Q2. What are the main reasons for rural teachers to not switch to student-centered teaching?
With respect to pedagogy, traditional lecturing and rote learning are to give way to student-centered teaching methods, such as small group work, discovery methods, and project-based inquiries (Dello-Iacovo, 2009).
Q3. What was the key to deciding who should be held accountable for the failure?
Most importantly, since poor test scores was practically unavoidable, covering all the required knowledge points became a key to deciding who should be held accountable for the failure.
Q4. What were the prominent themes in the analysis?
When analyzing classroom teaching, teachers’ complaints about the new curriculum, students, and pace emerged to be the three most prominent themes.
Q5. How many pilot schools were able to keep the class time to within 6 lessons per week?
For Chinese language, a mere 20% of pilot schools in Beijing were able to keep the class time to within 6 lessons per week as required by the new curriculum, while for math, only 6% of the pilot schools met the requirement of 4e6 lessons each week (Research-Panel, 2006).
Q6. What is the main reason why rural teachers persist in intensive drillings?
Urban schools are also found to persist inwholeclass lecturing and intensive drillings due to the high pressure of tests (Research-Group-Three, 2006).
Q7. What is the main reason for the poor implementation of the new teaching methods in rural China?
Teaching style is monotonous, and learning is boring.” (Wang, 2006) The current literature has suggested several factors contributing to the poor implementation of the new teaching methods.
Q8. What is the main reason why rural teachers are reluctant to adopt the new student-centered teaching methods?
Chinese rural teachers in the study are reluctant to adopt the new student-centered teaching methods because these new methods are more timeconsuming and unpredictable than lecturing.
Q9. What were the effective methods for controlling the class tempo?
Lecturing and rote learning were most effective for controlling the class tempo, and thus, the best way to ensure completion of the textbook.
Q10. What did the teacher do to protect themselves in the conflict between the curriculum and students’ preparedness?
Lecturing enabled Chaoyang teachers to have better control of the pace of the lesson and allowed them to protect themselves in the conflict between the curriculum and students’ preparedness.
Q11. What percentage of rural teachers thought the number of characters to be taught was too much for lower primary?
One-third of rural Chinese teachers surveyed thought the number of Chinese characters to be taught was toomuch for lower primary grades in rural areas.
Q12. What was the way for Chaoyang teachers to entertain students’ mistakes in class?
errors in the process of learning are natural and should be tolerated, yet under the time pressure to finish the pre-programmed textbook, it was a luxury for Chaoyang teachers to entertain fully students’ mistakes in class.
Q13. What is the main reason for the lack of material resources in rural schools?
low public investment in rural education has left rural schools short of material resources (Qin, 2002; Wang, 2006; Yu, 2002).