While the genre-based approach has assumed increasing prominence in discussions of writing pedagogy for diverse classrooms, little is known about how secondary school student-teachers understand and adopt genre pedagogies in the English as a foreign language writing class. Based on the data from semi-structured interviews and teaching materials, this study examined Chinese EFL student-teachers’ knowledge and use of genre-based writing instruction during the teaching practicum and explored the challenges they encountered in enacting it. The findings (...) demonstrated that teacher informants showed some familiarity with genre pedagogies, especially in terms of scaffolding the linguistic features and semantic patterns in the focused genres. However, they were generally confused over the connection between language, content, and context, and their GBWI practice scarcely involved the explicit teaching of the linguistic and semantic choices for a specific audience and context, which gave rise to some perceived tensions in the teaching reality. Further probing has revealed the complex interplay between Chinese EFL student-teachers’ professional knowledge, perceived difficulties, and genre instructional practice in the secondary school writing class. The study concludes with practical implications for the student-teachers’ professional development of effective GBA. (shrink)

The ‘Practicum-3’ preservice teachers are those who are in their 3rd year of their degree studies and have prior teaching experience. The intent of this qualitative paper is to assess the challenges experienced by the preservice teachers and the tactics used by them to manage these challenges, during their first week of teaching practice. The challenges reported herein were thematically analysed after extrapolating from the participants’ narratives and presented within the context of the Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle. Findings (...) from this study reveal that there are several factors within and outside the control of the student teacher that affect the practicum experience. Further, the preservice teacher’s preparedness and emotional disposition significantly influence discharge of the duty. In the same vein, the mentor-mentee relations contribute a lot in making or breaking the practicum experience for student teachers in the UAE. The findings recommend further explorative assessments of the situation and necessary policy corrections in the preservice teacher education. (shrink)

It is common in early childhood education, for student teachers to be asked to reflect on incidents or scenarios that occur while on practicum and relate their reflections to theory. This process of identification and corroboration, demonstrates the student’s familiarity with the dominant developmental narratives within which ECE is situated. The pressure on students to conform to prescribed theory and the local narratives of the practicum context can, however, make it difficult for them to question both (...) the texts they are asked to apply in their teaching, as well as the practice they are observing and seeking to engage. In Bakhtinian theory, ‘voice’ is promoted through a community of learning, and a critical engagement creating new knowledge and subsequent practice. This theme of developing a critical voice for ECE students is the subject matter of this paper, with reference to practicum experience and Bakhtin’s essay, “Epic and Novel: Towards a Methodology for the Study of the Novel.”. (shrink)

Recently, teacher emotions have become the focus of research in teacher education. Teacher emotions not only affect teachers themselves but also have an impact on their students. However, pre-service teachers’ emotions have been neglected. This study is based on a qualitative analysis of online emotional diaries related to emotional experience expression by 120 Chinese pre-service teachers before, during, and after teaching practice. The results in this study show three characteristics of pre-service teachers’ emotional experiences: the overall positive emotions are (...) higher than negative emotions; “caring” and “nervous” are the most typical emotions and variability in emotional experience across gender and internship schools. Then, it is surprising that pre-service teachers’ emotional trajectories are complex and dynamic, positive emotions are decreasing, and negative emotions increase as time goes by. Finally, from the perspective of emotional experience sources, organizational factors affect the emotional experience, personal factors, and background factors. (shrink)

This paper addresses whether, how, and to what extent social studies student teachers who have been introduced to inquiry-oriented teaching (as manifest in the National Council for the Social Studies C3 Framework) in their secondary social studies methods course incorporate this approach into the planning for their practicum experience. Based on analysis of lesson plans used in the practicum and follow-up interviews with a small subset of student teachers, this paper analyzes the factors that promote (...) or inhibit use of this approach to teaching in their practicum experience. Results indicate the C3-oriented teaching approach, as taught in the methods course, did appear in the student teachers’ lesson plans. A small subset of student teachers used the framework competently while two smaller subsets were less adept in their application. The degree of application was affected by student teachers’ perceptions of their school placements and students’ needs. (shrink)

Narrative inquiry in a nursing practicum One approach to creating research‐based nursing education is to think and write narratively about the daily life of a BScN program student and her teacher in diverse settings and over time. Gail, as a nurse‐teacher, and Faith, as a nursing student and now Public Health Nurse, reconstruct their teaching–learning experiences in an integrated practicum in maternal–child health services as a narrative inquiry. After presenting this reconstruction of experience at a (...) conference on maternal scholarship, further inquiry into their experiences shows how narrative inquiry matters to construction of nursing praxis and to life‐long learning as a nurse. Teaching–learning relationships are seen as a template for a student's connections to people experiencing nursing care and to other clinicians. Construction of stories to live by that take into account becoming a nurse, constructing knowledge and enacting caring–healing nursing practices is illuminated through narrative inquiry. (shrink)

When the teachers’ training practicum was paralyzed during the COVID-19 pandemic, preservice teachers in Malaysia were required to adapt to the online practicum. This qualitative case study was conducted with 20 preservice teachers to investigate their online teaching practicum experiences. The study drew on the Engagement Theory and Disaster Management Cycle framework to further suggest teaching approaches that might be effective during a tragic situation. Data were collected from interviews and video observations, and analyzed thematically. (...) The findings contribute to the understanding of how preservice teachers learn to modify their teaching practices during the challenging context. A number of themes related to positive experience were identified: higher confidence level, improved interaction, engagement in active learning, and adapting to online syllabus. On the other hand, the negative experience revolves around the problem with Internet connection. It is hoped that the findings of this study will encourage preservice teachers to consider hybrid approaches and online teaching in the future. (shrink)

Pedagogy, power and practice ethics: clinical teaching in psychiatric/mental health settings Often, baccalaureate nursing students initially approach a psychiatric mental health practicum with uncertainty, and even fear. They may feel unprepared for the myriad complex practice situations encountered. In addition, memories of personal painful life events may be vicariously evoked through learning about and listening to the experiences of those diagnosed with mental disorders. When faced with such challenging situations, nursing students often seek counsel from the clinical and/or (...) classroom faculty. Pedagogic boundaries may begin to blur in the face of student distress. For the nurse educator, several questions arise: Should a nurse educator provide counseling to students? How does one best negotiate the boundaries between ‘counselor’, and ‘caring educator’? What are the limits of a caring and professional pedagogic relation? What different knowledges provide guidance and to what differential consequences for ethical pedagogic relationships? This paper offers a comparative analysis of three philosophical stances to examine differences in key assumptions, pedagogic positioning, relationships of power/knowledge, and consequences for professional ethical pedagogic practices. While definitive answers are difficult, the authors pose several questions for consideration in discerning how best to proceed and under what particular conditions. (shrink)

The consequences of a trend to marginalize social studies in the early grades are complex and widespread, as a new wave of novice teachers and K-6 students are receiving a message clearly implying that social studies education is unimportant. Convincing them of the value in teaching and learning social studies is progressively becoming more difficult for social studies methods instructors. The purpose of this study was to examine pre-service teachers’ observations of the extent to which social studies is being (...) marginalized, possible barriers involved, and the impact that this phenomenon has on pre-service teachers and K-6 students in the classroom. Through a mixed-method design, 88 pre-service teachers were asked to report their classroom observations. Over half observed social studies instruction. Of those who observed social studies instruction, about a third indicated that teachers taught 5–15 min per day. Pre-service teachers reported personal success in planning and teaching social studies lessons during their practicum experiences; likewise, K-6 students were motivated by pre-service teachers’ student-centered activities in the lessons. The results of this study provide one form of current documentation regarding the effects of social studies marginalization in K-6 schools. (shrink)

In response to the changing global climate and the growing recognition of the professional associations in the teacher education community, universities around the country are beginning to recognize the need to add a global dimension to their education programs. One way to prepare teachers to address the challenges associated with teaching children in a global age is through carefully structured, international and intercultural field experiences where candidates are immersed in another culture. Intercultural Student Teaching demonstrates examples of (...) such successful programs. (shrink)

This study examines how one student teaching seminar employed collective critical observation and reflection of an experienced high school social studies teacher's pedagogy using a multimedia representation of teaching. Pre-service teachers watched this teacher implement two full class lessons and reflections on teaching about freedom of speech. This study's pre-service social studies teachers exhibited a developing ability, through collective observation, to critically reflect on their individual methodological and philosophical goals, social studies teaching and learning, and (...) professional and curricular visions in relation to their student teaching experiences and future practice. The study's findings offer implications for how pre-service social studies teachers critically reflect on their practice, while also developing knowledge of learners, subject matter, and teaching social studies. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper is an interpretive exploration of the figure of the monstrous child as it appears in the experiences of student‐teachers entering the community of teaching. It also considers how interpretive work is itself haunted by this figure and how, therefore, teaching itself might be considered an interpretive activity.

Teachers and managers strive to be determining causes, leading those whom we instruct or supervise to act in some ways rather than others. If we are seeking to be causes, then we ought to admit our mission and monitor how well we are doing. Yet, instead of owning up to our failures, we hide behind claims such as “some students are unteachable because their habits are bad,” or “we have little time to affect our students who are being indoctrinated by (...) other business school professors to believe that narrow self-interest does and should rule the world.” Perhaps it is we who have failed our students, not the reverse. Examining our business ethics pedagogy is crucial because regulation is not by itself going to prevent future scandals. This paper presents three structures for teaching business ethics in a liberal arts, transformative way. While no pedagogy comes with a guarantee, these approaches at least have the potential to transform students because they force students to have “some skin in the game.”. (shrink)

Teacher identity is defined in its relations, on the one hand, to curriculum and, on the other, to students: to be identified as a teacher is to be taken by the latter as a bearer of the former. In this essay I consider some variations on theorising teacher identity within these relational terms. Beginning with the educational task of cultivating student subjects within the often impersonal aims of curriculum, I reject a correspondingly personalised production of teacher identity that would (...) humanise education through the teacher's personality. Turning instead to the idea of a teaching role defined by institutional authority, I look at two perspectives from which the teacher's identity can be theorised as a matter of performing that role. Jane Gallop's performative definition of teaching highlights the teacher as a pre-existing role but is fundamentally concerned with the teacher's self-understanding, this fails, however the relational requirements of teaching. Ultimately, bringing performativity into the context of the transferential relation between teacher and student provided by Plato's Symposium , I argue that student desire produces teacher identity in response to the teacher's performed relation to truth. (shrink)

The question, what makes a clinician a healer? may evoke the image of a devoted physician paying a critically important home visit at the end of a long day or the image of an astute nurse—steadfast, empathic, anticipating the patient's needs before they become apparent to others. But health care is no longer provided by lone doctors or nurses. In the modern health care system, multiple professionals must work together to provide safe and effective care. The moral nature of healing (...) has not changed. But what is required of clinicians to facilitate healing has. To be a healer today, a clinician must be a good team player. Medical students have opened our eyes to this new reality. Building on their observations, we articulate a view that, over and above the role of teamwork in providing technically appropriate care and preventing errors, health care requires teamwork to promote healing. Being a good team player is now a moral imperative because it makes an essential contribution to healing. (shrink)

Today's pre-service teachers grew up attending schools where high stakes testing and teacher accountability were the norm. Despite a substantial body of research focused on the influence high-stakes testing on the practices of novice social studies teachers, a gap exists regarding the accountability movement's influence on novice social studies teachers. This study focused explicitly on the influence high-stakes testing and the culture of accountability had on two pre-service social studies teachers during their student teaching experience. Our findings highlight (...) the ways the accountability culture of public schools served a narrow gatekeeping function, limiting what participants learned during student teaching. Rethinking gatekeeping during student teaching within the current era of accountability and oversight positions teacher educators to confront the constricting nature of student teaching today. Student teachers must learn to recognize the gatekeeping aspects of the accountability culture and to make sense of the contradictions embedded in the student teaching experience. (shrink)

Ever-increasing numbers of teachers are expressing commitments to social justice education today, but few experienced critical or democratic education in their own schooling or in their teaching practicum. Thus, teachers’ critical democratic commitments can be difficult to put into practice, especially in classrooms where students with diverse and unequal positionalities are engaged in learning together – what I call “heterogeneous” classrooms. Education that is “democratic” (that includes a range of warranted perspectives) can seem to come into conflict with (...) education that is “critical” (that elevates and centers marginalized perspectives). We have little research depicting how educators meet such challenges. This paper depicts an experienced and committed social justice educator wrestling with difficult problems in the enactment of critical democratic education. Mr. Crane regularly engaged his racially and linguistically heterogeneous students in discussions of social issues, and during these discussions regularly encountered practical facilitation challenges posed by inequality among students. He wrestled with how to elevate students of color's views without spotlighting them, and how to challenge dominant perspectives without shaming the students who voiced them. Drawing on qualitative data from classroom observations and interviews, I depict Mr. Crane making sense of and mobilizing emergent instructional responses to these challenges – with, by his own reckoning, mixed results. One instructional routine, an impromptu version of a critical inquiry, was flagged by Mr. Crane as a promising method for navigating some of the trickiest problems of critical democratic education practice. This paper's findings demonstrate that enacting critical democratic education is not easy. Even experienced and committed social justice educators struggle with how to put their critical values into practice. By making visible one experienced critical democratic educator's recurring problems of practice, my research acknowledges the difficulties of this work and contributes to problem-framing. Furthermore, by deconstructing a promising routine for impromptu critical inquiry during classroom discussions of social issues, this research contributes a model of effective critical democratic education in practice. (shrink)

This paper has two interrelated goals. The first is to introduce a framework: oppositional democracy. The second is to use this framework to address what I see as a central problem that occurs when learning to teach: the moment when someone with power tells an aspiring teacher that something she hopes to accomplish is unrealistic. The framework of oppositional democracy helps us understand this problem while also suggesting responses that free an aspiring teacher to experiment in responsible ways, thereby empowering (...) her to work against practices she does not want to be complicit in perpetuating. (shrink)

This article describes a model for incorporating lesson study into the student teaching placement and reports on the success of the implementation of such a model with student teachers and their cooperating teachers (CTs). Student teachers had the opportunity to discuss many important ideas with each other and their CTs, including ?big ideas? of mathematics, and the anticipation of student questions and possible responses. Student teachers also had a built?in opportunity for peer observation on (...) a regular basis and the opportunity to collaborate with their peers. Certain important aspects of lesson study were not present in this implementation: the teachers involved did not discuss the gaps in their own knowledge with the goal of improving their own mathematical understanding, they did not refer outside sources for ideas for the lessons, and they did not have an overarching affective goal for students. Suggestions are made for teacher preparation in light of these findings. (shrink)

In a time marked by the development of innovative treatments in healthcare and the need for health professionals to deal with resulting ethical dilemmas in clinical practice, this study was developed to determine the influence of the bioethics teaching on the moral competence of medical and nursing students. The authors conduct a longitudinal study using the Moral Competence Test extended version before and after attending the ethics curricular unit, in three nursing schools and three medical schools of Portugal. In (...) this questionnaire the participant is confronted with three ethical dilemmas and asked to evaluate arguments for and against the attitude of the main character. For both nursing and medical students, C-score was lower after the attendance of the ethics curricular units, with a statistically significant decrease in the total score for nursing students and a decrease not statistically significant for medical students. A multivariate analysis did not find any association between this decrease and gender, course, or age. The phenomenon of moral segmentation was observed, with better performance in the worker and judge dilemma, than in the doctor dilemma. These results highlight the need to reflect on the curricular strategies that can be implemented for health professionals to better develop moral competence and decision-making, allowing for the provision of humanized health care. (shrink)

Ethics teaching in engineering can be problematic because of student perceptions of its subjective, ambiguous and philosophical content. The use of discipline-specific case studies has helped to address such perceptions, as has practical decision making and problem solving approaches based on some ethical frameworks. However, a need exists for a wider range of creative methods in ethics education to help complement the variety of activities and learning experiences within the engineering curriculum. In this work, a novel approach is (...) presented in which first-year undergraduate students are responsible for proposing ethics education activities of relevance to their peers and discipline area. The students are prepared for the task through a short introduction on engineering ethics, whereby generic frameworks for moral and professional conduct are discussed, and discipline and student-relevance contexts provided. The approach has been used in four departments of engineering at Imperial College London, and has led to the generation of many creative ideas for wider student engagement in ethics awareness, reflection and understanding. The paper presents information on the premise of the introductory sessions for supporting the design task, and an evaluation of the student experience of the course and task work. Examples of proposals are given to demonstrate the value of such an approach to teachers, and ultimately to the learning experiences of the students themselves. (shrink)

A group of engineering students at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany, designed a course on engineering ethics. The core element of the developed Blue Engineering course are self-contained teaching-units, “building blocks”. These building blocks typically cover one complex topic and make use of various teaching methods using moderators who lead discussions, rather than experts who lecture. Consequently, the students themselves started to offer the credited course to their fellow students who take an active role in further developing (...) the course themselves. (shrink)

This study investigates the effectiveness of pedagogical practices used to teach business ethics. The business community has greatly increased its demands for better ethics education in business programs. Educators have generally agreed that the ethical principles of business people have declined. It is important, then, to examine how common methods of instruction used in business ethics could contribute to the development of higher levels of moral judgment competence for students. To determine the effectiveness of these methods, moral judgment competence levels (...) for undergraduate and graduate students from three institutions were measured and compared based upon the pedagogical method used in a business class. Significant differences were found for moral reasoning and moral competence scores depending on the method used for ethics instruction. Students in classes with more highly integrated ethics coverage scored higher in moral reasoning and moral competence. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss three different ways in which we can refer to those we teach: as learner, as student or as speaker. My interest is not in any aspect of teaching but in the question whether there can be such a thing as emancipatory education. Working with ideas from Jacques Rancière I offer the suggestion that emancipatory education can be characterised as education which starts from the assumption that all students can speak. It starts from the (...) assumption, in other words, that students neither lack a capacity for speech, nor that they are producing noise. The idea of the student as a speaker is not offered as an empirical fact but as a different starting point for emancipatory education, one that positions equality at the beginning of education, not at its end. (shrink)

This paper describes how bodily positions and gestures were used to teach argument diagramming to a student who cannot see. After listening to short argumentative passages with a screen reader, the student had to state the conclusion while touching his belly button. When stating a premise, he had to touch one of his shoulders. Premises lending independent support to a conclusion were thus diagrammed by a V-shaped gesture, each shoulder proposition going straight to the conclusion. Premises lending dependent (...) support were diagrammed by a T-shaped gesture, the shoulder premises meeting at the collar bone before moving down to the belly button. Arguments involving two pairs of entailments were diagrammed by an I-shaped gesture, going from the collar bone to a mid-way conclusion above the abdomen before travelling to the final conclusion at the belly button. The student’s strong performance suggests that placing propositions at different locations on the body and uniting them with gestures can help one discern correct argumentative structures. (shrink)

The teaching of ethics in UK medical schools has recently been reviewed, from the perspective of the teachers themselves. A questionnaire survey of medical undergraduates at King’s College London School of Medicine provides useful insight into the students’ perception of ethics education, what they consider to be the value of learning ethics and law, and how engaged they feel with the subject.

To prepare for ethically challenging situations in the workplace, it is useful for students to explore their attitudes toward ethical issues and their own value systems. An experiential assignment to teach ethics in business programs is presented. This method allows instructors to incorporate a “stand alone” assignment in ethics into a course that focuses on another area in management. The assignment, student-developed case studies of ethical situations in the workplace, requires students to develop individual case studies in ethics drawing (...) on their workplace experiences to illustrate ethical principles. The assignment requires students to describe an ethical situation they encountered in the workplace, their relevant value systems, sources of information consulted, their role in the organization, and how they resolved the ethical situation, considering how their experiences since the time of the situation might influence analogous decision making today. To assess student learning, we used thematic analysis to evaluate the content of the case studies, and descriptive statistics to analyze responses to a post-assignment survey. Based on our analysis of the content of the case studies and student responses, this appears to be an effective learning tool to actively engage students in a consideration of, and discussion about, ethical issues in management, and to learn from the experiences of others. (shrink)

This paper describes what could be labeled “best practices” in teaching ethics to those entering the criminal justice, criminology and related professional fields. The underlying focus of the discussion is on the “self” and reflects the beliefs of the authors in the pedagogic thesis that ethics awareness begins with individual social actors and their existing world views. Thereafter, self awareness of ethical dilemmas and internal safeguards against unethical behavior are defined by those same individuals. Lastly, the process continues when (...) the social actor gains an internalized, self-generated, accountability for one’s own actions. That self accountability may morph over time, depending on circumstances, but individual social actors remain effectively protected from unethical behavior as they master their own ethical challenges and live within their individualized sense of ethical purpose. To make these arguments the authors describe the background for an effective learning paradigm for the study of ethics that can be used in university level criminal justice courses, criminology classes, and police training sessions. This pedagogic approach is theoretically informed and used in classes designed to teach ethics to criminal justice professionals, criminology students who are entering a variety of professions. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss three different ways in which we can refer to those we teach: as learner, as student or as speaker. My interest is not in any aspect of teaching but in the question whether there can be such a thing as emancipatory education. Working with ideas from Jacques Rancière I offer the suggestion that emancipatory education can be characterised as education which starts from the assumption that all students can speak. It starts from the (...) assumption, in other words, that students neither lack a capacity for speech, nor that they are producing noise. The idea of the student as a speaker is not offered as an empirical fact but as a different starting point for emancipatory education, one that positions equality at the beginning of education, not at its end. (shrink)

In response to the difficulty of teaching an increasingly large number of students who are ill prepared for the sort of abstract thinking and well-structured essay writing that are essential to the field of Philosophy, I have discovered a five-step method for teaching students in my Philosophy and Social Ethics course how to examine any ethical issue and write well-structured essays discussing the issue. Just as important, students are now required to take more responsibility for the learning process (...) which, I believe, is an appropriate goal for a course in Ethics. (shrink)

In this chapter we introduce concepts for analyzing proofs, and for analyzing undergraduate and beginning graduate mathematics students’ proving abilities. We discuss how coordination of these two analyses can be used to improve students’ ability to construct proofs. -/- For this purpose, we need a richer framework for keeping track of students’ progress than the everyday one used by mathematicians. We need to know more than that a particular student can, or cannot, prove theorems by induction or contradiction or (...) can, or cannot, prove certain theorems in beginning set theory or analysis. It is more useful to describe a student’s work in terms of a finer-grained framework that includes various smaller abilities that contribute to proving and that can be learned in differing ways and at differing periods of a student’s development. (shrink)

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is both a staple in the philosopher’s diet and the lesson that is often difficult to digest. In this paper, I describe one way to teach the Sun, Line, and Cave analogies in reference to students’ personal past experiences. After first learning about Plato’s metaphysics and epistemology through reading Republic VI-VII, students are asked to reflect upon a time in their lives when they emerged from a particular “cave of ignorance.” In reflecting on this experience, (...) students are encouraged to consider how each aspect of the line analogy might be represented in their own experience. Students also consider the epistemological experience turning towards that which is more real. In so doing, students gain a deeper understanding of these lessons by connecting new, abstract, and difficult information to information that is so familiar, it is remembered and not merely imagined. Putting Plato’s theories into the context of their own learning experiences facilitates students’ comprehension of the different levels of being and cognition, their interrelation, and the psychological process of increasing understanding. (shrink)

Student evaluations of teaching are ubiquitous in the academe as a metric for assessing teaching and frequently used in critical personnel decisions. Yet, there is ample evidence documenting both measurement and equity bias in these assessments. Student Evaluations of Teaching have low or no correlation with learning. Furthermore, scholars using different data and different methodologies routinely find that women faculty, faculty of color, and other marginalized groups are subject to a disadvantage in SETs. Extant research (...) on bias on teaching evaluations tend to review only the aspect of the literature most pertinent to that study. In this paper, we review a novel dataset of over 100 articles on bias in student evaluations of teaching and provide a nuanced review of this broad but established literature. We find that women and other marginalized groups do face significant biases in standard evaluations of teaching – however, the effect of gender is conditional upon other factors. We conclude with recommendations for the judicious use of SETs and avenues for future research. (shrink)

In recent years, universities throughout the People’s Republic of China have begun actively seeking foreign professors to work full-time in their philosophy departments. This, coupled with the decrease in the number of job openings in philosophy across western Europe and North America, might very well lead to a sharp rise in the number of foreign faculty members in philosophy departments across mainland China. In this article I will outline three of the major difficulties facing philosophy teachers who have little or (...) no experience in the Chinese education system, and provide suggestions for dealing with them. The first two are general and apply to a broad range of courses; namely, initiating class discussion and teaching students how to understand philosophical arguments. The third is specifically related to those who teach or engage with Chinese thought. These professors should be prepared to encounter a surmountable but pronounced skepticism among many Chinese students (and professors) against the ability of foreigners to truly comprehend Chinese philosophy. (shrink)

In recent years, universities throughout the People’s Republic of China have begun actively seeking foreign professors to work full-time in their philosophy departments. This, coupled with the decrease in the number of job openings in philosophy across western Europe and North America, might very well lead to a sharp rise in the number of foreign faculty members in philosophy departments across mainland China. In this article I will outline three of the major difficulties facing philosophy teachers who have little or (...) no experience in the Chinese education system, and provide suggestions for dealing with them. The first two are general and apply to a broad range of courses; namely, initiating class discussion and teaching students how to understand philosophical arguments. The third is specifically related to those who teach or engage with Chinese thought. These professors should be prepared to encounter a surmountable but pronounced skepticism among many Chinese students against the ability of foreigners to truly comprehend Chinese philosophy. (shrink)

It is increasingly agreed that ethics has a place in undergraduate medical education. There is, however, debate about how it should be taught, and by whom. We present our experience of teaching ethics in a general practice module over six years. During this period there has been a shift from a teacher-centred to a student-centred approach in which students choose ethical issues to explore within a framework provided. The issues raised are discussed with examples, and the future directions (...) of our ethics teaching outlined. (shrink)