CHINESE LANGUAGE TEACHERS’ SOCIALIZATION INTO THE PROFESSION: A
COMPARATIVE STUDY
By
Wenxia Wang

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education
2012

ABSTRACT
CHINESE LANGUAGE TEACHERS’ SOCIALIZATION INTO THE PROFESSION: A
COMPARATIVE STUDY
by
Wenxia Wang
This comparative case study investigated how new Chinese language teachers from different
linguistic and cultural/ethnic backgrounds (from the U.S., the People’s Republic of China, and
Taiwan) are socialized to teach Chinese as a foreign language in U.S. public K-12 schools, by
focusing on four Chinese language teachers in a Chinese Teacher Certification Program at a
Midwestern university in the United States. This study used the interactive perspective of teacher
socialization proposed by Zeichner and Gore (1990) for educational research, in order to
investigate the four focal teachers’ socialization and how they also had some impacts on the
teaching environments they were in.
This research study was designed to be a qualitative case study. A variety of data was
collected, including the focal teachers’ journals and teaching videos; documents from the local
schools and the certification program, and their field instructor’s written feedback. Interviews
were conducted with the focal teachers and the persons who were involved in the teachers’ first
year of teaching. Data was collected from September, 2009, to June, 2010, altogether for one
academic year. Data analysis for this study was cyclical and was guided by my extensive
preparation in qualitative research in education and Second Language Acquisition (SLA).
This study found that the four teachers’ knowledge of teaching was developed in both
similar and different ways because of their different linguistic, cultural, social, and ethnic
backgrounds, and the teacher knowledge that they needed to gain and develop was much more

complicated than “pedagogical content knowledge” (Shulman, 1986). Their learning from the
teacher education program and their schools and their own understandings interacted with each
other and jointly shaped the teachers’ knowledge of teaching and socialization.
The findings of this study have implications for the fields of language teacher education and
mainstream teacher education in several aspects. First, this study revealed that Chinese language
teachers’ many years of apprenticeship did not affect their teaching as substantially as described
in the literature on mainstream teacher education. Their original linguistic and cultural
backgrounds played more important roles in their teaching than their second/foreign language
learning experiences. Both native and non-native teachers, and experienced and complete novice
language teachers, can be effective, and they develop in different ways.
Second, this study found that teacher education courses were able to have considerable
impact on the teachers’ teaching only when the courses addressed teachers’ needs and were
connected to their teaching. However, their internship and their first year of teaching
simultaneously can be both positive and negative to teachers’ development. Similar implications
are also applicable to the field of language teacher education.
Lastly, this study also showed that various factors and forces (students, mentor teachers,
colleagues, parents, contexts, etc.) in schools influenced teachers’ development and jointly
shaped teachers’ socialization. However, the participating teachers were also actively involved,
and they counter-influenced their contexts and the profession. During these processes, the
influence of cultural differences was complicated. Meanwhile, whether contexts for SLA theories
and those for teachers’ teaching are consistent might influence whether teachers can move from
theory to practice. This study also found an urgent need for Chinese teacher education programs
to develop better program courses and more teaching materials.

Copyright by
WENXIA WANG
2012

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many people have helped me in different ways during my long and rocky journey of doctoral
study in the College of Education at Michigan State University. Thanks to their help and support,
I have grown much personally, professionally, and academically over the past few years. I would
like to take this opportunity to express my heart-felt gratitude to all these people, although I am
not able to thank all of them individually here.
I owe my deepest gratitude to my dissertation directors, Dr. Jeff Bale and Dr. Susan FlorioRuane. Dr. Bale brought me into and guided me in the field of foreign language education.
Without his inspiration, encouragement, and sage advice, I would never have been able to get on
the right track, either in foreign language education research or teaching. I deeply appreciate that
Dr. Susan Florio-Ruane patiently guided me in my personal and professional growth. I am most
grateful for both of my directors’ trust and confidence in me. In these years, both of my directors
gave me feedback, constantly challenged me, and pushed me to think and further explore in the
field, all of which has helped me become a stronger and better researcher and person.
Dr. Lynn Paine has been my guidance chair since the first day I joined the program. She
guided me through the program’s courses in the early years of my doctoral study, and I learned
from her how to communicate with professors in the department, and more importantly, with
professors outside of the department. I am particularly grateful for her trust and help and for her
care for me all these years.
I am heartily thankful to Dr. Peter Youngs. When I was uncertain about the direction of my
study at MSU, Dr. Youngs helped me with building a bridge between my background and the
field of Education so that I could move into and find my place in the field in the early years of my

v

doctoral study. He has always been accessible and very supportive and helpful, and I truly
appreciate his trust and valuable assistance in all these years.
Dr. Debra Friedman helped me to lay a solid foundation in the field of Second Language
Acquisition (SLA). I benefited greatly from her perceptive and thought-provoking feedback and
conversations. I am particularly grateful that she treated me equally with students in her
department and has always been willing to help and guide me in the field.
Dr. Douglas Campbell taught me how to conduct qualitative research in practice. He is my
wonderful mentor in research writing, and his patient and constant assistance has helped me as an
international student to develop in writing substantially. I am also grateful for his discussions
with me and his insightful suggestions on my research over all these years.
I deeply appreciate Dr. Avner Segall’s help in my study at MSU, and Dr. Michelle Williams’
care and support in all these years. I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to work with these
people and learn from them.
My deepest gratitude goes to all my family members for their unconditional love and support,
which always revitalizes me and provides strength for me. I love them and miss them very much.
I am also grateful to a number of my best friends for their consolation, encouragement, and
companionship during my doctoral study.
I would like to thank all the participants in my dissertation research, especially the four focal
teachers, although unfortunately I cannot list their real names here. They were always there,
providing whatever information I needed for my study. They offered help, encouraged me, and
shared with me their insights about language instruction, which has made the process of research
a journey of learning and enjoyment. Without them, this dissertation would simply have been
impossible.

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................................... xi
LIST OF FIGURES....................................................................................................................... xii
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 1
Statement of Problem and Rationale........................................................................................... 2
Definitions of the Key Terms...................................................................................................... 3
Teacher Knowledge ................................................................................................................ 3
Chinese.................................................................................................................................. 11
Overview of the Study .............................................................................................................. 14
Significance of the Study .......................................................................................................... 16
CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW, THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK, AND RESEARCH
QUESTIONS ................................................................................................................................ 19
Literature Review ...................................................................................................................... 19
The Role of Teachers’ Backgrounds ..................................................................................... 20
The Role of Teacher Preparation Programs .......................................................................... 24
The Role of Workplace and Culture ..................................................................................... 30
Background and Rationale ........................................................................................................ 38
Shortage of Chinese Language Teachers and Solutions ....................................................... 39
Interns or New Teachers? ..................................................................................................... 41
Theoretical Framework ............................................................................................................. 43
Teacher Socialization ............................................................................................................ 44
Theoretical Perspective ......................................................................................................... 45
Research Questions ................................................................................................................... 47
CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH DESIGN AND ANALYSIS.......................................................... 49
Research Methods and Rationale .............................................................................................. 49
The Chinese Teacher Certification Program ............................................................................. 53
Participants ................................................................................................................................ 57
The Four Chinese Language Teachers .................................................................................. 57
Other Participants.................................................................................................................. 66
Data Sources ............................................................................................................................. 74
Existing Data......................................................................................................................... 75
Collected Data ....................................................................................................................... 76
Data Analysis ............................................................................................................................ 82
Analysis of Various Data ...................................................................................................... 83
Comparisons in Data Analysis .............................................................................................. 85
Reporting of the Research Results ............................................................................................ 89
Ethical Considerations .............................................................................................................. 90
Researcher as the Field Instructor ......................................................................................... 90
Anonymity............................................................................................................................. 92

vii

CHAPTER 4 GAINING KNOWLEDGE OF PEDAGOGY ....................................................... 94
Knowledge of Pedagogy at the Beginning ................................................................................ 95
Scott’s Knowledge of Pedagogy at the Beginning of the Fall .............................................. 95
Tianyu’s Knowledge of Pedagogy at the Beginning of the Fall ........................................... 99
Yalan’s Knowledge of Pedagogy at the Beginning of the Fall ........................................... 101
Fangyi’s Knowledge of Pedagogy at the Beginning of the Fall .......................................... 103
Analysis of Their Teaching at the Beginning...................................................................... 105
Misunderstanding and Confusion at the Beginning ............................................................ 108
Learning Pedagogy.................................................................................................................. 110
Scott’s Learning of Pedagogy ............................................................................................. 111
Tianyu’s Learning of Pedagogy .......................................................................................... 122
Yalan’s Learning of Pedagogy ............................................................................................ 134
Fangyi’s Learning of Pedagogy........................................................................................... 145
Similarities and Differences in Their Learning of Pedagogy .................................................. 155
CHAPTER 5 RESTRUCTURING KOWLEDGE OF SUBJECT MATTER .......................... 161
Scott’s Development in Knowledge of Subject Matter .......................................................... 161
Relating to Students’ Lives ................................................................................................. 162
Changing Views on Teaching Pinyin and Chinese Characters ........................................... 167
Expanding and Changing Views on Teaching Four Skills in Cultural Context ................. 171
Tianyu’s Development in Knowledge of Subject Matter ....................................................... 174
Teaching Pinyin or Chinese Characters? And How? .......................................................... 174
Learning Lesson Planning and Curriculum Design ............................................................ 179
Teaching the Four Skills ..................................................................................................... 191
Yalan’s Development in Knowledge of Subject Matter ......................................................... 192
Connecting to Students’ Lives ............................................................................................ 192
Learning to Teach Chinese Characters and Grammar ........................................................ 195
Expanding Views on Chinese Culture ................................................................................ 199
Fangyi’s Development in Knowledge of Subject Matter ........................................................ 202
Learning to Teach Pinyin and Chinese Characters ............................................................. 202
Connecting to Students’ Lives ............................................................................................ 204
Expanding Knowledge of Teaching the Four Skills ........................................................... 210
Similarities and Differences in Their Development ............................................................... 213
In Teaching Pinyin and Chinese Characters ....................................................................... 213
In Learning to Teach the Four Skills................................................................................... 216
In Curriculum Design and Lesson Planning ....................................................................... 217
Lack of Resources ............................................................................................................... 220
CHAPTER 6 UNDERSTANDING AND MANAGING STUDENTS ..................................... 223
Scott’s Development in Knowledge of Students .................................................................... 223
Learning to Manage Students’ Behaviors ........................................................................... 223
Learning to Manage Students’ Learning ............................................................................. 232
Tianyu’s Development in Knowledge of students .................................................................. 236
Tianyu’s Understanding of Students at the Beginning........................................................ 236
Learning to Manage Students’ Behaviors ........................................................................... 237

viii

Learning to Manage Students’ Learning ............................................................................. 242
Yalan’s Development in Knowledge of Students ................................................................... 247
Learning and Experience about Students in the Fall ........................................................... 247
Learning to Manage Students’ Behaviors in the Spring ..................................................... 250
Learning to Manage Students’ Learning ............................................................................. 255
Fangyi’s Development in Knowledge of Students.................................................................. 258
Learning to Manage Students’ Behaviors ........................................................................... 259
Learning to Manage Students’ Learning ............................................................................. 266
Similarities and Differences in Understanding and Managing Students ................................ 271
In Managing Students’ Behaviors ....................................................................................... 271
In managing Students’ Learning ......................................................................................... 274
Influence of Cultural Differences........................................................................................ 276
CHAPTER 7 DIFFICULTIES, CONFLICTS, AND THEIR IMPACTS ................................. 279
Conflicts in and Difficulties Caused by the Certification Program ........................................ 279
Teachers’ Lack of Preparation and Frustration ................................................................... 279
Limitations and Difficulties of Field Instruction ................................................................ 281
Difficulties and Conflicts in Schools ...................................................................................... 283
Mentoring Practices ............................................................................................................ 284
Different Chinese Programs ................................................................................................ 289
Difficulties and Conflicts at State Level and Nationwide....................................................... 292
Developing Chinese Language Programs ........................................................................... 293
Structure of World Language Programs ............................................................................. 294
CHAPTER 8 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS ............................................................... 299
The Role of Teachers’ Backgrounds ....................................................................................... 299
In Mainstream Education .................................................................................................... 299
In Language Teacher Education .......................................................................................... 303
In Chinese Language Teacher Education ............................................................................ 306
The Role of Teacher Preparation Programs ............................................................................ 307
In Mainstream Education .................................................................................................... 307
In Language Teacher Education .......................................................................................... 310
In Chinese Language Teacher Education ............................................................................ 313
The Role of Workplace and Culture ....................................................................................... 315
In Mainstream Education .................................................................................................... 315
In Language Teacher Education .......................................................................................... 320
In Chinese Language Teacher Education ............................................................................ 323
Limitations .............................................................................................................................. 325
CHAPTER 9 IMPLICATIONS .............................................................................................. 328
Teacher Knowledge ................................................................................................................ 328
Importance of the Structure of Teacher Education Programs ................................................. 329
Multi-layered Socialization ..................................................................................................... 331
APPENDICES ............................................................................................................................ 333

ix

REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 341

x

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. The Participants in This Study……………………………………………………73
Table 2. The Data for This Study…………………………………………………………..82
Table 3. Ranking of the Four Teachers’ Knowledge Category…………………………….94

xi

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Data Analysis for This Study……………………………………………………88

xii

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

With the development of China’s economy in the past decade, the Chinese language has
become an increasingly important foreign language in the United States and the world.
Recently, enrollment in Chinese as a foreign language in U.S. higher education institutions and
K-12 schools has been rising. According to a 2006 survey by the Modern Language Association
(MLA), enrollment in Chinese language courses in U.S. higher education institutions increased
from 19,490 in 1990 to 51,582 in 2006, and Chinese was one of only two languages with
dramatic increases between 2002 and 2004 (the other was Arabic) (Furman, Goldberg, & Lusin,
2007).
In U.S. K-12 schools, Chinese as a foreign language has recently received unprecedented
attention. In 2003, the Advanced Placement Course (AP) in Chinese Language and Culture was
created. In a survey by the College Board in 2004, around 2,400 U.S. high schools were
interested in offering AP Chinese courses and Chinese programs (the College Board, 2006).
Recognizing Chinese as “a language critical to the U.S. now and in the future,” the National
Security Education Program (NSEP) in 2005 started the Chinese K-16 Pipeline Project, the
prototype for all critical languages in its National Flagship Language Initiative (NFLI)
(NCOLCTL, n.d.). A recent survey by the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) about foreign
language education in K-12 schools in the United States found that the teaching of traditional
foreign languages—French, German, Japanese, and Russian—was decreasing in K-12 schools
from 1997 to 2008, but the teaching of Chinese and Arabic was increasing (Rhodes & Pufahl,
2009). The percentage of elementary schools that offer Chinese increased from 0.3% in 1997 to
3% in 2008, and that of secondary schools from 1% in 1997 to 4% in 2008.

1

Statement of Problem and Rationale
Despite this increased interest in and need for Chinese language education, little is known
about either how to prepare Chinese language teachers to work in the U.S. or how the Chinese
language is being taught in the U.S. In contrast to the trend of learning Chinese as a foreign
language, there is a severe shortage of qualified and certified Chinese language teachers in the
United States and the world. This has become a big obstacle because these countries are
developing their programs and courses of Chinese as a foreign language. The shortage of teachers
of Chinese hinders and undermines the development of Chinese in these countries. Meanwhile,
few research studies have been conducted to understand how Chinese language teachers should
be prepared to teach Chinese in the United States or other countries in order to meet their
increasing need for learning Chinese.
Neither the 2008 CAL survey nor the 2006 MLA survey offers much information about
Chinese language teachers, although the CAL survey does report a general and severe shortage of
foreign language teachers in K-12 schools. The MLA survey did not include much information
about foreign language teachers. The Chinese Language Teachers Association (CLTA), which
was established in the U.S. in 1962, concentrates more on promoting theoretical and empirical
research on Chinese language learning and teaching in the U.S. than on Chinese language
teachers’ development. As a result, not much information or research about Chinese language
teachers can be found on its website, at its annual conferences, or in its publications (e.g., The
Journal of Chinese Language Teachers Association).
Although little information is available, I managed to find that Chinese language teachers in
the U.S. K-12 schools are from diverse ethnic, cultural, educational, and linguistic backgrounds
(ACTFL, 2009; Ingold & Wang, 2010), and they are recuited from a range of sources (Ingold &

2

Wang, 2010). However, little research can be found in the literature to have investigated the
preparation of Chinese language teachers in the U.S. or how they are working and being
socialized into the foreign language teaching profession in university or K-12 school settings.
Wang (2009) noted, “The lack of quantity and quality of Chinese language teachers constitutes
the key bottleneck in building capacity” (p. 283). Therefore, it is necessary to include Chinese
language teachers from various backgrounds and to study Chinese language teachers—their
learning as well as their classroom practice— in order to have a more complete understanding of
the process and the teachers’ development and contribute to this much-needed field.
Definitions of the Key Terms
Focusing on the development of the teachers’ knowledge of teaching in their first year of
teaching, this study investigated the four teachers’ socialization into the foreign language
teaching profession while they were teaching Chinese in U.S. public K-12 schools. Although
many concepts were used in this study, two were critical to the study and thus need to be defined
here before any further discussion—the concepts of teacher knowledge in this study (it is used
interchangeably with knowledge of teaching) and the Chinese language—so they are introduced
and discussed below.
Teacher Knowledge
The concept of teacher knowledge has been widely discussed in mainstream education but
not much applied to language-teacher education. Meanings and connotations of teacher
knowledge may vary greatly from one researcher to another because they define teacher
knowledge from various disciplines and/or from different educational perspectives. Meanwhile,
with the development of this concept, researchers also use different labels to refer to certain

3

aspects of teacher knowledge, or to broader views which include teacher knowledge. For
example, in teacher education, Grant (2008) used the term teacher capacity to mean “a teacher’s
knowledge, skills and dispositions” (p. 127). In language teacher education, Borg (2003) adopted
the term teacher cognition to indicate “what teachers think, know, and believe and the
relationships of these mental constructs” (p. 81).
Generally teacher knowledge includes “the whole of the knowledge and insights that
[underlie] teachers’ actions in practice” (Verloop, Driel, and Meijer, 2001, p. 446), and it
“…involves the epistemological question of how teachers know what they know to do what they
do” (Freeman, 2002, p. 1). Teacher knowledge in general education has been understood, for
example, as personal and tacit from a philosophical perspective (e.g., Elbaz, 1983; Schon, 1983),
or as situated from an anthropological view (e.g., Lave and Wenger, 1991). It is also discussed
from different educational perspectives, such as the constructivist perspective or the critical
perspective, etc. (Howey, 1996; Tsui, 2003). In many educational approaches to teacher
knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), which refers to teachers’ disciplinary
knowledge for teaching purposes, and was proposed by Shulman and his colleagues (1987), has
been prominent and widely discussed. Because I focus on the four focal teachers’ knowledge and
its development during their first year of teaching, PCK is a relevant concept for this study.
The key idea of PCK is “…how subject-matter knowledge is related to pedagogical
knowledge and, furthermore, how subject-matter knowledge is part of the process of pedagogical
reasoning” (Howey, 1996, p. 151). That is, it is a teacher’s capacity to use various techniques and
strategies to make the teaching content comprehensible to students. Because this concept
combines two critical aspects in teaching, subject matter and pedagogy, it has been widely
accepted and applied in educational research. However, this concept does not seem to attach

4

much importance to teacher’s knowledge of students, although implicitly in this concept,
teacher’s selection of instructional strategies should target students’ understanding. To recognize
the importance of the knowledge of students, Grimmett and MacKinnon (1992) proposed
pedagogical learner knowledge, but their concept seems to decrease the importance of teacher’s
knowledge of subject matter when compared to PCK. More recently, Mishra and Koehler (2006)
incorporated technology into PCK and came up with the term of technological pedagogical
content knowledge. PCK remains the core part of this extended concept.
However, PCK has been critiqued by some researchers. Ball (2000) and her colleagues (e.g.,
Ball & Bass, 2003; Ball, Hill, & Bass, 2005; Hill, Rowan, & Ball, 2005) have built upon and
differentiated aspects of PCK in her subsequent work in pre-service teacher education. Ball
(2000) argued that, in addition to PCK, teachers should be able to “…deconstruct one’s own
knowledge into a less polished and final form, where critical components are accessible and
visible” (p. 245), and they should also be able to “…use student work as a site to analyze and
interpret what students know and are learning…” (p. 246). Thus, Ball (2000) actually added in
her argument teachers’ capabilities to conduct and integrate dynamic and/or diagnostic
assessment in their instruction into the framework of PCK, hoping to assist teachers and also
hoping that teacher education programs can help teachers to develop capabilities to deal with
“…the interactive work of teaching lessons in classrooms, and all the tasks that arise in the
course of that” (Ball, Hill, & Bass, 2005, p. 17). This perspective on teacher knowledge also
acknowledges the importance of students and their learning and recognizes that teaching is
dynamic, which is also a development of PCK.
Furthermore, although PCK is argued to interact with other parts of teacher knowledge, as
shown above, some researchers have noted that this part of knowledge is emphasized so much

5

that it seems possible to separate it from and neglect other parts of teacher knowledge, for
example, knowledge about teaching contexts (e.g., Tsui, 2003). In the literature, various
frameworks of teacher knowledge have been proposed, and a number of components or
categories of teacher knowledge have been recognized, which include knowledge of general
pedagogy, subject matter, curriculum, students, context, educational philosophies, and
pedagogical content knowledge, (e.g., Shulman, 1987; Verloop, Driel, & Meijer, 2001). Colton
and Sparks-Langer (1993) added teachers’ prior experiences and beliefs, personal views, and
values in their comprehensive framework of teacher knowledge. Generally educational
researchers appear to agree that the combination of various components of teacher knowledge
into an integrated whole is essential to effective teaching (e.g., Feiman-Nemser & Floden, 1986;
Grossman, 1990; McDiarmid, Ball, & Anderson, 1989).
The concept of teacher knowledge in language-teacher education has not been discussed and
researched until recently. As Richards and Nunan (1990) pointed out, “The field of teacher
education is a relatively under explored one in both second and foreign language teaching” (p. xi).
Actually, compared to research on mainstream teacher education, that on language teacher
education “…has been noticeably missing from the professional discourse” (Freeman & Johnson,
1998, p. 397). This is because in language instruction, learning to teach has simply been taken as
a static three-part schema: learning linguistic content, applying teaching methods, and
understanding theoretical rationales for these methods (e.g., Freeman, 2002; Johnson, 2006).
From the 1990s, the field of language teacher education began to account for languageteacher knowledge and to draw on comparable work in mainstream teacher education. However,
examined closely, some seminal theoretical frameworks in mainstream teacher education may
need to be modified, or may not be applicable, in language teacher education because of some

6

particular characteristics of language instruction. Take PCK, for example. Language teachers’
knowledge has to be contextualized, and thus is much more complicated than PCK as it has been
conceptualized in mainstream teacher education. Language teachers have to find ways not only to
provide authentic language input and to have students experience the target culture (PCK from
the perspective of mainstream education), but also to address the linguistic and cultural contexts
and students’ real lives so that their instruction is comprehensible and meaningful to their
students. However, the target language may not be the teacher’s native language, or the teacher
does not necessarily share the same native language with the students, or the students of one class
may have multiple native languages. As a result, multiple “languages” are involved in the
1

language teacher’s instruction (including learners’ interlanguage ). This way the language
teacher’s knowledge of content and pedagogy both influences and is modified by these languages
and his or her instructional context, and thus their content and pedagogical knowledge become
dynamic. Meanwhile, the language teacher’s instructional context does not simply include his/her
physical classroom or school; instead, “it assumes a virtual dimension through the socializing
power of the teacher’s past and present experiences and communities” (Freeman, 2002, p. 7).
Consequently PCK seems not to be able to describe language teachers’ knowledge accurately.
Freeman (2002) noted that PCK “…becomes a messy and possibly unworkable concept” when it
is applied to language-teacher education, as “…teaching involved[s] the teacher in complex
thought processes” (p. 6). Therefore, a more incorporative and accurate concept is needed for
language-teachers’ knowledge.
1

Interlanguage: “The language produced by a nonnative speaker of a language” while he or she
is learning a second language but not fully proficient (Gass & Selinker, 2001, p. 455). Often
learners’ interlanguage has features of both their first language and the target language and also
has developmental features that are not of their first language and the target language.

7

Recognizing that “…learning to teach is affected by the sum of a person’s experiences,”
Freeman and Johnson (1998) argued that it “requires the acquisition and interaction of
knowledge and beliefs about oneself as a teacher, of the content to be taught, of one’s students,
and of classroom life”; furthermore, “it is built out of and through experiences in social
contexts…” (p. 401). This looks quite similar to the framework proposed by Colton and SparksLanger (1993) in mainstream education. Freeman and Johnson (1998) also proposed a framework
for language teacher knowledge, which is composed of three domains: “teachers as learners of
language teaching,” “the social context of schools and schooling,” and “the pedagogical process
of language teaching and learning” (Freeman & Johnson, 1998, p. 405-412). This framework
includes contexts, which are very important for language teachers’ knowledge, and identifies
interactions among different aspects of knowledge. It is an important development of language
teacher knowledge in the field, although it is descriptive and includes fewer teacher knowledge
aspects compared to those in mainstream teacher education. Johnson (2006) further emphasized
the importance of context in language teacher knowledge after reviewing the literature on
teachers’ learning, pointing out that “common to these structural arrangements is the recognition
that participation and context are essential to teacher learning…” (p. 244), and also arguing that
“context is not necessarily limited to specific geopolitical boundaries but can be sociopolitical,
sociohistorical, and socioeconomic contexts that shape and are shaped by local and global
events” (p. 245).
Bringing context and its interaction with teacher knowledge into theory about languageteaching, Freeman and Johnson were echoed by Tsui (2003), who reviewed and critiqued teacher
knowledge from different approaches, including PCK, and used a re-conceptualization of teacher
knowledge in her research on ESL teachers. She recognized five common aspects of teacher

8

knowledge from mainstream teacher education—knowledge of subjects, students, contexts,
curriculum, and pedagogy, but more importantly, Tsui (2003) pointed out that teacher knowledge
is an organized and integrated whole, and the relationship between teacher knowledge and
context is dialectical. That is, “teacher’s knowledge and the practices in which it is embedded
jointly constitute the context in which they operate, and this in turn is an integral part of the
knowledge so constituted” (Tsui, 2003, p. 64). According to this concept, context is one
component of teacher knowledge and also permeates other components of teacher knowledge, so
it plays an important role for language teachers and also perhaps for teachers of other disciplines.
This study accepts this concept about context in its investigation of the teachers’ socialization.
However, this study does not include teacher’s beliefs and assumptions in teacher knowledge.
The literature reviewed above shows that researchers have different views on teacher knowledge,
and some researchers in mainstream teacher education and language education have included
teacher’s beliefs in teacher knowledge (e.g., Colton & Sparks-Langer, 1993; Freeman & Johnson,
1998). Although teachers’ beliefs undeniably play very important roles in their learning to teach,
other researchers perceive teacher knowledge “as propositional in nature and dependent on truth
conditions,” so “it is distinct from beliefs because the latter do not have truth value and do not
have to be agreed on as being true by a community of people” (Tsui, 2003, p. 61). This stance
about the differences between teachers’ beliefs and teacher knowledge is more relevant to
language teachers, especially when they are from different cultures than the host context where
they are teaching. Influenced by their own cultures and teaching profession, language teachers’
original beliefs and assumption about teaching in the host culture may not be true or may even
look unacceptable as perceived by the language teaching profession in the host country.

9

Therefore, this study makes a distinction between teacher’s belief and teacher knowledge and
investigates how their beliefs influence development in their teacher knowledge.
In their development of teacher knowledge, teachers do not passively accept what they are
told; instead, they interpret the messages, “…engage in ongoing, indepth, and reflective
examinations of their teaching practices and students’ learning…” (Johnson, 2006, p. 244), and
play an important role in their learning to teach. In her re-conceptualization of teacher knowledge,
Tsui (2003) further argued that language teacher knowledge “must be understood in terms of the
way they [teachers] respond to their contexts of work, which shape the contexts in which their
knowledge is developed” (p. 64). In the process of developing their knowledge, teachers interact
“…with people in their contexts of work, where they constantly construct and reconstruct their
understandings of their work as teachers” (Tsui, 2003, p. 64). That is, teachers are actively
learning and shaping their knowledge. This way, Tsui (2003) recognized language teachers’
agency and its interaction with their knowledge of teaching, which indicates that language
teachers’ knowledge is dynamic and developmental while they are learning to teach.
Because my study asked questions about the knowledge particular to learning to teach a
foreign language and also about the relevance of extant theory and research on teaching to
language teaching, I examined several key concepts related to the literature on teacher knowledge
that I reviewed: content, pedagogy, student, curriculum, and the complex interactions of these
with context in language teaching. My study therefore pays special attention to the participating
teachers’ capabilities to understand, balance, and bridge students’ first language and culture to
the target language and culture. Meanwhile, I looked at the influence of their different cultural
and linguistic backgrounds, these teachers’ growing abilities to adapt to local school contexts,
and their initiatives to incorporate the concept of context into their teaching during the period of

10

study. Some other aspects of their knowledge not emphasized in the theory and research
reviewed above may also be relevant (for example, their knowledge about students). I identify
these aspects of teacher knowledge in the presentation of my observational and self-report data
(see description of data analysis below).
Therefore, while my study was informed by research on teaching, it focused on the focal
teachers’ knowledge in their first year of teaching Chinese in American secondary schools and
their socialization into the foreign language-teaching profession in the United States. Thus
research on the differences in pedagogy, content, context, and interactions with learners when
teaching Chinese in the U.S.—the particular foci of my study—may have implications for how
we understand the complexities of learning to teach Chinese in the U.S., and for understanding
language teaching more broadly.
Chinese
The language to be taught when we speak of “teaching Chinese” has a complex history and
is varied. This is relevant to my study because the four focal teachers learned different varieties
of Chinese in different cultural contexts. Therefore, I offer a brief description of “Chinese” for
the purpose of studying its instruction.
In Western literature, the terms Chinese and Mandarin are both used, often interchangeably,
to refer to the language used in the People’s Republic of China and some neighboring areas and
countries, for example, in Singapore. Generally the term Mandarin is an old one, which refers to
the official Chinese language used by the late Qing dynasty and governments in Beijing in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries, when China was transitioning from a feudalist society to a
modern one. Starting with the New Culture Movement of the late 1910s and 1920s, written
Chinese developed from the classical literary style, which is formal, and was refined to a
11

vernacular, spoken, and simple style so that it is easy for the common people to understand (Sun,
2000).
After the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the Chinese language went
through some reform and became what is called standard Chinese today. Standard Chinese has
some important elements that have to be taught to its learners—pronunciation, a phonetic
transcriptions system known as Pinyin, Chinese characters, and its linguistic system, including its
morphosyntax. Its pronunciation is synthesized from some northern dialects, so it does not sound
exactly the same as any dialect in China. Standard Chinese borrows phonetics from some
Western languages (the work was initiated by the nationalist government in the 1930s), because
traditionally Chinese pronunciation had been taught orally and no phonetic system was used to
illustrate the pronunciation. Nowadays, this phonetic system is widely known as Pinyin in the
West. Taiwan uses a different phonetic system, which is known as Zhuyin Fuhao (or bo-po-mofo) in the U.S. Although the phonetic systems are different, people in China and Taiwan,
especially the educated, pronounce the Chinese characters almost the same way. The traditional
characters, which were composed of many strokes, were simplified to facilitate mass education in
China in the 1950s and 1960s. These characters are called simplified Chinese characters.
Consequently simplified Chinese characters are used in China nowadays, while traditional
Chinese characters are used in ancient Chinese literature and in some neighboring areas and
countries, for example, Taiwan. Today standard Chinese has been widely used in every aspect of
life in China—in education, mass media, technology, academia, etc. It is also taught as a foreign
language in the world, including in the U.S. The four focal teachers in this study learned Chinese
in China, Taiwan, and the U.S. The teacher from Taiwan learned traditional Chinese characters
and Zhuyin Fuhao, and the others learned simplified Chinese characters and Pinyin. However, all

12

four teachers taught simplified Chinese characters and Pinyin in their first year of teaching in the
U.S. Thus, teaching simplified Chinese characters and Pinyin might be more complicated to the
teacher from Taiwan than the other three teachers.
Meanwhile, there have been hundreds of Chinese dialects in China, many of which have
been in existence for thousands of years and have gone through many changes through their
development. Although the written system of the Chinese language is commonly used across the
country, people in different areas may pronounce a character very differently. Nowadays, it is
common for people from different provinces, even from different areas in the same province, to
have difficulties in understanding each other if they speak their own local dialects. Consequently,
some dialects sound so different from standard Chinese or other Chinese dialects that some
people take them as languages instead of dialects. Some of these dialects have become known in
the Western countries, for example, Cantonese, which is the dialect in Guangdong province in
China.
In addition, there are other languages which are completely different from the standard
Chinese and its dialects in China. The Chinese language has long been associated with the
biggest ethnic group in China, the Han, so sometimes the Chinese language is also called Hanyu
(literally, the language of the Han ethnic group). Similarly, China’s National Office for Teaching
Chinese as a Foreign Language is abbreviated as Hanban (literally, office for Hanyu, the
executive board of Chinese language program international in Beijing, affiliated with the
Ministry of Education of China). Some minority ethnic groups (e.g., Man, Meng, Zang, Hui
ethnic groups) have their own languages, which are totally different languages than Chinese,
either in form or in pronunciation. The modern standard Chinese (with synthesized and thus
“standard” pronunciation, a phonetic transcription system known as Pinyin, simplified characters,

13

and its linguistic system, including its morphology, syntax, etc.) is taken as the official language
in China. Sometimes people also use the term simplified Chinese to refer to the modern
“standard” Chinese in China or the world.
In this study, the term Chinese is used to refer to the “standard” Chinese language (in
pronunciation) in its simplified written form that is widely used in Chinese society, because U.S.
schools and universities are teaching this version of “Chinese” (e.g., Wang, 2007). However,
Chinese as a foreign language in the U.S. might have different meaning for the four focal
teachers in this study because of their different linguistic and cultural backgrounds and perhaps
the different curriculum expectations of their schools. The European American teacher learned
Chinese as a foreign language and was teaching Chinese as foreign language in the U.S. in this
study, which is different from the teacher from Taiwan, for whom Chinese is the native language,
but she had to learn to teach “standard” Chinese. They might interpret Chinese and the
curriculum expectations differently than the two teachers who are originally from China, to
whom Chinese is the native language, but they were teaching it as a foreign language in the U.S.
Thus, the four teachers’ disciplinary and curricular knowledge of Chinese interacted with their
knowledge of context and developed along with their socialization into the profession, which
will be analyzed in the following chapters.
Overview of the Study
This study has eight chapters. In chapter one, I first explain why it is important to investigate
Chinese language teachers’ socialization into the foreign language teaching profession in the U.S.,
and I briefly introduce the four focal Chinese language teachers in this study. Then the two key
terms—teacher knowledge and the Chinese language—are defined in this chapter. The
significance of this study is also described below.
14

Chapter two includes the literature review, theoretical framework, and research questions for
this study. I first reviewed research on the roles that teachers’ backgrounds, teacher preparation
programs, and workplace and culture play in teacher socialization in mainstream education,
language teacher education, and Chinese language teacher education.

From the literature,

Zeichner and Gore’s (1990) interactive approach was selected as the theoretical framework for
this study in order to investigate how teachers’ knowledge is shaped in their teaching and how
they also actively learn to teach and counter-influence their contexts. On the basis of this,
research questions were developed for this study.
In chapter three, I explain the research design and analysis. With the guidance of Zeichner
and Gore’s (1990) interactive approach to teacher socialization, this study was designed as a case
study of four Chinese language teachers’ learning to teach. Detailed information about all
participants, including the four focal teachers, is provided in this chapter, and it is followed by
the data collection and analysis processes for this study.
Chapter four describes how the four teachers gained their knowledge of pedagogy in their
first year of teaching. While the four teachers had different starting points in their instructional
methods, none of them seemed to have much knowledge of language pedagogy at the beginning
of their teaching. During their first year of teaching, they all learned to take a communicative and
task-based approach to their teaching, but they achieved in different ways.
Chapter five presents how their knowledge of subject matter was restructured and
contextualized in their first year of teaching. All four teachers are successful Chinese learners or
native speakers, but during their first year, they learned to connect their teaching to students’ real
lives, whether and how to teach Pinyin vs. Chinese characters, and the concepts of the four

15

language skills. In these processes, their knowledge of Chinese as a subject matter was
restructured.
In chapter six, their understanding and management of students are traced and illustrated. All
four teachers had to learn about their students because of cultural differences and other
contextual factors. They faced similar and different classroom management problems, and they
all had to learn from various sources how to manage students’ behaviors and their learning.
Chapter seven analyzes the difficulties and conflicts at all levels which caused obstacles and
negatively affected the teachers’ development—within the Chinese teacher certification program,
in their schools, and at the state level and nationwide. The conflicts within the Chinese
certification program led to difficulties for the teachers and field instruction. Varied mentoring
practices and Chinese programs in their schools made their first year of teaching quite daunting
to them. Lack of policies and guidelines and the structure of world language programs added
another layer of difficulties to Chinese teachers’ teaching and socialization.
In chapter eight, the implications and conclusions of this study are discussed, as it is situated
in teacher socialization research in mainstream education, language teacher education, and
Chinese teacher education. The roles teachers’ backgrounds, teacher preparation programs, and
workplace and culture played in the four teachers’ socialization in their first year of teaching
Chinese in U.S. K-12 schools are discussed, and conclusions are drawn correspondingly.
Significance of the Study
This research study can make contributions to the fields of language teacher education and
mainstream education in a number of ways. First, a large number of Chinese language teachers
need to be trained to meet the needs of Chinese teaching in U.S. K-12 schools, but little research
has been conducted on Chinese language teachers’ training or socialization into the foreign
16

language teaching profession in the United States. This study fills this gap by focusing on four
new Chinese language teachers’ socialization. In addition, the different linguistic and
cultural/ethnic backgrounds of the focal Chinese language teachers also revealed the
complexities in Chinese language teachers’ preparation and socialization. Second, Chinese
language teachers’ education may share some common features in the field of language teacher
education, but it may also be particular because Chinese is typologically different from European
languages, and Chinese culture is also distinct. This study can help illustrate the similarities and
differences and add to the literature of language teacher education. Meanwhile, researchers have
frequently noted the gap between theory and practice in the field of foreign language teacher
education (e.g., Freeman, 2007; Lambert, 2001; Lantolf & Johnson, 2007; Schulz, 2000). This
study investigated the factors in and processes of Chinese language teachers’ socialization. Thus,
the study makes a contribution to the field in bridging the gap between theories and practice, by
focusing on how the theories of language instruction actually influence the teachers’ teaching.
Third, the field of language education mainly has research on ESL in the U.S. and other
countries, or on EFL teachers in other countries than the U.S., where a distinction is made
between native speakers or nonnative speakers. This study may make a difference in that it
focused on foreign language teachers in the U.S., including native and nonnative speakers of the
target language. Focusing on the teachers’ socialization and also paying special attention to
language, this study not only investigated the teachers’ socialization processes, but also the roles
that one’s native language plays in these processes. Fourth, the focal teachers in this study were
in a situation which combined traditional internship and first-year teaching (this will be further
illustrated in the following chapters). The field of teacher education has long lamented the
disconnection between teacher education programs, field experiences, and local schools (e.g.,

17

McIntyre, Byrd, & Foxx, 1996; Zeichner, 2010). This study may have some findings about
whether a combination of internship and first-year teaching is beneficial or disadvantageous to
the focal teachers. Therefore, by examining the challenges in the focal teachers’ socialization
processes, this study may also shed light on the field of teacher education in general, with either
positive or negative evidence. Lastly, not much research has been conducted to compare teachers
from different cultures teaching in the same cultural setting. This study focused on Chinese
language teachers from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds who are teaching Chinese in the
United States, which may make possible contributions to the broader field of teacher education.

18

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW, THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK, AND RESEARCH
QUESTIONS
This chapter reviews the literature on teacher socialization, including language teacher
socialization, in order to provide a research context for my study. The social and institutional
contexts for this study are also presented. In addition, the rationale for this study is described and
the theoretical framework for this research is explained, which eventually leads to the research
questions of this study, which are presented toward the end of this chapter.
Literature Review
Chinese language teachers’ education may be particular, while also sharing some of the same
features as other language teachers’ education and mainstream education. As one part of
language teacher education, Chinese language teachers’ education may face the same challenges
and share the same principles of development. However, the Chinese language is typologically
different from the European languages, which have long been the main foreign languages taught
in the United States (e.g., Spanish, French, German). Additionally, Chinese culture is distinct
from Western cultures. Thus, Chinese language teacher education may also have its own
distinctive features. However, little research can be found on Chinese language teacher education
in the current literature, so probably not many studies have been conducted in this area. Therefore,
this chapter will discuss the research findings about teachers’ socialization in language teacher
education and mainstream education in general, in order to situate Chinese language teacher
education and this study in the context of teacher socialization.

19

The Role of Teachers’ Backgrounds
It has been widely recognized in education that teachers’ prior experience before they are
admitted into a teacher education program has great influence on their teaching. The classical
work by Lortie (1975) identifies teachers’ prior experience as the “apprenticeship of teaching,”
and suggests that many years of observation of teaching as students may play a greater role in
teachers’ learning to teach than their preparation in a teacher education program. Following
Lortie, the influence of teachers’ prior experience on their teaching has been one of the main foci
in teachers’ socialization research (e.g., Achinstein, Ogawa, and Speiglman, 2004; Alhija &
Fresko, 2010; Hammerness, et al., 2005; Zeichner & Gore, 1990). In the studies of teachers’ prior
experience, many kinds of factors have been identified that influence teachers’ socialization into
the teaching profession, for example, predispositions, previously-held beliefs, attitudes, and the
knowledge they have before they enter education programs.
Zeichner and Gore (1990) classified the research on teachers’ socialization into three groups:
•
•
•

influences on teacher socialization prior to formal teacher education;
the socialization role of preservice teacher education;
socialization in the workplace and culture. (p.335-338)

In recent research on new teachers’ socialization, Achinstein, Ogawa, and Speiglman (2004)
also identified the importance of teachers’ backgrounds and local school contexts in teachers’
socialization, but they differed from Zeichner and Gore (1990) in that they included another
factor that they think may shape teachers’ socialization—state policy environments.
Similarly, the importance of teachers’ prior language experience and other factors in their
backgrounds has also been recognized in language teacher education (e.g., Bartels, 2005a, 2005b;
Crooks, 1997b; Farrell, 2009; Freeman & Freeman 1994; Johnson, 2009; Lantolf & Johnson,

20

2007). Freeman and Freeman (1994) listed a number of factors that shape language teachers’
teaching—the teachers’ own second/foreign language learning experience, their beliefs about
language learning and teaching, language teacher education programs, local school context,
updates about new ideas, accessible teaching materials, and their students.
While all these factors are recognized to influence language teachers’ teaching, another
factor that has impact but has not been discussed much in this literature is language teachers’
own linguistic backgrounds. Compared to teachers of other disciplines, language teachers are
distinctive in that language is both the medium and the target of their instruction. The target
languages and their cultures that language teachers are teaching are also different from their
students’ native languages and cultures. Thus, language plays a special role in language teachers’
instruction. For example, research on language teacher education makes a distinction between
native speakers and nonnative speakers in language teachers (e.g., Borg, 2006; Braine, 1999;
Nemtchinova, 2005). That is, language teachers’ own linguistic backgrounds also affect their
teaching, and the ways they view themselves—and how others, including their students, view
them—as teachers (Liu, Sellnow, & Venette, 2006; Nemtchinova, 2005).
Some nonnative TESOL student teachers noted that the biggest obstacle in their teaching
was caused by their English proficiency, so they were not confident while they were teaching
(Brinton, 2004). Widdowson (1994) claimed that for TESOL teachers, “native speaker expertise
is assumed to extend to the teaching of the language. They not only have a patent on proper
English, but on proper ways of teaching it as well” (p. 387-388). However, research found
nonnative speaking teachers did as well as native speaking teachers (e.g., Liu, Sellnow, &
Venette, 2006). The teachers in such studies (e.g., Borg, 2006; Braine, 1999; Nemtchinova, 2005)
were often ESL (English as a second language) teachers or teacher candidates in TESOL

21

programs who may teach English as a second language or as a foreign language. Not much
research has been done to investigate the roles of other foreign language teachers’ own linguistic
and cultural backgrounds in teacher socialization.
Even less research has been found on Chinese language teachers in U.S. mainstream schools.
A few studies of Chinese as a heritage language or of Chinese community schools mention that
their Chinese language teachers are predominantly from China and Taiwan (e.g., CurdtChristiansen, 2006; Huang, 2003; Linnell, 2001; Liu, 2006; Tang & Yao, 2001; Wang, 1996).
For example, Tang and Yao’s (2001) survey of Chinese community schools in the East of the
U.S. showed that by 1998, 58% of their teachers were from Taiwan, 29.6% from China
(mainland, not including Hong Kong SAR), and only 0.4% from the U.S. Tang and Yao (2001)
noted that for teachers in Chinese community schools, their instructional methods and the
homework they assigned to students were heavily influenced by their cultural and educational
backgrounds, although they had been in the U.S. for different amounts of time. However, the
analysis of the influence of teachers’ backgrounds on their teaching is very brief in Tang and Yao
(2001). Many of the teachers in Chinese community schools have been in the U.S. for a while,
and they may choose to receive certificates in order to teach in U.S. public schools. These
teachers may have different socialization processes while they are teaching in U.S. public schools,
compared to Chinese teachers who come to the U.S. very recently.
However, even less information is available on how Chinese language teachers’ different
cultural and ethnic background influence their teaching and socialization in U.S. public schools.
The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) noted that around 5% of
its members were Chinese language teachers in April 2009 (ACTFL, 2009), but no information
was offered about the cultural backgrounds of these teachers. However, the exemplary teaching

22

videos on the website (www.learner.org) that illustrate the applications of ACTFL standards in
foreign language teaching reveal that some Chinese language teachers are of Chinese ethnic
background. Since 2007, the College Board and China’s National Office for Teaching Chinese as
a Foreign Language (Hanban) have been working together to bring guest/volunteer Chinese
language teachers from China to U.S. schools (the College Board, 2008). Furthermore, some
Chinese teacher certification programs (e.g., at UCLA) in the U.S. admit teacher candidates who
are both U.S. and non-U.S. citizens. Wang’s (2009) survey on Chinese language teachers in the
2

STARTALK programs from 2007 to 2008 indicates that an overwhelming majority of Chinese
language teachers in these programs are native speakers who immigrated to the U.S.; a very small
number of Americans of Chinese heritage joined STARTALK Chinese programs, only 3.56% of
a total of 222 Chinese teachers in 2007.
The literature reviewed above tells us that Chinese language teachers are diverse in the U.S.
and in U.S. K-12 schools. Some of them are from China, and they have been in the U.S. for
various amounts of time, short or long. To my knowledge, there are also Chinese language
teachers who are European Americans. In addition, some Chinese teachers are from Taiwan.
Meanwhile, although the number is very small (e.g., Wang, 2009), some American-born-Chinese
are beginning to choose to become Chinese language teachers in the U.S. Chinese language
teachers’ different cultural, ethnic, and educational backgrounds may influence their instruction
and their learning to teach in U.S. public schools in distinct ways when they are compared to
each other. However, I have not found any research examining how Chinese language teachers’
different cultural and ethnic backgrounds influence their teaching in U.S. public schools.
Therefore, research is needed to investigate this aspect of Chinese language teacher education.
2

For more information about STARTALK, please refer to http://startalk.umd.edu/about.
23

The Role of Teacher Preparation Programs
In mainstream education. As the previous section mentioned, teacher preparation programs
are recognized to have an effect on teacher socialization. Zeichner and Gore (1990) further
identified three major components in teacher preparation programs that contribute to teacher
socialization:
•
•
•

General education and academic specialization courses, completed outside schools, departments,
and colleges of education;
Methods and foundations courses, usually completed within education units;
Field-based experiences, usually completed in elementary and secondary school classrooms.
(p.335-336)

In the rest of their review, Zeichner and Gore (1990) found that not much research had been
done to investigate the role of general education and academic courses in teacher socialization;
meanwhile, the research that has been done on the socialization role of methods and foundations
courses often indicates that these courses have weak influences on teachers. In any case, not
much literature has been found on these two aspects yet, and therefore some researchers (e.g.,
Zeichner & Gore, 1990) have cautioned against generalization of these findings.
Comparatively, the socialization role of field-based experiences has received much more
attention than the other two categories established by Zeichner and Gore (1990) in the literature.
Guyton and McIntyre (1990) described “…school experiences as the most important element in
professional education and student teaching as the most universally approved education course”
(p. 514). Valencia, Martin, Place, and Grossman (2009) regard student teaching as a
“cornerstone” of teacher preparation (p. 304).
Research on field-based experiences has found both positive and negative influences on
teachers’ socialization. Some researchers have argued that field-based experiences have weak
and ambiguous influences on teachers’ teaching (e.g., Zeichner & Gore, 1990). Furthermore,
24

during field-based experiences, student teachers are busy learning classroom management, and
opportunities for learning to teach and for reflecting on meaningful issues are therefore lost (e.g.,
Rosaen & Florio-Ruane, 2008; Valencia, et. al., 2009). Last but not least, the disconnection
between university-based teacher education programs and field-based experiences has long been
a problem in the field (e.g., Featherstone, 2007; McIntyre, Byrd, & Foxx, 1996; Zeichner, 2010).
Nevertheless, some studies have found positive influences of field-based experiences on
teachers’ socialization. Achinstein et al (2004) noted that “…preservice programs, especially
those with strong visions of teaching, influence the instructional practices of their graduates” (p.
560). Research has found that teacher education programs, especially field-based experiences and
student teaching, have positive impact on teachers’ teaching and socialization, including
preservice and in-service teachers (e.g., Achinstein, et al., 2004; Darling-Hammond,
Hammerness, Grossman, Rust, & Shulman, 2005; Davis & Moely, 2006; Stuart & Thurlow,
2000).
The field of teacher education has realized that it is necessary to have coherent teacher
education programs and to get local schools and communities involved in the teacher education
process (e.g., Darling-Hammond, et al., 2005; Lawson, 1992; Zeichner, 2010). Zeichner (2010)
used the term “third space” to refer to the “creation of hybrid spaces in preservice teacher
education programs that bring[s] together school and university-based teacher educators and
practitioner and academic knowledge in new ways to enhance the learning of prospective
teachers” (p. 92). Therefore, while teacher education programs are recognized as important to
teachers’ learning to teach and to teacher socialization, the programs need to improve the
coherence of their theoretical foundations and program designs.

25

In language teacher education. Recent socialization research in bilingual and multilingual
contexts has explored children’s socialization both at home and in school settings, and
socialization in the workplace other than school settings (e.g., Bayley & Schecter, 2003; Li, 2000;
Roberts, 2010), but much less has been done on the socialization of teacher candidates. In the
available literature, evidence for the influences of language teacher education programs is mixed.
Some researchers have found that language teacher education programs play an important role in
language teachers’ teaching and socialization (e.g., Bartels, 2005; Crooks, 1997b; Freeman &
Freeman, 1994; Freeman & Richards, 1996; Gebhard, 2009; Singh & Richards, 2009), but others
have demonstrated that language teacher education programs have only weak influence (e.g.,
Farrell, 2009; Freeman, 1994).
Richards and Pennington (1998) and Pennington and Richards (1997) focused on first-year
3

EFL teachers in Hong Kong. Their studies found that in order to adapt to teaching in the local
schools, these teachers gave up much of what they had learned in their TESOL programs,
including some new and innovative language teaching approaches and techniques. Johnson’s
(1996) study of an ESL student teacher’s experience during his/her practicum in a U.S. TESOL
program indicated a gap and tension between the student teacher’s understanding about teaching
because of preparation in the program and actual teaching, so Johnson (1996) pointed out that
“teacher preparation programs that continue to present a theoretical view of teaching, without
recognizing a more realistic one, are in essence sending pre-service teachers into the practicum
ill-prepared to learn to teach” (p. 48). Furthermore, similar to mainstream teacher education,

3

Although English is a foreign language in Hong Kong and Singapore, the authors used “ESL”
instead of “EFL” in the works which are cited in this study. I use EFL teachers to refer to
teachers in these contexts.
26

language teacher education courses are not well connected to student teachers’ teaching (Tedick,
2009).
Although student foreign teachers’ teaching practice indicates varying degrees of influences
of the teacher preparation program, Almarza (1996) found that language teacher preparation
programs played important roles in teachers’ learning to teach by providing them with theories
and with chances to reflect on their learning experiences and teaching practices. A more recent
study by Rankin and Becker (2006) confirmed that reading the research literature and theories
promoted student foreign language teachers’ understanding of teaching and their teaching
practice. Freeman (1996a) found that language education programs facilitated student teachers’
understanding of teaching, although he also proposed that “the teacher education program needs
to involve the teachers-in-training in different contexts of teaching” (p. 237, italics are in
original). Bailey’s (1996) study of a language methods course for ESL and bilingual teachers
showed that student teacher groups’ interaction with each other were very helpful to their
learning. Concentrating on Taiwanese and American graduate students in U.S. TESOL and
Applied Linguistic programs, Ho (2007) discovered that the students’ personalities and the nature
of classroom activities had more impact on their socialization into classroom discourse than their
linguistic and professional backgrounds. However, the study looked at the participants more as
graduate students and focused more on their learning than on their teaching as future teachers.
Some features of language teacher education perceived by researchers (e.g., Burns &
Richards, 2009) may account for the lack of research on the influence of preparation programs on
language teachers. First, language teacher education has long and mainly been developed by
linguists and specialists in language instruction and teacher education, so the research and
discussion has primarily been on the linguistic aspects of teaching and has been “an entirely

27

internal debate” (Burns & Richards, 2009, p. 1). Second, the field has predominantly focused on
two areas for language teacher training—knowledge about language and about language
pedagogy, which people in the field have long believed would be sufficient for teachers to learn
to teach. This trend is typically reflected by the dominant model of language teacher preparation,
“the applied science model,” one of the three models of language teacher training that are
recognized in the field (the other two are “the craft model” and “the reflective model”) (Barduhn
& Johnson, 2009; Johnson, 2009; Wallace, 1995). This model focuses on knowledge about
language and second language acquisition theories and assumes that teachers will know how to
teach a language in the classroom when they are armed with this linguistic knowledge and
theories. Therefore, the influence of language teacher preparation programs on teachers and their
teaching has not been a central focus in the field.
However, although still focusing more on teacher’s knowledge about language (e.g., Bartels,
2005), recent research has found that teachers have difficulties in applying what they have
learned from their teacher preparation programs to their actual teaching. Thus, some researchers
have called for collaboration and connection between language teacher preparation programs and
school communities (e.g., Gebhard, 2009), in order to identify more knowledge and skills
necessary for teachers to transition from preparation programs to practice successfully. Recent
discussion in the field has recognized the importance of contexts in language teachers’ learning
to teach, including contexts for their learning in preparation programs and in their actual teaching
(Hall & Knox, 2009; Legutke & Ditfirth, 2009; Singh & Richards, 2009; Tsui, 2009). People
have further agreed that teacher preparation, like all learning, is a social process, and contexts
have great impact on this process (e.g., Freeman, 2009; Gebhard, 2009; Johnson, 2009; Singh &
Richards, 2009). That is, “professional learning processes were redefined in a broader sense to

28

include not only what happened in instructed teacher-training environments, but also the wider
influences of socialization evident in individual development” (Freeman, 2009, p. 15).
Moreover, researchers have started to identify the importance of teachers’ knowledge from
practice in the teacher preparation process, and to call for a new conception about the knowledge
base of language teacher education (e.g. Johnson, 2009; Singh & Richards, 2009). Lastly, the
field has begun to recognize language teachers’ roles in their learning to teach. Researchers
increasingly perceive language teachers as actively constructing their own socialization processes
in the web of different factors which help shape their socialization. That is, their learning is
“situated,” “constructed,” “collaborative in nature,” and thus an “active process” (Reagan, 2002,
p. 47). However, empirical research is still needed to investigate this process.
In Chinese language teacher education. Because Chinese as a foreign language in K-12
schools has only recently become a topic of interest in the United States, as indicated in chapter
one, little research can be found that has been conducted on teacher preparation programs’
impact on K-12 Chinese language teachers’ teaching and socialization. The field has been
focusing on teaching techniques, pedagogies, or how a certain aspect of Chinese should be taught,
or how learners learn Chinese words from the perspectives of psycholinguistics or cognition (e.g.,
Everson & Xiao, 2009; McGinnis, 1996). When the emphasis has actually been placed on
Chinese language teachers, it has tended to be accounts or reports of personal experience, not
empirical study. For example, Jin (2004) reported a three-stage training framework on Chinese
language teachers’ elicitation techniques. However, Jin’s framework was developed from the
teacher trainers’ own experiences in a teacher training program in the United States; it was not
based on an independent research investigation. Meanwhile, the socialization approach has

29

traditionally not been used to study teachers, but has focused instead on children and students.
For example, some recent studies from the language socialization approach in second language
acquisition have investigated Chinese children’s socialization into Chinese language and culture,
and into American society (e.g., He, 2001, 2006; Jia, 2006; Lei, 2007). However, no research has
been found on the influence of Chinese language teacher preparation programs on Chinese
language teachers’ socialization in the field, although Chinese teacher certification programs
have been in existence for a while at some U.S. universities (e.g., California State University
Long Beach; Rutgers; University of Maryland; UCLA; Wayne State University; William
Paterson University; Teacher’s College at Columbia University; etc.).
The Role of Workplace and Culture
In mainstream education. In the three categories of teacher socialization listed by Zeichner
and Gore (1990), the role of workplace and culture, including local schools, in teachers’
socialization has been discussed and studied most intensively. Zeichner and Gore (1990)
identified various factors in local schools that influence and shape teachers’ socialization:
students, “the ecology of the classroom,” colleagues, schools and communities, macro-level
culture, and educational policies (emphasized by Achinstein et al., 2004). More recent research
has discovered that cooperating teachers or mentors play a significant role in preservice or
beginning teachers’ socialization (e.g., Alhija & Fresko, 2010; Gratch, 1998; Valencia et al.,
2009, Youngs, 2007a). The longitudinal study by Valencia, Place, Matin, and Grossman (2006)
found that curriculum materials facilitate but also inhibit new teachers’ learning to teach. With
their growth of instructional knowledge and skills, new teachers tend to switch their attention
from themselves and students’ behaviors to curriculum, pedagogy, and student learning (Burden,

30

1990; Huberman, 1993). However, “many new teachers who are unable to move beyond
concerns about classroom management and their own adequacy eventually leave the profession”
(Youngs, 2007a, p. 801).
The various factors in schools constitute the contexts for teachers’ learning to teach, which
also in turn influence and shape how and what teachers learn. Britzman (2003) investigated how
student teachers interpret messages and negotiate relationships in their interactions with their
contexts, including their students, cooperating teachers, principals, and colleagues during their
learning to teach and to become teachers. She found that “trying to teach is deeply unsettling and
conflictive because experience itself—what is called in this present study, ‘practice’—is a
paradox, an unanticipated social relation, and a problem of interpretation” (Britzman, 2003, p. 3).
Thus, “learning to teach is not a mere matter of applying decontextualized skills or of mirroring
predetermined images”; instead, “learning to teach is a social process of negotiation rather than
an individual problem of behavior” (Britzman, 2003, p. 31). In the process of learning to teach,
student teachers contantly negotiate and balance their “biography,” “emotions,” and “institutional
structure” in their “struggle for voice” (Britzman, 2003, p. 20), and so “the meanings one makes
from practice are in a state of continual and contradictory reinterpretation as other contexts and
other voices are taken into account or are ignored” (p. 37). This way, Britzman (2003) also
recognized that learning to teach is dynamic. Meanwhile, school contexts and cultures
reconstruct beginning teachers’ professional identities, such that they have different
understandings about what it means to be a teacher at the very beginning of their teaching and at
the end of their first year of teaching (Britzman, 2003; Flores & Day, 2006). However, how
teachers’ knowledge for teaching is influenced, developed, and reconstructed during their
learning to teach in their school contexts remains to be further investigated.

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The cultural influences on teachers’ teaching and socialization have also been recognized
and investigated (Zeichner & Gore, 1990). Spindler and Spindler (1987) compared teaching
cultures between Germany and the United States, and Anderson-Levitt (2002) compared France
and the United States. Their studies made it clear that teaching is embedded in and is
contextualized by the national and macro ethnic/cultural setting in which it occurs. This point is
more salient in the well-known work by Alexander (2000), when he compared the institutional
cultures and classroom teaching practices in five countries—France, Russia, India, England, and
the United States. According to Alexander (2000), “Schools and classrooms are microcultures in
their own right. They mediate messages and requirements coming from above and add some of
their own. And each level is its own kind of window on the large culture” (p. 531). However,
although focusing on teaching in different cultures and countries, none of these studies examined
how new teachers from different cultural backgrounds teaching in the same culture and country
are influenced and perhaps shaped by local schools and communities in their teaching and
socialization.
“Culture” is a complicated concept and both its broad sense and narrow senses are discussed
in teacher education. From an anthropological perspective, “culture” refers to “…values, beliefs,
ideas, institutions, networks of relationships, patterns of behaviour, and artefacts” (Alexander,
2000, p. 163). This concept is often used to discuss cultures in two different countries. “Culture”
in its narrow sense can mean “any sphere of activity to signal its distinctiveness and otherness,”
and when applied to schools, it means “schooling and curricula select from a society’s spectrum
of values and ideas and this selection informs and pervades curriculum, teaching and assessment”
(Alexander, 2000, p. 164). Anthropologists believe that culture is acquired knowledge, and
Anderson-Levitt (2002) proposed that “culture includes tacit as well as explicit knowledge, and

32

values and attitudes as well as propositions and theories. It also includes knowledge-in-practice
and embodied knowledge” (p. 8). However, culture is never neutral. It is “contested, temporal,
and emergent” (Clifford, 1986, p. 19, cited in Britzman, 2003, p. 71). Thus, when teachers are
from a different culture than the host culture and their classrooms, their learning to teach may
become more complicated than the teachers in their home culture, because “…the context of
teaching is political, it is an ideological context that privileges the interests, values, and practices
necessary to maintain the status quo…” (Britzman, 2003, p. 33). Meanwhile, different layers of
cultures may be involved for a teacher from a different cultural background, such as different
cultural expectations for students, student age groups’ cultures, school cultures, community
cultures, and more importantly, different cultural expectations for teaching. Thus, research needs
to be conducted to investigate the cultural influences of learning to teach on teachers from a
different cultural background than the host country and its culture.
Furthermore, the literature on the schools’ roles in teachers’ socialization has focused on the
influence on teachers, but teachers’ own roles have not been closely examined until recently (e.g.,
Britzman, 2003; Pardo, Highfield, & Florio-Ruane, 2011). Britzman (2003) pointed out that
“…learning by experience is a fundamental value in the process of becoming a teacher. Yet this
value is so taken for granted that the underlying structures and assumptions that authorize it are
rarely interrogated” (p. 49). Investigating what teachers “…make happen because of what
happens to them and what it is that structures their practices” (p. 70), Britzman (2003) analyzed
student teachers’ roles in their learning to teach. This is also important, because “marginally
situated in two worlds, the student teacher as part student and part teacher has the dual struggle
of educating others while being educated” (Britzman, 2003, p. 36). That is, student teachers and
perhaps also new teachers are socialized to teach but also are socializing their students to various

33

degrees. However, in addition to these studies, not much research has been found to have
investigated how teachers, including preservice and beginning teachers, make sense of the
various factors and challenges in local schools and how they come up with their own solutions
and teaching.
In language teacher education. Compared to mainstream teacher education, much less
research has been conducted on the roles that local schools play in teachers’ socialization in the
field of language teacher education. Freeman (1996b) commented, “As a field, language teaching
has not been unique in paying little attention to how people come to know what they know and
do what they do as teachers” (p. 353), because “language teaching and language teacher
education have long been an ‘unstudied problem’ in which traditional practices, conventional
wisdom, and disciplinary knowledge have dominated” (p. 374). Meanwhile, similar to
mainstream teacher education, the field of language teacher education has been focusing on
transmiting “knowledge” from teacher preparation programs to student teachers, but teachers’
roles in interpreting the messages that they receive in language teacher education programs and in
their schools had not been studied until the 1990s. As Freeman and Richards (1996) pointed out
in the prologue of their edited book, Teacher Learning in Language Teaching, which is on
language teachers’ perspectives and narratives on their learning to teach,
Although it should be common sense to examine the teacher as pivotal in the enterprise of
teaching and learning, to date questions such as these have been largely overlooked both
in general educational research and in the field of language teaching. (p. 1)
Thus, Freeman (1996b) regarded their edited book as “the first step in establishing a formal
research base for language teacher education” (p.352). Since then on and in their edited book,
some studies on language teachers’ learning to teach in their contexts and their roles in the

34

processes have been conducted. In the studies available, several factors at the local schools—
students, colleagues, mentoring, and local schools’ practices and contexts—have been identified
as important in language teachers’ socialization (e.g., Farrell, 2003, 2006; Freeman & Richards,
1996; Moran, 1996; Johnson & Golombek, 2002; Pennington & Richards, 1997; Richards &
Pennington, 1998; Tsui, 2003).
Moran’s (1996) study of a Spanish teacher’s teaching during her internship showed that the
teacher was shaped by her Spanish learning experience, her observations of other Spanish
teachers, her interactions with Spanish colleages, and students’ reactions. Richards and
Pennington (1998) and Pennington and Richards (1997) found that the teachers they studied
survived by aligning their teaching with their own classrooms and the local educational context.
Tsui’s (2003) comparative study of ESL expert and novice teachers indicated that teaching
expertise is a “developmental” process (p.265). What distinguishes expert teachers from novice
teachers is how they respond to the external and contextual forces that shape their development,
and “…the problematization of what appears to be unproblematic, and the effort and energy that
they put into tackling the problem…” (p.272). Farrell’s (2003, 2006) single case study of a first
year ESL teacher in Singapore showed that collegial support was the most important factor in the
teacher’s successful socialization in the local school because the teacher made efforts to balance
among teaching approaches, course content, and collegial relationships in the local school.
Because of the challenges and difficulties in addressing all of the various factors found to
influence language teachers’ socialization, researchers call for the alignment of language teacher
preparation programs and local school contexts or collaboration between the programs and the
local schools (e.g., Farrell, 2009; Richards & Pennington, 1998; Schulz, 2000).

35

However, more research tends to have been conducted on ESL/EFL teachers in the U.S. and
other parts of the world than on foreign language teachers’ actual teaching in the U.S. Richards
and Pennington’s studies and Tsui (2003) were conducted in Hong Kong, and Farrell’s (2003,
2006) were in Singapore. In the 15 empirical studies in Freeman and Richards’ edited book,
seven were about language teachers in the U.S., and the other eight were about ESL/EFL teachers
in U.K., Canada, Australia, and Hong Kong. Still four of the seven research studies were about
ESL teacher candidates. In the three studies about foreign language teachers, two of them focused
on student teachers’ learning in the language teacher education programs (Freeman, 1996a;
Knezevic & Scholl, 1996), and only one of them investigated a mid-career Spanish teacher’s
internship in a U.S. high school (Moran, 1996). Not many comparable studies which investigate
socialization of foreign language teachers who are teaching in the U.S. have been found in the
literature. Thus, it is necessary to do research in this area.
This is perhaps partly because of the long-recognized dichotomy between the abstract and
decontextualized knowledge of researchers and the contextualized practices of teachers (Freeman,
2007), but research in the field tends to focus on the former, as the literature reviewed in the
previous section and above indicates. Another reason may be that language teacher education
was only emerging as a field in the late 1960s, so “FL [foreign language] teacher preparation is
still long on rhetoric, opinions, and traditional dogma, and short on empirical research that
attempts to verify or test those opinions or traditional practices” (Schulz, 2000, p. 516-517).
Although language teacher education has come to realize that teacher learning is “…socially
negotiated and contingent on knowledge of self, students, subject, matter, curricula, and setting”
(Johnson, 2009, p. 20), more research on foreign language teacher education still needs to be
conducted.

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In Chinese language teachers’ socialization. As frequently indicated in the previous sections,
little research has been conducted on Chinese language teachers. Few studies can be found on the
role of local schools in Chinese language teachers’ socialization. As far as I know, the only study
in this aspect is an ethnographic study by Romig (2009) on new Chinese language teachers from
China.
Romig (2009) investigated new Chinese teachers’ acculturation while they were teaching
Chinese in a U.S. elementary school from the fall of 2007 to the end of 2008. The study found
that the Chinese teachers moved from Chinese “culturally embedded” approaches in classroom
management and pedagogies at the beginning of their teaching to those that assimilated both
Chinese and American elements. That is, teaching at the local schools influenced and changed
the teachers’ ways of teaching. However, in this study, whether challenges and difficulties the
teachers faced were caused by cultural differences between the U.S. and China or by being a new
teacher was not addressed. Thus, it does not illuminate the questions of whether the challenges
and difficulties the teachers’ had were only typical of new Chinese teachers, or whether
experienced Chinese teachers or new American teachers would also face similar challenges.
Furthermore, pedagogies discussed in the study are general, for example, teacher-controlled vs.
student-centered, and are not situated in SLA. Therefore, to have teacher participants from
different linguistic and cultural backgrounds may help better understand the complex processes
of Chinese language teachers’ socialization; meanwhile, a closer look at the teacher participants’
language teaching and connecting it with SLA may offer more direct insights on Chinese
language teachers’ preparation and language teacher education in general.
The literature reviewed above shows that little research has been conducted to investigate
how Chinese language teachers are socialized into the foreign language teaching profession,

37

while the studies on language teacher education and mainstream education indicate that all kinds
of factors—teachers’ backgrounds, teacher preparation programs, and workplace and culture—
influence and shape teachers’ teaching and socialization. Thus, research is needed to examine
whether these factors also influence Chinese language teachers’ teaching and their socialization.
This study, therefore, investigated how four Chinese language teachers who are from different
ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and educational backgrounds and with various years of teaching
experience were socialized to teach Chinese in U.S. public K-12 schools while they were all
enrolled and learning in a Chinese teacher certification program at a Midwestern university in the
U.S. In the following, I will provide background information for my study first.
Background and Rationale
The rapidly increasing need for Chinese as a foreign language in K-12 schools in the United
States requires a large number of qualified Chinese language teachers, which in turn poses both
opportunities and challenges to Chinese language teacher preparation programs who are serving
not only foreign language teachers, but also serving foreign nationals who relocate to the U.S. to
teach Chinese to U.S. K-12 students. This process is especially difficult because of the efforts
necessary to prepare teachers to meet the demand within a short period of time. It is also difficult
because it is a new enterprise, with neither models nor directly relevant research to inform its
development. Thus, some teacher preparation programs are exploring various alternatives (Ingold
& Wang, 2010), including the Chinese teacher certification program which is the site for this
study. The research presented in this dissertation not only documented one program, but it
addressed needed case study research on the process of individual Chinese teachers’ learning to
teach Chinese in the U.S. classrooms and in an emergent teacher education program, by focusing
on four Chinese language teachers in the same certification program.
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Shortage of Chinese Language Teachers and Solutions
In spite of the increasing enrollment in Chinese as a foreign language in K-12 schools and
colleges and universities, as shown in chapter one, the lack of Chinese language teachers has
become an obstacle to Chinese learning and teaching in the United States (e.g., Arnoldy, 2007;
Chinese Central TV, 2009; Dillon, 2010; Ingold & Wang, 2010; the College Board, 2006; Wang,
2009). Both the 2004 College Board survey and the 2008 CAL survey noted a severe shortage of
qualified Chinese language teachers (the College Board, 2006; Rhodes & Pufahl, 2009). Many
schools that are interested in AP Chinese courses or Chinese programs cannot find a Chinese
language teacher to start such a course or program. As a result, many schools in the United States
and around the world have to limit the enrollment in Chinese courses or are unable to offer
Chinese language courses (Chinese Central TV, 2009).
To solve the problem, the College Board and Hanban signed a five-year agreement in 2006
to bring guest/volunteer Chinese language teachers from China to U.S. schools. The first group
of 37 teachers arrived in January 2007 (the College Board, 2008). Since then, they have brought
more than 325 volunteer teachers to the United States (Dillon, 2010; Ingold & Wang, 2010).
These teachers have assisted in starting and expanding the Chinese language programs in K-12
schools, but there are some limitations in such a practice. First of all, the number of these
volunteer teachers is too small to solve the problem of teacher shortage. By 2007, the U.S. had
only around 300 to 400 qualified Chinese teachers, but there were 2,400 schools which were
interested in offering Chinese classes (the College Board, 2006), so bringing dozens of teachers
from China each year did ameliorate the situation substantially. Second, the teachers from China
only stay for three years, as permitted by their guest worker visas, which negatively affects the
continuity and effectiveness of the programs (Arnoldy, 2007). Third, these Chinese language

39

teachers from China may have very different cultural backgrounds, teaching philosophies and
approaches, and expectations for students compared to those of U.S. teachers, which makes their
teaching in the United States challenging to themselves (Arnoldy, 2007). At the same time,
because of these cultural differences, students may also have very different classroom
experiences compared to their other classes.
Educators and specialists have been looking for a better and more permanent solution to the
problem of the shortage of Chinese language teachers. Some people proposed to train “USbased” teachers to meet the needs (Arnoldy, 2007). “Increasingly, the United States is
recognizing native and heritage speakers of critical languages as major resources for expanding
our world language capacity” (Ingold & Wang, 2010, p. 18). Some people turn to teachers in
Chinese community schools or Chinese heritage learners in the United States, but these teachers
or Chinese speakers are not perfect candidates for a variety of reasons—speaking a dialect other
than standard Chinese, not very motivated to teach, without teacher preparation or certification,
etc. (Arnoldy, 2007). Therefore, U.S. universities (e.g., Rutgers University and California State
University at Long Beach, University of Maryland, UCLA, Wayne State University, etc.) have
recently begun to offer Chinese language teacher preparation programs or certification programs.
The STARTALK programs are another effort by the National Security Language Initiative (NSLI)
to increase the number of world language teachers, including Chinese teachers, and to promote
world language learning and teaching in the U.S.
Meanwhile, the Confucius Institutes in U.S. universities are contributing to Chinese
education and, more importantly, to Chinese language teacher education. Since 2004, around 50
Confucius Institutes have been set up to help with Chinese language teaching and to promote
Chinese language and culture in the United States (Confucius Institute Online). Some of these

40

institutes only assist the Chinese language courses in local schools, and these institutes are
usually jointly founded by a U.S. university and a Chinese university (e.g., the Confucius
Institute at New Mexico State University). Others are affiliated with a department of teacher
education or language education and jointly sponsor Chinese language teacher certification
programs, for example, the Chinese teacher certification program at UCLA. In this study, the
four focal Chinese language teachers were in a Chinese certification program similar to that at
UCLA, which will be described in detail in the following.
Interns or New Teachers?
The teacher candidates in the Chinese teacher certification program in this study are in a
position which is different from that of either traditional interns or first-year teachers in the
literature. In the United States, field experience or student teaching has been required for teacher
certification in many states since the 1920s (Guyton & McIntyre, 1990). The connotations and
implications of field experience, student teaching, and internship may not be the same in
different teacher certification programs in the United States. Some teacher education students
have to have many hours of early field experience before they do their student teaching, and
student teaching typically lasts from seven weeks to sixteen weeks in the United States (Guyton
& McIntyre, 1990). Huling-Austin (1990) believes that internships are designed for those who
begin to teach without traditional teacher education preparation. During the late 1980s and early
1990s, some teacher education programs began to add a fifth year of internship to their programs
(Conway & Clark, 2003; Guyton & McIntyre, 1990; McIntyre, Byrd, & Foxx, 1996), for example,
the Cincinnati Initiative for Teacher Education at the University of Cincinnati (Wulf, 1997), and
the Oxford Internship Scheme (Benton, 1990). Some programs have their teacher candidates
teach for a couple of weeks in local schools and come back to the teacher education programs to
41

reflect on their teaching in the following weeks, and then go back to teach in the same local
schools (e.g., Lougbran & Russell, 1997). Still others require the teacher candidates to have
“guided lead teaching” in a fall semester and “lead teaching” in a spring semester, while
supervised by a faculty member or doctoral student in the program (Conway & Clark, 2003).
These teacher candidates are called “interns” (e.g., Conway & Clark, 2003; Feiman-Nemser &
Beasley, 1997), “pre-service teachers” (e.g., Chaliès, Bruno-Méard, Méard, & Bertone, 2010),
“student teachers” (e.g., Lougbran & Russell, 1997) or “prospective teachers” (Lougbran &
Russell, 1997). Interns usually have full teaching responsibilities for only a limited period of their
internship year or only limited or partial responsibilities in the classrooms.
The terms new teachers, beginning teachers, or novice teachers are used in the literature to
refer to those who are certified to teach, but are in the first one to three years of their teaching
careers. These teachers take full teaching responsibility in their classrooms. Many statistics have
been reported that a large number of new teachers leave their teaching careers and switch to other
professions within the first five years, so school districts have begun to provide some assistance
to teachers to reverse this trend (e.g., Strong, 2009). Nowadays, especially in their first year of
teaching after the 1990s, new teachers usually have an orientation at the beginning, get some
assistance from a veteran teacher, and attend teacher development workshops while they are held
fully responsible for their own classes. The field of teacher education usually names such
assistance to in-service teachers “induction,” although researchers’ conceptions about teacher
induction may vary.
A comparison of interns and new teachers in the literature helps explain that the four
teachers in this study and their cohort were interns, but were also treated as new teachers. They
were still taking courses from the teacher certification program for their teaching certificates

42

while they were teaching. The teacher candidates were teaching to fulfill the requirements for
field experiences stipulated by the teacher certification program, so they had instructors and field
instructors from the program. Because they were not certified yet, they were teaching with a
provisional license in the local schools during the study, although three of them had some prior
teaching experience (detailed information about the teachers will be provided in chapter three).
However, they were assigned mentor teachers as if they were in their induction year instead of
cooperating teachers that regular interns have. They assumed full responsibilities for their
classrooms for the full internship year instead of the limited period of full responsibilities that
interns usually have. Furthermore, they were also required to attend professional development
workshops for new teachers offered by the school districts. These features are actually
characteristics of new teachers’ induction. Therefore, the four teachers in this study were actually
in a mixed situation which combined the practices for both interns and new teachers. They were
interns performing new teachers’ responsibilities. For convenience, I use “new teachers” to refer
to these teachers, and the literature about both interns and new teachers is referenced in this study.
To investigate their socialization into the foreign language teaching profession in the U.S., I
deliberated on the relevant theories and selected a theoretical framework for this study, which I
will elaborate in the following.
Theoretical Framework
The particularities of Chinese language teacher education in the U.S. and the Chinese
teacher candidates in this research study led me to adopt the interactive perspective on teacher
socialization proposed by Zeichner and Gore (1990). I used this perspective in order to capture
both the special and common features of Chinese language teachers’ socialization processes.

43

Zeichner and Gore (1990) reviewed the literature on teacher socialization and came up with
their interaction approach. They classified the traditions in educational socialization research into
three approaches—“functionalist,” “interpretive,” and “critical” (p. 329). According to Zeichner
and Gore (1990), “Functionalism is a view characterized by a concern with providing
explanations of the status quo, social order, consensus, social integration, solidarity, need
satisfaction, and actuality” (p. 330). However, the interpretive approach searches for
“…explanation ‘within the realm of individual consciousness and subjectivity, within the frame
of reference of the participant as opposed to the observer of action’ ” (Burrell & Morgan, 1979, p.
28, cited in Zeichner and Gore, 1990, p. 330). Both the functionalist and interpretive approaches
have strengths but also weaknesses, so Zeichner and Gore (1990) proposed an interactive
approach which combines the strengths of these two approaches. This study adopts this
interactive perspective on the socialization approach in educational research.
Teacher Socialization
Teacher socialization has traditionally been defined as “the process whereby the individual
becomes a participating member of the society of teachers” (Zeichner & Gore, 1990, p. 329).
However, according to Zeichner and Gore (1990), this concept is too narrow and limited, because
it only focuses on how teachers are socialized into the teaching profession but neglects how
teachers also counter-influence their environments and the teaching profession. To recognize
teachers’ agency in the socialization process, Zeichner and Gore (1990) characterized “…the
socialization process as contradictory and dialectical, as collective as well as individual, and as
situated within the broader context of institutions, society, culture, and history” (p. 343). In this
study, I draw on this conceptualization to investigate the four focal teachers’ socialization, and I
use its corresponding theoretical perspective proposed by Zeichner and Gore (1990) to study how
44

the four teachers were socialized and might also have had some impact on the teaching
environments they were in, which is discussed below.
Theoretical Perspective
The three traditional approaches of teacher socialization research mentioned above have
different purposes, and therefore concentrate on only certain aspects in their investigations of
teacher socialization, which do not cover the two aspects of teacher socialization I planned to
examine in this study—teachers’ socialization into the profession and teachers’ counter-influence
on the profession or their contexts. The traditional perspective on teacher socialization, the
functionalist, makes an effort to discover and explain the general tendencies and patterns in
teacher socialization. It has been dominant in the study of teacher socialization until recently (e.g.,
Achinstein, Ogawa, & Speiglman, 2004; Aljija & Fresko, 2010; Britzman, 2003; Zeichner &
Gore, 1990). However, the functionalist perspective neglects teachers’ individual socialization
processes or how they develop in these processes. The interpretive perspective on teacher
socialization aims to “understand the fundamental nature of the social world at the level of
subjective experience” (Zeichner & Gore, 1990, p. 330), but this perspective may not able to
address some general features of socialization. The more recent critical approach focuses on
“transformation,” and aims at “…increasing justice, equality, freedom, and human dignity” by
examining power and control issues such as gender, class, and race in teacher education
(Zeichner & Gore, 1990, p. 331). Therefore, the functionalist and interpretive perspective focus
on focus on one but neglect the other aspect of teacher socialization, while the critical approach
focus on only some particular characteristics of teacher socialization.
Because of the limitations of the three perspectives, I turned to the more comprehensive
approach on teacher socialization by Zeichner and Gore (1990). Zeichner and Gore (1990)
45

criticized the weaknesses in the functionalist and interpretive studies on teacher socialization and
advocated an interactive perspective of teacher socialization. According to them, functionalist
studies “…fail to illuminate the diversity present in individual stories of teacher development” (p.
341). Meanwhile, the interpretive research “…has caused us to lose sight of many of the more
collective aspects of the socialization process, of patterns in teacher socialization for particular
subgroups of teachers, and of the social and political contexts within which the socialization
process occurs” (p. 341). Zeichner and Gore (1990) believe that teacher socialization research
should explore “…both uniqueness and commonality in the socialization of teachers” (p. 341).
Therefore, they proposed an interactive perspective of teacher socialization which posits that
“…teachers influence and shape that into which they are being socialized at the same time that
they are being shaped by a variety of forces at many levels” (p. 341).
I agree with Zeichner and Gore (1990) on the bi-directional nature of teacher socialization,
because I believe that language teachers actively accumulate their knowledge about teaching
rather than stay passive in their contexts and during their socialization processes. They assimilate
all kinds of influences, interpret their experiences of learning to teach and their teaching, and
become who they are. Language teachers “make their own sense of the ideas and theories with
which they are presented in ways that are personal to them…each individual constructs his or her
own reality” (Williams & Burden, 1997, p. 2). The way they teach languages “…is influenced by
the effects of the social structures in which they are embedded, which create them, and which
they in turn create” (Crooks, 1997, p. 73). That is, language teaching is bidirectional. Language
teachers are not just socialized into the pre-existing language teaching profession. Their
understandings and insights about language teaching also contribute to the field about how
languages should be taught so that new theories come into being and the field of language teacher

46

education develops. Therefore, my own belief about language teacher education, my
understanding of Chinese language teacher education in the U.S., and the purpose of my study
led me to choose the theoretical framework proposed by Zeichner and Gore (1990).
Furthermore, Zeichner and Gore (1990) pointed out that identifying the intellectual tradition
helps researchers form and understand research questions, select research methods, and analyze
and interpret their data. This study does not focus on power relations in terms of race, gender, or
class in the focal teachers’ socialization, and thus the critical perspective of teacher socialization
identified by Zeichner and Gore (1990) is not used. Instead, this study investigates the focal
teachers’ socialization processes and aims to find what roles the teachers themselves played in
their socialization into the foreign language teaching profession. Thus, research questions are
constructed under the guidance of Zeichner and Gore’s (1990) interactive perspective on teacher
socialization in order to achieve my research purposes. These questions are described below.
Research Questions
The following are the research questions for this study. The questions were constructed to
investigate the four Chinese language teachers’ knowledge of teaching and its development
during their first year of teaching Chinese in U.S. public K-12 schools while they were learning
to teach in a Chinese teachers’ certification program at a Midwestern university in the United
States, in order to study their socialization into the foreign language teaching profession.
Specifically they are the following:
1. What is the four beginning language teachers’ knowledge of teaching Chinese in the U.S.
in terms of the components of teacher knowledge as conceptualized in the U.S. teaching
and teacher education literature (as reviewed in chapter one)?

47

2. How was their teacher knowledge shaped and developed in their socialization in the first
year of teaching in the teacher certification program that formed the context for this study?
3. How do the beginning teachers of Chinese make sense of their socialization processes?
4. What similarities and/or differences exist in their challenges due to being from different
linguistic and cultural backgrounds?
5. What are the implications of these teachers’ socialization for the growing need for and
concern about Chinese language teachers’ education in the U.S.?
These research questions help examine both particular and common characteristics in the
four teachers’ development and socialization into the foreign language teaching profession in
their first year of teaching, which I hope can help educators and the field to understand the
complexities of Chinese language teacher education. Moreover, these research questions and the
conceptual framework helped me to choose the case study approach as the right research method
for collecting and analyzing data for this particular study. This is because a case study can allow
not only the detailed information and data analysis and interpretation of individual cases, but also
patterns and tendencies at the macro level when various cases are included in a more general case
study, which will be further illustrated in the following chapter.

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CHAPTER 3

RESEARCH DESIGN AND ANALYSIS

This chapter describes the research methods used for this study and the reasons why I used
the case study method in relation to my research questions and the theoretical framework.
Consistent with the case study method, I selected participants and collected and analyzed data for
this study, which is also reported in this chapter.
Research Methods and Rationale
With the guidance of Zeichner and Gore’s (1990) interactive perspective on teacher
socialization, I designed this project to be a case study of new Chinese language teachers’
development of their teacher knowledge and their socialization into the foreign language teaching
profession in the United States in their first year of teaching. Because the interactive perspective
on teacher socialization has two sides—general patterns from the functionalist side and particular
processes of the interpretive side—this study includes multiple cases from the teacher
certification program to investigate to meet the requirements of the theoretical framework: to
investigate the teachers’ individual socialization processes and to examine patterns of their
socialization. While each of the teachers is an individual case, the four of them also comprise a
more general case study of the Chinese teachers’ certification program. Meanwhile, each of the
teachers is compared with the other three to investigate whether they have some common and/or
particular challenges in their socialization because of their different linguistic and
cultural/ethnical backgrounds, because one of them is a European American, one is Chinese but
has become a U.S. citizen, one is from China, and the fourth one is from Taiwan.
Case studies have become increasingly important in qualitative research (Stake, 2000). In the
multiple definitions of case study research from different perspectives, the traits such as
“boundedness or singularity, in-depth study, multiple perspectives or triangulation, particularity,
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contextualization, and interpretation” are recognized as important in case studies (Duff, 2008, p.
23). In education, Gall, Gall, and Borg (2003) asserted that case study research is “the in-depth
study of instances of a phenomenon in its natural context and from the perspective of the
participants involved in the phenomenon” (p. 436). In TESOL, case studies are those that “…
aimed [aim] at understanding a bounded phenomenon by examining in depth, and in a holistic
manner, one or more particular instances of the phenomenon” (Chapelle & Duff, 2003, p. 163164). Yin (2006) believes that the case study method can achieve more “in-depth” understanding
of a case in its “real-life” situations, and it is “best applied when research addresses descriptive or
explanatory questions and aims to produce a firsthand understanding of people and events” (p.
111-112). Case studies in SLA in the early period often concentrated on learners’ acquisition, but
recently, case studies tend to focus on students’ and teachers’ development, their identities’, and
language policy implementation (Chapelle & Duff, 2003).
The interactive perspective on teacher socialization involves both detailed interpretation at
the micro level and analysis of patterns and tendencies at the macro level, so case studies are
necessary to achieve these research goals. On the one hand, the interpretive side of the interactive
perspective is oriented toward an understanding of the “interpretive accounts” of individual
teachers’ development, and it focuses on both the “diversity” and “unique elements” in the cases
(Zeichner & Gore, 1990, p. 341). Thus, the case study method is the right research approach to
describe the details and complexities of individual teachers’ development and socialization. On
the other hand, the functionalist side of the interactive approach tends to concentrate on the
“collective aspects,” “patterns in teacher socialization,” and the institutional, cultural, social, and
political “…contexts within which the socialization process occurs” (Zeichner & Gore, 1990, p.
341). Thus, it is necessary to have various cases in their contexts to capture the wide variety of

50

the phenomenon so that patterns may be identified. This is also in accordance with the case study
method, because “case researchers seek both what is common and what is particular about the
cases…” (Stake, 2000, p. 438). Therefore, this study includes diverse cases in order to have
detailed interpretive descriptions of the Chinese language teachers’ socialization, and to help
promote a more general depiction and understanding of Chinese language teacher education.
An understanding of the nature of this study leads to my choices of participants. Stake (2000)
listed three types of case study: “intrinsic case study,” “instrumental case study,” and “collective
case study” (p. 437). I classify this study as instrumental. The four focal teachers in this study
have different linguistic and cultural/ethnic backgrounds, which not only parallels the different
types of teacher candidates in this particular teacher certification program, but also can help us to
understand the complexities in their processes of learning to teach in the United States.
Meanwhile, the Chinese teacher certification program involved in this study may look different
from traditional teacher preparation programs in that it combined both an internship and firstyear teaching for its Chinese teacher candidates, but it may be a common feature of many
programs of Alternative Routes to Certification in the U.S. (Ingold & Wang, 2010). How such a
practice influenced the teacher candidates’ socialization into the foreign language teaching
profession is unclear and needs investigation.
In the mean time, my knowledge about the field led me to assume that Chinese language
teachers from different linguistic, cultural/ethnic, and educational backgrounds, who have lived
in the U.S. for different amounts of time and have various years of prior teaching experience,
may have common but also particular challenges so that their socialization into the foreign
language teaching profession in the United States will be diverse and will reveal different levels
of complexity involved in the processes of becoming a Chinese language teacher. Furthermore,

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Chinese as a foreign language in U.S. K-12 schools is a new issue. I hope my study can help
promote understanding of Chinese language teachers’ preparation and can contribute to the field
of language teacher education. That is, studying the four new Chinese language teachers may
“…provide insight into an issue or to redraw a generalization” (Stake, 2000, p. 437). Thus, from
the perspective of these purposes and goals, this study is an instrumental case study in Stake’s
(2000) conceptions.
With these understandings, four Chinese language teachers from different linguistic, cultural,
educational, and ethnic backgrounds were selected from their cohort in the certification program
as the focal participants for this case study. How cases are selected for a study is essential in case
studies, because “a good case study design, at a minimum, involves defining your case, [and]
justifying your choice of a single-case or multiple-case study…” (Yin, 2006, p. 114). These four
teachers reflected the gender, linguistic, cultural, and ethnic diversity of the cohort they were in;
as Stake (2000) noted, “The cases are expected to represent some population of cases” (p. 446).
Thus, studying their learning to teach can help illuminate the various processes of the cohort’s
socialization, which is the intrinsic side of this case study. Moreover, these teachers’ different
backgrounds might have caused them to experience a variety of socialization processes, which
can shed light on the complexity of language teachers’ education, because “…illustration as to
how a phenomenon occurs in the circumstances of several exemplars can provide valuable and
trustworthy knowledge” (Stake, 2000, p. 444). This reveals the instrumental nature of this case
study.
In addition, the four teachers reflect a good balance of gender from a research perspective.
Two of the selected teacher candidates for this study are male, and the other two are female,
although males may look overrepresented. It is widely known that teachers in K-12 schools are

52

dominantly

female.

Teacher

socialization

research

is

mainly

conducted

by

male

researchers/educators on female teachers, which signifies the power of men over women in
education (Zeichner & Gore, 1990). In this study, the researcher is a female, and the teacher
participants’ genders are balanced to mitigate and eliminate the traditional imbalanced power and
gender issues in educational socialization research. Although a female instead of male novice
teacher from China for this study would better parallel teachers’ gender in the field, the only
female novice teacher in my interns/new teachers taught mainly kindergarten and elementary
school children. However, because I focused on secondary Chinese language teachers, I included
a male novice teacher. Therefore, the sample is appropriate for the research purposes of this study.
Detailed information about the focal participants and other participants is provided in the
following section.
The Chinese Teacher Certification Program
The Chinese teacher certification program in this study is a collaborative effort by a
Department of Teacher Education and a Confucius Institute (CI) in a Mid-Western University in
the United States. Different from traditional language teacher education programs, this program
should be classified as an Alternative Routes to Certification (ACRs). This program admits
teacher candidates who are proficient in Chinese and English. The candidates can have their
Bachelor’s degrees from a variety of disciplines or can be certified teachers in other subjects,
both from overseas and from the United States. If the teacher candidates have no prior
experiences in American schools or the United States, they are required to have preparation in
cultural differences and U.S. teaching approaches in China before the teacher candidates come to
the United States in the summer. Many teacher candidates admitted into the program from China

53

do not have such experiences, so they have the required preparation before they come to the
United States. Therefore, the teacher candidates in the program have diverse academic and
teaching backgrounds.
This three-year program requires the teacher candidates to take academic courses and have
field experiences. In the first year, the teacher candidates take two academic courses in the
summer, and they begin to teach Chinese with a provisional license in K-12 schools near the
university from the fall to the summer of the following year. This first-year teaching is required
by their field experience courses (one course for each semester) and is supervised by course
instructor(s), field instructor(s), CI administrators, and the local schools/school districts. If the
teacher candidates pass the field experience courses, they come back to the campus to take
courses with the incoming new cohort in the summer, and they go back to the schools to teach in
the fall of the second year while they are taking other required courses from the program. Toward
the end of second year or in the third year, the teacher candidates have their panel review (a final
comprehensive exam) and get their teaching certificate to teach Chinese as a foreign language in
K-12 schools in the United States, if they can successfully pass all tests and evaluations.
Altogether the teacher candidates should accumulate 24 credits within the three years.
The teacher candidates are in different situations while they are teaching Chinese in K-12
schools in their first year. They teach in a variety of Chinese programs in elementary and
secondary schools. Some teach Chinese immersion programs or Chinese language and culture in
elementary schools. Some teach Chinese as a foreign language in middle and high schools. Still
others teach in certain particular programs in a school district, for example, an International
Baccalaureate program or a long-distance program. Often these teacher candidates teach in more
than one school. The teacher candidates are also provided with mentor teachers from the local

54

schools or school districts where they are teaching, in addition to their field instructor(s) from the
program, but their mentor teachers are also from different disciplinary or work backgrounds.
In the program I studied, some mentor teachers teach other foreign languages or other
disciplines (e.g., social studies) in the same local schools with the teacher candidates. Some
mentor teachers are from the school districts, and there are mentor teachers who are from an
Intermediate School District (ISD). These mentor teachers may be administrators instead of
teachers, and they are selected to serve as mentor teachers because they have certain experiences
of working with people from China or Taiwan who have been in the U.S. for various amounts of
time. How the mentor teachers work with the teacher candidates varies. Usually the mentor
teachers may observe the teacher candidates’ teaching a couple of times each semester, answer
the teacher candidates’ questions, and help the teacher candidates with their lesson plans,
classroom management, or assessment.
However, how the teacher candidates should work with their field instructors is specified in
the syllabi for the “Field Experiences” courses. The course syllabi, materials, and resources are
provided to the teacher candidates through a learning website developed by the program. The
website is also one of the main media for communication between the teacher candidates and
their field instructors, and among the teacher candidates themselves. The cohort and their courses
are grouped so that they can discuss and learn from each other in their groups online. The teacher
candidates are required to submit their course assignments, for example, their teaching journals
and their teaching videos reflections, to this website every week. The teacher candidates are also
required to have weekly online meetings with their field instructors. With the guidance and
supervision of the course instructor(s) and the program leaders, their field instructors give the
teacher candidates feedback and advice on their teaching journals and teaching videos, and also

55

at online meetings. In the middle and at the end of each of the two semesters, their field
instructors meet with one or two of their school representatives (usually the teacher candidates’
mentor teachers or principals) and the teacher candidates themselves, in online conferences to
evaluate the teacher candidates’ teaching. After the evaluation conferences, the field instructors
report the evaluation results to the course instructors and the Chinese teacher certification
program. The courses of field experience are evaluated on a pass/fail basis. The course
instructors decide whether the teacher candidates pass the courses or not, and they submit the
grades to the university at the end of each semester.
Although the Chinese Teacher Certification Program in this study is a program of
Alternative Routes to Certification (ACRs), it is necessary to study Chinese teachers’ learning to
teach in such programs. First of all, because of the severe shortage of Chinese language teachers
for K-12 schools in the U.S., alternative Chinese teacher certification programs are considered as
critical to solve the problem (Ingold & Wang, 2010). According to the statistics of the National
Foreign Language Center (NFLC), “…the United States has 451 teacher preparation programs
for Spanish, 373 programs for French, 235 programs for German, and 77 programs for Latin,”
but has only 50 Chinese teacher preparation programs (Ingold & Wang, 2010, p. 19). Second,
other world languages, especially other critical languages, are also developing their ACRs
programs, because the overall ratio of students in higher education who enroll in foreign
language classes is low, only 8.6% as shown in a MLA survey in the year 2006, but “more than
half of these were enrolled in Spanish, with only about 11 percent of language enrollees studying
critical languages” (Ingold & Wang, 2010, p. 18). Thus, studying a Chinese ACRs program may
shed light on the other ACRs world language programs. Third, ACRs programs have been
playing important roles in U.S. education. The statistics show that around 30% of new teachers

56

working in the U.S. received their teaching certificates from ACRs programs (Feistritzer &
Chester, 2002), and from 2007 to 2008, ACRs programs of all disciplines, which covered all 50
states and the Districts of Columbia in the U.S., prepared 62, 000 certified teachers for the U.S.
(Feistritzer, 2009). Thus, investigating Chinese language teachers’ socialization may also
contribute to the field of ACRs and teacher education in general.
Participants
There were two types of participants—the focal participants and other participants. The focal
participants were the four Chinese language teachers. While they were the focus of this study,
other participants who worked closely with these teachers in the four teachers’ first year of
teaching were also included in order to have a comprehensive and deep understanding of the
teachers’ socialization.
The Four Chinese Language Teachers
The four focal teachers whose learning and practice were examined in this study are from
different cultural/ethnical backgrounds. One is a Chinese male from China who arrived in the
U.S. only around two months before he started teaching Chinese at three U.S. high schools. One
of them is a European American who was born and educated in the U.S. The third one is a
Chinese female who grew up and was educated in China, but has been in the U.S. for around ten
years and has become a U.S. citizen. The fourth is from Taiwan and identifies herself as
Taiwanese. She had been in the U.S. for six years prior to the study. All four teachers taught
Chinese as a foreign language in middle and high school in different school districts in the same
state, from the fall of 2009 to the spring of 2010, as part of the teacher preparation program in
which they were all enrolled. The study compared the four teachers’ experiences and ways of

57

making sense of them as part of investigating the development of their teacher knowledge and
their socialization processes during this period and in this program.
These four teachers were selected for this study for a number of reasons. First, the cohort
that they were in was diverse in the Chinese teachers’ certification program, so choosing these
four teachers from each distinct group in the same cohort helps us to understand the complexities
of the cohort’s socialization. Second, these teachers were educated in different cultural and
linguistic contexts, and they have lived in the U.S. for different amounts of time. Moreover,
Chinese is either their native or second language. All of these factors may influence how they
viewed and taught Chinese, how they interpreted the various messages during their socialization,
and how they were socialized into the foreign language teaching profession in the U.S. Third, this
group of four teachers closely parallels the diversity of practitioners who are actually teaching
Chinese in the U.S., so focusing on them may shed light on the complex issue of Chinese
teachers’ socialization and language teacher education in general in the U.S. The types of
development and differences will be further illustrated in the following chapters and sections.
The four focal teachers in this study were admitted into the Chinese teacher certification
program in the beginning of 2009. All of them had at least a bachelor’s degree from a university
in Taiwan, China, or the United States, but in a variety of disciplines. They took two courses in
the program in the summer of 2009. One course was about approaches and methods of teaching
Chinese as a foreign language, and the other was about curriculum in its socio-cultural context in
the United States. In August 2009, they did team teaching in the Chinese Summer Camp, which
was organized by the Confucius Institute to teach Chinese to American K-12 students for about
two weeks. In the fall of 2009 these four teacher candidates began to teach Chinese with a
provisional teaching license and assumed the full responsibilities for their Chinese teaching in K-

58

12 schools, mainly secondary schools, in school districts which are close to the university
campus where the Chinese teacher certification program was located. This study focused on their
first year of teaching and development, from the fall of 2009 to the end of the spring semester in
2010. For confidentiality, pseudonyms are used for the teachers in this study.
Scott. Scott is a European American in his early thirties. He and his wife have four children.
Scott was born and raised in the state of Pennsylvania. He learned Spanish for a few years and
some Latin in high school. He went to a religious college nearby at the end of his junior year
when he was 17. He majored in English literature and also learned Greek for one semester while
studying the Bible there. He stayed in the college for two years. He decided that he wanted to do
something different and to see the outside world beyond Pennsylvania, so he signed up for the
Army.
Scott was assigned to learn Chinese at the Defense Language Institute. After one and a half
years, he graduated from the program as one of the top two or three students in 1999. Meanwhile,
he completed his Bachelor’s degree in liberal arts with a focus on the Chinese language. From
1999 to 2006 he worked as a translator in foreign affairs in the Army. In 2001, 2003, and 2005,
Scott had the opportunity to work in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing for around one month each
time. When he was in Beijing, he interacted with the local people, for example, taxi drivers, to
learn more about Chinese language and culture. He also went sightseeing, had Hutong tours, and
found some small restaurants in order to understand local Chinese cultures.
Scott left the Army in 2006 and then taught rope courses and environmental education
courses in a non-profit youth camp for two years. In 2008, he applied to the Chinese teacher
certification program and was accepted. Before he started in the program, Scott worked as a long-

59

term substitute teacher in an area close to the university campus in the spring semester of 2009.
He taught mostly high school and only a few days in elementary schools. To have field
experience in teaching Chinese in K-12 schools, as the certification program requires, he got a
job working as a Chinese language teacher at a charter school in a big city in the state, which is
around 80 miles away from the university campus. Scott was directly employed by his school
district, while most of his cohort in the Chinese teacher certification program were hired by the
Confucius Institute and placed in different schools.
From the fall of 2009 to the spring of 2010, Scott taught seven classes at the charter school
each weekday except Wednesdays, when he prepared his lessons, attended staff meetings and
professional development workshops, and did other things. Also he taught two levels of Chinese:
Chinese Exploratory for his three sixth-grade classes and Chinese I for three seventh-grade
classes and one eighth-grade class. Around 90% to 95% of his students were African American.
Fangyi. Fangyi was in her early thirties during this study. She was born and educated in
Taiwan and had been in the United States for six years when this study began in the summer of
2010. She came to the United States with her husband in 2004 when he came to pursue his
doctoral study at the midwestern university where this study was conducted.
Although very interested in English, Fangyi was persuaded by her mother to concentrate on
document processing in a school after she graduated from middle school. She continued her
business concentration when she went to a two-year college, so she graduated with an associate
degree in Business in 1998. Fangyi worked as a saleswoman in Taiwan for three years after her
graduation. Hoping to become a teacher, Fangyi quit her job and learned English in an English
program for one year, because she had excelled in English as a student and wanted to teach

60

English. Fangyi received her certificate in Teaching English as a Second Language in Taiwan in
2001. After that, she began to teach English to K-12 students in an American English school and
some other English programs in Taiwan. In 2004, Fangyi received the Best Teacher Award from
the American English school. Meanwhile, she completed her courses and received her Bachelor’s
degree in Business Administration in 2003.
Soon after she arrived in the United States in 2004, Fangyi began to teach Chinese at a
weekend Taiwanese community school. She started with teaching Chinese to preschool students
and continued to teach the same class for five years. Fangyi learned traditional Chinese
characters in Taiwan and taught both traditional and simplified Chinese characters at the
community school. She also taught other kindergarten Chinese classes at a different Chinese
school in the area. Fangyi actively learned how to teach Chinese by attending some short-term
teacher preparation programs when she traveled back to Taiwan from 2004 to 2009. She studied
Chinese instructional methods, web-based Chinese instruction, and Chinese grammar in these
preparation programs. Fangyi also attended a professional development workshop for Chinese
language teachers sponsored by the Asian Studies Center at the midwestern university in this
study.
Before she was admitted into the Chinese Teacher Certificate Program in 2009, Fangyi had
successfully completed her master’s study and gained her master’s degree in education from the
same department of teacher education which collaborates with the CI for the Chinese teacher
certification program. Therefore, Fangyi had teaching experience in Taiwan and in Chinese
community schools in the U.S. and had background in educational studies when she started the
courses on Field Experience and her first-year teaching in the certification program in the fall of
2009.

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Because of her study in the masters program of the department, Fangyi was not required to
take the two summer courses. From the fall of 2009 to the spring of 2010, Fangyi was assigned to
teach two Interactive TV (ITV) classes each week day at a school which is around 20 miles away
from the university campus. Her students were tenth graders from four different high schools.
Fangyi’s classes were different from those that were taught by the other three teachers in this
study. For one of her two classes, Fangyi had one group of students from one school in her actual
classroom, and another group of students from another school at the remote site who attended the
class by technology. For the other class, Fangyi did not have any students with her in the actual
classroom. There were two students in this class, each from a different and remote school. The
students had to turn in their homework by faxing.
Tianyu. Tianyu was in his early twenties and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Electric
Engineering from a university in China right before he came to the United States in the summer
of 2009. Tianyu was born and grew up in a northwestern city in China. He developed a deep
interest in English and Western cultures when he was a child while he was watching movies from
the West. He learned English on his own by looking up words in a dictionary and imitating
people’s talking on tapes when he was in elementary school. Therefore, when English classes
formally started in his junior high school (seventh grade in China), he had quite a large
vocabulary and could speak English sentences fluently with correct pronunciation and intonation.
He also read extensively, including English magazines and novels, and learned authentic English
speaking and songs from cassette tapes.
He majored in electrical engineering for his undergraduate study at a university in his
hometown, but soon lost interest. He spent more time studying computers and English at the

62

university. He attended the annual English speech contests at his university for two years. As the
best speaker at the university, he was selected to represent the university by participating in the
English contests at the provincial and national levels, and he won many awards and prizes.
During this period, he developed a close relationship with some international teachers at his
university, especially one from the U.S., and he learned much English from this teacher. He was
actively involved in student societies at the university. These activities, especially his volunteer
work at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, helped him decide to go abroad and have a look at the
outside world.
Tianyu applied to the Chinese teacher certification program’s partner in Beijing and soon
was admitted. Then he went to Shanghai for the one-month preparation program, as the Chinese
teacher certification program required. In Shanghai, American staff introduced American
education, schools, and life in the U.S. to Tianyu and other candidates. Although very briefly, the
teacher candidates also had chances to learn about designing lesson plans and to have
demonstration teaching and subsequent analysis. Some Chinese professors were invited to teach
Chinese culture and art. Toward the end of the preparation program, the candidates demonstrated
their teaching and were evaluated. Tianyu passed the evaluation successfully. Before Tianyu
came to the U.S. in the summer of 2009, he also observed an elementary teacher’s Chinese class
in his hometown for about one month, which was arranged by the program.
He came to the U.S. with a majority of his cohort only a couple of days before the two
summer courses started at the university where the Chinese teacher certification program is
hosted in the U.S. Then they were paired to teach classes together in the Summer Camp, which
was sponsored by the Confucius Institute. The students were mostly kindergarten and elementary
school students.

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For the fall semester of 2009, Tianyu was assigned to teach in a school district which was
approximately 80 miles from the University. He taught five classes in three schools. Three
classes were in the same school: two of them were first- and second-year Chinese in an
International Baccalaureate program (correspondingly ninth and tenth grades), and the other was
a first-year Chinese class for a regular ninth grade class. He also taught Chinese in a regular
eighth grade class and in a ninth grade class in two different public high schools. He taught two
classes in the morning and the other three in the afternoon, and he traveled among the three
schools every day from the fall 2009 through the spring of 2010.
Yalan. Yalan was in her early thirties and has been in the U.S. for more than ten years. She
became a U.S. citizen in the spring of 2010. Yalan came to the U.S. with her husband and their
eldest son in 2001. She and her husband have three children. Yalan was born and raised in a
southeast province in China. She focused on International Business in a two-year college, so
many of the courses she took were on English, including listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
After her graduation with an associate degree in 1997, she worked as a translator in an
international business company from 1997 to 2000. Meanwhile, she continued her study in a
well-known University in the south of China and got her Bachelor’s of Law degree in 2000.
Soon after her arrival in the U.S. in 2001, Yalan realized that American culture and practice
were very different from those in China. Hoping to be a good mother, especially in a new and
different cultural setting, Yalan enrolled in a Child Development Associate (CDA) certification
program at a nearby university. With a CDA certificate in 2003, she worked as a pre-school
teacher in a children’s educational center for more than two years. Because of her background,
she was recruited by a Chinese community school in the area and began to teach pre-school

64

students there. She also taught second and third grades in the Chinese school. Hoping to try
something new, Yalan started the AP Chinese course in the Chinese community school in the fall
of 2009. In addition to her teaching in the Chinese community school, she also taught some afterschool Chinese classes at a Recreation and Education center for students from the public schools
in the area.
While most of the Chinese teachers in the program were employed and placed by the
Confucius Institute, Yalan had to work hard to find her placement on her own. In the fall of 2009,
cooperating with a social studies teacher, she taught Chinese language and culture in a social
studies class in a public high school. She and a social studies teacher co-taught social studies
courses to three morning classes in ninth, tenth, and twelfth grades in a public high school. She
also taught various Chinese classes in the two Chinese community schools in her area, including
a class of Chinese as a second language for kindergarten Chinese children who were adopted by
American people and a class of Chinese as a second language at the beginning level for
American children. In addition, she taught one hour after-school Chinese in an education center,
and the students in this class were American kids from several elementary schools.
In the spring of 2010, she switched to another middle school and taught Chinese there on her
own. In the spring semester of 2010, Yalan dropped the social studies courses and began to teach
Chinese as a foreign language on her own in a seventh grade class at a public middle school. She
taught one hour each day, five hours in total at this school each week. There were 17 students,
and 14 of them were boys. The rest of her classes remained almost the same as those in the fall
semester. Therefore, Yalan taught Chinese to students of different age groups for her field
experience, from kindergarten to high school students, from 2009 to 2010.

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The four focal participants’ teaching experience. Although the four teachers were “new” in
the Chinese teacher certification program, three of them had some prior teaching experience in
different teaching contexts. Scott, Fangyi, and Yalan had taught before they were admitted into
the program. Both Fangyi and Yalan had taught Chinese in a Chinese community school in the
United States for a couple of years. Only Tianyu was a fresh graduate from a university in China.
This way, the four focal teachers were different not only in their linguistic, cultural, and ethnic
backgrounds, but also in their professional backgrounds, which reflected the diversity of teachers
in the Chinese teacher certification program.
Other Participants
To understand the teachers’ socialization from different perspectives, this study also includes
the views of and perspectives about the four focal teachers from those who worked with the
teachers and were involved in the teachers’ socialization process: a) the teachers’ mentor teachers;
b) policy-makers, instructors, and administrators of the teacher certification program; and c) I,
myself, as the teachers’ field instructor. They were included in the study because data for case
studies should be varied and from different sources in order to “…seek both what is common and
what is particular about the case…” (Stake, 2000, p. 438). For this purpose, Stake (2000) also
proposed several sources of data:
•
•
•
•
•
•

The nature of the case;
The case’s historical background;
The physical setting;
Other contexts (e.g., economic, political, legal, and aesthetic);
Other cases through which this case is recognized;
Those informants through whom the case can be known. (pp.438-439)

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The previous sections discuss and mention the first five types of data sources, so the data about
the perspectives of the people who worked with the focal teachers is necessary to fulfill the last
type in Stake’s (2000) categories, in order to get a more complete understanding about the
teachers’ socialization processes.
Mentor teachers. The mentor teachers for the four focal teachers were either from the same
local schools or the school districts where the teachers were teaching. They voluntarily signed up
to serve as mentor teachers for these new teachers. How the mentor teachers worked with the
four new Chinese language teachers varied, but all observed the new teachers and helped the new
teachers with their lesson plans and/or classroom management issues.
Scott’s mentor teacher. Scott’s mentor had been an educator for 15 years when she began to
work with Scott in the fall of 2009. She has a B.A. degree in history and a M.A. degree in
Educational Studies. The mentor teacher had been a history teacher, and she worked as the
assistant principal and school consultant while she was serving as Scott’s mentor teacher from
2009 to 2010. She also administrated the foreign language programs at the school, including
Spanish, French, and Chinese programs, so she had the opportunity to visit Taiwan and
investigate Chinese language programs in schools in Taiwan.
Scott and his mentor teacher met once a week along with the rest of the faculty. They also
met one-on-one once a week or every other week. Scott also turned to her for help and advice
when he had questions. In the fall semester, the mentor teacher mainly talked with Scott about
the school’s goals for the Chinese classes, and she was away on maternity leave from November
to December. They worked more on Chinese curriculum development plans at the district level in
the spring semester. The mentor teacher observed Scott’s classes occasionally.

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Fangyi’s mentor teacher. Fangyi’s mentor was from the Intermediate School District, and she
has a Master’s degree in educational psychology. The mentor met with Fangyi every two or three
days before the fall semester began. She drove Fangyi to the school, observed her classes, and
discussed with Fangyi about her teaching after class every day in the first ten days of the fall
semester. After that, they met about once a week. They had fewer meetings in the spring semester,
depending on Fangyi’s teaching. When Fangyi had questions and called her, they talked on the
phone or met in person. The mentor also observed Fangyi’s teaching in order to do Fangyi’s
evaluations that were required by the Chinese teacher certification program.
Tianyu’s mentor teachers. Tianyu was assigned a mentor teacher in the International
Baccalaureate (IB) school. His mentor teacher was a Japanese language teacher, who had been
teaching Japanese for eight years when she became Tianyu’s mentor in 2009. The mentor teacher
had a dual B.A. degree in International Relationships and Japanese Language and Culture from
the university where the Chinese teacher certification program is located. She also received her
post-Bachelor’s teacher certification in Japanese and an M.A. degree in Curriculum and Teaching
from the same university.
However, she was on maternity leave from August to December in 2009. During this period,
Tianyu worked with a substitute teacher who taught English language and literature in this school.
The substitute teacher had a B. A. degree in English and Language Arts and was teaching in her
third year when she worked with Tianyu. The substitute teacher was in Tianyu’s classrooms
when Tianyu was teaching in the IB school, talked with Tianyu after class, and had meetings with
Tianyu for lesson planning. However, she did not travel to the other two schools with Tianyu.

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Although she was not Tianyu’s mentor officially, I included her in the study and took her as
Tianyu’s mentor in the fall, in order to track Tianyu’s development from the very beginning.
In December 2009, Tianyu’s mentor came back to teach, so Tianyu worked with her until
the end of the second semester. His mentor was scheduled to be with him every time he had
Chinese classes in the IB school, but they could only talk while the students were working or a
little after school. They did not have time when they could sit down and meet with each other.
They managed to work together for designing lesson plans and activities. Tianyu also turned to
his mentor when he had questions even if the mentor was not scheduled to meet with him.
Yalan’s mentor teachers. Different from the other three focal teachers, Yalan had two official
mentor teachers, one for each semester. Her mentor in the fall semester was a high school social
studies teacher with more than ten years of teaching experience, and he had a B.A. degree in
history. In the summer of 2009, he and Yalan designed the course curriculum together for the fall
semester. They taught social studies courses to a ninth grade class, a tenth grade class, and a
twelfth grade class, for three hours in the morning every day in the fall of 2009. Before their
classes, they talked about each lesson. Yalan taught the Chinese language, culture, and history
part, while the social studies teacher taught the rest. Each of them was in the classroom and
observing when the other one was instructing. After class, the social studies teacher helped Yalan
to reflect on her teaching during the day. They also designed the assessment for the courses
together and jointly decided on the students’ final grades.
In the spring semester, Yalan switched to teach Chinese in a middle school. She was
assigned a mentor teacher by the school district and the mentor was from another high school in
the school district. The mentor teacher had a B.A. degree in Spanish International Studies in

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Education and an M.A. degree in Intercultural Communication. She had been teaching at the high
school for 11 years and had taught both Spanish and French, with five years of experience
serving as a mentor and cooperating teacher. She also served as the chair person for the school
district’s foreign language teachers’ association.
The mentor teacher’s definition of the role of mentor teacher was for a fully-certified new
teacher, not for a pre-service teacher. Therefore, the mentor was only scheduled to work for ten
hours with Yalan by the school district in the spring semester. She observed Yalan’s teaching a
couple of times to help and for Yalan’s evaluation purpose. Yalan also turned to her when she
was struggling.
Instructors, administrators, and policy-makers. Because the Chinese teacher certification
program is jointly sponsored by a department of teacher education and a Confucius Institute, the
instructors and administrators are from both institutions. During the study, one faculty member
from the department of teacher education worked as the core instructor for the courses that the
four teachers took, and he was also the supervisor for the field instructors. The Confucius
Institute’s program coordinator assisted the teachers’ teaching in various ways and helped them
share their experiences with each other. The instructor, field instructors, and the Confucius
Institute’s program coordinator held weekly meetings to analyze and facilitate the teachers’
teaching. In addition, the Confucius Institute’s administrators worked with the school districts for
the teachers’ placement, monitored the teachers’ progress, and managed their courses at the
university, so this study also included the Chinese teacher certification program director. These
people helped me to identify the certification program’s expectations for the Chinese language

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teachers and how these expectations might have influenced the teachers’ knowledge of teaching
and their socialization into the profession.
The researcher as a participant. I was the researcher for this study, but I also worked as the
field instructor for the secondary group, including the four focal teachers, in the Chinese teacher
certification program from the fall of 2009 to the spring of 2010. I was one the people who were
involved in the teachers’ socialization, so I included myself in this study.
I was born and educated in China and my native language is Chinese. I majored in English
Language and Literature in China. I taught English majors and also worked as an assistant
professor and administrator, including collaborating with new teachers, at a university in Beijing
before I came to the U.S. I focused on second/foreign language education during my doctoral
study in the department of teacher education at the university where the Chinese teacher
certification program is located in the U.S. It was my first year to work with Chinese language
teachers in the certification program, from 2009 to 2010.
As the courses required, I read their teaching journals every week and watched their teaching
videos every other week to give them written feedback on their teaching on their learning website
while I worked as their field instructor. In addition, I met with them in the online conference
room to help them with their teaching for two hours every week, one hour for each of my two
groups. In the spring semester, the course team (course instructor, program coordinator, and the
field instructors) decided to add some readings on language instruction. I selected 12 topics,
discussed them with the course team, and prepared materials for at least eight of the topics. This
way, I was involved in and contributed to the teachers’ socialization processes. Therefore, when I
included myself—my written feedback and my role as their field instructor—in the study, I was

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also examining myself as one of the possible factors in their learning processes in order to
understand the role that field instruction in teacher education played in the focal teachers’
socialization.
However, I was only one of the influences in the teachers’ socialization, so this study is not a
“practitioner inquiry” as illuminated by Cochran-Smith and Donnel (2006). According to the
course design, the field instructors did not visit their teacher candidates’ classes. The teacher
candidates mainly worked with their mentor teachers at the K-12 public schools and attended the
professional development workshops for new teachers as required by their school districts.
Starting from the middle of the fall semester, the program coordinator organized monthly
seminars for all the teacher candidates in different cohorts. Thus, the four focal teachers in this
study might learn from a variety of sources and from different people, and I, as their field
instructor, was only one of these influences. This way, my field instruction might be one kind of
influence on the teachers, but it was not the focus of the study. Therefore, this study is a case
study of the teachers’ socialization, not a practitioner inquiry.

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Table 1 summarizes the participants in this study.
Participants

Name

Gender

Focal participants
1st
language

Ethnicity

Field
instructor

Mentors

Teaching
experience

Discipline

Teaching
experience

Instructor(s)
Administrators
Policy-makers

School/
District
TE professor

Scott

English

American

F

Chinese

Taiwanese

6 years in
English and
Chinese

Tianyu

Yalan

F

Chinese

Chinese

Chinese

Chinese
(U.S.
citizen)

School

Educational
psychology

20+ year

Intermediate

English
M

15 year

3 year

School

Japanese

Fangyi

Education
(History)

10 year

School

Social
studies

10+ year

School

Spanish

11year

District

Researcher

M

2 years in an
educational
camp

Certificate
program
coordinator

novice

5 years in
Chinese

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Program director

Data Sources
Guided by theories in qualitative and case study research, I collected data on the four focal
Chinese language teacher candidates’ socialization into the foreign language teaching profession
from a variety of sources and perspectives and in different formats. Because this study was a
qualitative case study, data collection was guided by the theories and methods on both cases
studies (e.g., Chapelle & Duff, 2003; Duff, 2008; Stake, 2000; Yin, 2006) and qualitative
research (e.g., Chapelle & Creswell, 1998; Duff, 2003; Hatch, 2002; Miles & Huberman, 1994;
Richards, 2003). According to these theories, data collection for an educational qualitative case
study should be “…extensive, drawing on multiple sources of information such as observations,
interviews, documents, and audio-visual materials” (Creswell, 1998, p. 62-63, bold and italics are
in original). Yin (2006) took a similar view as Creswell (1998) and listed six sources of evidence
that are commonly used for a qualitative case study: “documents,” “archival records,”
“interviews,” “direct observations,” “participant observation,” and “physical artifacts” (p. 116).
For a qualitative case study in Second Language Acquisition, data should “…[bring] together
(triangulating) multiple perspectives, methods, and sources of information…” (Chapelle & Duff,
2003, p. 165, italics and brackets are in original).
Therefore, I collected a variety of data for this study, including the focal teachers’ teaching
journals, lesson plans, and teaching videos, and documents from the teachers, the local schools,
and the Chinese teacher certification program.

I also conducted interviews with the focal

teachers, their mentor teachers, and the core instructor, the coordinator, and the director in the
Chinese teacher certification program. The data for this study is classified into two types—
existing data and collected data.

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Existing Data
Most of the data from other sources recommended by Yin (2006) are classified as existing in
this study. As the previous discussion indicates, the four focal teachers took courses from the
Chinese teacher certification program while they were teaching, from the fall 2009 through the
spring of 2010. As the courses on field experience required, they wrote teaching journals every
week and video-recorded their teaching every other week. Meanwhile, when the focal teachers
were teaching at the local schools, they designed their own curriculum and/or lesson plans. They
also designed homework, handouts, and some projects for the students. In addition, a couple of
them organized field trips for their students, attended professional development workshops in the
school districts, and were involved in activities organized by their schools or school districts.
Thus, I also collected some materials and information about these events. This part of the data for
this case study is classified as documents, archival records, and physical artifacts, following
Yin’s (2006) list of data sources.
Another important data source for this study was observation. Observation has been
identified as “the fundamental base of all research methods” (Adler & Adler, 1994, p. 389) in
qualitative research. In Yin’s (2006) list, two out of six data sources are about observation—
direct observations and participant observation. As their field instructor from 2009 to 2010, I
gave online written feedback on their teaching journals and videos on the learning website which
was used for the purpose of the two courses of field experience during the year. Although I did
this for instructional purposes, the role was similar to that of direct observations. While I was
preparing the weekly two-hour online meetings with the teachers and during the online meetings,
I took some notes about their questions and discussions. This role resembled that of participant
observation, which is characterized as “…central to all the social sciences” (Vidich, 1955, p.

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354). In addition, I also noted my discussions with the course team (course instructor, program
coordinator, and the field instructors) at our conferences. I did the mid-term and final evaluations
with the school representatives and the focal teachers themselves at online conferences, and I
made the written record of the conferences in the two semesters. I took all of these as data for the
study. This part of the data for the study consists of four out of the six data sources recommended
by Yin (2006)—documents, archival records, direct observations, and participant observation.
In addition, some materials related to the two courses were also included in the data for this
study. The syllabi of the two courses on field experience for the cohort and the readings from the
two courses were stored on the learning website. When I conducted the teachers’ mid-term and
final evaluations with their mentor teachers/supervisors, I used the certification program’s
evaluation form and took notes. Some of their mentor teachers/supervisors also noted down their
observations of the teachers’ teaching before the evaluations and sent them to me. I collected
these notes for this study. The focal teachers also had written discussions about their teaching
with other teacher candidates in their cohort, which was also required by the two courses and
recorded on the learning website. All of these were included in the data for this study. I classify
this part of the data as archival records in Yin’s (2006) terms. Therefore, the existing data for this
study covers five out of the six types of common data sources listed by Yin (2006) for a
qualitative case study.
Collected Data
Interviews were specifically designed for this study and were included in the data. Interviews
are one type of data source listed by Yin (2006) for a qualitative case study, and they are also
considered a very important data source for a qualitative study (e.g., Block, 2000; Brenner, 2006;
Holstein & Gubrium, 2002; Richards, 2003; Seidman, 2006). Interviewing aims to
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“…understand informants on their own terms and how they make meaning of their own lives,
experiences, and cognitive processes” (Brenner, 2006, p. 357). It is “…a basic model of inquiry”
(Seidman, 2006, p. 8), and has become a major technique for conducting research in all the social
sciences (Holstein & Gubrium, 2002). In SLA, “…there is a common tendency to use interviews
as an important part of triangulated data collection…” (Block, 2000, p. 757). Therefore, in
addition to the existing data listed above, interviews were conducted for this study with the focal
teachers and their mentor teachers. The core course instructor, the certification program
coordinator, and the program director were also interviewed, because these people worked with
the focal teachers and had direct influence on the teachers in the Chinese teacher certification
program.
More importantly, because the existing data is mainly from the teachers’ courses on field
experience, it is descriptive and is only from the teachers’ perspective. Thus, it is necessary to
have data that is reflective and from different perspectives in order to triangulate the data and to
achieve a more complete understanding of the four focal teachers’ socialization. Accordingly,
interviews with the focal teachers themselves, their mentor teachers, and the people they worked
with in the Chinese teacher certification program helped accomplish these goals and attain a
comprehensive and complete conception of the teachers’ development and socialization in their
first year of teaching in the United States.
Interviews with the focal teachers. The interviews with the focal teachers followed the
guidelines and methods for qualitative educational research and for interviews in particular (e.g.,
Block, 2000; Brenner, 2006; Miles & Huberman, 1994; Richards, 2003). Because the four
teachers’ first-year teaching and socialization is the focus of this study, it is critical and necessary

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to find the teachers’ own reasoning and understanding of their experiences. Interviewing is the
right method for this research purpose, because “a basic assumption in in-depth interviewing
research is that the meaning people make of their experience affects the way they carry out that
experience” (Blumer, 1969, p. 2, cited in Seidman, 2006, p. 10). Furthermore, interviewing can
help researchers locate the context of their participants’ experiences and understand the meanings,
processes, and consequences of those experiences (Seidman, 2006).
Specifically, I conducted two to three in-depth interviews with each of the four focal teachers
and I followed up with the focal teachers about these interviews and their first-year Chinese
teaching in the United States after my initial data analysis when I had questions, found some
discrepancies, or needed to check with them for more information. The interviews with the focal
teachers were open-ended in order to give the teachers “…the space to express meaning in his or
her own words and to give direction to the interview process” (Brenner, 2006, p. 357).
Meanwhile, the interviews with the focal teachers were semi-structured. Although the same
interview protocols were developed and used for all four teachers’ interviews, I asked follow-up
questions that were built on the teachers’ respective responses to the questions during the
interviews (Brenner, 2006). Consequently, the interviews gained not only from the teachers’ own
accounts and understanding of their first-year teaching, but also clarified my previously-held
beliefs about their teaching and helped me probe further into their socialization through my
follow-up questions during the interviews and during data analysis.
The first interview concentrated on their cultural and educational backgrounds, with
particular attention paid to their language learning backgrounds before they joined the Chinese
teacher certification program. Their reasons to apply for this certification program were also
addressed. The interviews were conducted in the university’s library, a local cafeteria, or a

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restaurant in the summer of 2010 when the teachers came back from their assignment schools to
the university campus for courses. The teachers were given the freedom to speak either English
or Chinese for the interviews. Scott spoke English in the interview, while the other three teachers
used Chinese. Accordingly, I followed them in speaking English or Chinese for the interviews.
For the Chinese interviews, I translated the English interview questions into Chinese on the site.
The first interviews lasted from around 40 minutes to one and a half hours. All four teachers
voluntarily agreed to be audio-recorded. The interview protocol is attached in the appendix.
The second interview focused on their teaching from the fall of 2009 through the spring of
2010 and was conducted in December 2010 while the focal teachers were teaching at their
schools for the second year. I interviewed them individually in a place convenient to them, for
example, a cafeteria. Specifically, this interview addressed the issues of their understanding and
perspectives about their teaching, how they taught in the past year, and the theories and
approaches they used in their teaching. Meanwhile, the teachers were also asked to talk about
their challenges and the help and support they received in their first-year teaching.
The teachers’ videos were used as a stimulus to prompt and assist the teachers to recall their
first year of teaching during the second interviews with them. Specifically, four teaching videos
from each teacher from the two semesters were selected for this purpose: a) the video recorded at
the beginning of the fall semester; b) the video recorded at the end of the fall semester; c) the
video recorded in the middle of the spring semester; and d) the video recorded at the end of the
spring semester. I played the videos for them and stopped when they believed that they could
recall the recorded classes. I first asked questions such as how they planned the classes, and what
their teaching goals and rationales for the teaching activities were. Referring to the videos and
sometimes replaying the videos when necessary, I also asked the teachers questions about their

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more detailed teaching, for example, their interactions with one or some students and why, the
differences between their planning and their actual teaching, their reasons for changing some
instructional activities, etc. These videos helped the teachers to recall and reflect on their
teaching from the beginning to the end of their first-year teaching, for example, their teaching
goals, the teaching activities they designed and their rationales, the challenges that they faced,
what they thought about the students’ learning, etc.
The teachers’ language use for the second interview was different from that for the first
interview. Scott still spoke English during the interview. Fangyi chose to speak English after I
informed her again that she had the freedom to use either English or Chinese for the interview.
Tianyu used English for a majority part of the second interview, and he switched to Chinese for
the rest of the interview after our break. Yalan chose to use Chinese for the second interview.
Again, I followed the teachers in their language use and translated the English interview
questions to Chinese on the site if a teacher chose to speak Chinese. The second interviews lasted
for about one hour to two hours. All the interviews were audio-recorded. The second interview
protocol is also attached.
In addition, while I was transcribing and analyzing the interviews, I also called the four
teachers if I needed to check with them or if I needed more information on an issue. Often the
talks were brief, around 15 to 20 minutes, and I took notes as we talked. Then I conducted
follow-up interviews with them, at least one with each of them, for more information on some of
the themes that were identified in my data analysis. Therefore, altogether, at least three
interviews, including the first and second interviews, were conducted with each of the four
teachers. Occasionally they came back to the university campus and visited me briefly. We talked
and chatted about this study informally, which helped inform the study, but I did not take notes.

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Interviews with the mentors. All six mentor teachers voluntarily agreed to participate in
the study, so interviews were conducted with each of them in December 2010. I also followed the
guidelines and methods for qualitative research and for interviews (e.g., Block, 2000; Brenner,
2006; Miles & Huberman, 1994; Richards, 2003; Seidman, 2006). During the interviews with the
mentor teachers, the following issues were addressed: a) their schools’ expectations for the
Chinese language teachers; b) their views on teacher knowledge of foreign language teaching in
the United States, including their knowledge of the Chinese language teacher; c) how they
worked with their respective Chinese teachers; and d) which aspect of Chinese teaching the
mentor and Chinese language teacher talked about most often and what kind of advice the mentor
gave to the Chinese teacher. All the mentors spoke English. The interviews lasted for about one
hour and were audio-recorded. The interview protocol is attached in the appendix.
Interviews with instructor, coordinator, and director. Interviews with the focal Chinese
teachers’ core course instructors, the certification program coordinator, and the program director
were conducted in November and December of 2010, in order to gain better understanding of the
teachers’ Chinese instruction in their contexts and for a broader view about the influences from
the Chinese teacher certification program on the teachers’ teaching. Again, the guidelines and
methods for qualitative research and for interviews (e.g., Block, 2000; Brenner, 2006; Miles &
Huberman, 1994; Richards, 2003) were followed.
Although the interview questions varied slightly according to the roles that the interviewees
played in the Chinese teacher certification program from 2009 to 2010, these interviews focused
on the following issues: a) the goals of the Chinese teacher certification program; b) their views
on teacher knowledge for Chinese language teaching in the United States; and c) their

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expectations for the new Chinese language teachers in the Chinese teacher certification program.
Each of these interviews lasted for about one hour, and all the interviews were audio-recorded.
The interview protocol is attached.
Table 2 summarizes the data for this study.
Existing Data

Collected Data

Teaching journals
Teaching videos
Lesson plans
Other documents and materials
(e.g. curriculum, handouts)
Field instructors’ feedback, notes

Backgrounds
Teachers
Interviews
(audio-recording)

First-year teaching
Mentor teachers
Instructor, coordinator, and
director

Course syllabus and materials, the
learning website
Discussions with the teachers

Data Analysis
Multiple rounds of data analysis were conducted for this study, because “…working with
data is frequently a cyclical process of looking for coherence and meaning that requires returning
to the data with a different perspective as insights are developed…” (Brenner, 2006, p. 366).
Data analysis for this study was guided by extensive work on educational and SLA qualitative
research (e.g., Block, 2000; Brenner, 2006; Mackey & Gass, 2005; Miles & Huberman, 1994;
Richards, 2003; Ryan & Bernard, 2000; Yin, 2006). In order to have accurate data analysis, “…
researchers employ various procedures, two of the most common being redundancy of data
gathering and procedural challenges to explanation” (Stake, 2000, p. 443). The variety of data
collected for this study—in different formats and from various sources—can meet the standard of
“redundancy of data gathering”. Data from different sources and in different formats for this
study was constantly compared with each other to achieve “procedural challenges to explanation”
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in order to ensure that data analysis was accurate and depicted participants’ experiences in their
contexts.
I used NVivo 8 to code the data. Although the analysis varied for the data from different
sources, two modes of analysis were applied in the process. I started text analysis line by line and
used NVivo’s “free node” function to code texts with detailed and specific themes which were
generated from the data, letting data speak for itself and “…leaving any winnowing and sorting
until later” (Richards, 2003, p. 273). In the next step, I used NVivo’s “tree node” function to
categorize and sort the codes with the themes from the literature review and my knowledge and
experience in language education (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Ryan & Bernard, 2000). During
this process, each theme’s frequency in the data was calculated by NVivo automatically so that I
had a clearer understanding about the importance of each factor in the four teachers’ socialization.
I also matched the themes with the research questions for this study. Throughout the data analysis,
a variety of analytic techniques was used, including “explanation building,” “time-series
analysis,” and “cross-case synthesis” (Yin, 2006, p. 118). As a result, the evidence from the data
was collected to support the themes from the literature; meanwhile, new themes rising from the
data were identified. Both types of themes aimed at addressing the research questions put
forward in chapter two of this study.
Analysis of Various Data
I started with the existing data, especially the focal Chinese teachers’ teaching journals and
videos, after my dissertation proposal defense in Oct. 2010. Although I worked as the focal
Chinese teachers’ field instructor and read their teaching journals and watched their teaching
videos, it was for instructional purposes, from the fall of 2009 through the spring 2010. In the fall
of 2010, I analyzed the journals and videos for research purposes.
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The teaching journals with my written feedback were analyzed by following Richards (2003).
Initial coding was generated while the journals were analyzed line by line in NVivo. Although I
focused on the teachers’ knowledge development, I used detailed themes as codes when they
emerged from the data, so the detailed codes were generated about their knowledge components,
their understanding and reasoning about their teaching, challenges they had, assistance they
received, and actions they took. The codes were categorized in NVivo to identify the themes in
each teacher’s instruction and the patterns in my feedback.
The teaching videos were used and analyzed for different purposes in this study. First, they
were used to check with the teaching journals. Almost a half of each teacher’s journals were
reflections on their teaching videos. For instructional purposes, they were asked to focus on a
seven-minute segment in each of their one-hour videos, or on a particular theme of their teaching
each time. I checked the journals and videos for research purpose during the data analysis for this
study. Some characteristics and patterns of the teachers’ instruction were gained from this initial
analysis. Second, as discussed in data collection, the videos were used as a stimulus to prompt
teachers to talk about their teaching during the interviews with them. Thus, I also checked with
the videos and my initial analysis of the video reflections while analyzing the interviews in order
to compare whether my initial understandings were the same as the teachers’ reasoning. When
there were differences, I followed up with the teachers by calling them and discussing with them.
The analysis of the interviews helped me to gain insights about the teachers’ teaching and
development from different perspectives, and to “…capture information from and about the
informant’s reality” (Brenner, 2006, p. 360). There were several steps in analyzing the interviews.
First, all the interviews were transcribed. I also translated the Chinese interviews into English.
Second, the transcripts were imported into NVivo for data analysis. The interviews were

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analyzed line by line in NVivo. Because the initial codes were detailed themes, they were
categorized after I finished initial coding so that bigger themes and patterns emerged. Third, the
themes and patterns that emerged from each teacher’s interviews were also compared with each
other. Fourth, the interview analysis of the focal teachers was cross-checked with those with their
mentor teachers, the instructor, the coordinator, and the director. Fifth, the interview results were
also checked with other data for this study, for example, their lesson plans.
Lastly, as with the analysis of the teaching journals in NVivo, counting the number of
occurrences of each category in the interviews was also done to gain understanding about how
the teachers were influenced by different factors and which factors played more important roles
in their socialization. By “…using multiple perceptions to clarify meaning, verifying the
repeatability of an observation or interpretation” (Stake, 2000, p. 443) in the previous steps, the
data was triangulated and the data analysis of the interviews and other data for the study became
more complete so that the teachers’ knowledge and socialization were revealed accurately.
Comparisons in Data Analysis
Comparisons were constantly made during data analysis for this study, for example, data
from different sources on one teacher. Comparison is often used in research because it “…is a
grand epistemological strategy, a powerful conceptual mechanism, fixing attention upon one or a
few attributes” (Stake, 2000, p. 444). Through these comparisons, I can “…establish the range of
generality of a finding or explanation and, at the same time, pin down the conditions under which
that finding will occur” (Borman, Clarke, Cotner, & Lee, 2006, p. 123).
A number of comparisons were conducted throughout this study. First, I compared the data
from the same focal teacher at different times to find his/her changes and development in his/her
teacher knowledge. Different points of time in their first-year teaching were identified from their
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teaching journals and videos. Their teaching in these different times were compared, discussed in
the interviews with the focal teachers, and analyzed and compared in data analysis. This way, I
was able to track the changes that happened to the teachers and to detect the factors that
influenced and shaped the teachers’ knowledge and their socialization. At the same time, this
comparison also helped me understand how the teachers made sense of their socialization and
what contributed to their development.
Second, the data in different formats and from various sources on the same focal teacher was
constantly compared throughout data collection and data analysis. Such a comparison allowed
me to investigate the teachers’ knowledge and socialization from different perspectives,
including those of their mentor teachers, administrators, instructors, themselves, and myself. This
comparison not only reduced my subjectivity and preconceptions as the focal teachers’ field
instructor, but also provided a full picture about the teachers’ development in their first-year
teaching. Accordingly, the factors that were found to have shaped the teachers’ socialization in
this procedure should be considered accurate and complete.
Third, because the teachers were from different cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and educational
backgrounds, comparisons among them were made to help me understand the complex processes
of the four teachers’ socialization and the common and/or particular challenges that existed in
their development in the United States. Meanwhile, some external and contextual factors were
also taken into consideration, for example, the differences of their students. Such a comparison
among the four focal teachers helped me to examine whether a difference among them was
caused by their different backgrounds or by some contextual factors. This comparison directly
addresses the third research question for this study: what similarities and/or differences exist in
their challenges when they are from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds?

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Fourth, peer debriefing with others promoted more accurate analysis and representation of
the data and the teachers’ socialization. Two persons who were involved in the Chinese teacher
certification program were invited to help me examine my data analysis. One was the program
coordinator, who participated in this study. The other one was an advanced doctoral student in
education who had been involved in teacher preparation in this program for a while. I randomly
picked up some paragraphs from the teaching journals and interview transcripts (identifiers were
removed). The doctoral student coded these paragraphs and I compared and discussed our coding.
The other person helped me check whether the codes accurately described the themes and
patterns generated from the data. During this peer debriefing process, they could see how I “…
[distilled] ideas from the primary data and to judge whether the patterns detected are visible to
people less connected to the original data collection” (Brenner, 2006, p. 368).
Lastly, member checking of the data analysis was conducted with the focal teachers. I
called the teachers to clarify any differences that I found when I compared different sources of
the data. After I finished writing their backgrounds, I sent them to the teachers to see whether I
described them accurately. Writing of their individual cases was also sent to them for member
checking. On the basis of the above procedures and data analysis, I was able to situate this study
in the fields of language teacher education and mainstream education and to find the implications
this study has for these two fields.

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Figure 1 indicates the data analysis process for this study.

Teaching
journals

Teaching
videos

Lesson plans
and other
documents

Field instructor
feedback

Mentor
interviews

Teachers’
socialization

Course
syllabi and
readings

Teacher
interviews

Instructor,
coordinator, and
director interviews

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Teacher
evaluation

Reporting of the Research Results
As with the data collection and analysis for this study, reporting of the research results also
followed the guidelines and theories of qualitative research (e.g., Borman, Clarke, Cotner, & Lee,
2006; Creswell, 1998; Yin, 2006). While the four teachers’ development in their teacher
knowledge was analyzed and compared, four major themes emerged from data analysis, so the
reporting of the research results was organized according to the four themes—gaining knowledge
of pedagogy, restructuring knowledge of subject matter, understanding and managing students,
and difficulties, conflicts, and their impacts.
On the other hand, this research study is inherently a case study and consists of four cases, so
reporting of the research results was also guided by the theories and guidelines for case study
research (e.g., Borman, Clarke, Cotner, & Lee, 2006; Creswell, 1998; Richards, 2003; Yin, 2006).
Thus, chapter four describes how the four teachers learn instructional methods in their first year
of teaching. In this chapter, each of the four teachers’ experience of gaining knowledge of
pedagogy is described and analyzed, and evidence is used to support arguments within each case,
because the description of a case should not only be “…crammed with details and facts, it also
conveys an argument and an informing context as to how these details and facts interweave”
(Van Maanen, 1988, p. 30).

The cases are followed by the section of the four teachers’

similarities and differences in gaining their knowledge of pedagogy in their socialization. A
similar format is applied to chapter five and six, which present the four teachers’ restructuring of
knowledge of subject matter and their understanding and managing of students. Chapter seven
describes the difficulties and conflicts that were involved in the four teachers’ socialization in
their first year of teaching within the certification program, in their schools, and at the national

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level. In chapter eight, the conclusions and contributions of this study are discussed by drawing
on the teacher socialization research literature and connecting it to this study.
Meanwhile, in reporting each teacher’s socialization, the teacher’s development and change
across the year is also taken into consideration. That is, the patterns that emerged from the data
and that address the research questions for each period of their first-year teaching are now
“…being used as the interweaving themes” (Yin, 2006, p. 118). With such a format for reporting
the research results of this study, the following chapters will focus on each of the four themes
that emerged from the data analysis.
Ethical Considerations
I was the four teachers’ field instructor from the fall of 2009 through the spring of 2010,
which might lead to concerns about ethical issues. However, this should not be taken as a flaw of
this study, because I could not have control of the teachers, so they were not disadvantaged by
participating in this study.
Researcher as the Field Instructor
I came to know these teachers before I worked as their field instructor. When they were
taking the two summer courses on campus in the summer of 2009, I went to visit their classes
several times with the permission of the two course instructors, because of my interest in
second/foreign language education. Usually I sat in the back or in one corner of the classrooms so
that I was not obtrusive to the classes. Occasionally the instructors asked me to join in a group to
facilitate the group discussion, so I came to know Tianyu. During the break or after class, some
of the teacher candidates talked with me on a variety of topics.

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When the fall semester began, coincidentally I was assigned as a teaching assistant to work
as one of the two field instructors for this program by the Department of Teacher Education. In
September of 2009, the cohort was divided into two groups by the program coordinator—the
elementary and secondary groups, according to the classes they were going to teach. I was
assigned to work with the secondary group, and all four focal teachers were in the secondary
group and worked with me from 2009 to 2010.
However, I played only a limited role in their course of “field experiences,” so I did not have
control of the teachers or whether they would participate in this study. First, I did not design the
course syllabi. The syllabi were designed by the course instructor, a professor in the department
of teacher education, and an administrator in the program. As a field instructor, I mainly carried
out the course syllabus in the fall semester, but I added readings to my secondary group when I
perceived the teacher candidates’ urgent need of learning some necessary teaching approaches
and methods. Although the other field instructor and I added some readings to the whole cohort
in the spring semester, we were still following the course syllabus. I selected the majority of the
readings, but they were prepared for the whole cohort, including both the elementary and
secondary groups. That is, I could not and did not make any special arrangements for the four
focal teachers for this study. Neither did I intentionally adjust my work with the four teachers.
Second, I had only limited influence in their course evaluations, as described in chapter two.
In the middle and at the end of the semesters, I had online or phone conferences with the
individual teachers and their mentors or supervisors to conduct their evaluations, because the
teachers worked in schools that were far from the university. Detailed decisions were made about
the teachers’ teaching after my discussion with their mentors or supervisors while the teachers

91

were present. I reported the evaluation results to the course instructor, and he made the decisions
about whether the teachers passed or failed the courses.
Third, my work with all teachers in my two groups was mainly public. My written feedback
could be viewed by all teachers in the cohort, including the elementary groups. We discussed
their teaching at our weekly online meetings as groups. Only when I perceived that an individual
teacher needed more support or that a private conversation worked better for their struggles, did I
call the teacher individually. I did not make any special arrangements for the four participating
teachers. Therefore, my limited role as their field instructor should not have affected their
decisions about whether to participate in this study.
More importantly, my idea for this study was developing while I was working with the focal
teachers and their cohort. I did not decide whom I would include in this study or how I would
conduct the study until the beginning of the spring semester. Even after I had a rough idea about
the possible participants for this study in the middle of the spring semester, I had to follow the
routines of the course to perform my field instructor responsibilities. I did not have the privilege
to change the course syllabus or the course routines for the purpose of my study.
To make sure that the teachers’ participation was voluntary, I did not talk to the teachers
formally about their participation until the course was over in the middle of May 2010. Also, data
collection started after my work as their field instructor was over. Therefore, their participation
should be considered as voluntary rather than being affected by my role as their field instructor.
Anonymity
Because this study is a case study in nature and there are only a limited number of the
participants, I use pseudonyms for all four focal participating teachers in order to protect their

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privacy. To reflect their ethnic backgrounds, I used an English name for the European American
teacher, and Chinese names for the other three Chinese and Taiwanese teachers.
Moreover, I made sure that I did not include cases that make the teachers uncomfortable in
my report of the research results. All teachers were very interested in this study, and we had
developed trusting relationships with each other, so they shared with me their understanding
about their teaching and whatever they knew about Chinese education in the U.S., which not only
included their development as new teachers, but also their problems, struggles, and confusions. I
appreciate that they encouraged me to complete the study and offered their help so that my data
collection and analysis could be successful. To protect these teachers, I wrote individual cases of
each teacher, including their problems, and sent the complete description to them individually. I
asked them to read through the cases and ensure that they were comfortable with the accounts
and my interpretation about them. This way this study did not jeopardize their status, either as a
student in the program or as a Chinese teacher in their schools.
In addition, I am aware that the teachers were very interested in the research results and they
should benefit from their participation in this study. After data collection, I shared with them my
interpretation of their development and gave them my suggestions. After they finished their first
year of teaching Chinese, they were not provided with a field instructor any more. They also
talked to me from time to time about their questions and asked for my advice on their study of
second language education and on their second year of teaching. Therefore, the teachers and this
study informed each other and benefited from each other. With these understandings about this
study, I will switch to the research results of this study in the following chapter.

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CHAPTER 4 GAINING KNOWLEDGE OF PEDAGOGY
This chapter describes the four teachers’ development in one component of their teacher
knowledge—knowledge of pedagogy. When their knowledge components were categorized and
calculated in NVivo, their knowledge of pedagogy was ranked the highest of the five components
in terms of frequency of mention in various data: their knowledge of pedagogy, students, subject
4

matter, context, and curriculum .
Table 3 is the ranking of the four teachers’ knowledge categories

5

1

2

3

4

5

Scott

Pedagogy

Subject

Students

Context

Curriculum

Tianyu

Pedagogy

Curriculum

Students

Subject

Context

Yalan

Pedagogy

Students

Context

Curriculum

Subject

Fangyi

Pedagogy

Students

Context

Curriculum

Subject

However, the five components were interwoven with each other and worked as an integrated
whole. They were analyzed separately during data analysis in order to determine how each part of
their teacher knowledge influenced the four teachers’ socialization. As a result, their knowledge
of pedagogy, subject matter, and students and their interaction with the other components of
teacher knowledge appeared to have been more salient in the teachers’ socialization. Meanwhile,
the teachers faced many challenges and difficulties in their immediate and broader contexts,

4

Their pedagogical content knowledge is included in either their knowledge of pedagogy or their
knowledge of subject matter, depending on whether their knowledge of pedagogy or subject
matter played more important role in an instance.
5
The data set mainly includes the teachers’ interviews, their mentors’ interviews, their journals
in the fall and spring, and their evaluation reports (if they had) for each of the four teachers. I did
not include my field instruction comments or notes in frequency calculations for their knowledge
components. To have done so would have potentially skewed the data because of my high but
varied frequencies of contacts with the four teachers.
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which seriously affected their socialization into the profession. This chapter illustrates
development of their pedagogical knowledge.
In their first year of teaching, the teachers started with little knowledge of pedagogy. They
gained this knowledge from the courses of “Field Experiences”/field instruction, from their
interactions with their students and contexts, and from their own actual teaching practice. They
shared similarities in their development, but there were also many differences.
Knowledge of Pedagogy at the Beginning
At the very beginning of the fall in 2009 when they started their first year of teaching
Chinese in U.S. K-12 schools, the four teachers were replicating their language learning and
educational experience, and they were using their prior teaching experience in Chinese
community schools. Because these teachers’ training in the Chinese teacher certification program
focused on educational theories, knowledge and skills of pedagogy which specifically address
Chinese instruction in U.S. K-12 schools were not evident or not very systematic.
Scott’s Knowledge of Pedagogy at the Beginning of the Fall
For the first few weeks in the fall of 2009, Scott took a whole-class approach to teach
Chinese, and his teaching tended to be teacher-centered. Without any textbooks, curriculum, or
other resources, Scott had to create everything from scratch for his teaching of Chinese in his
first year of teaching. He mentioned at the beginning that “I've been teaching the first few weeks
without any technology, no projector or computers at ALL” (Scott’s journal in the fall,
capitalization is in original). Thus, Scott set his own teaching goal at the beginning according to
his understanding about foreign language learning. He recalled, “I kind of …thought of what you
need to know first in Chinese, you know, what you need to know first is first of all, the

95

introduction” (Scott’s second interview). During his instruction, he first asked the students to
brainstorm English words and sentences to introduce themselves. Then he translated them into
Chinese and illustrated vocabulary and sentence structures:
We started and said how… You know, I had conversations with the students, so when
you meet someone, what do you say? Right? So they made a list in English of the things
that we say in English…when you meet someone. And then from that list, we translated
that list into Chinese, so that it gave us a kind of the content that we were going to be
discussing. Then after that, I showed them the basic structure of the sentences. I pointed
out the kind of subject, verb, and object. I went on and taught them the pronouns. (Scott’s
second interview)
Scott’s language input procedure shows that he included students’ involvement in his
instruction, so his instruction was not completely teacher-centered. After language input, Scott
led students through practice and language output:
And then from that, we would practice that list a couple of times. Then yes…take this,
you now use this to create your own conversation…I wasn’t giving them a rehearsed
dialogue…but I didn’t give that to them in the can dialogue. It was all…this is what
Chinese people say, this is how you say these things. Now you take it, and you make your
own dialogue. And then…to assess it, I am gonna have you come up here to present.
(Scott’s second interview)
Scott’s teaching procedure indicates that he followed the traditional procedure of
presentation, practice, and product, but his instructional step of presentation was more flexible.
Meanwhile, he focused more on speaking; listening, reading, and writing were not practiced
much, because “I told them all that we were going to be focusing on spoken Chinese” (Scott’s
second interview). Moreover, there were drills instead of students’ interactions during students’
practice, although there might be some pair or group work while students were preparing their
presentations. Between the students’ practice of sounds and writing their own conversations,
Scott did not seem to have provided much modeling or scaffolding to help the students to further

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understand the sentences and structures. Additionally, assessment was not evident until students’
presentations:
At the end of each conversation, I gave the students a chance to give constructive
feedback to the students performing. I had to take special care to ensure that they would
be kind and respectful to each other, but I think it went pretty well. (Scott’s journal in the
fall)
Analysis of Scott’s teaching videos at this time shows that when the students made mistakes
6

in using Chinese, Scott tended to help them by “recast,” which is a common strategy used by
American middle-class parents to their children, and has been widely recognized by the field of
Second Language Acquisition (SLA). But sometimes, Scott did not correct a student’s language
mistake. Instead, he switched to another student or did not make any comments, perhaps because
he did not notice the mistake or perhaps he did not hear what the student said.
In addition to using the white board for his instruction, Scott did not seem to use other
instructional technology or strategies to assist his teaching because other technology (e.g.,
computer, projector, etc.) was not available to him until several weeks later, although it turned
out later that Scott actually was very good at computer technology:
I used…not very much [technology]. I basically created my own from scratch. I mean…I
wasn’t using…I wasn’t handing out a lot of notes. I guess I used some notes. I would type
those out and use kind of online dictionary…the stuff, you know, Microsoft input to type
the Chinese and give to them, but it was…I was basically going without any resources at
all. (Scott’s second interview)

6

Recast: a teaching strategy in language instruction. When a student makes a mistake in using
the target language, the teacher corrects the student by repeating the student’s utterance and
correcting the language use, that is, the teacher corrects the student implicitly. For example, a
student may say, “I go shopping yesterday”. The teacher can say, “Oh, you went shopping
yesterday”.
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Scott was aware that he was trying to teach with the audio-lingualism method (although
obviously he had made some adjustments in the input and students’ output phases of this
method), because that was the way he learned Chinese at the Defense Language Institute. He said,
I think people tend to teach sometimes as they were taught…or think by doing that, so my
initial thought when I was going to be doing teaching in an audio-lingualism
type, …where the conversations, you know, that kind of structured way of teaching, so
that was kind of my idea at the beginning. (Scott’s first interview)
Meanwhile, he was also aware he was not exactly reproducing the audio-lingualism method
in his teaching. He said, “But I didn’t give that to them in the can dialogue. It was all…this is
what Chinese people say, this is how you say these things. Now you take it, and you make your
own dialogue” (Scott’s second interview). That is, he did not teach students pre-determined
dialogues. Instead, he elicited what students would say in a context and compared that to Chinese.
He did so because “I want to specifically relate to their lives, and I mean…to communicate with
other people in Mandarin, in Chinese” (Scott’s second interview).
Scott’s modification to the audio-lingualism method was perhaps more caused by his work
experience than his learning experiences of other second languages or his preparation through the
summer courses in the certification program. He only had a very vague memory of his
experiences of learning other languages, including Spanish, and only mentioned the sociocultural approach from his impression of what he learned in the summer in the certification
program (these will be further analyzed below). Therefore, Scott’s knowledge of pedagogy at the
beginning was mainly from his own Chinese learning experience, and he was also influenced by
his cultural background.

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Tianyu’s Knowledge of Pedagogy at the Beginning of the Fall
Tianyu was a complete novice teacher and was only in the U.S. for two months when he
started teaching Chinese in the fall, so he did not have much knowledge about how to deliver the
Chinese language and culture in the U.S. context at that time. He assumed that teaching in the
7

U.S. and China was similar and that he could use a teacher-centered and lecture-based approach
in his instruction because that was how he was educated in China. As a result, he stood in the
front of the classroom, explained some Chinese characters that he thought would be interesting to
the students, and answered the students’ questions. Although his teaching at the beginning was
not recorded, Tianyu recalled, “One thing that I do remember about that lesson was like I … it
was totally like a lecture, so it was mostly teacher-centered, because I was so inexperienced. It
was totally teacher-centered…” (Tianyu’s second interview)
Tianyu’s principal and his mentor teacher (the English teacher) had similar observations. The
principal noted that “Tianyu was incredibly one-dimensional at the outset” (Tianyu’s principal’s
report for the mid-term evaluation). The mentor teacher gave a more detailed description about
Tianyu’s teaching at that time:
I don’t think he knew how to present the information in an organized way. He didn’t
know what to teach first, what to teach second, what to teach third. He didn’t print any
handouts. There were no worksheets, there were no notes. There was just…he would
write on the board for 45 minutes straight without any break…any type…a handout or
any type of direction. He would write all over the board. (Tianyu’s fall mentor interview)
The accounts show that Tianyu had little knowledge of language instruction. He did not have
clear procedures for his class. Neither did he seem to know language instructional methods and
7

In this study, I used teacher-centered approach to refer to teaching which focuses on
transmitting knowledge from a teacher to students. Much attention is paid to content, but less on
how students learn. With such an approach in classrooms, teachers control class activities, and
not many student-student interactions can be observed.
99

how to incorporate technology into his teaching. Moreover, he had little idea of what he should
ask the students to do. His principal observed that “home work assignments included repetitive
writing of sentences, etc.” (Tianyu’s principal’s report for the mid-term evaluation). Obviously,
Tianyu’s teaching at the beginning was not acceptable to U.S. K-12 instruction, especially K-12
foreign language teaching. Thus, the mentor teacher commented, “I don’t think he knew how to
deliver it in the way that the American kids can understand,” and “he just knew how to stand up
in the front of the class and talked to the kids” (Tianyu’s fall mentor’s interview).
Tianyu was aware that he was trying to copy his learning experience in China to his teaching
in the U.S. in the beginning of the fall. He noted that that was how he was educated. However,
without any prior teaching experience in China, his understanding about teaching in China was
not complete and accurate. For example, Tianyu did not know that he should take attendance
every day. His fall mentor teacher recalled:
He didn’t know how to use the attendance program or the grade book on the computer. I
don’t think that occurred to him that there was a grade book in the computer. It was
like…you have to take attendance every day, I don’t think those things ever occurred to
him… (Tianyu’s fall mentor interview)
Two factors might have led to this incidence. First, Tianyu did not have any teaching
experience in China, so he was not very clear about some general pedagogy. For example,
teachers in China do take attendance every day and have formative assessment. This happened
more because Tianyu was a novice teacher rather than that he was from another cultural or
educational background. Second, he did not know the detailed routines of his school at that time.
Thus, Tianyu’s little knowledge of pedagogy and inexperience, together with other challenges,
led him to such a difficult situation in the beginning of the fall semester in 2009.

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Yalan’s Knowledge of Pedagogy at the Beginning of the Fall
At the beginning of the fall of 2009, Yalan seemed to know that she should use distinct
instructional methods for her classes of different age groups and in various settings. In the high
school social studies classes, Yalan usually used powerpoints to help with her illustrations. Next,
she gave more examples and let the students practice or discuss. After that, she asked the
students to do independent work, for example, develop presentations. One of her classes during
this period is an example. Yalan introduced Beijing Opera when she was teaching the history of
mid-Qing Dynasty of China. She had several major steps for this lesson:
8

I made a PowerPoint about the four roles—生旦净丑 . Students learned colors through
净 ’s face painting. In Beijing opera, the different face colors represent different
personalities. For example, red stands for loyalty and uprightness… Then I show them 泥
人脸谱, and let them say the colors in Chinese and figure out the personality. Then we
watched the movie—《霸王别姬》, Beijing opera part. Last, I gave every student a noncolored 净’s face, I let students painted the face and made a presentation about one person.
If s/he is in Beijing opera, what face color s/he should have, why? (Yalan’s journal in the
fall)
It seems that Yalan had clear procedures for her teaching in the social studies classes. Yalan
was aware that she was imitating her mentor teacher while she was in his class and learning from
him because they co-taught the social studies classes:
Usually I was in his class, so I knew his steps. Then I would prepare for the lessons one
week before his actual classes. I showed him what I prepared. If he thought it was fine, I
would teach that way. (Yalan’s second interview)

8

These are the four main roles/characters in Beijing Opera. “生” usually refers to the role of a
young male, and “旦” refers to a young female. The role “净” in Beijing Opera usually has a
colorful make up, and “丑” is often a comic character. These four types of characters, when put
together in Chinese, mean different roles in Beijing Opera. “泥人脸谱” refers to the masks or
colorful faces made of earth. For Beijing Opera,《霸王别姬》, some people literally translate it
as Farewell my Concubine.
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Thus, before each class the mentor teacher checked whether the teaching methods that Yalan
had prepared would work in the social studies classes. During the class sessions, the mentor
teacher was in the classroom when Yalan was teaching. He observed Yalan’s teaching and gave
her suggestions after the class. “After each class he would tell me how I could improve, including
my English,” Yalan recalled (Yalan’s second interview). This way, the mentor teacher strongly
influenced the way that Yalan was teaching in the social studies class in the high school, both
explicitly and implicitly.
Yalan assumed a very different teaching style in her classes of Chinese as a second language
for the young children. Her first teaching video in the fall is an example. She seemed experienced
and relaxed and more flexible toward the class activities than in her high school social studies
classes. Without a classroom of her own, she could not decorate the room, but she tried to create
an engaging learning environment with a variety of children-friendly activities, her own adjusted
tones and language use, and her smiles. When she called on a child, she would smile and say
with a soft but cheerful voice, “Come on, sweetie.”
Yalan’s teaching activities were often associated with physical movements, and she invited
the children to participate during her teaching. To teach the color of pink (粉红色) on the first
day of school, Yalan showed the picture first, led the children to read in Chinese, and then asked
the children to find the color in their clothes. The children happily responded and showed her,
“My shirt is 粉红色!” “My shoes are 粉红色!” In the follow-up activities, Yalan used songs and
puppets to assist her teaching.
From these teaching activities, it can be seen that Yalan had rich knowledge about how to
teach young children in terms of pedagogy, and it came more from her prior teaching experience,
as Yalan noted:

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Because I studied Early Childhood Education before… and I worked in kindergarten for
several years, that was why I could incorporate all these. Also I had been working in
kindergarten, so I know…which songs they know, which stories they know, so I
translated them into Chinese. (Yalan’s second interview)
Yalan’s teaching at the beginning of the fall shows that she benefited from her prior teaching
experience and her mentor teacher in the high school. However, the benefit was limited, and
Yalan was still much influenced by her education in China. The above description and analysis
indicate that Yalan often took a whole-class approach, and student-student interactions were not
evident, especially in her high school classes. Her fall mentor teacher recalled that Yalan’s
teaching tended to be a “mixture” of Chinese and American instructional methods (Yalan’s fall
mentor interview).
Fangyi’s Knowledge of Pedagogy at the Beginning of the Fall
Fangyi taught Interactive TV Chinese classes, and she appeared confident and relaxed during
her class sessions at the beginning of the fall. She spoke with a loud and cheerful voice, smiled,
and looked energetic. Fangyi started the class with greetings between teacher and students. She
asked the students to introduce themselves in Chinese with “你好，我是…” (Hi, I am…) while
she was taking attendance and introducing two new students to the three groups.
Fangyi gave instructions both in Chinese and English—she would speak in Chinese first,
pause, and then translate her instruction into English. Her teaching seemed to have clear steps.
Fangyi knew that she should have a warm-up activity at the beginning of a class. She said, “The
first activity I did was warm-up activity. The purpose of warm-up activity was to refresh the
students’ memory…what they learned in the previous day. Then I may intentionally or
unintentionally include today’s vocabulary” (Fangyi’s second interview).

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For the core part of a class, Fangyi had her instruction and the students’ practice alternatively.
For her instruction, she explicitly asked the students to take notes. For example, Fangyi first
illustrated several initials and vowels in Chinese Pinyin, asked the students to follow her to read,
and then had the students practice combinations of initials and vowels. She would check by
asking the students whether they had any questions before she went on to the step on vocabulary.
To teach vocabulary, Fangyi prepared flash cards of Chinese words and showed them on the
9

screen one by one to her groups . She gave the English meaning of a Chinese character,
pronounced it, and asked the students to follow her and read. After the students’ activity of
practicing vocabulary, Fangyi would move on to the grammar part. Around ten minutes before
the class was over, Fangyi asked the students to take out their textbooks and read the dialogues.
The words and sentence patterns that the class learned were in the dialogues.
Obviously Fangyi had clear steps and procedures for her instruction at the beginning of the
fall. She herself was also aware that she was guiding the students to move through these steps:
First of all, the students learned vocabulary. Then I designed a variety of activities and
games as much as possible and had them familiar with how to speak, how to use the
vocabulary. Then after that, I designed sentence pattern, and had them practice, then
conversation… (Fangyi’s second interview)
However, Fangyi seemed to have used many drills, especially for practicing Pinyin and
vocabulary. Her teaching was also teacher-centered. Fangyi herself attributed such a teaching
approach and procedure to the influence of her former director when she was learning how to
teach English in Taiwan. She said, “I am influenced by my director a lot, the director in that
English training program. It’s subconscious” (Fangyi’s first interview).
9

Her first video was about her second hour class of three groups of students: one group was in
the same classroom with her, and the other two groups were at different remote sites and learning
through ITV.
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Analysis of Their Teaching at the Beginning
The above description and analysis of the four teachers’ teaching show that they were all
much influenced by their educational and cultural backgrounds and prior teaching experience at
the beginning of the fall. Although Yalan and Fangyi had taught in Chinese or Taiwanese
communities schools in the U.S. for at least five years, their teaching was much influenced by
their education in China and Taiwan. However, none of them mentioned their preparation in
language instructional methods from the teacher certification program in their teaching journals
at the beginning of the fall or when they were recalling their teaching during this period in my
interviews with them, which may indicate that they did not learn much about language
instruction from the program before they started teaching, or they did not know how to apply
language instructional methods to their teaching.
Knowledge of pedagogy is very important for teachers to learn to teach, and was identified
as one of the core areas by the certification program. The certification program director believed
that knowledge of pedagogy was important and noted that “they [teachers] have to have
knowledge of teaching pedagogies, though they may not be proficient with them yet” (program
director’s interview), before the teachers started teaching Chinese in the fall. The core
instructor

10

also identified pedagogy as one of the three major areas that the certification

program had been focused on when he explained the curriculum of the certification program:
…so it came out with in some major areas, and one of mostly curriculum, because that
was one of the courses. Another one was instructional methods. Another was

10

This core instructor is a professor in the Department of Teacher Education. He supervised the
Chinese certification program (including the instructors, courses, and field instructors) from 2008
to 2011, and taught the course on classroom management in the program in the summers of 2008
and 2009.
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management. I think those three things have been sort of the stable concern, and central
concern. (program instructor’s interview)
With these understandings, the specific focuses were further determined for the course on
pedagogy, and apparently they addressed language instruction:
…the main person who was working from…we did have language training, proposed
these six ideas to organize around: designing environment, relate language to life,
scaffold language learning, learning to listening, speaking and so on, extending learning,
and incorporate activities. (program instructor’s interview)
However, it did not seem that the teachers had learned Chinese instructional methods in the
real sense, although the course on language instructional methods was one of the two courses
they took from the certification program in the summer of 2009. Tianyu’s principal noted that
“Tianyu entered the year with little if any instructional practice and/or comprehension. His
summer training seemed to prepare him for a philosophical approach to learning without any of
the tools to articulate those abstract concepts.” Tianyu’s spring mentor teacher also had a similar
observation:
I know that we asked him, “What did you do at ××× [the certification program] in the
summer before you came to us”? He said, “Well, we talked a lot about like John Dewey
and like political theory, and all these…” We were like… but you don’t know how to
plan a lesson. (Tianyu’s spring mentor interview)
As a result, Tianyu did not know how to teach a language at all, as the above analysis of
Tianyu’s teaching indicates. Commenting on his own teaching in the fall, Tianyu said,
Back then [in the fall] I was just trying…like I said, I didn’t know what to teach, I didn’t
know like the steps like teaching like warm-up, like introducing new content, like
activities to get familiar with the content, and then review, and like next one. (Tianyu’s
second interview)
Thus, Tianyu did not seem to have learned detailed and specific language instructional
methods from the course in the certification program in the summer. Scott and Yalan added more

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evidence. Scott mentioned only the socio-cultural approach from his learning in the program in
the summer, but he had to face practical teaching, so theories that he learned did not seem to be
the most important thing while he was teaching. In one of my talks with Yalan, she struggled to
recall what they learned in the summer course. With my help, she recognized that they learned
things such as “legitimate peripheral participation,” “socio-cultural theory,” etc., within the five
weeks of the course. She had to find the syllabus to provide me with more information. The
syllabus indicated that they watched their preceding cohort’s teaching videos for the first two
weeks, discussed how people learn their first/second/foreign language for a week, and the last
two

weeks

were

about

teaching

methods.

The

course

introduced

four

teaching

approaches/methods—“didactic teaching,” “task-based teaching,” “project-based learning,” and
“action based classroom.” However, none of the four teachers referred to their learning of these
approaches/methods from this course, as the above analysis indicated. Yalan admitted that she
was confused, because she did not know how she should apply these to her Chinese teaching.
Thus, the program course on Chinese instructional methods seemed to be disconnected from the
teachers’ needs and their actual teaching.
Fangyi was in a different situation. She was waived from taking the two summer courses,
because she had taken courses on pedagogy from the fields of SLA and Education in the U.S.
However, it did not seem that she used what she learned in the U.S. in her teaching at the
beginning of the fall. Her teaching was still an imitation of one of her teachers’ in Taiwan. Thus,
Fangyi seemed to have difficulties or did not know how to apply what she had learned to her
Chinese teaching at the beginning of the fall. In her reflection on her first teaching video in the
fall, she raised many questions for me:

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Regarding interactive tasks and form-focused instruction on L2 lexical acquisition, I have
the following questions : 1) What is the ideal structure and sequencing of the vocabulary
task, and what specific elements can enhance L2 learning (especially for teaching novice
level in a CFL environment)? 2) Should vocabulary tasks include form-focused
instruction, and if so, how much and when (before, during, after the meaning-based task)?
3) Can we use the task-based vocabulary method to teach beginner level in a CFL setting?
If so, what tasks can we adopt (e.g. match game, complete a dialogue, and etc.)? 4)
Should the form-focused instruction be explicit or implicit in a CFL setting? (Fangyi’s
journal in the fall)
This quotation indicates that Fangyi had rich knowledge of language pedagogy in theory, but
she needed guidance on implementing the theories, especially to teach Chinese. Her knowledge
of language pedagogy seemed to remain theoretical and was not well applied to her teaching yet.
Thus, for Fangyi and teachers like Fangyi, perhaps proper guidance on applying theories to actual
teaching practice is necessary.
Therefore, the four teachers either did not have much knowledge of language pedagogy or
did not know how to connect theoretical knowledge of language pedagogy to actual teaching,
especially to Chinese teaching in U.S. K-12 schools, when they started teaching in the fall of
2009. They tried to use whatever “methods” they knew about language instruction from their
learning and teaching backgrounds, but the cultural, occupational, and instructional contexts are
different in the U.S., China, and Taiwan, so the four teachers faced many challenges and had to
learn and improve their pedagogy from the beginning of their first year of teaching.
Misunderstanding and Confusion at the Beginning
The teachers’ learning of pedagogy was not smooth at all, and there were various
misunderstandings and confusion at the beginning of the fall, especially in the first two months.
The first few weeks were quite chaotic. As their field instructor, I could feel the distrust from the
teachers and the tension between the teachers and the program, and I was caught in between. The
syllabus of the course on “Field Experiences” was assigned to me and the other field instructor
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by the certification program, but the teachers were confused by the course syllabus, and so were
the field instructors. The course required the teachers to submit a teaching journal every week, a
video reflection every other week, and three stages of their improvement projects

11

after the

mid-term evaluation, but the syllabus did not make it clear whether the teachers should also
submit a journal when they submitted a video reflection or one stage of their improvement
projects. Neither was it clear how many videos they should submit across the semester, because
there was not a clear calendar. As a result, when the other field instructor calculated, she thought
there should be six videos in total, but when I calculated, I believed that there should be five
videos in total. The other field instructor and I had to communicate with the program about the
issues, but the answer was, “Ask them to read the syllabus!” The teachers were frustrated and
even became resistant, arguing with me about the syllabus during our field instruction sessions
and trying to get away from the assignments. Finally, with the permission of the core instructor,
the other field instructor and I revised the syllabus to make it clear to the teachers, and things
became much better.
Meanwhile, the teachers had misunderstandings about me and my role as their field
instructor. The certification program asked the field instructors to watch only seven minutes of
each teacher’s videos, which were specified by the teachers themselves, although they were
required to submit a one-hour video every other week. Many teachers took me more as an
evaluator than an instructor and did not want to give me a negative impression about their
teaching, as Tianyu admitted to me in one of our talks. As a result, the videos they specified were
11

The Chinese teacher certification program required the teacher candidates to select an issue
which they needed to improve most in their teaching based on the feedback they received from
the mid-term evaluation. In the second half semester, the teacher candidates focused on the
selected issue, proposed solutions, implemented their plans, and submitted their report at the end
of the semester. This is called Improvement Project in the Chinese certification program.
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often about students’ doing their work, but I could not know their teaching process. For better
understanding of their teaching, I decided to watch the teachers’ full videos and explicitly asked
them to record their teaching processes. I also encouraged and elicited questions from them, and
more importantly, helped them to understand that my role was to assist their teaching. Gradually
they began to be open and cooperative and asked questions actively. The most resistant teacher
said to me in a private talk after class, “Wang Laoshi, you are different.”
As their field instructor, I was shocked, worried, and overwhelmed by my groups’ struggles
and lack of knowledge of language instruction, which I observed from their videos and questions
in the fall, but I met them online only for one hour weekly for each of my two groups, as the
course specified. Instead of “re-teaching” them language instructional methods or overwhelming
them by adding readings, I decided to focus on their common and urgent struggles, leading them
to discuss the issues, and guiding them to connect to language instructional methods and their
instructional contexts. I appreciated that Scott was a wonderful asset to assist me in explaining
American K-12 school contexts. My field instruction often had to run over 10:30 pm because of
the teachers’ MANY questions, although it should have been over at 9:15 pm. When I identified
that a teacher struggled hard in a certain aspect of teaching, I had to call him or her individually
to provide more systematic assistance. Things became better in the spring so that the other field
instructor and I were able to add readings (mainly on language pedagogy) to “re-teach” language
instruction more systemically. However, because of the teachers’ struggles, some schools talked
to the certification program, and the certification program blamed the field instructors.
Learning Pedagogy
Despite the misunderstandings and confusion at the beginning of the fall, the four teachers
realized or were reminded that their teaching should be improved, and they worked hard to do so.
110

However, they faced many similar and different challenges and difficulties because of a variety
of factors, including their cultural and educational backgrounds.
Scott’s Learning of Pedagogy
Soon after the fall semester started, Scott found that his modified audio-lingualism method
did not work well for his classes. He expected his students to take notes, but he found that “the
students a lot of times didn’t take notes at all, or didn’t study their notes, or lost their notes”
(Scott’s second interview). From his first teaching video in the fall, I observed that quite a few
students read instead of presenting in the front, which might indicate that they were not very
familiar with what they had learned, so I reminded Scott to ask the students to try “not to take
notes with them” during their presentation in order to “push” or “force” them a bit in their output
(my comments on Scott’s journal in the fall). Scott tried to help the students to review, but he
was frustrated and said, “…a lot of times I feel like I was reviewing the same thing over and over,
and not making the progress I want to, because they won’t retaining…feel like I wasn’t
teaching… (Scott’s second interview). The worse thing was that the students’ misbehaviors often
made Scott unable to cover what he had planned or often disturbed Scott’s plans, so Scott had to
learn two kinds of pedagogies—general pedagogy to motivate students to learn, and language
pedagogy to teach Chinese in his first year of teaching.
Learning language pedagogy in the fall. Scott worked hard to learn language instructional
methods and techniques from field instruction, his Chinese cohort, and his colleagues. He
actively participated in field instruction while we were discussing their common and particular
challenges, including language instructional methods. We discussed various issues in the fall,

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including how teachers should start a language class, how to have language input and how much
language input they should have, and how to have students’ interactions, etc.
Meanwhile, Scott had very active informal interactions with his cohort. They talked about
their teaching, challenges, and more importantly, their learning, which Scott believed was very
important for them. Thus, he suggested to me during our class discussions and also in our chats
in the summer of 2010 that the certification program could have found more ways to encourage
sharing and communication among the Chinese teacher candidates in the program. Moreover, as
I reminded them, Scott was trying to learn from colleagues in his school at the beginning of the
fall, and he often talked to the Spanish teacher next door. Scott also tried to learn from other
foreign language teachers at professional development events or through his personal
connections, but there were not many opportunities for this type of learning. Scott recalled, “I felt
like…I was just doing anything that I could do…you know, I felt like…I was so frustrated by
things that were not working, so I was trying to find anything that gonna work” (Scott’s followup interview).
Around the middle of the fall semester, there were many noticeable changes in Scott’s
instruction. He began to use greetings between a teacher and students to start his classes, as many
of his Chinese colleagues did. In addition to the benefit of helping the students learn authentic
Chinese language and culture, Scott believed that such a practice could signify to the students
that class begins and thus could help to draw their attention to him (my informal communication
with Scott). From early October in 2009, Scott began to use PowerPoint and other strategies to
assist him in introducing language input, especially when he was teaching Chinese culture, which
was very new and different to the students:

112

I am using a ppt presentation to teach the different parts of the face [in Beijing Opera]. I
found some funny pictures for each part of the face and I hoped that this and the drawing
would keep the kids pretty engaged in the lesson. It seems like this plan worked pretty
well; they were much more receptive to this type of "lecture" than if I just hand out a
sheet of notes and teach from the notes. (Scott’s journal in the fall)
Encouraged by the positive results of using PowerPoints in his teaching, Scott began to try
different strategies of language teaching, which he learned from various sources. Toward the end
of November, he was able to use a variety of strategies for language input. He wrote that “in my
first 3 months teaching Chinese, I’ve used several approaches to delivering Chinese language
content. I’ve given lecture format, using printed notes. I’ve used instructional videos to teach
certain concepts, such as colors, elements of Chinese culture, etc.” (Scott’s journal in the fall).
Meanwhile, there were also signs that Scott began to use Task-Based Language Teaching

12

or

project-based teaching, which was introduced to him and his cohort through field instruction in
the fall:
I also used project-based learning, to reinforce colors and to teach parts of the face. I’ve
also interwoven activities such as student presentations, whiteboard drills, etc. to help
review/reinforce material that we’ve already covered. Several times I tried giving the
students access to laptops and questions/tasks to allow them to learn through
investigation. (Scott’s journal in the fall)
Scott’s description shows that he used some strategies for students’ participation in class,
and he also tried to have students do some independent work. However, Scott did not seem to
have included many student-student interactions in his teaching, and he was leading most of class
activities during this period, which was caused by students’ misbehaviors, so that Scott had to be
careful about activities he used and he had to learn how to deal with this situation.
12

It was introduced to my two groups of teachers in our field instruction discussions in the fall,
and also introduced to the whole cohort, including the elementary group, in the spring.

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Learning general pedagogy in the fall. Parallel to his endeavor in learning language
instructional methods, Scott worked hard to learn general pedagogy from his colleagues and his
mentor teacher. The students often misbehaved and disturbed his teaching plans, which was the
reoccurring theme in Scott’s journals in the fall, so Scott was cautious to balance his control of
the whole class and students’ individual work. Thus, Scott had to gain knowledge about how to
manage the students to learn and how to teach this group of students.
In addition to the routine greetings between teacher and students at the beginning of the class,
Scott introduced more structures to his teaching in early November. We discussed how to
maximize use of the target language in their instruction at the beginning of the fall, for example,
by using Chinese in some routines, but Scott did not increase his use of Chinese substantially.
Neither did he introduce more routines until November, because he was worried that too much
use of Chinese would lead to classroom management problems:
I noticed when watching the video that I need to use more Chinese. I am a bit nervous
about the classroom management problems this might cause. But I think it is important
and I am going to make a conscious effort to increase the amount of Chinese I use in the
class. (Scott’s journal in the fall)
Things began to change after the mid-term in the fall. Scott noted that “…as someone who
thrives on creativity and establishing relationships, I sometimes have to FORCE myself into
routines, because part of my nature tends toward that which is OUTSIDE of the routine” (Scott’s
journal in the fall). Scott made such a change because his conversations with his colleagues and
especially his mentor teacher and the Spanish teacher next door helped him to realize that the
students needed good learning habits and better literacy proficiency.
As a result, Scott divided the 50 minutes of class into four distinctive periods—bell time,
daily routines, review, and new content. Each period was set for certain activities. For example,

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during bell time period, Scott had a weekend review on Mondays, Chinese culture on Tuesdays,
current China events on Thursdays, and questions about Chinese on Fridays (things in Chinese
that interested the students). He also made talking about the weather, dates, etc., a classroom
routine before he taught new content for the day, which was used by some of his cohort in the fall.
These types of activities remained almost the same each day, because Scott hoped the students
would be clearer about what he expected them to do. Scott explained that “these are some of the
things that I gleaned from those conversations. So those were beneficial conversations with my
mentor where I would go” (Scott’s second interview). He continued to explain the reasons for
and the strengths of such a structure:
I think the strength was a lot of those students lacked basic structure, organization,
discipline in a lot of areas in their lives. And so…because they lacked that kind of
consistency, it was very evident in almost everything indeed. You know, they never hit
on…been in a situation where they…they were required to do anything consistently. So
by giving them that structure…at first, they went crazy about it, but it allowed them to tell
something that they knew…what to expect.
Scott was able to see the benefits of increasing use of Chinese and more routines in his
teaching. Using more Chinese not only helped with his instruction, but also classroom
management, as Scott reflected:
…in the long term, using Chinese more can be as effective as using English, and it also
accomplishes language instruction goals. For example, I’ve intentionally started using
more Chinese words and phrases in class. One that I use frequently with my rowdy
classes is “安静” (quite). After I say it a couple times, usually a student will speak up,
“He said “anjing” (quite). That means quiet!!” So the students are understanding Chinese
being used in context to control behavior. (Scott’s journal in the fall)
Thus, Scott said, “I think that I’m starting to see that, in the long term, using Chinese more
can be as effective as using English, and it also accomplishes language instruction goals” (Scott’s

115

journal in the fall). Meanwhile, Scott reaped some rewards from the routines and structure for his
instruction toward the end of the fall. When he watched his teaching video, he noticed:
Students were quiet and ostensibly attentive during videos and most actively participated
in the discussions. The reaction to the daily routines seemed mostly positive as well,
although implementation was far from perfect… My implementation occurred during the
three weeks of school between Thanksgiving and Christmas. In spite of the increased
“rowdiness” of the students during this time, I was still able to observe measured progress
in the areas of classroom management AND language instruction. (Scott’s teaching
journal in the fall)
Therefore, when looking back at the roles that routines and structures in his instruction, Scott
believed that routines assisted both his instruction and students’ learning and also helped to
modify students’ behaviors. He noted,
I think it is good to have routines in teaching…I think it makes things easier for the
teacher and the students, but I think it’s also to be able to step outside the routines. This
was a good practice for me to come up with a routine, implement it, and see the beneficial
impact on the students where by doing things repetitively and consistently, they were able
to …modify their behaviors. (Scott’s second interview)
In addition to cultivating students’ good learning habits, Scott also tried to improve their
literacy, as a way to help with his Chinese instruction. He recalled that “she [his mentor] was also
the one who pointed it out some of the kids were at biggest… behavior problems with…where
kids that she knew had literacy issues” (Scott’s second interview). Scott created a website to
provide the parents with some Chinese resources and was actively involved in school activities
that promoted school literacy. He also contacted the Chinese program at a university in the same
city in order to bring Chinese native speakers or Chinese language learners to his classes and to
seek Chinese resources for his students from various sources. That is, Scott was working toward
building a Chinese learning community for his students, and he searched for opportunities for his

116

students to learn Chinese and improve their literacy, as his principal and mentor noted at the final
evaluation in the fall and in the interview.
Gaining knowledge of pedagogy in the spring. With more knowledge of pedagogy and
students, Scott was able to have much improvement in his teaching in the spring. He gradually
moved from being teacher-centered to being more student-centered, and he was able to reach
individual students. Meanwhile, his teaching became more communicative and task-based, and
he also paid attention to, having authentic language input and more student interactions.
In the spring, Scott was learning from the readings that were added to the course on “Field
Experiences” (mainly on language instructional methods), and he applied what he learned to his
teaching. During this process, his students’ reactions became an important factor that influenced
Scott’s decision whether to use a language instructional method in his teaching. The
Communicative Language Teaching approach (CLT) was the first topic that was introduced to
Scott’s cohort in the spring. Understanding that “CLT-based foreign language teaching focuses
on ‘teaching’ students to speak and understand authentic language in its proper context” (Scott’s
journal in the spring), Scott applied it to his teaching and observed both positive and negative
effects of this approach in his teaching. He “…noticed that students are usually motivated to
learn things that they deem useful outside of the classroom,” but “using communicative language
teaching

forces

the

teacher

to

shift

his

focus

from

accuracy

of

grammar

to

COMMUNICATION,” because “by allowing students to learn language from each other, I have
to forfeit some of my opportunities to correct their pronunciation, grammar, etc.” (Scott’s journal
in the spring) Nevertheless, Scott decided to continue to use CLT in his teaching, because “this
concession is worth the benefit I gain by having the students more engaged in the language

117

learning process in my classroom” (Scott’s journal in the spring). It is clear that students’
attentiveness was the important reason for Scott to keep using CLT for his instruction. Because
Scott’s concern about CLT was common among the teachers in my groups at that time, I led class
discussion on this issue to clarify what CLT is and how to use CLT in foreign language
instruction.
With more knowledge of students and better classroom management, Scott was also able to
pay more attention to students’ use of the target language around the middle of the spring
semester, which is also an important feature of CLT. However, there were constraints, because
students’ misbehaviors interrupted his efforts. I observed from his teaching videos that he
instructed in Chinese instead of English, repeated the word or phrase, or paused to push the
students for better language output. Clearly Scott was aware that he should use more Chinese and
push students for better language output, as I reminded him at the beginning of the fall. However,
he was often discouraged by students’ misbehaviors and gave up his efforts in this aspect. Scott
gave another example in his spring journal and noted that “I was happy with the way I handled
the situation,” and “I didn't have to speak any English,” but “I forced her to speak Chinese even
though she didn't want to and she didn't seem convinced that she could” (Scott’s journal in the
spring). However, “many times, I don't handle this situation this well. I sometimes get frustrated.
Sometimes, I just lapse into English” (Scott’s journal in the spring). Even in this video, I noticed
that a few of the students were not paying attention. Thus, Scott knew how he should handle the
situations, but students’ misbehaviors negatively affected his efforts. His endeavor to use his
knowledge of language pedagogy was constrained by his contexts.
However, his further efforts of using CLT in his teaching was seriously affected by his
students’ behaviors and learning, so Scott had to be cautious in using more student activities in

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his teaching. In his spring videos, I observed that he did try to have some student-student
interactions to increase their communication. Some students were working, but a number of
students were chatting and disturbing others. More importantly, Scott was frustrated by students’
learning. He noted,

I REPEATEDLY told them to focus on simple sentence patterns (我是，我有，我喜欢,
等)(I am…, I have…, I like…, etc.).But when I went to grade the assessments, I found
that the majority of my students were unable to meet this requirement. (Scott’s journal in
the spring)
Thus, Scott had to use more teacher-controlled activities or games to emphasize more
language input and students’ practice, although he tried to use more interesting activities to
motivate the students to learn. For example, he used Twister to help students practice colors and
directions. He also lined up students to chant in order to practice numbers.
Scott’s learning of other language instructional methods, especially CLT and TBLT, was
also interwoven with his learning of general pedagogy from other sources, and many factors
came into play and shaped his teaching in the spring. Scott believed that he gradually moved
from his modified audio-lingualism to task-based teaching in the spring. He said, “I think I
switched to more Task-Based Language Teaching probably…that’s the best way to describe it”
(Scott’s follow-up interview). He explained, “Because I was searching for something that would
work…I think we were talking about it [task-based language teaching] in our field instruction.
Weren’t we? I think that’s where the idea came from” (Scott’s follow-up interview). However,
although TBLT was introduced to them in the fall, and he also tried in his teaching, Scott
believed that he did not change “…methods fully until the second semester” (Scott’s follow-up
interview). As Scott’s learning of general pedagogy shows, this happened because in the fall, he

119

had to focus on managing and improving students’ behaviors, which might have delayed his
learning of language instructional methods.
In the spring, with more knowledge of students and improved students’ behaviors, Scott
began to use TBLT better in his teaching. In addition, he also combined it with differentiated
instruction when he designed extra tasks or projects for some gifted students. He identified that
his teaching was slow for some well-performing students and they were bored:
I remember one student particular in my first hour who I knew was gifted, because I can
see the sign. She was very…articulate in the way she spoke. She needn’t pay very much
attention at all, but when I called on her, instantly knew the answer. So she was…it is
pretty obvious…she was bored with things going on. The pace was way too slow for her.
(Scott’s second interview)
Scott further noted, “But I feel frustrated because I had been there in classes before where I
was bored. I hate being bored. I understood her situation, and I wanted to make her situation
better” (Scott’s second interview). He also noticed that several other students were in similar
situations, so he decided to make some changes by designing extra projects for these students so
that they could further develop. Because he was learning differentiated instruction from both
field instruction and the professional development workshops in his school district during this
period, he decided to use this method for these students. Evidently, Scott’s own educational
experience and his knowledge of the students influenced his instructional decisions, and field
instruction and PD helped to provide resources.
When Scott was implementing differentiated instruction and TBLT for these gifted students,
his parenting experience and his knowledge of context also played a role. Thinking about the
issue carefully, Scott talked to the students and their parents in order to get their input, instead of
picking up a project for these students, because communication with parents is part of the

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school’s culture (Scott’s second interview). He also allowed options when he designed the tasks
with individual students:
I think as a teacher and also a parent where you kind of give a child options by the ways
that you present it, by the options you give them, you are also giving them directions in
the ways that they will go. But by giving them a choice, you are also allowing them
freedom in this. So…I think because I was a parent, I recognized it was good to do that.
(Scott’s second interview)
Clearly in this issue, Scott combined his knowledge of language pedagogy on TBLT and his
knowledge of general pedagogy on differentiated instruction, which also interacted with his
knowledge of students and contexts and his own background. Thus, a variety of factors jointly
shaped Scott’s teaching in the spring.
Toward the end of the spring, Scott witnessed the mixed overall results from his efforts on
differentiated instruction and TBLT for the gifted students. Although generally the gifted
students were more motivated to learn and did well on their individual tasks, Scott felt that it was
difficult in “…getting the students to go from talking about what they were going to do to
actually doing it,” so his improvement project on differentiated instruction “…wasn’t as effective
as I hoped it would be” (Scott’s second interview). Despite these difficulties, Scott believed that
he learned much about differentiated instruction in the spring semester, and noted that “…I
was…learning to teach that in several different ways so that different student could still grasp the
same objective” (Scott’s second interview). Thus, Scott noted that “the improvement project
helped me. I think that was good for me to be able to think about teaching all my students
individually” in the spring semester (Scott’s second interview). More importantly, teaching in the
first year helped Scott to be “practically teaching in classroom every day” (Scott’s second
interview).

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Looking back at his learning experiences in his first year of teaching, Scott believed that he
learned from various sources. First, he thought he learned much from his colleagues. He said,
“My colleagues helped there, so I think interacting with them, because we…we worked…we
talked…we did a lot of things together” (Scott’s second interview). Second, Scott considered his
own teaching important in his learning to teach. He continued, “And also just kind of by doing
things, and you know, by experimentations, right? You teach…I guess I was fond of teaching
experience as well.” Third, “I think the course work in the certification program helps by kind of
providing different theories, and ideas, and approaches,” Scott noted. Fourth, he also learned
from other Chinese language teachers. He said, “I think interaction with other Chinese teachers
was helpful to see what they were doing, to hear the struggles they were having.”
Tianyu’s Learning of Pedagogy
Tianyu started his teaching with almost no knowledge of pedagogy in the fall of 2009, as the
description and analysis in the earlier sections of this chapter indicate. He tried hard to gain
knowledge of pedagogy, but many factors helped and also delayed his learning to teach in his
first year of teaching.
Confusions and uncertainty in the beginning. Tianyu soon had to face tremendous
challenges and difficulties in his classes, schools, and even the school district because of his
initial teacher-centered and lecture-based approach and unorganized teaching at the beginning of
the fall of 2009. He wanted to improve, but did not know how, and sometimes he could not
understand why, so the fall semester, especially the first half semester, was very tough for him.
His lesson plans were not approved by the school district at the beginning of the fall,
although Tianyu was confident and felt good about his teaching at that time, which alerted him

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and helped him to realize that he should improve his teaching:
When I just arrived, I felt good about several lessons, including my lesson plans, but they
were disapproved by others. It happened in the school district. Of course, they were very
polite. They told me that you could do this way, and it would be better this way, so I
realized that I didn’t do well. (Tianyu’s first interview)
However, without adequate knowledge of pedagogy, Tianyu was not clear how he could
improve according their advice. He said, “…but I couldn’t do it well when I tried to do as they
said, because I didn’t know why I should do that way. So I was very uncomfortable while I was
trying” (Tianyu’s first interview), so Tianyu was not very convinced by their advice at that time.
After Tianyu realized his inadequacy in teaching, especially in pedagogy, he worked hard to
learn how to teach from his mentor teacher, as his principal required. Although he participated
well in the “Field Experiences” courses, his teaching journals and class discussions were more
about the challenges he had only during his teaching in the classroom, because he thought that
the course on “Field Experiences” focused on teaching students, not on himself as a teacher.
Actually he tried to hide his difficulties in his teaching from me at the beginning, because he also
took me more as an evaluator. Thus, the first two videos he submitted to me were about the
students doing their work, while I was following the certification program’s requirement to watch
seven-minute video segments of their teaching. When I noticed this and asked him to record his
teaching process, it was already around the middle of the fall semester, because they were
required to submit only five videos across the fall. Together with the chaos of the course, I was
not able to get a better understanding about Tianyu’s teaching for quite a few weeks at the
beginning. As a result, my field instruction focused on issues that I could observe from his
teaching journals and videos, mainly on language instruction. I did not have a complete idea
about his struggles that were not recorded in the videos or his journals, for example, his school

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district’s feedback on his teaching, until the interviews for this study.
Learning language pedagogy. Tianyu learned language pedagogy from various sources: from
his mentor teachers, field instruction, and his colleagues in the cohort and in his schools. He said
that he learned language pedagogy from field instruction and his colleagues so that he could
gradually move from his lecture-based instruction to more student interactions. He noted,
I learned from various sources [last year]. First, the courses provided by ×× [the
university] and the discussions we had in our class sessions. This is a major part.
Then…my discussions with other teachers after class…their teaching methods. I meant
Chinese language teachers. Also I asked my colleagues in schools…also somebody raised
issues in our class discussions. I also found some things not good in my teaching and I
adjusted them. (Tianyu’s follow-up interview)
When he was teaching in the IB school in the fall, he talked to his mentor teacher or they met
with each other after class. Without any prior teaching experience or any references, even a
textbook, Tianyu did not know where to start. He said at that time, “I did not know anything”
(Tianyu’s follow-up interview). His fall mentor teacher suggested some topics, but Tianyu did
not know how to teach these topics. Consequently, he “…wrote down some notes. It was not so
organized. They were just like some ideas of …what I wanted to teach” (Tianyu’s second
interview). His fall mentor teacher helped Tianyu to organize vocabulary:
The other thing that I remember I was trying to get group the vocabulary, like he would
just teach all the vocabulary that didn’t connect. So for a while that I told him that…ok,
why didn’t he try to teach it in clothes? So he would just teach like all the clothes. Then I
said, alright, let’s try to teach it in the food, so he would try to teach it in the food.
(Tianyu’s fall mentor interview)
He also learned other language teaching techniques from the mentor. For example, he
learned to use flash cards to help the students to practice new vocabulary. At that time, Tianyu
felt that what he learned from his fall mentor teacher was very helpful for his teaching, but “when

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I look back…she is young, and she is an English teacher, so it’s still not so organized” (Tianyu’s
follow-up interview).
Learning in his first year of teaching helped Tianyu to modify and apply his original
understandings about language instruction, which sound consistent with foreign language
teaching in the U.S. From the very beginning, Tianyu advocated maximum use of Chinese in
class, because his Chinese tutoring experience in China for a number of international students
made him believe that they could figure out the meaning. He also believed at the beginning of the
fall that U.S. students would be curious enough to try to figure out the meanings. He actually
carried out his belief in his teaching but was discouraged:
From the very beginning, especially the first few classes, I used a lot Chinese in class
even that students understand five percent of it. The purpose was to let the students get
use to it and feel the language. The other reason was that I had no America teaching
experience and was very confident at the beginning. Later on, I saw the puzzled looks on
students’ faces, and I became unconfident. (Tianyu’s journal in the spring)
Without enough knowledge or confidence in this situation, Tianyu switched to English for
his instruction, hoping that the students could at least understand. We discussed how to increase
the target language at our field instruction meetings, and Tianyu began to slow down, repeat
when necessary, and he used gestures in order to help increase his use of Chinese in class, but he
could not increase his use of Chinese dramatically in the fall, although he was focusing on
increasing students’ activities then. Even in the spring, when his teaching was much improved,
he had to make conscious efforts to use Chinese in his instruction:
…I am pushing myself to maximum using Chinese in class. It turned out to be that in the
middle of the class, if I remembered or teach as I planned I can use lots of Chinese.
Otherwise, I automatically changed back to English. The most interesting part was that
when I noticed I was speaking English and I immediately changed back to Chinese…
(Tianyu’s journal in the spring)

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Tianyu’s learning experience in this aspect of his teaching shows that novice teachers may
collect some correct understanding about language instruction, but they may need guidance in
applying their understandings to their actual teaching, and it takes them time to use those
techniques skillfully.
With learning of language pedagogy from various sources in the fall, Tianyu was able to
“add some American elements, although I was not very clear yet,” but gradually he realized that
“students needed to have more interactions…group work” (Tianyu’s follow-up interview). One
of the very important ways for Tianyu to have more student interactions was to use games in his
teaching.
Tianyu observed his students and talked to them for their feedback. He noted, “students
also…some comments or some feedback from the students, they said like…we like this game,
we learn more from games” (Tianyu’s second interview). His conversations with some of his
colleagues in the schools and in his cohort impressed him that they used many games in their
teaching. Tianyu recalled, “I think I talked with some other language teachers and I looked at
some examples of lesson plans. All I learned was they had a lot of activities, and they had lots of
games” (Tianyu’s second interview). Thus, Tianyu tried some games in his own teaching that he
learned from other teachers. Students were more interested, but soon Tianyu noticed some
problems. He found that the students were used to games and did not want to work if there were
no games. He also became aware that improper use of games could lead to classroom
management problems. Thus, Tianyu noted that “I can understand students want to play games.
But if they have the idea that they go to school is just for playing games then I think we have
conveyed wrong idea to them” (Tianyu’s journal in the fall).

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Tianyu proposed to work on games and activities in language instruction in the second half
semester of the fall. He explained that “I was educated in China, and all the teaching
there…mostly I would say was like lectures...the idea of using games and activities here is pretty
new to me,” so he wanted to know more about it (Tianyu’s second interview). At that time, I
noticed that Tianyu’s understanding of “games” was broad—it included projects, flash cards,
songs, etc., so I agreed on his plan, hoping that this plan would help him to have more student
interactions and assist him in moving to more student-centered teaching. In the following days, I
also reminded Tianyu to ensure that language learning was the focus of his “games.” He came to
understand that learning “…from games is a good way but it is not always the best way and
effective way” (Tianyu’s journal in the fall). Sometimes he lost track of his language
instructional purposes in “games,” so in the spring I asked him to focus on connecting his
activities to his teaching purposes, instead of giving him flexibility to choose a focus.
Upon reflection, Tianyu realized that he was trying to move away from lecture-based
instruction, but it took him “quite a long time” (Tianyu’s follow-up interview). In this process, he
also gradually realized that language input, students’ interactions and practices, and students’
presentations of the language that they learn should all be included in his instruction in the
classroom, not only his language input. He said, “Long time ago, I thought in class, I was only
responsible for language input. Language output…if they need to practice, they should do it after
class” (Tianyu’s follow-up interview). Thus, Tianyu’s learning and actual teaching practice
helped to replace his previous beliefs on language instruction.
Tianyu’s official mentor teacher, the Japanese language teacher, came back to work in
December, and Tianyu often talked to her for her advice on his teaching. The spring mentor
recalled, “When I came in, I think it was better… but I still would see some inconsistency or the

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lack of flow in his lessons” (Tianyu’s spring mentor interview). They did not have a common
planning time or a time for formal meetings, so he could talk to his spring mentor teacher only
after class or while the students were working themselves. “Mostly I just open out to him,
whenever you have questions, you have things you are not sure how to teach, this concept or that,
this vocabulary,” Tianyu’s spring mentor said (Tianyu’s spring mentor interview). Because of his
tight schedule, Tianyu did not have a chance to observe his mentors’ or other teachers’ teaching,
although I advised him and he also wanted to do so.
Sometimes there were misunderstandings and different expectations between Tianyu and his
mentor teachers which negatively affected Tianyu’s learning. Tianyu appreciated that his spring
mentor teacher gave him much advice, but Tianyu did not think she understood his difficulties
sometimes. He did try to improve his teaching as his spring mentor advised, but “I did not have
any resources, and I did not have any experience…I really did not know…” (Tianyu’s follow-up
interview), so it took him time to have changes which were satisfactory to her. Tianyu
understood that he did not do perfectly well, but felt his spring mentor “focused on the fact that I
did not do well, but she did not think about why I had such a problem” (Tianyu’s follow-up
interview). In addition, Tianyu understood that he was a novice teacher, so he had asked the
mentor teacher to tell him when she noticed things that he should improve. However, he was
“surprised” at some problems which his spring mentor teacher told me at the evaluation
conferences, because those had never been mentioned to him, or only very “implicitly,” for
example, problems in designing assessments, and thus, he was not alerted. Tianyu felt at that
moment, “Wow, I have so many problems. But I also felt…why not tell me before this”
(Tianyu’s follow-up interview).

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I also observed a similar instance with Tianyu’s mentoring in the fall. Tianyu talked to the
students to get to know more about their lives and their reactions to his teaching, but
unintentionally he talked more with some Chinese American students. The fall mentor teacher
noticed that and talked to me during the interview. However, Tianyu was not aware of that until I
checked with him. He said, “Yes, that was true. But I did not realize it at that time… Perhaps I
felt comfortable to talk to them because of their appearance. You know, I was so new then”
(informal talks with Tianyu).
With his hard work, Tianyu learned to take steps in teaching toward the end of his first year
of teaching. His teaching had clear steps. He would start his class with warm-up activities to help
the students review and to lead them to the new content of the day. He used different strategies to
introduce new content. Sometimes he asked students about their experience with Chinese culture,
sometimes he compared Chinese and U.S. culture, or sometimes he used dialogues and passages
to introduce the new content. After he guided students to learn vocabulary and sentence patterns
with different contextualized activities, he would lead them to write Chinese characters. When
the students were ready with the four skills, Tianyu would ask students to do a more
comprehensive task, for example, to design a weather report, to write a letter to an editor
introducing their school life, etc. This way, his teaching tended to be more task-based and also
included some student activities.
He also learned to provide authentic language input in situations, so his classes would have
activities to help students understand “how it is used in real life, no matter they do a skit or a
project, or watch a video…let them know how to use it,” which he believed was the most
important thing he learned—contextualization (Tianyu’s follow-up interview). He tried both
inductive and deductive approaches in teaching new content, and found that “both have strengths

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and weakness…Perhaps there is not a fix method…perhaps I should use different ways for
different units…” (Tianyu’s follow-up interview).
Learning general pedagogy. As a novice teacher, Tianyu had to work hard to gain knowledge
of general pedagogy. He did not know those common practices and daily routines in a U.S.
school which had been taken for granted by his schools. He expected that his colleagues could
tell him, but they assumed that he was a prepared or an experienced teacher:
For the other teachers, they know how school works. They know what they should do
when something happens, and they also know what the procedures are. For me, I was
expecting other teachers would tell me at the orientation meeting. But I was wrong. On
the contrary, they just treated me as an experienced teacher even they know I am new,
because for them, they thought that’s something I should have already known. The only
thing school tells you are the special rules they have. (Tianyu’s journal in the fall)
Without adequate knowledge of general pedagogy and his school’s practices, Tianyu did not
know what he should do as a teacher. That was also one of the reasons why he did not realize at
the beginning of the fall that there was a grade book on the computer. Neither did he know that
he should include students’ homework in his reports in the school’s grading system:
For the first few weeks I didn’t know I have to grade on students’ homework, I just
corrected them. Until a couple of weeks ago a teacher [Tianyu’s fall mentor] noticed that
I have only put quiz and test score in the system which really scare her a little bit.
(Tianyu’s journal in the fall)
These sentences indicate that Tianyu only had a partial understanding about how teachers
handle students’ homework in China. Although some teachers only correct students’ mistakes in
their homework, many teachers also grade students’ homework, which can be implicit and
explicit formative assessment. However, Tianyu’s experience only as a student in China could
not help him learn how teachers in China handle students’ homework. Consequently there was no
sign at the beginning that Tianyu adjusted his teaching on the basis of students’ performance in

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their homework.
In the following days, Tianyu learned from his fall mentor teacher about how to use the
grading system. His fall mentor teacher recalled, “I think I had that [grade book] out and had him
prepare it with me” (Tianyu’s fall mentor interview). Meanwhile, Tianyu also talked to his
colleagues, both in his cohort and in his schools, to know more about grading in U.S. schools. He
mentioned that “then I learned that for some schools there would be a standard for how many
times you should grade on students’ homework and quizzes for a period” (Tianyu’s journal in the
fall).
Tianyu had only a very vague understanding about formative assessment, although with his
educational experience, he knew at the beginning of his teaching that he should have summative
assessment. In one of the talks with me, Tianyu commented that at the beginning he was only
aware of the semester final test from his experience as a student in China. His fall mentor noticed
that “there was no assessment; there was no test; there were no quizzes” (Tianyu’s fall mentor
interview). Without prior teaching experience, Tianyu actually did not know how to design
assessment, so his fall mentor teacher helped him with “how to plan assessment for learning”
(Tianyu’s principal’s report for the fall mid-term evaluation).
Neither was he able to use formative assessment in his teaching. His principal wrote that
Tianyu’s formative assessment “was neither obviously connected to a set curricular expectation
or to a particular set of skills” (Tianyu’s principal’s report for the fall mid-term evaluation).
Although we discussed different ways of formative assessment in field instruction, and Tianyu
was also trying to applying them to his teaching, he had some misunderstandings even in the
spring:

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Dynamic assessment is one of the popular methods I used in my class. However, after
13
reading the article I found that I have made a mistake…In my class, I thought that the
dynamic assessment is only the teacher interacts with students… I found that in my video
I constantly ask students to interact with me. Sometimes I ask the whole class, sometimes
I ask individual students. (Tianyu’s journal in the spring)
In addition to this, I also noticed his difficulties in using some techniques of formative
assessment, so I focused on formative assessment in one of my individual talks with him one day
and used examples from his own teaching. Tianyu finally came to understand and responded, “I
really appreciate the suggestions you gave me and I really like the suggestion about the
assessment methods we talked about the other day. I will try to implement those in my teaching”
(Tianyu’s journal in the spring). I did not have the opportunity to observe whether he was
actually able to use the methods in his teaching, because it was coming to the end of the spring
semester. This case indicates that Tianyu might not know when and how to use assessment,
although he knew the concept. That is, as a novice teacher, Tianyu did not know how to
“contextualize” assessment in his teaching.
Meanwhile, Tianyu was learning general pedagogy in other aspects of his teaching, which
also assisted him in learning language instructional methods. His fall mentor teacher recalled that
“there were a lot of things that he didn’t know, and if I hadn’t said there was so and so…did in
the room, I don’t think he would’ve been able to be prepared for that situation” (Tianyu’s fall
mentor interview). For example, Tianyu learned about rubric from his mentor teacher:
I remember clearly that the first project I wanted to do…but my mentor said, “Do you
have a rubric for that”? I asked, “What is rubric”? …after that I went home and I looked
up the word, rubric. And I said, ok, that’s rubric. I found some examples of rubrics and
asked some other teachers about their rubrics for some activities. So I said, well, next
activity, probably I should use my own rubric. (Tianyu’s second interview)
13

Tianyu was referring to Chapter 11 by Shrum and Glisan (2009) on assessment, Assessing
Standards-Based Language Performance in Context.
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Clearly Tianyu did not know even the meaning of rubric at the beginning, but he actively
learned about it after he came to know the idea. At first, he used other teachers’ rubrics because
he was learning to design rubrics and did not want to make students confused. “In case students
get confused, I even copied the rubric from a teacher directly. I heard it has been used for years”
(Tianyu’s journal in the spring). Along with his teaching and learning, he came to understand
more about the roles of rubrics and said, “next activity, probably I should use my own rubric”
(Tianyu’s second interview), so he connected his rubrics to both the content and his teaching
purposes:
The last one is I make rubrics for the game with rules on it. The rubric points out the
language point and the purpose of the game. I think it will make their learning more
effectively if they know clearly what they are doing. (Tianyu’s journal in the fall)
Tianyu believed that he learned more from discussions in the courses on “Field
Experiences,” because the courses were “practical, case analysis…for example, Scott’s classes,
my classes…some things may not happen in my class, but I heard that. When it happens, I can
say, ok, they dealt this way, we discussed this” (Tianyu’s follow-up interview). Tianyu also
believed that he learned more from field instruction in the spring semester than in the fall. He
explained:
Because I was more familiar with American classrooms, and many things had
happened...I would be more attentive to some theories or cases, because I know they are
related to my teaching. Perhaps last summer they also mentioned some of these, but at
that time, I was very confused…when they talked about classrooms, I even did not know
what an American classroom looks like, so it is impossible for me to apply it… (Tianyu’s
follow-up interview)
To Tianyu, communication with his cohort was very helpful. They shared their teaching
experience, and they also “complained and commented” to each other (Tianyu’s follow-up
interview). All of these and his actual teaching experience made Tianyu believe that gaining

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knowledge of language pedagogy helped him more in his learning to teach. He also realized that
he had very limited resources, and the available resources did not work very well, so he noted
that it was necessary for Chinese teachers to share and improve the quality of resources on
Chinese instruction in the U.S.
Yalan’s Learning of Pedagogy
Although Yalan taught American and Chinese children in children’s centers and a Chinese
community school for several years before she started teaching Chinese as a foreign language in
the fall of 2009, there were many aspects in her instruction that she needed to improve. Thus,
Yalan also had to gain and expand her knowledge of pedagogy in her first year of teaching in the
program, including knowledge of language pedagogy and general pedagogy.
Learning language pedagogy. Yalan recalled that she did not have much knowledge of
foreign language instruction in U.S. K-12 schools, especially language instructional methods,
when she started teaching in the fall of 2009. She said, “I did not know [language instructional
methods]. I certainly did not know at the beginning of my teaching” (Yalan’s follow-up
interview). She also mentioned that she learned the basic concepts like “input” and “output” from
the courses on “Field Experiences.”
One salient characteristic of Yalan’s learning to teaching in the first year was that she tried in
her teaching the discussion results at our field instruction meetings or the approaches and
techniques in the readings that were assigned to them from the course in the spring. She actively
participated in field instruction discussions and shared her experiences with others at the
meetings. She recalled, “At that time, I wanted to try those [discussed at field instruction
meetings], and then came back to share with others” (Yalan’s follow-up interview). She also read

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others’ teaching journals online, talked with them, and learned from their teaching experiences.
When the class discussions were new to Yalan, she also tried them in her teaching. After I
reminded my groups to increase their use of Chinese in class instruction, Yalan noted, “I didn’t
realize that my use of English was not good for students” (Yalan’s follow-up interview), so she
began to pay attention to the ratio of her use of English and Chinese in instruction. In the early
fall, Yalan watched her own teaching video and “felt bad that I used too much English when I
told story, especially during the story discussions” (Yalan’s journal in the fall). That is, class
discussions in field instruction helped Yalan to get to know language pedagogy, compare with
her original teaching, and identify directions for her to improve her teaching. Looking back on
her first year of teaching, Yalan described how she learned to teach:
14

Especially after Adobe meetings , I would try some the following days to see…whether
what Wang Laoshi talked about worked or not…I should say they worked well. The more
important thing to me was…because I come from China, sometimes intentionally or
unintentionally I might use some methods common in China. After each Adobe meeting,
I was clear that I should use American teaching methods…like grouping, we discussed a
lot in our classes. Then I realized…in class I should speak more Chinese, use Chinese as
much as possible. We also talked about situations…task-based…teaching methods like
these. So I would deliberately use what we learned. (Yalan’s follow-up interview)
Yalan’s description shows that she realized the differences in language instruction between
the U.S. and China and the influence of her background on her teaching, so she was learning and
making a deliberate effort to move away from her Chinese way of foreign language teaching.
However, discussions about a language teaching method or a few experiments of the method in
her teaching could not guarantee that Yalan would use the method from then on because it was
not easy to break away from something that one was used to for many years. Although Yalan got

14

Yalan was referring to our weekly online field instruction meetings, because we used Adobe
Connect Pro program for our online meetings from 2009 to 2010.
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to know that she should use more Chinese in her instruction, and she was also making efforts to
do so in her teaching, occasionally she would still use more English than Chinese in her
instruction. Toward the end of February in 2010, Yalan applied the standard of comparison in her
teaching to ask students to compare Christmas and Chinese New Year, because they were
learning ACTFL standards from the course on “Field Experiences” then. Yalan watched her
teaching video and noticed:
I should speak more Chinese. Frankly to say, I’m hesitating whether to turn in this video
tape, because I spoke too much Chinese [English], or at least I should say “春节, 圣诞节,
还有什么？” (Spring Festival, Christmans, what else?) as patterns. (Yalan’s journal in
the spring)
Clearly Yalan kept in mind that she should speak more Chinese in her instruction, especially
the Chinese words and sentences that she had taught to the students, but learning or using
ACTFL standards in teaching, which were new to her at that time, probably attracted more of her
attention during her instruction at that time so that she could not do all things well at a time.
Yalan also noticed some features in her learning to teach and said, “If we did not have
Adobe meetings for a while, I went back to my old way of teaching…so I need somebody to
remind me constantly” (Yalan’s follow-up interview). However, because she knew how she
should improve and she had been working hard on those aspects of teaching, Yalan believed that
in general, she was making progress. That was true, because, taking Yalan’s use of Chinese in
her instruction for an example, I noticed that Yalan increased her use of Chinese gradually. Her
spring mentor teacher also observed:
I mean they were speaking Chinese in the class like…she was using a lot of Chinese with
them and you know, they would respond that… So you could definitely tell that Chinese
was used in the classroom and…(Yalan’s spring mentor interview)
Yalan’s experiences above indicates that it might take teachers with prior teaching
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experience some time to be able to use some teaching methods and techniques in their teaching,
especially when they were gaining new knowledge of language pedagogy. From her own
experience of learning to teach, Yalan came to be aware that learning to teach is not a linear
process. She said, “I think learning to teach is cyclical [spiral], although it is improving. It also
has…For some time, you might not do so well, but for another certain period of time, you do
well. But generally it is improving” (Yalan’s follow-up interview). That is, learning to teach is
perhaps dynamic, gradual, and developmental, and sometimes there might be ups and downs in
the process. It is not simple for teachers to learn some methods and reproduce them in their
instruction. Many factors might come into play in their teaching, and teachers might encounter
various difficulties in using these methods or techniques, which would discourage them and
negatively affect their use of the teaching approaches and methods that they have learned.
Yalan’s learning experience of pair work and group work is an example.
In the fall, we discussed the roles that pair and group work play in students’ interactions in a
language class, and Yalan came to understand that she should use these techniques more often in
her teaching. She tried to have group activities in her Chinese AP class in one of the Chinese
community schools, but it did not work out as she had expected:
…when I assign the group, I let the girl who knows Chinese very well to be a partner with
a boy whose Chinese is not so good (26:00—33:00). I thought this boy would learn from
the girl. But the fact was the boy let the girl do the most, and he tried to do the easier part.
Next time, when I assign a group, I should be more careful about their levels. (Yalan’s
teaching journal in the fall)
However, Yalan did not seem to comment on grouping very much in her journals in the
following days. She did not address the issue in her learning to teach during this period in the
interviews for this study, either, although her mentor teacher noted that they also worked on the
issue for their social studies classes:
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I did tell her some strategies I used as far as keeping those people focused, making them a
part of something, give them something extra to do, and be very careful about who they
are with, what kind of groups when they are working in groups, particularly the
conversation groups. Who is with whom, so people are keeping each other on task.
(Yalan’s fall mentor interview)
A further analysis of Yalan’s teaching journals and my notes about our class discussions
during this period indicates that perhaps she was more focused on assessment, which was one of
the common challenges that my two groups of teachers had and also was one of the most salient
aspects that Yalan needed to improve, as indicated by their teaching journals and my notes. Her
endeavors on assessment perhaps took more of her time and energy, although learning
assessment and group work could have happened simultaneously. Thus, even for a teacher with
some prior teaching experience like Yalan, learning a new teaching method may not have had
immediate effect on their teaching because of the complexity of learning to teach and actually
teaching.
In the spring semester when Yalan was teaching Chinese class for her middle school class on
her own, Yalan had to learn how to conduct pair work and group activities. “After I read
Communicative Language Teaching, I paid more attention to group and peer activities, and
related what students learned to their real lives” (Yalan’s journal in the spring). However, initial
attempts were not successful. One of her classes is an example. She tried to group the students,
but there were problems. The class was very noisy, and the students had various questions and
requests:
The classroom turned very noisy, “Which group I should go, I forgot my number”. “No,
you are not in our group, we already have four people”. “No, I’m in this group, you are
not”. “David is my best friend. Can we be together, please”? “No, I don’t want to join
any group. I prefer to be myself”. (Yalan’s journal in the spring)
With great effort, Yalan finally separated them into different groups, but the students were

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chatting in English, and nobody looked at the rubrics. Yalan wanted to have groups of four
students work together and design their dream house, and she expected that the students would
talk and negotiate with each other in Chinese. However, when she was with one group, the group
tried to speak Chinese, but when she left, they went back to English.
Learning from field instruction discussions, Yalan assigned different roles for group
members and used rubrics for this dream house project. However, while the designer and drawer
were working, the writer and presenter were chatting and laughing. During their group work,
Yalan reminded them of the time several times, but when time was up, the students complained
that the time was limited and they were not able to finish. “When they presented, they used the
words and sentences in the rubrics at beginning. But they had to use many English to describe
more details…Then they spoke everything in English” (Yalan’s journal in the spring), so Yalan
had to remind them to speak Chinese constantly. Consequently, Yalan was so frustrated that she
even thought of giving up group activities in her class:
All in all, I felt out of control and very struggled when I did the group activities. I was
going to give up the idea of group activities. To my surprise, in the following day, one of
my students begged to have another group project, and others said they had a good time. I
said, “If you like group projects, 举手” (raise your hand). Everyone raised their hands. At
that moment, all the struggles and problems I met in group projects suddenly disappeared.
(Yalan’s journal in the spring)
Because of the students’ response to group activities, Yalan decided to work on this aspect of
teaching. She said, “I felt they were interested, but I was not so good at it, and I was willing to try
how to make better use of group activities to improve my teaching and achieve my teaching
purposes” (Yalan’s second interview). In my comments on her group activities in this class, I
tried to guide Yalan to be clear about her teaching purposes for the group activity first:

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…what is your purpose/goal to have group work for the students? Did you expect them to
practice the Chinese words orally while they were doing the group work? Did you expect
them to write Chinese? Did you expect all group members to have equal opportunities to
listen, speak, and write the Chinese words in the process? (my comments on Yalan’s
spring journal)
Meanwhile, I also helped Yalan to think about whether the students were ready for the
language output needed for meaning negotiation during their projects and how to group students
in order to have smooth transitioning. We further discussed these at field instruction meetings,
and I also asked Yalan to work on connecting her teaching purposes to her teaching activities.
During this period, Yalan was also learning to manage students from her spring mentor teacher
and field instruction.
In her subsequent teaching, Yalan began to make progress in group activities, but she also
encountered difficulties. For instance, in one class, she designed interviews to help students use
the Chinese vocabulary of family members and animals, some measure words, and related
sentence patterns. However, right before students’ interviews, Yalan spent much time helping
students practice writing Chinese numbers, but not on speaking skills which would be used in
interviews, so I reminded her that “your teaching purposes were not clear enough in some
activities…”(my comments on Yalan’s spring journal).
Toward the end of the spring, Yalan made much progress in group activities. While she was
teaching Chinese vocabulary about food, she asked the students to have role plays to imitate
ordering food at a restaurant. She used pictures and PowerPoint to teach vocabulary first, because
“I found that my students learned better from visual pictures” (Yalan’s journal in the spring). She
also asked the students to compare some American and Chinese food in order to help students to
have a better understanding. “After the students knew those main food very well, I started input
the sentences” (Yalan’s journal in the spring), and she paired the students to practice the sentence

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patterns. When Yalan saw that the students were ready, she grouped them to have role play of
ordering food at a restaurant: one was the waiter or waitress, and three others were guests, and
manu was also provided. In order to help with students’ writing, Yalan also asked the students to
conduct a food survey after the role play so that “they would listen the team members’ favorites
and write down their answers” and…“took turns to present their team’s favorite” (Yalan’s spring
journal). Obviously for this class, Yalan made good use of group activities, and she seemed clear
about her teaching purposes for each step. She also conducted dynamic assessment while
students were practicing, and paid attention to include all four skills in her teaching: listening,
speaking, reading, and writing. All these activities helped her teaching to be more
communicative, compared to her teaching at the beginning of the fall.
Learning general pedagogy. In her first year of teaching in U.S. public schools, Yalan also
had to learn some general pedagogy, because her prior teaching experience came mainly from
Chinese community schools or children’s centers. Similar to her learning of language pedagogy,
Yalan did what we discussed in field instruction when it was consistent with her prior teaching
experience. For instance, Yalan preferred to prepare more than she could teach or some
alternatives, in case she needed to teach more or something unexpected happened. She said,
“…when I was preparing for the lessons, I would rather prepare more. Otherwise, if the students
learned quickly, and you taught all you prepared, there was nothing more for you to teach. This
would be very embarrassing” (Yalan’s second interview). Yalan commented that preparing more
and some alternatives also made her feel confident, because sometimes there might be something
wrong; for example, a computer might not work. With good preparation, at least she would not
feel anxious and nervous at that moment (Yalan’s second interview). When I asked her whether

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she learned this from her previous teaching experience, Yalan answered, “Yes. And you also
talked about that in our class” (Yalan’s second interview).
With her fall mentor teacher’s help and influence and her own prior teaching experience,
Yalan did well in many aspects of teaching in the fall. However, there were still some aspects of
teaching that she needed to improve, and one of the most salient was assessment. Her fall mentor
teacher and I agreed with each other at the mid-term evaluation that Yalan appeared to have had
little knowledge of assessment, especially formative assessment. Yalan was alerted, so she
focused on assessment, especially in the fall semester.
However, even though Yalan knew that she should improve in assessment, her limited
knowledge of this aspect of teaching made her not sure how to start. She tried the learning
website we used for the course on Field Experience, but she did not find any resources on
assessment there, so she went ahead to try what she knew first:
I did dynamic assessment through observe students’ interacting, but I found if the student
had good mood, his/her performance would be much better than s/he had the bad mood.
So I thought the assessment by the traditional paper-pen test was more reliable. Making
the test paper was a new experience for me, especially for the social study classes.
(Yalan’s teaching journal in the fall)
This part of Yalan’s journal indicates that Yalan was not very clear about the different types
of assessment or the purposes and functions of assessment; neither did she have the experience or
enough knowledge to design a paper test. Because of this, Yalan raised the question about how to
assess students’ learning at our weekly class. Yalan noted in the second interview that she did not
have a clearer understanding of assessment until our class discussion, when I asked her whether
she knew different types of assessment then:
Very little. Even if I had heard about them, I could probably forget. But you talked more
about them, and I also remember we had the particular lesson on assessment. We talked
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about these. Then you particularly talked about formative and summative assessment, and
sent us some resources and articles on it, so I remember them clearly. (Yalan’s second
interview)
In the following days, Yalan was learning from field instruction and experimenting with
different ways of assessment. In the meantime, Yalan’s mentor teacher was also helping her with
assessment, both in their regular teaching and for the students’ final assessment. Her fall mentor
teacher recalled that “I suggested the way that some exercises and some assessment techniques
that might be useful to assess the students’ knowledge...So I assisted her in coming up with the
assessment” (Yalan’s fall mentor interview). Toward the end of the fall semester, Yalan and her
mentor teacher “designed the rubrics together, and gave scores to the students together” for
students’ final assessment (Yalan’s second interview). Thus, she learned the detailed assessing
process from her mentor teacher.
Yalan also came to understand that assessment for kindergarten children should be different
than that for high school students. She paid more attention to assessing young children, because
“…it was hard for me to know their reactions…they could not read or write” (Yalan’s second
interview). She worked hard to learn how to assess young children’s listening and speaking by
reading the resources provided by the field instruction and the certification program. She noted
that “I got many good ideas after I read the article: Oral Language Assessment in the Foreign
Language Class”

15

(Yalan’s journal in the fall). With these ideas and her prior experience with

young children, Yalan used various techniques to assess young children. For example, she used a
picture of a rainbow to assist children to recognize the colors when she was assessing their
listening; she used children’s songs to help students recall Chinese words that they had learned
when she was assessing their speaking. Yalan was also able to use some language teaching
15

The article can also be found online: http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED454738.pdf
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methods in her assessment. For instance, she used Total Physical Response

16

to assess children’s

listening—“When someone says body parts in Chinese, students could point their body parts
correctly” (Yalan’s journal in the fall). Because of her learning of assessment in the fall and her
knowledge of the grading system which she learned by attending staff meetings in the spring,
Yalan was “very organized” in terms of students’ grades, as commented by her spring mentor
teacher at the spring mid-term evaluation.
However, Yalan seemed more concentrated on summative assessment, and formative
assessment did not seem to have attracted much of her attention in the fall. This perhaps was
natural, because the end of the semester was approaching when she was working on assessment,
or perhaps she had to learn formative and summative assessment one by one. Thus, I had to
remind her of formative assessment. Noticeable changes began to happen in the spring, when
Yalan took formative assessment into consideration during her instruction, so sentences like “I
dynamic assessed my students when they did those dialogues” appeared in her journals in the
spring. I was not able to observe this directly from her teaching videos, because the students
often went to the other side of the classroom when they did activities, so how Yalan did her
dynamic assessment on students’ were not recorded. I checked with Yalan and asked her what
she had to think about during her lesson planning in her first year of teaching, Yalan noted that
“after you plan a lesson, you have to look at students’ responses, their answers…how well they
learn, adjust [teaching] according to their pace” (Yalan’s follow-up interview). Obviously, Yalan
was including formative assessment into her teaching.

16

The teaching approach was introduced to Yalan and her cohort through field instruction in the
fall.
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This way, Yalan learned language instructional methods and general pedagogy in her first
year of teaching in U.S. K-12 schools. Although she learned pedagogy mainly through field
instruction, her fall mentor teacher, her prior teaching experience, and her efforts to learn also
played very important roles in this process.
Fangyi’s Learning of Pedagogy
Fangyi was in a different situation than the other three teachers in this study. She had taught
in Taiwan and in Taiwanese community schools in the U.S. for several years before she started
teaching Chinese in U.S. public schools. The earlier sections of this chapter indicate that Fangyi
had rich theoretical knowledge of language instruction. However, Fangyi had to learn how to
apply her theoretical knowledge of language instruction to actual Chinese teaching in U.S. public
high schools.
Learning language pedagogy. Fangyi’s teaching in her first video in the fall shows that she
had clear steps, but she used many drills, as discussed above. The vocabulary and sentence
patterns she taught were from dialogues, but the individual learning activities of vocabulary and
grammar were isolated from dialogues or contexts. Meanwhile, she was leading all activities, and
did not give students opportunities to interact with each other. Although she checked by asking
the students whether they had any questions, other alternatives of formative assessment were not
evident. Fangyi’s mentor teacher observed a similar issue about Fangyi’s teaching. She said,
The other thing I notice is a lot of drills. That was another conversation we had with
Fangyi. You know. I understand in foreign language, some of them…is drilling them,
saying it 15 times. That is not normally the way our students learn. They need a kind
process. They are learning a new alphabetic…a new sound. So you just stop the drill for a
minute. Now let me listen to you say that individually. (Fangyi’s mentor interview)
Fangyi’s own reflections also revealed this. She wrote in the same journal on her first

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teaching video that “utilizing the audiolingualism approach, I had students repeat the words,
practice drills, and write the words on flashcards,” and “…I noticed that I used the top-down
strategy, the grammar-translation approach…” (Fangyi’s journal in the fall). Fangyi’s own
descriptions about her teaching reveal that she could recognize her language teaching methods,
but perhaps she was not clear about which method she should use when teaching Chinese in
current U.S. K-12 schools. Actually that was one of the reasons why Fangyi enrolled in the
certification program after she had received her master’s degree from the College of Education:
I applied because I felt I didn’t know American education at all, although I had been in
the Master’s program for two years. I wanted to know how I would feel when teaching in
an American school. And I wanted to experience American educational philosophy and
culture… I read a lot, but I wanted to know how I should apply it. (Fangyi’s first
interview)
This quotation adds more evidence that Fangyi’s theoretical knowledge of language
instruction was separated from her practical knowledge of how a foreign language was actually
being taught in U.S. K-12 schools. Because of these characteristics of Fangyi’s teaching in the
early fall, I began to advise Fangyi to contextualize her teaching activities and incorporate
students’ interactions and formative assessment, which her mentor teacher and I also agreed with
each other at the mid-term evaluation.
During the fall, Fangyi learned from various sources and in different ways in order to
improve her teaching. She actively participated in discussions at the field instruction meetings.
She also shared with her cohort during or after class and attended the CI’s seminars and
workshops. Influenced by her background and sharing with her cohort, Fangyi began to use songs
in her teaching to help the students remember the newly-taught phrases and sentences. Her
mentor teacher also noticed that Fangyi used a variety of teaching techniques and strategies. She
used “auditory (recording of speaking) prompts, visual (flash cards, books, pictures) and
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kinesthetic (clapping, slapping), PowerPoint, and videos” (Fangyi’s mentor’s report for the fall
mid-term evaluation).
At that time, I noticed that Fangyi was very interested in Task-Based Language Instruction,
as indicated by her questions for me in her reflection on her first teaching video, but she did not
appear to have a clear understanding about this method. I explained this method to her and sent
17

her some chapters which I thought more practical for her teaching . Fangyi recalled her initial
understanding of tasks and said, “In the past, I understood that TBLT was to use tasks. You give
students tasks and have students do tasks. The students learn through task. That’s all. But I don’t
know that TBLT can split into different steps” (Fangyi’s second interview). Thus, Fangyi read
the chapters and tried the method in her teaching. She was proactive in contacting me by email or
phone calls, discussing with me her understanding of the method and her teaching and reflection,
in addition to her regular teaching journals and class participation. She also searched for more
literature on language instructional methods. For example, during this period, she read the SIOP
model, compared it with TBLT, and discussed it with me. These helped Fangyi to realize that
“these six steps [of Nunan’s (2004) framework] and principles offer learners sufficient
scaffolding, authentic input practice on meaning and form, a freer opportunity to execute a task,
and time to reflect upon their learning through the whole task cycle” (Fangyi’s journal in the fall).
Fangyi and I also talked about issues related to TBLT, including connecting tasks to
students’ life, assessing students’ learning dynamically, providing scaffolding, modeling, and

17

I mainly sent her Nunan’s (2004) six-step framework on Task-Based Language Teaching and
Willis (1996) three-phase framework. Nunan (2004) proposed six steps to carry out a task in
second/foreign language instruction: a. “schema building,” b. “controlled practice,” c. “authentic
listening practice,” d. “focus on linguistic elements,” e. “provide freer practice,” and f. “introduce
the pedagogical task.” Willis’ (1996) framework has three phases: “pre-task,” “task cycle,” and
“language focus.”
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practice in one activity before leading students to the next activity; if necessary, even adjusting
her some steps or add steps or activities to the framework. Fangyi recalled,
18

I remember I discussed with my field instructor and she suggested that I don’t have to
necessarily follow the six steps procedures. I can adjust them. That’s very surprising,
so…I always like to try the book theory into teaching. I want to find out what they say is
effective or not. (Fangyi’s second interview)
Gradually in the late fall, Fangyi began to contextualize her teaching and also include
students’ interactions in her instruction, although there were still some drills. Take one of her
teaching video during this period for an example. Fangyi used some prompts in the drills to help
the students review vocabulary—she used some pictures while reviewing nouns and asked the
students to act out while reviewing verbs. However, for the new content of the day, Fangyi taught
the new words and sentence patterns with two recorded dialogues between herself and her friends.
That is, she was trying to provide a context for the new content she was teaching. Fangyi asked
the students to interact with each other, using the dialogues that they composed with the new
words and sentence patterns. They also had the opportunity to do surveys about their classmates
in order to practice further what they learned that day.
Fangyi also actively learned from her own teaching. She interviewed students after she tried
something new in her teaching. She conducted likert scaling surveys on her students as if she was
doing action research. With her various ways of learning in the fall, Fangyi came to realize that
“if the lesson really link to students’ life, students would be more willing to learn…,” and
“…your lesson plans follow the steps. You cannot jump around. Each day the lesson plan has
specific teaching objectives” (Fangyi’s second interview). Moreover, she learned from her
18

Fangyi used “field instructor” to refer to me in the second interview because for better data, I
asked her not to take me as her field instructor, but as a stranger, when she was recalling her first
year of teaching.
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teaching that
…TBLT not only provides students many chances to practice, the TBLT also creates a
chance where students can learn new things. But that new thing didn’t go beyond their
abilities too much. It depends on i+1. After I used TBLT, I learned that students need
repetitive chances to practice what they learn. (Fangyi’s second interview)
Fangyi further commented that “for me, the activity teachers use in TBLT approach was like
formative assessment. You use different kinds of activities to observe whether your students can
learn, say, can really apply to their lives” (Fangyi’s second interview). Thus, Fangyi believed that
TBLT was what she learned most in the fall semester.
Although she made much improvement in the fall, Fangyi was not satisfied. She believed
that ITV teaching negatively affected her efforts, because “I believe that if I can be in the remote
site’s classrooms, the percentage of the students who actively engaged in activities could be
increased” (Fangyi’s journal in the fall). Moreover, because Fangyi’s class was elective and only
counted for a half credit, some students did not take it seriously, which also affected the
effectiveness of Fangyi’s teaching. Fangyi mentioned that “even though TBLT worked
effectively for my students, one student commented that she was not motivated at all,” because
“she told me the reason that she took the Chinese class is because she did not have to take the
gymnastic class with her younger sister” (Fangyi’s journal in the fall). Because of these views,
Fangyi did not think that students’ performance was satisfactory in her last teaching video in the
fall. She said, “Honestly I expected them to have better performance, maybe very fluently
introducing themselves and their friends, but some of the students looked at their scripts. So this
is not what I expected” (Fangyi’s second interview).
With more understanding about teaching Chinese in U.S. K-12 schools, Fangyi was able to
focus on students’ communicative competence in the spring, and field instruction helped her to

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pay attention to this issue. She explained why she chose to study Communicative Language
Teaching (CLT) as a way to improve her teaching in the spring:
The purpose of learning a language is to use it in your daily life. In this semester, we
learned CLT. Of course it has some deficiency, but it is still a good approach to improve
students’ communicative competence. So I think why I didn’t take some time to
understand this approach and to implement in one of class. (Fangyi’s second interview)
What Fangyi talked about in this quotation was also the pattern of how she was learning to
teach in the spring—she reflected on the readings in the course on “Field Experiences” and
applied them to her teaching. During this process, she gained more knowledge of language
pedagogy, and her prior knowledge was expanded. More importantly, her knowledge became
more practical while she was learning and implementing the principles and methods in her
teaching. For example, when learning ACTFL standards in the early spring, Fangyi noted,
I heard the 5C standards three years ago, but I had very little knowledge about 5C
standards; yet, the readings of this week and some teaching videos on
http://www.learner.org helped me better understand how to integrate the 5c standards
and three modes of communication into my teaching. (Fangyi’s journal in the spring)
In the following days, Fangyi applied the 5C standards to her teaching while she was
working on the students’ communicative competence with the guidance of CLT and TBLT. For
example, she was learning how to promote students’ interpersonal communication, which she
learned from the 5C standards by trying it in her teaching. She noted, “The major goal of this
week’s teaching was to enhance one of my classes’ interpersonal communication skills”
(Fangyi’s journal in the spring).
As she did in the fall, Fangyi often contacted me to discuss her learning and teaching in the
spring, especially on how to improve students’ communication in Chinese. We discussed how to
further increase her use of Chinese and how to further incorporate students’ interest and real life

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into her teaching. At the beginning of the fall, Fangyi struggled to increase the use of Chinese in
the class, both hers and the students’, so she raised the question, “…when teaching Chinese in
America, what is the appropriate amount of Chinese that I should use so that my beginner
students understand the lesson while being exposed to an authentic learning environment”
(Fangyi’s journal in the fall)? Fangyi also believed that “the biggest challenge I encountered was
that I was always struggling in speaking Chinese” (Fangyi’s second interview).
We discussed when and how to use the target language in their instruction at class sessions
of field instruction, but Fangyi was hesitant to use more Chinese in the fall, because she was
concerned that using much Chinese would make her instruction difficult to understand for her
students or it would mess up her instructional plans. She wrote that “if I speak too much Chinese,
it is overwhelming for beginner students” (Fangyi’s journal in the fall).
For the purpose of increasing Chinese communication in the spring, Fangyi understood that
“I should change my teaching style. I should speak more Chinese” (Fangyi’s second interview),
and she began to increase her use of Chinese gradually, but she had to be careful not to
discourage students at the remote sites in her ITV teaching, so “I asked students to tell me their
personal stories three times a week, which is an opportunity for free talking,” Fangyi noted in her
journal in the spring.
On the basis of these efforts, Fangyi made a plan on how to further improve her students’
Chinese communication. She recalled, “If I didn’t remember wrong, I talked with the teacher of
this course, and I read some references, and I came up with this plan. I was thinking how I could I
encourage my students to speak more” (Fangyi’s second interview). I reviewed her plan and
helped her to revise it in order to include all four skills and contextualize her teaching, as I wrote

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in my feedback, “…as I said at our Adobe meeting, reading doesn’t appear in your plans…” and
“you might want to contextualize…” (my comments on Fangyi’s journal in the spring).
Toward the end of the spring semester, Fangyi’s teaching was much more communicative
and contextualized. She selected topics that were relevant to students and taught new Chinese
words in mini dialogues by listening. She helped them practice the words and sentence patterns
with pictures and flash cards. When she noticed that the students had difficulties in practicing
one of the four skills, Fangyi would analyze the issue, discuss it with the students, and provide
more illustrations and contextualized exercises. To prepare the students for their presentations,
Fangyi provided rubrics and some samples. Fangyi’s mentor teacher was happy and satisfied at
Fangyi’s overall development in language instructional methods, as she indicated at the final
evaluation in the spring. The mentor teacher also noted that “she really tried to put it in the
context of the language” (Fangyi’s mentor interview).
Learning to teach ITV class. Teaching ITV classes was very challenging to Fangyi, in
addition to teaching Chinese in U.S. K-12 schools for her first year of teaching. She had to learn
and adjust to this non-traditional mode of teaching. It was hard at the beginning, and the first
thing that Fangyi had to learn was to talk to the machine instead of to students:
At the beginning, I had to get used to talking to this machine. Then I had to look at the
screen always. I was very uncomfortable, because usually I looked at the students. I forgot
that I also had students on the remote site. It took me a lot of time to get used to it.
(Fangyi’s second interview)
The technology also added another layer of challenge. At the beginning of the fall, Fangyi
did not realize that her voice was delayed from her side to the remote sites. She was frustrated
and could not understand why the students were not learning. She said, “Sometimes I feel like I

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have taught this topic for a couple of times, how come they still can’t get it” (Fangyi’s second
interview).
Fangyi turned to her mentor for help, who often visited Fangyi’s class at the beginning of the
fall. “Then she said, Fangyi, you got to remember that they are in the remote site. Sometimes they
cannot hear your voice very clearly. Your voice will delay,” Fangyi recalled (Fangyi’s second
interview). Fangyi’s mentor helped her to understand how to adjust to ITV teaching:
I remember she told me that I need to slow down my pace, since some students were at
the remote site. So I had to be very sensitive to my students’ learning progress and their
learning mood. I need to always remember to keep eye contact with them, with the TV
screen. (Fangyi’s second interview)
Fangyi accepted her mentor’s advice and adjusted her teaching accordingly. She observed
some positive results. She noted, “By taking my mentor’s advice…and give more wait-time to
students, it seemed that my students at the remote sides participated more in answering my
questions” (Fangyi’s journal in the fall). With her mentor’s advice, Fangyi also tried to take care
of the students at the remote sites. Fangyi mentioned, “She suggested to me that I should make
the remote site students feel they are as good as the students at ×× (the host school). Also, I may
need some tricks to create participation opportunities for the remote sites” (Fangyi’s journal in
the fall). Toward the end of the fall, she was able to teach the small ITV class. Fangyi mentioned,
“As time passed, I reached the conclusion that ITV teaching is more appropriate and effective for
small classes where it is easier for teachers to manage and help students” (Fangyi’s journal in the
fall).
While Fangyi was learning to use the method in her teaching, she was also learning
assessment from field instruction, and she discussed with me about how to incorporate formative
assessment into her teaching. However, it was not easy for Fangyi to include formative

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assessment in her teaching, because she was teaching ITV classes, and “if the camera was not
close to them enough, you actually can’t see their faces very clearly. You can see what they are
doing, but you can’t remind a student to pay attention at any time” (Fangyi’s second interview).
She said, “The disadvantage of using ITV teaching is that you didn’t know whether the student is
looking at the script or according to her memory. It is hard to tell” (Fangyi’s second interview).
Thus, sometimes Fangyi was not able to be sure how well the students performed on a task.
Gradually with more knowledge of ITV teaching, Fangyi came to be clear about which kind
of assessment she could use. She noted that “the tool of assessment I adopted is performancebased assessment” (Fangyi’s journal in the fall). She also made use of her prior teaching
experience by using a seating chart. She mentioned, “I have assessed my students’ performance
using the seating chart to record their practice and actual oral presentation” (Fangyi’s journal in
the fall). Toward the end of the fall, Fangyi’s mentor teacher noticed that Fangyi “watched
students to adjust instruction” (Fangyi’s mentor’s report for final evaluation in the fall).
For more understanding of ITV teaching, Fangyi also managed to talk to a teacher at the
school who taught online courses, but they could not talk more because that teacher was not a
language teacher:
Particularly I talked to the teacher who taught an online class. I asked how he could
effectively have the students turn in their work. He mainly picked up the students to go to
the blackboard. I only talked with him one or twice, and no more later. He taught
psychology. (Fangyi’s second interview)
Because of this, Fangyi explored how to use some detailed features of ITV equipment herself
and made good use of them, for example, its blackboard function. She used it so well that a
teacher on the remote site even wanted to invite Fangyi to share her experience, as the ITV
director told Fangyi. After her first year of teaching, Fangyi became confident and comfortable

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about ITV teaching. She said, “I was comfortable to face the machine. I also can tell whether a
student is focused. I couldn’t tell at the beginning” (Fangyi’s second interview).
The above analysis of Fangyi’s learning indicate that she learned language pedagogy from
field instruction, interactions with her cohort, and she learned ITV teaching from her mentor
teacher and her own teaching. However, being a part-time teacher from an Intermediate School
District, Fangyi did not have many opportunities to interact with other teachers in the school,
which constrained her learning to teach. When I mentioned that she tended to learn teaching
methods from the literature during her first year of teaching in the certification program, Fangyi
replied,
I think that is because my situation couldn’t give me immediate response. I couldn’t go to
workshops like other teachers. I couldn’t ask anybody else. What my mentor knew was
also limited. Therefore, since there is literature, I had to refer to the literature. Actually I
prefer to discuss with others, to go to attend workshops, and to interact with others, but
no way for me then. (Fangyi’s second interview)
Similarities and Differences in Their Learning of Pedagogy
The four teachers shared many similarities but also showed some differences in their
development of pedagogy. Although from different educational backgrounds, none of them
seemed to have had much knowledge of foreign language instructional methods in U.S. K-12
schools, so all four teachers cared about their pedagogies the most, and they all had to gain and
expand their knowledge of pedagogy during their first year of teaching Chinese in the
certification program, whether they had prior teaching experience or not. Being native speakers
of Chinese or successful learners of Chinese themselves did not automatically help them know
how to teach Chinese, nor did they automatically know how to apply theories in the fields of
Education and SLA to Chinese instruction in U.S. K-12 schools. All of this indicates that a

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certification program course which could actually address foreign language pedagogy and
connect it to teachers’ actual teaching in retrospect seems very necessary for the teachers in the
program before they started teaching.
Starting from diverse instructional methods because of their distinctive educational
backgrounds and work experiences, all four teachers learned to be more communicative and taskbased toward the end of the spring, but they achieved this in different ways, and their teaching
seemed to have involved whole-class and student-student activities to various degrees. Scott
moved from his modified audio-lingualism to more communicative and task-based teaching, but
because of students’ misbehaviors, he had to structure his teaching in order to modify the
students’ behaviors as well as to teach them more effectively. He tried differentiated instruction
to be more student-centered, but received mixed results in students. Tianyu gradually switched
from a teacher-centered and lecture-based approach to task-based teaching by using “games” and
adding students’ activities in his instruction. By connecting to students’ real life and explicitly
focusing on and increasing pair and group work, Yalan also changed from a more teachercentered approach to be more communicative and task-based for her teaching. Fangyi read
literature and applied CLT and TBLT to her teaching. During this process, she gradually grew
from a teacher-centered approach to paying more attention to her students as individuals by
surveying her students and including students’ lives in her teaching. Thus, while all other three
teachers moved from a teacher-centered approach to a more student-centered approach, Scott had
to have more teacher control and be very careful in increasing student-student interactions
because of his students’ misbehaviors.
Parallel to their efforts of increasing students’ communication, the four teachers had to learn
to increase their use of Chinese in order to promote more communication in the classroom. All of

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them struggled to increase their use of Chinese in their teaching because of little knowledge,
different concerns, lack of skills, and distraction by their students’ behaviors or their learning
other aspects of teaching. Although they came to understand that they should use Chinese more
in their instruction, their experiences as described in above sections indicate that they needed
more knowledge or skills to be able to do so, and their efforts were constrained by other factors,
for example, their students’ behaviors. Thus, it was not difficult for the teachers to understand
some language instructional principles, such as using the target language as much as possible, but
it took time and they needed guidance and practice to apply these principles to their actual
teaching.
Because all four teachers learned CLT and TBLT from field instruction, it seems that the
courses on “Field Experiences” played an important role in socializing them to foreign language
pedagogy by introducing and illustrating language instructional methods and assisting and
monitoring their applications. Although the chaos and misunderstandings at the beginning
delayed the teachers’ learning, field instruction seemed to have gradually replaced their original
“teaching approaches” with the dominant language instructional methods in the U.S. foreign
language teaching profession. The processes for the teachers to become more communicative and
task-based in their teaching were very complicated, and two sides were involved. On the one side,
because of their little knowledge of foreign language instruction in U.S. K-12 schools and the
challenges from their teaching, they had to learn language pedagogy from field instruction, and
their learning interacted with their backgrounds. On the other side, they had to learn how to apply
those language instructional methods and techniques to their teaching, which obviously was more
challenging to the teachers. During this process, they themselves as teachers (their knowledge
and their backgrounds) and their instructional contexts (their students, mentors, and schools)

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interacted with each other, and both facilitated and affected their socialization into the teaching
profession. Thus, these two sides of their learning were shaping each other and in turn shaped
their socialization.
The four teachers experienced different socialization processes in their actual teaching
because of the interactions of their different backgrounds and situations, although they all
working toward more communicative, task-based, and student-centered Chinese instruction in
their first year of teaching. Initially Scott was not convinced by field instruction about increasing
his use of Chinese through routines because of his personal belief in individual creativity.
However, his students’ behaviors and his mentor’s advice led him to structures and routines in
his teaching. His own learning experience also made him more aware of the needs of some gifted
students, and thus directed him to differentiated instruction. Tianyu had to learn almost
everything from the beginning because of his inexperience. His interactions with students
facilitated his decision to work on “games,” and he also learned much about some basic teaching
skills from his mentor teachers, but the different expectations between him and his mentor
teachers and the school seemed to have delayed his socialization. Then guidance from field
instruction appeared to have played a more important role to his learning of pedagogy, especially
in the spring.
Although Yalan tried what she learned from field instruction, her prior teaching experience
facilitated her learning of connecting teaching to students’ life, but her own foreign language
learning experience affected her development in increasing her use of Chinese in her instruction.
Her learning from her two mentor teachers helped her to switch to be more communicative in her
teaching. Her students helped her to decide on more student interactions, but also added
challenges to her in this process. Fangyi’s prior teaching experience both promoted and affected

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her development in language pedagogy. She mainly learned language pedagogy from literature
and field instruction, but she had to learn about her students and to learn ITV teaching from her
mentor teacher, which made her socialization more challenging to her. Therefore, many factors
came into play, and they were interacting with each other and jointly shaped the four teachers’
socialization in their first year teaching. Although both Yalan and Fangyi had prior teaching
experience, their socialization may also indicate that instructional approaches and methods may
be different in a community school context and in a public K-12 school in the U.S.
Although field instruction identified many of the teachers’ challenges and helped them to
solve the problems, it had some limitations. As their field instructor conducting field instruction
online, I could not have a complete picture about their teaching, so some of the teachers’
difficulties were detected late or were left un-detected if they were not reported in their journals,
class discussions, videos, and evaluations. Alerted by their fall mid-term evaluations, Yalan and
Fangyi worked on assessment and made some improvement in their first year of teaching. Tianyu
was also reminded of his assessment in the fall mid-term evaluation, but because he had to learn
many things in teaching, his misunderstandings about formative assessment were not manifested
to me until I read his teaching journals while we were “re-learning” assessment in April.
However, I was not able to identify Scott’s difficulties in assessment until late April while he was
commenting on course readings. He wrote that “I feel that I do a decent job teaching. But
assessing is SOOOO hard,” and “…I always feel like I'm such a novice when it comes to
assessment” (Scott’s journal in the spring, capitalization is in original). This happened because
he had been working hard on other aspects of teaching, especially managing students, as Scott
himself recognized and noted, “To me, it’s almost impossible to be good at assessing as a new
teacher. We’re just learning, and there is so much to learn” (Scott’s journal in the spring). Thus,

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the four teachers’ experience in assessment indicates that preparation for these teachers in
assessment was necessary, and guidance in and practice of how to make use of assessment were
also important to them.
Interestingly, the four teachers’ educational backgrounds seem to have influenced their first
year of Chinese teaching to various degrees. While all three other Chinese teachers’ teaching
were much impacted by their educational backgrounds in China and Taiwan, Scott never referred
to his second and foreign language learning experience in high school and college in the U.S. As
introduced in chapter three, Scott learned Spanish as a second language for a couple of years and
Latin for one semester when he was in high school, and he learned Greek in college (Scott’s first
interview), but he used audio-lingualism when he was teaching Chinese in the beginning of the
fall because that was the way he learned Chinese in the Army. After he found that the audiolingualism method did not work for his students, he searched for anything that would work, but
never mentioned his Spanish and Latin learning experience in high school or his Greek learning
experience in college in the U.S. A follow-up communication with Scott indicates that he only
had a very vague memory of his language learning experiences in high school and in college.
Thus, his “apprenticeship” of Spanish, Latin, or Greek in U.S. high school and college did not
seem to have helped his first year teaching of Chinese, perhaps because such “apprenticeship”
happened too long before his Chinese instruction. Or perhaps because Spanish, Latin, and Greek
are languages very different from Chinese, Scott’s Chinese learning experience in the Army had
more impact on his first year of teaching Chinese.

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CHAPTER 5 RESTRUCTURING KOWLEDGE OF SUBJECT MATTER
This chapter presents the four teachers’ development of their knowledge of subject matter in
their first year of teaching Chinese in U.S. K-12 schools. As successful Chinese language learner
and native speakers, the four teachers started with their own understanding about what should be
taught to U.S. students. However, they had to modify, adjust, and change their views while they
were teaching and gaining more knowledge in other categories of teacher knowledge, so their
knowledge of subject matter for Chinese instruction in U.S. K-12 schools was restructured.
Scott’s Development in Knowledge of Subject Matter
Scott is a successful Chinese language learner, and he has rich knowledge of the Chinese
language and culture because of his work experience and his visits to China. However, this does
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not mean that he naturally knew what should be taught to his students, because being a language
learner and being a language teacher are different, and Scott’s views on Chinese as a subject
matter to teach to his U.S. students had to develop along with his knowledge of students and
contexts.
Relating to Students’ Lives
When Scott started teaching in the fall, he did not have a Chinese curriculum or other
guidance for what he should teach. As required by the principal at the beginning of the fall, Scott
was writing the semester and year plan for his Chinese classes. He said, “…Since I didn’t have a
textbook or a kind of curriculum…I was creating the curriculum” (Scott’s second interview).
Scott selected topics that were related to students’ real life, and obviously Scott was clear about
the goals for his Chinese instruction in his first year of teaching:
So my goal for the whole year was at the end of the year as much as possible, they could
talk about themselves in Mandarin. So all the topics that I chose or kind of…I want
them…I want to specifically relate to their lives, and I mean…to communicate with other
people in Mandarin, in Chinese. (Scott’s second interview)
With his thematic curriculum, Scott started his Chinese teaching with the topic of selfintroduction at the beginning of the fall. He recalled that “the first week’s class…I kind
of …thought of what you need to know first in Chinese, you know, what you need to know first
is first of all, the introduction” (Scott’s second interview). Meanwhile, instead of selecting
Chinese vocabulary and sentence structures for his teaching, Scott included those which were
listed in English by the students in the class, and then he translated them into Chinese, as
described in chapter four. This way, both his students and Scott jointly decided which Chinese
vocabulary and sentence structures they would learn, so the content was more relevant to the
students. Scott explained that he made such decisions on subject matter at the very beginning of

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the fall because of what he had learned from his work experience, especially in the educational
camp (Scott’s follow-up interview).
Scott’s perspectives on the content of Chinese instruction were confirmed by his learning
from field instruction and then further developed by his increasing knowledge of students and
contexts. We discussed relating teaching to students’ real lives in the early fall at our field
instruction meetings. Along with his teaching and interactions with his students, Scott realized
that students were more motivated when his teaching was more relevant to their lives. Before he
started teaching, Scott assumed that his students would also be very interested in Chinese history
and culture, which would help motivate them to learn Chinese, because as a Chinese language
learner himself, Scott was very interested in Chinese history and culture:
…I felt there was a lot of Chinese history, culture…that would make the students
automatically very interested in learning Chinese, so I was excited, very eager, and also
expected that my students were going to be as eager as I was, and learn what I was going
to be teaching… (Scott’s first interview)
With these assumptions, Scott also tried to introduce some Chinese history and culture while
he was teaching the unit of self-introduction. However, he soon found that the students were not
interested as he is in Chinese history and culture, and they were not learning in the way he had
assumed. Scott recalled that “I feel like I was giving them good information, but I found out the
students a lot of times didn’t take notes at all, or didn’t study their notes, or lost their notes”
(Scott’s second interview). Meanwhile, he had hoped that his students would be able to talk
about themselves after he taught them how to do so in Chinese, but he found that the students did
not learn much. He noted, “I intentionally created this unit so that they would be interested,
because they would be talking ABOUT THEMSELVES. But still, the result was disappointing.
Although a handful of students excelled, most failed miserably” (Scott’s journal in the spring).

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Thus, Scott began to try other ways that were more connected to students’ real lives in order to
help with his students’ learning both Chinese language and culture.
Scott came to know that many students knew some Spanish, so he made use of some similar
sounds between Spanish and Chinese to assist his students in remembering the Chinese for the
pronouns “I,” “you,” and “he/she”:
I like to talk about them as…Juanita, which is a Hispanic name as I teach them, “Do you
know this name? From Spanish, it’s Juanita.” They said, “Oh, yeah, Juanita.” And I said,
“Oh. That’s the three personal pronouns in Mandarin Chinese.” (Scott’s second interview)
This way, Scott related not only the topic to students’ real lives, but also his detailed
instructional techniques. He noticed that the students were more motivated to learn this way, so
he also paid attention to teaching Chinese culture in a similar way while he was learning more
teaching techniques during this period. When he was teaching Beijing Opera, he collected
pictures and videos online and used them to assist his teaching. With his learning of Task-Based
Language Teaching, Scott also asked the students to do a mask project while he compared makeup faces in Beijing Opera with masks used in Halloween:
My Chinese I students are working on a Masks project. We've learned the parts of the
face and done some research into Peking Opera. Now, their task is to design their own
mask. The mask is supposed to either REVEAL part of their identity or HIDE part of
their identity. They are required to submit 2 drafts of their mask, one hand-drawn and one
computer-drawn (my school's laptops have the full Adobe suite), and then we will
construct the plaster masks the week of Halloween. (Scott’s journal in the fall)
In order to help the students practice some typical features of Chinese culture, Scott made
use of games and activities that students liked. He played a chopsticks game for the students in a
video-recorded class. Each student got a pack of fruit snacks which had different colors and were
shaped as numbers. When Scott called out the numbers or colors, the students were supposed to
pick up the number or the color with their chopsticks. Although the game was not perfect, it

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motivated the students and they looked very engaged. Scott also commented that “students love
this activity, because the fruit snacks are a treat and they were excited to learn how to use
chopsticks. This activity went very well” (Scott’s journal in the spring). The more important
thing was that the students also practiced some Chinese words while they were experiencing
Chinese culture.
By connecting his teaching of Chinese language and culture to their real lives, Scott was able
to see that the students were at least more engaged in their work. He was also aware of this for
his students:
Especially with that group of students, the things we studied had to be very very relevant
to their lives; otherwise, they had no interest in studying, so it was so hard to get them to
do any kind of school work or to study it at all. (Scott’s follow-up interview)
Along with teaching and his learning from his colleagues, including his mentor teacher,
Scott accumulated more knowledge about the students’ family backgrounds and the school
context. Accordingly he adjusted the content he was teaching in order to accommodate his
students. When he was teaching a family unit in November, he understood that some students
were from single-parent families or they lived with their grandparents. These students were often
not familiar with their fathers. Thus, Scott taught them a euphemistic way to talk about their
fathers:
I taught them the words bu zai or bu zai le. So we talked about…you know, if your dad,
because a lot of the students didn’t have a relationship with their fathers. Fathers didn’t
live with them. One student didn’t live with either mother or father. He lived with his
grandparents, because his parents were totally out of the picture, and so…but he called
them mom and dad. So I had to be very…very liberal, almost with the use of the family
terms like…my dad isn’t here, what would I say? Oh well, you could just say that your
dad isn’t here, Ta bu zai. You know, I would tell them in Chinese. That’s very…it’s a
nice way of saying he is not around. He could be dead, you know, he could be in jail, he
could be anything, but it’s just a very polite way of saying. (Scott’s second interview)

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In this situation, although “bu zai”

19

is a not a typical way to talk about one’s family

member in Chinese, it is a good way to be polite and general so that the students would not feel
uncomfortable or embarrassed participating in class interactions in Scott’s class. As Scott
remarked, “I wanted Chinese to be relevant. I wanted them to use the language, but also I wanted
them to feel comfortable using it, and be able to make modifications to the language so that they
could” (Scott’s second interview).

This way Scott adapted his teaching to his immediate

contexts and his students, who were in particular situations at the urban school which is located
in a big city, and he cultivated their social and cultural awareness about their own contexts. Scott
further noted, “I would teach them those kinds of things. Those were a kind of the things that
were in front of my mind is…a kind of social consciousness, the cultural awareness…for urban
XX” (Scott’s second interview). Thus, development of his knowledge of students and contexts
and his awareness of connecting his teaching to students’ real life influenced and restructured
what he was teaching to his students in his first year of teaching.
However, lack of time and Chinese instructional resources made Scott not able to connect
his teaching very well to each of his classes’ previous learning of Chinese. Scott had two levels
of Chinese for seven classes, but at the beginning of the fall, he only prepared two sets of lesson
plans, one set for each level, although each level included several classes. Although lack of
knowledge of pedagogy and students were important reasons, lack of time and resources were
also contributing factors. Thus, Scott tried to have some variations among his classes across the
fall, but he was not able to prepare lessons for each class individually. He said, “…but because of

19

Bu zai (不在), means somebody is not here, or not around. Bu zai le (不在了) in this context
can mean somebody is not here any more, and it can also mean somebody is dead.
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my time limitation, I basically was planning…I was planning for two different classes, two
different levels” (Scott’s second interview).
One of his classes learned the fastest of all his classes. He tried to provide them with
something extra, but he understood that he did not have much time to select suitable materials to
help them learn more:
The one class that was after lunch…they kind of had more time where we did some fun
things, so they got to watch some extra movies, so those kinds of things, still the time,
because they were able to accomplish the objectives faster than most of the other classes.
(Scott’s second interview)
Another reason was that there were not many kinds of resources for his teaching. Scott
commented that “In retrospective, if I had known more…if I had more resources, I probably
could use that time more wisely with that class. So I could’ve taken that class farther…” (Scott’s
second interview). Thus, lack of time and resources undermined the effectiveness of Scott’s
instruction.
Changing Views on Teaching Pinyin and Chinese Characters
Throughout the first year, Scott only taught Chinese sounds. Neither Chinese characters nor
Pinyin was taught. He only expected the students to follow him and learn the sounds. He wrote
Pinyin on the white board while he was teaching and asked students to follow him to read.
Because he did not want to have his students overwhelmed, he said,
At the time, I though it was going to be too much for the students. I think for that group
of students…I don’t know…I kind of wish I taught some characters, because I think
students enjoy it….I didn’t do it because I didn’t want to overwhelm the students with too
much…and it would make Chinese too foreign. (Scott’s follow-up interview)
Meanwhile, Scott aimed to teach his students to be able to talk about themselves in Chinese,
which was also confirmed by his learning from field instruction when I was guiding them to be

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more communicative in their teaching, so he focused more on speaking and only asked the
students to read Pinyin. He said, “My ideal was…just having them read in Pinyin…you know,
with spoken language. It would make the teaching more communicative, which is important to
me, but I also didn’t want to overwhelm them…” (Scott’s second interview).
However, Scott did not teach Pinyin systematically at the beginning of the fall, because “I
wanted them to get used to sounds” (Scott’s second interview). He assumed that Pinyin looked
similar to English letters, so by following him to read, the students would figure out and
understand how to pronounce and spell Chinese Pinyin, and consequently, the students would
have an easier time to transition to Chinese. As he said,
I started out basically by telling them that I wanted them to learn to be able to speak in
Chinese. I told them all that we were going to be focusing on spoken Chinese. We
wouldn’t be focusing on characters because I wanted them to get used to sounds. I didn’t
teach them Pinyin at all… (Scott’s second interview)
However, things were not going the way he expected. Although the letters in the Chinese
Pinyin system look exactly the same as English letters, some of them are pronounced very
differently from their English counterparts. For example, the pronunciation for “Q” and “X” in
the Chinese Pinyin system does not sound like any English letters. Actually, they cannot even be
described with English consonants and vowels. Consequently, some of the students learned how
to pronounce the letters in the Chinese Pinyin system, but some did not:
Some of them got it, but even toward the end, I was still kind of frustrated. I remember
being frustrated kind of the end of the year where I write something in the board in Pinyin,
and I would call on somebody and say, “What is this”? And they read it…what they…and
it was totally wrong. (Scott’s second interview)
Meanwhile, toward the end of the second semester, Scott realized that many of the students
were still unable to recognize the Pinyin for Chinese characters which they had practiced many

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times. In retrospective, Scott came to understand that teaching Pinyin is necessary for students,
and his actual teaching practice helped him to learn this lesson:
…which I kind of regret now, because the last…even the end of the year I was telling
them something in Chinese, they would have no idea how to spell it using letters. So I
always had to spell everything for them. I gave them Pinyin. They were unable to read it,
so I…at the end, I kind of regret not teaching, not just teaching Pinyin first… (Scott’s
second interview)
Unfortunately, as his field instructor, I did not realize this issue earlier. When I watched
Scott’s first video in the fall, I did check with him about whether the students were using Pinyin
or Chinese characters during their presentations, because I could not see their scripts or Scott’s
notes on the board clearly. Later I understood that they were using Pinyin, and I assumed that
Scott had taught Pinyin to students. Their first videos were about one of their lessons in the
second or third week of their teaching, and most of my two groups of teachers were teaching
Pinyin at that time. I also led the class discussion on whether to teach Pinyin or not when Tianyu
and Yalan disagreed with each other at that time. However, my over-generalization made me not
aware of the issue in Scott’s first year of teaching.
Neither did I realize that Scott did not teach writing Chinese characters until the spring
because of my over-generalization. We reached the conclusion from our class discussion in the
early fall that both Pinyin and Chinese characters should be taught, but that teachers should focus
on Chinese characters along with their teaching. At that time, Scott mentioned that he did not
teach Chinese characters, but only expected the students to recognize Chinese characters, while
all the other teachers in my two groups were teaching Chinese character writing. I did not push
Scott to add Chinese character writing then because of his difficult situation, hoping that he could
add it gradually with students’ improving behaviors. After all, Chinese character writing is found
to be the most difficult aspect in CFL settings (Everson, 1998; Ke, Wen, & Kotenbeutel, 2001),
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including U.S. colleges, K-12 schools, and Chinese community schools in the U.S. (Ke, et al,
2001).
Because we discussed Chinese characters, including its writing, for a few times at our field
instruction meetings, I assumed that Scott would also add writing gradually, but I did not check
with him. They struggled in many aspects of their teaching, and subject matter appeared to be
much easier for them, so I focused more on their difficulties that I could observe from their
journals and videos. Not until the end of March, when our course readings were particularly on
how to teach Chinese characters, did I realize from Scott’s teaching journal that still he only
expected students to recognize characters. However, it seemed a bit too late for me to ask Scott
to add Chinese character writing, so I kept consistent with Scott’s teaching and only reminded
him to use different techniques to help students recognize the Chinese characters that they
learned. For example, I asked him to provide Chinese characters as visual aids while the students
were playing some language games. Scott followed my advice and pondered in his subsequent
journal that “…by adding characters, I can hopefully help them learn the characters along with
the correct pronunciation” (Scott’s journal in the spring). In this case, my overgeneralization,
assumptions, and the fact that I was not onsite made me not aware of the issue for a long time.
In addition to his concern about overwhelming his students by teaching them how to write
Chinese characters, there were two other reasons that influenced Scott’s decision on whether to
teach Chinese character writing. First, Scott was only required to recognize Chinese characters
while he was learning Chinese in the Army, which might have influenced his views on Pinyin
and Chinese characters. He noted, “When I learned Chinese, we weren't required to write very
much—we simply had to be able to recognize the character and know its meaning and
pronunciation” (Scott’s journal in the spring). Second, Scott did not think writing Chinese

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characters is important nowadays because of technology. He mentioned that “the advent of
technology reducing the need for remembering stroke order,” because “as long as a student can
remember the pronunciation of the character and then pick it out of a list, he or she is able to
functionally ‘write’ Chinese characters using a computer” (Scott’s journal in the fall).
After his first year teaching, Scott came to understand that teaching Pinyin and Chinese
character writing is necessary, and he regretted not having done so in his teaching. He also
commented that the lack of onsite assistance negatively affected his learning to teach Pinyin and
Chinese characters. He said,
…if I have had more support through the teacher ED program…if I could have an
experienced Chinese teacher working with me to help me make decisions, I think that
would be very very helpful…You did a great job providing support from ××, but it would
have been nice to have somebody in the classroom, somebody on a regular basis…
(Scott’s follow-up interview)
Scott’s comments also indicate that both field instruction and mentoring for him had some
limitations. Field instruction was online, and I had only a very limited understanding about his
teaching, so I could not identify some of his difficulties and confusion in teaching Chinese.
Because his mentor teacher was not a Chinese language teacher, she could not help him with
language decisions, although she did help him with classroom management.
Expanding and Changing Views on Teaching Four Skills in Cultural Context
Scott focused on spoken Chinese from the fall of 2009 to the spring of 2010, and he selected
the themes that were about students’ lives, for example, “me and my family,” or those closely
related to students’ lives, for example, colors and numbers. However, little knowledge of
language pedagogy negatively affected his teaching of Chinese speaking. With little learning of
language instructional methods in the summer, Scott had to resort to his Chinese learning

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experience in the fall. While he was accumulating knowledge of teaching speaking in the fall, he
did not have a better and more complete understanding about the detailed teaching techniques
until the spring, when we were specifically focusing on Chinese speaking. He noted,
20

Regarding speaking (Brown, 2001) , I was interested in the discussion on drilling, since
we've had similar discussions in our weekly meetings [field instruction meetings]. As
someone trained in Mandarin Chinese using audio-lingual methods, I understand firsthand the benefits of conversational drills. However, my coursework at the certification
program has also taught me the benefits of using real, relevant conversation and
minimizing the amount of contrived drills or content. (Scott’s journal in the spring)
Accordingly Scott tried to provide contexts for students’ speaking. He asked the students to
use the Chinese that they learned when there was an applicable situation. For example, a student
asked to drink water while they were playing the chopsticks game. Scott pushed and also helped
him to request in Chinese. Scott also made sure that students’ speaking was culturally correct.
For instance, a student tried to say, “I am very pretty” in Chinese, which was grammatically
correct, but pragmatically incorrect in Chinese culture, so Scott explained the differences
between American and Chinese cultures for such usage. He also invited native Chinese people
from the area to his classes and organized a trip to a Chinese restaurant so that his students could
speak Chinese in authentic Chinese contexts.
With little preparation in the summer, Scott also had to learn how to teach some common
aspects of language teaching (e.g., listening) and particular features of Chinese teaching (e.g.,
Chinese writing). Listening is common and also critical for language input in a second/foreign
language class. Although Scott is a successful language learner, his student experience did not
help him to understand language teachers’ different purposes and techniques. When we focused
on listening in field instruction in the spring, Scott commented,
20

Brown, D. (2001).
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The piece on listening was helpful because it gave me some new insights on just how
complex listening is. Sometimes as a teacher, I ask my students to “just listen,” as if
21
listening and understanding were passive processes, even in a first language. Morley
points out some different types of listening which I hadn't considered (like bi-directional,
unidirectional, and autodirectional). And her recommendations on listening instruction
and activities contained some really good ideas that I think will help me in my classroom.
(Scott’s journal in the spring)
Scott’s comments indicate that he did not realize various techniques and concepts about
listening from his own language learning experience. Readings and field instruction helped to
provide a different view on listening and its roles for language learners. This incident may also
show that it is necessary to help novice language teachers to understand the rationales for their
instruction, even for an activity which looks very common, like listening.
However, although current second/foreign language instructional methods, which are often
based on English as a second/foreign language or some other European languages, are also
applicable to Chinese language instruction in U.S. K-12 schools, some techniques may need to be
developed in order to assist teachers to teach some particular aspects of the Chinese language, for
example, Chinese characters. At the same time, because Scott was only required to recognize
Chinese characters when he was learning Chinese in the Army, discussion in field instruction on
teaching Chinese characters seemed beneficial to Scott for his teaching:
I really appreciated this discussion because it helps me think through the issue of how I
will teach characters to my students… Right now, I'm thinking about leaning more toward
22
Zhang's phonic method of teaching characters. The fact that phonics can aid in memory,
the advent of technology reducing the need for remembering stroke order, etc all make me
believe that this approach can help me as I teach my students Chinese characters. (Scott’s
journal in the spring)

21
22

Scott was talking about Morley, J. (2001). Please refer to the references for details.
Zhang, Z. (2009).
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The course in this session on “Field Experience” introduced two approaches to teaching
Chinese characters, and we also discussed them at the field instruction meetings: one is the
traditional approach, which focuses on ideographic radicals of Chinese characters, and the other
one focuses on phonic parts. Scott’s notes above show that field instruction and his actual
teaching began to help him switch from expecting Chinese character recognition from students to
planning to teach Chinese characters, so his views on Chinese characters were changed.
Tianyu’s Development in Knowledge of Subject Matter
Tianyu is a native Chinese speaker, but he was a complete novice teacher from a different
educational background when he was teaching Chinese as a foreign language in U.S. K-12
schools in his first year of teaching. Many factors in his teaching and learning from various
sources also re-structured his knowledge of Chinese as a subject matter in U.S. foreign language
teaching.
Teaching Pinyin or Chinese Characters? And How?
At the beginning of the fall, Tianyu started with teaching Chinese characters, which he
assumed would be interesting and fun to his students, with his illustration of the meanings of
different parts in each character. Tianyu understood that Chinese might look very difficult to
learn to the students. He noted, “When I went to the school and just started teaching, I think it
might be hard for them, because they think Chinese language is the most complicated language in
the world” (Tianyu’s second interview). In order to encourage and motivate the students, he
relied on Chinese characters. For his first class, he taught the two characters meaning China and
explained the structures of the two characters in detail, because he wanted to cultivate confidence
in the students and motivate them to learn Chinese:

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And I just don’t want to like…frighten them or scare them with like…introduce some
language content the first day, so I only take a few like interesting characters and
introduced to them…told them how easy it is. All those characters make sense to Chinese
people, and they worked the same for American students…just want them to get familiar
with Chinese culture and language, and just not to be…not to be too scared of learning it.
(Tianyu’s second interview)
Obviously, Tianyu’s instructional decision at the beginning was influenced by his linguistic
and educational background. Another reason might be his tutoring experience in China, as
mentioned in chapter four, which led Tianyu to believe that students could be motivated enough
to figure out meanings if only Chinese was used in teaching and teachers should only teach
Chinese characters. Tianyu recalled that he argued with Yalan in the summer of 2009 and
insisted that only Chinese characters should be taught to the students, not Pinyin, because the
characters are Chinese and students would able to understand the characters and learn. He also
mentioned this in his teaching journal and noted that “back then I was supporting the negative
[other] side, and defending myself by telling them my American students in China all have
problems with pinyin and tones even if they speak wonderful Chinese” (Tianyu’s journal in the
fall). Still another very important factor was that Tianyu did not have a curriculum or a textbook
to give him any guidance at the very beginning of the fall, so he went ahead with his own beliefs
about teaching.
We discussed whether to teach Pinyin or Chinese characters at our field instruction meetings,
as mentioned in Scott’s development above. From his own teaching, Tianyu also found that the
students could not remember how to pronounce a character without Pinyin. He came to
understand that teaching Pinyin is also necessary, and he began to include Pinyin in his
instruction. Tianyu described this change in his journal:
Ironically, I have changed my previews lesson plan with adding Pinyin to the first unit…
And I found my teaching becomes more effective and students realized what they are
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really doing while doing a conversation. At least they now have a clue what symbols they
are speaking. (Tianyu’s journal in the fall)
While Tianyu was using Pinyin to assist students’ learning of Chinese, he found that students
did not do well in Pinyin, although some of his classes were learning Chinese for the second year.
This negatively affected his teaching, so after the middle of the fall semester, Tianyu re-taught
Pinyin systematically:
Even though they claimed they have been learning pinyin for the whole year. They still
have a lot of problems about pinyin. When I pronounce the work and let them to spell it
out, few can get the pinyin correctly. And in their quizzes and tests, they made a lot of
mistakes on pinyin. They didn’t like pinyin but they couldn’t prove that they don’t need
to learn pinyin. Last week, after a test that they made serious mistakes about pinyin, I
realized that it is the time I should re-teach them the whole pinyin system completely.
(Tianyu’s journal in the fall)
Our discussions at field instruction meetings in the early fall led them to understand that
Pinyin is a “tool” to assist students’ learning of Chinese, but the focus of their teaching should be
Chinese characters. Obviously Tianyu agreed on this, as his views on Pinyin and Chinese
characters at the beginning of the fall show, so toward the end of the fall semester, Tianyu made
the students move from both Pinyin and Chinese characters to Chinese characters only again,
when he believed that the students were doing well with Pinyin. In his journal in December,
Tianyu wrote that “it was a challenging week for students because they are having a transition of
Pinyin and complete Chinese characters learning.”
Furthermore, influenced by his Chinese educational experience, Tianyu also expected the
students to write Chinese characters correctly and neatly, because that is the common expectation
for children when they are learning to write Chinese characters in China. For example, Tianyu
explained why he gave an A- to a boy student’s homework when his mother asked Tianyu. He
noted, “That’s the boy’s homework, which is rather messy with a very poor handwriting…

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Honestly, his son’s handwriting is not just ugly, it is very unorganized” (Tianyu’s journal in the
fall). Thus, I reminded Tianyu to pay more attention to whether students could write correctly,
but not look at them as Chinese native learners, and at the same time, to make his expectations
for students’ homework clear to students and parents.
However, there were different views on how to help students to remember spelling for
Chinese characters between Tianyu and his school supervisors. Again, Tianyu turned to his
Chinese learning experience in China and the homework Tianyu assigned to the students was still
rote learning and copying. Tianyu noted, “My initial understanding about language instruction
mainly came from my own Chinese and English learning experience” (Tianyu’s follow-up
interview). His principal observed that “home work assignments included repetitive writing of
sentences, etc.” (Tianyu’s principal’s report for the mid-term evaluation).
In the late fall, we discussed some techniques for students’ language practice, including
filling in blanks, matching, making sentences, translation, etc. Tianyu also tried them in his
homework for students, but he found that the students did not write Chinese characters accurately.
For example, the students might write “由” or “甲” when Tianyu asked them to write “田.”
Because of this, he asked students to use the printed “田字格”

23

to write Chinese characters

correctly. Although it is common for Chinese children learn to write Chinese characters this way
at the beginning, Tianyu asked his students to analyze the structures of Chinese characters first
before they write, not to copy mechanically. Tianyu believed that it was effective and helpful to
him when he was learning Chinese, and he hoped that his American students could also benefit

23

They are printed squares which are used to help practice writing Chinese characters. They
look like the Chinese character “田” or small tables.

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from such a practice. Some students understood his purpose and did well, but some did not. The
principal and his spring mentor teacher thought it was only repetitive and mechanic. Thus,
Tianyu had to explore different ways.
At our field instruction meetings and one of the CI’s seminars that Tianyu and I went to, we
shared technology and some online programs on teaching Chinese characters. Tianyu also
communicated with his Chinese colleagues on this aspect of teaching. Toward the middle of the
spring, Tianyu made use of technology to teach Chinese characters. As one of his teaching videos
during this period shows, Tianyu used the computer to guide students on stroke orders for
Chinese characters. Then he led students to write, using their individual small white boards. The
students seemed very engaged. His spring mentor teacher also observed, “Tianyu is providing
students with new strategies to learn Chinese characters and is improving upon ways to create
authentic situations in the classroom where they can use Chinese… Good at motivating students
to learn characters, share webs with them” (Tianyu’s spring mentor’s report for the spring midterm evaluation).
Even though Tianyu’s new way of teaching Chinese characters motivated students to write
Chinese characters in class, I was not able to see whether this method worked better for students
to remember Chinese characters correctly, because, as Tianyu also noticed, the students did not
seem to be willing to correct their mistakes when they practiced writing Chinese characters on
small white boards. Tianyu noted, “Some of them say, ‘Ah…That was close’ or ‘Come on, I
almost got it’” (Tianyu’s journal in the spring). After all, Chinese in U.S. K-12 schools was only
at its very beginning, there was not much literature or experience for me to refer to and, in turn,
to provide assistance for Tianyu’s teaching in this aspect.

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Sometimes Tianyu returned to his old way of homework, perhaps because of his inexperience
and, limited time for designing, so his spring mentor teacher noted at the same time that “his
homework still mainly consists of rote copying of already existing information. I.e. copy the
characters 10 times, copy the dialogue, practice the paragraph” (Tianyu’s spring mentor’s report
for spring mid-term evaluation).
Learning Lesson Planning and Curriculum Design
In his first year of teaching, Tianyu had to gain knowledge about what should be taught to
students and how to sequence his knowledge of the Chinese language and culture. Although he is
a Chinese native speaker, he had to learn curriculum design and lesson planning in the U.S.
context, which also reshaped his knowledge of Chinese as a subject matter in U.S. K-12 schools.

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Learning curriculum design. Like many Chinese language teachers in his cohort, Tianyu
started his teaching without any textbooks or references in the fall. What made it worse was that
he was teaching Chinese in an International Baccalaureate program, but neither the certification
program nor the school provided the curriculum to him. “I went there. I just heard about IB, but I
had no idea about what it is,” Tianyu recalled (Tianyu’s second interview). He asked his principal,
who was also one of the coordinators for the school’s IB program, for some guidance on the IB
Chinese program one month after his teaching, and he received a booklet about the IB program as
a whole, in which the Chinese program was only mentioned very briefly, so Tianyu was confused
about what the Chinese IB program should be. At that time, the principal expected Tianyu to
write a Chinese IB curriculum for a semester- and a year-long program, but Tianyu hardly had an
idea of curriculum, which led to misunderstandings and frustrations on both sides.
His principal reviewed his lesson plans for a few weeks and asked him where he was leading
the students. “They thought I didn’t have a goal or something. I didn’t…you know, I didn’t really
think so,” Tianyu told me, “I said, well, I have my goal” (Tianyu’s second interview).
Discouraged and confused by the principal’s comments, Tianyu wrote a long email to the
principal. He explained that “I wanted students to learn some things within a certain period of
time. I would like them to learn speaking first, and gradually lead them to reading, writing,
listening, etc.” (Tianyu’s follow-up interview). Clearly Tianyu’s knowledge of Chinese as a
subject matter focused on the four skills, but the principal expected a curriculum which specifies
the content.
The principal sounded quite unhappy at Tianyu’s un-preparedness and at the certification
program while I was conducting Tianyu’s mid-term evaluation with him. He talked with me
about Tianyu’s various challenges in almost every aspect of his teaching, which also helped me

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to know more about Tianyu’s teaching, including his difficulties in curriculum and lesson
planning. However, I was not sure whether I should ask Tianyu to write a curriculum then. I was
not able to conduct Tianyu’s mid-term evaluation in the fall until early November because of the
difficulties of scheduling the conference with the principal, but neither Tianyu nor I had any
resources about the IB Chinese program. Meanwhile, I was uncomfortable to ask Tianyu to work
harder then, because he had been working hard, and at that time he was sick because of the
pressure from work and his car accident, as he taught full time and traveled among three schools
every day, but he learned driving only the previous summer. Tianyu tried to continue to work.
Finally his principal identified that and asked him to see a doctor. I had to give him extensions
for the course assignments, in addition to other assistance. I remember he was confused at that
time. He could not understand why he became sick because he had been very healthy and strong.
At the follow-up interview with Tianyu, I asked him why in the fall he never mentioned his
difficulties in curriculum in his teaching journals or at our field instruction meetings. He
answered, “Because I did not think this should be included in our course…because I felt we
focused on teaching.” It seemed that Tianyu’s understanding about teaching was the process
which happened “within” the classroom, not things that happen outside of the classroom.
However, as far as I could tell in the fall, Tianyu was teaching on a thematic basis. Tianyu noted
that he talked to his fall mentor teacher. He suggested some topics, and his fall mentor teacher
also recommended some topics to him. However, without a curriculum, Tianyu was not able to
have a rationale for the topics he selected for his teaching:
I picked up those topics because I thought those would be interesting to American
students. Or maybe like…I would say those topics are all the topics that I can think
of…ok, I know this, let’s do this. I know this, and we’ll do this. (Tianyu’s second
interview)

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Consequently, Tianyu was not able to sequence those topics in a logical way. He recalled:
…those information are not so well-connected to directions. So like I taught a lot of
things, and they are not so well-connected. And then just like…to them, they just think I
just randomly taught them something. So it is like…each day like…that was just for one
lesson, but different lessons, like day by day, they are not so connected. (Tianyu’s second
interview)
Thus, Tianyu’s views about field instruction, his little knowledge of curriculum, and my
limited understanding of his teaching delayed his development in the fall, although as a native
Chinese speaker, he has rich knowledge of Chinese language and culture. His fall mentor teacher
commented, “Honestly, I think if he had a curriculum, he would be a lot more successful”
(Tianyu’s fall mentor interview).
In November, Tianyu received his textbook and two weeks later, his official mentor teacher
(his spring mentor teacher) came back to work. I asked Tianyu to talk to and learn from his
spring mentor teacher, as his official mentor teacher is a Japanese language teacher and also one
of the coordinators of the IB program. I believed that she was in a better position to help Tianyu
with IB Chinese curriculum. Tianyu also tried to search for some information on the IB Chinese
program, but he did not have an account on the IB program’s website, so he did not get anything.
In the early spring, Tianyu realized that he needed a long-term plan for his teaching. He
further explained that “it was because after a few of months of teaching, I just realized that I only
covered a few pages of the textbook” (Tianyu’s second interview). Thus, he thought that
“Probably I have to figure out like how fast I should go or what things I should teach” (Tianyu’s
second interview). From a conversation with one of a second-year Chinese teacher in the
certification program, Tianyu got to know that the IB school should have an account and he
asked his spring mentor teacher for that. He also talked to the certification program, and finally
received the IB Chinese syllabus from the certification program in the middle of the spring.
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With the syllabus, Tianyu was much clearer about what he should teach to the students,
because the syllabus laid out Chinese vocabulary and grammar that should be taught in the IB
program. This also helped Tianyu to select vocabulary and grammar that the students should
learn when he was using the textbook, Learning Chinese with Me. That is, Tianyu’s knowledge
of Chinese as a subject matter was re-formulated and re-organized by the IB syllabus for the
teaching purposes of an IB program, even though he is a native Chinese speaker. Tianyu recalled,
Later with the syllabus, I knew which vocabulary was useful to the students and they
should learn or which vocabulary would not appear in their tests. This way I could teach
them things useful to them. For the other vocabulary, it could be elective. If the students
had competence and they were willing, they could go ahead to learn. But if they were not
able to do or if they were unwilling to learn, it was ok. (Tianyu’s second interview)
However, Tianyu still had to rely on himself on how to teach the Chinese vocabulary and
grammar required by the IB syllabus, because “…for IB for Mandarin, they do not have a lot of
resources for Chinese teachers” (Tianyu’s second interview). Thus, lack of resources was also
one of the factors that undermined Tianyu’s teaching and also one of the important reasons for
his difficulties with curriculum design and lesson planning.
Looking back on his learning experience in the IB Chinese program, Tianyu came to
understand the importance of curriculum to his teaching. He came to understand the feedback to
him at the beginning of the fall and said, “…now when I looked back I thought I didn’t really
have goals” (Tianyu’s second interview). He further noted,
I learned…I had to have a long-term lesson plans, like weekly or monthly, although I
didn’t really finish doing those things, but I had the idea of doing that and have some…to
have some…not so good lesson plans, but still like I was trying to do that way. (Tianyu’s
second interview)
Tianyu’s comments above also indicate that he was still working on lesson planning, which
was another aspect of teaching that Tianyu had struggled with and that affected his effective

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delivery of Chinese language and culture. However, learning lesson planning helped Tianyu to
organize what should be taught on a daily and weekly basis, so it will be discussed in the
following section.
Learning lesson planning. Not having a curriculum, textbook, or any other references at the
beginning of the fall contributed to Tianyu’s difficulties and struggles with lesson planning.
Actually Tianyu struggled so hard at lesson planning that he still could clearly remember his
experience for his first class when I interviewed him several months after his first year of
teaching:
First time I was trying to make my lesson plan, I struggled so hard…I struggled so much.
I asked for help from different like…from other teachers, and then I looked at the lesson
plans that I had when I was in China. So I think I still remember like the first lesson plan I
made was…to motivate the students about learning this language. (Tianyu’s second
interview)
With little knowledge of curriculum and lesson planning, Tianyu did not know what he
should include in a lesson plan at the beginning of the fall. When I asked what factors he thought
he should take into consideration to design a lesson plan, Tianyu answered quite frankly:
I had no idea. All I was trying to do was how to finish the class and how to have
something…back then…it was simply…just like…ok, my lesson is to make sure that I
have something to teach and the students have something to learn, and I have enough
activities to use the time. (Tianyu’s second interview)
More importantly, perhaps Tianyu did not know the functions of lesson planning in his
teaching, although seemingly he did have lesson plans. During the interview, he described what
his lesson plans looked like at the beginning of the fall:
I wrote down some notes. It was not so organized. They were just like some ideas
of …what I wanted to teach, so I just wrote them down without like…with a form or
whatever. I just wrote them down, just wrote down those things on a piece of paper. It

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was just something that I wanted to do, but just like to do a list. (Tianyu’s second
interview)
However, without well-prepared lesson plans, Tianyu had to face many challenges and
difficulties in class. He often lost track about what he was teaching a class, and students’
questions led him nowhere, as Tianyu recalled with this experience:
My lesson planning was not really that helpful I think by then. Like a lot of
times…sometimes like…I was not following my lesson… And then like when the class
was about over, we have five minutes, and I have three more activities…ok, forget about
it, just like…because I couldn’t do it... I would say the lesson plan was not really there…
(Tianyu’s second interview)
This also made the students confused about what they were learning every day, and they
went to the principal. Tianyu’s principal reviewed his lesson plans and visited his classes a
couple of times. He realized that Tianyu did not know how to do lesson planning and asked
Tianyu to work with his fall mentor teacher on it.
Although Tianyu struggled so hard and also worked hard with his fall mentor teacher, his
difficulties in lesson planning did not catch my attention before his fall mid-term evaluation,
because of his misunderstandings about my role as his field instructor and the course of “Field
Experiences” and my limited understanding about his teaching, as mentioned in chapter four and
above. As a result, only when I conducted his fall mid-term evaluation with his principal did I
realize his difficulties in lesson planning. His principal noted in the report that “the year certainly
began with little coherence or definable purpose.

Learning was without focus and lesson

planning / unit planning was non-existent. Both are highly remedied but still at a novice level”
(Tianyu’s principal’s report for the fall mid-term evaluation).
Meanwhile, the principal also talked to the certification program and requested onsite
assistance for Tianyu, which caused a big conversation within the administration of the

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certification program. Although the certification program was reluctant, the principal was firm
about the issue. He succeeded in the end, and the CI sent staff to visit Tianyu’s classes every
week in the spring semester, which was unusual for all the schools involved in the certification
program during 2009-2010.
At that time, I understood that both Tianyu’s spring mentor teacher and the CI staff were
reviewing Tianyu’s lesson plans, so I still focused on his in-class teaching. However, it seemed
that Tianyu was only making very slow progress, although I understood he was working hard. In
my interviews with him, Tianyu explained why. He tried to follow his mentor and wrote very
brief lesson plans, actually a brief list about what he planned to do, but he was lost in the
classroom. During this period, Tianyu was also provided with a very detailed lesson plan sample
from the CI, which further confused Tianyu about what he should do. His mentor teacher recalled,
“…teaching him how to be organized, you can’t really…our time was a little organizing or what
lesson plan template to use. I say it doesn’t matter that the template” (spring mentor’s interview).
Tianyu tried to balance these two styles:
My principal said what he wanted to see was a brief list about what I was going to
teach…my mentor said she would co-plan with me. What she did was…she had a little
square, and wrote things very briefly…Then ×× [the CI staff] sent me two examples of
lesson plans…but they were very detailed and not useful to me. Finally my lesson plans
were in the middle of these two samples…but I was not satisfied with the lesson plans I
made. However, at least, I had lesson plans, and it was better than no lesson plans.
(Tianyu’s second interview)
The quotation indicates that at that time Tianyu was not very clear about the functions and
purposes of lesson planning. Neither did he know the rationales for the two styles of lesson plans.
The consequence was that Tianyu was still not clear why he should have lesson planning and
which aspect of the Chinese language he should teach, so he still had to follow the textbook.
Tianyu’s spring mentor teacher noted that the “co-teacher created a lesson plan outline for him to
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follow… His lesson plans to do not include any standards.

He is following the textbook

chapters” (Tianyu’s mentor’s report for the mid-term evaluation in the spring)
During that period, I tried to help him connect his long-term instructional goals to his daily
and weekly lesson plans; at that time, I observed disconnections among his classroom activities,
although the students looked engaged. I believed it was because Tianyu did not have very clear
goals or he did not align the activities with the goals, so I reminded him that “First, I think your
teaching purposes could be clearer. Mainly there were three activities in this class session, but it
was not so clear what the connections were among the three activities” (my comments in the
spring). However, I did not ask for his lesson plans at that time, because, after all, both the
spring mentor teacher and the CI staff were reviewing them.
At that time, I found that Tianyu still seemed not very clear about lesson planning. I used one
of another teacher’s classes as an example to write a sample lesson plan, illustrated the lesson
planning process, and sent the sample to my two groups. I also called Tianyu over a weekend and
explained lesson planning with one of his classes. Tianyu finally understood why he needed to
have lesson plans and what a lesson plan should look like.
Toward the end of the spring semester, Tianyu himself was able to identify some positive
changes in his teaching because of his improvement in lesson planning. He noticed that “with
better-planned lesson plans, the class went smoothly and the transition went well. The
information in the lesson is adequate and students did get the planned content” (Tianyu’s journal
in the spring). Moreover, Tianyu was also able to adapt the textbook or select activities from the
textbook to serve his instructional goals and purposes instead of only following the textbook. He
wrote, “Activities now are not as unorganized as I simply taking the suggestions from the
textbook. I would say I learned from the suggestions and modified it with my teaching goal and

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focus more on my goals” (Tianyu’s journal in the spring).
More importantly, the students seemed clear about what they were learning and what they
were supposed to do for an activity, because of Tianyu’s improvement in lesson planning. During
the second interview, Tianyu appeared confident and satisfied with the students’ presentations in
the last teaching video of the year:
I don’t need to watch this video, because I remember this one clearly. I think I achieved
my goals, since I did this project even better than the family tree project. Also several
students did very well and successfully. I applied what I learned into this project in
several aspects. (Tianyu’s second interview)
Although Tianyu appeared to have made much improvement in lesson planning, it looked
like it might be too late—Tianyu had struggled with lesson planning for a long time. When I
illustrated lesson planning to him, it was almost March. In retrospective, several factors seem to
have caused Tiayu’s problem with lesson planning.
First, he learned English in a special way, and did not follow regular English instruction step
by step, especially in secondary schools in China, as introduced in chapter three. This may be one
of the important reasons why he could not understand why and how to connect one activity to
another, or which part of his teaching should go first when he came to lesson planning in his
first-year teaching. In this sense, Tianyu’s foreign language learning experience negatively
affected his socialization into the teaching profession.
Second, educational and cultural differences between the U.S. and China made this problem
more salient to Tianyu. In China, curriculum is imbedded in textbooks, and teachers are
following the curriculum when they use the stipulated textbooks. As a result, teachers do not
need to know much about curriculum. However, Tianyu did not have any formal teaching
experience in China and thus did not have the concept of curriculum and the function of lesson

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planning. In the U.S., teachers are supposed to be clear about curriculum and they have the
flexibilities to choose textbooks or design their own materials. Without any prior teaching
experience in the U.S., Tianyu did not know what curriculum is or how to plan a lesson.
Third, Tianyu did not seem to have learned much about curriculum and lesson planning from
the certification program before the fall semester of 2009 started. Apparently, Tianyu’s
knowledge of curriculum and lesson planning nearly did not exist in the fall, especially at the
beginning. His principal commented that “it seemed quite apparent that he received little
effective training toward this end in his summer work as concepts of lesson planning, curricular
design and assessment were foreign, at best” (Tianyu’s principal’s report for the fall mid-term
evaluation). Tianyu’s mentor in the spring also had a similar observation:
I know that we asked him, “What did you do at ××× [the certification program] in the
summer before you came to us?” He said, “Well, we talked a lot about like John Dewey
and like political theory, and all these…” We were like… but you don’t know how to
plan a lesson. (Tianyu’s spring mentor interview)
The comments from Tianyu’s principal and his spring mentor teacher indicate that Tianyu
learned some grand theories about education in the U.S., but not specific enough for him to
understand curriculum and lesson planning. His spring mentor teacher said frankly that “he didn’t
really understand the concept of lesson planning” (Tianyu’s spring mentor interview). Therefore,
it seemed that what Tianyu learned from the certification program courses in the summer was
disconnected with what he actually needed to know for his teaching.
Fourth, his initial misunderstanding about the field instructor’s role and the limitations of
field instruction might also have delayed his learning to teach. I did not come to know his
difficulties in curriculum and lesson planning until the late fall. If Tianyu did not report his
difficulties “outside of the classroom” in his journals or at the field instruction meetings, it was

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not easy for me to identify the issues.
Fifth, the structure of field instruction also led me to a limited understanding about Tianyu’s
teaching. I was not in the teachers’ actual classrooms, because they were in different schools that
are far away from the University campus. Although they were required to submit their teaching
videos and journals, I did not see their lesson plans and could only see what was happening in
their classrooms from the particular angle of the cameras. I was supposed to have two hours’
field instruction each week. However, I had nine Chinese teachers and they were divided into two
groups by the CI. As a result, I only had one hour with each group. The first group met with me
online from 7:00 pm to 8:00 pm, and the second group from 8:15 pm to 9:15 pm. Often the class
was not over until 10:30 pm because the second group had many questions, but the first group
could only stay with me to 8:15 pm. Tianyu was in the first group for the two semesters. My
impression of the first group at that time was that they had many difficulties with pedagogy. An
examination of my comments on Tianyu’s teaching journals and videos indicates that I focused
on his instructional methods. Furthermore, my job responsibilities did not include reviewing their
lesson plans. In addition, it was my first time to do field instruction with Chinese language
teachers, so I was inexperienced with them. Consequently, for a long time, I did not find the main
reason for Tianyu’s difficulties in his teaching.
Lastly, the status of Chinese language education in the United States might also have
contributed to Tianyu’s challenges with curriculum. The literature review for this study indicates
that Chinese instruction in U.S. K-12 schools is only at its very beginning. The teachers I worked
with taught in different school districts across the state and in a neighboring state, but there was
no one Chinese curriculum at the district level for any of them. As the only Chinese teacher in
the school district from 2009 to 2010, Tianyu had to do everything from scratch on his own,

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which was very daunting and tough to a novice teacher. What made it worse was that Tianyu was
expected to design a curriculum which could help prepare his students in the IB program for their
IB Chinese test when Tianyu barely had an idea about what IB or curriculum is. Furthermore, the
IB Chinese syllabus was not provided to him until Feb. or March in 2010, which negatively
affected Tianyu’s curriculum design and lesson planning.
Teaching the Four Skills
Because Tianyu was only learning how to teach from the beginning in his first year teaching,
he did not have very clear concepts about the roles of the four skills—listening, speaking, reading,
and writing, in language teaching until they were more systematically introduced and discussed
in field instruction meetings toward the middle of the spring. While they were learning listening
and speaking, Tianyu noted, “…the first impression was that I didn’t realize listening and
speaking are more important than I thought, and there are quite many aspects I should improve in
my teaching to more effectively apply listening and speaking in the class” (Tianyu’s journal in
the spring).
Meanwhile, Tianyu also took initiative to talk to his spring mentor teacher when he had
questions, and he probably learned more about the four skills in language instruction, and more
importantly, how to incorporate the four skills in teaching:
…telling him thinking about the four skills, listening, speaking, reading, writing. They
should listen before they speak. They should read before they have to write, so that
receptive versus productive types of things, so I really need…say, I’m almost teaching
him methodology, and then at the same time, ok for directions, you can have…then you
use this information gap, you know, to ask and answer directions, so it was a little bit…it
was built simultaneously. (Tianyu’s spring mentor interview)
With these efforts, Tianyu seemed more competent in developing the students’ four skills
toward the end of the spring. Meanwhile, because of his development in curriculum and lesson

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planning, he was clear about his teaching purposes. For example, after the students learned a unit
about weather and did their presentations, Tianyu asked them to read a “letter” and then write a
responding letter in order further to consolidate what they learned in the unit and to guide them to
use Chinese through reading and writing. He described,
Each one of the students has got an envelope that has a letter in it. The letter is from a
friend in China that introduced the weathers in four seasons. They are all in Chinese
characters, and students are not allowed to use textbook and notes so that they can really
practice their reading. (Tianyu’s journal in the spring)
Tianyu’s development in his knowledge of subject matter in his first year of teaching
illustrates how this component of his teacher knowledge was restructured in his socialization.
Demanded by his teaching context, including students’ learning, the mentor teachers, and the
principal, he had to change his views on Pinyin and Chinese characters and to learn curriculum
design and lesson planning, in order to organize his instructional content better. He also came to
understand and apply the four skills with the guidance of mentoring and field instruction.
Yalan’s Development in Knowledge of Subject Matter
Although Yalan had had several years of teaching experience in a Chinese community
school, she also had to learn which parts of the Chinese language and culture should be taught
and in what kinds of order in her first year of teaching, because of the differences in students and
instructional contexts between Chinese community schools and U.S. public schools, and more
importantly, the nature of Chinese as a subject in these two types of schools.
Connecting to Students’ Lives
In her first year of teaching, Yalan learned to connect what she taught about Chinese
language and culture to her students in U.S. public schools. At the beginning, when the field

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instruction discussions were consistent with her prior teaching experience, they were evident in
Yalan’s subsequent teaching. For example, I noticed in one of her teaching videos about social
studies classes in the early fall, Yalan was teaching Chinese characters for various countries, their
people, and their languages. She picked Britain, the United States, France, Germany, and Korea,
because “…I have a Korean student in my class…because I was relating to his real life” (Yalan’s
second interview). She continued to explain:
That’s their purposes of learning a language, I believe. If it is not connected to real life, it
would be meaningless…I should say from my experience partially, and partially from
your class. Then naturally I thought of this. I remember we talked about it in our class. So
I think your class was very helpful. (Yalan’s second interview).
Meanwhile, Yalan also applied the teaching principle to her teaching of young children, and
she made use of things that children are familiar with in their lives in order to make foreign
language learning meaningful to them. Yalan recalled, “When we talked about body parts, I used
the American song, ‘Head, shoulder, knee, and toe…,’ because they all knew this song. And
these children liked it very much. They sang it at home every day” (Yalan’s second interview).
Along with her teaching, Yalan became more skillful and flexible in using this teaching principle
in her teaching. In the early spring, Yalan noticed that the school put a big poster about the Medal
Count of the Winter Olympics in its center, and her students were also talking about the Winter
Olympics. She made use of the opportunity and taught Chinese vocabulary for sports and medals.
She was happy to see that the students were using Chinese the following day:

The second day, I saw two students watching the medals count, and said, “美国金牌：
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7， 银牌：7, 铜牌：10” . I’m very happy and surprised that they remembered it. And
another student told me, “I’m learning 花样滑冰 now”. (Yalan’s journal in the spring)
24

美国金牌：7,银牌: 7, 铜牌: 10 means U.S. gold medal: 7, silver medal: 7; bronze medal:
10. 花样滑冰 means figure skating.
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Another reason for Yalan to teach the Winter Olympics to the students was that “I integrated
my lessons with students’ interests. I have 17 students, and 14 of them are boys. They all like
sports” (Yalan’s journal in the spring). This way, Yalan connected her teaching not only to
students’ interests, but also to her instructional context. That is, her students and teaching context
influenced her decisions on which part of Chinese to teach.
In order to connect better to students’ real lives, Yalan also took the initiative to know more
about their lives and interests. Yalan made use of her survey results in her curriculum decisions.
For example, she designed a unit about Chinese food, “because all the students like Chinese food
very much. Actually some students came to my class because they liked Chinese food” (Yalan’s
second interview). Meanwhile, Yalan also used students’ surveys to check her teaching. She
noted that “I did survey to get the students’ feedbacks, and adjusted my teaching according to
their feedbacks” (Yalan’s journal in the spring). Thus, more knowledge of students contributed to
restructuring Yalan’s knowledge of Chinese as a subject matter.
On the basis of such learning, along with her teaching, Yalan also tried to select a better
Chinese textbook for her middle school class in the spring so that it would better connect to her
students’ lives and motivate them to learn. However, “at that time, there were not so many books
by Hanban or other institutions,” or “Hanban may have some books for college students, but not
so many for lower grades at that time” (Yalan’s second interview). As a result, Yalan searched
for teaching materials while she was back in China. By accident, she found one published by
Hanban, Happy Chinese, and used that in her teaching, but the book’s accompanying website
was not available until around 2009. Yalan did not follow the textbook strictly, because some
units or lessons were not applicable to her students. She added something and designed her own

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materials while referring to the state’s world language standards and benchmarks and while
addressing the students’ needs. Her spring mentor teacher observed,
Because she was very limited in the resources that she had to teach, she came up with a
lot of interactive powerpoint to teach vocabulary. And I know she tried to do a lot of
cultural activities to make things fun. (Yalan’s spring mentor interview)
During her trip back to China, Yalan also collected materials and artifacts in China for
teaching Chinese in the U.S. Thus, she could use these authentic materials in her teaching not
only to motivate the students, but also to help them learn the Chinese language and experience
Chinese culture in a meaningful context.
Learning to Teach Chinese Characters and Grammar
Thanks to her prior teaching experience, Yalan understood the importance of Pinyin in
assisting students’ learning of Chinese, so she taught both Pinyin and Chinese characters.
However, there were some detailed aspects of Chinese words which are related to Chinese
grammar that Yalan had to learn in order to teach her U.S. students. Similar to her learning about
connecting to students’ lives as described above, Yalan seemed to follow the guidance of field
instruction in restructuring her knowledge of the Chinese language.
In her journal in early October, Yalan did not know whether she should teach American
students the order of strokes for a Chinese character, and she raised the question, “Is the order
(笔顺笔画)

25

of characters important? Is it necessary to teach American students 笔顺笔画?

Why we couldn’t let students create their way to write Chinese” (Yalan’s journal in the fall)?
Order of strokes is an important feature of Chinese characters and it is common for Chinese
children to follow the order of strokes to write characters. However, because it was also a
25

笔顺笔画[划] refers to stroke order for Chinese characters.
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common concern among my two groups of teachers whether they should also teach U.S. students
the same way, I led the discussions on this issue at field instruction meetings. I asked the teachers
to get students familiar with individual strokes while they led the students to follow the stroke
orders to write Chinese characters, but I also reminded them to allow flexibilities in stroke orders
and how students remember the strokes. In addition, I illustrated different expectations for
students’ vocabulary—to start writing from Chinese radicals, to recognize some more
complicated but very relevant characters, and to figure out the meanings of some even more
complicated characters that do not frequently appear in their learning. Yalan seemed to have
followed the suggestions. For example, in my second interview with her, she mentioned that
when she was teaching how to write “门” (door), a student commented that its left side looks like
the letter “I,” and the right side looks like the number of “7”. She accepted the student’s way of
interpreting the different parts of this radical.
Meanwhile, with more understanding of her students, sometimes Yalan also came up with
ways to help the students understand and remember Chinese characters. For example, she
compared some basic philosophical concepts between the U.S. and China to help the students
understand while she was teaching them some radicals:
26

The first 5 characters my students learned are: 5 elements (金、木、水、火、土) and
their radicals. My students also compared Chinese 5 elements with American 4 elements
(wood, fire, earth, and air). (Yalan’s journal in the spring)
When readings (e.g., Yin, 2007; Zhang, 2009) and discussions focused on how to teach
Chinese characters in the spring and introduced the six types of Chinese characters, Yalan was
enlightened and began to make use of some rules for Chinese characters in her teaching. She

26

金: gold; 木: wood; 水: water; 火: fire; 土: earth.
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taught patterns of semantic and phonetic components for Chinese characters, in order to help her
middle school students remember them better. For example, she taught the patterns of Chinese
characters for some fruits:
I gave them some radicals’ clues, which helped them a lot! I told my students if the fruits
were from the tree, they had “木 (wood)” radical. If the fruits were from grass, or vines,
they had “grass head”. (Yalan’s journal in the spring)
Obviously the readings and discussions at field instruction meetings helped Yalan to
understand the role of the patterns of Chinese characters for her U.S. students. These patterns did
facilitate the students’ recognition of the Chinese characters; as Yalan observed, “Even if my
students couldn’t remember what those characters were, they realized those were the fruits from
a tree or a vine” (Yalan’s journal in the spring).
From her own teaching, Yalan perceived some characteristics of her American students’
learning of Chinese. She found that to the high school students, Chinese characters looked like
pictures, so sometimes they could not tell the minor differences between two similar Chinese
characters. Yalan said, “The students probably couldn’t recognize the differences between ‘人’
and ‘入’ or ‘ 天’ and ‘夫’if I didn’t emphasize them” (Yalan’s second interview). However, she
found that the high school students could learn Chinese language and culture with their own
strategies.
Similar to her learning about language instructional methods, Yalan applied what she
learned about the four skills from field instruction to her actual teaching. In addition to Chinese
character writing, she understood more about listening and speaking and used the teaching
strategies from the course readings in her teaching. Some of those strategies were consistent with
her practice, but she also mentioned that “I got many good strategies from the Principles for

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27

designing speaking techniques ” (Yalan’s journal in the spring). Yalan’s learning to teach the
four skills shows that she also had to expand her knowledge of them, even though she had prior
teaching experience in a Chinese community school.
Yalan was also learning how to teach differences between English and Chinese to her
American students. For example, Chinese has measure words for nouns, but English does not.
Yalan was aware of such a difference between the two languages, and she also called the
students’ attention to this grammatical aspect of Chinese in a video-recorded class when she first
introduced two measure words. She provided examples with the new words the students were
learning that day and asked the students to make sentences, but she found that the students did
not do well with the measure words in their homework:
But when I checked their homework, I was disappointed to find that there was a big
28

problem on the measure words. Most of them forgot to use “只 ”between the numbers
and pets. They wrote, “我有一猫；哥哥有六狗”. (Yalan’s journal in the spring)
From this incidence, Yalan realized that “measure words are very different from English
grammar, so students got confused how to use them,” but she believed that “some of students
were careless. Students didn’t pay enough attention, and made those mistakes” (Yalan’s journal
in the spring). She was also looking for ways to solve the problem. She proposed, “I will write
the mistakes that students made on the board, and let them find the mistakes (改错). I will let
them do more similar examples to reinforce the measure words usage” (Yalan’s journal in the
spring). I suggested in my feedback that she provide more practice for students, “…you might

27

Yalan was talking about Brown, D. (2001).

28

只 is a measure word in Chinese. 我有一猫 means I have a dog; 哥哥有六狗 means My elder
brother has six dogs. The students missed measure words between “一” and “猫,” and “六” and
“狗” in their Chinese sentences.
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want to give them more chances to practice the measure words, since it was totally new to
them…” and I gave her examples about teacher-student and student-student interactions on
measure words by using the nouns they learned in that class and before that class (my comments
in the spring). We also had discussions on measure words at the following field instruction
meeting. All of these, including her own teaching experience and field instruction, helped Yalan
better to understand how to teach some grammatical aspects of Chinese which are different from
English to her American students.
Expanding Views on Chinese Culture
In her first year of teaching, Yalan learned the American perspective on some aspects of
Chinese culture from her fall mentor teacher, and she was also learning how to present Chinese
culture to her American students from field instruction.
From her teaching in the social studies classes in the fall, Yalan came to understand that the
people of China and the U.S. have different views on Chinese history; as she commented,
“…Chinese and American education, including that on history, are very different, because we
had communist way of education…so there are some…including the eight-year anti-Japanese
war…” (Yalan’s second interview).
While she got to know her American fall mentor’s perspective on Chinese history, she also
came to understand his views on other aspects of Chinese culture, for example, philosophy. As
requested by her mentor teacher, Yalan taught three kinds of Chinese philosophies, but she
selected the content:
…he asked me to teach Chinese philosophy, and talk about three kinds of Chinese
philosophy: Taoism, Buddhism, Confucius. Honestly, when he asked me to teach this, I
didn’t know this myself at all. Then I went to look for it everywhere. One thing good now
is that internet is so developed, so I could find a lot of things from google, but not
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everything that you can use. You still need to take much time to select. (Yalan’s second
interview)
In this case, in addition to her inadequacy with this aspect of Chinese culture, perhaps a very
important reason was that in China those three religions and philosophy are often not taken and
discussed together. In China, when Taoism and Buddhism are together, they are taken as
religions; but when Taoism and Confucianism are put together, their viewpoints on politics are
often discussed. However, working with her American mentor teacher in the fall led Yalan to
take these as three kinds of philosophies and to teach them in the way that American people look
at them.
Teaching Chinese history and culture in the social studies classes helped Yalan to refresh her
knowledge of Chinese history or to re-learn and have a more comprehensive understanding about
some aspects of Chinese history and culture. She noted:
And also my knowledge about history was more…better, because when I was learning
history, I was not so…I forgot a lot of things, but now I picked it up again. It also pushed
me to learn, because I think actually I knew little about it. But because you were teaching,
you had to read about it. (Yalan’s second interview)
In the spring, when Yalan taught Chinese to her middle school class, she was learning how
to teach Chinese culture to them. Instead of presenting Chinese culture with PowerPoint or
videos, as she did in the social studies classes, Yalan tried to use artifacts she collected to create a
context for the students to learn and use the Chinese language and to experience Chinese culture
with what she learned from field instruction, her teaching experience, and her cultural
background. For example, in the spring, Yalan learned realia, games, and contextualization from
field instruction. In one of her classes on activities that Chinese people do in the spring, she
taught the students to sing a Chinese song about spring and introduced some activities, including
flying kites. Yalan took Chinese jump ropes and kites to her class and taught the students how to
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play. More importantly, she taught them the song that Chinese children sing when they play jump
rope. The main part of the lyrics is number counting, from 21 to 100, which also helped her
students to review numbers. Yalan’s teaching video of this class showed that all the students
were very engaged in learning this song, and they sang with the rhythm. Toward the end of the
class, Yalan also took the students out so that the students could play jump rope and fly kites.
The students seemed to enjoy it very much.
Especially after she learned the ACTFL standards from field instruction, Yalan paid attention
to make her teaching of Chinese culture more relevant to her students by following two of the
five ACTFL standards, comparison and community. For example, she led the students to
compare Chinese New Year to Christmas:
In my class, I help students to be aware of the cross-cultural similarities and not just
differences. For example, when we learned Chinese New Year, the students compared
Chinese New Year with Christmas. They found the differences and many similarities, too.
(Yalan’s journal in the spring)
An analysis of Yalan’s curriculum for the spring semester shows that the curriculum was
thematic and was guided by standards: several topics that were closely related to students’ lives
were selected, and under each topic, the state’s standards and benchmarks for world languages
were cited and applied. Thus, “obviously she follows the same as the state’s standards and
benchmarks, so that’s universal for all the languages” (Yalan’s spring mentor interview).
Because of her students’ interest in Chinese food, Yalan also taught that. She not only
guided the students to compare American and Chinese food, but also Chinese restaurants in the
U.S. and China. Thus, Yalan not only helped the students to understand more about their
community, but also used Chinese restaurants in the U.S. as a bridge to help students to

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understand more about Chinese culture. In this way, Yalan’s knowledge of Chinese culture and
how to teach Chinese culture in U.S. K-12 schools was restructured and expanded.
Fangyi’s Development in Knowledge of Subject Matter
Similar to Yalan, Fangyi also had prior teaching experience of teaching Chinese in a
Taiwanese community school in the U.S., but had to learn what to teach and how to teach
Chinese in U.S. public K-12 schools because of the differences in students and contexts. She
learned to teach Pinyin and simplified Chinese characters, to select topics which were relevant to
students, and to incorporate the four skills in her teaching, and she further expanded her
knowledge of lesson planning and curriculum design.
Learning to Teach Pinyin and Chinese Characters
Fangyi learned Zhuyin Fuhao and traditional Chinese characters in Taiwan, but teaching
Chinese in the U.S. made her to switch to Pinyin and simplified Chinese characters, and she
taught both Pinyin and simplified Chinese characters in her first year of teaching in the
certification program.
Fangyi began to learn Pinyin and simplified Chinese characters from the first year when she
taught Chinese in a Taiwanese community school in the United States. Fangyi recalled that she
did not “…know simplified Chinese and Pinyin until I was in the United States” (Fangyi’s first
interview). Although many teachers in Taiwanese community schools teach traditional Chinese
characters and Zhuyin Fuhao (Wang, 2007), Fangyi learned Pinyin and simplified Chinese
characters “because those children were learning simplified Chinese and Pinyin. Americans are
learning simplified Chinese and Pinyin. I learned it because of this trend” (Fangyi’s first
interview).

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However, there are differences between Pinyin and Zhuyin Fuhao, so Fangyi had to compare
them and learn the rules for Pinyin. She recalled, “I compared and matched Pinyin and our
symbols, but I didn’t understand some of your rules for Pinyin, for example, the rules for some
phonetics. In order to teach, I made up some stories about these phonetic symbols” (Fangyi’s first
interview). Fangyi did not need to “study simplified Chinese characters very hard, because it is
not very difficult to know them when you know traditional characters. But for those which are
simplified too much, I have to look them up in a dictionary” (Fangyi’s first interview). Thus, the
students in the Taiwanese community school and in the bigger context of Chinese instruction in
the United States made Fangyi teach simplified Chinese characters and Pinyin, which helped her
to have an easier start when she began her first year of teaching Chinese in a U.S. public high
school.
Description of Fangyi’s first video-recording class in chapter four showed that Fangyi taught
both Pinyin and Chinese characters from the beginning of her first year of teaching because of
her prior teaching experience. In one of my conversations with her, Fangyi mentioned that she
also tried to teach traditional Chinese characters, but the students were reluctant to learn them,
because many traditional Chinese characters have more strokes than their corresponding
simplified ones, and the students felt overwhelmed when they were learning, especially their
writing. Thus Fangyi gave up her idea and only taught Pinyin and simplified Chinese characters
in her first year of teaching. This way her public high school students’ reactions played an
important role in Fangyi’s disciplinary decisions.
Despite being a native Chinese speaker and a teacher with experience, Fangyi did not
automatically know how to teach Chinese characters in the U.S. public schools, so she also
benefited from field instruction on how to teach Chinese characters. She wrote:

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Being a Chinese native speaker, it is very easy for me to remember and understand the
structures of Chinese characters; however, speaking how to teach Chinese characters is a
29
challenging task. The assigned readings provide me practical and useful ideas of how
to design successful Chinese character lessons. (Fangyi’s journal in the spring)
In her subsequent reflections, it seemed that these readings confirmed and expanded some of
her prior ideas on teaching Chinese characters. She started with pictographic Chinese characters
and used pictures to assist her illustration of the characters to students, which was consistent with
advice in the readings. Fangyi also came to understand that “one of the advantages of learning
pictographic words is that students can use some radical to assist them to remember or analyze
complicated Chinese characters” (Fangyi’s journal in the spring). Thus, learning from readings
facilitated Fangyi’s development in making decisions on Chinese as a foreign language in U.S.
public school settings.
Connecting to Students’ Lives
As was the case for the other three Chinese language teachers in this study, the schools did
not provide a Chinese curriculum or any guidance on the course for Fangyi, so she had to design
her own curriculum and make subject matter decisions. Before the fall semester began, Fangyi
and her mentor teacher met with each other and set the goals for Fangyi’s Chinese teaching. They
talked about the state and national standards for foreign language instruction in the United States.
The mentor teacher recalled,
Fangyi has to set her goals based on the standards of the State and the national standards.
So when we sat down to outline the expectations for the first year, she really had to set
her expectations for her students, and those were the goals for the class. (Fangyi’s mentor
interview)

29

Fangyi was talking about Zhang, Z. (2009); Yin, J. (2007); Zhang, M. (2001).
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When the fall semester started, Fangyi planned her lessons based on the textbook supplied,
Learning Chinese with Me, The topics were relevant to students, for example, self-introduction,
family, hobbies, etc. For better instruction, she also “googled some information online and
searched about how other Chinese teachers plan their schedule” (Fangyi’s second interview).
Thanks to her prior teaching experience, Fangyi did not “have a very detailed lesson plan. My
lesson plan…I usually planned on a piece of paper. I didn’t throw it away. I kept them in some
notebook. I would calculate the time…” (Fangyi’s second interview).
Meanwhile, because of her prior experience, Fangyi understood that she should take many
factors into consideration while she was designing a lesson, “such as the difficulty of the text, the
ability of the students, and their interest, and the individual differences” (Fangyi’s second
interview). She also adjusted her lessons according to the students’ learning:
When you actually taught the class, you would immediately contact the students. That
means a lesson plan is always flexible. You can’t just follow your teaching steps and your
procedures. You have to consider the students’ learning mood…if he is not ready to
learn… (Fangyi’s second interview)
Along with her learning and teaching in the fall semester, Fangyi came to understand more
about the importance of connecting her teaching to her students’ real lives, because we discussed
this at our field instruction meetings. However, it was challenging for Fangyi to connect her
textbook to her students more closely. Fangyi recalled, “Even though I know that the teaching
material, the teaching activity, the teaching games must relate to students’ life, it was difficult for
me to design a very interesting lesson that can connect to students’ lives” (Fangyi’s second
interview).
Two factors might have made it difficult for Fangyi to connect her teaching to her students’
real lives, although she understood such a teaching principle. First, she did not have many

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references. According to Fangyi, the hosting school provided her with the textbook and the
teacher’s guide to go with the textbook, but in addition to these, no other materials were supplied.
Neither did the schools inform Fangyi any of their expectations for Fangyi’s ITV Chinese classes
(Fangyi’s second interview). There were not many resources about Chinese instruction in the U.S.
at that time. Consequently, Fangyi had to search online for more information. Because such a
situation was common among my two groups of teachers, I had to ask them to share with each
other at and/or after our field instruction meetings about materials on Chinese instruction that
they were using or they knew. They also realized the importance of sharing with each other, and
they asked me to build an online platform for such a purpose. I communicated with the
instructional team about their wish, but such a platform was not set up.
Second, it was the first time for Fangyi to teach U.S. students; she did not know very much
about them, and she was not able to connect her teaching to their lives very well. Actually,
learning about her students was a very important characteristic in Fangyi’s learning to teach (this
will be further discussed in the next chapter), and she had to gain knowledge about her students
from various sources in her first year of teaching, including her mentor teacher, field instruction,
other Chinese language teachers in the cohort, and her own interactions with students. However,
the fact that she was teaching Chinese ITV classes delayed her understanding of the students.
With her learning and teaching, Fangyi came to understand that “…if the lesson really links to
students’ life, students would be more willing to learn” (Fangyi’s second interview).
However, because of having inadequate knowledge of students and foreign language
instruction in U.S. K-12 schools, sometimes Fangyi was confused about whether to teach some
expressions and/or to what degree, although she understood that the students wanted to use them
in their lives. She asked,

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…can we teach students very negative words such as hate in Chinese? One of
experienced teachers shared with me about avoiding teaching very negative words
because it may influence children's mental development. Therefore, when I teach the
opposite word of love, I teach them "dislike; don't like" because it does not sound that
strong! (Fangyi’s journal in the fall)
We discussed the issue at our field instruction meetings and I provided her with examples to
select expressions according to students’ ages and the contexts for those expressions: for young
children, she could select negation forms of the words that express positive attitudes; for her high
school students, she could choose expressions appropriate in those contexts; and corresponding
Chinese phrases should be taught when they are proportional to their native language
development. Interestingly, Fangyi seemed to try to balance students’ English expressions about
their emotions and Chinese corresponding words which sounded milder. For example, a student
asked Fangyi how to say “damn it” in Chinese when he was writing a skit in her class. Fangyi
provided the Chinese word “zaogao” (糟糕), which sounds more gentle than “damn it” in some
situations. Fangyi also noted, “While it was used correctly, I did not understand why he used
repetitively. I assumed that this is due to the fact that senior high school students like to swear”
(Fangyi’s journal in the spring). This happened in January, and seemingly Fangyi was still
gaining knowledge of her students then, which might have affected her subject matter decisions.
Nevertheless, noticeable changes began to happen in the spring, when Fangyi seemed more
confident in selecting topics and words and became more skillful in adapting her teaching to
students’ language needs. Because she understood her students and Chinese teaching better,
Fangyi decided to switch to a Chinese learning series instead of following her assigned Chinese
textbook. With her mentor’s assistance, she negotiated with the schools and began to use the Live
ABC Interactive Chinese magazine in the spring. She said, “I thought it was great. Some other
overseas Chinese teachers and Chinese teachers in Taiwan bought it. I think the content of this

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book is authentic and lively” (Fangyi’s second interview). Fangyi further noted, “It also has
verbal illustration, but does stress grammar a lot. It emphasizes students’ communicative
competence. It is thin and colorful and has English illustration for each Chinese word and
sentence. I believe students would like it.” This was consistent with her efforts at improving the
students’ communicative competence in the spring, as described in chapter four.
Further learning of the 5C standards in the spring helped Fangyi pay closer attention to
students’ communicative competence. For this purpose, Fangyi tried to use topics and
expressions that came from her students. She asked the students to write passages about their
experiences, and she taught Chinese based on these passages in order to facilitate students’
development of communicative competence. For example, in stage two of her improvement
project, she noted,
When one of them was giving a report, the other one was asked to take notes. At the end,
I would ask them some questions in order to understand how much information he/she
grasped. This was not only presentation task but also a listening task. Therefore, it
conformed to two modes of communication of ACTFL: interpretative mode and
presentational mode. (Fangyi’s journal in the spring)
This way, what she taught to her students became more relevant to the students’ lives, which
also encouraged students’ participation and interactions in class.
Meanwhile, Fangyi also worked on how to make Chinese/Taiwanese culture more accessible
to her U.S. students. She introduced guest speakers, guided students to do projects, and organized
field trips. Toward the end of October, Fangyi designed a field trip to a Chinese restaurant in
order to help the students use Chinese in their real life. I encouraged her to carry out the plan, and
the mentor teacher helped her to organize the trip. Before their trip, Fangyi taught Chinese
vocabulary and sentence patterns about ordering food in a restaurant. She also taught the Chinese
culture of zodiac with PowerPoint slides and a video clip. “Many students said, ‘This is the best
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video that I ever watched,’” Fangyi wrote in her journal. The students were able to interact with a
guest teacher and a waiter, and they played a Chinese game in the restaurant:
I asked each student to greet and introduce themselves when they met the guest teacher
(e.g. name, age, nationality, and grade). Then, the guest teacher reviewed the Chinese
zodiac and asked the students’ their Chinese zodiac. The waiter asked them “nǐ yào hē
shén me?”, and the students replied with their drink order in Chinese…the students had
an authentic learning experience. They did not only meet their classmates, but also they
practiced speaking Chinese with the Chinese teacher and the waiter. (Fangyi’s journal in
the fall)
After their field trip, Fangyi administered a survey to get to know more about the students’
views and learning experiences. She analyzed the survey results carefully and found that most of
the students enjoyed interacting with the guest teacher and the waiter in Chinese. However, she
was very surprised to know that one of her well-performing students complained that she had
troubles. Thus, Fangyi discussed the issue with me.
During this process, Fangyi further learned lesson planning while she was learning how to
balance language and culture in her teaching. Although a teacher with prior teaching experience,
Fangyi sometimes neglected or forgot language activities while she was busy with some class
activities on culture, although she had these activities in mind when she prepared her lessons.
This happened because her instructional purposes were not very clear for some activities, or
because of her lack of balance between language and culture. For example, when she was
teaching students how to make dumplings, she also tried to ask the students to use measure
words, but she did not prepare them well in this language aspect:
For this part, I did not use a lot of time to explain the usages of these three Chinese
classifiers. I only asked students to repeat back to me. Moreover, when recapping the
lesson (46:03-46:53), I did not review the Chinese classifiers. Because of not doing this,
students might not have deep impression of the three Chinese classifiers. Before
introducing these Chinese classifiers, I did not have a good transition for connecting the
classifiers. (Fangyi’s journal in the spring)
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Reflecting on this issue, Fangyi realized that “when planning the schedule for this lesson, I
expected too much. In other words, I should have understood that this lesson focused more on
culture knowledge” (Fangyi’s journal in the spring). She also noted that “I thought that I could
remember everything, yet, I still forgot to recap the Chinese classifiers for students” (Fangyi’s
journal in the spring). Because of this, I guided her to think about her teaching purposes for this
class. For example, I commented that “if they are learning Chinese, but you just designed
that class as a culture class, you can ask them to prepare to say something in Chinese about
making dumplings…” (my comments on Fangyi’s journal in the spring). In the rest of the
semester, I also asked Fangyi to think about her teaching purposes for both the class in general
and each activity while she discussed her improvement project with me.
Fangyi seemed to make progress in this aspect in the spring semester. She was aware that she
should pay attention to what students could learn from each activity and the connections between
activities. When Fangyi was describing how she designed the activities in the late spring, she said,
So when I designed the lesson plan under the CLT, I was very careful to come up with the
activities, especially I considered whether each activity was connected to each other,
whether activity 1 helps students do activity 2, activity 2 helps students do activity 3. I
care about whether their ability was built up by previous activities. (Fangyi’s second
interview)
These accounts show that learning more about lesson planning helped Fangyi to teach the
content in a logical way, and she also took care to help build students’ communicative
competence step by step during her instruction processes.
Expanding Knowledge of Teaching the Four Skills
Fangyi seemed to know the importance of the four skills in language instruction, because she
received her Master’s degree in Education in the same department. As mentioned in chapter four,

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she had rich theoretical knowledge and tried to apply it to her teaching, but she needed guidance
in when and how to use which theory in which situation. The same was true for her knowledge of
the four skills in language instruction. She noticed that
According to Noam Chomsky’s concept of universal grammar… adult learners cannot
pick up a language by simply listening; they need more instruction. Applying this theory
to my high school students, I find that my students could not learn by listening to my
pronunciation; they needed me to write pinyin. (Fangyi’s journal in the fall)
Although Fangyi apparently had a misunderstanding of Universal Grammar, she seemed to
find that her actual teaching was consistent with Universal Grammar, but this made her confused
about how much she could teach to U.S. students, so she continued and asked in her journal,
“Therefore, when teaching Chinese in America, what is the appropriate amount of Chinese that I
should use so that my beginner students understand the lesson while being exposed to an
authentic learning environment?” At our online meetings, we dicussed what kind of language
input that they should provide to students. With my help at the field instruction meetings, Fangyi
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recognized the Input Hypothesis by Krashen (1985) . We also discussed the amount of new
content they should teach daily and how to increase their use of Chinese during their teaching, as
mentioned in chapter four.
Because of her background in the field of language instruction, Fangyi was able to apply to
her teaching what she learned about the four skills from the readings in the courses on “Field
Experiences.” When we focused on listening and speaking in the spring, she was working on
improving students’ communicative competence, so she made use of the teaching strategies in

30

Although Krashen (1985) did not say that instruction is needed for comprehensible input, I
mentioned the Input Hypothesis because of Fangyi’s background and in order to help the teachers
understand what kind of language input they should provide to their students and how much they
should teach daily.
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the readings. She mentioned that “…most changes were concerning oral communication, and
thus this week’s reading topics, listening (Morley, 2001) and speaking (Brown, 2001) are proper
resources to help me in examining my teaching practices” (Fangyi’s journal in the spring).
However, Fangyi had to learn how to incorporate and balance all four skills in her teaching.
She tried to include the four skills in her plan to improve the students’ communicative
competence, but reading was absent in her plan, so I had to remind her, “…as I said at our Adobe
meeting, reading doesn't appear in your plans. I think you might want to include that in your
plans and help the students develop their interpretive abilities by reading” (my comments on
Fangyi’s journal in the spring). Fangyi not only had further discussions with me to understand
more, but also reflected on and revised her plans. She wrote that “I followed our conversation to
write up the stage II, so you will see my format is different from the requirement…”

31

(Fangyi’s

journal in the spring). More importantly, Fangyi made sure that she took care of the students’
four skills in her teaching in the following days:
With the goal of developing my students’ communicative competence, I followed the
moves I listed in my improvement project (I) and one concept from Learning Chinese
with Me, to design my lesson plan. Plus, listening, speaking, reading, and writing are not
separated, so my lesson plan also integrated four areas of language skills. (Fangyi’s
journal in the spring)
Meanwhile, Fangyi reflected on her own teaching and came to have more understandings
about teaching the four skills to U.S. high school students. For example, in addition to her
learning about how to teach Chinese character writing from the course readings, she also learned
that “…students’ culture can influence their writing styles” (Fangyi’s journal in the spring).

31

I allowed her some flexibility in her format so that she could be creative in applying CLT and
her own ideas in teaching.
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Similarities and Differences in Their Development
The four teachers shared some similarities, but there were also differences among them
while they were learning to teach, as their knowledge of Chinese as a subject matter in U.S. K-12
schools was restructured and expanded, such as in Pinyin vs. Chinese characters, the four skills,
selecting topics that related to students’ lives, and better organizing the content by learning more
about lesson planning and curriculum design.
In Teaching Pinyin and Chinese Characters
The four teachers taught Pinyin or Chinese characters or both at the beginning, but all came
to understand after their first year of teaching that both Pinyin and Chinese characters should be
taught. Scott only used Pinyin in his first year of teaching, but from his teaching, he realized both
Pinyin and Chinese characters should be taught. Tianyu was very confident and only taught
Chinese characters at the beginning of the fall, but switched to both Pinyin and Chinese
characters because of his learning from field instruction, and more importantly, from his own
teaching. With his students’ improving proficiency, he began to focus more on Chinese
characters. Yalan and Fangyi taught both Pinyin and Chinese characters from the beginning of
the fall because of their prior teaching experience in Chinese and Taiwanese community schools
in the U.S., and their knowledge about how to teach Chinese character writing was expanded
because of their learning from field instruction. Fangyi also tried to introduce the traditional
Chinese characters, but she gave up because of her students’ responses. Thus, the four teachers’
knowledge of Pinyin and Chinese characters was modified and expanded during their first year of
teaching, and they all reached the same view that both Pinyin and Chinese characters should be
taught in U.S. K-12 schools.

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The four teachers’ different views on Pinyin and Chinese characters were caused by their
distinct backgrounds and prior learning and teaching experience. Scott’s decision to rely on
Pinyin was mainly caused by his Chinese learning experience and his teaching situations.
Tianyu’s belief on teaching Chinese characters only was from his tutoring experience in China.
Both Yalan’s and Fangyi’s views came from their prior teaching experience, and Fangyi learned
to teach Pinyin and simplified Chinese characters in the U.S., although her original education
was in Zhuyin Fuhao and traditional Chinese characters. Seemingly, the teachers’ backgrounds
and prior teaching experience influenced their subject matter decisions at the beginning.
However, such influence was not long-lasting if it was not compatible with their actual teaching.
Scott regretted that he did not teach Pinyin in the spring, and he taught both Pinyin and Chinese
characters from the beginning of his second year of teaching (Scott’s follow-up interview). My
visit to Scott’s classes in the spring of 2011 and my interactions with his students also showed
that his students could write many Chinese characters. Tianyu changed his views after around
two weeks of teaching in the fall. Yalan and Fangyi kept on teaching both Pinyin and Chinese
characters because it was the “right” way to teach Chinese in U.S. K-12 schools. Perhaps it also
can be drawn from the four teachers’ experience that both Pinyin and Chinese characters should
be taught to U.S. public secondary school students.
Scott was also different from the other three teachers in his views on Pinyin and Chinese
characters writing. First, Scott did not teach Pinyin systematically, although he did ask his
students to imitate him and read Pinyin for a Chinese character. He regretted this practice in the
spring when he found that some students still could not read Pinyin for Chinese characters,
although he taught it many times. Second, even though two approaches to teaching Chinese
characters were introduced to Scott and his cohort in the spring, Scott preferred the approach

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which focuses on phonic parts of Chinese characters, while all the other teachers agreed on the
traditional approach, which focuses on ideographic radicals of Chinese characters. In addition to
the reasons recognized above, Scott’s linguistic background perhaps also played a role. Except
Chinese, all other languages that Scott had learned are European languages (English, Spanish,
Latin, and Greek), and he learned them in a more sound-based way. Thus, his previous linguistic
background might have affected the way he approached Chinese.
However, the fact that the other three teachers of native Chinese speakers did not change
therir views on Chinese may indicate that the teachers’ first languages might have played a more
important role. Chinese and English are two vastly different languages, and they influence the
ways their speakers think and their views about languages and the world. The Chinese language
describes things and the world with pictures and meanings, so the original characters were
pictograms and ideograms. With its development, there were also other ways of creating Chinese
characters, including phone-semantic compounds. Because Tianyu, Yalan, and Fangyi are all
native speakers of Chinese, the traditional approach of focusing on ideographic radicals make
sense to them, and they looked at Chinese characters and perhaps the world that way. So they
believed that Chinese characters would also make the same sense to U.S. students, as indicated in
Tianyu’s first class and his thinking. Their second language, English, did not change their views
on languages.
To Scott as an English native speaker, an English word is formed by a number of letters
which had individual sounds. Similarly, Chinese phone-semantic compounds make sense to him,
because those characters are composed of a sound radical and a semantic radical. This way,
Scott’s linguistic background influenced his views on languages and perhaps ways of thinking.
His Chinese learning experience did not change this, either. Therefore, the teachers’ different

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linguistic backgrounds might have determined the approaches of how they taught Chinese
characters, and their second language did not significantly change their ways of thinking.
Deutscher’s (2010) and Nisbett’s (2003) research provides evidence that languages reflect a
nation’s culture and help shape its people’s thinking, so English and Chinese native speakers
describe the world in different ways. Anyway, U.S. students have started learning Chinese as a
foreign language nowadays, so both research and practice are needed to find out which approach
to teaching Chinese characters works better for U.S. K-12 students.
In Learning to Teach the Four Skills
The four teachers had to learn more about the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, and
writing) in language instruction, and how to teach them in Chinese as a foreign language in the
U.S. Scott learned Chinese as a foreign language, but learning and teaching Chinese were not the
same to him, and he had to learn how to teach the four linguistic skills to his students. The other
three teachers are native Chinese speakers, but they also had to learn or expand their knowledge
on how to teach the four skills in Chinese because Chinese is a foreign language in the U.S. The
teachers’ learning in teaching the four skills in their first year of teaching show that Scott and
Tianyu did not know very much about the four skills, and Yalan and Fangyi had to expand their
knowledge in this aspect of language instruction. This may also indicate that they did not learn
much on this from their course on language instructional methods, which was one of the two
courses that they took in the summer. Yalan and Fangyi seemed to know more about the four
skills than Scott and Tianyu, perhaps because of their prior teaching experience. An analysis of
their summer course syllabus reveals that the skills were not included in this course in the
summer of 2009. In this situation, their inadequate knowledge of the key concepts in language
instruction and pedagogy affected them in teaching the four skills effectively, so they had to
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develop or further develop their “pedagogical content knowledge” on how to teach the four skills
in their first year of teaching.
In Curriculum Design and Lesson Planning
None of the four teachers received a Chinese curriculum in their first year of teaching, which
might not have been a serious problem for experienced teachers like Yalan and Fangyi, or for
someone with work experience in education like Scott. However, it became the main reason for
Tianyu’s struggles in his first year of teaching in the United States, as analyzed above. Yalan
worked with her fall mentor teacher on curriculum for social studies classes, and Fangyi also
worked with her mentor teacher to set expectations for her teaching, but Scott and Tianyu did not
seem to have received such guidance and assistance. Even if the three teachers (Scott, Yalan, and
Fangyi) seemed to have fewer challenges than Tianyu, their knowledge of curriculum was limited.
Descriptions in previous sections indicate that they had difficulties in lesson planning to various
degrees. Their limited knowledge in curriculum and lesson planning might also have negatively
affected them in selecting parts of Chinese language and culture and designing a Chinese
curriculum in their first year of teaching.
Without any reference or assistance in curriculum, Scott mentioned that “I had an ‘idea’
what I wanted to teach for the semester/year, but I didn't have any input on it from my mentor
and I had no idea how fast/slow my pacing would need to be” (my communication with Scott).
An email from Yalan to me asking for assistance in early September of 2011 indicates that
perhaps Yalan did not have a clear understanding of curriculum, either. She asked me in the
email,
1) Can a book be considered a curriculum? 2) In what ways are all curricula alike? What,
that is, makes "a curriculum" what it is? 3) Is the word over-used? misused? Do you feel
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teachers, parents, students, administrators respond differently to the term based on
whatever connotations arise in their thinking?
Similarly, Fangyi told me in April 2011 that she did not actually know what curriculum is
until she was learning language curriculum in a TESOL program at another university. Thus,
Scott, Yalan, and Fangyi’s knowledge of curriculum came mainly from their own prior
teaching/work experience and/or their mentors’ help at the beginning of the fall, but none of
them seemed to have had very clear understanding about curriculum, which might have affected
what and how much they taught to students in their first year of teaching. Reflecting on his first
year of teaching, Scott believed that to design a Chinese curriculum in teachers’ first year of
teaching was “unrealistic” (Scott’s follow-up interview).
The four teachers’ difficulties and limited knowledge of curriculum might indicate that they
did not learn much about curriculum from their summer courses, although one of the two focused
on curriculum. When I asked Scott whether he learned about curriculum in the summer, he
answered, “No, not really. I think I've learned the most about curriculum from developing it as I
taught” (My personal communication with Scott). Tianyu’s tremendous struggles in curriculum
design and lesson planning show that he did not know much about them. The subsequent
conversation between Yalan and me about her questions in the email and their summer course
also made it clear that Yalan was not sure about what curriculum is, and she did not learn how to
design it from the course. Fangyi did not take the summer courses in the certification program,
because she had taken the course on curriculum from the same department during her master’s
study. Unfortunately she also did not have a clear understanding about curriculum.

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An investigation of their summer course on curriculum helps explain the teachers’
challenges and struggles in curriculum. The core instructor in the certification program described
how the course was developed:
When the first curriculum was developed, the instructor of that course proposed these five
ideas: social-cultural context of the curriculum, the teacher role in curriculum, how
curriculum is governed, particularly here in ×× (the state). There was an idea of response
of curriculum, and there was an examination of curriculum models. To me, that still so
much too theoretical, not practical enough, but you can see where it is extended. (program
instructor’s interview)
A comparison of this description and the summer course syllabus that was used for Tianyu
and his cohort in the summer of 2009 reveals that the course remained the same as what the
program instructor described in the above quotation, although “the curriculum course first time
taught was…it became apparent almost immediately that the members of the program could not
proceed through the program at the rate that had been laid out” (program instructor’s interview).
However, when I compared this summer course syllabus in the certification program to that
in the Department of Teacher Education, I found that they were almost the same. Although the
course on curriculum had been taught successfully in the Department of Teacher Education, the
same course did not seem to work well in the Chinese teacher certification program, because the
teacher candidates had different educational backgrounds. In the Department of Teacher
Education, teacher candidates usually grew up and were educated in the U.S., but in the Chinese
teacher certification program, most of candidates were from Chinese educational backgrounds.
Even so, Scott did not seem to learn much from the course, perhaps because he was not provided
a Chinese curriculum. However, an unadjusted course for the teacher candidates caused negative
results. The program coordinator mentioned that “last year the teachers did not know what to
teach when they started teaching. This means that they did not have an idea of curriculum”

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(program coordinator’s interview). Thus, the course on curriculum may need to be developed to
better assist the teacher candidates in the certification program.
Comparatively, Tianyu seemed to have demonstrated more struggles in curriculum design
and lesson planning than the other three teachers. In addition to the factors listed in the previous
sections, another important reason was that Tianyu had to prepare his students for the IB Chinese
exam, but the other three teachers did not have this external pressure. In my interview with
Scott’s mentor teacher, she mentioned her expectations for what, but not how much, the students
should learn from Scott’s classes. Yalan’s school district did not set curriculum expectations for
her, as her spring mentor teacher noted,
As far as the district-driven curriculum, we don’t have that, because we are just about
developing Chinese. So we are kind of allowing our Chinese teachers to develop it as
they are creating the courses. They are kind of the leaders in all of that. (Yalan’s spring
mentor interview)
Fangyi was in a similar situation. She said, “They didn’t tell me how many lessons I have to
finish in the semester. They didn’t tell me” (Fangyi’s second interview). Their different situations
in terms of curriculum perhaps also explain why Scott, Yalan, and Fangyi were more able to
connect their teaching to students’ lives than Tianyu. The four teachers’ experience in curriculum
may reveal that not only a Chinese curriculum is very necessary for U.S. K-12 schools in order to
facilitate teacher’s socialization, but also a course on curriculum which specifically address
Chinese language teachers’ needs should be designed.
Lack of Resources
Lack of resources appeared to be a common obstacle while the four teachers were learning to
design their curriculum and selecting topics for their teaching in their first year of teaching
Chinese in U.S. K-12 schools. Scott did not have a textbook and had to design everything by

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himself. Scott said it made his learning to teach more challenging and it became one of the
reasons that he left the school after he finished his first year of teaching. Scott did not have a
chance to observe and learn from a more experienced Chinese language teacher or another world
language teacher. The same was true for Tianyu and Fangyi. Tianyu and Fangyi were the only
Chinese language teachers in their school districts. Tianyu did not get any Chinese teaching
material which was designed for the Chinese IB program until the middle of the spring. After the
orientation about how to use ITV equipment, Fangyi was unable to share with any teacher who
taught an ITV class or to observe another world language teacher. Although she was provided
with a textbook, Fangyi still had to design much on her own in order to connect her teaching to
her students’ real lives and to better help with their learning. Yalan was one of two Chinese
teachers at her school in the fall and one of three in the school district in the spring, but she did
not have a chance to share with the other teachers until they started to meet with each other at the
district’s conferences. She made great efforts to search for a textbook because there were not
many choices.
This happened perhaps because Chinese programs in U.S. K-12 schools were very new and
there were not enough Chinese language teachers, not to mention experienced Chinese language
teachers, to serve as cooperating teachers or mentor teachers for the four teachers in this study.
That was why none of their mentor teachers was a Chinese language teacher. Neither were there
many published materials for Chinese programs in U.S. K-12 schools. These difficulties, together
with the challenge of no Chinese curriculum in the school districts, made their first year of
teaching Chinese quite daunting to the four teachers. Because they continued to teach Chinese in
U.S. K-12 schools and to accumulate knowledge of teaching, the four teachers were getting more
experienced, and so perhaps would eventually be able to help new novice teachers in the future.

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However, work also needs to be done to prepare more materials on Chinese instruction in K-12
schools.
Such a situation pushed the four teachers to play a more active role in their socialization,
though. Scott incorporated authentic Chinese and also tailored his teaching content to his
students’ learning styles and real lives. In the spring semester, Scott began to be involved in
Chinese curriculum development in his school district, as his mentor teacher mentioned in the
interview. Tianyu changed his textbook and began to design an IB Chinese curriculum in order to
better teach his students. Yalan not only selected teaching materials and the textbook, but also
began to collaborate with other Chinese language teachers in the school district in order to design
a Chinese curriculum for the district. Fangyi designed her own curriculum, changed her textbook,
and also tailored her teaching to students’ needs.
This all may be further evidence that the teachers were active in their socialization processes
and counter-influenced Chinese instruction in the foreign language teaching profession in their
first year of teaching. From their actual teaching experience, the four teachers came to understand
what and how Chinese should be taught to U.S. K-12 school students, and they also took actions
to help make Chinese instruction more relevant to K-12 students and to better address students’
needs. This is very important and valuable for the development of Chinese instruction in U.S. K12 schools, especially when there are not many published materials or systematic curricula for
Chinese instruction. In a sense, they were contributing to the foundation and development of
Chinese as a foreign language in U.S. K-12 schools.

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CHAPTER 6 UNDERSTANDING AND MANAGING STUDENTS
This chapter describes how the four teachers developed their knowledge of students in their
first year of teaching in U.S. K-12 schools. Although from different educational and cultural
backgrounds, all four teachers had to learn about their students in order to manage their
behaviors and learning, and they had both similar and different experiences.
Scott’s Development in Knowledge of Students
Scott grew up and was educated in the U.S., but he was new to the state and the area where
the school was located. Although Scott had some experience in dealing with the students’
misbehaviors from his experience in an educational camp and as a substitute teacher, the
environment and students were different during his first-year teaching. Thus, he had to learn how
to manage students.
Learning to Manage Students’ Behaviors
From the very beginning, Scott talked about classroom management problems in our class
discussions and in his journals. His difficulties in classroom management were most salient in
the fall semester. As early as his first journal in early September, Scott described his challenges
in managing some of the students. One of his sixth-grade classes was noisy, and one boy in
particular was disruptive because the boy was diagnosed as having ADHD:
The biggest issue I have had so far is my 6th hour class of 6th graders. There are several
students in the class who have been misbehaving and one has been especially bad. He
frequently talks out of turn, refuses to follow direct instructions, etc… One of the teachers
was told by his mother that he has been diagnosed ADHD, but that she is reluctant to give

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him medication. She tells him that if he behaves himself he won't have to go on
medication. (Scott’s journal in the fall)
Similar comments appeared in Scott’s journal frequently in the fall. In addition to this boy,
several students were regular offenders. What made things worse was that his sixth hour of a six
grade class was very noisy, and the students were not engaged in learning at the beginning of the
fall semester. They misbehaved, especially when the class was doing practice. Scott described:
Others, however, spent much of the time wandering around the class, talking to their
peers, and generally avoiding work. There have been MANY times that I have had to get
quite loud and short with this class, forcing them to sit quietly in their seats and
write/work. (Scott’s journal in the fall)
I also observed the problem from Scott’s journals and videos in the fall. For example, in
Scott’s second teaching video, a boy never stopped talking for around 20 minutes, even when
Scott was teaching. Several other students were chatting. As a result, Scott had to raise his voice
to make himself heard by the students. Scott also mentioned in his journal that students’
behaviors were worse on Fridays. To better help Scott, I showed Scott’s second video to and
discussed the issue with the instruction team and with my supervisor, the core instructor for the
certification program from the Department of Teacher Education.
The instructional team analyzed the case and directed Scott to the resources on classroom
management on their learning website. Although I also led class discussions on Scott’s
difficulties, I felt uncomfortable, because I actually did not know very much about Scott’s
students and his school in September. I had to ask Scott to talk to his mentor teacher and
colleagues in the school first to understand more about the students and the school’s rules and
policies. Scott was conscious that he was an outsider, and he is a white male who was new to the
area. An overwhelming majority of his students were African American who were born and grew
up in this big city:
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And also understanding that I was an outsider. You know as a white male. The students
were probably 95 or 96% percent black. You know, I am new to the state. I am new to
this city. I am a white male, so I understood kind of …very aware of going in. There was
a possibility that a lot of them would see me as the outsider with…they didn’t have the
authority…so those were kind of considerations that I had…(Scott’s second interview)
Influenced by his experience in the educational camp, Scott believed in team work and
worked with his colleagues, especially with his mentor teacher and a Spanish teacher next door,
as Scott noted and his principal shared at the mid-term evaluation in the fall. He also talked to
students’ parents because he wanted to know the reasons for the students’ misbehaviors.
Scott met with his mentor frequently throughout his first year of teaching. Except for his
mentor’s maternity leave from November to December in 2009, Scott met with his mentor every
week to discuss classroom management and the students. The mentor teacher recalled, “I met
with Scott weekly along with the rest of the faculty. But I also met with Scott, just one on one,
probably once every two weeks. Scott is very high-function. I mean he didn’t need a lot of handholding (Scott’s mentor interview). According to Scott,
I met with my mentor once a week at least. We had a regular meet once a week, or we
just eat lunch together so had a chance to talk. Then any time beyond that I had
issues…she…because of her role…she was…she was kind of role of a counselor in
there…not a counselor, but she did a lot of counselor duties, because she knew the kids.
So if there was an issue with one of the kids, any discipline problems, I kind of thought
that I would go and had an extra conversation, in addition to the once-a-weeks. (Scott’s
second interview)
Meanwhile, Scott also learned about his students and the school from the Spanish teacher
next door. The Spanish teacher was in her second year of teaching when Scott started teaching in
the fall of 2009. They developed a very supportive and friendly working relationship with each
other. When one needed something from the other, they went to see each other. The Spanish
teacher also helped Scott to understand the students and why some issues occurred. Scott
mentioned her help a couple of times in the second interview:
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And also I had a colleague…there was a Spanish teacher that also has been with the
students for a year before, so she knew the kids, so she could kind of help. So they were
the ones that kind of help me understand part of the difficulties, and …because of that
knowledge, that kind of process…ok, maybe this is what’s going on…that caused an
issue.
In addition, Scott also consulted other teachers and administrators at the school, including
the dean of the world language department, about the individual students’ behaviors. From all
these sources, “And based on conversations with other teachers, I think some of them are lacking
in discipline, possibly because they've never had anyone really discipline them before” (Scott’s
journal in the fall). Scott also learned that several factors led to students’ low motivation and
misbehavior in his class.
First, the students’ motivation was closely related to whether they chose to learn Chinese.
Some students chose Scott’s Chinese class, so these students usually were motivated. However,
other students did not choose to learn Chinese. They did not get their priority language class, for
example, Spanish, so they were placed in his Chinese class against their will. These students
often were not motivated and did not care whether they were learning Chinese or not.
Second, a few of the students were diagnosed with ADHD or ADD, for example, the boy
who kept talking in the sixth hour class. However, the boy’s mother was reluctant to give him
medication. Consequently, “This one student definitely change[d] the whole dynamic of the
class” (Scott’s teaching journal in the fall).
Third, many students were having non-academic issues. Scott was teaching at an urban
charter school in a big city in the state. Around 95% of his students were African American, and
many of the students had “…social problems, family problems, emotional problems,
psychological problems” (Scott’s second interview). These non-academic problems affected their
behaviors in Scott’s classes. These non-academic problems also caused the students to miss a

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significant part of their school education. As a result, these students were failing in their tests and
misbehaving in Scott’s Chinese classes:
…long-term academic difficulties/failures have led students to believe they can't or won't
succeed in my class. The achievement test data on these students shows that MANY of
them are below grade-level in Math, Science, and Lang. Arts. Learning difficulties are
often embarrassing to students, so they often will cause behavior problems to distract
attention away from their other issues. (Scott’s teaching journal in the fall; capitalization
is in original)
With more understanding about Scott’s students, I tried to suggest Scott at our field
instruction meetings to establish a system of classroom rules to reward positive behaviors and
discourage misbehaviors, Scott sounded hesitant. He also noted in his journal:
I think the take-away here is to keep this in mind as I consider behavior problems. I
should constantly be asking myself the question, what is causing this behavior problem?
Is there something I can do that has a good chance of improving student behavior? Also,
are there circumstances OUTSIDE of school that may be affecting behavior as well. It's
not always as simple as "punishing" the bad behavior to fix the problems. (Scott’s journal
in the fall)
After he had more knowledge about his students, Scott began to educate them, adjust his
teaching, and work on improving their behaviors and academic performance. He talked to the
students about life and school, hoping that each student could work to be a better student and
person. He said,
I spent a lot of time talking with these kids about stuff that wasn’t related with Chinese at
all, but kind of teaching them how to make good decisions, what’s school about, kind of
trying to coach them in life almost. (Scott’s second interview)
However, it was not easy to change students’ behaviors quickly. In the subsequent days,
Scott noted his difficulties in his journals. The students’ discipline problems often disturbed
Scott’s instructional plans. As a result, Scott had to modify or change his teaching, which made
him upset. For example, Scott designed a white board activity in order to motivate the students to

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review the facial parts. Scott described one part of the face, and the students at the whiteboard
were supposed to draw it. The students seemed very interested in the activity, but there were still
problems:
It sometimes gets distracting to the other students and me. Also, transitioning between
this activity and the next instruction is extremely difficult. The group uses this
opportunity to run around the classroom, talk, waste time, etc. This difficulty
transitioning makes me not want to do whiteboard drills with this class AT ALL!!
(Scott’s journal in the fall)
Because of his tough and complex situation, I talked to my supervisor again in October, and
he offered to work with Scott directly. The professor edited resources on the learning website to
address Scott’s situation, and tried to call Scott and talk. Because of the conflicts in their
schedules, their phone conference did not work out, but Scott did read the resources for him. He
answered the professor’s email and copied it to me:
Thank you for your work to improve the resources available to Chinese teachers in the
field. I’m not sure that any specific move will “fix” the challenges that I see from my 8th
grade class. But I think constant reflection and continued ingenuity should, at the very
least, help my attitude and perspective on the issue. (Scott’s email in the fall)
While Scott was working on students’ behaviors, he had to use every strategy he could think
of to make the students calm down. Sometimes the classes went well without big behavioral
problems, but sometimes the classes became troublesome and even wild. Right before the middle
of the fall semester, two girls in an eighth grade class had a big fight. Scott had to do behavioral
referrals for both girls, and both of them were suspended. After the incident, Scott took actions to
prevent things like this from happening again. He talked to the two girls individually and made
sure that they understood his expectations for them in the future. Scott also educated all his
students and reinforced the principle of “respect” in his classes.

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Scott summarized the students’ behaviors at his mid-term evaluation conference (which was
attended by Scott, his principal, and me as his field instructor). With his principal’s advice at the
mid-term evaluation, Scott decided to focus on improving students’ behaviors for his
improvement project while also trying to accomplish the academic goals he had for his students
in the second half semester in the fall.
Hoping to find how to deal with and improve all his classes, Scott paid particular attention to
the toughest of his classes, an eighth grade class which was held from 8:00 am to 8:50 am. He
noted, “My hypothesis is that if I can produce results in THIS class by improving the way I
organize my classes, then I should be able to see results in ALL of my classes” (Scott’s journal in
the fall). There were 24 students in this class. According to Scott, this class made the slowest
progress of all his four Chinese I classes, and their behaviors were also the poorest. Many
students arrived late or came unprepared for his Chinese class. Even at 8:25 am, some students
were still walking in. Furthermore, the school announcements, which ran from 8:10 to 8:15, often
distracted the students’ attention and interrupted what was going on in the classroom.
From the conversations with his mentor teacher and the Spanish teacher, He came to
understand that some of the students could not get their breakfast until they got to the school.
Meanwhile, some of the students who behaved worst also had long-term failure in literacy and
they also had discipline problems in other classes. Scott decided to introduce structure and
routines into his instruction for his toughest class in order to accommodate the students and help
them to develop better learning habits as well (this was described in chapter four). Scott
explained his rationales for these efforts, “These are some of the things that I gleaned from those
conversations” (Scott’s second interview).

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Scott also talked to the parents to get their support in managing the students. When a student
misbehaved, he called the parent(s) in front of the student, because many of the teachers in his
school dealt with misbehaviors that way. Scott said, “That was the culture of the school. The
culture…a lot of the teachers there did that and I kind of learned that from them... from mentor as
well…” (Scott’s second interview). His mentor explicitly taught Scott this method, and Scott
found it effective:
I will say, so and so was doing something in my class. They behave very poorly. She said,
“Did you call the mom?” I said, “No.” She said, “Well, yeah, next time they acted up,
make them walk over to your phone and in front of you, make them call the mother.” And
the students did not like to do that. They didn’t like it at all, but it was effective, because
it made them instantly responsible for their behaviors…there were times when the parents
wanted to talk to me. The parents would apologize to me for the students’ behaviors. So
that’s kind of the culture of the school…the school wanted …have a close connection
between the school and the home. (Scott’s second interview)
Scott also tried to build relationships with his students and to make use of their relationships
in order to reduce their misbehaviors, to get to know what they liked, and to use rewards as a
strategy to direct the students to his instructional activities in the second half semester in the fall.
For example, when the students asked to watch a movie, he answered, “Sure, we can watch a
movie, but first, we have to do this” (Scott’s second interview), instead of simply accepting the
students’ requests as he had done at the beginning of the fall semester. Scott believed that “it was
a combination of what I learned in the teacher certification program, and just my personality that
I … I am a people person” that led him to build relationships with the students (Scott’s second
interview). His prior work experience also contributed; as Scott commented, “But I felt like
because I had to deal with kids that were in youth camp, I already knew how to interact with
them as far as classroom management…kind of relationship-building” (Scott’s first interview).

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Toward the end of the semester, Scott reaped some rewards from the routines and structure
of this class for his other classes. The students’ behaviors improved, but they still misbehaved
sometimes:
Some days the routines didn’t go so well. On these days, students appeared uninterested
or unmotivated to learn. When I was unable to elicit something resembling a correct
response from them several times in a row, I abandoned the “routine” activity and moved
on to the next thing in my plan. I’m not sure whether this was the proper response or not,
but it’s what I did. (Scott’s journal in the fall)
At the end of the fall semester, the principal noted that Scott was able to manage the students
with different strategies because he knew the students better.
In the early spring, students’ behaviors were better but had not improved tremendously.
Watching one of his video-recorded classes, Scott noticed that “…the noise volume in my class
was very loud. Sometimes I forget this fact, but it really stood out to me in the video” (Scott’s
journal in the spring). When Scott asked the students to practice speaking Chinese with each
other, a majority of the students were not following his instructions at all. They seemed not
interested. Scott became confused about how to deal with this group of students because he had
tried a variety of strategies, and for a long time:
At this point, I'm not quite sure how to address this issue. I think it's very important to
have students practice speaking with each other, but what do I do if MOST of the students
aren't using this time productively?? (Scott’s journal in the spring)
After reviewing Scott’s video and journal on this class, I tried to advise him in two aspects—
his teaching activities and the students’ behaviors. In Scott’s teaching, I commented, “First of all,
while you were giving them orders before the activity, you needed to get everybody’s
attention…” and “second, the time you allowed for the activity seemed a bit long” (my comments

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on Scott’s journal in the spring). In terms of students’ behaviors, I tried to direct Scott’s attention
to both the class and some disruptive students. I noted,
Third, when you were interacting with a student, some other students didn’t pay attention
at all. They were still chatting. In that situation, you might want to make them stop so that
the student could be heard… I noticed the four students close to the camera almost never
stopped chatting. I am wondering whether they are often together. If so, you might want
to separate them with some strategies... (my comments on Scott’s journal in the spring)
Scott still worked hard on students’ behaviors in the spring, but things were getting better
only very gradually. Some students were able to learn, but some still looked easily distracted.
Perhaps Scott was focusing on differentiated instruction or he was learning more systematically
about language instruction in the spring, so he did not comment on students’ behaviors in the late
spring. However, this does not mean that the students’ behaviors improved substantially. Scott
was frustrated at things that were not working, and he felt so exhausted toward the end of his first
year of teaching that he switched to another school in the district.
Learning to Manage Students’ Learning
In conjunction with his efforts to improve students’ behaviors, Scott had to educate his
students to learn and manage their learning. In this process, his newly-acquired knowledge of
students and his context influenced how he dealt with students’ learning. Meanwhile, his
background also played an important role.
Soon after the fall semester started, Scott found that the students were not learning in the
way he had expected:
I remember one of the frustrating things is I saw like a lot of times, the students…I would
teach, and I feel like I was giving them good information, but I found out the students a
lot of times didn’t take notes at all, or didn’t study their notes, or lost their notes. (Scott’s
second interview)

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Scott also found that students learned little, so they “read” their notes instead of presenting in
the front. Additionally the students did not seem to learn as fast as he had expected:
…In my plan, I planned to go a lot faster and kind of …see a great progress as they went.
Actually the first few weeks, I do remember being frustrated because we…they weren’t
getting in as fast as I wanted them to get… I was…I wasn’t satisfied with what they
learned, because I wanted them to learn a lot more… (Scott’s second interview)
In the early fall, although I did advise Scott to “push” students a bit so that they could
present instead of “reading” their notes. After I watched his first teaching video, I did not set
more expectations for his content while he was working on understanding the students and
managing their behaviors, because of his tough situation and because I did not want to make him
feel overwhelmed, especially when he taught seven 50-minute Chinese classes on all days except
Wednesday. Another reason was that, as far as I could see from his teaching videos, the content
and the amount of the content seemed appropriate for students in middle school. After all, we did
not know very much about the students then. In addition, the description above and in chapter
four show that we focused more on classroom management and teaching techniques in the fall.
After he perceived that the students could not learn fast, Scott made his own instructional
decisions and adjusted his expectations by slowing down his pace in teaching so that the students
could follow him and could complete what he had planned for them. He said, “You meet them
and you realize that they only are going get here. Then when you teach, you can’t expect them to
get here, right?” (Scott’s second interview)
Meanwhile, Scott gained more knowledge of his students and his school with the help of his
mentor teacher and the Spanish teacher. He came to understand the charter school’s expectations
for the students and also came to realize the disadvantages of poor children in school education:

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The challenges at home make success at school much harder for them than for their more
affluent classmates. The founder of my charter schools believes that this is a civil rights
issue. The school I teach at is working to provide an education for poor, inner-city
students that is equal to or greater than the education received by students in the richest
suburbs. (Scott’s journal in the spring)
Scott took his school context into consideration while he was prepared his lessons. He was
aware that he was teaching in an urban context, so he took that into consideration and tried to
connect his context with his teaching when he was designing his lesson plans:
I mean I was planning…I was considering kind of the culture I was teaching in… so I was
teaching in an urban culture. I knew that I couldn’t…I had to make sure connected to
them somehow, and that I was able to connect to them. (Scott’s second interview)
In order to better help the students to learn Chinese, Scott created a website to provide the
parents with some Chinese resources. He had regular communication with the parents and invited
the parents to join in his classes or the school’s activities. Because of the students’ long-time
failure in literacy, Scott was involved in and searched for opportunities for his students to learn
Chinese and improve their literacy, as his principal and mentor noted at the final evaluation in the
fall and in the interview. In the late fall, from his teaching videos, I observed that the students
took notes while Scott was teaching.
However, perhaps because Scott adjusted his pace of teaching and his expectations for the
students in early spring, he found that some students “…who are normally engaged and wellbehaved [became] inattentive and even disrespectful in class” (Scott’s journal in the spring). As
he observed,
I have at least a couple students in each class that are extremely bright learners. They
learn quickly, usually with little effort. They also become bored easily. Sometimes, this
leads to them causing behavior problems. Other times, they simply “check-out”--stare off
into space, read, write, draw...you get the idea. Some of them are doing extremely well,
while others have a very “average” grade. In my opinion, a “C” grade is far below their
potential. (Scott’s teaching journal in the spring)

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Scott noted, “Then I identified early on, but I feel frustrated because I had been there in
classes before where I was bored. I hate being bored” (Scott’s second interview). Because of this,
Scott proposed to work on differentiated instruction for those gifted students. Clearly Scott’s own
educational experience influenced his instructional decisions. I cautioned him to make sure that
those students actually learned what he expected of all students; meanwhile, those gifted students
were also different from each other, so he might need to work out different plans for them (my
comments on Scott’s journal in the spring).
Thinking about the issue carefully, he decided to have the students’ input, because Scott
believed that each student is an individual and there might be different ways to address their
needs and bring them back to his instruction. He offered options to the students, designed
projects or tasks with them in the middle of the spring semester, and asked them to conduct their
individual projects in the following weeks. In this process, Scott’s status as a parent impacted the
way he approached this issue:
I think as a teacher and also a parent where you kind of give a child options by the ways
that you present it, by the options you give them, you are also giving them directions in
the ways that they will go. But by giving them a choice, you are also allowing them
freedom in this. So…I think because I was a parent, I recognized it was good to do that.
(Scott’s second interview)
His parenting experience also made Scott understand that students often might not be fully
aware of the consequences that their options would produce, so he constantly monitored these
students’ progress in their individual plans. However, Scott’s efforts had mixed results. While
some gifted students seemed to make positive changes and learning, some did not. Scott noticed
that one student did not do what she had planned with Scott:
I was hoping by giving her that option that she would be automatically be self-motivated
and instantly…the behavior shift…, so I still had to be very…had monitored her very
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closely, and gave her a lot of feedback. And I was hoping that I wasn’t gonna to be that
involved in the…so that was one of the areas that I was a little disappointed…didn’t go
quite as well as I hoped it would… (Scott’s second interview)
Nevertheless, Scott felt that he learned most from his improvement project in the spring
semester. More importantly, one year of teaching helped him to become “…able to focus more
on saying the right thing in the right way to the right students” at the end of the second semester
(Scott’s second interview).
Tianyu’s Development in Knowledge of students
Tianyu arrived in the U.S. only two months before he started teaching Chinese in a U.S. high
school, so he had little knowledge of U.S. students. He came to understand his students and
learned how to teach his students while he was teaching them, from the fall of 2009 through the
spring of 2010.
Tianyu’s Understanding of Students at the Beginning
At the beginning of the fall, Tianyu did not know much about teaching in the U.S., so he
assumed the teaching approach of what he knew about teaching in China. He expected that the
students would respond similarly as Chinese students do. For example, they would take notes
while the teacher is teaching. He said, “At the beginning of the year, I didn’t know much about
my students. I don’t know how they learn. I don’t know what are the subjects they learn, all those
just like…I didn’t know them at all” (Tianyu’s second interview).
Obviously Tianyu had little knowledge of his U.S. students when he started teaching in the
fall, although he had the one-month pre-program preparation in China before he came to the U.S.,
and he also did team-teaching in the Summer Camp in the summer. However, the one-month preprogram preparation did not help him very much with understanding U.S. students. Tianyu only

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had a very rough impression that U.S. students are different from their Chinese counterparts, but
he was not clear about how different they are or how he should deal with these differences:
…I felt perhaps they mentioned many things, but only talked a little, because they didn’t
want to focus on one thing... Although they might mention American schools and
students, I was still not clear. Because from what they said, I realized that American
students were different from us, but I didn’t know what to do. For example, they said if
you talked this way in the U.S., the students might react this way. To me, the simple
conclusion was I didn’t talk that in the U.S. (Tianyu’s first interview)
It was clear that even though they mentioned some classroom management issues in the preprogram preparation, without any contact with U.S. students, Tianyu did not understand.
Sometimes he was not convinced. He recalled, “…some classroom management problems, I
didn’t believe, because there were no such problems in classrooms in China (Tianyu’s follow-up
interview). Unfortunately three weeks of teaching in the Summer Camp did not help him very
much. The students enrolled in the Summer Camp were chiefly kindergarten and elementary
school students, so he was not able to know more about U.S. high school students. Therefore,
when Tianyu started teaching in the high schools and the IB program in the fall, he actually did
not have any experience with U.S. high school students
Learning to Manage Students’ Behaviors
As a novice teaching with little knowledge of his U.S. high school students, Tianyu did not
know how to manage his classroom at the beginning of the fall. Lack of teacher knowledge in
other components (e.g., pedagogy) had a negative impact and made the situation worse:
Classroom management was not at all apparent at the outset of Tianyu’s teaching
experience. His natural charisma limited issues, but his lack of instructional approach
countered that benefit…(Tianyu’s principal’s report for the fall mid-term evaluation)
Perhaps because of the chaos of field instruction and misunderstanding about the role of

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field instruction at the beginning of the fall, Tianyu did not mention students’ misbehaviors in his
teaching journals or at our field instruction meetings. Or perhaps because of cultural differences
and being a novice teacher, Tianyu was not able to identify students’ misbehaviors. For example,
he could not tell whether the students understood his teaching or whether the students were
engaged during his class instruction at the beginning of the fall:
I don’t think that he recognized that the kids weren’t engaged. If be it recognized that they
weren’t engaged, he wasn’t doing anything about it… And I think that’s more a cultural
thing, like he didn’t realize that more than it was that he was purposely ignoring it. They
weren’t interested, and he didn’t notice… I don’t think there was anything that had
occurred to him. (Tianyu’s fall mentor interview)
However, Tianyu gradually figured out that he had some classroom management issues by
talking to his cohort in the certification program, who shared their experiences and their
understandings of American students. Tianyu learned from his cohort’s difficulties and strategies
for improvements in classroom management. He noted, “They always talk about some of their
problematic students. I heard a lot. I said, well, some of them…I have the same case. From there,
I realized that classroom management should be important thing” (Tianyu’s second interview).
Another important way was to attend field instruction meetings, although he did not notice
classroom management problems in his own teaching or asked such questions at the meetings at
the beginning of the fall. He said, “Someone brought up that question, we talked about classroom
management, and I realized that I have the same issue here…” (Tianyu’s second interview). From
the class discussions, he also learned more about U.S. students and came to understand that he
could talk about those with me at the meetings, so toward the end of October, Tianyu described
his challenges in classroom management in his teaching journal:
But the worst is they did not just put all the snacks or food in their mouths, they used
them as their toys. It did not just happen once or twice, it happened several times in the
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classroom. For example, last Thursday two of my students were fighting over a bag of
Toritos while I was teaching them writing characters. I paused and asked the two boys
what they were doing. To my surprise, the two 15-year-old boys said, “He took my food.”
No, I didn’t.” Then I didn’t know what to say. Under this urgent situation, I said “No food
in my class anymore!” Then one of the other students stood up and said:” We don’t have
lunch time, school allows us to eat in class.” Then I said,” I gave you chance, it’s just you
didn’t use the chance to eat.” The class was deadly quiet, but I have lost my mood for the
teaching. Of course the rest of the class was boring and more like a monoplay. (Tianyu’s
journal in the fall)
The above quotation indicates that Tianyu did not have the skills or experience to handle the
students’ behaviors at that time. The cultural differences also surprised Tianyu and perhaps
confused him when the boy claimed that the other boy took his food, because a student is not
supposed to answer a teacher that way in China.
Tianyu also reflected on the issue himself in the same journal. He realized that cultural
differences influenced how he looked at his U.S. students—he took them as Chinese students. He
tried to adapt, but was not sure how. He noted,
My experience of Chinese education influenced my judgment on those kids. Once they do
something I don’t think Chinese students will do in class, I just start feeling they are
doing bad. But after the few months living here in the U.S., I adapted their lifestyle a lot.
The problem is now my standard for class behavior becomes vague. (Tianyu’s journal in
the fall)
From his description and analysis, I found that Tianyu was not able to identify in the
beginning of the fall whether it was a student’s misbehavior or whether it was a cultural
difference in the classroom because he had little knowledge of U.S. high school students:
Last week, I noticed in one of my classes the students began eating snacks and food in my
class. At first, I accepted this. I thought in American, students have a lot of freedom and
eating freely would be one of them…(Tianyu’s journal in the fall)
Clearly cultural differences and little knowledge of U.S. students made Tianyu not sure what
kinds of behaviors were acceptable in the classroom. However, even though he could identify

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students’ misbehaviors, he had little knowledge and thus was not confident about when and how
to manage students’ misbehaviors:
But two days ago, another two boys were chasing each other for a bag of snacks. Just
because it was not when I was talking, and one of the boys is a very good student, I
pretended I didn’t see. (Tianyu’s journal in the fall)
I responded to his challenge in detail at that time, and we also discussed the case during our
weekly class session. I advised Tianyu to check “…with your mentor teacher to see how
the school says about this policy” (my comments on Tianyu’s journal in the fall), because the
students said they were allowed to have food in class. If it was true, Tianyu could set a class rule
and/or set a corner in the classroom to require the students to finish their food within the first few
minutes of the class. I also suggested that Tianyu have private talks with the two students, and
deal with students’ misbehaviors even when they were not serious. I reminded him that
“pretending not to see that may implicitly encourage the students. They would go further” (my
comments on Tianyu’s journal in the fall).
In the rest of the fall, Tianyu did not seem to have very serious problems in classroom
management, because he did not mention such issues in his journals or at our field instruction
meetings. His teaching videos showed that the students’ behaviors were good. Tianyu also noted
that “frankly, it was a regular week last week. I did not really have any problems about class
management…” (Tianyu’s journal in the fall).
However, while Tianyu was working on “games,” sometimes there were classroom
management problems, which made him aware that improper use of “games” could lead to
classroom management problems:
…sometimes the classroom management is so poor…so like…students are crazy,
noisy…they were not doing things, just like walking around, chatting with students. Then
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I realized the games are fine, the games are cool, but the thing is when they play games,
they really think them as games. (Tianyu’s second interview)
With these understandings and guidance from field instruction, Tianyu incorporated
language learning into his broad concept of “games” in his teaching. In the following days, he
found that “…if the students can really focus on doing something, classroom management is not
an issue any more, because they are busy doing their projects” (Tianyu’s second interview).
Tianyu kept on observing and reflecting on the differences between U.S. and Chinese
students’ behaviors. In November, he came to understand that “unlike Chinese students,
American students don’t have the concept that they have to sit still through the whole lesson.
They move a lot even they sit on their chairs” (Tianyu’s journal in the fall). We also discussed
very briefly about this at our field instruction meetings, so Tianyu did not expect his students
would sit still throughout the class session, but he knew that he should still monitor their
behaviors and stop students’ minor misbehaviors:
In my class, my students are not afraid of me that much. I treated them very well,
respected them very well. But as teenagers, sometimes they don’t know how to do things.
They will take the freedom and respect I give them for granted. That’s our job to stop
their activity or thinking before it is getting worse. (Tianyu’s journal in the fall)
Students’ misbehaviors did not appear to be a big concern to Tianyu in the spring semester,
because the number of his comments on the students was much smaller than in the fall. Toward
the middle of the spring semester, Tianyu was able to have clearer classroom routines and to
communicate better his expectations to the students. His mentor teacher observed that “Tianyu is
getting better at establishing routines and communicating with students so that they feel less
anxious about homework, tests and other expectations” (Tianyu’s mentor’s report for the spring
mid-term evaluation). With more knowledge of students and pedagogy, Tianyu was also able to
find that the students were “…more likely to have those misbehaviors when the activity was not
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smooth and during the transition time” (Tianyu’s journal in the spring), while we were focusing
on classroom management in field instruction the spring.
Actually his students in the IB program were selected from the district and they performed
well academically, so generally they behaved well in class. Tianyu’s spring mentor teacher
commented, “To be honest, the classes that he did have here at this school, the students were
very very well-behaved. They were really interested, and so he didn’t really have a lot of
misbehaving students or management issues” (Tianyu’s spring mentor interview). Thus, although
Tianyu was a novice teacher, he did not have to face as many challenges in classroom
management as Scott did.
Learning to Manage Students’ Learning
At the beginning of fall, Tianyu did not know how to manage his students’ learning because
of little teacher knowledge. When the students did not turn in their homework or missed their
homework, Tianyu did not know how to deal with the issue, which was new to him because most
students in China turn in their homework on time. His fall mentor teacher recalled that “the kids
weren’t turning in any of their work, which I don’t think he was used to kids not doing their
work” (Tianyu’s fall mentor interview). Although Tianyu did not ask for help with this issue at
field instruction meetings, some other teachers did (e.g., Yalan), because that was also a common
challenge for teachers from China. However, Tianyu did get to know that U.S. and Chinese
students are different in their ways of learning. He noted, “The other biggest discovery is that
American students never review or learn Chinese at home on their own. Thus giving them
efficient home work is very important. I just noticed this is becoming a problem for me recently”
(Tianyu’s journal in the fall).

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Thus, Tianyu had to learn how to manage students’ homework, in addition to his learning
how to design homework (which was discussed in chapter five). However, sometimes he was
confused by students’ reactions. He felt he worked hard to design homework, but some students
did not do it and came back in the following day claiming that they did not understand the
homework, so he had to explain the homework to the students (Tianyu’s follow-up interview).
Tianyu was discouraged that when the students had questions about homework or other things
about Chinese classes, they turned to Tianyu’s spring mentor teacher instead of him. Because
Tianyu was teaching with a special license then, the Chinese classes he was teaching in the IB
schools were under his spring mentor teacher’s name, which might have made the students
believe that the Japanese teacher, instead of Tianyu, was managing the Chinese classes.
Although I advised my two groups of teachers to have good communication with students’
parents as a way to manage their students’ learning, including their homework, Tianyu seemed to
have challenges in how to communicate with the parents. Actually because of this, he had an
awkward experience at the first parent-teacher conferences in the early fall:
He wasn’t comfortable speaking with parents, so he wasn’t able to… interact with …the
students’ parents. At that particular school, the students’ parents were very vested in them.
They could sometimes…very aggressive. He had to know how to communicate with them
about the grades, about what he was doing in the class…And he can’t answer those
questions. Those parents were going right to his principal…I think he just didn’t know
what to say. (Tianyu’s fall mentor interview)
The description by Tianyu’s fall mentor teacher reveals that lack of knowledge of curriculum
was a very important reason for Tianyu’s difficulties at the parent-teacher conferences. That is,
Tianyu was not able to provide a rationale for his teaching at that time. Another reason was that
Tianyu was a novice teacher from China. He did not have experience in working with Chinese
parents, so perhaps he was not confident about how to communicate with American parents

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when he was so new in the U.S.
Tianyu did try to learn how to manage students’ learning while he was teaching. As advised
by his principal and field instruction, Tianyu talked to his students in order to know more about
them. However, the information Tianyu obtained about his students might not be accurate
because of the students he talked to. Unintentionally, Tianyu often talked to a few Chinese
American students in the classes, but Tianyu did not realize this until I checked with him in a
follow-up talk, as mentioned in chapter four. He tried to adjust his teaching according to what he
knew about the students, but in his fall mentor teacher’s view, Tianyu focused more on those
students and the well-performing students during his class instruction:
There was one of the kids in the class had parents…that were from China… so they had
more kind of ….that he felt more connected to those students, those of the students he
tended to talk to more, or the students that were picked out very easily. But as an
American teacher, I mean the kids you really want to focus on are the kids that don’t get it.
I think he found easier to kind of focus toward the kids who did get it than focus on the
kids who need more support. (Tianyu’s fall mentor interview)
However, because Tianyu did not identify the problem or he was not reminded of the issue,
he could not report this in his journals or at our field instruction meetings. Consequently, this
issue was left undetected in Tianyu’s first year of teaching, which might have negatively affected
his teaching.
Moreover, Tianyu was learning about teaching from other sources. “Tianyu is clearly at a
novice level in instruction, but is quite apt at taking and responding to criticism,” Tianyu’s
principal observed (Tianyu’s principal’s report for the fall mid-term evaluation). He “seeks help
of co-teacher” (Tianyu’s spring mentor’s report for the spring mid-term evaluation). He also
interacted with his colleagues in his schools and in the cohort. His spring mentor teacher noted,
“Honestly he is very social. He has very friendly personality, so it’s been really nice that he’s

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really tried to as much as he can…he is try to interact with others,” and “To my knowledge,
Tianyu utilizes his classmates at ×× [the University] for idea-sharing” (Tianyu’s spring mentor
interview).
Things began to become better for Tianyu in the spring when he had better understanding
about teaching in the U.S. With the help of his mentor teacher, Tianyu used a mailbox system to
manage his students’ homework and other assignments. His spring mentor teacher mentioned
that “he has created a “mailbox” system with the help of co-teacher for each student so the
exchange of papers is very organized (Tianyu’s mentor’s report for the spring mid-term
evaluation). Toward the middle of the spring semester, Tianyu appeared to have become more
comfortable about communicating with parents at the parent-teacher conferences and about
performing his regular teacher responsibilities with his development in other components of
teacher knowledge:
With help of his co-teacher, weekly progress reports are being sent home as a means to
communicate student grades with parents. Tianyu is very good during conferences with
parents at being direct and letting parents know what their student’s strengths and
weaknesses are in a respectful manner. (Tianyu’s spring mentor’s report for the spring
mid-term evaluation)
However, Tianyu still looked not very confident about communicating with the parents,
perhaps because of his limited knowledge of context or because he did not have enough time. He
was more passive and not very confident in approaching parents. His spring mentor teacher
commented, “Tianyu needs to take initiative and communicate directly with parents via phone/email about students’ behavior or grades. Tianyu is timid about contacting parents” (Tianyu’s
spring mentor’s report for the spring mid-term evaluation).
With more knowledge of his students, Tianyu also tried to encourage his students to
participate. His spring mentor teacher noticed that “he always encourages students to take risks in
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Chinese and points out that his English is not perfect. When he makes mistakes he reminds them
that he is taking risks with them” (Tianyu’s mentor’s report for the spring mid-term evaluation).
More importantly, because Tianyu came to understand more about his school and American
culture, he began to be able to handle students’ learning and to deal with cultural differences in
his teaching:
He promotes respect for cultural differences and shares with the students his reasons for
grading or for doing certain things in his teaching. He is open to feedback and
encourages students to make mistakes. He deals with student issues fairly and on a case
by case basis. (Tianyu’s spring mentor’s report for the spring mid-term evaluation)
In the spring, Tianyu was gaining more knowledge of pedagogy and curriculum, which also
helped him to understand more about his students’ learning and facilitated his classroom
management. Tianyu was able to identify whether the students understood his instructions from
the students’ facial expressions. He noted that “…they easily lose their concentration when they
have no clues what they are doing or what they are supposed to do. Their face expressions can
tell you they are confused and unwilling to attempt to follow” (Tianyu’s journal in the spring).
He also came to understand that even the usually well-behaved students would misbehave if his
pace did not match their learning:
I am teaching IB students, which most teachers believe are the best students of always.
However, even those “beloved” young kids misbehave when they have nothing to do,
learning slow or they don’t know what to do and how to do it. (Tianyu’s journal in the
spring)
However, after all, Tianyu was still gaining teacher knowledge and developing, so he was
not completely skillful at managing students’ learning. There were still minor challenges of time
management and logistics. Tianyu wrote in his journal in the spring that he had difficulties
managing time for class activities. He observed that the students are “…more likely to have those

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misbehaviors when the activity was not smooth and during the transition time” (Tianyu’s journal
in the spring). His mentor noticed Tianyu’s difficulties on some logistic issues:
But there were still other issues, how to assign homework, sometimes he would forget to
explain the homework, not leaving enough time, or forget to take attendance, so it was
sort of house-keeping types of things, how to run the classroom routine that he had to get
used to… (Tianyu’s spring mentor interview)
The mentor teacher’s observation revealed that Tianyu got to know teacher’s responsibilities
and some skills to manage his students’ learning, but he needed time to become more skillful.
Yalan’s Development in Knowledge of Students
Although Yalan had been in the United States for around ten years when she started teaching
Chinese in public schools, she still had to learn about American students. Her learning and
knowledge of students also influenced her socialization into the teaching profession, especially in
the spring semester, when she taught the middle school class on her own. Because of this, her
learning and management of students appeared frequently in her data and thus became a very
important aspect of her socialization.
Learning and Experience about Students in the Fall
Yalan co-taught the social studies classes with her fall mentor teacher, and when one was
teaching, the other was also in the classroom. Thus, Yalan had the opportunity to observe how
her mentor teacher dealt with the students, which also helped Yalan get to know U.S. high
schools students:
…because it was my first time to teach at a public school, and his students were from all
grades, from nineth grade to twelfth grade…So I could be there and had a sense of
students from different grades, especially in classroom management… (Yalan’s second
interview)

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Before and after class, Yalan also had the opportunity to talk with her mentor teacher about
their students, and her fall mentor teacher also shared his experience with her in how to handle
and guide students in classroom:
We didn’t have that much of problems (in classroom management), because the subject
itself was new and intriguing to them… There were a few less motivated students. There
were a few students who didn’t respond appropriately. Then we talked about strategies,
sort of to channel their enthusiasm or to…in more appropriate ways to express
themselves. (Yalan’s fall mentor interview)
In addition, Yalan was learning about the students while teaching them. For example, she
observed that the three social studies classes were different in terms of their morale, which
influenced her teaching:
I should say there were some differences. Because some had classes early, and they were
more focused, but sometimes, especially after lunch, there were some discipline issues.
Sometimes you could teach a lesson smoothly and finish your plans, but sometimes you
could only teach around ¾ of the content. (Yalan’s second interview)
In this process, Yalan’s prior teaching experience facilitated her learning about U.S. high
schools students, although she mainly had taught kindergarten children:
…Sometimes individual students, with difficult students who weren’t paying attention,
who were a little resistant to follow the instructions. But she is good. I mean she had a
broad background, particularly in teaching younger kids. She had figured it out pretty
well. (Yalan’s fall mentor interview)
Thus, co-teaching with her fall mentor teacher helped Yalan to gain knowledge of U.S. high
school students in the social studies classes in the fall, which also assisted her to establish a
professional relationship with the students. Her mentor teacher compared student-teacher
relationships in the U.S. and in China, and believed that “her relation with the students was more
flexible, more aligned with the American level” (Yalan’s fall mentor interview).

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While she was with kindergarten students, Yalan seemed more casual, amiable, and
experienced, and a majority of the students looked relaxed with her. Because of her prior work
experience in children’s centers, Yalan seemed to have rich knowledge of young children, but
she also had to learn how to reach and assess the shy children while she was learning assessment
from the certification program, because “some children were very shy…even if you asked them
questions, they would not answer” (Yalan’s second interview). During her learning of assessment,
her prior experience also helped her to talk to the parents in order to understand the young
children better, and she learned that these children did try to speak Chinese at home. She noted
that “some students never sang in my class, but the parents said that they sang at home every
day” (Yalan’s second interview), which is also one of the reasons why she decided to invite the
parents to be involved in the students’ assessment toward the end of the fall.
Because of her teaching experience with children, and perhaps because she herself is a
mother, Yalan was able to take care of every child in her class. For example, she noticed that a
usually active girl was quiet one day. While the students were doing activities, Yalan walked to
the girl, gave her a hug, and tested whether the girl had a temperature. When she got to know that
the real reason was that the girl’s dog was dying, Yalan also pacified the girl with various
strategies. Because of her rich knowledge of children and her care for them, many of the children
liked her very much:
Other classes for elementary students went very well. The students are sweet, and they
like to please me. One student gives me a flower for every class. Her mom said it turned
to be her routine. Others gave me the pictures they drew. I love to see their smiling faces
whenever I gave them a “five” or a hug. (Yalan’s journal in the fall)

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Learning to Manage Students’ Behaviors in the Spring
Managing students’ behaviors did not become a problem to Yalan in the social studies
classes in the fall semester, because the social studies teacher was always in the classroom and
implicitly assumed the authoritative role even when Yalan was teaching, and the students
behaved well. Yalan was aware of this and said, “…because we taught together, and he was
always there, it was fine in classroom management” (Yalan’s second interview). She had taught
kindergarten children for several years, so she did not have many challenges in managing them
throughout her first-year teaching. The challenges with classroom management became more
salient while she was teaching the middle school class on her own in the spring semester. Yalan
almost focused on her middle school class solely while she was talking about her challenges with
classroom management.
Yalan recalled that her first month of teaching her middle school students worked well,
because the Chinese language and culture was new to them and they were curious and focused.
She described that period as a “honeymoon.” However, it did not last long. The students began to
misbehave, especially when Yalan was trying to use more pair or group work in her teaching
after she learned Communicative Language Teaching and Task-Based Language Teaching from
field instruction.
In addition to students’ misbehaviors during their group activities, Yalan faced many
challenges in managing students’ behaviors at the beginning of the class or when she was
transitioning from one to the next activity. When they were learning classroom management from
the certification program at the end of January, Yalan reflected,
I found transition time was very hard for me. For example, when the students were back
from the recess, it would be harder for them to quiet down. I’m a little bit struggled with

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the students’ transit from outdoor recess to focusing on learning Chinese at the first 5
minutes. (Yalan’s journal in the spring)
Although we discussed at our field instruction meetings strategies of making students calm
down and shift their attention to class, Yalan seemed to have done well in this with her
elementary classes, as she reported in the same journal how she handled such situations. She did
not mention much in her subsequent journals or at our field instruction meetings about her
classroom management problems except for their misbehaviors when they were doing pair work
or group activities, although Yalan learned actively and asked questions when she did not
understand. However, she did ask for help from others. She said, “When I had questions, I would
first go to my mentor, the principal, or other staff for help, a person I could grab then,” because “I
thought that because you were a new teacher, if you didn’t ask, the problems would be there
forever” (Yalan’s second interview).
There might be a couple of reasons why Yalan did not ask for advice on managing students’
misbehaviors in her journals or at field instruction meetings. First, she was working on pair work
and group activities with me as a way to improve her students’ behaviors, as described in chapter
four. As far as I could see from her three teaching videos in her middle school class, her students’
behaviors were all right, although occasionally they looked and sounded very excited during
group activities. For example, while they were “interviewing” each other about their favorite
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food, a couple of them sounded like shouting instead of talking to each other in Chinese , but
they were using Chinese and were engaged. Second, Yalan needed immediate or onsite assistance
when the students misbehaved, so she talked to whichever person she could find in the building,
especially a Spanish teacher, who was “…kind of served as an unofficial mentor,” and Yalan’s

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I could not see them during this activity from the teaching video.
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spring mentor teacher “…spoke with her about helping Yalan as much as she could” (Yalan’s
spring mentor interview). Yalan herself also recalled, “Generally if I had questions, I mainly
asked the Spanish teacher in the building, so I learned more from the other second language
teacher in the second semester” (Yalan’s second interview). Thus, Yalan knew the colleagues in
the building very well. Her principal commented that Yalan “did a good job in participating in
the school community” (Yalan’s final evaluation in the spring semester).
Yalan mainly worked with the Spanish teacher in the building instead of her spring mentor
teacher because of the nature of mentoring. As illustrated in chapter three, Yalan and her cohort
were interns, but they were treated as new teachers. Although her mentor teacher in the spring is
a world language teacher, Yalan could work with her mentor for only 10 hours according to the
district’s policy, because the teacher was not a cooperating teacher for a pre-service teacher or an
intern. Thus, Yalan did not have the opportunity to learn from her mentor teacher about
curriculum design or lesson planning. The scope of their work was clearly delineated. Her spring
mentor teacher said, “Mine is to help her be acclimated to the school district, help her understand
what is…you know, what her responsibilities are as a teacher in ×× public school” (Yalan’s
spring mentor interview). Consequently, there were different expectations about mentoring
between Yalan and her spring mentor teacher:
So I think, if I am not mistaken, Yalan was looking for me to be her cooperating teacher
and more of a student teaching setting rather than as…She kind of look at this…I don’t
have experience. I need help. I don’t know what to do. I haven’t done student teaching.
And I have been thrown in as a classroom teacher…so that kind of through me off
going…wait, wait, wait, that’s not really…I have a student teacher like…I can’t be your
cooperating teacher… (Yalan’s spring mentor interview)
Yalan herself also worked hard on managing students’ behaviors. She tried to know more
about them by surveys and by talking to them. She said, “What I could feel in the second

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semester, the most important thing was to understand the middle schools students gradually”
(Yalan’s second interview). She attended the middle school’s staff meetings, the school district’s
meetings, and world language day conferences. From these meetings, Yalan learned how the
middle school managed their students’ behaviors:
…so our school is all using a system called VOE…anyway a school system. If a student
doesn’t behave well, we would give him a slip. For the first time, we put the slip on his
desk. This way we can still have our teaching and it does not affect your teaching a lot.
For the second time, you can have him to write down his name. For the third time, you
take away the slip. Then this student would get lunch detention or after-school detention.
(Yalan’s second interview)
However, Yalan seemed to have struggled with classroom management problems. Her spring
mentor teacher recalled that she “…tried to help her as much as I could, because I know that she
was very frustrated and overwhelmed, especially with classroom management. That was just
really really hard for her” (Yalan’s spring mentor interview). It was also the focus when Yalan
worked with her mentor teacher. I asked what they usually talked about when she and Yalan met
with each other. The mentor teacher recalled that “…a lot of them was related to classroom
management” (Yalan’s spring mentor interview). The spring mentor teacher advised Yalan in
classroom management. “I just gave her some suggestions of…you know, how she could contact
some of students, parents to work on behavior contracts…some situations like that,” the mentor
teacher noted (Yalan’s spring mentor’s interview). She also recommended that Yalan go to
observe other language teachers’ classes:
One of the things I recommended is, because I am a high school teacher, and she teaches
middle school, and she was really struggling with classroom management…is that she go
and observe another middle school language teacher teaching language so that she could
see how they manage, so it’s middle school, it’s a language teacher. (Yalan’s spring
mentor interview)

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There were two main reasons for Yalan’s struggles in classroom management: one is related
to the students, and the other, to Yalan herself. There were three factors in the first main reason.
First, world language was not a core course in the middle school; neither was it included in
national or state tests, so the students did not take it seriously. Instead, they “…take it as a hobby
or other things” (Yalan’s second interview). The second reason is related to the students’ ages.
According to Yalan, “…middle school students at this age are very very difficult to teach, and
they are resistant, things like that. Sometimes you tell them this, but they might react in another
way…” (Yalan’s second interview). Third, there were 14 boys and three girls in Yalan’s class,
which might negatively affect the dynamics in the classroom.
On the other hand, Yalan’s cultural background and inexperience also contributed to her
challenges in classroom management. Yalan was aware that the cultural differences negatively
affected her communication with students:
At the beginning, everything was good, like a honeymoon. Then after that, there began to
have all kinds of problems, like their behaviors…Sometimes the classroom management
problems were not caused by… some of the reasons might be that you didn’t understand
their culture very much... (Yalan’s second interview)
Occasionally, the cultural differences could lead to very embarrassing situations for Yalan.
For example, while she was teaching sports, Yalan talked about some sports that China had good
performances in, for example, volleyball, Ping Pong, etc. Unfortunately, Yalan used the
acronyms in Chinese and literally translated them into English, so terms like “three little balls”
appeared in her illustration. “Then the students began to laugh, because I hadn’t known that this
ball could mean something else…” as Yalan recalled, still very embarrassed (Yalan’s second
interview). The students were laughing and began to have mean and frivolous questions for her.

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At that moment, Yalan did not know how to respond, and she also learned from this incident
about the negative influence of cultural differences:
…sometimes you really didn’t realize it yourself, but you already made yourself very
funny to them. Thus, this is the difference between the cultures. Although I have been in
the U.S. for many years, I still could have problems like this. The students would think
that you are different from them, things like that. (Yalan’s second interview)
However, the more important reason Yalan thought about was that she was inconsistent with
classroom rules sometimes:
The main reason is perhaps, I think, that I am not very consistent. For example, I said that
they should raise their hands and speak. But one student gave the right answer, and I said,
correct. The other student might think that they didn’t need to raise their hands, so they
began to speak. (Yalan’s second interview)
Yalan believed that she learned much about classroom management. She found in her
practice that communications with the parents could be beneficial to her classroom management:
The best way is to communicate with the parents. This is the best way. Because every
time these students had some behavior issues, I talked to the parents and found they were
better the following day. However, they forgot quickly. So always back and forth.
(Yalan’s second interview)
However, Yalan was not satisfied at what she had achieved by then in managing students’
behaviors. She mentioned that she still “…struggle a lot, even several days ago…” (Yalan’s
second interview), when I interviewed her in October in 2010. Therefore, managing students’
behaviors was one of the biggest challenges to Yalan for her Chinese instruction in the middle
school in the spring of 2010.
Learning to Manage Students’ Learning
While Yalan was teaching Chinese in the social studies classes in the fall, her fall mentor
teacher talked with Yalan about almost everything about teaching in U.S. public high school, and

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“one of the strands was like how to communicate with parents, which was difficult, because of
the nature of student teaching” (Yalan’s fall mentor interview). Nevertheless, because of her
experience in this period, Yalan was able to have some knowledge about U.S. public schools
before she started teaching Chinese in the middle school on her own in the spring.
Yalan was also observing her students during her instruction. She found that the students of
different grades/ages learn a language in different ways. She noticed that young children
preferred to learn from their five senses, and they learned better with some signs and gestures.
However, things were different for her middle school students. Yalan observed that “young
adolescents have more learning strategies. They have longer attention spans. They know how to
solve the problem by different ways, and they like to work with their peers” (Yalan’s journal in
the spring).
With more understanding of her students, Yalan applied her prior knowledge of kindergarten
children to her middle school students, although sometimes she was reminded by people such as
her mentor teacher. For example, the middle school students were often curious and asked many
questions in class. Some of the questions were relevant to Chinese language and culture, but
often the questions were irrelevant or about Yalan herself. For example, the students asked her,
“Is your husband tall?” or “Are you carrying a boy or girl?” Yalan did not want her students to be
distracted by the irrelevant questions, but she also did not want to discourage them, so she put a
bag in the classroom. The students could write down their questions and put them into the bag.
After they were done with learning for a day, Yalan would take questions from the bag and
answer them. She used this strategy for two reasons:
Later I talked to my mentor teacher. She said that you could have a box or a bag, and ask
them to put their questions in that. And we also used that before. I had worked in

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kindergartens. When it came to show and tell, we asked the children to put things in a box.
(Yalan’s second interview)
While Yalan was learning group activities, Yalan was able to notice positive results toward
the end of the spring semester. She noticed that “the students like to do group activities. With my
clear teaching goals, I designed meaningful group activities, so the students were willing to
engage in those activities” (Yalan’ journal in the spring). This also encouraged Yalan to continue
using group activities in her instruction; as she said, “I can tell that activities like this are
successful. Therefore, I often used this kind of activities later, that is, to have everybody busy”
(Yalan’s second interview).
As mentioned in chapter five and the previous sections, Yalan also took initiative to
understand the students by surveys, “…to get the students’ feedback, and adjust my teaching
according to their feedback” (Yalan’s journal in the spring). She also observed the students’
reactions in order to understand the characteristics of their learning. For example, she “found that
my students learned better from pictures, so I spend lots of time to search the appropriate
pictures” (Yalan’s journal in the spring).
From the professional workshops by the school district and the world language professional
day in the school district, Yalan got to know the district’s expectations and regulations in
managing students’ learning, including their assessment:
Our district required teachers to include everything about their teaching and their students
in power teacher system, like the teaching plans, rules and requirements, students’
homework, quizzes and tests, students’ presentations, etc. The students have their own
accounts and they can sign in and find all their scores there. (Yalan’s second interview)
Yalan also further learned how to communicate with the parents during this process.
Although she enjoyed good relationships with students’ parents in her prior teaching, Yalan’s
communication with the parents of her middle school students focused on different aspects of her
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teaching in the spring of 2010. She turned to the parents for support and to gain more information
about the students, which she believed worked best. She said, “The best way is to communicate
with the parents. This is the best way” (Yalan’s second interview). Meanwhile, “some parents
were very involved, especially some professors and staff at ×× (one of the universities in the
area), and they would tell me some information and hoped that we could learn that” (Yalan’s
second interview). Yalan worked with the parents well and was able to maintain a good
relationship with them. She “…sent emails to the parents and let them know what we learned in
the week, homework…” (Yalan’s second interview). Yalan’s middle school principal noted that
Yalan did a good job in communicating with the parents promptly and in keeping the parents
updated (Yalan’s final evaluation in the spring semester).
Reflecting on her learning to teach in her first year, Yalan remarked, “What I could feel in
the second semester, the most important thing was to understand the middle schools students
gradually” (Yalan’s second interview). With more knowledge about the students and Chinese
instruction from her actual teaching, Yalan became more confident. She noted that “now when I
look back, I feel it is so different. I improved step by step. I can tell…because you have
experience, you are more confident when you are teaching” (Yalan’s second interview).
Therefore, Yalan concluded that “…the most important is your practice in class,” while “all
contributed (to learning to teach), including our group discussion, your class, reading...” (Yalan’s
second interview).
Fangyi’s Development in Knowledge of Students
Fangyi had taught Chinese to elementary school children in a Taiwanese community school
for five years in the United States before she started her first year of teaching in the certification
program, but she had little knowledge of U.S. students, so she had to learn about them, which
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was similar to Yalan. Learning about and managing students also became important to her in her
learning to teach, and her students significantly influenced her development as a Chinese
language teacher in the United States.
Learning to Manage Students’ Behaviors
At the very beginning of the fall, Fangyi seemed satisfied with her high school students’
behaviors and sounded confident. Her impression of the students was that “…most of my
students are active and well-behaved. Therefore, we have a good interaction in the beginning”
(Fangyi’s journal in the fall). This was consistent with my observation from her teaching videos.
Actually, the students generally behaved well during her first year teaching. Fangyi recalled,
My students basically were good. They were behaved. Perhaps they know they were
monitored by the TV, so they got to behave well. Except the students at ×× school, they
have the problem of skipping my class. Other areas, they were fine. (Fangyi’s second
interview)
However, students’ low motivation and their absence made Fangyi’s first year of teaching
challenging. After one month, she found that the students did not participate well in class and
looked uninterested in what Fangyi was teaching. She noted, “Participation/engagement started
to decline at the end of October, especially with the students at remote sites” (Fangyi’s journal in
the fall). According to Fangyi, motivating the students, especially those at the remote sites, was
the biggest difficulty that she had to face in the first semester (Fangyi’s second interview).
The more challenging issue was that the students were absent from time to time, so Fangyi
had to work on this issue in the two semesters, as indicated above. Fangyi recalled that the same
issue troubled Fangyi for the two semesters, which also made her teach less Chinese when
compared with the other Chinese language teachers in the certification program. She said, “I had
no control about whether they would show up one day. When they were absent, I didn’t know

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why. Nobody at the school told me why,” so “if one student on the remote site was absent, my
whole class was delayed. So I had slower pace than any other teachers who were using Learning
Chinese with Me” (Fangyi’s second interview). Fangyi also described the issue in detail in her
improvement project after her fall mid-term evaluation:
In my class, there is a student who has been absent over ten times, which I find frustrating.
I have consulted with the school counselor about her absence several times. I have
persistently emailed her and talked with her privately. But, she still has not shown interest
for this matter. On Friday of last week, the ×× students were all absent. Moreover, one
student at ×× high school is often absent without any advance notice, even though I told
my students that they must let me know in advance if they will be absent. Some of my
students still do not take my request seriously. Those incidents discourage me because
they symbolize that my class is not engaging, interesting, or productive enough for them
to consistently attend. (Fangyi’s journal in the fall)
What made this issue worse was that the schools did not inform Fangyi in advance. Fangyi
was upset that “the schools were not very cooperative. For example, they knew that one student
couldn’t come to my class, but they didn’t notify me in advance. This happened several times”
(Fangyi’s second interview). Consequently, Fangyi had to be very careful when she was planning
her lessons. She said, “When I was preparing the lesson plans, I had to take many things into
consideration,” because “when there were school activities, mid-terms, my students would be
absent from my class” (Fangyi’s second interview). Fangyi asked for the schedules from each
school, looked at them closely, and designed her lessons accordingly in the second semester, but
still there were occasions of students’ absence without prior notice from the school.
As a result, Fangyi had to accommodate those students who had been absent in the
subsequent class. She said, “When one was absent, I had to re-teach for the student next time,
because I couldn’t go there and help the student to make up. I had to re-teach within the 60
minutes I had,” but “for those who had learned in the previous class, I felt sorry, but I had to”
(Fangyi’s second interview).
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The mid-term evaluation helped Fangyi reflect on every aspect of her teaching, and she
realized that she should find ways about “…how to enable all students to be more motivated and
intrigue them to engage in class activities” (Fangyi’s journal in the fall). Thus, she worked on
increasing the students’ motivation in order to improve students’ interactions in her classes and
encourage their attendance.
Fangyi worked hard to learn from various sources. She talked with me while she was
working on her improvement project. As described in chapters four and five, I advised her to
improve her pedagogy and to make subject matter decisions on the basis of better understanding
of her students. She learned to increase students’ interactions instead of drilling and also tried to
connect her teaching to her students’ real lives.
She also talked with her mentor teacher. Fangyi said, “I discussed with my mentor to see
whether she had any comments” (Fangyi’s second interview). When asked about which aspects
of teaching Fangyi asked for her assistance in the fall, the mentor teacher answered,
“…understanding how American schools work, protocol, how the students… how do they work
and learn in the American schools” (Fangyi’s mentor interview). The mentor teacher “…tried to
explain the psyche of the American lesson and schools... you know, why they just don’t do it”
(Fangyi’s mentor interview).
Talking with the school counselors helped Fangyi to know more details about each student.
She noted,
Recently, I have talked to each school counselor to better understand some less-motivated
students, and even consult with a few students after class. These measures assist me to
better understand why some of the students cannot give their full effort to learn Chinese.
Some of the challenges that hinder my student’s learning include taking of a sick mom,
having a part-time job, and only interested in learning Chinese culture, to name a few.
(Fangyi’s journal in the fall)

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Moreover, Fangyi talked to her cohort in the certification program about students’
motivation. They shared with each other ideas of teaching and their understandings of U.S.
students, and they supported each other emotionally. When there were problems in one day’s
classes, Fangyi would first reflect on her teaching, but “if I couldn’t find the reasons, I would call
my cohort and talk with them. Sometimes they could give me some good feedback. Sometimes
there was nothing I could do” (Fangyi’s second interview).
Fangyi observed the students’ learning, talked to them, and did surveys to get to know what
they were thinking. Her mentor teacher also noted that “she did do several surveys during the
year, asking them how they thought things were going, what they liked, what they didn’t like”
(Fangyi’s mentor interview). Meanwhile, Fangyi tried some strategies to manage their behaviors.
Inspired by the posts by of other field instructors on the certification program’s learning website,
she decided to set up classroom rules:
I think that the students at the remote sites are less attentive and have more behavioral
problems than the ones in the broadcasting classroom because I have not worked with
them to set up reasonable rules and expectations. I will set up another time next week to
discuss appropriate behaviors in the classroom and the solutions for skipping class. Once
we agree on solutions, I will make a contract and have the students sign it. (Fangyi’s
journal in the fall)
Fangyi carried out her plan and her mentor teacher noticed this. She reported that Fangyi
“recently revised the classroom rules based on student input” (Fangyi’s mentor’s report for the
fall mid-term evaluation). When there were issues, Fangyi also talked about them with her
students, hoping that the students would learn to be more responsible about their behaviors.
However, this strategy did not work for all the students. “…this didn’t work for some
students. They are still young,” Fangyi said. Thus, she “…contacted the school counselor, the
principal. I contacted with the parents. I told them what I saw, what I observed about their child,”

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and “as time went by, some of the students changed,” but not all of them (Fangyi’s second
interview).
In addition to the factors mentioned above that negatively affected the students’ motivation
and attendance, there might be other reasons. First of all, some of the students selected the
Chinese course not because they were interested and wanted to learn, but because of something
else. As mentioned in chapter four, a girl selected Chinese in order not to be in the same
gymnastic class with her younger sister. More importantly, Fangyi believed that one very
important reason for students’ absence was that “an absence will not appear on a student’s record.
The students may know this policy; thus, they sometimes skip class without an excused reason.
After all, it will not affect them” (Fangyi’s journal in the fall).
Second, her class schedule might be another reason. Fangyi observed that “my Chinese class
starts at noon. This time presents additional learning barriers because the students become sleepy
after lunch. Instead of actively participating, they would rather remain seated in their chairs and
watch me entertain them” (Fangyi’s journal in the fall).
Third, a very important reason was perhaps that Fangyi was teaching ITV Chinese, which
made teaching and learning very challenging to Fangyi and her students. As described in chapter
four, Fangyi had to learn how to teach ITV classes, and it took her quite a while to adjust to this
kind of teaching mode. Her voice was delayed from her physical classroom to the remote sites,
which might have delayed and affected students’ participation. While she was learning to use the
machine, there were technological problems. At the beginning, Fangyi had to learn to adjust the
camera and the project so that the students could see the words on the flash cards clearly. In one
of the videos, it took Fangyi quite a few minutes to do this. She tried hard at first, but the
students still could not see the cards very clearly. Finally Fangyi had to ask a student in the same

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room to help her. Fangyi recalled that “it took me many weeks to figure out all these
technological problems” (Fangyi’s second interview). She was worried that these problems
would discourage the students’ learning. She noted, “…in my large class, we often encounter
some technical problems, which is frustrating for both me and my students” (Fangyi’s journal in
the fall). Another disadvantage of ITV teaching for Fangyi was that she could not see the
students’ facial expressions clearly. Neither could she intervene immediately even if she noticed
some students on the remote sites might need assistance. She said,
The biggest disadvantage of ITV teaching is that I cannot correct their behaviors or give
them immediate help. If I am in their physical classroom, I can immediately walk to a
student who is absent-minded; hence, he/she may become more alert in the class.
(Fangyi’s journal in the fall)
At the end of the fall semester, reflecting on her improvement project to increase students’
interactions, Fangyi believed that ITV teaching negatively affected her efforts. She wrote that “I
believe that if I can be in the remote site’s classrooms, the percentage of the students who
actively engaged in activities could be increased” (Fangyi’s journal in the fall). Fangyi’s mentor
teacher observed that “it’s probably three times more difficult what she did and how she taught,
as you don’t see the students face to face” (Fangyi’s mentor interview).
Fourth, Fangyi’s mentor teacher believed that some students’ low motivation was caused by
cultural differences between Fangyi and her students:
I think it was most cultural, cultural issues, understanding American students’ motivation
to learn or not learn. I think that was the most difficult thing for her, because I got the
sense that in China, it is pretty much drill drill drill. Whatever the teacher does, you do.
No questions, no free-will to say “I am not going to do that.” (Fangyi’s mentor interview)
The above quotation reveals two layers of “cultural differences” between teaching in China
and Taiwan and in the U.S.—one is about a teacher’s teaching approach, and the other is about

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students’ roles. The mentor teacher’s visit to a few of classrooms in China impressed her that
language teachers in China and Taiwan probably use more language drills than teachers in the
U.S. Fangyi’s teaching at the beginning of the fall indicates that she used many drills, as
described in chapter four. This approach works well in Taiwan, and the students know that they
should follow their teachers and practice. However, in the U.S., students are different, and they
do not necessarily follow their teachers, so Fangyi did not have knowledge of U.S. students’
learning styles.
Toward the end of the fall, Fangyi’s efforts helped her to know more about her students’
motivation and learning styles. Fangyi came to understand that “the students have different
learning styles. If they do not interact with me or their peers a lot, it does not mean that they are
not learning” (Fangyi’s journal in the fall). She was able to engage the students in class activities.
She noted,
Did this presentation motivate my students to put more efforts to learn Chinese? Yes,
most students changed their attitudes and have become more engaged than before. For
example, ××, ××, and ××, who did not actively participate regularly in class have tried to
answer questions in the class more often. (Fangyi’s journal in the spring)
Her mentor teacher recognized Fangyi’s efforts and noted that Fangyi had learned “more
about the difficulty of motivating students,” but Fangyi had been improving as she became “more
comfortable teaching high school students” (Fangyi’s mentor’s report for the fall final
evaluation). Thus, Fangyi looked to have “good control of the class” and was able to use “lots of
different ways to get all students to participate,” and the students seemed “more comfortable
speaking Chinese.” Overall, “Fangyi is improving her ability to engage the students in
activities—letting students work in class—gets them more engaged in materials. Also asks
students to answer questions and allow them to think,” the mentor wrote in the report. The

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mentor teacher was particularly impressed by one student’s improvement, and she was “amazed
at ××’s participation in the second hour! She has grown so much with the individualized
instruction” (Fangyi’s mentor’s report for the fall final evaluation).
In the spring, Fangyi was able to attend to individual students, and she accommodated their
individual needs and differentiated her instruction. Fangyi worked with well-performing students,
students who were failing, and students with some special needs in the spring semester.
Although Fangyi noted that she still had some difficulties in dealing with the students who were
in the same classroom with her, her mentor teacher believed that Fangyi “did a good job to
involve all students,” had “clear organization for the classes,” and the students did not have
“discipline problems and looked comfortable in the class” (my notes at the spring final
evaluation).
Learning to Manage Students’ Learning
Because of her prior teaching experience, Fangyi seemed familiar with classroom procedures
from the beginning of the fall semester. Her mentor teacher commented that “she was more
comfortable with the procedures. Taking attention, calling on students, and getting them
participate in the second, there wasn’t such an issue” (Fangyi’s mentor interview). The
description of her teaching in the first video in the section on her knowledge of pedagogy showed
that Fangyi was skillful at taking attendance—she combined the students’ self-introduction in
Chinese with her attendance-taking.
However, the students’ low motivation also affected their turning in their assignments in a
timely manner. In early October, Fangyi began to find that the students did not do their work or
did not turn in their assignments on time, which made Fangyi surprised and frustrated, because
she was not used to this situation. She recalled, “And the students may not turn in their
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homework. They don’t want to ask you questions very much…I have some teaching experience
already, but I still felt very frustrated at the very beginning, very frustrated” (Fangyi’s second
interview). Fangyi tried every strategy that she could think of to remind the students of their
homework, but it did not change the situation dramatically. Her mentor teacher observed that
“she was killing herself to get the students to do homework, then messaging them, reminding
them” (Fangyi’s mentor interview).
Along with her learning about motivating students, Fangyi sought help with students’
assignments from her mentor teacher and me. With our advice, she talked to the school counselor
to know more about the students, and she also talked to the parents on the phone. Because of the
structure of her teaching, Fangyi did not have other means of interacting with the parents, except
calling them, but she had “contacted parents with good reports of their students and also teacher
concerns regarding students” by the mid-term in the fall (Fangyi’s mentor’s report for fall midterm evaluation). She also had “respect for parents input into student performance” (Fangyi’s
mentor’s report for fall final evaluation).
As far as I know, Fangyi also shared with her cohort about their experiences with U.S.
students. She also tried to adjust her assignments for the students, as we discussed about different
types of homework at our field instruction meetings. Her mentor teacher also tried to have her
“…understand why they weren’t doing their homework. I tried to have her adjust her class so that
there wasn’t so much emphasis on homework” (Fangyi’s mentor interview).
While Fangyi was working on improving students’ motivation and making classroom
contracts with students, she also included rules about assignments in their contracts. Her mentor
teacher reported that “Fangyi has engaged the students in writing their class contracts for
completion of assignments and attendance” (Fangyi’s mentor’s report for the fall mid-term

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evaluation). This worked to a certain degree, but not dramatically, so sometimes Fangyi was still
discouraged at students’ late or missing assignments. Her mentor teacher also helped Fangyi to
understand her own role as a teacher,
So I think that was probably the biggest conversations always about… “Fangyi, you can’t
learn for them, they have to. You can give them, you can motivate them, you can make
your content interesting, but there has to be a point where the teacher is the teacher, and a
student is a student.” (Fangyi’s mentor interview)
With her progress in students’ motivation, pedagogy, and instructional content, Fangyi
seemed to have made some progress in terms of students’ assignments in the spring, and she
sounded happy about it when she mentioned that “all in all, students’ performance on this writing
task improved more than their first role-play skit. The most important changing was that eighty
percent of the students submitting their draft on time” (Fangyi’s journal in the spring).
In addition to her learning about students’ assignments and homework, Fangyi also learned
how to manage students’ grades and how to deal with seniors. At the beginning of the fall,
Fangyi attended the host school’s orientation for new teachers and received some guidance on
grading. Her mentor teacher recalled that “I think it was a half day for new teachers. She just got
how to do the grade book, kind of understanding, she got the first 60 days of teaching…”
(Fangyi’s mentor interview).
Because of her prior teaching experience, Fangyi seemed to do a decent job in organizing
and managing students’ progress and grades in the fall, although she had to learn how to integrate
ongoing assessment into her instruction, as discussed in chapter four. Her mentor teacher
observed that “she gives feedback to the students about their progress” (Fangyi’s mentor’s report
for fall mid-term evaluation). Toward the end of the fall, the mentor teacher noticed that Fangyi
was “willing to adjust throughout lessons” (Fangyi’s mentor’s report for fall final evaluation).

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However, in the spring, because the students were graduating, Fangyi was learning how to
manage their learning from her mentor teacher. “Second semester she was maybe just dealing
with students who were failing, because they were seniors, and they were failing,” Fangyi’s
mentor teacher recalled (Fangyi’s mentor interview). The mentor teacher also helped her to deal
with this type of students and to understand more about this issue:
What her responsibilities are to those students …will they graduate…if they won’t
graduate, you need to call the counselor. You need to tell them, you put it in reading
[writing], students may not pass Chinese, like fail, so just making sure that she
understood the consequences of failing someone, especially senior. (Fangyi’s mentor
interview)
With better understanding about her students from her work on students’ motivation, Fangyi
worked hard to include every student in her instruction and also to help those students who had
some difficulties. At the final evaluation in the spring, Fangyi illustrated how she had
accommodated a pregnant student and differentiated her instruction for the student. She also
addressed, and the mentor helped to explain, how she worked hard to help a boy student who was
failing, and she showed me these two students’ work at different stages.
However, Fangyi did not learn or did not have the opportunity to learn more about at least
the host high school’s expectation for students or for her teaching. She was hired by the
Intermediate School District, not by the host high school or its school district, so Fangyi was
often not informed of staff meetings, professional development workshops, or other school
activities. The mentor teacher commented that working with the Intermediate School District
instead of working at a school made it hard for new Chinese teachers to have the full experience
of teaching in U.S. public schools. She said,

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The difference is ITV teacher, in this and Fangyi wasn’t attached to a specific school. She
wasn’t part of this school faculty. She didn’t go to staff meeting. She wasn’t there…it is
hard to really kind of get the whole experience. (Fangyi’s mentor interview)
Thus, Fangyi did not have much contact with the school staff, especially the school’s
language teachers. Except the materials and textbook for Fangyi at the beginning of the fall, the
school did not give any guidance or have any requirements for her. Fangyi described her
experience to me and said, “Actually I feel like I was like a bird in the school. Nobody cared
about my schedule. I just came and say hello to the principal and to the staff. When the class was
finished, I left” (Fangyi’s second interview).
Fangyi consulted with the school counselor about the students several times during her first
year teaching, as mentioned above, but beyond that, she did not have interactions with other staff
or teachers. Fangyi’s mentor teacher tried to arrange for Fangyi to observe other foreign language
teachers at the host school, but there were time conflicts (my notes at the spring mid-term
evaluation). Moreover, Fangyi only worked in this school context part-time, which posed more
challenges for her. Fangyi’s mentor teacher acknowledged its impact on Fangyi’s teaching:
I think for Fangyi, it was normal progression, but I think she had a, in some cases, more
difficult times than maybe the Chinese teacher the year before who worked in the school
all day long. So I think that because she only taught two or three class versus somebody
that is working in the school all day. (Fangyi’s mentor interview)
Therefore, teaching part-time and teaching ITV Chinese did not enable Fangyi to have best
understanding of her students, meanwhile did not help her to get full experience of what a new
teacher would go through, and so made her first year of teaching a particularly difficult
experience.

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Similarities and Differences in Understanding and Managing Students
The four teachers shared some similarities and also had differences in understanding and
managing their students’ behaviors and their learning and in how they communicated with
parents to manage students’ learning. Cultural differences between them and their students also
influenced their socialization differently.
In Managing Students’ Behaviors
All four teachers had to face challenges in managing students’ behaviors in their first year of
teaching, but this did not seem to have affected them equally. Scott, Yalan, and Fangyi all had
some teaching experience before they started teaching in the fall of 2009, but data analysis
indicates that they had the most difficulties in classroom management. Although Tianyu was a
completely novice teacher, classroom management problems ranked last among his challenges.
This happened because Tianyu’s students were behaving well and also performing well
academically. Tianyu’s Chinese IB classes are an example. The students needed to have a GPA
higher than 3.0 to be admitted to the IB program (Tianyu’s spring mentor interview). As
described above, Tianyu’s spring mentor also mentioned that the students behaved very well.
Therefore, students’ misbehaviors negatively affected the development of Scott, Yalan, and
Fangyi, but Tianyu’s well-behaving students made Tianyu’s first year of teaching less daunting to
him, which also indicates that students can play very important roles in affecting or facilitating
new teachers’ socialization.
The reasons for the four teachers’ difficulties in managing students’ behaviors were various
and complex. For Scott, the students’ prior long-term academic failure might have been the most
important cause, and quite a few of his students were diagnosed as having ADD or ADHD.
Classroom management problems were one of the reasons why Scott left the school after he
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finished his first year of teaching, as he told me. The analysis above about Tianyu’s difficulties in
classroom management showed that being a complete novice teacher was an important factor.
Yalan and Fangyi had different situations, but the nature and structure of their classes added to
their difficulties in managing their students’ behaviors. For both of them, their classes were
elective, and the students did not take them very seriously. In Yalan’s class in the spring, the
students’ age and imbalanced genders and Yalan’s inexperience were all important factors.
Fangyi was not in the same room with many of her students, which made it very difficult for her
to manage the students.
The four teachers came to understand and manage their students’ behaviors in different ways.
Scott came to understand his students, including their social, cultural, academic, and family
backgrounds, by talking to his mentor teacher, the Spanish teacher next door, and the students
themselves. He also learned to deal with his students from his experience in the Army and in an
educational camp. Being a parent and being an American also helped him to communicate with
and understand his students. On the basis of these efforts, Scott tried to guide his students, and he
focused on cultivating and promoting positive learning habits and behaviors in his students.
Tianyu talked to and observed his students to get to know more about them, including their
learning styles and needs. He also shared his understandings about U.S. students with his cohort
in the certification program. With more knowledge of his students, he adjusted his teaching and
expectations to cater to his students, for example, with “games.” That is, Tianyu did not intend to
change or modify his students’ learning styles or behaviors. Instead, he was socialized by his
students in terms of how to teach them in the U.S.
Yalan’s prior teaching experience and perhaps her own status as a mother helped her greatly
in understanding young children. She gained more knowledge of her high school students’

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learning styles by teaching and interacting with them. Yalan administered surveys to get to know
her middle school students’ needs, and she interacted with them to understand their learning
styles. She talked to her spring mentor teacher and her colleagues in the building and in her
cohort. She also asked for help from the field instructor in order to improve her students’
behaviors. This way, Yalan’s experience seemed like a mixture of Scott’s and Tianyu’s, in that
she was both adapting to her students’ learning and trying to modify their behaviors.
Fangyi had experiences similar to Yalan’s. Fangyi also administered surveys to understand
her students’ learning styles, their progress, and their pace, and she adjusted her teaching
accordingly. In addition to observing and talking to her students, Fangyi also talked to the school
counselors and parents, trying to motivate the students to attend the classes and submit their
assignments on time. Thus, Fangyi also adapted to and modified her students’ behaviors.
It seemed that the four teachers’ backgrounds influenced their development in their
knowledge of students greatly and differently. Scott’s work experience and the fact that he is an
American might have helped him to be more proactive in modifying his students’ behaviors, but
from a different sub-culture than his students also affected Scott in managing his students. As a
complete novice teacher from a different culture, Tianyu seemed more passive toward his
students’ behaviors. Although he had some expectations for his students because of the influence
of his Chinese educational and cultural background, he was not firm enough to require his
students to meet his expectations, perhaps because he did not have enough time to be able to
understand U.S. culture and his school culture. Thus, novice teachers from a different culture like
Tianyu perhaps need more time to be able to identify students’ misbehaviors, to be more
assertive, and to play more active roles. Although Yalan and Fangyi had to gain knowledge of
students and they also adapted to their students’ learning, they were assertive enough to promote

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positive student behaviors and worked hard for that purpose, perhaps because of their teaching
experience. Therefore, their differences in their knowledge of students were caused by both their
cultural differences and their teaching experience.
In managing Students’ Learning
The four Chinese language teachers changed some of their teaching practices while they
were adapting to the students’ learning styles and learning to manage their learning. This way,
they were socialized to foreign language education in U.S. public schools by their students and
the various sources mentioned above. While the effects of the students’ influence were often
positive, they could also be negative. For example, Yalan made sure that she had every member
of a group work on one aspect of a group task in order to keep them from misbehaving, so all the
students were given a chance to practice the target language and thus had a positive influence on
their learning. However, with the help of his mentor teacher, Scott came to understand that his
students had long-term failure in literacy, and some of their misbehaviors were caused by family
issues, so he had to lower his expectations, slow down his pace, and structure his instruction.
Although the students behaved and learned better, they learned less than Scott had expected. The
same was true of Fangyi. Constrained by her ITV teaching, she had to slow down and adjust her
expectations, with advice from her mentor teacher.
The four teachers were different in their ways of learning to manage students’ learning.
Although Scott was aware that he had a different ethnic and cultural background from his
students, the broader American culture and his prior work experience facilitated his
understanding of his students. He was able to modify his teaching content to his students because
of his understanding about the bigger social context of the city. More importantly, Scott took
actions to change his students’ situations, including helping promote literacy in the school,
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providing parents with Chinese resources, and building a Chinese learning community with a
university in the city. In one of my conversations with him, Scott was aware that he was trying to
“transform” his context.
Tianyu was learning and adapting to the ways how he was supposed to manage his students’
learning, including learning the grading system, teacher’s responsibilities, and communicating
with parents. Although cultural differences might have affected this process, the fact that he was
a complete novice teacher might also have made him learn everything and still look passive.
Because of cultural differences, Yalan also had to learn more about managing her students’
learning in the spring, and her prior teaching experience also helped her to play a more active
role in developing and maintaining a good and professional relationship with parents. Fangyi’s
development was similar to Yalan’s. Fangyi knew how to perform her teacher’s responsibilities
because of her prior teaching experience, but she had to learn how to manage her U.S. students’
learning and ITV teaching. Fangyi had constrains in getting to know more about her students
because of the nature of her teaching, but she took initiative to approach her colleagues, and also
communicated with parents in a professional way. Therefore, their differences in their ways of
managing students’ learning were caused by their cultural and ethnic differences and their prior
work experience.
The four teachers were also different in how they interacted with parents to manage students’
learning. Scott contacted parents for both his students’ misbehaviors and their learning styles. He
also provided resources for parents and tried to involve them in his efforts to promote school
literacy. Tianyu was learning how to communicate with parents in the fall, and he sent students’
reports to parents in the spring. Parents helped Yalan with students’ assessment in the fall, and
they shared with Yalan about resources for Chinese learning in the area in the spring. Fangyi

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communicated with parents about her students’ misbehaviors and for more understandings of her
students.
While Scott, Yalan, and Fangyi seemed more active in communicating with parents, Tianyu
was more passive. Tianyu was more interested in performing a teacher’s responsibilities than
actively involving parents in his instruction, perhaps because he was a novice teacher and was
still learning how to communicate with parents. Thus, it may take a novice teacher some time to
develop the skills of interacting with parents.
Influence of Cultural Differences
All four teachers had to gain knowledge of the differences between their cultural
backgrounds and their students’, which negatively affected their teaching. The program instructor
recalled that “the new teachers are very shocked and surprised by the…casual and assertive
behavior of American kids, and don’t know quite how to deal with it” (program instructor’s
interview). While “culture” is a complicated concept and may mean quite different things to
different people, several layers of culture and/or different “cultures” were involved in the four
teachers’ learning to teach in their first year in this study. First of all, there are American,
Chinese, and Taiwanese cultures involved in the four teachers’ learning to teach, so cultures from
an anthropological perspective (which is defined by Alexander (2000) and cited in chapter two of
this study) were involved in these teachers’ learning to teach. Second, the four teachers were
teaching in different schools, and these schools each had their own “cultures,” and their students
of different age groups also had their own “cultures,” so the narrower sense of “culture,” as “any
sphere of activity to signal its distinctiveness and otherness” (Alexander, 2000, p. 164), was also
involved. These types of cultures were interwoven, and they made the four teachers’ learning to

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teach in their first year a very complicated process, because these cultures both facilitated or
negatively affected their socialization.
Scott is a European American from a state in the east, so he had to learn the social and
cultural backgrounds of his African American students in a big metropolitan city in a midwestern
state. Managing the students’ misbehaviors attracted much of his attention and energy and made
him struggle hard. Tianyu’s students were behaving well in general, but because of cultural
differences, Tianyu was not able to distinguish between his students’ minor misbehaviors and
normal “American” students’ behaviors. Both Yalan and Fangyi had at least five years of
teaching experience in a Chinese or Taiwanese community school in the U.S., but they also had
to learn about U.S. public schools’ and their students cultures. Cultural difference was also one
of the reasons for Yalan’s inadequate knowledge of students and her struggles in classroom
management, which led to embarrassing occasions for her. Fangyi’s students behaved well
during her class sessions, but she was discouraged by the students’ homework and attendance,
and she had to learn how to motivate her students. These issues undermined the effectiveness of
her teaching, because Fangyi used homework as an important step for students’ learning in her
prior cultural context.
The certification program tried to reduce the influence of cultural differences in their
orientation in China and in the summer courses by introducing some American students’
behaviors in their lectures during the pre-program training or showing the new cohort some
video-recorded classes of their preceding cohort in the summer courses, but such efforts seemed
to have only very limited positive effects. Tianyu did not know U.S. students better because of
the orientation in China. Part of their summer course on Chinese instructional methods was
overlapping with the summer course on classroom management for their preceding cohort. This

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way the teachers had the opportunity to watch their preceding cohort’s teaching and discuss with
their preceding cohort so that they might have some impression of U.S. students:
In the summer courses, we are trying to introduce some shared language…no, the first
thing is to try to reduce some…just surprising shock of the way classrooms look. That’s
the reason we are using the video in the summer courses, using videos of the preceding
cohort’s classes to reduce sort of shock, to form some images of what’s going on there,
strong and weak. (program instructor’s interview)
However, time was limited. The teachers only had several hours of such practice. Or perhaps
they still did not get a whole picture about what U.S. students looked like from the videos.
Probably that was why Fangyi’s mentor teacher suggested direct observations of U.S. students
for new Chinese language teachers:
I think the main thing is having some experience in the school or the high school. They
are go in the high schools, to be able to have some real observations in the classroom in
high school. Watch how teachers handle homework, how they handle classroom
management. I think that’s really important before they go in their own. (Fangyi’s mentor
interview)
So in language education, foreign language teachers may need to have the opportunities to
understand, observe, and have actual contact with U.S. students in public schools before they
start teaching, especially those teachers from a different culture than their students. This way,
foreign language teachers can better understand cultures of U.S. public school students, schools,
and bigger communities within which the schools are located, and thus they are more able to
connect their foreign language teaching to their students’ real lives when they actually start
teaching themselves.

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CHAPTER 7 DIFFICULTIES, CONFLICTS, AND THEIR IMPACTS
In this chapter, the difficulties that the four teachers had to face and the conflicts that were
involved in their first year of teaching in the certification program, in their schools, and at the
state level and nationwide are discussed. These conflicts seriously undermined the effectiveness
of the four teachers’ teaching and seriously affected their socialization.
Conflicts in and Difficulties Caused by the Certification Program
Various conflicts were involved in the certification program, which made the teachers not
well prepared for their teaching in their first year and also made it difficult for field instruction.
Moreover, their placement added another layer of challenges.
Teachers’ Lack of Preparation and Frustration
The previous chapters, from four to six, have revealed that the four teachers were not well
prepared for their first year of teaching, although they had taken the pre-program training in
China and/or had taken two courses in the summer—one on language instructional methods and
the other on curriculum. Chapter four and five show that the teachers had little knowledge of
language pedagogy and curriculum, and the two courses did not help them very much in these
two aspects of teaching, which made their first year of teaching quite daunting to them.
The main reason was that the two courses were theoretical or general, not specifically
targeted at foreign language instruction (and Chinese in this study), and they did not take the
teachers’ needs into consideration. From the teachers’ description about their experience in the
two courses, the course syllabi, and the core instructor’s explanation, it was clear that the two
courses were about some educational philosophies and teaching approaches, but did not address
second/foreign language instruction, not to mention Chinese teaching. Although Chinese

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instruction in U.S. K-12 schools was at its beginning, and there was not much literature or
resources, the four teachers’ development in their first year of teaching also showed that they did
not learn the fundamental concepts about second/foreign language instruction: listening, speaking,
reading, and writing. Yalan and Fangyi’s prior experience in teaching Chinese as a heritage
language in community schools in the U.S. helped them to have an easier start in the fall, but lack
of preparation in language instructional methods made Scott and Tianyu struggle.
Tianyu’s principal commented frankly at Tianyu’s lack of preparation in the summer. He
noted, “His summer work seemed to be far more abstract and theoretical and not highly relevant
to the experience he was about to undertake,” and as a result, “it seemed quite apparent that he
received little effective training toward this end in his summer work as concepts of lesson
planning, curricular design and assessment were foreign, at best,” so “quite frankly, he was not at
all prepared for this position or placement” (Tianyu’s principal’s report for the fall mid-term
evaluation). Thus, the principal was unhappy because they had to teach Tianyu how to teach and
“essentially, we’ve put him through a crash course in TED” (Tianyu’s principal’s report for the
fall mid-term evaluation).
Therefore, what the teachers learned from the two summer courses did not connect to what
they were going to teach in the fall. This led to the struggles of the new teachers like Tianyu and
Scott, especially for a complete novice teacher like Tianyu, because “I mean things were harder
for him because he learned all those theories, but when he got into the classroom, none of them
matched up. The kids were completely different” (Tianyu’s fall mentor interview).
While most of the teachers took the two summer courses before they started their teaching in
the fall, there were also teachers who came to the U.S. in September and went into the classroom
directly. One of them was in my second group of teachers. This teacher was a recent graduate and

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a complete novice like Tianyu. Obviously he had no idea about U.S. K-12 schools or teaching in
the U.S., so I had to spend more time with him and my second group of teachers, illustrating
language instruction from the very beginning. That was one of the reasons why my field
instruction was not over until 10:30 pm. Both the teachers and I were overwhelmed.
However, the certification program did not seem to be very supportive to the teachers, and it
made them frustrated and unhappy with the program. Field instruction started in the middle of
September, but in the first one or two weeks, the teachers asked questions such as their
enrollment, how to get permission to video-record their teaching, how to pay their credits, the
number of their credits, etc. I tried to ask them to turn to the certification program’s
administration so that I could focus on their teaching at our field instruction meetings, but the
teachers sounded discouraged, because they had tried, and nobody answered them. The other
field instructor and I tried to communicate with the program’s administration about the teachers’
questions, but the administrators looked unhappy. Thus, I had to show the teachers how to enroll
in a course at one of our field instruction meetings. As mentioned in chapter four, the teachers
were resistant at the beginning of the fall. They turned in their journals or videos late, or turned in
their videos in a format that I could not open. Although later they came to understand my role
and began to be cooperative with me, I also understood that many more issues were involved and
I was not able to help. In one of our talks, Scott described the certification program’s
administration as “hot-tempered,” and he believed that the certification program should be “reorganized.”
Limitations and Difficulties of Field Instruction
The structure of field instruction and the certification program’s administration put several
layers of challenges to field instructors, which made field instruction ineffective in the fall,
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especially at the beginning of the fall, when the teachers were confused and needed guidance
badly.
First of all, the field instructors’ responsibilities were not clearly specified, and that caused
the field instructors’ confusions and misunderstandings between the field instructors and the
certification program’s administration, and consequently negatively affected field instruction.
The course syllabus was confusing, so the other field instructor and I had to ask the certification
program about our responsibilities, for example, how we were supposed to watch the teaching
videos. The immediate response was seven-minute segments of the teaching videos, perhaps
because both field instructors were graduate students and worked for a certain number of hours,
but that turned out to be not effective. Almost every time the teachers had questions about field
instruction at the beginning, the field instructors had to go back and forth between the teachers
and the administration.
Second, because of the structure of field instruction, what I could see and know about the
teachers’ teaching was limited, as discussed in the previous chapters. However, even if I
identified some issues, I was confused about how much I could do to change and improve the
teachers’ practice. All four teachers in this study worked hard to learn from field instruction, but
there were cases in which it did not work well when a teacher was not convinced by field
instruction. Sometimes I found serious problems in a teacher’s teaching and suggested how the
teacher could improve, but the teacher did not agree that there were problems, so the progress
was slow. Occasionally this led to serious problems in a teacher’s teaching and the school/the
school district talked to the certification program about the teacher’s problems, and the
certification program’s administration blamed the field instructors. Thus, I was sometimes
confused by how much a field instructor could do, how far I should go to ask the teachers to

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improve, and what my role was as a field instructor in teachers’ learning and socialization,
especially when the teachers had little knowledge of teaching.
Third, the online field instruction was further limited by lack of contact with the schools, so
the teachers’ learning to teach was affected. As frequently mentioned in the previous chapters, if
the teachers did not report their difficulties in their journals or videos, or if they did not know
which kinds of challenges should be reported to field instruction, it was hard for field instructors
to identify those issues. The evaluation conferences with Tianyu’s principal and his spring
mentor teacher were helpful for me to know more about Tianyu’s teaching and struggles.
However, the other schools did not provide much information about the teachers’ challenges at
the evaluation conferences, perhaps because the teachers were also present. Except for these
evaluation conferences, there were no other opportunities for field instructors to know more
about the teachers’ performance in their schools, unless a teacher was in serious trouble and the
school talked to the certification program’s administration.
All of these factors made field instruction very challenging to the field instructors, and also
made it ineffective, especially at the beginning of the fall, when both the field instructors and the
teachers had to face tremendous difficulties. Although in the spring semester, the field instructors
added readings to “re-teach” language instruction and the teachers also worked hard to learn from
those readings while they were teaching, being a teacher and student simultaneously made the
teachers overwhelmed and exhausted.
Difficulties and Conflicts in Schools
The schools and school districts had different mentoring practices and different expectations
for the teachers. Meanwhile, the Chinese programs in the schools/school districts were varied.
These made the teachers’ teaching and socialization more challenging.
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Mentoring Practices
Seemingly the certification program considered mentor teachers to be very important to the
certification program, and counted much on the mentor teachers:
I think it is very good that we have a voice coming from a person in the building who is
around a lot of times and who has opportunities that could deal more than we do. It’s like
relying on the mentor teachers in the rest of the program. (program instructor’s interview)
However, mentoring practices varied across schools and school districts, and the mentor
teachers did not seem to share the same views as the certification program.
Different mentoring practices. As described in chapter three, the mentor teachers were from
schools or districts or an Intermediate School District, and they had different understandings
about mentoring and assumed different styles while they were working with the teachers. Some
mentor teachers visited the teachers’ classes and worked with the teachers more often, but other
mentor teachers visited a couple of times each semester and the teachers did not have many
opportunities to work with their mentor teachers.
Scott’s mentor teacher worked in the same school with Scott. Scott met with his mentor
every week to discuss classroom management and the students. The mentor teacher recalled, “I
met with Scott weekly along with the rest of the faculty. But I also met with Scott, just one on
one, probably once every two weeks. Scott is very high-function. I mean he didn’t need a lot of
hand-holding (Scott’s mentor interview). According to Scott,
I met with my mentor once a week at least. We had a regular meet once a week, or we
just eat lunch together so had a chance to talk. Then any time beyond that I had
issues…she…because of her role…she was…she was kind of role of a counselor in
there…not a counselor, but she did a lot of counselor duties, because she knew the kids.
So if there was an issue with one of the kids, any discipline problems, I kind of thought
that I would go and had an extra conversation, in addition to the once-a-weeks. (Scott’s
second interview)

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When he needed help in dealing with a specific student, Scott also turned to his mentor to
know more about the student and for some advice. His mentor also observed his teaching and
talked to him about her observations. She said, “I did informal observation about once a month,
and I did a formal observation of him at least once each trimester” (Scott’s mentor interview).
Both of the mentors were with Tianyu in his classroom in the fall and spring, respectively,
when Tianyu was teaching at the IB school. They talked to Tianyu about whatever issues they
noticed in Tianyu’s teaching, including organizing a class, lesson planning, assessment, etc.
Those were often casual talks while the students were working by themselves, during the break
or after school. Tianyu’s fall mentor teacher also had meetings with Tianyu to help with his
curriculum and lesson planning in particular, but the spring mentor did not have a common
planning time or a time for formal meetings. Because of his tight schedule, Tianyu did not have a
chance to observe either of his mentors’ teaching.
Fangyi’s mentor teacher was from an Intermediate School District. The mentor teacher took
Fangyi to the host high school’s orientation and helped her to get familiar with the equipment for
ITV teaching. Even before the fall semester began, the mentor teacher and Fangyi met with each
other so that Fangyi could have some ideas about U.S. schools. The mentor teacher recalled,
Before school started, every two or three days. And then almost every day in the
beginning because I was driving her. I would observe her classes, then we would meet,
probably for the first ten days. Then at least once a week for the first six weeks, at least.
(Fangyi’s mentor interview)
The mentor teacher also visited Fangyi’s class very often to make sure that Fangyi was
adapting ITV teaching well:
We met more often at the beginning in the first semester, because she was wondering
whether I could get used to this kind of teaching, and things about the student, so we
talked very often. Then she had been mentoring me about how to teach this ITV class
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until she felt it was ok then. Later she didn’t come very often, unless I took initiative to
ask for her help. (Fangyi’s second interview)
Yalan prepared and taught the social studies classes with her fall mentor teacher in the fall,
and they often talked after class. Yalan noted that “I observed his class, he observed mine, and
gave me all kinds of advice and suggestions. I think these are very helpful to me and my
teaching” (Yalan’s second interview). “Well I was there in the class every time. Yeah. I observed
everything. She has any questions, and I give my comments to assist her,” the mentor teacher
said (Yalan’s fall mentor interview). Thus, Yalan’s fall mentor teacher looked more like a
cooperating teacher or a co-teacher, but his mentoring was particular rather than common in my
two groups of teachers.
However, Yalan’s spring mentor from the school district was supposed to work with Yalan
for only 10 hours in the spring semester, and the scope of their work was clearly delineated:
I don’t even work in the same school as she does. Mine is to help her be acclimated to the
school district, help her understand what is…you know, what her responsibilities are as a
teacher in ×× public school, but I have nothing to do with her guidance of developing as a
teacher, lesson plans, curriculum. (Yalan’s spring mentor interview)
Clearly the nature and time of mentoring for Yalan in the spring did not match the
expectation of mentoring of the certification program, so Yalan’s learning from her spring
mentor teacher was limited. Perhaps that was one of the reasons Yalan had to turn to whoever
she could grab when she needed immediate help.
Limitations of mentoring practices. Although mentor teachers worked hard with the teacher
in the certification program, there were limitations. First of all, not all mentor teachers were
teaching. For example, Scott’s mentor teacher was an administrator and school counselor, so
their work focused on understanding and managing students, and Scott could not learn much

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about teaching from his mentor teacher. Fangyi’s mentor teacher worked at the Intermediate
School District, so there were some aspects of Chinese teaching that she could not help Fangyi
with very much. Fangyi said, “I guess my mentor can’t give me too many teaching suggestions,
since she is not a language teacher. In the past, she was a school consultant” (Fangyi’s second
interview).
Second, many mentor teachers were not language teachers, so what the teachers could learn
from their mentor teachers about language teaching was inadequate. Tianyu’s fall mentor teacher
was an English teacher, and she tried to help Tianyu in the fall, but what she could do was
limited, as Tianyu’s official mentor commented:
I think she really try to help him, went online, try to look up a lot of resources to help him,
but obviously she doesn’t have the pedagogy and methodology of foreign language
learning, just very different than teaching English, teaching literature, things like that.
(Tianyu’s spring mentor interview)
Yalan’s fall mentor teacher was a social studies teacher. Although Yalan learned much from
her fall mentor teacher, she also recognized that teaching in a social studies class and teaching a
foreign language were very different, so she had to work hard on language instructional methods
in the spring.
Third, none of the mentor teachers were Chinese language teachers, so the teachers were not
able to talk about curriculum and subject matter decisions with their mentor teachers. This was
one of the reasons why Scott regretted not teaching Pinyin or Chinese characters in his first year
of teaching. Yalan’s spring mentor teacher was a Spanish teacher, but because of the nature of
her mentoring and the time limit, Yalan was not able to talk with her about her curriculum, as
indicated above. Although Tianyu’s spring mentor teacher was a Japanese language teacher, as
the mentor recognized, there were things that could be improved to better help Tianyu. She said,

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…even though he had some support here at school, but I don’t teach…the fact that I don’t
know Chinese. I know how to teach a foreign language, but I don’t know the details about
Chinese culture… the differences in the language, teaching characters, I can't help him
with… the grammar I know is very different than Japanese. (Tianyu’s spring mentor
interview)
Thus, Tianyu’s spring mentor teacher continued to comment that it would be very helpful
for Tianyu to work with Chinese language teachers. She noted,
They can talk about how do you teach the past tense or I don’t know, the different sorts of,
maybe some more complicated, you know, we have positive or passive in Japanese,
which is very hard to teach. How you teach that. It’s unique to the language. (Tianyu’s
spring mentor interview)
However, when the teachers were actually teaching, they did need a more experienced
Chinese teacher, or at least a language teacher around, so that they could better learn how to
teach a foreign language. Although I could advise them to observe other language teachers if
possible, their tight schedules or their difficult contexts often did not allow that to happen. That’s
why Scott emphasized the necessity to have an experienced language teacher as a mentor in one
of our talks. He further explained,
I think the more Chinese teachers get to know their American colleagues, and learn from
experienced good teachers, I think the faster they will become better teachers, because I
really think most Chinese teachers, whether they are here in the states, born and raised
here, or just come within the past year, I think all of us want to do well, really desire to
succeed. Even the ones that failed, they don’t fail because they want to fail. They failed
because they don’t know what to do, how to do things…somehow we need to find a way
to connect the good experienced teachers within American schools with new struggling
Chinese teachers that don’t know what to do and want to learn. (one of my follow-up
talks with Scott)
Therefore, perhaps the mentoring practice could have been improved to better assist the
teachers’ learning to teach and to facilitate their socialization into the foreign language teaching
profession, and also to make the certification program more successful.

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Different Chinese Programs
As indicated in the previous chapters, the Chinese programs where the four teachers and
their cohort worked varied across different schools and districts. Often one school had one to
three Chinese classes, but most of the teachers were expected to work full-time, so it was
common for the teachers to travel between schools. Moreover, their schedules were tight and did
not leave them much time to prepare for or reflect on their teaching.
Throughout the first year, Scott taught seven classes each weekday except Wednesdays,
when he had to prepare for his classes, attend school conferences, and go to workshops, etc.
Meanwhile, he took the courses in “Field Experience” from the Chinese teacher certification
program, and he had a family to take care of. Because of this, Scott had a hard time adjusting to
his tight and busy schedule, especially at the beginning of the fall semester:
I think the toughest thing the past few weeks is that I’m still adjusting to my schedule. On
the days where I’m introducing new material and I have to repeat it so many times, it
really makes me fatigued!! I find myself falling asleep at around 8:30, just after my kids!!
(Scott’s journal in the fall)
Such a situation affected Scott negatively in a couple of ways. First, the busy schedule and
the stress also made him less patient; as he noted, “I’ve found that Tuesdays and Fridays are
especially exhausting for me because of my minimal breaks on M-Tue and Th-Fri. I would like to
see myself be more relaxed and patient with my students” (Scott’s journal in the fall). His tight
schedule also made him tired. He wrote, “I think perhaps MY fatigue level might be affecting the
situation as well. By 6th hour, I’m already kind of tired, so I have less patience to deal with the
behavior problems” (Scott’s journal in the fall).
Second, Scott did not have enough time to design different lesson plans for his seven classes
at two levels of Chinese. He explained, “…because of my time limitation, I basically was

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planning…I was planning for two different classes, two different levels” (Scott’s second
interview). Lack of time was also one of the reasons why the class, which learned fast, could not
get further guidance from Scott, in addition to lack of resources. Scott commented, “I could’ve
taken that class farther, but the time…I didn’t really have the resources, and I didn’t have the
planning time in order to be able to do that” (Scott’s second interview).
Tianyu taught five classes in three schools in his first year of teaching, so he had to travel
between these three classes every day. These schools had different expectations for Chinese
classes, which made them difficult for a novice teacher to handle, especially the IB school. As
described in the previous chapters, the IB Chinese program expected Tianyu to write an IB
Chinese curriculum and prepare the students for the IB Chinese test, but for a long time, Tianyu
did not realize this. Neither did he have enough resources to meet the school’s expectations.
Similar to Scott, Yalan looked for a place to teach on her own and faced many challenges.
She searched almost the whole area where she lived in order to find a school where she could do
her internship and meet the requirements of the Chinese teacher certification program (Yalan’s
second interview). However, there were not many Chinese programs in K-12 schools at that time.
The only Chinese class was taken by an intern from one of the universities in her area. Because
of her prior teaching experience, Yalan finally was able to teach the Chinese part of social studies
in a public school and two Chinese classes for kindergarten children at an after-school children
center and a Chinese community school. The certification program approved her teaching plans.
Although Yalan was successfully accepted to teach Chinese to the middle school class when
the program was started in the spring, she also had a bad experience. Because of the tight budget,
the school decided to end the Chinese program and lay off some teachers of other programs, so
Yalan was the first one to receive the notice that she would be laid off in early April of 2010.

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Yalan was very discouraged and upset at that time. She was called back to teach the same class
the next fall only because the students and parents wanted to keep the Chinese program. On the
other hand, because Yalan looked for her teaching on her own, she was not considered one of the
CI’s employees. When she asked the certification program some questions, often the answer she
got was that “you are not our employee, so…” That made Yalan quite upset, and she did not have
the feeling of belonging to the certification program.
Fangyi’s teaching was assigned by the CI, but she had different opinions from the
certification program’s administration about how many classes she would teach in her first year,
which made the administration very unhappy with her. The CI wanted her to teach full-time in
the fall, but Fangyi felt it was overwhelming, because she was learning how to teach Chinese in
U.S. high schools, and she had to learn how to teach the ITV Chinese program. She was worried
that teaching full-time would negatively affect the quality of her teaching. Therefore, Fangyi
negotiated with the CI and finally was approved to teach part-time in her first year of teaching,
which was unique in her cohort. However, unlike most of her cohort, Fangyi only had a one-year
contract with the CI to teach instead of a three-year contract, so she left after she finished her first
year of teaching.
The four teachers had to face different challenges because of the nature of their teaching.
Scott and Tianyu taught full-time in their internship and first year of teaching, so Scott did not
have enough time to prepare for his seven classes, and Tianyu did not have the time and
experience to design an IB curriculum. Yalan and Fangyi worked part-time, but they also had
their challenges of learning to teach and their conflicts with the certification program’s
administration. On the other hand, they had to face different challenges in their school contexts,
but it was hard for new teachers, especially new teachers from another culture. Scott observed

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that “I have the advantage of understanding American school systems, how American students
work, and I also have the advantage of understanding the politics of American culture,” but “I
think a lot of times Chinese teachers in American culture don’t understand the politics of
American culture,” so they “…missed opportunities and advantages that you might be able to
gain” (one of my follow-up talks with Scott). Nevertheless, all four teachers managed to survive
their first year of teaching, but they were all burned out.
Their varied and particular teaching situations and contexts also posed challenges to field
instruction. Despite their misunderstandings about field instruction and the chaos of field
instruction at the beginning of the fall, I had to learn each of their situations first, because each of
my nine teachers was in a particular context. For example, one of the teachers taught hundreds of
kindergarten and elementary students and also high school. When she asked me how to
remember all her students’ names at the beginning of the fall, I could not provide a good answer.
Therefore, the teachers’ various teaching contexts affected the effectiveness of field instruction,
and in turn added difficulties to their learning to teach.
Difficulties and Conflicts at State Level and Nationwide
The introduction and review in the first chapter indicates that currently Chinese is considered
an important world language in the U.S., and schools are making efforts to establish Chinese
courses. However, the relevant policies and guidelines are missing, and resources and references
are also needed for setting up Chinese programs. Meanwhile, the structures of world language
programs make it even more challenging for Chinese language teachers when they are involved
in starting a new Chinese language program in a secondary U.S. school.

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Developing Chinese Language Programs
As frequently indicated in the previous chapters and above, Chinese courses in U.S. K-12
schools are beginning to develop, and schools are exploring different models of Chinese
programs. This adds another layer of challenges and difficulties to new Chinese language
teachers while they are being socialized into the foreign language teaching profession in the U.S.
They are new teachers, but in the meantime, they have to assume the leadership roles in their
Chinese language programs, which is quite daunting to them. For example, Yalan had to be one
of the two Chinese language teachers who were teaching and making efforts to design a Chinese
curriculum for the school district, as her spring mentor teacher mentioned. Yalan also told me
that she was also working with the other Chinese language teacher to design a common Chinese
assessment for the school district.
Even in an established educational program like the IB, guidelines and resources for its
Chinese program were scarce. Although Tianyu received the IB Chinese syllabus and was
designing an IB Chinese curriculum in the spring, he also recognized that the syllabus and the IB
Chinese exam had very high expectations, but he had no resources to meet these goals. Tianyu
noted that other IB world language programs have many resources, but he had to create
everything for his IB Chinese program. This made his first year of teaching tremendously
challenging to him. Still he was not sure whether the students could achieve what is laid out in
the IB Chinese syllabus within their four years of Chinese study. For example, one of the
requirements is that students should be able to write a 300-word Chinese essay for an assigned
topic, but Chinese character writing has been recognized to be the hardiest part of U.S. students’
learning of Chinese. Tianyu was concerned that if the students could not pass the IB Chinese test,

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it would discourage the students from enrolling in the IB Chinese language program, and
eventually affect the IB Chinese language program in general.
Structure of World Language Programs
The structure of world language programs makes the contexts difficult for Chinese language
teachers. With the Chinese language growing as one of the world languages in U.S. secondary
schools, it and actually often its Chinese language teachers have to face the competition and
complaints from other world language teachers. This further contributes to their difficulties in
learning to teach Chinese in the U.S., especially when they are not well prepared for their
teaching.
Both Yalan’s fall and spring mentor teachers mentioned that there was resistance from other
language programs. Both of them talked about the unfavorable environment for Chinese
programs in the public schools of the school district. In contrast to students’ enthusiasm to learn
Chinese and parents’ hope to start Chinese programs in the area, “…there is a wide spread of
prejudice against teaching Chinese from other world language teachers for a variety of reasons”
(Yalan’s fall mentor interview). Yalan’s fall mentor teacher noted that “there are some points
where there is a degree of resistance. There tends to be enthusiasm among the community of
students. There is still a great deal of resistance in world language departments, from other world
language teachers” (Yalan’s fall mentor interview).
The major reasons for other world language teachers’ objections to Chinese programs are
related to the educational system for world language programs in U.S. K-12 schools. Different
from other subjects in K-12 schools, there is competition among different world language
programs. If there are not enough students to enroll in a world language, this language program
would be cancelled and the teachers would lose their jobs. However, the number of students is
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fixed for a school, so other world language teachers fear that Chinese programs would attract
students so that they would not have enough students and thus would lose their jobs, as Yalan’s
mentor in the fall illustrated:
…in the American educational model, every language teacher is in essence competing
against every other language teacher. Whatever courses have enrollment stay, and those
courses drop enrollment, they go away. The teachers are in essence competing for their
jobs. They are confident that they can attract enough students to enroll. There’ll be
enough students want to take French or Spanish, but they are fearful of the competition
from Chinese will drop their enrollment. (Yalan’s fall mentor interview)
As a result, other world language teachers have very unfavorable views about Chinese
language programs. Actually they tried to stop introducing Chinese programs to K-12 schools, or
at least to secondary schools in the area, so they spread the prejudice that Chinese is too hard for
American students to learn, especially in high schools:
Then others feel that the language [Chinese] is too hard to teach at the high school level
unless students start when they are in first grade or kindergarten. You know, it is useless
to teach it because it is impossible to learn for older students. (Yalan’s fall mentor
interview)
Yalan’s fall mentor teacher also gave me an example about a Chinese language teacher he
knew. The teacher was teaching Chinese in Chicago, and “…these issues have been a struggle for
her every year she’s been there. There was tremendous…a hostile over there” (Yalan’s fall
mentor interview).
However, because of the requests from parents and students, the school district started one
lower-level Chinese program in a high school in 2009, and the other one in a middle school in
the spring of 2010 (the one taught by Yalan). Then the other world language teachers began to
complain that Chinese language teachers were not prepared or certified, and the school district
should not continue with Chinese programs. Yalan’s spring mentor teacher was also the

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chairperson of the foreign language programs in the school district. She pointed out that lack of
student teaching experience led the Chinese teachers to a very unfavorable situation in the area:
That’s why I said the Chinese teachers are at a huge disadvantage because they don’t
come prepared as student teachers. They have not done student teaching before they are
hired, which means they have to jump into being first-year teachers without having the
experience of student teaching. And so they are at a huge disadvantage because all the
other language teachers have to go through a minimum of a semester of student teaching
after they have done pre-student teaching. (Yalan’s spring mentor interview)
As a result, the school district had to work on the issue. Yalan’s mentor teacher noted,
So, on the district part, it’s like…you know, they have to do a lot more interventions on
behalf because it’s…they can’t expect the same out of the first-year Chinese teachers as
they could out of Latin, German, or French, or Spanish. (Yalan’s spring mentor interview)
However, the mentor teacher was concerned about this situation, because what the school
district could do was very limited, and it was possible that such situations would become worse if
Chinese language teachers were not better prepared:
But, you know, as I was honestly there, there are a lot of negative vibes. And I don’t think
it’s directly towards the Chinese teachers as much as it is…you know, one…it’s a new
language and so…you know, other languages feel threatened…like…why are doing
Chinese? And then the issue of…you know, we are hiring teachers that don’t have the
preparedness as others. Is that fair? Is that right? (Yalan’s spring mentor interview)
The mentor teacher was worried that such situations would in turn affect the school district’s
decision about whether to further develop or continue with Chinese programs in the area. She
said, “But I will be honest. That’s what is happening. I mean I know, for now, we have Chinese
lower levels, but there is a lot skepticism about growing it because of the preparedness of the
teachers” (Yalan’s spring mentor interview).

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The mentor teacher acknowledged that one of the reasons she did the interview with me was
that she hoped the Chinese teacher certification program in this study could get to know the
situation and improve the program in order to better prepare the teachers:
I guess I said I want to help your program, because as mentioned earlier, I don’t want a
negative connotation to come across of as schools and school districts are developing
their Chinese programs…for them to get an idea that why would we want to start a
Chinese program because the Chinese teachers are not prepared, and it’s a lot of headache
and extra work to hire them because they are not ready. And I don’t want that to start as a
trend, because then your program would never be able to grow. (Yalan’s spring mentor
interview)
Therefore, Yalan’s mentor teacher further expressed her wish explicitly in the interview. She
hoped that this study could help inform the Chinese teacher certification program and the
importance of preparing the teachers well:
I think it’s good for you to take that back to your program and say, “This is why my
student was struggling so much.” So I think that’s good as far as an avenue for you to
show your program and see what are some good things, what are something you need to
work on for your program… So I think this is good so that you know, as an educational
experience, to learn what would be best to prepare the teachers to become Chinese
teachers, because if we don’t start those Chinese teachers on the right foot, it’s really
gonna to hurt the program in the end. It is, because if we were hiring new Chinese
teachers that are unprepared to be teachers, districts are going to be more inclined to cut
the program. (Yalan’s spring mentor interview)
Therefore, lack of preparation not only posed huge challenges and difficulties to the four
teachers and made their first year of teaching daunting to them, they were also left on their own
to cope with the doubts and resistance from other world language programs, which would
perhaps eventually hurt the development of Chinese language teachers and Chinese as a world
language in U.S. K-12 schools. On the other hand, if the Chinese certification program received
an unfavorable reputation, as Yalan’s spring mentor teacher noted, it would also eventually

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negatively affect development of the Chinese teacher certification program and even the College
of Education where the certification program is located.
After their first year of teaching, Scott switched to anther school in the same school district,
and Fangyi left to continue with her study, not to teach Chinese, so both of their Chinese
programs were discontinued. Tianyu left after he finished his second year of teaching because of
his visa issues, and Yalan began to teach in high school. However, none of them sounded happy
at their experience in the Chinese teacher certification program. Scott said, “…as long as the
program stays the same, it gonna to be very hard to take away the huge burden that’s on the firstyear teachers,” because “you are counting on getting really really good people that are working
really really hard and willing to endure the overwhelming amount of responsibilities placed on
those teachers in their first year” (one of my follow-up talks with Scott). He added quite frankly,
“I don’t think the program, as it stands right now, is designed well to help teachers succeed.”
Therefore, the Chinese teacher certification program may need to be improved to better prepare
teachers.

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CHAPTER 8 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
In analyzing and comparing the four teachers’ socialization from chapter four to seven, I
discussed how their teacher knowledge was developed and re-constructed and the challenges they
faced. The chapters also show that the teachers were actively involved in their socialization
processes and that they resisted and/or transformed the practices of the communities in which
they were being socialized, and thus counter-influenced their immediate contexts. In this chapter,
implications of the four teachers’ development and socialization into the foreign language
teaching profession are discussed, in connection with fields of language teacher education,
including Chinese language teacher preparation, and mainstream teacher education. Specifically,
I focus on the influence of their backgrounds, the certification program, and their schools in the
teachers’ socialization into the profession in the U.S.
The Role of Teachers’ Backgrounds
This study’s findings are both similar to and different from those in the fields of language
teacher education and mainstream education in terms of the influence of the teachers’
backgrounds on their teaching. This study found that teachers’ backgrounds have an important
impact on their teaching, but the effect may be limited or not necessarily greater than the impact
of their preparation in teacher education programs. Although non-native speakers and native
speakers differ from each other, their dissimilarity does not seem to affect the effectiveness of
their teaching significantly.
In Mainstream Education
The influence of the teachers’ backgrounds has been an important focus of research on
teacher socialization. Zeichner and Gore (1990) summarized three approaches that try to explain

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why teachers’ backgrounds play important and even decisive roles in their teaching: the
“evolutionary,” the “psychoanalytic,” and “apprenticeship of observation” (p. 332-334). However,
in the field of mainstream education, the approach represented by Lortie (1975) has been
researched more. This approach believes that teachers’ many years of apprenticeship when they
are students are more important than teacher education programs in shaping their teaching.
Although Zeichner and Gore (1990) also noted that teachers’ backgrounds may “exert some
influence but do not totally determine socialization outcome” (p. 335), recent qualitative and
quantitative research (e.g., Achinstein, Ogawa, and Speiglman, 2004; Alhija & Fresko, 2010)
continues to find the important and even decisive roles of teachers’ prior experience and
apprenticeship in their teaching and socialization. However, this study found that the influence of
teachers’ experiences as students may last for only a limited period of time, or may influence
only some aspects of their teaching; during their development as teachers, the teachers also gave
up some influences from their backgrounds if they were not compatible with their teaching, and
they kept those that facilitated their teaching.
There may be several reasons for the differences in the roles of teachers’ apprenticeship and
backgrounds in studies like Lortie’s (1975) and this study. First, in the 1970s teacher education
programs were not yet well-developed, so they might not have been able to change teachers’
views significantly or to exert a very strong impact on teachers. Lortie (1975) observed that
“‘professional preparation’ is comparatively recent in its development and that there are few
evidences of major technical change in the conduct of instruction” (p. 56). He further pointed out,
“Although there is some variation by level (programs of elementary education tend to have more
education requirements), education undergraduates probably spend, on the average, somewhere
between one and two years of equivalent full-time study on specialized courses (Conant, 1963)”

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(p. 58). Compared to teachers’ many years of apprenticeship, teacher education programs,
especially at their early stage, might not be able to alter teachers’ predispositions effectively and
efficiently within one or two years. Nowadays, however, teacher education programs are much
more developed and thus perhaps can play more importantly roles in teachers’ preparation.
Second, “new teachers” in the studies which take the approach of apprenticeship (e.g.,
Achinstein, Ogawa, and Speiglman, 2004; Alhija & Fresko, 2010; Lortie, 1975) and in this study
are different. Teachers in those studies usually went to college and took education courses
immediately after their graduation from high school, and then started teaching soon after they
finished their study in teacher education programs. However, the teachers in this study often
worked or taught for several years (Scott, Yalan, and Fangyi) before they began their first year of
foreign language teaching in the certification program. Perhaps that was why Scott could not
remember his language learning experiences in high school, and so the influence was weak.
Although Nias (1986) found that teachers’ personal experience influences them even after nine
years of their teaching, more research is needed to provide evidence on this. Or perhaps because
this study only investigated the four teachers’ first year of teaching, the impact of their
backgrounds had not shown up yet during the period of this study. Thus, Zeichner and Gore
(1990) also pointed out the need to investigate teachers who enter the teaching profession in
alternative ways and with longitudinal research on the influence of teachers’ apprenticeship and
other work experience on their teaching over time.
Third, perhaps the most important difference is that the studies of apprenticeship have
focused on teachers who were born, grew up, and were educated in the U.S., or in the same
countries where they were teaching, whereas the teachers in this study are from different cultures,
but all were teaching in the U.S. Teachers in the same culture are used to what is going on in

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schools, their practices are consistent with schools’ expectations, and they work reasonably well
in their classrooms, with not much resistance from their students or not many perceived
unacceptable practices by their mentors or cooperating teachers. It takes time for a new idea or
practice to be accepted by people, not to mention teacher education programs trying to promote
many approaches or methods which may be different from what new teachers are used to.
However, when teachers are from different cultures, they perceive cultural differences
themselves directly, and their different ways of teaching immediately attract attention from their
mentor teachers in the host culture/country. These teachers’ prior ways of teaching do not work
in a different cultural setting, so they are more ready to learn and accept teaching approaches in
the host culture, and their backgrounds thus cease to play a more important role than their
preparation in the host culture’s teacher education programs.
Fourth, the teachers in studies of the apprenticeship influence are often mainstream teachers
(e.g., Achinstein, Ogawa, and Speiglman, 2004; Alhija & Fresko, 2010), while the teachers in
this study are foreign language teachers, whose medium of instruction should be the language
they teach (Hammadou & Bernhardt, 1987). In some studies (e.g., Achinstein, Ogawa, and
Speiglman, 2004; Grossman & Shulman, 1994), the participants are English teachers; their
subject matter is also different from other subjects (e.g., math) and poses complex challenges for
them. However, English is the teachers’ and students’ first language, and the teachers and
students share the same cultural background. Because foreign language teachers teach a language
that students do not use in their daily lives, and the target culture is also different, the teachers
have to be sensitive to the differences between students’ first language and the target language
and culture. Therefore, “becoming a foreign language teacher, too, is a different process from
which other future teachers experience” (Hammadou & Bernhardt, 1987, p. 302), and “language

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teachers’ [teachers] may also be characterized by a distinctive pedagogy as well as by particular
emotional or social concerns (i.e., isolation)” (Borg, 2006, p. 6). In this study, Tianyu, Yalan, and
Fangyi were teaching their native language as a foreign language in the U.S., and Scott was
teaching Chinese in a different context and for different purposes than his own learning
experience, so their apprenticeship did not seem to have played the same important roles in their
teaching as described in the mainstream teacher education literature.
In Language Teacher Education
The field of language teacher education also recognizes that teachers’ backgrounds influence
their teaching (e.g., Freeman & Freeman, 1994; Kamhi-Stein, 2004; Kwo, 1996; Moran, 1996).
However, this field has increasingly recognized that the first year of teaching has a stronger
influence on teachers than their prior beliefs or experience (e.g., Farrell, 2003; Freeman, 1994;
Richards & Pennington, 1998). This study seems to support this trend, because the four teachers
are successful language learners themselves or native speakers, but that did not automatically
make them qualified foreign language teachers, because “well formed KAL [knowledge about
language] does not seem to be necessary to be a superior language teacher” (Bartels, 2005b, p.
411). That is, only having knowledge about language cannot guarantee that language learners
will become successful teachers. What they learned in their first year of teaching is more
important than the influence of their apprenticeship or their backgrounds.
This study found that foreign language teachers’ foreign language learning experiences did
not influence their teaching for a long time, which is not consistent with the literature (e.g.,
Almarza, 1996; Freeman & Freeman, 1994). Although the field of language teacher education
notes that language teachers’ original linguistic and cultural backgrounds also play an important
role in their instruction (e.g., Kamhi-Stein, 2004), this study further found that these factors were
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more influential than language teachers’ second/foreign language learning experiences. The four
teachers’ instruction at the beginning of the fall showed that they were replicating their most
recent language learning experience

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, but they broke apart from their prior experience and

moved on to the common practices in current foreign language instruction, although it took them
some time to do so. Meanwhile, their second/foreign language learning experience did not seem
to have changed their views on language fundamentally. Instead, their first language appeared to
have greater influence on their viewpoints about a language and how their students should learn
that language. Although the influence of language teachers’ learning experience is identified in
the field, it is more a topic of discussion and common sense rather than the focus of research (e.g.,
Freeman and Freeman, 1994; Crooks, 1997).
Therefore, this study provides evidence that teachers’ prior language learning experiences
influence their instruction greatly only at the beginning of their careers and when preparation in
language instruction is weak in language teacher education programs. If their prior
second/foreign language experience is consistent with their students’ learning and school
expectations, this influence may be stronger. All of these findings from this study also indicate
that language teachers’ backgrounds play complicated roles in their teaching, but the influence of
apprenticeship is weak.
Although it has been found in the field of language education that non-native speaking
teachers are as effective as native speaking teachers, the literature focuses on ESL/EFL teachers
(e.g., Borg, 2006; Braine, 1999; Kamhi-Stein, 2004; Kamhi-Stein, et al. 2004; Nemtchinova,
2005), and teachers who are teaching in post-secondary settings (e.g., Borg, 2006; Liu, Sellnow,

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For example, Scott learned Spanish as a foreign language in high school and learned Greek in
college in the U.S., but he draw on his Chinese learning experience in the Army.
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& Venette, 2006), where the distinction between native and non-native speaker is made among
the teachers. In their quantitative study, Kamhi-Stein, et al. (2004) investigated native and nonnative English speaking teachers in California K-12 schools (not ESL teachers) and found both
similarities and differences between these two groups of teachers about their views of pre-service
training, mentoring, and teaching. My study found that native and non-native speaking teachers
develop in similar ways in their teacher knowledge and their socialization into the foreign
language teaching profession in the U.S., but they also develop in different ways because of their
different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Their distinct linguistic and cultural backgrounds
influence their teaching in various ways.
As an American, Scott’s similar cultural background with his students facilitated his
development of knowledge about the students and the context, and this helped him to be
socialized into his instructional context and the foreign language teaching profession. However,
because Scott and his students are also from different sub-cultures in the U.S., the cultural
differences between Scott and his students affected his socialization. Being a non-native Chinese
speaker, Scott came to have a different approach on how to teach Chinese characters from the
other three native Chinese-speaking teachers in this study. Because of different cultural
backgrounds from their students, the other three teachers had to learn about and develop their
knowledge of students and contexts in the United States. As native speakers of Chinese, Tianyi,
Yalan, and Fangyi shared the same view about how to teach Chinese characters, but this view
was different from Scott’s. However, because this study did not include the students’
perspectives, it cannot draw conclusions about whether native or non-native Chinese speakers are
more effective Chinese language teachers in U.S. K-12 schools. Therefore, further research on
this aspect is needed.

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In Chinese Language Teacher Education
Because there is very little research on Chinese language teachers in U.S. public schools, this
study helps to fill this gap. While the findings in the previous two sections are also applicable to
Chinese language teacher education, this study provides specific evidence for this part of teacher
education in that the Chinese language teachers’ different linguistic, cultural, and ethnic
backgrounds and their different prior work and teaching experience greatly influenced their
teaching and socialization into their instructional contexts and the foreign language teaching
profession in the U.S.
First, American Chinese language teachers may have different views about the Chinese
language and culture than their colleagues from China or Taiwan because of the influence of
their different linguistic, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds. In addition to Scott’s case, my other
Chinese language interns also talked with me about their different perspectives on Chinese as a
subject matter when they were collaborating with their American colleagues (who were not
prepared by the certification program in this study) to design a curriculum of Chinese as a foreign
language for public secondary schools in their school districts in 2011. For example, Chinese and
American teachers disagreed with each other on whether to include Pinyin in their Chinese
curricula. A couple of school districts were designing their detailed curricula, and their Chinese
and American teachers also had different views on which kinds of sentence structures should be
included in their curriculum expectations, for instance, whether to teach students “我叫…” or
“我是…”

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for self-instroduction when they were collaborating. This happened perhaps because

34

Although both of these structures can be translated as “I am…,” in my opinion, “我叫…” is
commonly used in Chinese, but “我是…” looks more like a literal translation of English into
Chinese.
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English and Chinese are greatly different from each other, and the two cultures are vastly
different, but their speakers are influenced by their own first languages. Thus, more research and
practice are needed to investigate how Chinese language teachers’ different approaches to the
Chinese language influence students’ learning of Chinese in the U.S.
Second, this study found that Chinese language teachers from Chinese or Taiwanese
community schools in the U.S. also need to have teacher preparation before they start teaching
Chinese in U.S. public secondary schools. Yalan’s and Fangyi’s learning to teach revealed that
their teaching experience helped and facilitated their development. They knew how to perform a
teacher’s responsibilities and how to communicate with parents, and they had some experience in
subject matter. However, such benefits were limited, so they also had to learn and develop their
teacher knowledge in other several aspects, including knowledge of pedagogy and students.
The Role of Teacher Preparation Programs
Comparatively, research on the influence of teacher preparation programs on teachers’
socialization is less than that on the influence of teachers’ backgrounds or schools. This study
found that the influence of teacher preparation programs is complex, and the findings of this
study are both similar to and different from those in the literature on the impact of teacher
preparation programs on teachers’ socialization.
In Mainstream Education
Zeichner and Gore (1990) categorized research on the influence of teacher preparation
programs into three groups: disciplinary courses, education courses, and field experiences.
Because the teacher certification program in this study does not include Chinese language
courses and it recruits teacher candidates with Bachelor’s degrees, the following discussion about

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the influence of teacher preparation programs focuses only on education courses and field
experiences.
Consistent with the literature (e.g., Su, 1992; Valencia, et. al., 2009; Zeichner & Gore, 1990),
this study found that teacher preparation courses do not play an essential role in these teachers’
learning to teach. In this study, neither the pre-program training in China nor the summer courses
in the U.S. seemed to have facilitated the participating teachers’ socialization into the foreign
language teaching profession significantly. While Zeichner and Gore (1990) summarized various
reasons for the weak influence of teacher education courses (e.g., students’ background,
influence of their disciplinary courses, mixed messages in teacher education courses, students’
misinterpretation, etc.), this study revealed that for these factors it may be because the training
was isolated from their actual teaching context, and the courses were not connected to teachers’
actual needs for teaching Chinese in U.S. public secondary schools.
However, there are disagreements in the field on the view that teacher education
courses/programs have weak influences; some do argue that teacher education courses influence
teachers, contribute to teachers’ knowledge growth, and socialize teachers with the hidden
curriculum (Zeichner and Gore, 1990). Kamhi-Stein, et al. (2004) found that pre-service training
positively influenced both native and non-native English speaking teachers. But in general, direct
evidence on teacher education courses is very limited. Furthermore, field experiences have both
positive and negative effects on teachers (e.g., Achinstein, et al., 2004; Guyton & McIntyre, 1990;
McIntyre, Byrd, & Foxx, 1996; Rosaen & Florio-Ruane, 2008; Valencia, et. al., 2009; Zeichner
& Gore, 1990). In this study, the researcher was one of the field instructors and was directly
involved in the process. I also have understandings about the summer courses from the data and
by working in the program. This study shows that when teacher education courses address

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teachers’ actual teaching (e.g., courses on “Field Experiences” in this study), they can replace
teachers’ previously-held views on teaching, facilitate teachers’ knowledge growth, and
contribute to teachers’ general capabilities of independent thinking and problem solving. This
finding supports the appeals in the field that teacher education courses should be aligned with
pre-service teachers’ field experiences (e.g., McIntyre, Byrd, & Foxx, 1996; Newell, Gingrich, &
Johnson, 2001; Wideen, Mayer-Smith, & Moon, 1998; Zeichner, 2010). But the structure of the
courses on “Field Experiences” in this study was also one of the causes that left the teachers’
struggles unnoticed.
However, caution has to be taken about such findings from this study. The teachers in this
study were in a particular situation which combined the traditional internship and first year
teaching, which is different from field experiences in many of the studies in the field. The
teachers’ field experiences in this study helped to construct their teacher knowledge and to shape
their socialization into the profession in very important ways, but such a mode of simultaneous
student teaching and first year teaching also negatively affected the teachers’ learning to teach.
On the one hand, the teachers were teaching full-time or assuming full responsibilities in
their classrooms all the time, which accelerated their learning to teach, because they could notice
and were forced to solve the problems that emerged in their teaching. Meanwhile, the structure of
the courses on “Field Experiences” promoted their reflection on their teaching. Their class
discussions at the field instruction meetings assisted them in developing their teacher knowledge
because the discussions concentrated on their challenges and difficulties, and thus better
connected to their actual needs and promoted their learning to teach.
On the other hand, because the teachers in this study were actually interns who taught fulltime or assumed full responsibilities in their classrooms, they had to face many more challenges

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and difficulties compared to student teachers in the traditional mode of internships and new
teachers in their first year of teaching. Such a situation left the teachers in this study (especially
Scott and Tianyu) little time to prepare for their classes, to learn from their mentors and
colleagues, and to reflect on their teaching. This negatively affected the effectiveness of these
teachers’ teaching, and perhaps also their students’ learning. This is consistent with the research
result that teachers in such situations are less satisfied than those who have completed their preservice training before they start their first year of teaching, because “…filling two roles
concurrently seems to be confusing and counter-productive” (Alhija & Fresko, 2010, p. 5).
In Language Teacher Education
This study is also informative to the field of language teacher education in terms of the role
of courses in language teacher preparation programs. As the literature review of this study
indicates, not much research on this aspect has been conducted in the field of language teacher
education, and the available literature generally shows that language teacher education programs
only have weak influence on language teachers’ socialization (e.g., Farrell, 2009; Horwitz, 1985;
Peacock, 2001), and the courses are too theoretical and disconnected from language teachers’
needs for teaching (e.g., Farrell, 2009; Lo, 2005; Tarone & Allwright, 2005). This study also
found that the certification program’s courses on instructional methods and curriculum did not
help with teachers’ subsequent instruction significantly. Thus, this study helps explain why
language teacher preparation programs do not have a strong influence and why the dominant
applied science model is not effective. Because of this, researchers (e.g., Barduhn & Johnson,
2009; Bartels, 2005b; Farrell, 2009) have argued that courses in language teacher education
programs should be improved. At the same time, the courses should “…complement each other
and help novice teachers form a coherent network of knowledge about their practice” (Bartels,
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2005b, p.417). In addition, these courses should prepare teachers for the challenges and students’
motivation which are illuminated by research on new language teachers’ first year of teaching
(Farrell, 2009). Interestingly, similar to Zeichner’s (2010) proposal for “third space,” Farrell
(2009) also calls for “building school-teacher educator partnerships” (p. 186).
This study supports the above arguments by researchers in the field by providing evidence
from teachers’ actual instruction. Fangyi had received her master’s degree before she joined the
certification program. During her master’s study, Fangyi also took courses from the TESOL
program at the University, so she knew many more SLA theories than the other three teachers.
However, in her actual teaching, she did not automatically recognize the situations in which she
could apply SLA theories. For example, only with my guidance at one of our field instruction
meetings, did Fangyi identify the input hypothesis during our discussion about what and how
much they should teach their students daily. The detailed accounts of Fangyi’s teaching in
chapter four also show that she needed assistance in how to apply SLA theories and language
instructional methods to her actual teaching. Lo’s (2005) single case study also found that
courses on SLA theories are often research oriented, and teachers are confused about how to
move from theory to practice. Meanwhile, this study provides evidence about the tremendous
challenges in various aspects of teaching that new language teachers have to face in their first
year of teaching when their courses are disconnected from their actual teaching, so the findings
of this study may help illuminate courses in language teacher education programs. Fangyi’s case
explains why there is a gap between SLA research and innovative language instructional methods
and foreign language teachers’ actual language instruction, and thus, the dominant applied
science model in the field of language teacher education does not seem to be very effective in
foreign language teachers’ education.

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However, some researchers have found that language teacher education programs positively
influence teachers (e.g., Almarza, 1996; Attardo & Brown, 2005; Kamhi-Stein, et al. 2004;
Moran, 1996; Riegelhaupt & Carrasco, 2005). Almarza’s (1996) research indicates that preservice foreign language teachers are able not only to reflect on what they learn from language
teacher education program, but also apply it to their teaching. That is, language teacher education
is effective. Meanwhile, Almarza acknowledged that other factors also contribute to teachers’
knowledge growth, not just language teacher education programs. In this study, the four teachers
did occasionally refer to their learning from the two summer courses, which indicates that the
courses had some influence. For example, Scott took a socio-cultural approach to his teaching
and his students because of the influence of the summer courses. However, the fact that the other
two teachers who took the courses (Tianyu and Yalan) did not draw on the summer courses
reveals that the influence was very limited, or perhaps because what they learned from the
summer courses were interacting with their backgrounds, especially their instructional contexts,
so that influence of the program courses was diminished.
Although there is little research on the field practicum (student teaching in TESOL), the
available studies (e.g., Brady & Gulikers, 2004; Brinton, 2004) on non-native ESL student
teachers in the U.S. show that they have difficulties in subject matter, instructional methods, and
managing students, and thus they are not confident in teaching during their field practicum.
However, because the field practicum in TESOL is targeted at native English speakers, both
Brady and Gulikers (2004) and Brinton (2004) call for modifying the field practicum so that nonnative English speaking students can also grow and flourish through the field practicum.
Gebhard’s (2009) review of the practicum shows that language teacher education programs begin
to include orientation, observation, and mentored teaching into the practicum, but the field is also

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concerned about how to help student teachers apply what they learn from the practicum to their
actual teaching. However, similar research on foreign language teachers in the U.S. is sparse.
This research study shows that the four Chinese language teachers did learn much about
teaching and developed greatly in their teacher knowledge from their field experiences, which
helped lay the foundation for their teaching careers (although this kind of field experience is
vastly different from most field practica in TESOL and field experiences in mainstream
education). However, this particular model of field experience also posed tremendous difficulties
to the teachers and affected their development.
In Chinese Language Teacher Education
Because there is very little research on the influence of Chinese teacher preparation
programs in the current field, this study provides some insights in this area by specifically
focusing on Chinese language teachers’ development and socialization in a Chinese teacher
certification program in the United States, although the above discussion about (language)
teacher education programs also applies to Chinese teacher education programs.
First, similar to the findings in language teacher education, a course on Chinese language
instructional methods in Chinese language teacher preparation programs should be practical and
specifically address Chinese language teaching in the U.S. Because current language instructional
methods are based on research about and teaching of ESL/EFL, the course on Chinese language
instructional methods may need to address how to adapt those methods to teaching Chinese.
After all, English and Chinese are two very different languages, and the Chinese language has
some particular aspects, such as tones, Chinese characters, and different grammatical system.
Chinese language teachers are not necessarily able to modify and adjust those methods in their
actual teaching.
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Second, a course on practical curriculum design seems very necessary in a Chinese language
teacher certification program, especially when Chinese language teachers are from China and
when there is no Chinese curriculum in U.S. K-12 schools at present. China and the United
States have different educational systems, so Chinese language teachers from China need
guidance in understanding curriculum, and especially in actual Chinese curriculum design.
Abstract and profound theories about curriculum in general do not help with their actual
curriculum design or their actual instruction. Because there is not a Chinese curriculum available
for U.S. K-12 Chinese instruction, such a course is also important for American Chinese
language teachers.
Third, it may be more helpful for Chinese language teachers from China to have some actual
contact with American students before they start teaching Chinese, in order to reduce the
influence of cultural differences. Knowledge of students is a key component of teacher
knowledge. However, the effectiveness of a course or training on American students or
classroom management may be negatively affected if the teachers do not have a direct
understanding about American students and classroom. Furthermore, with actual vision of
American classrooms and teaching, Chinese language teacher candidates can also better
understand when they are taking other courses such as instructional methods and curriculum.
Fourth, because Chinese instruction in U.S. K-12 schools is only at its beginning, Chinese
language teacher preparation programs may need to take more factors into consideration than the
more traditional foreign language teacher preparation programs (e.g., Spanish, French, German,
etc.). The competition among the foreign language programs adds more challenges to new
Chinese language teachers when they are starting Chinese programs in U.S. public K-12 schools,
in addition to those that every new teacher needs to face. Furthermore, Chinese language teacher

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preparation programs may need to work with K-12 schools on the continuity of both Chinese
teachers’ preparation and Chinese programs. In this study, all four teachers left or switched to
other Chinese programs after their first or second year of teaching. Another new cohort of
Chinese language teachers came and took over their Chinese programs, but the new cohort had to
start understanding the programs from the beginning, which might negatively affect the
continuity of these Chinese programs and also the Chinese teacher certification program.
The Role of Workplace and Culture
Consistent with the literature, this study found that workplace and culture play very
important roles in teachers’ learning to teach and in their socialization into the teaching
profession in their first year (e.g., Achinstein, et al., 2004; Alhija & Fresko, 2010; Wechsler,
Caspary, Humphrey, & Matsko, 2010). Within work places, many factors (e.g., students,
mentoring practice, colleagues, curriculum, etc.) significantly influence teachers’ teaching.
Cultural differences play both positive and negative roles in the teachers’ socialization.
In Mainstream Education
This study shows that students affect new teachers’ instruction greatly, which is consistent
with the literature (e.g., Pollard, 1982, Zeichner & Gore, 1990; Su, 1992). Furthermore, students’
influence is complicated. On the one hand, students may embody many years of socialization
from their prior classes, so they help shape teachers’ knowledge of teaching by resisting a
teaching approach that does not match their style (e.g., Tianyu’s students), or by requesting a
certain teaching method (e.g., Yalan’s students). Meanwhile, students are also a medium through
which teachers can understand their immediate school context and larger community (e.g.,
Scott’s students). Thus, their students’ reactions and the teachers’ better understanding of their

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students helped the four teachers to realize which of their teaching methods worked and which
did not work. This way, their students facilitated the four teachers’ socialization to their teaching
contexts. However, their students also negatively affected the effectiveness of the teachers’
instruction and affected their socialization into their instructional contexts and the foreign
language teaching profession because of their misbehaviors. Directly associated with their
students, parents also played a role in the teachers’ socialization into the contexts by negating a
teacher’s practice (Tianyu’s case) or by helping discipline their children (Scott’s and Fangyi’s
cases) or by helping with a teacher’s instruction (Yalan’s case).
This study has complex findings about mentoring in teachers’ socialization. On the one hand,
it confirms the literature about the significance of mentoring practice. It found that mentoring
practice played very important roles in the teachers’ learning to teach and their socialization into
the profession, which is similar to the findings in the recent literature (e.g., Alhija & Fresko,
2010; Kamhi-Stein, et al., 2004; Valencia et al., 2009, Strong, 2009; Youngs, 2007a). On the
other hand, different from the literature (e.g., Cady, Distad, & Germundsen, 1998; Wood, 2007),
this study found that the mentoring practices did not help teachers with applying theory to
practice or with subject matter because of the mentor teachers’ different disciplinary backgrounds.
Although there were some limitations in their mentors’ assistance, the fact that their assistance
ranked highest

35

or equally high with field instruction and/or learning from their own teaching in

the teachers’ views also indicates that the mentor teachers did play a more important role than the
certification program. This happened perhaps because the mentor teachers were with the new
35

The calculation is mainly based on the teachers’ interviews and their journals in the fall and
spring for each of the four cases. Although I cited my comments on their journals to analyze their
learning to teach in the four cases, I did not include my field instruction comments or notes in
frequency calculations for any of the four cases. To have done so would have potentially skewed
the data because of my high but varied frequencies of contacts with the four teachers.
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Chinese language teachers in the schools, and thus could help the teachers with their actual
teaching and their immediate needs. However, the fact that most mentor teachers could not help
with language instructional pedagogy or subject matter reveals that current mentoring practice in
the Chinese teacher certification program needed to be improved in order better to facilitate new
Chinese language socialization into the profession.
This study has findings similar to the literature that colleagues contribute to new teachers’
growth of knowledge and their socialization in important ways (e.g., Johnson, 2004; Zeichner &
Gore, 1990). Learning and interactions with their colleagues at the same schools helped the new
teachers to have more understanding about their students and to be socialized into the school
contexts. Communications with their fellow Chinese language teachers increased the teachers’
knowledge of teaching and supported them emotionally during their socialization processes.
However, this study did not find similar influences of policy on teachers’ socialization. The
field has found that educational policy is an important shaping factor in teachers’ socialization
(e.g., Achinstein, et al., 2004; Cohen & Ball, 1990; Youngs, 2007a), and as a medium between
policy and specific schools, principals also play an important role in teachers’ development (e.g.,
Feiman-Nemser, 2001; Youngs, 2007b), but this study did not find such influences on the four
teachers during their first year of teaching. Although Tianyu’s principal assisted his growth, the
principal was more the IB program director than a principal. Such a difference between this study
and the literature is caused by two reasons. First, this study did not include the four school
districts and the principals in its investigation. Second, perhaps more importantly, Chinese
education in U.S. public K-12 schools is only at its very beginning, so policies directly
addressing this subject are not there, although there is a perceived need to learn Chinese in the
United States. This is perhaps why there was not a Chinese language curriculum in the secondary

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schools or the school districts. Thus, one has to be cautious in generalizing the findings of this
study.
Not having a Chinese curriculum negatively affected the teachers’ development in this study,
although curriculum can both facilitate and hinder new teachers’ learning to teach (Valencia, et
al., 2006). The mentor teachers in this study interpreted school contexts and expectations for
Chinese programs and assisted the teachers in Chinese curriculum (e.g., Yalan’s fall mentor,
Fangyi’s mentor), which helped with their socialization, but also set the boundary about how far
the new teachers could go in the content they were teaching. After all, their mentor teachers’
backgrounds and mentoring practices varied so much, so more systematic support for Chinese
language teachers is needed.
With the teachers’ different cultural backgrounds, this study discovered that the influence of
cultural differences is complex. On the one hand, because of cultural differencesbetween China
and Taiwan and the U.S., the teachers (Tianyu, Yalan, and Fangyi) had teaching approaches and
understandings of American students which were different from those of a typical American
teacher. Such cultural differences did not match their students learning styles or the schools’
expectations, so the teachers had to learn about their students’ and the schools’ cultures and even
the bigger community cultures within which the schools are located so that they could adjust
their teaching to meet the cultural expectations at these levels in the U.S. Although Scott is a U.S.
citizen, he is from a different sub-culture than his students in the U.S., so Scott also had to learn
cultures in his instructional context and to adapt to them. On the other hand, their cultural and
educational backgrounds helped them to be responsible teachers (for example, there are high
expectations for teachers, and also teachers have high expectations for students in China, because

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of the traditional influence of Confucianism) and have high expectations for students. They also
worked hard to push their students to meet their expectations.
This study also adds to the literature in that teachers are not passive during their socialization
processes. Zeichner and Gore (1990) interpreted that
According to Pollard, teachers’ actions represent active and creative responses to the
constraints, opportunities, and dilemmas posed by the immediate contexts of the
classroom and the school, and it is through these immediate contexts that the wider
structure of the community, the society, and the state have their impact on teachers. (p.
338-339)
More recently, Britzman (2003) and Pardo, Highfield, and Florio-Ruane (2011) have added
evidence to the literature that teachers are interpreting messages that they received in their
contexts and are playing active roles in their socialization. This study found that the teachers did
not conform to their schools and contexts blindly. Instead, the teachers identified issues in their
teaching, reflected on them, and actively constructed their knowledge of teaching and shaped
their own socialization. By investigating both the socialization role of school contexts for new
teachers and new teachers’ own agency, this study adds more evidence to the field that new
teachers are also actively shaping their socialization.
Therefore, various factors in their schools (students, mentor teachers, colleagues, parents,
curriculum, etc.) constitute a web of socialization forces which reflects the tiered impacts of
schools, immediate contexts, and larger social, cultural, and policy environments in the U.S. On
the one hand, this web helped to construct the teachers’ knowledge of teaching and assisted them
to grow as foreign language teachers in U.S. secondary public schools. On the other hand, this
web symbolized the occupational and cultural expectations of teaching in the U.S. and set limits
on how far the teachers could go in each aspect of their teaching. Within this web, the four
teachers gained knowledge of teaching a foreign language in the U.S. They reflected on and
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interpreted the various messages they received and came up with their solutions, which
assimilated both the U.S. occupational and cultural expectations and their own insights and
creativity. Thus, they counter-influenced their contexts and added new threads to the web.
In Language Teacher Education
What has been reported in the above section about the influence of local schools on new
teachers’ learning and socialization is also true of language teacher education. Because new
language teachers in the available literature are mainly ESL/EFL teachers, this study helps fill the
gap by focusing on foreign language teachers in the U.S. Farrell (2003, 2006) argued that
collegial support determines a new teacher’s socialization. Although this study found that
mentoring practice played a critical role in the four teachers’ socialization, other factors such as
field instruction and their own active learning were also equally or even more important in their
learning to teach. Such a discrepancy happens perhaps because Farrell’s (2003, 2006) studies
were conducted in Singapore, while this study was situated in the U.S., so the types of support
that new language teachers receive may therefore be different.
This study has different results about whether new language teachers can apply “innovative”
language instructional methods from the findings of other studies in the field. In the study by
Richards and Pennington (1998), new English teachers had to give up some “innovative”
language teaching methods (e.g., CLT) that they had learned from the BA TESL program in
Hong Kong and had adapted to the teaching approach in local schools and the larger context.
This study found that new foreign language teachers can use the more recent language teaching
methods in their teaching with support and guidance from language teacher education programs.
The differences between this study and Richards and Pennington (1998) may be caused by

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whether the teaching approaches that are taught in the language teacher preparation programs
match the expectations of the schools and the different larger contexts.
The TESL programs in Hong Kong intended to teach English teachers those current and
“innovative” language instructional methods in the field of language education in the study by
Richards and Pennington (1998). As frequently mentioned in this study, those methods were
based on teaching and research in North America. However, in Asian countries, the teachercentered approach is dominant. Thus, many factors that are involved in teaching (e.g., the nature
of language education, class sizes, assessments, etc.) are very distinct from each other in Asian
and North American contexts. As a result, it is demanding and even naive to expect new English
teachers in Asian counties to implement what they learn from language teacher education
programs in teaching on their own, because teachers do not receive assistance in their beginning
years of teaching (e.g., Alhija & Fresko, 2010), and students resist the “innovative” methods (e.g.,
Ouyang, 2003). The opposite is also true in North America, as indicated by the four teachers’
instruction in the early fall in this study (e.g., Scott’s audiolingulism, and Tianyu’s teachercentered and lecture-based approach). Lo’s (2005) study found that the teacher gave up and even
resisted the theories that she learned about SLA in the U.S. after she returned to Taiwan and
taught there. Fangyi’s case shows that teachers need assistance to apply SLA theories and
language instructional methods to their practice. This is also true of teachers of other subjects
(e.g., Borko & Mayfield, 1995; Duffy, 2005; Feiman-Nemser, 2001; Valencia et al., 2009).
Although the field realizes that mentoring is very helpful for new language teachers (e.g.,
Farrell, 2009; Malderez, 2009), there is little research on this area in language teacher education.
However, Farrell (2009) cautioned that “the mere appointment of a mentor is no guarantee that
the novice teacher will be successfully socialized into teaching within the school” (p. 184),

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because novice teachers may receive only very limited assistance from their mentors (Farrell,
2003; 2009). In general, there is very limited understanding about what happens to language
teachers in schools, because “…L2 classroom research developed from a growing interest in
understanding more about optimal conditions for L2 learning” (McKay, 2009, p. 282), not
teaching or teachers themselves. This study did find a negative effect of mentoring practice on
teachers, such as limited time, different disciplinary backgrounds, etc.
New language teachers in North America, including the four teachers in this study, are able
to apply what they learn from language teacher education programs perhaps because the methods
are consistent with actual teaching practice, and they also receive support from their programs
(e.g., field instruction) and their mentor teachers (e.g., Tianyu’s spring mentor). Meanwhile,
those language instructional methods are also compatible with the dominant teaching approach
on the continent. For example, TBLT is similar to task-based or project-based teaching in
mainstream classrooms. Thus, the apparent impact of local schools on language teachers actually
manifests the influence of the language education profession, and more importantly, the
socialization role of mainstream education.
Furthermore, this study did find that foreign language teaching is complicated and “socially
negotiated” (Johnson, 2009, p. 20). Meanwhile, different components of their knowledge of
teaching (pedagogy, students, curriculum, context, and subject matter) are interacting with each
other and interwoven together, which is more complicated than “pedagogical content knowledge”
as recognized in mainstream education. Language teachers have to balance these components of
teacher knowledge, learn from their teaching, and come up with their own solutions for their
foreign language instruction. During their socialization processes, the four teachers in this study

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counter-influenced their school contexts by modifying their students’ behaviors, by being
involved in curriculum design, etc.
In Chinese Language Teacher Education
Because few studies on Chinese language teacher education have been conducted in the
United States, this study makes an important contribution by investigating new Chinese language
teachers’ socialization. Meanwhile, this study’s findings about the influence of school contexts
and teachers’ counter-influence as discussed above are also pertinent to Chinese language teacher
education in the U.S. In addition, this study has findings particularly relevant to Chinese
language teacher education.
Focusing on complete novice teachers from China, Romig (2009) found that Chinese
language teachers’ teaching became a mixture of American and Chinese instruction after one
year of teaching in U.S. elementary schools. This study investigated teachers from both China
and the United States, and both complete novice teachers and teachers with teaching experiences
(in settings other than U.S. public K-12 schools), and the participating teachers in this study
taught Chinese as a foreign language in U.S. public secondary schools. It found that Chinese
language teachers’ socialization is complicated and involving more than assimilating “American”
and “Chinese” instructional elements. The teachers learned and adapted to their teaching
environment in the U.S., but also reflected on, improved, and renovated their instruction, which
helped to provide knowledge and insights for the emerging field of Chinese language teacher
education in the U.S.
This study also revealed that novice Chinese language teachers, American Chinese language
teachers, and teachers with teaching experiences in settings other than U.S. public K-12 schools
have both similar and different socialization processes in their first year of teaching Chinese in
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U.S. public K-12 schools. The challenges they had to face and the support that they received
were similar but also dissimilar. Although the teachers from China and Taiwan were influenced
by cultural differences, the interactions between their cultural backgrounds and local schools
were complicated. Meanwhile, all these teachers needed guidance and support in connecting
language instructional methods to the Chinese language in their teaching.
One of the most important implications of this study for Chinese language teacher education
is that programs may need to address explicitly what the curriculum is and how to design a
curriculum from a cross-cultural perspective. Meanwhile, there is an urgent need for the field to
adapt language instructional methods and findings about teaching Chinese in other settings to
Chinese instruction in U.S. public K-12 schools, or research and develop suitable Chinese
instructional methods for these settings. We cannot solely expect new Chinese language teachers
to modify and transform language instructional methods to their Chinese instruction when they
stumble to start their learning to teach, and then blame them for not being effective teachers.
Therefore, similar to language teacher education and mainstream education, Chinese language
teacher education may also need to work with Chinese language teachers and teacher educators
from K-12 schools in order to construct the knowledge base needed for the new emerging field.
Furthermore, this study also found that it is very necessary to develop materials for Chinese
instruction in U.S. K-12 schools and to promote sharing knowledge among Chinese language
teachers. In this study, the teachers often had to design their own lessons without many resources.
In this study and from what I know from my work experience, there are only several kinds of
books

36

available for teaching Chinese in secondary schools. Even so, the teachers and my other

36

They are Integrated Chinese, Happy Chinese, Learning Chinese with Me, Ni Hao, Zhen Bang,
and Experiencing Chinese. However, Integrated Chinese has long been used in college teaching.
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interns commented that many units are not appropriate for Chinese instruction in secondary
schools. However, the study also shows that communication with their fellow Chinese language
teachers helped the teachers to gain more knowledge of teaching. Therefore, Chinese language
teacher education may need to create the means for Chinese language teachers to share and
spread knowledge of Chinese instruction and to work with teachers in order to develop better
teaching materials.
Limitations
As is the case in all research, this study is limited. The primary limitations are related to the
variety of focal participants it has been possible to study and the teacher education contexts in
which the focal participants learned to teach Chinese. Resources limited the range and variety of
cases it was possible to examine closely in this research. In this section I discuss the limitations
of the research and their implications.
There are some limitations related to selecting the focal participants for this study. Currently,
there is not much research about the cultural backgrounds of Chinese language teachers in the
United States. From whatever information or resources are available (e.g., Huang, 2003; Ingold
& Wang, 2010; Liu, 2006; www.learner.org) and my knowledge of the field, I found that some
Chinese language teachers are European Americans, but many of them are probably of Chinese
origin, although they may be from different countries or areas. Although the four focal teachers
in this study were from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, which closely paralleled the
diverse backgrounds of the practitioners who are teaching Chinese in the U.S., they do not cover
all possible cultural and ethnic backgrounds of Chinese language teachers. For example, a small
number of Americans of Chinese heritage have chosen to become Chinese language teachers in
the United States (Ingold & Wang, 2010). However, this study did not include a teacher with this
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kind of background because there was no such teacher candidate in the program that this study
focused on. Therefore, this study was not able to cover all possible cultural and ethnic
backgrounds of Chinese language teachers in the United States.
Moreover, another limitation relates to the teacher certification program in which the four
focal teachers were all enrolled. Looking only at one program of Alternative Routes to
Certification (ACRs) limits what is possible to say about the role played by teacher education
programs generally in the education of Chinese language teachers. Additionally, these teachers
were in a special situation that combined a traditional internship and first-year teaching, so some
features of their socialization might be particular and not applicable to teacher candidates in other
teacher certification programs in the U.S., for example, the programs that have traditional four
years of undergrad study and fifth year of internship.
However, the problem of variation in program is offset by the need to keep a program stable
in order to study other kinds of variation (e.g., the backgrounds of the teachers). So it is necessary
to compromise when designing a set of comparative case studies. If the focal teachers had been
from different educational/certification programs, their teaching may have been influenced by
their programs, and thus comparison among them would have become complicated. The fact that
the four focal teachers were in the same certification program in this study helped exclude, if not
“control,” the variable of different programs. This way the differences in their teaching may more
likely be attributable to their cultural backgrounds or contextual factors. However, this also
makes this study inherently a case study of this particular Chinese teacher certification program
itself. Although the research findings of this study may capture a variety of scenarios in this
certification program, caution has to be taken when applying the research findings of this study to
other settings.

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CHAPTER 9

IMPLICATIONS

Although focusing on the four Chinese language teachers’ learning to teach in their first
year of teaching, this study has some implications for teacher education, including language
teacher education and mainstream teacher education, and including Alternative Routes to
Certification (ACRs) and traditional teacher preparation programs, in areas such as teacher
knowledge, the structure of teacher preparation programs, and teachers’ socialization.
Teacher Knowledge
In this study, I focused on the four teachers’ development in their teacher knowledge across
their first year of teaching. I studied these teachers’ different components of teacher knowledge,
including knowledge of pedagogy, curriculum, subject matter, students, context, and pedagogical
content knowledge in their socialization. The study found that these components are not
separated from each other, as discussed in the previous chapter. Instead, different components of
teacher knowledge are interactive and interwoven, and knowledge of context permeates every
other component of teacher knowledge. This looks crucial to language teacher education because
language teachers have to understand their instructional contexts to better connect their language
teaching to their students so that their instruction is comprehensible and meaningful to their
students. The relationships among the different components of teacher knowledge, especially the
importance of context, may also look pertinent to mainstream teacher education, especially as the
researchers have found that new teachers negotiate and balance different messages and forces in
their teaching contexts (e.g., Britzman, 2003), and have been calling for callaborations between
teacher education programs and schools (Zeichner, 2010).
On the other hand, having teacher knowledge cannot guarantee that teachers will be able to
teach successfully, because knowledge of context is constantly interacting with other components
328

of teacher knowledge, evolving, developing, and thus is dynamic. The factors that surround and
influence teachers’ teaching vary across different settings, and different forces in schools are
interacting with each other. For example, Fangyi was a successful teacher in Taiwan and
Taiwanese community school in the U.S., but she had to adjust, improve, and balance the
components of her teacher knowledge to address her U.S. high school students. The study
indicates that the four teachers’ abilities to balance the requests from their contexts and to
integrate different components of teacher knowledge played a very important role in their
development of teacher knowledge and their socialization. Thus, while teacher preparation
programs cannot exhaust all possible contexts and their influences when they are preparing
teachers, the programs may need to cultivate their student teachers’ capabilities to perceive,
analyze, and balance different possible factors and forces in their future teaching so that the
student teachers will be better prepared for their teaching.
Importance of the Structure of Teacher Education Programs
This study also indicates that the structure of teacher education/certification programs can be
crucial in teacher candidates’ learning to teach. For this study, I intended to investigate how
Chinese language teachers from different linguistic, cultural, educational, and ethnic
backgrounds are socialized into the foreign language teaching profession in the U.S. Intentionally
selecting participating teachers from different backgrounds, I had assumed that the four teachers’
different backgrounds would lead them to different socialization processes. However, I found in
this study that the Chinese teacher certification program influenced them more, both positively
and especially negatively, which indicates that how a teacher education program is designed and
executed has great influence on teachers’ learning to teach and their socialization. Although the
certification program involved in this study is a program of Alternative Routes to Certification
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(ACRs) in nature, the implication is important, especially nowadays teachers who are certified
through ACRs constitute an important part of teaching force and are playing increasingly
important roles in language teacher education (Ingold & Wang, 2010).
In this study, both teachers and their mentors frequently mentioned that lack knowledge of
U.S. students and classrooms was a very important factor that seriously undermined the
effectiveness of these teachers’ learning to teach and their actual teaching. The analysis in the
previous chapters also shows that the certification program’s structure did not provide the
teachers an opportunity to actually observe U.S. classrooms or interact with U.S. students. Thus,
a lesson that can be learned from these teachers’ learning to teach is that a teacher
certification/preparation program should be structured well to provide teacher candidates
opportunities to acquire knowledge they will need to perform their teachers’ responsibilities.
That is, a well-structured teacher education program is critical for teachers’ success.
Meanwhile, how a teacher certification/preparation program is actually executed is equally
important. This implication can also inform traditional teacher education programs. For example,
in the certification program in this study, the courses which address the key aspects of teaching
were included indeed, but they were not specifically about language teaching. Instead, they were
about teaching in general—they left the teacher candidates to interpret and connect to language
teaching and Chinese teaching in particular, which is obviously tough and tremendously
challenging to teacher candidates, as the analysis in this study indicates. In view of this, teacher
education courses probably should develop courses which can not only help student teachers
understand the grand philosophies of teaching, but also connect to their future practical teaching,
and in the meantime, to truly execute the program design.

330

Multi-layered Socialization
Another implication of this study is that teachers are socialized to different
communities/contexts, and thus socialization is multi-layered. Although teacher socialization has
been traditionally defined as “the process whereby the individual becomes a participating
member of the society of teachers” (Zeichner & Gore, 1990, p. 329), and Zeichner and Gore
(1990) also added teacher’s agency into this concept, these do not seem to capture all the
complexities that teachers’ socialization involves.
In this study, the four teachers’ instructional contexts varied greatly from one another, and
they were, first of all, socialized into their individual instructional contexts by the various factors
and forces surrounding them and influencing them in their settings. They did not accept whatever
messages they received from their contexts; instead, they interpreted and integrated those
messages and came up with their own solutions, so the teachers played active roles in their
socialization. By adjusting and “improving” their teaching according to the forces in their
contexts, the teachers became “acceptable participating members” of the teaching community, as
indicated by their evaluations across their first year of teaching.
Meanwhile, although Chinese education in U.S. K-12 is at its beginning, the Chinese
language teachers interacted and collaborated with each other, their cohort, and other Chinese
language teachers in the same certification program and other Chinese teacher education
programs. They learned from each other and contributed to each other’s development and growth.
In this sense, these teachers were socializing each other to the new and emerging community of
K-12 Chinese language teachers.
In addition, the four teachers were socialized to the foreign language teaching profession in
the U.S. by the certification program and some forces from their contexts (e.g., some of their

331

mentor teachers who were foreign language teachers). By learning from and interacting with
these sources, these teachers came to understand, accept, and adapt to the principles and norms of
foreign language teaching in the U.S., and thus they were socialized into the larger community of
foreign language teachers, which is also part of the even larger community of teachers in the U.S.
Therefore, teachers’ socialization is multi-layered—they are socialized to their individual
contexts, to the teacher community of their disciplines, and to the general community of teachers
in the U.S.

332

APPENDICES

333

Appendix 1: The Topics Selected for Field Instruction in the Spring of 2010
1. Communicative Language Teaching
2. Task-Based Language Teaching
3. Classroom Management
4. Age-appropriate Activities and Teaching Strategies
5. ACTFL Standards and Teaching Approaches
6. Differentiated Learning and Teaching
7. Motivation in Language Learning and Teaching
8. Chinese Speaking and Listening
9. Chinese Characters and Chinese Writing
10. Games in Language Learning and Teaching
11. Technology in Language Learning and Teaching
12. Realia and Contextualization in Language Learning and Teaching

334

Appendix 2: First Interview with the Focal Teachers (teachers’ backgrounds)
Interview Questions
1. Can you describe your educational and cultural backgrounds and years of stay in the US
before you entered Chinese Teachers Certificate Program?
2. How and why did you learn English/Chinese? Can you describe what your
English/Chinese class looked like?
3. How did you think Chinese/English should be learned when you were a student? Did you
use any strategies when you were learning the language? Any examples?
4. Did you teach before you entered the program? What did you teach? How long did you
teach?
5. Can you describe a typical class of your previous teaching?
6. How did you think you should teach English/Chinese? Any language acquisition theories
or teaching methods did you know then? Any examples?
7. How did you know Chinese Teachers Certificate program and how did you come to this
program?
8. What did you believe Chinese teaching should look like in the United States before you
entered this program?
9. Any other comments?

335

Appendix 3: Second Interview with the Focal Teachers
Interview Questions
1. You taught at different schools / you taught different classes in the first semester. Could
you tell me how you decided to at these schools/teach these classes?
2. Could you tell me how you planned your teaching for your first class/ first week/ your
class in the first video? Did you consult with anybody or use any resources?
3. Can you describe your first video-recorded teaching in detail? Did you teach according to
your lesson plan? Why or why not?
4. How and what did you teach in the following class?
5. Did you use the same lesson plans for your classes / at different schools when they were
at the same language level?
6. What do you think you should take into consideration when designing a lesson plan and
when teaching at the beginning of the first semester?
7. You chose to focus on classroom management/assessment/students’ interaction for your
improvement project

37

in the middle of the first semester. Can you tell me why and how

you decided to work on that topic?
8. You proposed two alternatives to solve the problem that you described in your
improvement project stage 1. How did you come up with those alternatives? Did you
consult with anybody? What do you think were the strengths of these alternatives?

37

In each semester, the teachers were required to pick up an aspect in their teaching that needed
to be improved immediately in the middle of the semesters and work on that aspect in the second
half semesters. This is called improvement project. It has three stages. They chose an aspect in
the first stage, and then thought about it in the following teaching and proposed their alternatives
in the second stage. They implemented their plans and reported the results in the third stage at the
end of the semesters.
336

9. Let’s look at your last video and your final report of the improvement project. Do you
think your implementation was what you expected? What did you learn from this project?
10. In addition to your improvement project, what else did you do to improve your teaching
in the first semester? Why did you do that?
11. In which aspect do you think you learned most in your teaching in the first semester?
How did you learn?
12. Toward the middle of the second semester, you chose to focus on increasing students’
communicative competence/ motivating students/ connecting teaching activities to
teaching purposes. How and why did you choose this aspect in your teaching?
13. How did you come to your implementation plan in your improvement project stage 2?
Did you consult with anybody or what made you have such a plan? What were the
important factors that you considered when proposing the solutions?
14. What kinds of difficulties/challenges did you have when implementing your plan in your
following teaching? How did you deal with them?
15. Let’s look at your last video and your final report of the improvement project. Do you
think you achieved your goals for this project? What did you learn from this project and
this semester?
16. What/which helped you most in your learning to teach in the second semester?
17. Any other comments?

337

Appendix 4: Interview with mentor teachers
Interview Questions (mentor teachers)
1. Can you describe your educational background, the language you are teaching, and years
of teaching?
2. What do you think is important for teacher to know to teach Spanish/French/Japanese
teaching? Or what kind of knowledge is important for a foreign language teacher? To
know the language well, to be able to use different teaching approaches or something else?
3. Do you think this kind of knowledge also applicable to Chinese language teaching in the
United States?
4. What curriculum or standards does/do the school(s) ask the Chinese teacher to follow?
What are the school’s goals for Chinese language teaching and learning?
5. Did you have opportunities to meet or interact with the Chinese language teacher to
design lesson plans in last fall and this spring? How often did you meet? In which aspect
did you talk more? Teaching approaches, teaching content, etc.
6. Did the Chinese language teacher often come to you for advice? In which aspects in the
last fall and this spring? Could you please describe the advices you gave to the teacher?
7. Did you suggest any specific foreign language teaching approach or method to the
Chinese language teacher?
8. Have you observed the teacher’s teaching, and how often? Have you talked to the teacher
about your observations? Did you talk to others, for example, her principal, about the
teacher’s teaching?
9. Did you suggest her/him to observe your class or other foreign language teachers’ classes
and talk to you about his/her observation?

338

10. Did you suggest him to interact with other colleagues?
11. Are there any other aspects that influenced Greg’s learning to teach, but I didn’t cover
here?
12. Based on your experience as a mentor teacher, what would you suggest Chinese teacher
preparation programs to do to when they are preparing Chinese language teachers?
13. Any other comments?

339

Appendix 5: Interviews with program instructor, coordinator, and director
Interview Questions
1. Can you describe your responsibilities and work in Chinese Teachers Certificate Program?
2. How do you think Chinese should be taught in the United States in terms of teaching
methods?
3. What do you expect the teachers to know about teaching Chinese in the US when they
entered the program and before their internship?
4. What do you think the Chinese language teacher candidates should learn in the program
and during their internship? Do you recommend any teaching approaches to the teachers
or does the program do so?
5. In general, how would you characterize the current Chinese language teachers’ teaching?
6. Can you describe their progress in terms of the standards and goals of the program?
7. What do you expect the Chinese language teachers can achieve in their teaching when
they finish the program?
8. What are the key qualifications, including those for the teachers’ teaching, for the
Chinese language teachers to get their certificates?
9. Any other comments?

340

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