Exploring culture-related values in Chinese student teachers’ professional self-understanding and teaching experiences

Abstract

Chinese student teachers nowadays encounter diverse value systems in society and specifically in their teacher education programmes: Eastern and Western values coexist. In this thesis, we aim to understand in this context, Chinese student teachers’ values and value development during and through their internships in a secondary school. We also investigate the role their own personal values play in their thinking and acting as teachers. We adapted four categories from Hofstede’s four cultural dimensions as an analytical lens to map student teachers’ culture-related values. The findings showed the applicability of the four categories of culture-related values in mapping individual Chinese student teachers’ values. Student teachers’ culture-related values appeared to be associated with their evaluation of their teaching practices, especially their emotional incidents during teaching. We noticed that both Eastern (i.e., teacher-centeredness) and Western values (i.e., pupil-centeredness) were held by Chinese student teachers before their internship. Values on teacher-centeredness were mostly reinforced and confirmed during their teaching practices in their internship. After their internships, student teachers showed stronger teacher-centred values in their understanding of being a teacher. Insight in current Chinese student teachers’ values and value development can help raise teacher educators’ and policy makers’ awareness of the importance of student teachers’ values in a changing culture. Besides, our results might help student teachers to cope with the conflicting values they encounter when they teach in classrooms. The findings suggest that it is important for appropriate student teachers’ professional development that they reflect on their own teaching behaviour.