The vision for this partnership was established by Lord Hanningfield’s overall goal to establish firm and long term bonds with the Jiangsu Province and create a harmonious relationship between Essex and China. The Professional Development project began as an idea to follow the Jiangsu Centre work in Essex with learning and teaching as the main focus-where both English and Chinese teachers could create conditions to follow reform agendas in common with each other. Many teachers from schools in Essex have already visited schools in Jiangsu and partnership links are developing. In 2007 Luke Abbott and Doug Davies joined the Essex China team to create a programme spanning a month that was innovative and different from any others available in the UK (or later we found in the world!) Luke wrote the detailed programme incorporating 5 linked training days spread throughout the month. The other days are for school placements. One of the initial challenges was to determine what sorts of experiences would be useful to visiting teachers and how we would find out! So within the programme an intensive visit schedule was included for each teacher and their school with a one to one tutorial to discover the needs of both the teachers and their school. Given the significance Chinese people give to such events the importance of the ‘personalisation’ process became one of the key features for the success and acceptance of the planned programme by the Chinese authorities. The programme is primarily aimed to enable debates to open on the ‘futures mission’ for schooling i.e. how to transform learning and teaching approaches to serve best the needs of a post industrialised society. Alongside this the challenges of honouring all people within our complex worlds. Chinese colleagues have similar concerns -engaging boys, motivating children to want to learn and establishing social health amongst students for their future lives. We are asking the teachers to keep their own journals as well as take an active part in discussing their research focus with school coordinators. Over the next month from the 22nd June to the 19th July Chinese teachers will be hosted in families and homes to improve and deepen their understanding of how the English language works and therefore their skills in our idiosyncratic language! We are planning a large scale event to say farewell to the teachers in the last week of July with Essex students’ performances forming the central activity. As the programme progresses we will be able to evaluate the impacts on both Chinese teachers and Essex schools. |
