By Xuan Wang

Abstract

This study is directly influenced by the recent sudden and rapid increase in the interest and demand of Mandarin provision across schools in the UK. The shortage of teachers and a negative climate of language learning have resulted in a knee-jerk reaction in which the importation of language and language teachers is in danger of imposing unproblematised assumptions upon the notions of language, culture and pedagogy. This research looks into the ideological conceptualisation of Mandarin teaching in British schools through the eyes of teachers of Mandarin. Taking stock of TESOL methodology and my position as a Mandarin teacher, I draw on the abundant narratives of fellow teachers to investigate how their perceptions of professional self construct the world of Mandarin teaching in which an intersection of conflicting and competing discourses suggest enduring problems in teacher training for Mandarin teachers in the UK.

Keywords: Mandarin, language learning, teaching, British education

Introduction

In May 2007, the Independent revealed that SSAT (the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust) and China’s Hanban (National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language) agreed to have 200 teachers sent from China each year to teach Mandarin in British schools (The Independent, 2007a). In the same breath, Taiwan and the southwest regional government have also sealed a deal to introduce Taiwanese teachers to Specialist Language Colleges in that area (www.//english.moe.gov.tw). In view of the demand for more teachers from the rapid growth of Mandarin learning in schools with prediction for more pupil take-up and new provision (CILT, 2007), one may feel pleased to see such initiatives taking place to ease the teacher shortage. However, there seem important questions unasked: Who are teaching Mandarin in this country? What language knowledge and teaching skills do they bring with them? How can these diverse resources be harnessed for the British education?

The current teaching of Mandarin is best summarized, in Pachler’s (2007) sense of words, a “knee-jerk reaction”, to China’s soaring status against the climate of “negativity” in Britain’s language education. As the world’s fastest growing economy, China’s image as a new power has prompted a global thirst for its language and culture (see Appendix1), with allegedly 40 million people learning Mandarin worldwide and a forecast to increase to 100 million by the end of this decade (Wang & Higgins, 2008; the Independent, 2006). This heat-wave of Mandarin, however, is met with a gloomy picture of language decline in Britain, a “negativity” that is rooted in the lack of ideological or pragmatic thinking in the British vision of language education (Pachler, 2007), which manifests in a combination of recent language policy shift and a general reluctance to engage in language learning dwelled in “the island mentality” (Watts, 2004), despite the government’s attempt to ascertain the economic and sociocultural benefit of linguistic diversity (Nuffield, 2000; DfES, 2002a). Based on a narrow notion of linguistic performance modelled on an “ideal native speaker” and standards and achievement measured in numerical terms, language education in Britain shows little movement towards concepts of multilingualism and plurilingualism that aim to, via the development of an integrated linguistic and intercultural communicative competence in language learning, provide young people with citizenship education to reduce the linguistic and cultural “otherness” resulted from the political and societal insularity (Pachler, 2007). The consequent translation of the government’s commitment for opportunity and entitlement to languages into the discontinuation, or, disapplication of Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) as a curriculum requirement for pupils aged 14 (DfES, 2002b) does little but undermining MFL in schools, arousing further decrease in and negative attitudes towards language learning in general (Pachler, 2002, 2007; Watts, 2004). Meanwhile, the articulation of the language policy in the mandatory National Curriculum (NC) of MFL, as observed by Pachler (2007: 4), is also questionable for its “systematic weakness” in “the effectiveness and fitness for purpose, and meta-pragmatics, the beliefs, views and perceptions, of language use in the real world” and its impact on curriculum time, assessment and methodology as well as teachers’ professional autonomy.

Clearly, in addition to teacher shortage, there is a serious problem with curriculum preparedness for Mandarin in all aspects, from the capacity of an already squeezed MFL to accommodate it in schools, to the mentality behind how it is positioned in NC and education and society at large. Despite these tests that the arguably flimsy framework of language teaching has to take, Mandarin is notably expanding in British schools. This trend, set off by the China heat and the introduction of Mandarin into the non-state school curriculum spun up by the media (see Appendix1), together with China’s active promotion of its official language in Britain (http://english.hanban.edu.cn ), has been well received in the light of a national language crisis the country has found itself in. However, the potential side effects of this trend are not to be underestimated, given that much of the institutional attention is drawn towards a particular political economic direction. In other words, we are confronted with an overwhelming China-centred discourse about a particular notion of language prototype, and an elitist tendency of its development by its token position as celebrated educational success in private schools or as China-Britain bilateral cooperation, such as the recent establishment of a Confucius Institute and 5 hubs within SSAT (The Independent, 2007b). Such a discourse inevitably favours certain assumptions about what Mandarin education should be in Britain over others and further problematises the questions posed earlier.

Linking this with the Mandarin teacher influx, what I gather about Mandarin teaching in schools seems to be a rather simplistic demand-supply approach in which language is imported as pre-packaged commodity and language teachers as readily usable pedagogical instruments, accompanying an unproblematised assumption about the complex issue of language, ethnicity and nationality in Mandarin teaching. On the other hand, being a Mandarin teacher myself, especially as a researcher for the Survey of Chinese Language Teaching in Britain initiated by Hanban (2007) last year, the reality I witness often appears quite the opposite. The population of teachers, the understanding of the language, and the way it is taught seem highly hybrid. Notwithstanding stories of success, what I hear from fellow teachers suggests confusions, frustrations and tensions in the individuals’ trajectories of language teaching in British schools, which direct me again to the questions asked above.

It is with all the above interests that I conduct this study, which sets out to consider, through Mandarin teachers’ perceptions of their professional self, how Mandarin teaching is conceptualised in British schools, that is, to construct an ideological representation of Mandarin teaching by rationalizing teachers’ professional thinking and practice, which helps answer the essential questions of which language, which culture and which pedagogy Mandarin teaching entails in the specific context of British schools, before we can formulate a coherent set of principles that hinges Mandarin curriculum and teacher education based on this understanding with the socio-political discourses of language education at a meso and macro level. To do so, I intend to draw on abundant narratives afforded by fellow Mandarin teachers, i.e., conversations I had with or heard from them about their teaching on various informal occasions, as fecund resources for research. Borrowing Schostak’s (2006) notion of “anecdote” around which events, meanings and judgements are organised and constructed, I rely on teachers’ accidental talks to identify issues and interpret them retrospectively against literature concerned. Hence for the purpose of this study, the theoretical framework is elected and synthesised by the way narratives are constructed. It is therefore necessary to clarify the research methodology before presenting a literature review.

How to quote (APA):  Wang, X. (2011). Which language? Which culture? Which pedagogy? A study of Mandarin Chinese teachers’ perceptions of their professional self in a British school context. (Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies; No. 4).

Read the full working paper here: Which language? Which culture? Which pedagogy? A study of Mandarin Chinese teachers’ perceptions of their professional self in a British school context.