"She has been watching the moon for a semester." A colleague exposed Zhao's "old foundation".
It turned out that "looking at the moon" was one of the teaching methods chosen by Zhao last semester. This course aims to observe a person's learning process. Last August, Zhao went to Harvard University School of Education to study developmental psychology, and she enrolled at the same time. They chose the same research project.
"If you have the opportunity to be a teacher, you should show your children the moon."
Zhao likes teaching methods very much. The special feature of this course lies in the examination method: students who choose the course write a weekly diary about this week's reading and course ideas, and summarize the changes in thinking mode since the semester. This is what Zhao, who pays attention to the way of thinking, values.
"When I look at the moon with the greatest enthusiasm, I go out to see it every 1 hour from 8: 00 every night until 1 the next day." Through the observation of the moon, Zhao has a further intuitive understanding of the relationship between the moon, the earth and the sun. The bigger gain is "after taking this course, I think it is very important to be a teacher." If you have the opportunity to be a teacher in the future, you can also take your children to see the moon. "
At home, Zhao doesn't like children. "I didn't think the children were great until I came here for class. In the past, there were many blind spots for them, such as not knowing what they thought and needed. Sometimes we don't do well, but we don't know what to do. "
Another course she took this semester is also related to the development of children's thinking, and she will also have practical contact with children. "Sometimes the content of the class is to observe a child, which lasts about 1 hour. For example, once a 6-month-old child slept on the table, and several of us were watching his behavior. " This is the essence of this course, which is to let children of different ages complete a task and watch their ideas change.
"I thought the class should say this, but the teacher said so."
Unlike Zhao, who has never been exposed to developmental psychology, his undergraduate major is education and he has studied developmental psychology, statistics and other courses.
But the teaching method still makes her feel very different. Taking statistics as an example, she explained that as far as textbooks are concerned, the textbooks compiled in China are all from the perspective of experts, while the teachers of Harvard University teach according to the law of learning, from the shallow to the deep. At first, I avoided many concepts that need to be mastered in the introduction to statistics, so it was easier to enter. "In fact, with the increase of learning content, students will also master those concepts. When I was in China, I would talk about many concepts in the first class, because these concepts were not often used later, but they were still unclear. "
Another thing that impressed Chen Shen was, "If you took a course in China, you would expect something from it." I thought this course should be like this, but the teacher here said so, which made her a little uncomfortable when she first came. For example, American teachers will come up with their own research when giving lectures. "Half of some courses are teachers' own research, including some recently published articles or works, which are relatively cutting-edge. In China, the development stage of the subject was sorted out. " Shen Wei said.
"It's not that foreign countries don't take exams and don't pay attention to grades."
Speaking of the similarities and differences between Chinese and western education, both of them mentioned one thing-not to say that foreign countries do not take exams.
Ye Zhao believes that foreign countries do not attach special importance to achievements. After studying abroad, she found that it was not. "We also attach importance to exams here, and some exam-oriented phenomena that have been criticized in China also exist here. Parents at home and abroad have similar attitudes towards academic performance. "
In Chen Shen's view, every student has different expectations for higher education when he enters the university. Some people want to get a good job for graduation and take more certificates. Some people want to learn a way of thinking and see the world. "These are two different choices. Even in the same class and the same teacher, students will get different results. It is too simplistic to simply attribute the education problem to a school or a teacher. "
Zhao agreed with this point. She took it with a smile: "A few days ago, Chen Shen and others were doing statistical homework. I sat diagonally across the table, feeling like I was listening to a gobbledygook. I was thinking, since they are all from China, I can't understand what you said. Because this field is not my specialty or my interest. But this is a very interesting class for me, and other students may feel bored. "
She further stressed: "Some classes may be teachers' problems, while others are not. How to judge the course content is not only up to the school and the teacher. Students' previous thinking and experience are different, and their attitudes towards the course are different, so they will have different feelings in class. We can't just blame schools and education methods, and foreign education is not desirable. "
"It turns out that this can also be used to talk."
In their view, the teaching methods at home and abroad are "very different".
Before going abroad, Zhao Zhuanmen, who had not a solid foundation in developmental psychology, found a course video of a domestic university. After starting classes at Harvard University, I feel that the form of classes is very different from that in China. "The courses here are mostly in the form of topics, and teachers are very willing to understand the students' ideas. Some professors often say that anyone who opposes my point of view also wants students to have opposing opinions, so that the class can be fun. "
This discussion teaching method is also a new challenge for Zhao, who didn't like to raise his hand to speak since he was a child. On the one hand, the challenge comes from classroom habits, on the other hand, the understanding of "speaking" is different from that of foreign students. In her mind, the content of the speech must reach a certain level, or a very complete idea has been formed in her mind before she can speak, but the thinking habits of international students are not like this. "When I first arrived here, I listened to the speeches of foreign students and felt, oh, this can also be said. In my opinion, this idea may only form part of my complete view. "
In this regard, Chen Shen believes that in the eyes of foreign students, classroom discussion is not as serious as that of China students. China students often want to contribute their opinions, while foreign students pay more attention to the atmosphere of discussion. She once took a class, and the teacher explained to the students before class that the performance of the class depended on the students' speeches in class. "So that in class, the teacher's PPT hasn't been talked for two pages, and the students' hands are raised like rainforests. They like such a warm class. "
Understanding the world is more important.
From August last year to May this year, Zhao He has been admitted to Harvard University for nearly 1 year. Do they have the "secret" to be admitted to a prestigious school? The two girls said seriously, "I really don't know."
But judging from the evaluation of friends around me-Harvard University admitted them can be described as "deserved".
Zhao liked psychology from middle school, and later he liked philosophy. "I hope to find the answer of humanity from these two subjects." Although she switched to learning Chinese as a foreign language because her parents thought that "psychology and philosophy have no future", she found that language is also related to thinking. "My interests look very broad, but they are all related to thinking. For me, I hope to learn to look at the problem from the perspective. Studying at Harvard is also a way of thinking, and you don't have to have technical achievements. "
Chen Shen, who is good at abstract research, also pays attention to "understanding the world". In college, she minored in English because of her interest in English itself, so that "going to college in China feels very hard." Of course, studying abroad is not easy.
"When I first came to school, how long did it take to adapt to the teaching methods and course difficulty here?" The reporter asked her.
Chen Shen made an image metaphor: "Time flies so quickly that there is no time to think about adaptation. It's like a soldier who was shot in the leg in the war. In order to save his life, he had no time to think about how painful the injury was, so he had to rush forward. That's the feeling. " (Reporter Zhao Xiaoxia)