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Flexibility and Balancing: Against the “Apprenticeship of Observation”

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Constructivism and Teachers in Chinese Culture
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Abstract

This chapter introduces Qiqi’s stories in two acts with a focus on her character. The first act describes Qiqi’s flexibility in facilitating children’s play and skills of balancing between children’s development and content knowledge learning. Act I is organized in three scenes: active learning – flexibility, heuristic teaching – balancing, and learning through play. These three scenes are presented to show how and why Qiqi enacted active and playful learning and what constructivism means for her. Following Act I, Act II further shows Qiqi’s moral reasoning about her way of teaching given the changing time full of opportunities and challenges. There are two scenes: culturally intrinsic ways of learning through dialogue and observation and time versus tradition. In sum, the whole ballet is intended to present how and why Qiqi enacted constructivist ideas in her classroom practice.

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Wei, Z. (2019). Flexibility and Balancing: Against the “Apprenticeship of Observation”. In: Constructivism and Teachers in Chinese Culture. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2691-2_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2691-2_5

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