Teaching in China

[Joseph-1]

I found, at least in undergraduate studies, that rote memorization was as important here in the US, as your students do there in China. Especially in subjects such as Organic Chemistry, Genetics, Physics, Anatomy, Physiology, Pathology, and math.

Thanks Owen! Couple of points on Owen's and Jim's observations below. Owen, it sounds like you have the first rough draft of an interesting article for the Chronicle. Perhaps discussion on this forum will help.

 

1) Jim, how old is your observation? (This is a statemet, not a question begging an answer - don't answer!) In the US and around the world, education is changing *very* quickly. I went to a conference in Beijing at the end of October and found that the rest of the world is even farther ahead on the philosophical and structural changes that are happening in education. (This actually even includes the Chinese that I met, albeit human factors researchers who are working on issues of machine-assisted learning.)

 

Owen, how regional is your observation? I wonder if some of the bigger schools throughout the country are closer to the "cutting edge" of these changes than other schools?

 

2) Back to Jim's comments: In many disciplines, there is necessarily going to be some rote learning. Many areas of study have specific "terms of art" that must be used in order to communicate meaninffully on a subject. How can one possibly learn anatomy without knowing the names of all of the spare parts? How can the pre-med student ever grow up to be a surgeon without being able to commit the names of these spare parts to memory?

 

So back to Owen's comments: I wonder if your observations on the culture of how one is "supposed" to learn has affected the kinds of courses that are being taught. I've had contact with Chinese and Russian professors who couldn't figure out how to teach Western marketing as these countries begin to discover Western business practice.

 

In disciplines outside of, say, medicine or law or physics or chemistry, we don't have quite so many "terms of art" or laws (read "mathematical formulas") to learn before we can discuss the issues of the subject. It is in these other disciplines that we have been finding that people learn better by using in context rather than by memorizing. For example, in teaching business, we have been using the case method for decades. There are some famous business schools - a snobby one in Boston is a good example -- that never got business school accreditation because they taught in this manner. But they didn't care because their students were ending up as CEOs of big companies. The rest of us changed to use that teaching model, and even the accrediting body changed to accept this method of teaching.

 

My point is that there is one teaching/learning method that is appropriate for pre-med or pre-law kinds of courses, but there is another method that is more appropriate for business strategy kinds of courses. The KINDS of subject areas that have historically been emphasized in China perhaps also somewhat dictate the teaching methods. Unfortunately, the methods used to teach traditional science subjects are completely inappropriate when teaching strategy courses.

 

(Perhaps this is why an American MBA is currently worth so much -- we've been using these methods longer.)

 

 

3) Now, let's go beyond just teaching something like business strategy and think about teaching something like personal selling. This now relates a bit to Owen's post: They don't teach many business courses in China, and "Western" courses such as sales management and personal selling are completely alien to them.

 

I come up with multiple choice exams just to satisfy the old guard, but it is tough to make these for a course such as personal selling. I teach my students how to swim as an individual and how to swim as part of a team, but the real test is when they get kicked into real water. No amount of memorization will keep them from drowning. When they must present a real sales proposal to a real business client, they aren't going to make it through if they only know a list of key words and definitions.

 

So in many of my courses, my students aren't even using textbook cases -- they are doing real consulting for real clients. I am nothing more than a mentor or team leader. I set the example, and they model their behaviors after me. (OK, here's the term of art: this is called "vicarious learning," and it is a keyword that was indeed on the multiple choice exams in my consumer psychology and personal selling courses this semester.)

 

This past semester, my consumer psychology students wrote advertising copy for a real client and did an atmospherics assessment for a real store. My marketing principles students did an environmental analysis for a real store. My sales students proposed strategies for obtaining the business of a conglomerate for our client who runs a carpet cleaning business. My graduate services marketing students "blueprinted" the counseling operations of a local family shelter to identify potential fail points in the service process. Absolutely none of the skills that are required to conduct the research, conduct analyses, formulate strategies, write persuasive reports, make persuasive presentations, or work effectively as team members can be learned through the methods to which Owen's Chinese students have been exposed.

 

Two cents that might encourage Owen to put his interesting and valuable observations in a more permanent and visible place like the Chronicle.

Someone is really missing the true attitudes of the Chinese regarding education.We as westerners tend to analyze things in terms of logic and deduction. Chinese tend more to touch life from experience. Its not what you know,its what you do. Now its nice for a westerner to take an interest in Chinese education or lifestyles,but we are on the outside looking in. We are attempting to analyze a culture that views us as intellectual children.

Over all, chinese students are coming from the exact opposite direction than most westerners think. At least my students were that way.

[owenkrout]

Most of the teachers, that I encountered in the American educational system, graduated with a master's degree and started teaching. They had no experience in the real world and probably couldn't make it! They certainly fit the cliche, "Those that can do, those that can't teach."

--------------------

Jim

 

Guess I fit that one. When my arthritis got to where I couldn't do the 12+ hour days on the concrete and the lifting in the machine shops, I went to teaching Engineering Technology.

[owenkrout]

I learned my manufacturing engineering the hard way, on the plant floor. I hit the books after I had learned the way it worked in the real world. I actually started, back in the stone age, as the janitor and worked my way up through two companies eventually "retiring" out as the Quality Manager.

 

Chinese are stuck with the field of study that they start with, so they are always amazed that I have degrees in different fields. I have an Associates in Digital Electronics (so long ago and not used enough that it is now terribly out of date), a Bachelors in History, a Masters in Technical Education (a program specific to teach people with an existing trade how to teach) and through national test by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers I am certified as a Manufacturing Engineer. In addition I have 18 graduate hours past the Masters in Adult Education. Add to that a wide array of job experiences besides the machine shops. Students are amazed that Americans can do that kind of change.

 

I tended to have little patience for the professors with doctorates, usually over me, who had no practical experience and didn't know how to switch on the lathe much less understand that the book feeds and speeds where just good starting points, not the answer that fit all situations.

[Guest bob61]

I know that some people can be really, really good at sewing quilts and have many years of experience doing so. They might even win lots of awards at craft shows. But if I'm scheduled for surgury, I want to know that the doctor has the recognized level of schooling in the appropriate disciplines.

 

As for reading the book ten years ago and learning nothing since, most of my friends have been the ones who wrote those books. My own research is cited in college consumer psychology textbooks and I am the author of three chapters in a marketing principles textbook. We are qualified to teach the subject because we are the ones who are making the new discoveries.

 

As for real world experience, I was age 39 when I finished my Ph.D. and started teaching. Two professors hired this year: One is a Mexican woman teaching production management who just finihsed her PhD at age 38; she had been an engineer prior to that. Another is a PhD Indian programmer who we got as a result of the Silicon Alley meltdown, hired to teach MIS. Most business professors do consulting on the side -- they are not removed from the real world. At the big schools, consulting is sometimes their primary source of income -- that's how those places end up with those obscenely huge megasections that leave the professor with enough spare time to run a full-time private practice.

 

This ain't your grandfather's Oldsmobile no more.

[Joseph-1]

I know that some people can be really, really good at sewing quilts and  have many years of experience doing so.  They might even win lots of awards at craft shows.  But if I'm scheduled for surgury, I want to know that the doctor has the recognized level of schooling in the appropriate disciplines.

 

As for reading the book ten years ago and learning nothing since, most of my friends have been the ones who wrote those books.  My own research is cited in college consumer psychology textbooks and I am the author of three chapters in a marketing principles textbook.  We are qualified to teach the subject because we are the ones who are making the new discoveries.

 

As for real world experience, I was age 39 when I finished my Ph.D. and started teaching.  Two professors hired this year: One is a Mexican woman teaching production management who just finihsed her PhD at age 38; she had been an engineer prior to that.  Another is a PhD Indian programmer who we got as a result of the Silicon Alley meltdown, hired to teach MIS.  Most business professors do consulting on the side -- they are not removed from the real world.  At the big schools, consulting is sometimes their primary source of income -- that's how those places end up with those obscenely huge megasections that leave the professor with enough spare time to run a full-time private practice.

 

This ain't your grandfather's Oldsmobile no more.

For myself I cant say that I have a degree in this or that. Although my education favors science and engineering. I was the kid who hated sports because he couldnt play them. Ive worked in some fairly interesting places and can say that when you do somthing you have a tendency to know how to do it,but explainining how to someone else is another matter entirely.

Its not unheard of to find someone with a college education that cant run a lawnmower. Yet some of those are running this country. Education without application = constipation.

[Guest bob61]

It doesn't matter that someone has a few decades of "real world" experience, doesn't matter that the person has the degrees, doesn't matter that someone is publishing the textbooks, doesn't matter that the person has professional technical certifications: some people are going to believe whatever they want or wish to be true regardless of the reality around them.

 

There is no end, regardless of the evidence, presumably for INS issues as well. Credibility now lacking, the rumors on this board no longer seem worth either the effort to read nor the support.