In recent years, the demand for the acquisition of Mandarin Chinese language is in full swing globally based on the recognition of the economic and social importance of China. As a proactive response, the Ministry of General Education in Zambia included Mandarin Chinese as a second additional language in the secondary school Curriculum. However, there is a lack of exploring the epistemological beliefs and conceptions about Mandarin Chinese language teaching and learning in Zambia. A mixed research design is employed to study the epistemological beliefs and conceptions about Mandarin Chinese language teaching and learning in Zambia. A belief questionnaire was administered to 100 secondary school students learning Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL). Semi-structured interviews were adopted to seek deep insights from 10 secondary school teachers on their epistemological beliefs and conceptions about Chinese language teaching and learning. The result shows that the students’ epistemological beliefs about the introduction of Mandarin Chinese language learning in secondary schools is key to enhance mutual understanding and friendship between the People’s Republic of China and Zambia. Also, the study results indicate that most of the students perceive learning Mandarin Chinese language as a window of opportunity for a good job and learning a new language. Nevertheless, the study results show that some teachers perceived the introduction of Mandarin Chinese language as a new form of Neo-colonization. This paper concludes that it’s fundamental for teachers in secondary schools in Zambia to review their epistemological beliefs and conceptions about Mandarin Chinese language teaching and learning and try to incorporate a SAL orientation using both literacy artifacts and cultural artifacts in teaching Mandarin Chinese language in secondary schools.
This systematic review aimed at exploring Confucius’ thoughts and influence on moral education in China. The study results show that ancient Chinese educational thoughts of moral education could be said to have three dimensions: goal, main contents, and teaching methods described in this paper. An analysis of the key elements of Confucius' educational thought’s on moral education reveals that the purpose of moral education in ancient China was to cultivate a totally virtuous individual ('Junzi')., while as the concept of benevolence ('Ren') is considered the foundation of Confucius' moral, educational thoughts, while the concept of etiquette ('Li') is the external form of 'Ren.' Both of them are fundamental to Confucius' ideas on moral education. Confucius' moral education includes numerous teaching approaches, such as self-cultivating, individual instruction, enlightenment, and practice, which are presented in this paper. Furthermore, this paper concludes by arguing that Confucius's educational thoughts on moral education provide a significant reference for contemporary education in todays' China and has enduring value for research and practice in contemporary moral education in the 21st century.
The overall purpose of this study was from an educational management perspective to explore the effectiveness of the re-entry policy implementation in public schools in Lusaka District, Zambia, and highlight the missing links between the stipulated re-entry policy of 1997 and the actual practice on the ground in terms of its implementation in secondary schools. This study was qualitative and employed a case study approach, and standard open-ended interviews were used to obtain data from the district education officers, headteachers, teachers, and parents to teen mothers. The study's findings imply that the re-entry policy implementation in the selected secondary schools is not practical to a high degree. The study findings further indicated that the policy is silent, and there is no awareness of the policy in secondary schools due to unclear policy goals and objectives. The study findings also indicated no sense of ownership of the policy by stakeholders responsible for implementing the policy. Further, the study concluded that secondary schools' policy implementation is not practical because there are no clear stated objectives, implementation and monitoring strategies, financial, human, and legal resources. Hence, this study recommended that the Ministry of General Education redesign the policy, including all stakeholders in the formulation process, and clearly state its goals and objectives to ensure future successful implementation.
Teacher professional development (TPD) is not only an ongoing process that contributes towards individual growth of teachers but also an integral element in school improvement. This paper reports the Zambian secondary school teachers’ perceptions of their continuous professional development in teacher engagement in CPD activities, perceived importance of different CPD programs/activities, needs to be focused on future training, and barriers using quantitative data. A self-created questionnaire was distributed to 700 conveniently selected secondary school teachers from four schools. The data was examined using descriptive statistics such as frequency of responses, mean scores, and standard deviation, as well as the t-test of independent samples for comparing the perspectives of respondents from different categories. From the findings, teachers were moderately engaged in TPD programs/activities and perceived developing teaching and learning materials as highly important. The impact of their perceptions was evident as there was no significant difference between female and male perceptions about their engagement in teacher CPD programs. Thus, the importance of recognizing and addressing teachers' perceptions of CPD is argued in this study because teachers play an important role in how they learn and how their perceptions impact the changes they make in their teaching practice.
Mandarin Chinese language, particularly regarding foreign language teachers' professional development, has been studied in depth. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has posed various challenges in professional development (PD) particularly in the education sector where the ‘new normal’ experience is all about online interaction and distance learning. Hence, little evidence has been conducted to examine the challenges and innovations of Mandarin CFL teachers in developing countries with regard to continuous professional development during the new normal. This research study, based on sequential explanatory mixed methods research design, is aimed at exploring the availability and provision of Mandarin CFL PD opportunities in public schools in the context of Zambia and the perception of Mandarin CFL teachers on its coherence and adequacy framed from a social cultural perspective. A total of 207 Mandarin Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) male and female teachers participated in a custom-designed 15-item questionnaire, as well as four school head teachers, four school coordinators, one CPD focal participated in semi-structured interviews to explore their perceptions, practices and challenges of online school based CFL PD program during the Covid-19 lockdown. The results show that Mandarin CFL teachers have a positive perception of CFL PD programs implemented during the Covid-19 pandemic despite the practice of teacher OTPD program implementation is at low level in the sampled schools. Furthermore, the results show that Mandarin CFL teachers lack support from school management and immediate supervisors and lack of collaboration between Mandarin CFL teachers and school head teachers were among the factors that affected the implementation of CFL professional development (PD) programs during the Covid-19 pandemic. Also, the study shows that Mandarin CFL teachers with more teaching experience relatively positively perceived PD programs during the Covid-19 pandemic and Mandarin CFL teachers 2nd-degree holders practice more PD activities than 1st-disagree holders in the selected secondary schools. On the basis of these results, this study recommends that teacher educators, policy-makers, and other decision-making bodies should consider long-term ongoing professional development (PD) for teachers of Mandarin Chinese language in digital literacy.
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