Educational Technology Promotes the Quality of In-class Teaching in Rural Primary and Middle Schools: BNU Pilot Program on Leapfrog Development of Basic Education 1 Overview Educational Technology Promotes the Quality of In-class Teaching in Rural Primary and Middle Schools is a pilot program led by Modern Educational Technology Research Institute of Beijing Normal University. Against the overall backdrop of accelerated ICT-based education development and the ongoing new curriculum reform in China, multiple methods such as face-to-face teaching, class attending, teaching evaluation, tutorial, online teaching, online discussion, inspection and evaluation, and cross-school, cross-area and nationwide exchange and seminars are adopted to integrate ICT into school teaching. The ultimate objective of leapfrog development is to improve the teaching quality in rural primary and middle schools to the level of outstanding schools in big cities without prolonging class hours or adding to the burden of students, and to eliminate significant difference in exam scores and achieve all-round development of students. Launched in September 2000, the pilot program has evolved through four phases by the end of 2012, namely preliminary establishment of theoretical approach, improvement of theoretical approach, deepening of pilot exploration and expansion of pilot areas. There are over 390 pilot schools so far, distributed in 27 pilot areas, 16 of which are rural areas. Targeted at areas and schools equipped with good Internet facilities or without access to the Internet, the program has seen a large number of successful cases where ICT promotes the teaching quality of schools considerably, and explored theories, technologies, modes and methods that did effectively improve the teaching quality in rural areas and could be widely replicated and popularized. 1 Draft of this case study is provided by Yu Shengquan (yusq@bnu.edu.cn) from Modern Educational Technology Research Institute of Beijing Normal University, and revised by Zeng Haijun (zenghj@bnu.edu.cn) and Wang Ying. Main references are papers of Prof. He kekang, the subject director, and website (http://www.etc.edu.cn/) and brochure of the program.
Background: enabling rural students to enjoy education opportunities equally Educational equity includes equity in the starting point, the process and the achievements. It takes considerable input of human resources, financial resources and materials to achieve equity in the three aspects, especially equity in the starting point. However, what truly matters is equity in educational achievements, because as long as rural students have access to as good education as urban students, achieve the same exam scores, and meet the same comprehensive quality requirements, inequity in their starting point would not matter much. Conventional theories on educational equity maintain that inequity in the starting point will inevitably result in inequity. However, today, the modern e-learning project for rural primary and middle schools has been completed and schools in central and western China are now generally equipped with basic ICT-based teaching facilities. If we adopt innovative theories, modes and methods of ICT-based teaching, will the correlation between starting point inequity and result inequity be changed? The Educational Technology Promotes the Quality of In-class Teaching in Rural Primary and Middle Schools program is implemented to practice, explore and seek the ultimate answer through experiments and research (see Figure 1). Figure 1: A 70-year-old professor educated 60,000 students in mountain areas for 17 years (source: website of the program http://www.etc.edu.cn/) Though in his 70s, Prof. He Kekang is still as dedicated to education as he always has been. Walking on the village paths leading to school, he always tells students: I don t know what it will look like tomorrow, but I do know what I should do today.
He believes that rural areas are a vast world to be tapped into by educationists. Educational equity and balance are our responsibility. We should strive to provide rural children with fair access to quality education resources. Objective: focusing on both knowledge and capability to achieve all-round development Prof. He Kekang, Director of the program explained the objective of the pilot program for leapfrog development in plain language: Turning weak schools with poor conditions into good and even reputed schools with high teaching quality; turning ordinary teachers into elite, outstanding and even renowned teachers; turning lagging-behind students with low starting points into students of excellence. Prof. Yu Shengquan, expert of the program team, explained: Leapfrogging is not premature development, but a direct tackling of the crucial issues in education development such as improvement of in-class teaching, burden alleviation and education for all-round development. It is intended to push education modernization onto a higher level through innovation and overcoming obstacles. The objective of the program is to focus on both knowledge and capability to achieve all-round development of students (see Figure 2), and to achieve better teaching quality without prolonging class hours or adding to students burden. Specifically: (1) Chinese: Enabling students finishing grade-2 schooling to recognize no less than 2,500 Chinese characters, read general newspapers and popular youth materials, and write completely-structured logical articles of at least 300 characters using a computer (or write articles of at least 150 characters by hand). Finishing each grade, students should reach the same level as students of the same grade in local Class-I schools in terms of the number of characters they can recognize, reading ability and writing ability. (2) English: Enabling students to make significant progress in vocabulary, listening and speaking; enabling primary school students to recognize 2,000 words and to acquire basic listening, speaking, reading and writing abilities. Finishing each grade, students should reach the same level as students of the same grade in local Class-I schools in terms of vocabulary, reading and writing.
(3) Other subjects: Achieving considerable improvement in teaching quality and students all-round development through in-depth integration of ICT and course teaching. Measurement can be made in three aspects: depth reached in meeting the standard teaching targets of the new basic curriculum, improvement of the practical problem-solving ability and development of the thinking ability. Figure 2: Comprehensive development targets of the program The reason why the program realized these targets was that the research team developed their own innovative theories on ICT-based teaching, formed a complete set of effective teaching modes and methods, and put them into continuous use in training teachers (see Figure 3 and Figure 4). Based on their study on linguistic psychology and neurophysiology, the team led by Prof. He Kekang put forward the Theory of Semantic Perception in second language learning, laying the theoretical foundation for the leapfrog development experiment in English teaching. Based on the laws of children s cognitive development and linguistic development and years of teaching reform practices, the team proposed the New Theory on Children s Development of Thinking as the theoretical foundation of the leapfrog development experiment of Chinese teaching. Combining the two with teaching practices, they raised the dominant force-center (DC) model, new constructivist theory and innovative thinking theory. Computer- and Internet-based ICT was used as a tool to promote independent learning, facilitate exchange and to create affective motivation. The conventional teacher-centered teaching structure was transformed into the new structure of teachers as the dominant force and students as the center.
Figure 3: Experiment model for leapfrog development in basic education established by the research team Creative Thinking Theory: Construction and Demonstration of the DC Model New Theory on Children s Development of Thinking
Theory of Semantic Perception: New Theory on Children s Linguistic Development Integration of ICT and Curriculum: Teaching Modes and Methods in the Internet Age Figure 4: Monographs on basic theories of the program Implementation Modern Educational Technology Research Institute of Beijing Normal University, organizer of the program, was founded in 1979, and is the most reputed research and training organization on educational technology in China. Prof. He Kekang, director of the institute, is one of the inaugurators and founders of the discipline of Chinese educational technology, and has been active in teaching for over 50 years. The head research team is set up in the institute to design, implement, manage, coordinate and monitor the program nationwide. Several research teams are established in program pilot areas, and a subject director is designated by the head research team to design and guide the subject within the areas. Dedicated teams are set up to take charge of teaching guidance, technical service, teacher training, and communication and contact respectively (see Figure 5).
Figure 5: Organizational structure of the research team and guiding areas Guidance and support service Regarding teaching guidance, the research team regularly visits pilot schools to organize activities such as watching & learning, comment on outstanding classes, class attending, class evaluation, seminars, and guidance on teaching designs (see Figure 6). Figure 6: Teaching guidance in multiple forms The procedure to guide the teaching process is as follows: teachers submit their teaching designs; discuss the designs in groups; teachers implement the designs in class; have group discussions after class; teachers reflect on the teaching; revise the designs and submit them to the guidance team.
Two key factors during this process are the preparation of teaching designs and reflection on the teaching. Pilot teachers are generally familiar with how to prepare traditional teaching materials, but have few or no idea about teaching design in the ICT-based environment. Accordingly, pilot teachers to have frequent face-to-face or e-mail discussions with the guidance team on their teaching designs. The guidance team visits pilot schools at least once a month to guide teaching of each pilot teacher by attending and evaluating classes (see Figure 7). After class, team members need to exchange opinions with school leaders, teaching research staff and pilot teachers, identifying merits and meanwhile offering advice and feasible methods on how to overcome shortcomings. Activities of each month are publicized and sent via e-mail to related leaders of pilot schools and education authorities to effectively promote the progress of the pilot program. A teacher giving a class A teacher giving a class Prof. He Kekang attending a class Prof. Yu Shengquan discussing with a pilot teacher after class Pilot teachers preparing teaching designs together Guidance team members discussing with pilot teachers Figure 7: Guidance team members attending and evaluating classes Pilot teachers are organized to watch and learn from outstanding classes (see Figure 8) and listen to comments of experts. Helping pilot teachers get a vivid perception on innovative teaching concepts in this way before going back to teaching and research makes an effective approach to promote their expertise development.
Dialogue in English class Dialogue pairs in English class Look that! Bulletin board of a pilot class Dialogue in a language lab Character recognition in groups Figure 8: Model classes of Chinese and English The leading research team tries to provide officials and teachers in pilot areas with opportunities for cross-region exchange to enhance communication between pilot areas schools (see Figure 9). Figure 9: the 9 th National Annual Conference of the Pilot Research on Leapfrog Development of Basic Education
Moreover, each research team regularly organizes knowledge tests for students in pilot classes and pilot schools, and conducts comparative tests with major schools in some developed cities to validate the effect of program. Feedback from education authorities, teachers and parents is sought in time to improve the program design. Training for pilot teachers According to the program progress and specific demand, research teams provide all teachers engaged in the pilot research with training sessions on theories, modes, methods and technology. Basic training is done collectively for all teachers involved, while enhancement training is implemented by issuing training materials and one-on-one tutorial. All training materials can be uploaded and downloaded on the program website. The program adopts case-based research methods and integrates study, work and teaching research of teachers to promote their development and meanwhile develop schools into learning organizations. After communication with pilot teachers, research teams launched an e-learning platform for training to meet the teachers demand, and introduced the mixed training mode based on experiencing online courses (see Figure 10). Online courses are tailored to the scientific research and teaching demand of pilot teachers at various stages, and cover over 30 topics such concept of the program, program management, ICT environment and tools, teaching design, teaching case and common issues (see Table 1). The purpose is to help pilot teachers grow from beginners to expert teachers through study of the courses. The training package includes three modules, namely, course introduction, learning manual and online courses.
Figure 10: Mixed training mode based on experience-type online courses Table 1: Topic list of online teacher training courses Target Concept preparation ICT environment and tools Teaching design Topic 1. Learning preparation 2. ICT and curriculum integration 3. Management of online pilot classes 4. Use of Vclass platform 5. Application of MS Office in teaching-ppt 6. Application of MS Office in teaching-word 7. Cultivation of students writing capability 8. ICT-based teaching design 9. Five-dimensional innovative teaching in primary schools 10. Five-dimensional innovative teaching in middle schools
Low-grade teaching Program management Addressing common issues in teaching Medium/high-grade teaching Middle school teaching Application of related teaching tools (intermediate and advanced) Actualizing teaching result Professional development of teachers 11. Teaching evaluation and reflection 12. Design of learning resources 13. Case study: Pinyin teaching cases 14. Case study: Chinese character recognition 15. Case study: text teaching in low grades 16. Case study: English teaching in low grades 17. Program management 18. Cultivation of innovative thinking 19. Transformation of lagging-behind students 20. English of medium/higher grades 21. Chinese of medium/higher grades 22. Case study: ICT integration in liberal arts classes in middle schools 23. Case study: ICT integration in sciences classes in middle schools 24. CAI software 25. Advanced information search 26. Multimedia material processing and integration 27. Topic study and design & teaching design package preparation 28. Design and preparation of comprehensive class cases 29. Essay writing and research methods 30. ICT-based Teacher development Support service with online platform The research team has provided an online platform together with technical support. With the platform, the team collets achievements, and communicates with pilot teachers. The online portal offers event announcement, introduction to the program, learning materials, pictures of past events, excellent essays, outstanding cases, teaching resources, common questions and online training, and serves as a window for information exchange between the leading research team and pilot teachers. The Interactive platform for class teaching includes such modules as development evaluation, learning activity design, course resource management, online teaching design, e-profile package, shared reading system, knowledge construction forum, writing and commenting system, class activity bank and journal.
Digital learning resource service ICT Integration in the Curriculum is a series of disks containing learning materials. It is issued to each pilot school on a monthly basis to support the conventional class teaching for leapfrog development. The materials cover theoretical learning, practice, teaching forum, training materials, and excellent cases, and are intended to share the latest teaching research achievements with pilot teachers (see Figure 11). Figure 11: ICT Integration in Curriculum The teaching resource website includes supporting resources for textbooks of all versions used in pilot schools, and pilot teachers can easily look up resources according to textbook they use, greatly saving the time spent on searching among the vast sea of information. English resources include 72 online teaching books and 48 non-online resource books in supplement to 10 different versions of textbooks. Chinese resources include 60 online teaching books and 20 offline resource books in supplement to 6 different versions of textbooks (see Figure 12). Resource site for primary school English
Resource site for primary school Chinese Printed materials for offline environment Figure 12: Online and offline materials for English and Chinese There are now more than 1,000 teaching designs and cases for various knowledge types and class types (see Figure 13). Such practical and theoretical achievements are of great value for pilot teachers, especially new teachers, to understand the concepts of the program and to start up their own practice within a short period of time. Figure 13: Collections of excellent teaching designs and cases
Fund The program is mainly funded by: (1) Program funds earmarked by Beijing Normal University, Ministry of Education, and National Center for Educational Technology as the start-up fund. (2) Support of the Ford Foundation, Beijing Western Sunshine Rural Development Foundation, Give2Asia Foundation and Chen Yet-Sen Family Foundation. For instance, Beijing Western Sunshine Rural Development Foundation provided RMB9 million in May 2012 to support launch the program in poverty-stricken areas in southern Gansu over the next 6 years. Approximately 60,000 middle and primary school students in nearly 400 schools will participate in the program. (3) Fiscal support from education authorities of pilot areas. (4) Donations from individuals or enterprises. The above-mentioned funds are mainly used for provision of related printed and digital learning resources for students, design and development of teaching resources, teacher training and thematic seminars, and necessary travels, equipment and program management. Achievements Objective evaluation In June 2007, seven classes from six pilot schools in Yanqing, Beijing and 19 classes from 14 pilot schools in Changping, Beijing were selected for a comparative test; while classes from 4 reputed schools with high teaching quality in urban Beijing were selected as the control group. Pilot school got remarkably higher average scores than the control group in terms of English listening, writing, speaking and total score, got slightly lower average scores in Chinese basics and reading, and got higher average scores in composition and total score.
In June 2006, five pilot primary schools in Fengning County, Hebei Province were selected to participate in the comparative test. Grade-two students in pilot areas of Fengning had a Chinese vocabulary of 2,745.5 characters on average. Four selected schools out of five got better results than the required standard of 2,500, and the remaining one failed to meet the requirement due to replacement of the pilot Chinese teacher and program coordinator at the end of Grade 1. One rural pilot primary school was selected out of the five for the English test. The excellence rates in speaking, listening and vocabulary reached 25.45%, 39.29% and 32.12% respectively, and the passing rates reached 72.73%, 82.14% and 66.07% respectively. In the speaking test, students had acquired 8.91 sentences and 5.69 different structures on average, all reaching up to the basic requirements. Subjective evaluation Some reflections of pilot teachers and comments from pilot schools and parents on the program were quoted as follows: Since the engagement in the program, the entire class has made remarkable progress in learning habit, attitude, enthusiasm, comprehensive capability, morale and solidarity. (A pilot teacher from Yanqing, Beijing) There is a lagging-behind student in my class. He recognized only a few characters at the beginning, but after one year of learning, teaching and encouragement, he now actively learns new characters in new texts, reads the texts aloud and writes excellent compositions. His parents are quite satisfied. (A pilot teacher from Yanqing, Beijing) With practice in the leapfrog research team and with the help of other teachers, I have made progress and some achievements. (A pilot teacher in Changping, Beijing) The leapfrog pilot program is one of the most effective programs I ve ever seen, and it is closely tied with the practice of teaching. Its achievements in Fengning are inspiring. I hope the research team can keep promoting the valuable experience to more areas and schools, especially the vast rural areas, to benefit more children and teachers. (Director of Education Bureau of Fengning County, Hebei) The leapfrog program is conducive to improving the quality of teachers, especially their understanding of modern education concepts and ICT skills. (Vice Principal of a middle school in Foshan, Guangdong)
The leapfrog pilot program aroused students interest in learning, and made them more active in participation. In this sense, it not only drove the progress in their daily learning, but also promoted the improvement of the all-round development of students. (Principal of a pilot primary school in Nanshan District, Shenzhen) My child used to know nothing, but after one year, he can easily come up with English words, sentences and ballads. I m really impressed. I cannot tutor my child at all, and I would like to say to the English teacher again: Thank you very much! (Parent of a pilot school student in Changping, Beijing) I don t know much about leapfrog education, but I see progress and better performance of my child. I hope the program can be further promoted to benefit more students. (Parent of a grade-3 student in Fengning) Social feedback The program was widely and warmly received by the public. It was awarded the first prize of the 4 th National Scientific Research Achievement on Education (see Figure 14). Mainstream media such as CCTV, CETV, China Youth Daily, Southern People Weekly, Wenhui Daily, Yangcheng Evening News, Guangming Daily and Sina all covered the program in feature stories. Figure 14: Award certificate of the program achievements In November 2008, Chen Xiaoya, then Vice Minister of Education, pointed out after hearing the program achievement report that using ICT to help rural primary and middle schools and teachers improve the teaching quality embodies distinct Chinese characteristics. ICT-based education in rural areas is about not only the modernization of equipment, but also a drive forward of the modernization of education and focus on class and teaching quality. Quality of education involves not only conditions and the starting point, but also the process and results, and it s highly rigid in law and cycle. It
takes time to explore and summarize and takes great efforts of a large number of research institutes and schools to achieve relative equity in the process and result. In June 2006, the expert panel of Ministry of Education concluded after inspecting the achievements of the pilot program that this was an outstanding scientific research achievement on education, providing a large number of successful cases of using ICT to considerably promote the teaching quality. Education experts also highly valued the research. Well-known educationist Mr. Tao Xiping, after visits to several pilot schools, commended the program as a down-to-earth innovative research. Educationist Prof. Ye Lan said the program applied and integrated ICT into teaching, explored a path of close combination, and shared development of ICT and educational theories. Famous education expert Mr. Wang Benzhong praised the program as reaching up high and deeply rooted in a sense that it was an independently innovative theory that bravely challenges international authoritative theories and a down-to-earth program closely linked to primary and middle school teachers and teaching. Experience: how to integrate ICT into teaching? Guide the integration with new constructivism New constructivism is highlighted here not because it is perfect, but because its learning-oriented teaching concept that students obtain knowledge and meaning through self construction is a shock to the traditional teacher-centered teaching structure in China. Moreover, constructivism learning theories, teaching theories and teaching design methods in a constructivism learning environment can provide mighty theoretical support for teaching in an ICT-based environment, i.e., integration of ICT and curriculum. Base the integration on the new DC teaching model We endeavor to create an ICT-based teaching environment and a teaching and learning process featured by independence, exploration and cooperation with an aim to transform the traditional teacher-centered teaching structure. Such a transformation should result in a new teaching structure that puts into full play both the dominant role of teachers and the position of students as the center. This requires teachers to pay close attention to the four key factors in their teaching in class i.e., teachers, students, teaching content and teaching media. Can the position and role of the four factors be changed in some way and to what degree? Which factors are changed and which are not?
Why? Only by carefully analyzing and taking corresponding improvement measures can we achieve effective integration. Conduct teaching design by focusing on both teaching and learning Currently, there are two popular categories of teaching design theories: teaching-centered and learning-centered teaching design. Since each of the two has their own merits and demerits, it is better to combine the two and form a teaching design theory that focuses on both learning and teaching (see Figure 15). This can exactly meet the requirement of building a new teaching structure that puts into full play both the dominant role of teachers and the position of students as the center. What is worth mentioning here is that when using information technologies in teaching, teachers should not merely take the technologies as visual teaching tools that aid the teaching, but more as a cognitive tool to promote independent learning of students, a tool to facilitate communication and a tool to deepen emotional experience.
Figure 15: Design of the DC teaching model Develop teaching resources and ICT-based learning tools Concept and understanding are crucial, and changing the concept is the first step to a breakthrough. Technology is not a decisive factor, but proper application of it can solve problems and improve efficiency. Motivation and enthusiasm, even the ability to innovate of students rely not only on guidance of teachers but also independent and cooperative learning and exploration of learners. This requires an ICT-based learning environment, tools, resources and support services. ICT-based teaching resources are generally divided into four categories: multimedia materials, multimedia courseware, online courses and ICT-based learning tools. For the ICT integration in both liberal art and science courses, the first three categories can serve well as tools for cognitive
exploration, collaboration, emotional experience, and internalization. The fourth category is mainly used in science courses as tools for cognitive exploration and collaboration. Explore different ways to integration based on subject features Based on different teaching stages involved, ICT integrated teaching modes can be divided into in-class integration and out-of-class integration. Since in-class teaching involves different subjects, teaching strategies and supporting environments, in-class integration can be further classified. For instance, it can be divided based on subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, Chinese, history, geography, etc.; based on teaching strategy used such as self exploration, collaborative learning, presentation, lecture, discussion, debate and role-playing, and based on the supporting environments such as the Internet, multimedia, software, and simulated experiment. All categories have their own implementing steps and methods. Practice of many pilot schools has proved that if the implementing steps and methods of different teaching modes can be fully understood and flexibly applied, in-depth integration can definitely be achieved. Reference He Kekang. Teaching System Design. Beijing: Beijing Normal University Press, 2002. He Kekang. Teaching Structure Theory and the Deepening of Teaching Reform. Audio-visual Education Research. 2007 (7): 5-10; (8): 22-27. He Kekang. Theory on In-depth Integration of ICT and Curriculum. Beijing: Beijing Normal University Press, 2008. He Kekang, Yu Shengquan, Wu Juan, Ma Ning, Zhao Xinglong, Yuan Lei, and Qi Yuan. Study on Using ICT-based Innovative Teaching Theory to Greatly Improve Teaching Quality in Rural Primary and Middle Schools and Promote Balanced Educational Development. Audio-visual Education Research. 2009 (2): 5-18. He Kekang. Analysis and Thoughts on ICT integration in Curriculum in the United States and Construction of a New Integration Theory. Audio-visual Education Research. 2008 (7): 1-10.