Abstract
A sequel to the previous article “Roots of Excellence: The Releasing Effect of Individual Potentials through Educational Cultural Intervention in a Chinese School” (in press), the present study is on the unexpected reversal phenomena in the process of cultural intervention. The goal of the intervention is to construct the dynamics of Jiti (well-organized collective in Chinese) through creative activities to promote students’ development. In the intervention, the releasing effect (Wu et al. 2016) emerged as well, but the teacher’s concern about worsening discipline and academic performance evoked and reinforced his habitual notions and practices of education, turning the joint activities into a way of strengthening discipline. The energy that had been discharging at the beginning of the intervention was inhibited, so that many more problematic behaviors took shape. The whole class formed an inhibitory atmosphere, within which pupils formed self-defensive regulation strategies. By comparing with the productive collective in which intervention was effective and analyzing this unexpected reversal process, we can not only see pupils’ self-construction status in the inhibitory culture but illuminate the formation of the teacher’s resistance to educational and cultural transformation as well. Resistance is originated from teachers not being able to interpret pupils’ inner developmental needs but instead anxious about the ongoing problems.
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Notes
In the Chinese educational context, ‘discipline’ has the extra connotation of ‘order’ or ‘orderliness’, and it is generally a favorable word when stressed in this way. So in some cases, ‘discipline’ is interchangeable with ‘orderliness’, as in ‘the discipline of this class got worse’ (= ‘the class became more chaotic’).
Chinese math multiplication table song is a basic math tool to learn multiplication which includes a list of the multiplications of numbers between one and nine. Pupils in second grade are supposed to learn to recite the song so that it is an easy task for our participants.
Because pupils’ homes are usually far away from the school, MWCS requests parents to pick their children up after class every day.
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Acknowledgements
The research was supported by International NGO of Save the Children in China. And also great thanks to reviewers’ comments.
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Wu, A., Li, XW., Zhou, L. et al. Resistance to Cultural Intervention: Formation of Inhibitory Collective and children’s Self-Defensive Regulation in a Chinese School. Integr. psych. behav. 51, 477–495 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-016-9368-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-016-9368-0