August 22, 2019
Thanks for introduction!
I am thrilled to have this opportunity to apply my knowledge and skills of international and bilingual education into practice. The school has achieved a lot in the past four years. I know I will have millions of things to learn from other leaders and the staff. In the past month, I already learned a lot by talking with people and reading documents of the school.
It is my honor to share some of my thoughts before the new academic year begins. It is a multi-campus, multi-curriculum large school. I guess we don’t have many chances to get together and ponder over big questions once we go back to each section and department. Let’s take this opportunity to have a look at the school curriculum together in a hope of identifying strengths and areas to be improved.
Background
There are approximately 800 Chinese-English bilingual schools catering for Chinese nationals in mainland China by the end of 2018, according to the statistics provided by sources including NewSchool Insight (Xin Xue Shuo新学说) and TopSchools(Ding Si 顶思).
All of these schools either offer curricula combined by Chinese national curriculum and some international curricular elements or import a reputable international or western curriculum such as IB, A-Level, or AP in high school. There are 163 IB schools in mainland China. Proudly our school is one of them.
Certainly, more schools among the 800 bilingual schools are offering other international programs, especially at the high school level. According to Chinese education policies, the school much offer compulsory education curriculum from Grade 1 to Grade 9. So kindergartens and high schools enjoy more freedom in terms of curricular offering than primary and middle schools.
In the past four years, the leadership team directed by Gloria have done a lot of foundational and valuable work as to the education offering of the school and positioning of the school, and the promotion of the education offered by the school. As you can see, in terms of the structure of curriculum offering, our school has no difference than other similar schools. So the question will be how we could stand out among these schools in the market. I think the answer should be related to the quality of curriculum delivery, the richness and coherence within and across the intended curriculum, the quality of teaching and learning in our classrooms, and the learning outcomes of our students.
I hope my talk today can provoke thinking and conversation among the staff in term of these areas. The fifth anniversary of the school is around the corner, it is the time for the school including the leadership team and the staff to reflect on our achievement in the past, deliberate on lessons that we have learned, and design and plan our future development in all aspects of the school including curriculum, which is the focus of my talk today.
Bilingual school and bilingual education
Before we examine the curriculum of our own school, let’s take a look at the bilingual education and its curriculum in general. Bilingual education occurs in many places around the world, especially in Canada, the USA, the Europe. There is a lot of research about the modes, purposes, and teaching methods of bilingual education. Actually, Shanghai has invested in practice and research in bilingual education during the first decade of the century. So, what is a bilingual education? Can we learn from the research in a way that improve our work on bilingual education?
From a teaching perspective, Cummins (2009) defines bilingual education as “an organized and planned program that uses two (or more) languages of instruction. The central defining feature of bilingual programs is that the languages are used to teach subject matter content rather than just the languages themselves.” (p.161)
From a student learning perspective, (Garcia, 2009, p. 14) defines Bilingual education is “any instance in which children’s and teachers’ communicative practices in school normally include the use of multiple multilingual practices that maximize learning efficacy and communication; and that, in so doing, foster and develop tolerance towards linguistic differences, as well as appreciation of languages and bilingual proficiency.”
The term of “bilingual” is in the name of our school. Some of the elements indicated in the two descriptions of bilingual education are practices in our school already. For instance, in PYP and DP, bilingual teaching permeates and teaching subject matter bilingually is required as well. The question we will continue to ask might be how “organized and planned” our bilingual programs are across the four sections? To what extent does our curriculum develop students’ “tolerance towards linguistic differences, as well as appreciation of languages and bilingual proficiency”.
There is another often-used term related to bilingual or multilingual education is international school. Can a bilingual school also be an international school? There are various understandings and definitions of international school. Actually, it is hard to find a common definition of it. Organizations and schools tend to use their own definitions of international schools when they categorize or label schools.
International Association of School Librarianship (IASL, 2009) uses the following criteria for International Schools,
1. Transferability of students’ education across international schools
2. A moving population (higher than in national public schools)
3. Multinational and multilingual student body
4. An international curriculum (i.e. IB - DP, MYP, PYP)
5. International accreditation (e.g. CIS, IBO, North Eastern ASC, Western Ass. of Schools and colleges, etc.)
6. A transient and multinational teacher population
7. Non-selective student enrollment
8. Usually English or bi-lingual as the language of instruction
We find ECNUAS meets most of these criteria although we are not labelled as an international school probably due to education policies in China. Actually it is very difficult to categorize schools in this time. To explain the complexity of school types around the world, Hill 2006 has to proposed graphical method to identify the nature of a school between two pure types, namely pure national school and pure international school.
“A national school will have culturally homogeneous students and staff
from the same country; it may be public or private and offers an education
programme prescribed by the nation state. (Hill, 2006)”
“ International schools have a very culturally diverse student body, ideally
with no one nationality significantly dominating the others. They are
almost invariably private, independent institutions and they teach an international
education programme. Many were created as a service to internationally
mobile parents and the majority teach in English. (Hill, 2006)”
(Hill, 2006)
Where do you think our school is located in the diagram?
Perhaps ECNUAS will never become B, but certainly we can strive to become C at this stage, where student body is homogenous with respect to language and culture, but educational programs and internal and external context of our education are quite international. We hope in the future we could bring in more students’ culture diversity so that we would move towards C to some extent. We would also continue working on the internal and external contexts of our education and make them more international. So my point is that our bilingual education should be further considered in a framework of international education because this kind of education is what our students needed in the future.
Who are our students?
Majority if not all of them are Chinese nationals. They were born in the digital age and grew up accompanied by the internet, computers, iPad, and likely IA robots. Their parents are well-educated, probably have international work/education experiences. Studying abroad is these students’ first choice after they complete education in our school, probably international mobility in terms of work and travel is their vision of lives. Many of them wish to join the globally mobile work force in cross national corporates, international organizations, and government agencies.
A question we will have to ask naturally is whether our school education prepares students for their visions of life. I think our first response would be a bilingual education in the framework of international education makes sense as our graduates need multilingual abilities and global competences. Further, we can think what qualities and skills do our teaching and learning foster in our students? What unique strengths they will possess as the products of ECNUAS education?
As a school offering two IB programs, we have already identified with IB Learner profile as educational goals for our students. We hope our students will develop the ten attributes through the education of our school. My question would be since the IB isn’t the only program in our school, does it capture the purposes of all the teaching and learning taking place in the school. For instance, in primary and middle school, Shanghai curriculum takes most of the teaching hours and Shanghai curriculum is a very strong curriculum which has been delivering excellent results. I think we should think what unique strengths that the Shanghai curriculum in the context of Confucius heritage society brings to our students. Following this logic, my conclusion is that IB Learner Profile is not enough, we should think beyond that in terms of what our students will become.
A framework of school curriculum
Bulman and Jenkins (1988) describe three main aspects of school curriculum, including academic curriculum, pastoral curriculum, and hidden curriculum. This framework has been used to analyze the curriculum in international schools in a hope of identifying strengths and issues in international schools (Hayden, 2006). I think this framework is useful for us to examine our ECNUAS school curriculum as we are also aspired to offer a holistic and internationalized education for Chinese students. The three main areas of curriculum are,
• the academic curriculum: what is formally ‘taught’ in schools; it is either prescribed by the national education, or imported from somewhere else for instance, IB PYP, IPC, IGCSE, IBDP, AP, A-Level, etc;
• the pastoral curriculum: concerned with the development of students’ positive attitudes and personal and social skills, including the education delivered by homeroom teachers, House system, extra-curriculum activities, counselling for careers and occupations;
• the hidden curriculum:
practices in schools that are not explicit in the curriculum but have regular impact on students’ learning and growth, these practices include ability streaming, student-teacher relationships, classroom rules and procedures, reward systems within and outside classrooms.
We can see that this framework nicely captures all aspects of a school education that develops students academically, socially, and personally. I believe it is helpful to use this tool to examine our curriculum when we are in the journey of pursuing high quality, richness, and coherence of the curriculum within and across the four sections of the school.
A bird view map of the curriculum of ECNUAS
I did some homework. This table presents an overview of the school curriculum. I focus on written curriculum, language, and pastoral curriculum. Next time we can add other columns related to the hidden curriculum. Since it is hidden, I need time to observe and summarize.
What questions related to curriculum development you can ask?
Some observations and areas to be explored
-shared vision, mission, educational goals (originate from China, impact the world; develop successful learners, confident and creative leaders, caring and responsible citizens, balanced and happy persons)
-available strategies and practices that bring alignment across sections and programs
-Music, Arts and Sports programs, Director of music, Director of Arts, Directors of Sports, secure vertical curriculum alignment
-Academic committee
-Proposed bilingual teaching and teaching committee
Areas to be explored:
-how well have we designed and implemented pastoral curriculum including homeroom teacher system, house system, and a lot of extra-curriculum activities
-have we paid enough attention to the part of hidden curriculum, which inevitably creates the management and learning culture of the school?
-Do messages of content, skills, understanding, learning skills—learn how to learn transfer from one grade to the other?
-How do we use assessment data within and across sections to inform curriculum planning and teaching (SSAT, ?)
-The importance of interdisciplinary learning, how horizontal alignment of the curriculum and teacher collaboration can offer opportunities of interdisciplinary learning?
-Do we have age-appropriate bilingual and or multilingual learning targets (including both Chinese mother tongue and second language and/or third language)?
-The next one concerns teacher development, do we have strategies and opportunities for teachers to become curriculum planners that are able to work comfortably across grades, programs, and languages? (PYP teachers are all good curriculum planners as IB PYP only prescribes a curriculum framework leaving the teachers to create their own teaching units according to the local context of teaching and learning. How much this expertise and experience could be learned by other teachers in the school? )
-In terms of pastoral curriculum, what is the change role of homeroom teachers between each year level and sections in this K-12 school. Obviously, the developmental goals for different ages are different. Do we have a consistent vision of the role of homeroom teachers? We have a wonderful House System. I learned that the House System primary focused on academic activities before. So, the next question would be how we can fully develop and implement the House System for the purpose of student well-rounded development. I think many things can be included in the House System, such as student behaviors, attitudes, awards, dormitory life, clubs, cross-section events, self-regulated learning activities, etc.
-The last question but not least concerns with the issue of language teaching and learning. Bilingual teaching and learning has been built into the identity of our school. I think it should build into the identity of every teacher of the school as well. Each teacher needs to consider how to plan and implement bilingual teaching and learning more effectively? There are different levels and modes of bilingual teaching and learning, either through individual planning and teaching or collaborative planning and teaching. I believe every teacher can make contribution to this work. What kind of teacher learning opportunities is needed if a good bilingual program is to be put into place? Do we need language training, CLIL training, bilingual assessment training, etc?
Summary
I would like to take this opportunity to discuss with the staff about the future of the school from a curriculum perspective. As we all know, there are four sections in the school, namely kindergarten, primary, middle, high schools. Under the umbrella vision and mission of ECNUAS, they have commonalities and differences. You as an individual teacher doesn’t necessary pay much attention to what other sections are doing in terms of curriculum and teaching and learning. I presented many questions rather than solutions. I believe solutions to curricular problems often come from teachers’ creativity as teachers are the curriculum planner and implementer. It is teachers who will deliver expected good results of the curriculum in each classroom. Therefore, questions that could prompt our teachers to think, discuss, and take actions are more useful than a few irrelevant suggestions. In the end, I will learn from you how you think about and tackle these questions and what your solutions for your classroom, department, and section.
Working in one K-12 private school, my hope is that all teachers would deliver consistent messages to students and foster aligned skills and attitudes in students in all classrooms. I believe this kind of consistency and alignment is demanded not only from a school curriculum development perspective but also a marketing perspective. A simple question to be asked by each section would be whether the graduates of my school would choose to stay within ECNUAS to continue their education. Let’s keep thinking and working on these curricular areas in the coming years as we believe we all hope to create a quality education that is attractive to the society, that benefits our students, that contributes to the country and world. The vision of ECNUAS is “Originate from China, Impact the world”. As a school, the best way to contribute to the country and impact the world is to deliver high quality future talents.
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