Promoting Pre-service Teachers’ Competencies of Teaching Chinese Reading Online

Background

Reading is a central component of Chinese language education, and it normally requires extensive interactions and discussions among teachers and students. Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, it created a great deal of challenges to pre-service Chinese teachers, as they were not prepared for the sudden changes to online teaching. It is not very obvious to many pre-service teachers how Chinese reading can be taught interactively online. In fact, many pre-service Chinese language teachers have not received training to teach online, and their lack of online learning experience also creates a barrier that prevent them from developing creative and effective online reading lessons.

Besides, the implementation of STEAM education has pushed up the development of online teaching and e-leaning towards Chinese education. In order to increase international competitiveness of Hong Kong and equip Hong Kong students for responding to the rapid development of economy, science and technology, with facilitating their whole-person development and life-long learning capabilities, the government proposed STEM education for the first time in the 2015 Policy Address (Education Bureau 2016). According to the latest CLEKLAG (P1-S6) 2017, there are about 8 Key Learning Area Curriculum Guides. These include:

1.Opening learning materials and attaching importance to classic readings

2.Broadening the scope of reading, increasing the amount of reading, and enhancing the depth of reading

3.Cooperating with the development of information technology education, and enhancing the effectiveness of learning and teaching in Chinese language. The above information reflects that the Education Bureau emphasizes reading and technology application in Chinese language education.  It also promotes the good use of information technology for boosting learning and teaching through online and blended modes.

Aims

The aims of this project are twofold: to develop pre-service teachers’ competencies of teaching Chinese reading online and to develop online pedagogies for skill-based training. The project will adopt an immersive model where pre-service teachers will be trained online to develop their online teaching competencies. Online reading pedagogies will be primarily based on social constructionism and sociocultural perspectives, and online skill-based training will be based on iterative model of online video-based self-reflection and peer feedback. For more details, the specific objectives are as follows:

1. To develop an online model of skill-based training for increasing interactions, feedback, and reflection

2. To increase students’ knowledge of theories and practices in teaching Chinese reading through online and blended modes

3. To enhance students’ capacities of using technological tools for teaching reading online

4. To develop reflective teachers through peer-reviewing and reflection

Project Collaborators

1. Dr Chin-Hsi Lin, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, HKU.

2. Dr Sau Yan Hui, Lecturer, Faculty of Education, HKU.

Participants

The preservice teachers from The Postgraduate Diploma in Chinese Education (PGDE) program and two double-degree Chinese education program (60 students in total) in The University of Hong Kong.

Content

First, to provide revised syllabi and design an online training model based on theories and recent findings in teacher education; and second, to provide online teacher training to all participants from September 2021 to December 2021.

Students’ feedback from interviews and questionnaires are used to evaluate the quality of these training model and materials. We adopted two online questionnaires with open-ended questions before and after training. At the middle of the course, we started to interview participants for collecting quantitative data.

The quality of students’ peer review and reflection will be evaluated based on the rubrics created (see Resources Sharing) for each course as well as the core teaching practices identified by the instructors. Students’ course evaluations, course work, along with the above-mentioned questionnaire and quantitative data, will be analysed for evidence of project effectiveness.

The Introduction of Peer Review and Reflection Model

The Design of Peer Review and Reflection Model

There are several steps in adopting training model. Firstly, each presenter should complete an individual or a group micro-teaching. Secondly, the presenters will be given several minutes for self-reflection. Non-presenters and tutors need to finish an online assessment form on Moodle. In the peer review session, the presenters need to share their self-reflection at first. Then, a discussion will be carried out between the presenters, non-presenters and tutors. In this session, non-presenters and tutors can provide constructive feedback, suggestions or ask critical questions to the presenters. The presenters also need to respond to tutors and peer review. Finally, each student should submit a written self-reflection report after finishing peer review session(post-lesson).

Resources Sharing

1.Lesson Plan