Despite the troubles I’ve faced in the initial stages of conducting my research, I’ve found ways to get around the “Chinese gatekeepers” of these international program. Mainly this have come through the contacts made among foreign teachers (western- typically from the US and Canada) here. They have become my main source of information as well as my means for getting into the classroom and meeting with students in the international programs. Creating this network for my research has been one of my main accomplishments in the past two months. Unfortunately now these international programs are on summer break and most foreign teachers are leaving town so I won’t be able to get many more interviews until late August.
Building my network of contacts
It’s been an organic snow ball process where one contact leads to another. At times, meeting contacts here have been fortuitous, coming at unexpected times:
- After a lunch in early May with an American guy who oversaw a Chinese language program at Yunnan University affiliated with the CET in Harbin, I was introduced to the lead foreign teacher at an international program who happened to be at the same restaurant as us then
- I met an international program teacher in my Frisbee group who started playing in late April
- In late April I went out to a western bar on a Tuesday night on a whim and met a group of foreign teachers at an international program then
- In mid- May I met an administrator of an international program playing cards at a foreign teacher’s apartment
Overall developing my fieldwork network has been a unique, exciting experience. After facing initial disappointment, persistence paid off (as well as a bit of luck) and my research fieldwork made great progress in unexpected ways.
Getting a sense of the “inner life” of these international programs
Talking to foreign teachers has provided me insight into program’s internal dynamics. And, unlike some Chinese educators I’ve met with, they are more direct and honest about the strengths and shortcomings of their international program. They’ve also helped me understand the composition of students who enter these programs.
Though I haven’t analyzed much of my data yet, these interviews have left me with some initial impressions of these programs. In particular, I’ve found that foreign teachers largely run and shape these international programs while Chinese administrators are largely detached and absent (similar to my own experience as an English instructor at an international college at Guangxi University). In administrative and teaching positions, foreign educators often have the primary role in developing curricula, teaching material, and lesson plans as well as deciding which textbooks to use in the classroom with little Chinese oversight or support.
One of the interviews I found particularly interesting and insightful was that with an American teacher (whom I will call “Jason”) who helped start one of these international programs in partnership with the Yunnan department of education. Jason had worked at a local English training school for two years helping to build it up in Kunming when he got a call from the Yunnan department of education in June, 2011. According to Jason, someone over there had heard about his ability to relate with Chinese students and his strong Mandarin skills in his words he could “embody white on the outside, Chinese on the inside.” After a 10 minute meeting with individuals at the local department, they hired him to start up the program in a local public high school where he would work for the next three years.
Jason literally had to start from scratch. The local department provided him with nothing in the way of curriculum, textbooks or learning material but already had 30 students signed up for the program. This international program’s aim would be to prepare students in a year to study at a high school in the US (either private or public). But Jason knew little about curriculum design at the time either and had no independent budget. They gave him several months to set things up as well as hire teachers. So he put together a semblance of an ad hoc curriculum (initially trying to follow Common Core) to include an ESL course, an English literature course, a Science course, a Math course, and an American history and made illegal copies of existing textbooks. He also hired a crew of capable foreign teachers largely relying on them to develop their own lessons and syllabus for each course.
To him, the Chinese administers and individuals in the local education department didn’t really care about the quality or content of the education in the international program. Jason claimed that there was just a “mentality of individuals making money” where what really mattered most was increasing the program’s numbers and making sure that the “customers [parents and students] were happy.” The tuition was about 60,000 RMB for the year (about $10,000) per student (tuition for public high school in China is often a fraction of that) and the public high school, department of education and the US study abroad placement company all got a piece of the pie. As a result, at times Chinese administrators and department of education personnel tried to push students into the program who, according to Jason, were not ready (mentally or linguistically). So he often played the role of trying to maintain a semblance of education standards and quality in the international program. Yunnan department of education also used him as their “little white boy”; he was often called on for dinners, recruitment events and competitions to be the “international face that Chinese could empathize with” to schmooze with and give speeches to parents in Mandarin.
Jason saw the foreign teachers as the core of the program’s development. Their passion for the students built the reputation of the program when he worked there. Jason took great pride in helping students prepare to study in the US. He had a semester long philosophy course aimed at helping students “understand [the] American student psyche.” Some students in the international program after graduating from high school in the US went on to noteworthy universities in the US including Stanford, Princeton and UC Berkley.
Problems with relying on foreign teachers for research data
Relying largely on foreign teachers for my research has clear drawbacks. I try to keep in mind that they have their own biases when it comes to perspectives on Chinese students, teachers and administrators. Among them, some foreign teachers inflate their role and influence over the Chinese students. I've noticed that a hubristic “enlightening” mission permeate some of the foreign teachers’ view of teaching Chinese students to the ways of Western thought and concepts. Nonetheless, they have provided me with invaluable insight into how these international programs operate as well as the student body. I hope that foreign teachers will provide me with a basis for getting interviews with Chinese educators connected to these international programs.