NIU hosts Chinese educators for talk
of teaching, technology, teamwork

by Mark McGowan

A group of Chinese educators who spent last Monday on campus started their day in the past but quickly moved into the present for a clear look at the future.

The 22 visitors, mostly school district superintendents from Beijing, first gathered among the wooden desks of the Milan Township One-Room Schoolhouse to learn the history of NIU and its partnerships with various institutions in China.

After a brief photo session on the school’s steps, they crossed Annie Glidden Road to find seats in the plush chairs of a high-tech classroom inside Gabel Hall, where the tools and educational philosophies of tomorrow unfolded before them.

By the time the day ended over dinner at Hops Chinese Cuisine, there were aspirations and promises for collaboration that eventually could grant NIU graduate degrees to school teachers in China.

“Everything went really well,” said visit coordinator Cynthia Campbell, an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Technology, Research and Assessment and chair of NIU’s Sino-American Committee.

“They are taking away some real optimism and hope for a partnership in the future, based on these issues of technology and assessment. Their idea is to help their teachers be all they can be,” Campbell added. “This was our first time face-to-face with this group, and these things take a little while to develop, but I think we have a real good beginning.”

The group from Beijing brought a “high-powered” association, she said. The superintendents are the educational leaders in their city – home to 1.5 million children – which itself is considered the educational leader in the country.

Presentations included words from ETRA chair Jeffrey Hecht, who explained the importance of training teachers to use technology, as well as from Cory Cummings, who heads NIU’s federally funded projects aimed toward that goal.

Afternoon sessions touched on preparing high school students for math and science, school-university partnerships, preparing students for careers in education and assessment of teaching and learning.

The Chinese particularly were interested in learning more about NIU’s theories of building research and assessment components into teacher preparation as well as action research, Campbell said.

“Basically, the teacher becomes a researcher in his or her classroom. They can identify through various research techniques which instructional method works best for a certain purpose,” she said. “They become able to diagnose student strengths and weaknesses because of this intervention and that intervention. It’s much more deliberate than hunch-based.”

However, she added, the Chinese developed a robust curiosity about many of the topics presented during the 12-hour visit and asked many good questions.

During a talk on math and science education led by Promod Vohra, dean of the NIU College of Engineering and Engineering Technology, they heard ideas on how to bolster students’ attention.

“Math is extremely important in China, and they were interested in how we structure learning environments to make it interesting and usable and to tap into students’ creativity,” Campbell said. “That’s a concern in China – making sure their students develop creativity along with these strong disciplines. Students in China do extremely well on standardized tests, and that tends to be the primary mode of assessment. They’re wanting to expand that. They realize there are limits to pencil-and-paper tests.”

Sharon Smaldino, NIU’s LD and Ruth G. Morgridge Chair in Teacher Education and Preparation in the College of Education, fielded questions about partnerships.

“They were interested in how to begin partnership discussions and how to nurture those relationships,” Campbell said. “How do you negotiate roles? How do you share responsibilities? They had start-up kinds of questions.”

One of the day’s greatest impressions came as Cummings spoken about NIU’s ITAAR project.

The Integrating Technology, Assessment and Action Research (ITAAR) project has as a prime focus the use of handheld computers for assessment, evaluation and improvement of instruction. ITAAR maintains that, with the appropriate training, teachers will be able to employ handhelds for many assessment- and evaluation-related activities, including giving tests, grading homework during class, recording informal observations and scoring group activities.

Campbell said the Beijing contingent were intrigued by ITAAR’s gathering of NIU faculty from the colleges of Education and Liberal Arts and Sciences with five clinical supervisors of NIU education students (pre-service teachers) and five cooperating teachers (mentors) in the partner classrooms.

Such collaboration is a hallmark of the NIU-led P-20 initiative, part of which promotes a seamless transition between the various levels from pre-school through graduate school.

“They were very impressed with how university faculty, our students and school teachers work in tandem,” she said. “That’s a concept that hasn’t fully developed in China.”

Of course, Campbell said, the potential NIU-Beijing partnership is a two-way street.

“Some of the approaches they’re using now are novel to us,” she said. “They really involve parents a lot in the assessment process. We certainly include parents, but the role is different. The evaluation rests primarily with the teacher. But that’s something certainly interesting to think about: a more holistic view of assessment.”

NIU education faculty also gain a broader perspective of the growing cultural diversity of northern Illinois, something they can pass on to their students.

“The college believes an exemplary educator is sensitive and aware of issues of diversity,” she said. “This will help us to learn more about diversity and help us to be less ethnocentric.”

Campbell will continue the meeting of the minds in May, when she travels to China.

She will visit schools – particularly ninth-grade mathematics classrooms – to talk with teachers about how they teach and assess math. She also will examine the role of parents in their children’s math education and quiz students about their attitudes toward math.

“After I collect the data, I’m going to do a similar study in Chicago,” she said. “There seems to be a bit of a paralyzing fear of math in this country.”

Her trip also will offer an opportunity to reopen the partnership discussions. Questions linger over how to make it work, such as whether to use the Internet, to send NIU professors to China or to bring Chinese students to DeKalb.

“There are a lot of possibilities. We’re open to really thinking outside the box, as they are,” Campbell said. “Their visit here really exceeded my hopes. There was so much enthusiasm. They were so interested. They asked so many questions. We shared so much.”

3-22-04