Approaches to Teaching English Composition in the ESL Classroom in Chinese Middle Schools
1. What are the theories to support teaching?
TPACK
Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) attempts to identify the nature of knowledge required by teachers for technology integration in their teaching while addressing the complex, multifaceted and situated nature of teacher knowledge. The TPACK framework extends Shulman’s idea of Pedagogical Content Knowledge.
"The School and Society (The Child and the Curriculum)" ---John Dewey
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"Learning must begin with experience and the curriculum must be made to relate to the students’ interest" (Dewey, 1991, p. 1).
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"When the school introduces and trains each child of society into membership within such a little community, saturating him with the spirit of service, and providing him with the instruments of the effective self-direction, we shall have deepest and best guaranty of a larger society which is worthy, lovely, and harmonious "(Dewey, 1991, p. 20)
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The child is the starting-point, the center, and the end. His development, his growth, is the ideal. It alone furnishes the standard. To the growth of the child, all studies are subservient; they are instruments valued as they serve the needs of growth. Personality character is more than subject-matter. Not knowledge or information, but self-realization, is the goal (Dewey, 1991, p. 107).
ECI 550
"A Reason to Teach" ---James A. Beane
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"Teaching the democratic way means involving students in planning the curriculum" (Beane, 2005, p.26).
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"The democratic right to have the voice and the related responsibility to hear many voices require that teachers and students draw content not only from the traditional disciplines of knowledge but also from their own personal knowledge, popular culture, and current media" (Beane, 2005, p.35).
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"When we choose to teach the democratic way, we are teaching from our hope. Not our fear---our hopes for more justice, more equity, more community, and more respect for human dignity" (Beane, 2005, p.88).
"Cosmopolitanism: Ethic in a World of Strangers"---Appiah. K.A
Cosmopolitanism is for the mutual respect, understanding, and assistance among people in the world. Diversity makes the development of the world possible. We have been judging other peoples based on our own values and assuming that all the people share the same information. We may once criticize others as ignorant or unreasonable people and even be neglected to the suffering of the people far away. Cosmopolitanism provided a new perspective for us to look at the things that we took for granted. People’s background and upbringing determined their concepts of the world. We need to interact in terms of respect with those who see the world differently. Everyone has a right to his own life. What’s more, even the knowledge is imperfect, provisional, subject to revision in the face of new evidence. We should keep open-minded. Just as Appiah mentioned that cosmopolitans are so respectful of the human diversity, we can’t even expect everyone to become cosmopolitan. In addition, we all have obligations to others near and far. When responding to those strangers, we should keep in mind what Adam Smith called “reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast (Appiah, 2006, p.174)”.
Summary of Cosmopolitanism
(ECI 524)
Composition Teaching Theories
(ECI 520)
2. How to incorporate technology into teaching and learning?
ECI 546 Cool to Blast (Apps for education)
ECI 520 Digital Writing Workshop
1. Fostering choice and inquiry through social bookmarking and blogging
2. Conferring through blogs, wikis, and collaborative word processors
3. Examining author's craft through Multimedia composition
4. Designing and publishing digital writing
5. Enabling assessment over time with digital writing tools
---Hicks, T. (2009)
3. How to develop students into global citizen through writing?
ECI 524 Global Learning Project
Global Learning PBI Project
4. How to get support out of the classroom?
ECI 508 Final Essay & Action Plan
ECI 508 Teacher Leadership Personal Log
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ECI 508 Final Presentation
Thirty years ago, if you are told that as a first-year teacher, you can be a teacher leader, what would you think? If you were also told on your first day of working in a school that you were not only responsible for the development of students, yourself but also your colleagues, would you think people were demanding or even crazy? However, the recent decades witnessed the dramatic change of the concept of and expectations on teachers. The multi-roles of teachers and “the central position that teachers rightly and importantly hold in the ways schools operate and in the core functions of teaching and learning”(Barr & Duke, 2013, p255) have been realized by broader people. Meanwhile, teacher leadership has become an effective and efficient power to boost schools’ development, motivate teacher’s growth and improve students’ academic performance.