Localising Chinese: Educating Teachers through Service-Learning

250 Pages·2018·2.987 MB·English

by  Michael Singh, Thị Hồng Nhung Nguyễn

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Localising
Chinese
Educating Teachers through Service-Learning
Michael Singh and Thị Hồng Nhung Nguyễn
Localising Chinese
Michael Singh • Thi Hô�ng Nhung Nguyê˜n
.
Localising Chinese
Educating Teachers through
Service- Learning
Michael Singh
Thi. Hồng Nhung Nguyễn
Centre for Educational Research
School of Education
Western Sydney University
Western Sydney University
Penrith, NSW, Australia
Penrith, NSW, Australia
ISBN 978-1-137-54281-6 ISBN 978-1-137-54282-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54282-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018933532
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Preface
We began research for Localising Chinese because of mounting concerns
regarding the educational outcomes for so many school students in Australia.
Among monolingual, English-speaking school students, 94% were drop-
ping out of Chinese (Zhōng Wén 中文) lessons before completing second-
ary school. Many of the remaining 6% of students who continued their
Chinese language education come from Chinese-speaking families. These
educational outcomes are similar across other nations throughout the
Anglosphere, a grouping of nations some people see as being organized by
their shared linguistic similarities. We understood that the family linguistic
heritage of some students enabled their success in language education in
their senior high school examinations. But what might be done to make
Chinese learnable for monolingual, English- speaking school students?
It seems that this question is mostly being asked by those who come
from the People’s Republic of China (Zhōngguó 中国), who already
speak Chinese as their first language. We understand and appreciate the
importance of these views to the scholarly debates about the globalisation
of Chinese language education. However, for monolingual school stu-
dents who are just beginning to learn Chinese, we too have a keen interest
in sponsoring their Chinese language learning and use. Through Localising
Chinese, we imagine ourselves in their situation, learning Chinese from
the position of outsiders. We bring the point of view of monolingual
students to questions about making Chinese learnable. While the
v
vi Preface
perspectives of monolingual students are important, these are often
neglected in this emerging field of education and research. Thus, we focus
on ‘teaching monolingual Engslish-speaking school students how to learn
and use Chinese’ rather than ‘teaching Chinese’. To begin with, these
particular students need sponsors for their Chinese language learning;
including educators who actually speak the same language as them, and
educators who speak other languages and have learnt English. In Localising
Chinese, we argue that this strategy is preferable to relying solely on teach-
ers from China and the associated agencies of the government of China
as sponsors of Chinese language education. In doing so, we also draw
upon  insights from the  work of  innovative language teachers in
China which is reported in current research literature.
Localising Chinese takes as its point of departure Singh’s approach to
internationalising education through the joint production of languages
and knowledge. He has developed doctoral pedagogies whereby multilin-
gual higher degree researchers can elect to activate, mobilise and deploy
their full linguistic repertoire to address the problems of local/global
knowledge co-construction. In his co-authored book Pedagogies for
Internationalising Research Education (Springer), Singh focused on using
conceptual knowledge in Zhōng Wén (中文Chinese) to develop the
capabilities of multilingual higher degree researchers for ‘post- monolingual
theorising’. He now finds himself exploring ways in which students’ mul-
tilingual capabilities can be brought out of the shadows of ostensibly
monolingual Anglophone universities and employed in their education.
In search of multilingual-friendly university education, Singh inserts
these questions into the heart of scholarly debates about local/global
imbalances in language/knowledge relationships.
Singh has visited a range of industrial plants, from a winery to an alu-
minium smelter, from a cabinet-making factory to a micro-aircraft man-
ufacturing works. There he has conducted educationally purposeful
conversations with high school students, teachers and factory worker-
trainers about the relationship between education and knowledgeable
workers. This has led Singh to better understand education policy prac-
tices for contextualising schooling through work integrated learning. His
co-authored book Deschooling L’earning: Young Adults and the New Spirit
of Capitalism (Palgrave Macmillan) explores education policy practices in
Prefac e vii
terms of what happens when idealised solutions are slammed up against
the doors of problematic realities. Localising Chinese builds on these
understandings through focusing on school-driven, research-oriented
service-learning for university candidates undertaking higher degrees by
research.
Initially, we had assumed that those who come from China and speak
Chinese as their first language could make Chinese learnable. However,
research reports from around the world indicate the need for much
greater involvement in Chinese language education by locals. In recent
years, we have begun to better understand that it is both possible and
quite effective to approach Chinese language education from the perspec-
tive of monolingual, English-speaking students. Localising Chinese is alive
with questions. Could prospective teachers from China make student-
centred, learning-focused language education a basis for their profes-
sional learning? Would they be willing to explore their students’ funds of
powerful knowledge, especially their recurring sociolinguistic activities
performed in English, and then use this knowledge  as educational
resources to make Chinese learnable? How might they deal with knowl-
edge from China and internationally about innovations in post-
monolingual education for teaching students how to learn Chinese?
Would it be possible for them to develop their professional capabilities as
teachers using school-driven, research-oriented service-learning?
These questions were also of interest to Thị Hồng Nhung Nguyễn, a
lecturer from Hoa Sen University (Vietnam). Nguyễn contributed to a
study of intercultural experience for local/global citizenship in higher
education for the Australian Government Office of Learning and
Teaching. Using case studies for curriculum development, she contrib-
uted to the collective development of a Local Global Learning Framework.
Insights from this research stimulated Nguyễn’s interest in Localising
Chinese and ways in which pedagogical connections can be made between
multilingual students’ diverse intellectual cultures and their academic
studies. Through a study of service-learning in higher education,
from which ideas are explored in Localising Chinese, Nguyễn investigates
ways in which multilingual researchers’ capabilities for post-monolingual
theorising can be developed. Her research into the divergence of l anguages
has informed her use of conceptual tools from the Tiếng Việt for post-
viii Preface
monolingual theorising about local/global service-learning. Through
this research, Nguyễn has established herself as a bilingual researcher and
educator, stimulating the use of her full linguistic repertoire to deepen
her theorising capabilities in Tiếng Việt and English.
Moreover, Nguyễn works as a volunteer ethics teacher in Australia.
This approach to work-integrated learning is similar to the service-
learning undertaken by the volunteers whose work in Australian schools
is presented in Localising Chinese. Nguyễn is supporting primary school
students in developing important life skills: thinking logically, disagree-
ing respectfully and using evidence and reasoning to make decisions. Her
contributions to developing these school students’ ethical learning has
extended her insights into the Australian education system, its intellec-
tual culture and what this means for teaching students with diverse lin-
guistic capabilities. In addition, Nguyễn discusses her twin sons’ uses of
Tiếng Việt as both a home and a school language with their teachers.
They encourage her to extend their bilingual capabilities by using Tiếng
Việt for home assignments, while some teachers also make an advantage
of their students’ multilingualism in their own teaching. As a volunteer
co-educator, Nguyễn helps primary school teachers identify bilingual
children’s existing knowledge in their own languages so that they can
make curriculum decisions about what and how to use this knowledge in
class and in students’ homework. Looking back on the family’s early days
in Australia when her twin boys could not communicate with their class-
mates in English, Nguyễn remembers sharing their tears when they came
home from school. Now she knows that their learning English can be
enhanced by using what they know and are learning in Tiếng Việt. As a
bilingual language educator, researcher and mother, Nguyễn wants more
teachers to know about the educational benefits of post-monolingual
approaches to working with bilingual and monolingual  students.
Localising Chinese contributes to that agenda.
As co-researchers, we are interested in mediating, or otherwise mitigat-
ing, the divisions in intellectual labour associated with the sense and sen-
sibilities governing the languages used for knowledge production, the
linguistic resources used for theorising, and the linguistic repertoire
employed for thinking critically. At stake here is the struggle against
intellectual equality. We work on the tensions between academic depen-
Prefac e ix
dency on theories produced and disseminated in English, and multilin-
gual researchers’ capabilities for theorising; between learning languages
and being made to feel some languages are difficult if not impossible to
learn; and the production of life-giving knowledge and the marketing of
employment and immigration certificates; and between people’s life
work and institutionalised mechanisms for doing otherwise. Through
making connections with Chinese people, especially those involved in
innovative Chinese language education throughout the world, we also
draw attention to learning about China’s place in the world of knowledge
production. While this is not the primary focus of this book, we fore-
ground its importance for Localising Chinese.
The problem which concerns us most, however, is the education of
professional teachers so that they know how to teach a global language
such as Chinese in forms and ways monolingual, English-speaking school
students can learn and use in their local school community. The research
reported in Localising Chinese provides a framework for educating profes-
sional teachers who then can actually enable their students to use their
existing knowledge in and of English to learn Chinese. This framework
can be used by school mentors and language teacher-research educators
to frame and negotiate the learning journey of emergent teachers who
need to develop student-centred, learning-focused professional knowl-
edge, practices and engagement strategies. Thus, we encourage teaching
and research which explore the relevance of Chinese to all aspects of stu-
dents’ everyday lives; ‘localising’ Chinese by folding it into students’
recurrent everyday sociolinguistic activities performed in English.
Penrith, NSW, Australia Michael Singh
Thị Hồng Nhung Nguyễn
Acknowledgements
A special word of appreciation is expressed to Lindsay Wasson, who initi-
ated and established the international school-driven research-oriented
service-learning programme in Chinese language education that provides
a basis for the study reported in this book. Likewise, we are particularly
grateful to Cheryl Ballantyne who operationalised the programme
through her liaison with schools and the ‘bridges to understanding’ com-
munication network. We express our thanks to those who helped with
this research in various ways: Lu Siyi, Huang Xiaowen, Yuan Jing, Lin
Long, Gao Tao, Bi Jiayin, Zhou Lan, Hua Xia, Shi Jie, Shen Hangyan,
Dai Siyu, Wang Qingjuan and He Qin. We are grateful for the educa-
tionally purposeful conversations we have had with a range of academic
colleagues, including Michael Apple, Ruth Arber, Xiafang Chen, Rusell
Cross, Guihua Cui, Fred Dervin, Tonia Gray, Stephen Kemmis, Jo Lo
Bianco, Edward McDonald, Catherine Manthunga, Hui Meng, Robyn
Moloney, Carol Reid, Angela Scarino, Andrew Scrimgeour, Haibo Shen
and Michiko Weinmann.
We acknowledge the valuable support of senior Education Department
officers Greg Prior, David Phipps and Diane Dunn, along with Professors
Wayne McKenna and Michael Appleton, whose combined educational
leadership made this long-term study possible. A special word of grati-
tude is extended to the many school principals, school mentors and
school executives who supported the programme that is the focus of the
xi