Inserción de los medios biológicos en el manejo integrado de plagas (MIP)

The support for teaching Mandarin Chinese in schools was the next issue raised during the interviews.

4.3.1

Initial and in-service training

The most frequent supporting factor mentioned by all the participants was that initial and in-service trainings were provided to teachers of Mandarin Chinese. Only Head of Department C provided the teacher with adequate funding for in-service training facilitated by Local Authorities. For others, ‘initial and in-service trainings’ were located expressly within their schools and involved interaction between staff in the same group.

“What we are taking on are people that can train ourselves and we can work with them better, at the moment with XX (head of department) whatever input, the training she does, whatever training happens will get her to feel part of the school and she will know the expectations, and then will know how to deal with the students here…” (IHT-SB)

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“The teacher is in a time of observational period where she will come along to observe lessons before she even contemplates teaching and we purposely chose a group that that she is going to teach so that is how we train her here.” (IHoD-SD)

Moreover, Heads of Department A and C pointed out that they fund their teachers of Mandarin attending the annual ‘Chinese conference’ hosted by SSAT in London. They claimed that teachers of Chinese in this country still had few chances to attend professional events in order to develop teaching across the curriculum. It was normal that there was only one teacher of Mandarin Chinese in a school, and it was important for the teacher to get together with colleagues to explore the latest information in teaching and learning Chinese in England.

4.3.2

Tutor support

Schools A and C had full-time staff teaching Mandarin Chinese, it was therefore legal for them to work by themselves. Schools B, D and E meanwhile recruited foreign language assistants annually. In order to support effective teaching and learning, Schools D and E offered a full-time tutor to support them in the classes.

“I wouldn’t leave her on her own, she needs some support. She is never left on her own by anyone in the department. She is always supported and we see that as a positive thing because otherwise it would just be chaos… in most of the classes, I’m there with her.” (IHoD-SD)

“There is a whole department, there are 5 teachers there is always a full-time staff with her in class… not fixed people. It depends on who is available. Yes, sometimes I am there if I am not teaching.” (IHoD-SE)

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School B also had a foreign language assistant as well; however, the teacher was always teaching and managing classes by herself. As Head Teacher B explained:

“I think that is because originally when we asked some people before they got there, they weren’t teachers because we put support in but we don’t really have support long term for people that they are here as teachers… well, as language assistant too.” (IHT-SB)

4.3.3

Activities

Having a variety of China featured activities was another key point mentioned by Head Teachers and Heads of Department when they were talking about the support for teaching Mandarin Chinese. The main activities were categorized within two main domains. One domain involved Chinese festivals such as celebrating Chinese New Year or holding moon cake parties which were located in schools; the other concerned visits to China and entertaining Chinese visitors.

All schools celebrated the Chinese New Year, according to interviewees; this was firstly because the Chinese New Year normally occurred in term time and it was easy for schools to arrange this within the timetable. Secondly, the Chinese New Year is treated as an icon for people who are interested in Chinese culture and previous studies (Byram and Zarate 1995) have found that in language learning, beginners are more easily encouraged by cultural symbols. Thus, it is straightforward to present the representatives of cultures in pupils’ learning environment. Within the activities, pupils were encouraged to experience cultural and linguistic diversity, for example, Chinese music, arts, tales, food and old legends. For Schools A, C and E, teachers of Mandarin Chinese and pupils in Mandarin classes led activities with support from the language department. The activities were open to all staff and pupils in different years

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of study. Meanwhile, in Schools B and D, Chinese activities were limited to Chinese classes along. They were more like a topic for teaching in teachers’ overall scheme of work, as Head of Department D commented “we spent a lesson talking and doing something about Chinese New Year when the time comes.”

Head Teachers A, B, D and E and Heads of Department A, C, and D in this study visited China before or after they started introducing Mandarin Chinese into their schools. Among them, Head Teachers B, D and E were invited to visit their link schools and meet the Head Teachers in China, while Head Teacher A and Head of Department C had personal trips with their families, and spent less than two weeks in China before School A started, and after School C had started teaching Mandarin Chinese. Heads of Department A and D went to China with their pupils for a summer camp; all stating that they enjoyed trips to China and had a good time there.

In this study, all of the schools had experience of sending pupils to China for 2 to 3 weeks. Moreover, School E was the only school that hosted Chinese pupils; Head Teacher E recalled that they had hosted 23 Chinese visitors from their link school in October 2007;

“23 students came here, stayed for two weeks with families in this area. They went to classes and then went on lots of different activities.” (IHT-SD)

It is interesting to observe that since 2009, School E had hosted Chinese guests only once, while they had sent pupils to China three times. When discussing this factor, Head Teacher E noted that it was very hard to manage with lack of funding being the first issue mentioned by Head Teacher E:

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“Because when this school sends its students over we pay obviously for a lot of there. They pay for their flights but not living expenses. Obviously they stay with families so the families pay for that but when we took them to Strafford and London we paid for that and that was expensive and we can’t afford to do that.” (IHT-SE)

Furthermore, as the Chinese visitors were junior school pupils, they spoke very limited English. This became a big problem for some families who had hosted visitors, especially when they needed to live together with these visitors for two weeks. Cultural differences also brought challenges which it is not possible to request that all local families have knowledge of Chinese culture and custom. It is also difficult for young pupils to be away from home and stay with local people alone for two weeks, particularly when they had problems communication. All these problems were detrimental to both visitors and hosts.

“I think they found it hard because two weeks is a long time and you get issues sometimes to do with food and things like that where you know some Chinese students didn’t like any food they had and weren’t eating very much and the English family was a bit worried about them.” (IHT-SE)

Problems not only occurred in hosting guests; Head Teacher B also indicated problems they met when organizing pupils’ visits to China. Head Teacher B was certain that introducing Mandarin Chinese would open up pupils’ eyes to a different world, however, School B was located in a poor area, and few pupils had been outside of the city.

“They (pupils) were excited as we took a trip on Wednesday afternoon, Year 7, we went to the park around the corner and a lot of the kids got excited about going to the park for the afternoon.” (IHT-SB)

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Therefore, although School B subsidized trips and charged each pupil less than 200 pounds for foreign trips, this might be a major economic burden for many parents. In addition, the financial subsidy from the school also became a burden for School B.

“We sent 15 children out to China, think about how much it actually cost? It probably would have paid for a part-time/full-time teacher. Thinking about which is the best method for promoting Mandarin in schools? Having a permanent member of staff teaching Mandarin or sending 15 children to China for a week?” (IHT-SB)