PRISIÓN PREVENTIVA Y PRINCIPIO DE INOCENCIA

The categorizations of teaching espoused by Western researchers may not be entirely relevant in the Asian context (Biggs and Watkins, 2001). According to Kember (1997), there is a high level of agreement between researchers about conceptions of teaching category schemes. He reviewed a synthesis of large independent research reported in thirteen articles and essentially put conceptions into these two categories:

- teacher-centred/content-oriented; - student-centred/learning-oriented.

A teacher/content-centred conception of teaching is one where the teacher’s job is conceived of as knowing their subject and then accurately and clearly imparting that knowledge to their students. From this conception, Watkins (1998) argued, it is the

108 student’s fault if the learning outcomes are unsatisfactory and, specifically, the student’s lack of motivation or ability is to blame. Watkins (1998) argued that, in contrast, a student/learning-centred conception is one where high quality learning is viewed as:

‘requiring active construction of meaning and the possibility of conceptual change on the part of the learners’ (p. 20).

According to Brandes and Ginnis (1986, p. 12), in student centred learning:

 The learner has full responsibility for his/her learning

 Involvement and participation are necessary for learning

 The relationship between learners is more equal, promoting growth and development,

 The teacher becomes a facilitator and resource person,

 The learner experiences confluence in his education

 The learner sees himself differently as a result of the learning experience.

From the student/learner-centred perspective, it is the teacher’s role to facilitate and encourage such construction and development (Watkins, 1998). There is a conception that portrays the Asian teacher as authoritarian purveyor of information, who expects students to listen and memorise correct answers and procedures rather than to construct knowledge themselves (Stevenson and Stigler, 1992). It is also believed that the teacher and books are thought of as an embodiment of knowledge, wisdom and truth. That

knowledge is in the book and can be taken out and put inside the students’ head. Kennedy (2002) had similar views, suggesting that teaching was largely didactic and text-bound,

109 with little time allowed for discussion, from his study of the learning cultures and

learning styles of Chinese learners. Kennedy states:

‘for many Chinese students and teachers books are thought of as an embodiment of knowledge, wisdom and truth. Knowledge is ‘in’ the book and can be taken out and put inside students’ heads . . . [whereas] for many foreigners, books are open to interpretation and dispute’ (Maley 1983 cited in Kennedy, 2002; p. 432).

However, Stigler and Stevenson (1992) disputed this conception from observations of dozens of elementary school teachers in China, Taiwan and Japan. Their study

described the teachers as posing provocative questions, allowing respectful waiting time and varying techniques to suit individual students. They used the term ‘constructivist’ to describe the teaching approach they saw which was also the term to describe teaching methods in Stigler and Hiebert’s (1999) study (mentioned above in Section 3.2.2). Stevenson and Stigler (1992) argued, that the universal whole class teaching does not mean what it does in the west. Stevenson and Stigler (1992) suggested:

‘Whereas Western teachers identify whole class teaching with lecturing, Asian teachers do not spend large amounts of time lecturing. They present interesting problems; they pose provocative questions; they probe and guide. The students work hard, generating multiple approaches to a solution, explaining the rationale behind their methods, and making good use of wrong answers’ (p. 147).

Stevenson and Lee (1991) also examined a great deal of teaching in both China and Japan and came to the conclusion that although the whole class instruction method is prevalent in both cultures, it gives children maximal opportunities to benefit from the

110 teacher. They found that Chinese teachers hold children’s attention by varying the

learning tasks. They expect students to respond to their questions in a rapid fire manner but at the same time, they also emphasize conceptual understanding (p. 47). O’Connor (1991 cited in Biggs, 1996) also used the term constructivist and suggested that Chinese classrooms may appear to be authoritarian, but they are in fact:

‘uniformly student centred, frequently engaging all students collectively in problem solving… pushing for high cognitive level through process’ (p. 727). In addition, Mok and Ko (2000), in observing nearly 200 lessons, found that as far as structure was concerned, a lesson usually consisted of a sequence of learning activities which involved a teacher-led whole class discussion with a focus on a specific theme, or completion of a learning task/worksheet by an individual student or a group. Thus, a lesson might consist of a flexible combination of whole-class, group work or individual learning activities. Nearly all lessons contained episodes of whole-class teaching and the majority of these episodes consisted of teacher-student or student-student interactions. Analysis of the nature of the interactions indicated that the teacher spent most of the lesson time in direct teaching and questioning. The high proportion of teacher-centred activities did not necessarily mean that the students were learning passively (p. 163).

It was Pratt (1992), who argued that in the traditional teacher led approach to teaching, where it is the responsibility of the teacher to deliver the content of the lesson, the teachers had no control over students’ attitude to learning. However, research has shown that teachers can influence student motivation (Lumsden, 1994). When students enter formal education such as schools, their level of interest and desire to engage in

111 learning is suggested to be influenced by teachers, administrators, the school environment and their classmates. Lumsden (1994) then argued:

‘To a very large degree, students expect to learn if their teachers expect them to learn’ (p. 2).

Trigwell, Prosser and Waterhouse (1999) showed a causal path between teachers’ approaches to teaching and students’ approaches to learning. Data was collected from 48 first year University chemistry and physics classes, comprising a total of 3956 students and 46 teachers. Both teachers and students were asked to complete the questionnaires in relation to the particular lecture topic being taught to the students. Thus, teachers’

thinking about learning influences their conceptions of teaching, which are linked to their approaches to teaching. Then from the students’ perspective, the teaching context affects students’ conceptions and then their approaches to learning, which in turn determine the learning outcomes. See figure 3.1 below:

Teachers Students

Figure 3.1: Relation between teaching and learning approach. Trigwell et al, (1999 in Watkins and Biggs, 2001; p. 17)

Thus, oppositional dichotomies such as teacher-centred versus student-centred classrooms offer educators false choices, sanctifying one alternative while demonstrating the other. Research should no longer be oppositional or even dichotomous, but rather seen as reflecting strategic and interrelated pedagogical decisions, dependent on purpose

112 and context, and must be understood in cultural terms before it can be related to any setting outside the classroom. Huang and Leung’s (2005) case study of a Shanghai mathematic lesson showed supporting evidence that characterization of ‘teacher-centred’ classrooms concealed unique teaching processes consisting both of teachers’ control of the learning process and of students’ engagement in it. Here the distribution of

responsibility for knowledge generation can be conceived as the oppositional

dichotomization of teacher-centred and student-centred classrooms, with each reflecting complementary responsibilities to a varying degree. Further, the dichotomy between student-centeredness and teacher-centeredness was also questioned in Fan’s et al (2004) study. In this study the observation of classroom interaction showed that teachers organized the lessons and controlled the transaction of classroom activities while the students were shown to engage themselves in the process of learning through well- designed activities. The utilisation of the distribution of responsibility for knowledge generation provides an integrative explanatory framework that problematizes teacher- centred and student-centred characterisations of the classroom and resolves the false opposition of dichotomous practices by replacing them with a conception of alternative interrelated classroom practices. Thus, the dichotomy may be too artificial to capture the subtle characteristics in the classroom.