Dominant pedagogical approaches and diverse teaching conditions: Integrating CLT in a Chinese university as a danwei community of practices

DOI 10.1515/applirev-2012-0013 Applied Linguistics Review 2012; 3(2): 273 – 293

Huhua OuyangDominant pedagogical approaches and diverse teaching conditions: Integrating CLT in a Chinese university as a danwei community of practices

Abstract: With life stories of local and international teachers practicing Commu-nicative Language Teaching (CLT) in a university in China, this article reveals how CLT ideological presumptions of individualism, egalitarianism and liberalism have been in a state of tension with the traditional methods and Chinese danwei characterized by collectivism, paternalism and conservatism. This tension ex-plains the strong resistance against pedagogical agents of change in China. The article calls for a more sociological understanding of the seemingly linguistics-based and egalitarian communicative approaches to language teaching/learning.

Keywords: curriculum reform, ideology, socialization, English in China, danwei community of practices

Huhua Ouyang: Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China. E-mail: [email protected]

1 IntroductionThe last thirty years or so have witnessed the increasing dominance of Communi-cative Language Teaching (CLT) in English language teaching/learning in the world. However, scholars now recognize that the success of such a global school-ing of CLT is largely dependent upon its practitioners’ capacity to understand the specific socio-cultural dynamics in the local communities where it is i mplemented or appropriated (Savignon 2007). The authentic needs and experiences of t eachers and learners in different cultural contexts and communities are forcing applied linguists and English teachers to move beyond the glorification of a particular methodology such as CLT (Kumaravadivelu 2002) to understand the people they are working with, and to find approaches that would maximize the community’s best interests.

Brought to you by | National Chung Hsing UniversityAuthenticated | 140.120.135.222Download Date | 3/27/14 8:54 PM

274 Huhua Ouyang

In this article, I report what we have been doing in a university in mainland China to meet the above objectives, by answering the following questions: 1) What ideologies of education are in conflict between CLT and Traditional Meth-ods? 2) How does CLT relate to local communities of practice? 3) What tensions do individual teachers experience in practicing CLT? 4) What principles and strate-gies are found useful to localize CLT for learners and teachers?

2 BackgroundMainland China’s CLT curriculum reform in ELT parallels its large scale societal transition from a central planning economy towards marketization initiated by Deng Xiaoping’s Open Door policy in the late 70s. In moving toward openness to the outside world and modernization, China needs personnel that are more inde-pendent, creative and productive than it has had. That is, China needs to look into educational practices with liberalism or reformism ideologies (O’Neill 1981; Gutek 1988). However, the traditional methods (TM hereafter) practiced in the Chinese classroom, which are based on conservative ideologies and rote learning, have been found inadequate to fulfill this goal. Believing that CLT can bring about learner autonomy and creativity, the education authorities have carried out a n ational campaign of reforming the curriculum toward a more Western-style lib-eral pedagogy, which advocates student centeredness, a humanistic approach, and practical learning. Since the late 1970s, CLT has become increasingly preva-lent, especially in modern English-language teaching (Dzau 1990). CLT, TBLT (task-based language teaching) or its soft version experiential or reflective learn-ing, humanistic learning/teaching, and teacher development are buzzwords e verywhere (see for instance, the national English Language Standards published in 2001; cf. Hu 2005).

Nevertheless, much of the CLT curriculum endeavors are conducted in a top-down direction. It is increasingly becoming the politically correct discourse to advocate CLT than it was in the 80s or 90s. CLT and its sibling versions have been required in some demonstration schools in the primary and secondary levels, with officially initiated and promoted model teaching contests going on nation-wide. Teacher development programs are mostly run in the form of a few famous professors or authorities lecturing to hundreds of ordinary teachers in a few day-long training sessions. Part of the preparation for them is to use dozens of newly composed textbooks with CLT features. Long term and consistent efforts of imple-menting and localizing CLT are only witnessed in a few elite and well-resourced universities, such as Zhejiang Normal University (Ying 2007; Wu 2004; Wu & Huang 2007 for a full account) or Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (more


CLT in a Chinese university 275

later). The criteria in national matriculation examinations and other impor-tant tests or evaluation for teaching/learning are still largely prescriptive and k nowledge-centered.

At the grassroots level, lots of failures and frustrations are being experienced in CLT implementation (Ouyang 2000, 2003b; Ward et al 1995; and Maley 1990 for an early report of such stories). Many projects have turned out to be i neffective and a waste of human and material resources, echoing Holliday’s observation in the international context (1994: 2): “Teachers return from training programs u nable to implement what they have learnt, because it does not fit with the conditions, needs and philosophies of their classrooms, students, institutions and communi-ties.” More and more teachers feel burdened or pressurized by the e ndless r eform-driven new tasks, and foot dragging and resistance are not u ncommon.

In recent times, a new consensus is emerging about CLT reform. Local t eachers and scholars increasingly realize the following. First, the Chinese way of learning and teaching is deeply rooted in its own tradition, and therefore a strat-egy which employs a radical full frontal attack is doomed to failure from the start. Second, both CLT and Chinese methods can be successful, and it is wrong for Western experts to assume that they have the only right and advanced methodol-ogy. It is a misguided perception to see Chinese method as primitive, ineffective and mechanical. Third, it is a commonly held but false belief that the two meth-ods are incompatible and mutually exclusive. Finally, and of paramount impor-tance, the implementation of any foreign method cannot come at the price of the Chinese losing their identity. Therefore, ways must be found for the foreign method and the local method of teaching and learning English to converge (Har-vey 1990; Maley 1990; Cortazzi & Jin 1996a).

We believe that the failures and frustrations experienced by teachers are due to the fact that reform has either ignored teachers or oversimplified what teaching is about. In a comprehensive review of the state of the art of ELT in China, Cortazzi and Jin reported that research “is an area which needs attention. There is rela-tively little research in applied linguistics or ELT in China” (Cortazzi & Jin 1996a: 75). In the scarce literature available in these areas, the researchers tend to e mphasize the pedagogical dimension, focusing on methodological aspects such as the ways in which the CLT approach outperforms the TM, with little regard to its appropriateness vis-à-vis the socio-cultural and political contexts in China. After a thorough review in applied linguistics, second language acquisition, the ethnography of communication, and language teaching, Cortazzi and Jin con-cluded that studies on “the culture of learning’’ are largely missing (1996b: 172).

The last ten years have seen more and more research on exploring the con-flicts between the global and local schoolings experienced by Chinese learners and ways to constructively manage the conflicts in international contexts (Rao


276 Huhua Ouyang

2002; Carless 2007). Some examined the cultural learning pattern internalized in learners’ so called “passive or silent” classroom behavior (Marlina 2009). Still, few studies are conducted by mainland Chinese scholars (but note Xu & Liu 2009 and Liu & Xu 2011, who used activity theory to examine the experiences of t eachers being included or excluded by CLT, also cf. Tsui 2007). Except for the RICH program (Wu 2004; Wu & Huang 2007), there are virtually no locally created teaching methodologies and theories in the whole sphere of English language teaching and teacher education. This is very much regretted by the former presi-dent of China’s Foreign Language Teacher Association of one million members in his preface to a recent national survey report on research on teacher education and development in China’s tertiary education (Wu 2007).

My argument in this article is that much of the failure, conflicts, dilemma, and thus low efficiency of CLT implementation in the Chinese context is caused by an inadequate understanding of the socio-cultural ramifications of practicing CLT in the Chinese community. Therefore, insights into the socio-cultural com-municative competence of Chinese learners and teachers, as well as the attitudes of parents, leaders and other stake holders, with an understanding of the culture or community practice specific conditions and dynamics, would open up an alter-native for us to move forward in the CLT reform.

3 Theoretical frameworkAs a consequence of the over-reliance on the ahistorical, apolitical and socio-culturally insensitive frameworks (which are mainly from linguistics), TESOL and applied linguistics suffer certain limitations (Ouyang 2000). Fullan and Harg-reaves (1996: xiii) have pointed out that “Education reform has failed time and time again. We believe that this is because reform has either ignored teachers or oversimplified what teaching is about.” Reviewing the Handbook of Research on Teacher Education (Houston et al 1992), Popkewitz criticized: “Recent scholar-ship in political science, sociology, history, feminist theory, education, and phi-losophy that reexamines such concepts as state, society, knowledge, and thought in a[n] effort to understand how subjects and subjectivities are formed is n eglected in the Handbook” (1992: 66). Therefore Richards and Nunan (1990) have called for “less dependence on linguistics and language theory as a source discipline for second language teacher education, and more of an attempt to integrate sound, educationally based approaches” (p. xii).

I have chosen the concept of “discourse systems’’ by Scollon and Scollon (1995), as a frame-work to guide my analysis in this study. This framework is relatively broad and can be used to widen or deepen my analysis of the Chinese CLT reform discourse. Discourse system, or



DS according to Scollon and Scollon, refers to a whole self-perpetuating network of com-munication, which contains basically four components, which are consistent with one a nother and mutually reinforcing systematically. These four basic components are i deology, socialization, forms of discourse and face system. Put differently, a discourse system can be analyzed by asking the following questions (Scollon & Scollon 1995: 98):1. What are the historical/social/ideological characteristics of the group? (ideology)2. How does one learn membership and identity? (socialization)3. What are the preferred forms of communication? (forms of discourse)4. What are the preferred or assumed human relationships? (face system)

Using this framework, I will argue that the CLT reform is a process/dynamics of particular historical timing, choices of contesting philosophical stances, a pro-cess and product of various forces of socialization or transformation, and con-struction or deconstruction of identities and memberships of individuals in rela-tion to their ‘significant others’.

4 Methodology and dataMost of the existing literature on CLT diffusion is based on perceptional data from learners and teachers on the pros and cons of CLT in relation to the traditional methods. They deal with perceived difficulties or incongruity in the reality of a pplication, and some offer suggestions for practical improvement in the imple-mentation for a localized version with better effects or congruence. Few studies consider the social structure and daily routines of Chinese schools (but see Ross 1993; Schoenhals 1993; Dzau 1990). Therefore the ethnography of the “legitimate peripheral participation” in the community of practices (Lave & Wenger 1991) is adopted in my research. “Legitimate peripheral participation” in the community of practices includes: “forms of membership and construction of identities . . . the location and organization of mastery in communities; problems of power, access, and transparency; developmental cycles of community practices; change as part of what it means to be a community of practice; and its basis in the contradiction between continuity and displacement” (Lave & Wenger 1991: 123). This would lead us to a better understanding about “the structural character of that world at the level at which it is lived” (p. 123).

Also, there is a severe lack of in-depth ethnographic studies of individual teacher participants’ actual experiences in the processes and dynamics of the CLT reform. In his seminal book Diffusion of Innovations, Everett Rogers states (1983: 371): “In spite of the importance of consequences, they have received very little study by diffusion researchers . . . Not only have researchers given little attention to consequences, change agents have as well. They often assume that adoption of a given innovation will produce only beneficial results for its adopters.” More


278 Huhua Ouyang

r ecently, Walsh (1996: xiv) reaffirms that, “although radically changing educa-tional institutions is the focus of much of the critical pedagogy literature, there are few texts that afford concrete examples of how or document actual efforts of the change process”. Therefore, in this research I adopt an anthropological a pproach that uses oral history and life stories to construct and deconstruct iden-tities during processes of change. It is emic, longitudinal and critically reflective, and presents a dynamic picture of changes in the individual teachers and in the social environment around them (Benmayor & Skotnes 1994).

I consider myself a CLT advocate, practitioner, teacher trainer/developer and researcher, working on ways to make CLT work for the Chinese learners. My own long term membership in the research field has positioned me to access a thick description of the community of practices with a good relationship with my infor-mants. I have stayed continuously in the research field for over 30 years. I was among the first cohorts of undergraduates in China that used CLT (Allen & Spada 1983; Li 1984) between 1979–1983. I obtained my MA in linguistics and applied linguistics in perhaps the best program of its kind in China. I have worked in the same department/faculty as a teaching assistant, lecturer, associate and then full professor, teacher training center director, department head and research center director. Over the years I have had ample opportunities to observe and take part in most routine activities of the community, and have enjoyed many trustworthy relationships with informants from all ranks of the hierarchy in that community. I have also had seven years of working outside the community to pursue further studies. Such experiences form the basis for me to draw comparisons when ana-lyzing the data, with an insider-outsider perspective, while ‘making the familiar strange’.

The data consists of field notes, teaching journals, observation records, eth-nographic interview transcripts, personal letters, in-house documents and open-ended questionnaire feedback. The informants include university and faculty leadership, staff from the foreign affairs office or personnel departments, ordi-nary teachers, trainees and undergraduates. Some of the data are in Chinese and then translated. The data is analyzed qualitatively (Glaser & Strauss 1967; Ham-mersley & Atkinson 1983; Lincoln & Guba 1985).

5 Guangwai and its 30-year journey of CLT reformGuangdong University of Foreign Studies (hereafter Guangwai) is located in the city of Guangzhou (also known as Canton), or China’s South Gate to the outside world. Specifically its English Department, now renamed or enlarged to become the Faculty of English language and culture, is the research setting of this study.



Since the late 1970s, Guangwai has become one of the most pro-reform insti-tutions in Chinese tertiary education, especially in ELT. The British Council and some North American agencies have played an important role in assisting this result with as many as six major joint programs running at the same time for some ten or more years in this single department of English, focusing on textbook prep-aration, testing, secondary and tertiary teacher training. About half of its faculty has received a master’s in applied linguistics or English-language teaching in some of the top universities in the United Kingdom.

CLT had been introduced into the Department of English in Guangwai in the late 1970s, largely due to an influential textbook series called Communicative English for Chinese Learners (better known as CECL; see Li 1987) for use by first- and second-year English majors. This pioneer project is regarded as “an attempt at a thorough adoption of the communicative approach” (Dzau 1990: 7) and a very successful one. CECL replaced the old textbook for undergraduate English majors beginning with the class of 1979–1981. From the mid-1980s, CECL took root and gained predominance at Guangwai. These CLT-formulated textbooks spread to the first two years of all departments with English majors. Gradually the teachers of CECL have become those young graduates who got master’s degrees in applied linguistics, where CLT represented progress. The textbooks have also gone through revisions since 1985: some lists of vocabulary, Chinese translations and more grammar exercises were added, responding to complaints from those t eachers who were educated in traditional methods or were skilled in using them. Although there are still divergent opinions about CECL and CLT among Guangwai faculty members, as a collective they tend to see CECL as a source of institutional pride vis-à-vis colleagues from other universities.

Beginning in the mid-1980s, as part of the endeavor to prove that CLT was good and CECL effective, Guangwai went on to spend over ten years successfully reforming the national university entrance examination toward a more communi-cative competency-oriented test in place of the former grammar rules–dominated one (Qi 2004). Guangwai has set up the first program of linguistics and applied linguistics both at the MA and PhD levels in China, and the program is now the only national key research center for linguistics and applied linguistics (http://www.clal.org.cn/en/?ColID=44&ParentID=0). The changes of the last ten years will be introduced in more detail in the section on Guangwai’s indigenous efforts at localizing CLT.

5.1 Guangwai as a danwei community of practicesTo depict Guangwai as a community of practices, a most useful concept to my knowledge is danwei, literally meaning ‘work unit’ in English. Danwei, according


280 Huhua Ouyang

to Chao and Chen (1997), is the single device that Mao and his New China govern-ment used to make all forms of social groupings, be it a factory, a farm, or a busi-ness union, into a standardized institution. In Yeh’s definition (1997: 60), a danwei is “an organization for work. Although variations existed, the distinguishing feature of a danwei was a lifetime social welfare system virtually from cradle to grave, and a network of relationships encompassing work, home, neighborhood, social existence and political membership.” The functions of a danwei are: “po-litical and social . . . characterized as ‘paternalistic’ and ‘materialistic’ r espectively. As in a traditional family, the danwei acts as a patriarch who disciplines and sanc-tions his children, while at the same time serving as a maternal provider of care and daily necessities” (Lü & Perry 1997: 8). Below I shall present an ethnographic account of how learners and teachers communicate in such danwei community, and how such communal socialization constitutes how they learn and teach and interact, and its implication for CLT practices.

5.2 Studying in a ‘ban’ collective as a community of practicesAfter entering Guangwai, students in the English Department are assigned to a unit of classes, with usually about 30 classmates to form one such class unit, called “Ban’’ a short form of ban jiti, literally “the class collective” (see also Ross 1993 and Schoenhals 1993 for a middle school Ban description). For the next four years, they are to stay in the same class collective. They are in many cases given one classroom permanently for four years exclusively (recently this has become difficult as the enrollment population has increased). Everything is shared in the Ban: i.e., same teachers, same courses, same furniture, and same outside-class activities. Only in the fourth year are optional courses available for students, which they do not have to take as a Ban. All of the students are assigned to live in some dormitories according to their Ban, usually six of them in one room, again for four years.

Organizationally there is a class committee consisting of members in charge of study, finance, sports and entertainment, in addition to a monitor and vice monitor, who hold regular meetings on decisions concerning the class, and orga-nize activities ranging from academic contests, teaching/course evaluation, awards competition, visiting sick classmates or teachers, to blood donation or political studies – all done as a group, with success or failure collectively owned.

Everyday routines are fixed. Breakfast time is 6:50–7:30 am. After class time, students rush to take lunch in the dining halls. Then everyone takes a nap in the dormitories for ninety minutes. At 10 o’clock, the lights go out in the teaching or academic area. Students go to bed at 11. Many chat before going to sleep. During weekends, students usually go downtown, eat out in the nearby small restau-rants, watch movies, or have parties.



Because of the proximity of the class both in the study and living environ-ment, the highly ritualized life routines, and the longtime co-participation in all identical activities and interaction, students in one Ban are very familiar with one another. They share knowledge such as: whether one is from the city or country-side, what one’s parents or relatives do, who was born when, how tall or short one is, who makes the best jokes, who is good at which kind of sports, who eats how much, how often one washes one’s shoes or socks, who snores, who cheats, who is on what terms with whom, who dances well and has good manners, who is generous, rational or reasonable, who studies best, who is the quickest and most intelligent, who makes the best impression on outside visitors, who has a sensible way with others and makes the best PR for the class, who is politically active, and so forth. There is hardly any place for privacy or secrets.

As a result of or alongside this collective experience and mutual understand-ing, various sorts of order, hierarchy and sequence emerge. Who is deserving of what kind of, and how much of the power and authority in leading and decision-making; who is suitable for approaching the departmental management for p ermission to do things; who is the right person to be the judge to mediate in disputes, etc. Such rights, obligations and power are proportionately granted to individual students and not specified or written out as a contract but is collec-tively observed as tacitly understood practices.

How does this community of practices fare when CLT is introduced? In a r ecent open-ended survey, students reported that their classroom participation, such as raising questions to or answering questions from teachers, making initia-tives or evaluation, are heavily decided by their observation and knowledge about one another. For instance, those who are active in oral performance in class are usually those who are called or pointed to by the teacher as the teachers’ favorite students, those who are very extrovert and self confident, and those who want to show off their oral English advantage or their smart ideas. Of course such a s equence or order of participation pattern in class is not there in the very begin-ning. During the first few months or the first semester, students are just like every group elsewhere, and they compete and negotiate like stranger to stranger, on an egalitarian footing. Yet very soon, they come to know each other better and change their pattern of participation. Some are very active and confident and then find after a mid-term examination, or a few times in class, that there are some classmates who score much higher or have much smarter things to say, and they would then usually choose to be quieter. When the group members know each other’s opinions and their quality, they will very soon develop a division of who are to lead, who are to follow and support, saying ‘this is the best way for the job to be done’. When the teacher asks a challenging question, especially when outside observers are at present, the whole class’s gaze will fall upon one single


282 Huhua Ouyang

top student, who would sigh ‘me again?’ and do as expected. Occasionally, when c ertain classmates want desperately to get a higher grade or improve their oral English, the classmates would accept it as an exception and let it happen. And as the time they spend together in class and on campus gets longer, the pattern or sequence and hierarchy will become more reinforced and internalized. During the whole period of studying in a Ban collective, seven semesters if not more, one would witness stronger and stronger stability of such a pattern, leaving little space for deviational behavior.

Violation of such tacit knowledge or consensus will bring about horrible con-sequences to the individuals who dare to be so insensitive. Such violations range from turning around so as not to see, starting to chat, looking out of the window very obviously, walking out of classroom, disengaging eye contact when meeting after class, not helping to get the lunch or fetch hot water for others, not waking someone up if s/he oversleeps for class or is late for tests, not playing with him/her, participating in nasty gossip behind his or her back, infringing on his or her chances for winning stipends or awards fairly, to causing him to lose a boyfriend or girlfriend, etc. etc.. All of these are “punishments” for putting oneself above the group’s interest, and thus one experiences a certain degree of deprivation of one’s membership and rights to live a normal life in the community.

When the CLT was implemented in such a hierarchy group, it was strongly resented by students in one case study (Du huizhen, personal communication). Students complained that such equal turn- taking forced by the CLT teacher in an oral English class ruined the class solidarity and harmony, because the bottom students were forced to expose their poor English in front of those they knew and thus felt humiliated, while the top students were also forced to display their supe-riority to the rest of the class that knew such differences too well, again and again. Both levels of students felt humiliated and face lost.

This case of studying in a Ban collective as a community of practices strongly suggests that there are assumptions of CLT regarding its learners’ participation in classroom activities: communication between individuals equally and freely, in the process of looking for the truth and negotiating knowledge, having not t aken into consideration those cultural contexts of an extensive power distance, hierarchically granted voices, identities as members of a collective, and their norms of interaction in a tacit consensus over long term consequence and hence internalization.

5.3 Teaching and Research Room as a community of practicesThe social organization where the teachers of mainland China work is almost iden-tical to the students’ Ban collective in terms of its function and features, only on a



much more sophisticated hierarchy and longer term membership. It is called Jiaoyanshi, literally Teaching and Research Room (TRR hereafter) – here ‘room’ means a team of teachers in a shared staffroom, as no individual teachers have an office or room.

Once one is assigned to a group of TRR, it is probable that s/he will stay there for a long period of time; ten years or even longer are not rare cases. The TRR are usually in charge of teaching one particular course, such as reading, speaking, culture, or CECL as described above. The heads are mostly middle-aged teachers who are the most capable, often having worked over twenty years in the Depart-ment and won awards as model teachers. The rest of the group are of two kinds: those most senior in age and rich in experience but not so strong in academic qualifications because of the negative impact of the Cultural Revolution on their education, and those who are fresh graduates from college, mostly from MA pro-grams of the Department itself.

The most frequent activity that these groups gather together for is ‘collective lesson preparation’. What this means is that the teachers teaching the same courses spend one whole afternoon every one or two weeks to go through the textbook they use. They divide up jobs among themselves, such as who will pre-pare the Chinese translation of the vocabulary for one unit, who will offer a d etailed plan for a unit with points that need emphasizing or skipping, or who will prepare the quiz or items for the term exam. Consensus is reached mostly by discussion, the sharing of experiences, and draws on the model of the best exper-tise of the group. In this way it is believed that the teaching responsibility is shouldered equally and the quality of teaching is guaranteed (see also Ross 1993: 81). Once the decisions are made, every teacher follows the group arrangement in his or her teaching.

The group membership and the job division seldom change without special reason and the change seldom comes suddenly. Consequently, teachers, in such a real permanent and enclosed setting, gradually establish lasting relationships and profound knowledge about each other: who teaches well, who is most con-scientious, who has what strength in what aspect of teaching, who should be elected as the model teacher of the year, whose ideas count most, or otherwise, etc. As the group usually consists of three generations, it frequently occurs that one person has a colleague who has been their teacher when they were a student, while at the same time they may have another younger colleague who has been their own student. “Once a teacher, always a parent”; so goes the popular saying. One is expected to pay great respect to one’s teacher for the rest of one’s time, and practice filial piety as a child to a parent in a family. Keeping a humble attitude towards one’s senior and a low profile are always sensible things for the juniors.

The real voice is mostly from the most senior professors or teachers, many of whom are more conservative than the rest with a much longer background of and


284 Huhua Ouyang

internalization with Traditional Methods, and once their decisions are made, the group follows suit, and the pattern gets copied year by year, to become a routine of great stability.

This collective culture leaves little room for ordinary teachers being indi-vidualistic and autonomous in decision-making about the teaching, choice of materials, common evaluation standard, error correction, or teaching styles. D eviation from the group’s decision could not only invite more workload in one’s teaching, but would suggest one’s arrogance, disrespect for the group and its well-being, and hence a higher risk for accountability for one’s actions and pos-sible adverse consequences without the group’s protection.

For the last thirty years of the CECL program, the examination has largely remained as inconsistent with or more exactly in contradiction against CLT prin-ciples of formative and learner-centered criteria, with linguistic knowledge as its main component while ignoring the majority of hours spent in a CLT class for communication competence. Students keep complaining about this, like many junior teachers, but not much has been changed with the testing. And although many have pointed out the need for learner development or orientation program-ming to help students to captivate the CLT learning principles and for in-house teacher development programming to help teachers of Traditional Methods to a ppreciate more experientially as learners of the humanistic principles of CLT in CECL, nothing serious has happened. And although it is obvious to everybody that the content of many texts in CECL, composed fifteen years ago or even in the early 80s, are outdated and should be updated, no institutional move has taken place. All these are results of no real teacher empowerment as decision makers in the institutional culture, as manifest in the TRR community of practices.

So while teachers could preach and facilitate CLT and its related i ndividualism, egalitarianism and humanistic principles in the classroom to their students, they themselves don’t enjoy such treatment in staffrooms or the reality of their routine. Such are the conditions for teachers to make or obey decisions regarding what and how to teach in mainland China, leaving little opportunity for real e mpowered initiatives, implementation and ownership of its success of any reform-related trials. Indeed, learning or teaching approaches can be a function of socialization processes and of the institutional context (Gow et al 1996).

5.4 What happens to individual learners and teachers who practice CLT in such community of practices?

We will present two real cases briefly here to further illustrate the dramatic socio-logical consequences that have happened to individual teachers and learners



who practiced the communication norms of CLT in the Guangwai community (Ouyang 2003a, 2000, for a full account of these two stories respectively). These two groups of individuals are not long term members of Guangwai community, but short term ones: they are the foreign experts or international teachers and teacher trainees from some less developed provinces of the hinterland of China.

The first group, the foreign experts, are native English speaking teachers who were invited to teach and demonstrate the Western style liberalist teaching method-ologies including CLT. And yet many of them came in for criticism from students’ evaluations. Such criticism has been consistent over twenty years. The process-oriented teaching of the foreign experts was seen as too improvisational and lack-ing in rigor. They made it hard for students to take notes and prepare for the lan-guage points. Their interactive and experiential learning with no standardized textbooks created a sense of insecurity and low sense of achievement for students. Their humanistic peer review and peer feedback error correction left students wondering what was right or wrong, and so on (Ouyang 2003a). Obviously the criteria used for evaluation were of Traditional Methods against the CLT teaching.

What is more relevant to us in this section is that the foreign experts adopted a Western style of conflict management in dealing with such criticism from stu-dents. They requested that the students come to them to tell them face to face about what they were not happy about, and that hard evidence be presented to them for their own judgment rather than dictated by the foreign affairs office or the faculty leadership. Many foreign experts got angry and upset and thought they were wronged or not allowed a fair chance to argue and reason back (Ouyang 2004).

The Western interaction pattern implies a lot about the community of prac-tices the foreign experts are part of. They prefer mobility in both job and resi-dence; a tendency towards short-term relationships in the work related context; a general wariness of mutual trust; a preference for a discrete and specified nature of day-to-day transactions; reliance on contracts and legal external regulations; and egalitarianism in individual status, rights and freedom. With these prefer-ences, it is natural for them to confront students, argue directly and exchange information publicly.

What they were not aware of is that the local people treat conflicts in a totally different way, consistent with the community structure and priority in communi-cation as outlined in the above description of Guangwai as a community of prac-tices. As scholars have noted, in Guangwai:

The Western tradition of straight talk, open debate, friendly disagreement, and loyal oppo-sition has no place in an interpersonal system focused on relationship rather than ‘truth’, given that relationships are mostly hierarchical and involve wide discrepancies in usable power. Indeed, it is precisely this hierarchy that constitutes ‘truth’, not some Platonic form discoverable by logical or scientific enquiry. (Bond 1991: 55)


286 Huhua Ouyang

However, the truth is that it is in the informal setting, in private and casual inter-personal communication, that most Guangwai people exchange views and infor-mation (for a full discussion, see Gao et al 1996; Bond 1991). In the private setting, with a limited audience and guarded by reasonable secrecy or privacy, face is not as much at stake as it is in public. Therefore, a more egalitarian kind of com-munication is made possible. For example, experienced head-teachers will rely heavily on meeting a small group of the student leaders, the class committee. Head-teachers also will take some time to visit students in their dormitories. Through such visits, students know they are cared for by the teacher, and the teacher gets to know what the students’ genuine concerns are. For the same r eason, students will approach teachers for answers only during break time, after class, or during those times when the teacher approaches them in private set-tings. For the teacher it is much less face-threatening to shed tears of regret on hearing students’ genuine criticism in such a private and friendly exchange.

While some of the foreign experts have learned to adapt themselves to the extent of ‘going native’ and become model teachers, many of them were treated in a way that minimized their agency. For example, they were assigned to teach courses of culture, society, literature, or oral English – all non-parallel or less central courses, designated an enclosed living apartment with less access to the community’s activities, resulting in a feeling of being used as tools. They felt that they were used “for improving the English of the students, to be taken out of the drawer in class time, and put away again afterwards” (Maley 1990: 102).

The other group of victims of the CLT reform concerned some teacher trainees in a senior middle school training program run by the British Council in collabo-ration with the Chinese ministry of education. Their experiences were as drastic as those of a migrant travelling between two communities, TM and CLT (Ouyang 2000). With the related experiences of one of such teachers, over her seven years of using CLT, we have witnessed the huge ordeal suffered in terms of her split identities and ups and downs in her status, face and relationships with her sig-nificant others.

This teacher was rewarded when her school in a hinterland found her TM expertise in agreement with the community’s needs. They appreciated her a uthoritative delivery of knowledge, the high grades she gave for displaying knowledge in examinations, and her status as role model to leaders and parents. The school rewarded her by sending her to receive CLT training in Guangwai for two years. Yet, she was looked down upon when her TM activity was in conflict with Guangwai’s pro-CLT community of practices. After the two years of forcing herself into CLT practices, this teacher went back to introduce CLT to her home-town school as planned. She now found out that her newly gained CLT conflicted with her danwei community of practices. For instance, she was seen as self-



promoting, trying to be equal to her superiors by initiating change, relating as an individualist to her colleagues in the TRR by doing things her own way, and b ehaving like an irresponsible and unaccountable teacher to her students who looked for correct answers to knowledge and help in examinations. It was in 1997–8 that she regained her social status in the community when the curriculum reform promoted CLT in textbook use and teaching methodology, which made her prior efforts in introducing CLT consistent with the needs of her school in general. Yet, before this stage, three quarters of her classmates were driven out from schools or quit, as their teaching practices were not appreciated in their schools.

What does promoting ELT reform mean to individual teachers, both local and expatriate? The answer is: a remaking of the community of practices, or transition from one Discourse System to another. It means that teachers would change from being a knowledge prescription authority and discipliner, to being a mentor, counselor and facilitator. This is analogous to changing face from an a uthoritarian father figure to an egalitarian, humanistic mother. With this change of face, their identities in the perception of their students, peers and communal seniors would change too. The rules for them to interact with others in the society would no longer be the same. Their status in the social community and power relationships with others would consequently be reshaped. During this remaking process, it is almost certain that many interests will be recreated and power relationships re-aligned and values redefined. As the former hierarchies and queuing order change, the new rules of the game will result in some gains for certain individuals and losses for others. This helps explain the severe struggles and conflicts be-tween the reformers and those already in privileged and advantageous positions in the old system.

Such is the nature of carrying out pedagogical reform in today’s China for ordinary teacher individuals. The nature of social, political and ideological con-flict could apply to all cases of instigating reform in China, regardless of how privileged the reformers are (expatriate vs. local), how open and developed is the reform that takes place (metropolitan vs. countryside), or how radically pro-reform some individuals or institutions claim themselves to be.

6 Towards localizing CLT with Chinese characteristics: Principles, priorities, and specific implementation projects of success

A better understanding of the mechanism and rationale of the local community and its social practices, together with insights about the intricacies of the CLT


288 Huhua Ouyang

reform and its overall socio-cultural ramifications, are not presented here to jus-tify the tradition uncritically. Rather, the objective is to identify the problems and the causes behind the conflicts between the conservative and the reforming peda-gogical movements, so that a more focused and constructive effort could be exer-cised and channeled to achieve a modernized China with its own characteristics. Education reform is an active agency in transforming society, without waiting for society to change itself to provide ideal and parallel conditions for the reform to take place.

Models of positive convergence between the traditional and Western ap-proaches and discursive practices should be developed with lessons drawn from the cases of divergence and conflicts between the two. Hall and Ames (1999) have already produced an exemplar, though theoretical, of such constructive conver-gence between Dewey’s communitarian ideas and those of Confucius. Jin and Cortazzi (1995) have also been practicing a model of “cultural synergy” in an a ttempt to benefit both the Western and the Chinese scholars in a manner that neither will lose culturally (also Maley 1990; Craig 1997).

In Guangwai, we have developed an indigenous approach to localize CLT, focusing on its micro-politics with particular relation to the dynamics between the leaders and subordinates in the existing hierarchy, between the collective and individual interests, between the public and private sphere of communication, and the continuity and transformation of the cultural heritages manifest in the institutional and individuals’ capital in traditional methods/practices. We have proposed an order of priority of three ‘not’s – ‘will not’, ‘dare not’, and ‘cannot’, as a guideline for implementing CLT reform in reality. That is, we first address what teachers and learners are reluctant to change by raising their awareness of the necessity to change what they have long internalized. Then we invest a huge effort to create a humanistic safe environment so that no one will dare engage in dominance or face conflicts through unwise pedagogical reform. Without the first two priorities being met, we cannot venture into introducing specific methods/techniques/activities of reform (Ouyang 2010).

Such an approach with its three priorities and sequence has worked well in our reform endeavors. In the tertiary level teacher development program, for i nstance, teachers were able to communicate with their work-unit leaders, espe-cially those who would likely see the teacher- initiated reform activities as a threat to their existing status and interests and thus would be likely to sabotage it. This strategy helped the leaders behave like egalitarian counterparts to reciprocate with empathy when teachers expressed their interest in reform related activities. More importantly, teachers made deliberate efforts to ‘surrender’ the reform suc-cess to the leaders, assuring the latter that such reform activities would not chal-lenge and take away their existing authority. As a result, many of such teachers



were seen by the leaders as capable of doing the politically correct reform while sensible enough not to create uncertainties for the authority structure. Thus in the end they were given more power to carry out the reform, achieving realistic teacher empowerment and reform (Ouyang 2009). The long term membership and ample opportunities for collaboration in the workplace enabled these teachers to become ‘moralistic leaders’ to bring about the maximal collective interests in the reform, rather than individuals seeking their own social advancement.

7 Discussion and conclusionIs the danwei community of practices the same across the country? Of course not. Since the Reform era from the late 70s, many elements of the state-owned work units/danwei have been rapidly disappearing, such as its free housing (from 2000), its permanent employment (now the younger generation need to sign con-tracts), and more and more staff members are living outside the campus. The i ndustrialization of education has also made the relationship between teachers and learners more and more utilitarian and contractual, and complaints from learners count more and more for teacher evaluation. The “single child genera-tion” learners are less collective than their parents in decision making and social activities. Publishers are fighting each other in the textbooks market, no longer as central as before.

Nevertheless, the vitality of Confucian values still proves to be powerful enough to survive and transcend modernization or Westernization. The social structure of the university, characterized as Ban or class collective and Teaching and Research Room in this study, features in almost all mainland Chinese educa-tion institutions, as a state-owned workplace named danwei. (Private schools have come into existence only recently and occupy only a tiny percentage). In fact, the danwei infrastructure with its enclosure, its long term membership, its hierarchical structure, harmony-oriented communication in public and recip-rocal exchange in private, as reported in this study, have been sustained if not strengthened with the increasing over-bureaucratization trend in China’s educa-tion. “Excessive administrative power over academic affairs has stymied the a dvancement of education on the mainland”, said Dr Zhu Qingshi (in the South China Morning Post, February 19, 2011), president of the proposed South Univer-sity of Science and Technology of China, who has been seeking government rec-ognition and approval for his university being “ruled by professors”. In the public view, the administrativization of the education system has set the largest obstacle to reforms towards more liberalistic education, making China’s universities like yamen (a traditional Chinese bureaucratic organization), breeding hegemony and


290 Huhua Ouyang

suffocating creativity. China is not alone in this: such modernized or westernized countries as Japan, South Korea and Singapore have continued to practice au-thoritarian leadership, collectivism and filial piety (Bond 1991; Hayhoe 1996; Lu & Perry 1997; Hall & Ames 1999).

Curriculum reforms modeled on the liberalist or reformist ideologies from the West as a global trend would not have started from the very beginning if the s ociopolitical moves in mainland China had not been receptive to the Open Door policy and Societal Transformation. During the process of reform, pre-existing orders, statuses and habits were challenged. Inevitably, conflicts of interests have arisen. A much wider perspective must be taken into account when gauging the impact of the ELT reform upon the social community. Advocates of change should bear in mind that efforts such as theirs have been witnessed constantly over the last hundred years, as reform has been one of the most important campaigns in China. The success of reform would be largely decided on how well the local agents make use of the borrowed new ideas and integrate and appropriate them into the socio-cultural conditions of their reality, making them serve the best i nterests of the local communities.

AcknowledgementThis paper has been presented at the 2011 annual conference of American Asso-ciation of Applied Linguistics, March 28, Chicago, at its Invited Colloquia “Knowl-edge Construction in Applied Linguistics: A Reappraisal” and I would like to thank AAAL and Professor Suresh Canagarajah for the invitation and Language Learning: a Journal for Language Studies for funding my trip and the stay. This paper is supported by Research Project 12JJD740066 of Humanity and Social Sci-ence Center, China’s Ministry of Education, 2012, the National Center for Linguis-tics and Applied Linguistics, China, and the Research Center for English Educa-tion, Faculty of English Language and Culture, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.

ReferencesAllen, W. & N. Spada. 1983. Designing a communicative syllabus in the People’s Republic of

China. In R. R. Jordan (ed.), Case Studies in ELT, 132–145. London: Collins ELT.Benmayor, R. & A. Skotnes (eds.). 1994. Migration and Identity. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.Bond, M. 1991. Beyond the Chinese Face: Insights from Psychology. Hong Kong: Oxford

University Press.



Cao, J. Q. & Z. Y. Chen. 1997. Walk Out the “Ideal Castle”: The Research about the Phenomena “Chinese Living in Units” (in Chinese). Shenzhen: Haitian Press.

Carless, D. 2007. The suitability of task-based approaches for secondary schools: Perspectives from Hong Kong. System 35: 595–608.

Cortazzi, M. & L. Jin. 1996a. English teaching and learning in China. Language Teaching. 29, 61–80. Cambridge University Press.

Cortazzi, M. & L. Jin. 1996b. Cultures of learning: Language classrooms in China. In H. Coleman (ed.), Society and the Language Classroom, 169–206. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Craig, B. A. 1997. Negotiating discourse expectations in an English as a foreign language classroom. Hong Kong Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2(1), 1–22.

Dzau, Y. F. (ed.). 1990. English In China. Hong Kong: API Press.Fullan, M. & A. Hargreaves. 1996. What’s Worth Fighting for in Your School? New York: Teachers

College, Columbia University.Gao, G., S. Ting-Toomey, & W. Gudykunst. 1996. Chinese communication processes. In, M. Bond

(ed.), 280–93.Glaser, B. G., & A. L. Strauss. 1967. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative

Research. New York: Aldine De gruyter.Gow, L., J. Balla, D. Kember & K. T. Hau. 1996. The learning approaches of Chinese people: A

function of socialization processes and the context of learning? In M. Bond (ed.), 109–123.Gutek, G. 1988. Philosophical and Ideological Perspectives on Education. Massachusetts: Allyn

and Bacon.Hall, D. L. & R. T. Ames. 1999. The Democracy of the Dead: Dewey, Confucius, and the Hope for

Democracy in China. Chicago and Lassalle, Illinois: Open Court.Hammersley, M. & P. Atkinson. 1983. Ethnography: Principles in Practice. London: Tavistock

Publications.Harvey, P. 1990. A lesson to be learned: Chinese approach to language Learning. In Y. F. Dzau

(ed.), 168–174.Hayhoe, R. 1996. China’s Universities 1895–1995: A Century of Cultural Conflict. New York:

Grune & Stratton.Holliday, A. 1994. Appropriate Methodology and Social Context. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.Hu, G. W. 2005. English language education in China: Policies, progress, and problems.

Language Policy 4(1), 5–24.Hu, Z. L. 2007. Preface to “Research on Teacher Education and Development in China’s Tertiary

Education”. Wu, Yian (ed.). ii. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.Kumaravadivelu, B. 2002. Beyond methods: Macro strategies for language teaching. New

Haven and London: Yale University Press.Lave, J. & E. Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.Li, X. J. 1990. In defence of the communicative approach. In Y. F. Dzau (ed.), 116–133.Li, X. J. 1987. Communicative English for Chinese Learners (series of textbook). Shanghai:

Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.Lincoln, Y. & E. Guba. 1985. Naturalistic Inquiry. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.Liu, Y. & Y. Xu. 2011. Inclusion or exclusion? A narrative inquiry of a language teacher’s identity

experience in the ‘new work order’ of competing pedagogies. Teaching and Teacher Education 27: 589–597.


292 Huhua Ouyang

Lü, X. P. & E. J. Perry (eds.). 1997. Danwei: The Changing Chinese Workplace in Historical and Comparative Perspective. New York: M. E. Sharpe.

Malcolm, I. & K. Malcolm. 1988. Communicative language teaching materials for China: The CECL project. Paper presented at the Regional Seminar on “Materials for Language Learning and Teaching: New Trends and Developments”, Regional Language Centre, Singapore, April, 11–15, 1988.

Marlina, R. 2009. ‘I don’t talk or I decide not to talk? Is it my culture?’ – International students’ experiences of tutorial participation. International Journal of Educational Research 48: 235–244.

Maley, A. 1990. XANADU – ‘A miracle of rare device’: The teaching of English in China. In Y. F. Dzau (ed.), 95–105. Originally published in 1984, in Language Learning and Communication: A Journal of Applied Linguistics in Chinese and English, (ceased publication) NY: John Wiley.

O’Neill, W. 1981. Educational Ideologies: Contemporary Expressions of Educational Philosophy. Santa Monica: Goodyear Publishing.

Ouyang, H. H. 1992. The pain of change. Teaching English in China 24: 5–10.Ouyang, H. H. 1996. Things that don’t work in the office might work at home: Teachers develop

through teachers’ chat-in-private. In G. Tinker Sachs, M. Brock, & R. Lo (eds.), Directions in Second Language Teacher Education, 186–201. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press.

Ouyang, H. H. 2000. One way ticket: A story of an innovative teacher in mainland China. Anthropology & Education Quarterly 31(4): 397–425.

Ouyang, H. H. 2003a. Resistance to the communicative method of language instruction within a progressive Chinese university. Chapter in Kathryn Anderson Levitt (ed.), Local Meanings, Global Schooling: Anthropology and World Culture Theory, 121–140. NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Ouyang, H. H. 2003b. Towards a learner- and learning-centered marking in the course of English Writing. Plenary speech at China’s 1st national conference on ‘Write to Learn’: Teaching English writing. Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China. Dec. 22–24.

Ouyang, H. H. 2004. Remaking of Faces and Communities of Practices. Beijing: Peking University Press.

Ouyang, H. H. 2007. A Rogerian humanistic and Chinese renqin featured approach of teacher development in China. Plenary speech at the 2nd national conference on College English teacher development, Zhongshan University and Guangzhou University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, PRC, May 4–6.

Ouyang, H. H. 2009. Can-not, or will/dare-not? An indigenous approach to teacher development in China. Plenary speech at the 3rd national conference on teacher education and development in China. Southwest University, Chongqing, Dec 10–12.

Popkewitz, T. S. 1992. Houston, W. R. et al. (eds.). Handbook of Research on Teacher Education. [Review of Handbook of Research on Teacher Education]. Journal of Teacher Education, 43(1), 63–75.

Qi, L. X. 2004. The Intended Washback Effect of the National Matriculation English Test in China: Intentions and Reality. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.

Rao, Z. H. 2002. Chinese students’ perceptions of communicative and non-communicative activities in EFL classroom. System 30: 85–105.

Richards, J. & D. Nunan (eds.). 1990. Second Language Teacher Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.



Rogers, E. M. 1983. Diffusion of Innovations (3rd ed). New York: The Free Press.Ross, H. A. 1993. China Learns English: Language and Social Change in the People’s Republic.

New Haven: Yale University Press.Savignon, S. J. 2007. Beyond communicative language teaching: What’s ahead? Journal of

Pragmatics 39 2007 207–220.Schoenhals, M. 1993. The Paradox of Power in a People’s Republic of China Middle School. New

York: M. E. Sharpe.Scollon, R. & S. Scollon. 1995. Intercultural Communication: A Discourse Approach. Cambridge:

Blackwell.Tsui, A. 2007. Complexities of identity formation: A narrative enquiry of an EFL teacher. TESOL

Quarterly, 41(4), 657–680.Walsh, C. (ed.). 1996. Educational Reform and Social Change: Multicultural Voices, Struggles,

and Visions. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Ward, T., B. Barr, M. Chan, D. Hua & H. Liu. 1995. A Crane among the Chicken? Evaluating a

Training Programme for English Teachers in China. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.

Wu, Z. J. 2004. Being, understanding and naming: teachers’ life and work in harmony. International Journal of Educational Research 41, 307–323.

Wu, Z. J. & A. F. Huang, 2007. Exploratory EFL curriculum: RICH program and teacher development. In Y.A. Wu (ed.), 182–241.

Wu, Yian. 2007. (ed.) Research on Teacher Education and Development in China’s Tertiary Education. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.

Xu, Y. T. & Y. C. Liu. 2009. Teacher assessment knowledge and practice: a narrative inquiry of a Chinese college EFL teacher’s experience. TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 43(3): 493–513.

Yeh, W. H. 1997. The Republican origins of the Danwei: The case of Shanghai’s Bank of China. In X. Lü & E. Perry (eds.), 60–90.

Ying, D. J. 2007. Teacher educators’ collaborative inquiry in a context of educational innovation in China – a case study of RICH as a learning community. In T. Townsend and R. Bates (eds.). Handbook of Teacher Education, 539–554. Netherlands: Springer.

BionoteHuhua Ouyang is Professor of English in Guangdong University of Foreign S tudies, Guangzhou, China. He has published in journals such as Anthropology & Education Quarterly and E’ducation et Socie’te’s, and is the author of Remaking of Faces and Community of Practices (2004, Peking University Press).



Documents

Dominant pedagogical approaches and diverse teaching conditions: Integrating CLT in a Chinese university as a danwei community of practices