Narrative inquiry and the exploration of culture for improving teacher education

Blended Learning Dilemma: Teacher Education in the Confucian Heritage Culture

“…In supporting the movement towards a more constructivist approach for Chinese undergraduates, many teacher education programmes have incorporated views of reflection into their course structure. Teacher educators (for example, Chan, 2015;Yu & Lau, 2011) have adopted inquiry-based approach to promote pre-service teachers as creative and reflective thinkers. Yu and Lau (2011) expressed concerns over the relationship between learning experiences and outcomes when more time must be invested in the inquiry process.…”

“…User statistics have shown a significant growth in the blended learning user base within the institution. Given that Hong Kong student teachers represent a general Chinese approach associated with learning (Chan, 2015;Chan & Elliot, 2004), they may be unable to cope in a blended environment. Zheng (2013) suggested that a critical examination of student teachers' perceptions of learning would assist in informing future practices on blended learning classrooms because learning beliefs vary between cultural groups.…”

“…As a British colony for more than 150 years, Hong Kong Chinese learners have incorporated both Eastern and Western cultural systems (Hong et al, 2000;Hayhoe, 2011). Studies investigating the epistemological beliefs of Hong Kong student teachers have revealed that the factors influencing the teacher's belief are complex and linked to cultural contexts (Chan, 2015;Chan & Elliott, 2004). Traditionally, researchers have used CHC as a context for understanding Chinese students as learners (Dasari, 2009;Education Bureau, 2017;Higgins & Zheng, 2002;Lau & Yeung, 1996).…”

Narrative inquiry in China

“…Many researchers point out that using narrative inquiry this way is a form of professional development for teachers. Recognizing the value of narrative inquiry as a form of action research contributes to competency and reflection (Sun, 2004;Liu, 2005;Yang, 2006;Chen, 2009;Song, 2011;Yang, 2016;Bai, 2020;Fan, 2020;Peng, 2021;Zhang, 2022).…”

“…We believe that tanjiu best captures the narrative idea of life space while recognizing that yanjiu opens the door to more reproducible theoretically guided studies. This distinction helps explain Yang's (2016) puzzle: although more and more research articles have been published on teacher-student relationship, Yang claims not to know how to deal with teacher-student relationship. With the theoretic as the starting point, before inquiry, people often have a framework in their mind to guide them to listen to, see, and know they want to know while overlooking or ignoring the nuances of different experiences lived by people due to different personal, social, cultural, historical, political and/or economic situations.…”