Entering a Culture of Teaching: Teacher Induction in Shanghai

Abstract

Li Mei is an energetic, cheerful woman who feels that teaching “is the hardest job under the sun, but the happiest”. [2] In her second year of teaching lower secondary mathematics, she teaches thirteen periods a week (the average load for most lower secondary teachers in Shanghai): six each to two different sixth-grade classes and one to an elective ‘activity class’ (huodong ke) that is geared at strengthening and deepening pupils’ interest in mathematics and helping them develop ‘divergent’ ways of thinking that stretch beyond the textbook. Her load is like that of most teachers in her school.