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Page 1: Pedagogy: East and west, then and now

This article was downloaded by: [University of Connecticut]On: 29 October 2014, At: 00:33Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

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Pedagogy: East and west, then and nowKai-Ming ChengPublished online: 28 Oct 2011.

To cite this article: Kai-Ming Cheng (2011) Pedagogy: East and west, then and now, Journal ofCurriculum Studies, 43:5, 591-599, DOI: 10.1080/00220272.2011.617836

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Page 2: Pedagogy: East and west, then and now

Responses to Wu’s Interpretation, autonomy, and

transformation: Chinese pedagogic discourse in a

cross-cultural perspective

KAI-MING CHENG, YONGBING LIU, LIANG CHENG

and NAN XU, TONGDONG BAI, and SOR-HOON TAN

Pedagogy: East and west, then and now

KAI-MING CHENG

This is the first of six commentaries discussing Zongjie Wu’s essay, ‘Interpretation,autonomy, and transformation’. Wu’s analyses of pedagogy have opened a new windowfor looking at the essence of education. The comparison of Confucius’s pedagogy withcontemporary teaching in China provides a striking contrast. However, perhaps it isunfair and inaccurate to attribute the evolution of Chinese pedagogy to western influ-ences alone. Such an evolution is also underpinned by changes in society during the pro-cess of industrialization. Meanwhile, despite the modern structure, much of the culturalheritage is still retained in China’s contemporary education. Nonetheless, when societyfurther advances, the Confucian pedagogy, which amazingly embraced the essence ofcontemporary learning theories, should have a role to play.

Keywords: Confucius’ pedagogy; imperial civil service examination;Chinese pedagogy; globalization

Wu’s (2011) essay ‘Interpretation, autonomy and transformation’ isintriguing. Although I may not agree with his conclusions, my ignorancein linguistic and historical knowledge has led me to conceive such dis-agreements as lack of understanding of the arguments rather than anobjection to them. In the following, I will offer my observations, verymuch in a chronological order, on Confucius’ pedagogy, the CivilExamination, pedagogy in contemporary classrooms, and the impact of

Kai-ming Cheng is Chair Professor of Education in the Division of Policy, Administrationand Social Sciences Education of the University of Hong Kong, Room 424, Runme ShawBuilding, Pokfulam, Hong Kong; e-mail: [email protected]. He studies education policies,initially centred on rural China and India, but he has extended his concerns to higher edu-cation and reforms. Most recently, he has concentrated on discerning contemporary theo-ries of learning and their implications for education. He has been a Visiting Professor atthe Harvard Graduate School of Education where he initiated a course on culture andeducation.

J. CURRICULUM STUDIES, 2011, VOL. 43, NO. 5, 591–630

Journal of Curriculum Studies ISSN 0022–0272 print/ISSN 1366–5839 online �2011 Taylor & Francishttp://www.tandfonline.com

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2011.617836

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globalization. I have to declare that I am a student of policies, and mycomments may demonstrate my ignorance about linguistics.

Learning and Confucius’ pedagogy

In order to avoid confusion, I have been careful to distinguish educationfrom learning (Cheng 2007). Learning refers to the process by which peo-ple develop themselves in order to lead a meaningful life. Thus, learningembraces the acquisition of knowledge and skills, or the cognitive dimen-sion, which is the conventional focus in western education systems.Learning also encompasses the affective domain1 (again using a westernanalytic framework) which pertains to values, emotions, ethics, morality,and so forth. Such affective dispositions may well be included under theumbrella of traditional deyu (德育), which is seen as more important thanthe cognitive dimension in the Chinese tradition. The definition oflearning is yet to include the spiritual dimensions, such as happiness,enlightenment, and mindfulness. Learning is supposed to be the corebusiness of education. However, education may or may not be conduciveto learning. There are parts of education that are meant to facilitate learn-ing, but are not designed for real, effective learning. Other parts of educa-tion may not be relevant to learning. Still others may even be detrimentalto learning.

Between learning and education is pedagogy. The meaning of the termpedagogy is by no means straightforward. The English dictionary defini-tions of pedagogy all relate to teaching, instruction, training or guidance.2

It is an act of the teacher towards the students, or the science or institu-tion of such an act.3 The importance of the teachers’ role in studentlearning cannot be overstated. However, it is a bold assumption thatteachers are the only cause for student learning. Also, it is not easy toestablish that all that teachers do contribute positively to student learning.

Contemporary theories of learning indicate strongly that learning hap-pens in individual brains, and the same teaching may lead to diverselearning outcomes. Within that understanding of learning, Confucius wasindeed a great teacher. All that Wu delineates in his essay portrays a verypositive image of Confucius as one who had a deep understanding of theessence of teaching. Here are some of the examples, which are my analy-ses inspired by reading Wu, where Confucius’s ‘pedagogy’ reflects thecontemporary understanding of human learning:

� Learning is not transmission of ‘knowledge’, as if it is a pouring ofliquid into the human brain. Confucius seldom delivered knowledgeas such. All that he did was to inspire his students towards certaindirections of learning, or provide hints for students to find their ownpath of learning.

� Learning is the active construction of knowledge by the learner.Confucius seldom initiated questions; he only responded to students’questions. There was no pre-set curriculum common to all, but alarge framework in which he spoke. In a way Confucius’s pedagogy

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is built upon students’ eagerness to learn. People learn differently.Confucius’s pedagogy is also plural. He provided different answersto different students, even with the same question, e.g. about ren(仁). Confucius answered differently, perhaps because he understoodthat the same question contained different meanings specific to theperson who asked.

� Learning relies on prior knowledge, and the teachers’ role is scaffold-ing. Confucius assumed that his students were knowledgeable, andhence his responsibility was only to point out a direction.

� The ultimate goal of education is to develop among students thecapacities to learn, or to learn to learn. The teachers’ responsibilityis ‘to let learn’, as Wu quoted Heidegger (p. 573). Confuciusseemed to fully understand that his basic responsibility is to let stu-dents learn.

� Good teaching is inspiring so that students actively learn. The casewith Confucius demonstrates that process, whereby his studentswent away and became engaged in higher-level learning.

At least this is what was recorded in the Analects. It might require somefurther research to confirm that it was indeed a classroom setting, as ishinted by Wu. Nonetheless, Wu’s essay makes it seem that modern theo-ries of learning are just a re-discovery of Confucius’s pedagogy. It is there-fore perhaps justifiable to call Confucius the ‘teacher and model foreternity’ (万世师表).

The civil examination

However, it is yet to be argued that Confucius’s pedagogy was sustainedafter his death. Wu seems to assume that it was not until the establish-ment of modern schools in China that the Confucian tradition of peda-gogy was disrupted. Running the risk of offending scholars who are moreknowledgeable about the historical facts, my understanding is that Confu-cius lived in an era of pluralism, where diverse ideologies competed. How-ever, the pluralism of philosophies that was cherished while Confuciuswas active (i.e. chun-qiu 春秋) came to a halt during the Han Dynastywhere ‘Confucianism’ (ruxue 儒学) became the dominating ideology. Thewestern translation of ‘ruxue’ into ‘Confucianism’ is perhaps itselfmisleading.

The open-ended pedagogy that Confucius practised during his timewas replaced in the 7th century by the Imperial Civil Examination whichwas based on prescribed classics, writing that followed pre-determinedstyles and ideas that would meet the Emperor’s favour. It is not obviouslypersuasive that the emphasis on memory and regurgitation of the classicsare indeed what Wu is suggesting as transcending the characters (images),swimming in the vast sea of interpretations, and engaging in search ofmeaning of life. Millions of young people (and in many cases until theywere quite old) turned themselves into scholars who knew nothing butreading and writing, memorizing the classics by heart, to become success-

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ful candidates for the Civil Examinations. The entire purpose of suchendeavours was, rather shamelessly, for credentials (功名), with the for-tune and status that follows. There was little beyond the Civil Examina-tion that could be counted as ‘education’, and there was little ineducation besides credentials. The Chinese tradition equates educationwith the preparation for the Civil Examination, but that is a misnomer. Itis not education in the sense of cultivating junzi, let alone learning in theauthentic sense of the term. At least from the literature and from the folk-lore, studying in preparation for the Civil Examination contained little ofthe zest for knowledge, pursuit for wisdom, or perfection of personality.

I am not trying to totally reject memorizing, and to equate it with rotelearning in a negative sense. It was the contributions from Biggs (1996)that opened our eyes against the biased interpretation of the Chinesetraditional way of learning (or pedagogy). There is indeed wisdom in thelearning mode that has lasted for thousands of years. What had been seenas rote learning could be interpreted as the two processes of learningintertwined: application and understanding. Whereas the concept of ‘rotelearning’ sees these two processes as completely separate stages: applica-tion only after understanding, the intertwining feature of the two processesis an essential understanding of human learning, hence the notion of‘learning by doing’ and thus the emphasis on ‘learning experiences’.

During these processes, the candidates developed their attributes ofhard work along with a de-emphasis on innate ability, adaptability toexternal pressures, and expectations and endurance vis-a-vis unfavourableenvironments. All these have contributed positively to a hard-working,persevering and adaptive traditional culture. However, the purpose of theCivil Examination (i.e. selection of officials) and the motivation of thescholars (i.e. upward social mobility) made real learning for meaning-making almost impossible. It has also to be borne in mind that, duringthe reign of the Civil Examinations, there was no space for alternativepaths of ‘education’.4

What I am trying to argue is that the disruption of Confucius’ peda-gogy started long ago when all other kinds of modes of learning gave wayto preparation for the Civil Examination, perhaps when it was started in603CE. The beauty that Confucius had started was buried long beforethe western invasion in the education arena at the beginning of the 20th

century.

Contemporary pedagogy

Education plays a social function, and it is shaped by society. Schoolsstarted as places for literacy, for example for reading the Christian bibleor skills in rural lives. Schools in those days were part of the communitylife. Education as a social system emerged in the West only in the mid-19th century. When there was a need for ‘skilled manpower’ in the cities,schools prepared young people with the skills needed in urban and indus-trial lives. When more and more families wanted to send their children tolearn such skills, schools became educational systems. As the economy

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developed still further, and with the analytic ‘rational legality’ (Weber1947) work organizations became pyramidal bureaucracies equipped withclassified and ranked workers. Towards the end of the 19th century, edu-cation became a national system in many countries. Education thusevolved into a sifting and screening machinery that classified and rankedhuman beings.

Contemporary education systems, at the beginning of the 21st centuryand around the world, are still largely functioning in this mode. That per-haps explains why education systems are pyramidal. All over the world,most of the discourse on education policies is still economic in nature.Education policy-makers explore notions of ‘investment’, ‘manpowerplanning’, ‘human resources development’, ‘rate-of-return to education’,and the ‘external efficiency’ and the ‘internal efficiency’ of education sys-tems. Society and the economy are evolving in ways that are very differentfrom the manufacturing industrial era. In this ‘post-industrial’ era—forthe lack of a more precise notation—pyramidal structures collapse. Workorganizations are becoming smaller, faster, and looser. Individuals changetheir tasks, jobs, and occupations. Social mobility, both upwards anddownwards, has become commonplace. All this begs a question: Is oureducation still preparing our young people for the future (Cheng 2009)?

I am fully aware that the above exposition does not quite belong to alinguistic discourse, the core matter of Wu’s essay, but it matters a lot inthe discussion about pedagogy. I believe that issues in education, andhence pedagogy, can only be understood within the complexity of thecontexts. There is no single factor that could explain what we have today.

However, my observation is that the pedagogy that prevails in themainstream West (which is a difficult term indeed, because of the diver-sity among the western societies) is very consistent with the economicevolution of the last 200 years. This is perhaps underpinned by two fun-damental observations. One, education plays a different role in the Westwhen compared with China.5 Families and churches played importantroles in traditional western societies. Education was a late-comer as a toolof socialization, and was prompted by the large-scale employment in theindustrial production units. This was not the case before the industrialrevolution. Hence, education as an institution started as an economicapparatus in the West from the very beginning whereas, in China, educa-tion (i.e. the Civil Examination) had long been regarded as almost theonly ladder of social mobility. That is also why Chinese families are tooready to sacrifice family life for children’s education (Solomon 1971),while such a sacrifice is often seen as intolerable in the West. However,Chinese notions of ‘education’ did not evolve into a national system untilit came to face the industrial challenge.

Two, perhaps also due to the industrial revolution, there is a strongunderpinning of an analytic tendency in western thinking, and contempo-rary education systems are also very analytic in nature. This is reflected inthe subject partitioning in the curriculum, the strict division of labouramong teachers, the numerical presentation of student performances, themeticulous accountability schemes for schools, the managerial styles ofschool leadership, and so forth. They indeed mirror the general

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methodology in the industrial production process. This is very differentfrom the Confucius’ notion of a junzi, which is a matter of holistic per-sonality that requires a comprehensive and all-round cultivation with littleof a calculated formula or curriculum for the upbringing of such a perfectperson.

Hence, I am critical about the pedagogy in today’s education, but Isee it as a matter of societal evolution. That is, the pedagogy we have wasless questionable during the ‘high’ industrial era. The corollary of that isthe need for a change in pedagogy to meet the changing and changedneeds in society. This make me sound rather too pragmatic, and hence‘western’. However, my argument is not that education should chase afterchanges in society and cater for new societal needs, which is the theme ofthe recent discourse in the policy arena. All kinds of arguments about‘21st-century skills’6 tend to fall into that category. My argument is,rather, that the industrial and manufacturing paradigm turned educationinto an apparatus for manpower needs, and hence has distorted the realmeaning of education. And now it is time to allow education to take onits original meaning.

It is noticeable that the pedagogy in the ‘West’ is also heavily criti-cized by scholars in the West. Jerome Bruner, for example, as a leadingthinker in education in the US, made a distinction between ‘computa-tional’ and ‘cultural’ orientations in education. In his The Culture of Edu-cation (Bruner 1996) he refers the former to ‘information-processing’ andthe latter ‘meaning-making’. This is very much in line with Wu’s con-cerns. Senge et al. (2000), in their best-selling Schools That Learn, heavilycriticized education in industrial societies, where students are processedaccording to mechanistic formulae. Hence, the dissatisfaction about edu-cation (‘western’) is not due to perspectives from outside the West.

Now that the industrial era is gradually abdicating from the scene, themanpower paradigm is being challenged. I argue that it is time to returneducation to its basics, and the distortion should be put to an end. Tome, the industrial notion of education, which has replaced learning bycredentials, and has ruled our thinking for almost 200 years, is an unfor-tunate episode in human history. Education should return to learning.

Chinese pedagogy

Although I began at a place which could be rather remote from Wu’sessay, my attention is on pedagogy. However, what is the ‘Chinese peda-gogy’? To start: it is difficult to assume that pedagogy should be a culturalconstant, and that returning to Confucius is always desirable, or the‘right’ way to go. As a student of education policies, I tend to be morepragmatic and try to look at what are more favourable for the future ofour younger generation.

Wu’s second case study, a model teacher in a contemporary class-room, indeed reflects the current thinking about ‘good’ teaching in China.The lesson was well-designed and well-planned, with very clear learningobjectives in mind. The teacher used all kind of ways to guide the stu-

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dents towards a certain direction, created ample opportunities for them toair their views, and eventually constructed a natural path for the studentsto arrive at expected conclusions. This is indeed seen in China as a dem-onstration of excellence in teaching. All the aspired benchmarks for goodteaching were met: good planning, student interactions, open-ended ques-tioning, effective guidance, and correct conclusions. This could easily bemade into a demonstration video and be used as a model for teachers tofollow.

However, Wu’s comparison of the two cases has brought out theessential contrast. Despite the enquiry approach of the second case, thepurpose of the lesson was for students to arrive at expected answers.Despite the open-ended questions the teacher asked, there was a definitiveknowledge the teacher expected students to acquire. The entire objectiveof this lesson was for students to learn what they were supposed to learn.In the Confucius’ case, however, the overall objective was to open the stu-dent’s mind and to induce him to think at a higher level.

The pedagogy that prevails in Chinese schools (here I broadly meanschools in all Chinese communities) are indeed ‘western’ if we refer tothe meticulous, analytic, pragmatic, and piecemeal approaches they evi-dence. As Wu has rightly contended, such approaches were perhapsembedded deeply in the thoughts of westernization that started in the lateQing Dynasty during the movements of modernization. However, I wouldalso argue that such approaches have also been underpinned by the man-power orientation which has prevailed over all education system aroundthe world.

About globalization

There is no intention in this response to land on a normative platform, todetermine how to tell good pedagogy from the poor. There is no attemptto revert our developments to the ancient, just because they are ancient.However, Wu’s case studies have indeed opened our eyes and invited usto look at the treasures embedded in the Chinese culture.

In this context, global trends and national traditions should not betaken as extremes in a dichotomy. As mentioned earlier, the prevalence ofthe pedagogies of modern schools is perhaps a structural issue, as wouldbe expected by the ideologies of an industrial society. Education systemsaround the world have adopted more or less the same structure under-pinned by the same philosophies. The majority of classrooms and schoolsare more or less the same around the world.

Nonetheless, apart from the general structure and the general peda-gogy, there are still variations among cultures. From a global comparativeperspective, the pedagogy that prevails in China is ‘western’ as well as‘Chinese’. It is ‘western’ in the sense that it is very different from theholistic and meaning-seeking nature of Chinese pedagogy. However, theliterature has also identified characteristics which are unmistakably Chi-nese. An example is the emphasis on effort and hard-work and the down-playing of innate ability in Chinese communities (Stevenson and Stigler

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1992). Another example is the significance of extrinsic motives in stu-dents’ study and the insignificance of intrinsic motivations. In otherwords, although the education in Chinese communities is western in itsoutlook, it instantiates core values that belong to the traditional culture.

By the same token, it is also possible that the pedagogy in Chinesecommunities will further evolve, and that some of the traditional valuescan shed new light on the future of Chinese pedagogy. For example, therehave been widespread appeals around the world for increasing the weightof learning in the affective domain. The emphasis on ‘moral education’(deyu 德育) in the Chinese tradition seems to be providing a useful experi-ence. As another example, there is also a tendency in contemporary socie-ties to shift from an analytic, structured, and bureaucratic paradigm tomore holistic, flexible, and fuzzy ways of thinking. If education indeedshould follow this shift, then Confucius’ pedagogy should resume its posi-tion in education, not because it is ancient, but because it reflects morehonestly the true nature of human learning.

Notes

1. According to Bloom’s (1956) Taxonomy.2. See, for example, the Oxford English Dictionary.3. In other languages pedagogy and its cognates, e.g. the German term, Padagogik, can

refer to a much broader sense of education.4. See a dialectic discussion in Cheng (2011).5. I am tempted to include other ‘chopstick cultures’ such as Japan and Korea, but for

the sake of brevity, I will stay with Chinese communities, herein called China.6. See, e.g. Trilling and Fadel (2009).

References

Biggs, J. J. (1996) Western misinterpretation of the Confucian-heritage learning culture.In D. A. Watkins and J. B. Biggs (eds), The Chinese Learner: Cultural, Psychological,and Contextual Influences (Hong Kong/Melbourne: Comparative Education ResearchCentre/ Australian Council for Educational Research), 45–67.

Bloom, B. S. (ed.) (1956) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educa-tional Goals: Handbook 1. Cognitive Domain (London: Longmans).

Bruner, J. S. (1996) The Culture of Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard EducationalPress).

Cheng, K. M. (2007) Education versus learning: challenges of the post-industrial era [教育versus学习:后工业时代的挑战], Shanghai Education [上海教育], 2007(5), 22–26.

Cheng, K. M. (2009) Education for all, but for what?. In J. E. Cohen and M. B. Malin(eds), International Perspectives on the Goals of Universal Basic and Secondary Education(London: Routledge), 43–65.

Cheng, K. M. (2011) Education in Confucius society. In J. A. Banks (ed.), Encyclopedia ofDiversity in Education (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage).

Liu, C. (1990) Chinese Systemic Thinking: Perspectives of Cultural Genes (Beijing: ChineseAcademy of Social Sciences Press) (刘长林:中国系统思维 � 文化基因透视。中国社会科学出版社).

Liu, T. Y. (1988) Honorary Graduates Speech presented at the 133rd Congrega-tion at the University of Hong Kong. Available online at: http://www3.hku.hk/hongrads/index.php/archive/graduate_speech_detail/174/31, accessed 28 July2011.

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Senge, P. M., McCabe, N. H. C., Lucas, T., Kleine, A., Dutton, J. and Smith, B. (2000)Schools That Learn: A Fifth Discipline Fieldbook for Educators, Parents, and EveryoneWho Cares About Education (London: Nicholas Brealey).

Solomon, R. H. (1971) Mao’s Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture (Berkeley:University of California Press).

Stevenson, H. W. and Stigler, J. W. (1992) The Learning Gap: Why Our Schools are Failingand What We Can Learn from Japanese and Chinese Education (New York: SummitBooks).

Trilling, B. and Fadel, C. (2009) 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times (SanFrancisco, CA: Jossey-Bass).

Weber, M. (1947) The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, trans. A. M. Hender-son and T. Parsons (New York: Oxford University Press).

Wu, Z. (2011) Interpretation, autonomy and transformation: Chinese pedagogic discoursein a cross-cultural perspective. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 43(5), 569–590.

Pedagogic discourse and transformation: A selective

tradition

YONGBING LIU

This is the second of four essays discussing Wu’s ‘Interpretation, autonomy, and trans-formation: Chinese pedagogic discourse in a cross-cultural perspective’ (JCS, 43(5),569–590). The essay is interesting against the background of recent debates, both insideand outside China, about the relationship between the Chinese and Western traditions ofcurriculum and pedagogy. The essay helps one to understand that there is no clear dividebetween the so-called Chinese and Western traditions. The modern Chinese language aswell as its pedagogical discourse have been hybridized with something western, with theimplication that it is difficult to distinguish one from the other. However, the paper fallsinto a trap of cultural judgement: it (re)interprets the Confucian ‘authentic’ texts as‘desirable’ and attributes many ‘contemporary’ pedagogical practices and/or the discourseof the so-called ‘Confucian heritage’ to the influence of the West.

Keywords: Chinese language; Confucius; critical discourse analysis; cul-tural transformation; pedagogic discourse

Yongbing Liu is Dean and Professor at the Foreign Languages School, Northeast NormalUniversity, 5268 Renmin St., Changchun, PR China 130024; e-mail: [email protected]. His research interests centre on language curriculum and pedagogy. He has pub-lished in Language and Education, Discourse, Pedagogy, Culture and Society, Language Policy,and Chinese Education in the World. He has chapters in the International Handbook of Liter-acy and Technology (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006), Struggle Over Dif-ference: Curriculum, Texts and Pedagogy in the Asia/Pacific (Albany, NY: State University ofNew York Press, 2005), and Analyzing Identities in Discourse (Amsterdam, The Nether-lands: J. Benjamins, 2008).

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