Teacher Training in China

[JVM]

I'm a licensed teacher trainer who has worked in the US and Latin America (and ESL in Asia prior to this). Lately I've been reading quite a bit about how much ESL is taking off in China, as well as the emphasis some organizations are placing on concepts such as student-centered classrooms and experiential learning. It seems there must be a huge demand for quality teacher development there in these areas, but over the web it can be a bit overwhelming! Does anyone have any suggestions about certain sites or organizations that might be interesting to explore? Thanks!

[chade]

This first article talks about team-teaching in Hong Kong. If you want to seriously get involved in teacher development, look for a university position in one of the schools (in a native English country) that has an undergraduate TESOL program. Serious teacher development occurs at the undergrad level, so you need to be qualified to teach there. As for professional development for in-service teachers...that is practically non-existent in most of the EFL world, simply because most EFL "teachers" don't have any teacher training to begin with. You might get involved in some in-house program, but again, you probably won't be engaging in serious -development-. I'd also like to point out that innovative teaching styles and the strong end of student-centered or CLT tends to NOT work well in China, based on the research of a few studies, most recently listed as the second article below.

If you are actually serious about teacher development in EFL/ESL, you'll want to create or join a program that trains teachers BEFORE they go to their destination countries. Universities are the most serious route, but I'm sure there is money to made in certificate programs and the like...they all need trainers of some sort.

Carless, David. "Collaborative EFL teaching in primary schools." ELT Journal 60.4 (2006): 328-335.

Rao, Zhenhui. "Understanding Chinese Students’ Use of Language Learning Strategies from Cultural and Educational Perspectives." Journal of Multilingual & Multicultural Development 27.6 (2006): 491-508.

[JVM]

Thanks! Where on the web would be the best place to find these articles? This is a link to an NY Times article I read that highlighted some of the changes (part of) Chinese education is (trying) to implement... from other colleagues in China I've talked to, it sounds like it is the ideal.

China - Education - Schools - Re-education - Ann Hulbert - New York Times

My previous teacher training work has been using these kind of Ss-centered and experiential learning methods, and this article was very exciting to read and consider how this could apply to China... we'll see, and thanks!