What does Modernization bring to China?

June 12, 2011 Zhang Yang (Allen) 4421293

Modernization is a process of modern transformations in social, economic, and political systems (Cao, 2009）, which is a worldwide social movement. In China, government together with the Chinese people, have been carrying out tireless explorations in modernization since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. It is a fact that China as a typical country of acquired modernization is modernizing very rapidly. Both its economy and its public institutions are undergoing this process of modernization. The essence of modernization in China is industrialization, which transits China from a traditional agrarian society to an industrial society. Besides changing economically backward countries into fully industrialized ones, modernization is also a changing process of mentality, attitude, values, and lifestyle (Wang & Li, 2009).

With the development of social modernization, a great deal is being said about the necessity of modernizing education in China. Modernizing the system of education means to perfect the existing system of education and bring it up to date. Modernization requires a deep reform of education system, teaching contents and methods. Therefore, in order to bringing the system of education into conformity with the needs of society, a number of major reforms have been implemented in China. Quality education and curriculum reform is just one of the outcomes of modernization. According to Pepper (1996), the highly centralized and hierarchical government examination system of China determined the content of formal education: the Confucian classics, history and literature as well as the skills of essay writing and poetry writing. It is a fact that Chinese students have limited opportunity to voice their thoughts, as most teachers handle the teaching and learning process by their own without listen to students’ idea. The study technique is more towards memorizing among the student. That is students memorize the facts in the textbooks rather than understanding it, which is probably because of the exam-oriented education system. This old traditional educational mode--examination-oriented education--did not suit the development of modernization. Talents needed in modern society cannot be cultured under such mode of education. Therefore, the State Council issued “Decisions on Deepening the Educational Reform and Improving Quality-Oriented Education” in 1999 (Council, 1999). In a word, modernization of education is compatible with the social modernization and institutional changes in the content, which can be manifested as the expansion of education, educational philosophy and values ​​of modern, scientific and educational content, etc.

According to Wong（2009）, modernization indeed makes significant changes in people’s values. As we all know, collectivism is one of the social morals in China, which emphasize self-sacrifice and working for the whole society (Chan, 2000, p. 209). Individuals should be subject to the collective, when there is confliction between individual interests and collective interests. That is pursuing individual interests is against this social norm. There are many exemplars in Chinese history, such as Lei Feng, Jiao Yulu. Lei Feng was a soldier of the People's Liberation Army, who devoted his whole life to the national revolution and to the people (Landsberger, 2009). People are taught how to submit to the collective and the state, as well as how to fulfill their obligations, with less reference to a citizen’s self-consciousness and individual rights (Yu & Tao, 2010). However, with the development of modernization process, an increasing emphasis on individual achievement becomes more and more popular. Affected by individualism from western society, new generations pay more attention on their own interests. The sense of communal obligations decreases seriously.  More and more people stress on personal achievements and individual rights and expect from each other to fulfill their own needs.

The preaching of traditional values indeed declines in modern society in China. Modernization makes “profit” become the main aim of life. More and more business people use unscrupulous means to make profit. Tan (2011) studied the capitalist market values in east Malaysia and China, he pointed that “the ‘profit’ motive reigns supreme in post-Mao China: ordinary people think of ways to earn money and to get rich”. (p. 140). Corruption of officials is rampant all over the country. In the pursuit of profit under market-direct economy, there are too many unscrupulous practices. In order to make greater benefits, the producers even add some deleterious chemical substances to the food, beverage, baby formula, etc, which caused serious health problems even death.

According to Cao (2009), China’s modernization is not simply the pursuit of economic development, but is designed to achieve a better society and improve the life of its people. As the future of China’s modernization, although economic development should still be the central task, the good traditional values such as the national spirit should be still promoted, for it is the tremendous driving force to push the modernization process forward.

References

Cao, F. J. (2009). Modernization theory and China’s road to modernization. Chinese Studies in History, 43(1), 7-16. doi: 10.2753/CSH0009-4633430101

Chan, C. (2000). The political pragmatism of Chinese university students at dawn of the twenty-first century. In S. Zhao (ed.), China and democracy. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis Group.

Council, C. (1999). Decisions on Deepening the Educational Reform and Improving Quality-Oriented Education.

Landsberger, S. (n.d.). Lei Feng’s Web log message. Retrieved August 10, 2009, from http://www.iisg.nl/landsberger/lf.html

Pepper, S. (1996). Radicalism and education reform in 20th century China. Cambridge. UK: Cambridge University Press.

Wang, X. D. & Li, J. C. (2009). Modernization and the Study of Modern Chinese History. Chinese Studies in History, 43(1). 46-60.

Wong, K. Y. & Wan, E. P. (2009). New evidence of the postmaterialist shift: The experience of Hong Kong, 92(1), 497-515. doi: 10.1007/s11205-008-9299-3.

Yu, J. X. & Tao, F. (2010). Civic education and transition governance in China. Social Justice, 22(1). 295–302. doi: 10.1080/10402659.2010.502071

Tan, C. B. (2011). Capitalist market values in East Malaysia and China. Current Sociology, 59(135). doi: 10.1177/0011392110391144

My Thoughts on Up The Yangtze

June 11, 2011 Zhang Yang (Allen) 4421293

If you have any time to look at the big news of China, you must not be ignored the severe drought of some provinces in Southwest China, which is a big calamity for people there. At this time, we turn to Three Gorges Dam for help. According to the report from Beijing daily, in order to decrease the drought, the government decided to release nearly four fifths of the adjustment to alleviate the drought situation. However, Three Gorges Dam seems have no use, which makes most of Chinese angry with such big money-costing program.

When I saw the news about There Gorges Dam, I remembered a film named Up the Yangtze. Actually, first heard of Up the Yangtze was in 2008, but till last month I have the chance to watch it. Up the Yangtze is a film which is rich in detail about ways of life, dreams, and aspirations. It provides a great view into the reality of Chinese life. Because the public media is controlled by government, the films like this are seldom usually to be released in mainland China. After watching the film, I realize that poverty will keep you away form education, even secondary school. This film impressed me most.

Yu Shui (Cindy) is the focus of the film. Yu Shui is a girl from a poor peasant family living on the banks of the Yangtze. She left her family to work on one of the cruise ships serving wealthy western tourists, at the same time her family was being forced from their home due to the flooding that accompanied the building of the Three Gorges Dam. Actually, millions of girls have the similar fate like her in China. They say goodbye to their education and families and turn to face the future. Although there are just teenagers, they have to look for a job to support not only themselves but their families as well. In China, whether the teenagers of poor families could continue to study is not depend on kinds, but parents. Therefore, these kind of life/fate decisions are not by teenagers themselves, these are decisions made by the family.

Yu Shui says that her country needs educated workers, so she wants to continue her education by attending high school, but her family cannot afford to send her. I know it is the fact that some students have to give up higher education such as college and university education for lacking of money. According to Zhou (2010), in the Three Gorges Reservoir region ‘national minority villages’, for the investment to compulsory education is not insufficiency, the scale is small and the system not perfectly, the education fair of region is unbalanced, and its development power is insufficient. I always think primary and secondary school education have nothing to do with the money, for the tuition is so cheap and all the teenagers in China have the same chance to accept the public education. However, it seems not the truth.

On the positive side, the three gorges dam is projected to create new economic opportunities that will help people escape from poverty. However, it was a fact that more than 1 million people who lived in the area flooded by the dam have been displaced and the government has made substantial attempts at resettlement, but there have been complaints of inadequate housing, unfair compensation for lost property, lack of economic opportunity for farmers resettled in urban areas and vulnerable pockets of poor people who have been left to fend for themselves. Displaced twice by the building of the three gorges dam, the family struggles to make a living.

Zhan (2007) pointed that the basic education was too weak and the whole development of education was really slow in three gorges area. As a teenager in poor families, how you wish to go to school when living is a problem. Here, I have a better understanding of what the antique store owner saying, “it is hard being a human being, but being a commoner in China is even more difficult. China is too hard for common people.” When secondary education of children is becoming a dream, I can not image how hard the life of a rural poor family is.

I searched internet and knew more information about Yu Shui. As the leading actress, I am sure her fate must be changed after performed this film. Just as my expectation, the report said she made her decision to return to high school after watching the film. No one knows the future she will have, but till now the change is positive. As feeling happy for her, I still can not help worried about the other teenagers’ fate. Hope all teenagers form poor families in China would be given chances to accept education.

References

Zhou, Y. J. (2010). Thoughts on the problems of rural compulsory education of national minority in three gorges reservoir region. Journal of Panzhihua University, 27(5), 112-118

Zhan, P. M. & Wang, W. B. (2007). Research on the development and countermeasure of the three gorges reservoir district e ducation. Journal of Chongqing Three Gorges University, 5(23), 1-8

My opinion on transformative learning

June 7 2011 (Allen)

In my last article, I clearly stated my opinion about the aim of school education, which is socialization. However, what’s the purpose of adult education or continuous education? Nowadays, more and more adults decide to take some courses to refresh themselves. In order to keep pace with the society’s development, adult workers look for continuous education actively. Adult education may be understood as an organized effort to assist learners who are old enough to be held responsible for their acts to acquire or enhance their understandings, skills, and dispositions (Mezirow, 2000, p26). As a primary goal of all adult education, Jack Mezirow sees it is transformative learning (Cranton, 2002).

Centrality of experience, critical reflection, and rational discourse are three common themes in the transformational learning theory. In an everyday sense, reflection is a ‘looking back’ on experiences. Having an experience is not enough to effect a transformation. The key to transformational learning is critical reflection on experience. Then, what is critical reflection? Critical reflection is a distinctive form of adult learning (Brookfield, 1995). It is the process of analyzing, reconsidering and questioning experiences within a broad context of issues (e.g., issues related to social justice, curriculum development, learning theories, politics, culture, or use of technology). Patricia Cranton (2002) defines reflective practice as about helping people to reflect on their experience of themselves and each other in the work place in a way that builds self insight and awareness so that people have increased choices about action.

How to lead to transformation? A perspective transformation often occurs either through a series of cumulative transformed meaning schemes or as a result of an acute personal or social crisis. A famous philosophy saying goes, “a quantitative change leads to a qualitative change”. That is, a qualitative change, to some degree, depends on the accumulation of quantity, which is suitable to leaning, including transformative learning. Although gaining emancipatory knowledge is transformative, learning of instrumental and communicative knowledge is the foundation or base for achievement of trasformation. It is a long process for students to acquire these two kinds of knowledge and students also need time to understand or digest them. According to Cranton, transformative learning is not a linear process, yet there is some progression to it, perhaps spiral-like (Cranton, 2000). Although we may not critically reflect on an assumption until a trigger event or a serial of trigger events appear, trigger event may not be a single event but rather a long-time accumulation process. According to Merriam’s study, all of the participants have experienced a big life event, which is crucial for their sudden transformational learning, such as death of a child, illness, car accident and so on (Merriam, 2008). It may take a significant or dramatic event to lead us to question assumptions and beliefs, for example, a natural disaster, the death of a significant other, divorce, a debilitating accident, job loss, or retirement. These experiences are often stressful and painful, and they can cause individuals to question the very core of their existence (Cranton, 2002). Although there are no particular teaching methods that guarantee transformative learning, teachers can only use some strategies to induce or stimulate critical self-reflection; teachers can provide the environment in which adult students can articulate and critically reflect on their assumptions and perspectives.

As a Chinese, I can not help thinking about the transformational teaching situation in China. In the last two decades critical reflection and transformative learning have been highly valued in western countries, especially in United States (Wei, 2006). In China, however, there is not even one article which concerns on critical reflection or transformative learning in the main journals or newspaper of Pedagogy or education before 2000(Liu, 2007). Scholars and researchers have just begun to realize the importance of critical reflection and transformation in recent years, only a few researches have been carried out (Fan, 2010). Thus, discussions and studies on critical reflection and transformative learning of adult student are still far to enough in China. As far as I am concerned, transformation is the highest-level of learning, and critical reflection is the key factor which leads to transformative learning. To achieve the high goals and expectations of education in the 21st century, Chinese educators must pay much attention on critical reflection and transformative learning in adult education, which is necessary and urgent.

References

Brookfield, S. D. (1995). Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Brookfield, S. D. (1995). Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Cranton, P. (2002). Teaching for transformation, New directions for adult and continuing education. Wiley Periodicals, Inc, 93(1), 63-71.

Fan J. (2010). Research and revelations of the transformative learning theory. Journal of Hebei Normal University, 12(3), 4-79.

Liu, S. B. (2007) Adult transformative learning and its teaching strategy. Educational Research, 10(1), 73-76.

Mezirow, J. (2000). Learning to think like an adult: Core concepts of transformation theory.  In J. Mezirow & Associates, Learning as transformation (pp. 3-33). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Merriam, S. B. (2008). Transformational learning in Botswana: how culture shapes the process. Adult Education Quarterly, 58(3), 183-197.

Wei, J. (2006). Study on adult transformative learning. Global Education, 12(1), 66-68.

School Education for What

June 4, 2011 ZHANG Yang (Allen) 4421293

June is coming, and July is not far away. For Chinese graduates, they become more and more busy and panic for seeking a job during these two months. June and July are to be seen as job-search months in China. Sending CVs as much as possible and not giving up any interviews, most of the graduates are now trying their best to do the last struggle to grab a job position before leaving campus. Most of graduates claim they can not find a suitable job. I still remembered my surprise when I read the news that a student had to sell pork in a market after graduating from the most famous university--Peking University. How ridiculous it is. People spend the first 20 year of the life to study and accept higher education, but can not find a job in their major area. As a graduate in education area, I can not help thinking what is education for? What’s the purpose of education?

According to Sadovnik et al. (2006, p. 30), the conservative perspective sees the purpose of education as to “socialize children into the adult roles necessary to the maintenance of the social order”. On the contrary, the liberal perspective sees the purpose of education as “enabling the individual to develop his or her talents, creativity, and sense of self”. As far as I am concerned, I agree with the former. I believe the initial purpose of education should be socialization. Education especially schooling should help students become right social roles.

Socialization is the process by which individuals acquire the knowledge, skills, and character traits that enable them to participate as effective members of groups and society (Brim, 1966). According to Roberta M. Berns, the school’s function is as a socializing agent (Robert, 2010, p.227). The school’s function as a socializing agent is that it provides the intellectual and social experiences from which children develop the skills, knowledge, interest, and attitudes that characterize them as individuals and that shape their abilities to perform adult roles.

The function of education is to make educatee acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to become self-sufficient as well as able to participate effectively in society. Education, especially school education, is to prepare educatee for their later occupational roles and to select, train, and allocate them into the division of labor. The degree to which schools directly prepare students for work varies form society to society, but most schools have at least an indirect role in this process.

For a new generation, they were born in a certain society. The primary task they first to confront is to know the society and adapt to the current life. That is to be socialized actively to survive. That why people themselves want to learn practical knowledge or technology to be more useful in a certain society. Most of people choose distance education, continuation courses in colleges or other educational institutions is just a good example.

It is no doubt that education should not ignore the development of students or the individual’s characteristics. According to Sadovnik et al., existentialists believe that education should stress individuality, focusing on the needs of individuals, both cognitively and affectively (Sadovnik et al., 2006, p. 176). Here, what are the needs of individuals in existentialists’ theory? Individualism supporters may give an answer that “talents, creativity, and sense of self”. However, I have another question, why they need these? In other words, what they need these things for? The answer is for pursuing a good life in the current society. Therefore, the finial aim of helping students acquire higher-order thinking skills such as analysis, evaluation and synthesis is make them more useful for serving society. We can see that schooling which focus on the development of individual is still for society.

Purpose of education as one of the basic issues in education inevitably arouses people’s debate. From the discussion above, I am convinced that the purpose of education is to socialize children into the adult roles necessary to the maintenance of the social order. In other words, education is for socialization. During the process of education, educatees acquire the knowledge, skills, and character traits that enable them to participate as effective members of groups and society. The necessary skills and knowledge which make educatee become self-sufficient as well as able to participate effectively in society must be taught.

References

Brim, O. G. (1966). Socialization through the life cycle. In O.G. Brim & S. Wheeler (Eds.), Socialization after childhood: Two essays. New York: John Wiley&Sons.

Roberta M. B. (2010). Child, Family, School, Community Socialization and Support. Thomson Learning , Inc.

Sadovnik, A. R., Cookson, P. W. & Semel, S. F. (2006). Exploring education: An introduction to the foundations of education (3^rd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.

Why teachers ignore their leadership? & Why teacher leadership need to be improved?

May 31, 2011 ZHANG Yang (Allen) 4421293

I met William today on my way home. He was now interested in school leadership and wanted to do more research. He knew I worked as a secondary school PE teacher for one year before I came to Brock. He asked me whether I had any chance to be a leader. I said no, and never thought about to be a leader as soon as I was a teacher. He laughed at me for a while and then told me, ‘teacher also has leadership’, which made me feel shamed.

When leadership is mentioned, I always think about political leaders, but not educational leaders. However, when people mention ‘leaders in schools’, principals are recognized as the only leaders, while teachers and teacher leaders are usually ignored unconsciously. Most of teachers lack of consciousness of being leadership. Barth (2001) was once shocked by “I’m just a teacher!” He wrote the scence in Teacher Leader:

I was visiting a middle school known for its innovation. After engaging a teacher in conversation for a while, I asked her, “Do you take on some leader ship or this school?” “I’m just a teacher,” she replied. “If you want to talk with the leader, he’s down the hall in the principal’s office.” Clearly the question struck a nerve. It is alarming that the individuals so central to the learning process so often see themselves as incidental to the enterprise we call “school.” “I’m just a teacher,” indeed! (p443)

My own experience also proves that most of teachers lack of leadership idea as well as leadership skills in China. I also realized it was true that teachers, to some degree, were merely knowledge transmitters and they were seldom engaging in the decision-making process in schools.

However, why teacher leadership need to or must be improved? Many studies show that leading and learning are interrelated. According to York and Duke (2004), “teacher leaders grow in their understandings of instructional, professional, and organizational practice as they lead”. That is teacher leaders’ expertise about teaching and learning is improved greatly. What’s more, teacher expertise is at “the foundation for increasing teacher quality and advancements in teaching and learning;” this expertise becomes more widely available “when accomplished teachers model instructional practices, encourage sharing of best practices, mentor new teachers, and collaborate with teaching colleagues” (York & Duke, 2004). Therefore, enhance teacher leadership indeed increases teacher quality.

Teacher leaders, to some degree, have a vested interest and they care about what they do, how they do it and how it affects student learning. They are always making instructional decisions based on what is best for students. It has been posited that only when teachers learn will their students learn (Barth, 2001). Therefore, students will learn better under teacher leaders’ instruction, because teacher leadership leads to teacher growth and learning.

According to Hirsch (2006), empowerment and leadership opportunities were important factors in whether teachers said they would work in certain schools. Greater involvement in school leadership offers appeal to many accomplished teachers. Enhancing teacher’s leadership will retain good teachers, improve schools’ prestige and improve school’s development.

The reason for ignoring teacher leadership is the importance of teacher leadership has not been realized or emphasized. As a teacher, we need to learn leadership. Just as a famous saying goes, “the soldier who doesn't want to be a general is not a good soldier.” So does a teacher. As a teacher, you should work hard to be a qualified educator, and then you can dream to be a department leader or grade leader, even principal. Only teacher has a desire to be a leader or learn leadership, can the teacher leadership be enhanced totally.

References

York, B. J. & Duke, K. (2004). What do we know about teacher leadership? Findings from two decades of scholarship. Educational Research, 74(3), 255-316.

Barth, R. S. (2001). Teacher leader. Phi Delta Kappan, 82(1), 443-449.

Hirsch, E. (2006). Recruiting and retaining teachers in Alabama: Educators on what it will take to staff all classrooms with quality teachers. Hillsborough, NC: Center for Teaching Quality. Retrieved November 1, 2007, from http://www.teachingquality.org/pdfs/al_recruitretain.pdf

High Dropout Rate in Distance Education: Why?

May 24, 2011 ZHANG Yang（Allen） 4421293

Last week, when I chatted with my brother, he told me he gave up his online course, which surprised me most. I knew in order to get a good grade in Graduate Entrance Examination, he enrolled in Koolearn operated by New Oriental School which provides all kinds of English online classes three months ago. The main way to learn the courses is to watch online courseware, most of which are videos that a teacher presents alone. I even remembered his excited tone when he told me he registered distance course that day. Why he quit from this course only after one month? I am really curious. When I asked him the reason, he said it was the bad feelings caused by lake of communication and prompt response or feedback from teachers that made him drop out. He also mentioned that his friend who had another distance course also dropped out.

When I googled “Distance Education”, I found the dropout rate in Distance Education is really high. Generally speaking, the dropout rate is often two times higher in distance offerings than in their face-to-face counterparts (Moore & Kearsley, 1996). In Europe, the dropout rate is usually ranging from 20 to 30 percentages (Pierrakeas, 2004). In USA, according to a report in the Chronicle for Higher Education found that institutions report dropout rates ranging from 20 to 50 percent for distance learners (Frankola, 2001). According to Cao (2005), the dropout rate is around 30% in some colleges of China. From this data, we can see that high dropout rates are indeed an embarrassing problem.

However, why? Why the dropout rate in distance education is so high? What is the main factor leading to this fact? After reading some articles and references, I found different researchers have different opinions or ideas about the real reasons. Some researchers believe the individual factors are the main cause; some researchers think poorly designed courses should be responsible; some researchers point out that lack of communication or interaction between students and instructors and among students is the main reason. As far as I am concerned, lack of communication and interaction directly lead to the high dropout rate in distance education.

The communication and interaction between learners and teachers or among learners can help them confirm and sustain their study motivation, which has a powerful affect on completion rates, regardless of institutional setting. Interaction is a good motivator to stimulate students’ potential. Prior research has indicated that lack of motivation is an important cause of dropouts when students choose to study at a distance (Visser, et al, 2001). If students lose the motivation that why to study or study for what, they will lose the confident to finish their courses.

Without doubt, if students in conventional teaching and learning settings have motivational problems, teachers or instructors can easily detect and correct them, because instructors have more frequent contact with learners. In addition, through participation in face-to-face group work as well as other cooperative activities, traditional learners have more chances to contact or communicate with peers, which can also directly enhance motivational levels in students. Because of less communication and interaction, however, distance learners’ motivational problems can go unnoticed and undetected for extended periods. Therefore, they will not benefit from the personal contact experiences. As a result, distance learners may not receive the timely help that would bring about higher levels of motivation when it is truly needed most by these students. It is abundantly clear that the communication or interaction can have a direct and strong impact on learners’ motivation and dropout rate in education.

I think, the best way to enhance the communication or interaction is through the good use of technology such as e-mail, chatting software ect, for interaction can occur synchronously, which may be helpful to alleviate the problem that students have fewer opportunities to communicate with instructors directly and timely.

References

Cao, W. & Guan, Z. Y. (2005). The inspiration of the regularity of student dropout rate web-based education (in Chinese). Distance Education in China, 11(1). P. 36-44

Frankola, K. (2001). Why online learners drop out. Workforce; Costa Mesa, 80 (10).

Moore, M. G. & Kearsley, G. (1996). Distance education: A systems view. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Pierrakeas, C. (2004). Comparative Study of Dropout rates and Causes for Two Different Distance Courses. Retrieved on December 21, 2005 at

http://www.irrodl.org/content/v5.2/pierrakeas-research.html

Visser, L., Plomp, T., Amirault, R. J. & Wilmad, K. (2001), Motivating students at a distance: The case of an international audience. Educational Technology Research & Development, 50(1), p.94-110. http://purl.org/utwente/58759

Research in My Eyes

What does “research” mean to me? Just like when leadership is mentioned, we often think of political leaders, rather than leaders in educational area; when I hear of “research”, I can not help thinking scientists and experiments. At the same time, a picture of researchers busy doing experiments in a lab is showed up in front of my eyes. I always simply think research is a kind of scientific activities. But sometimes, I also think research is survey with questionnaires, because some of my college students, especially those major in psychology, are fond of asking a large number of students to answer questions when they do research. As far as I am concerned, research is such a kind of activities that is conducted by professional people, focusing on a certain subject or area and having an explicit aim. Besides, research must have a certain value to be conducted, otherwise money and time is wasted. That means the results of research must benefit human or society.

I have never been a “subject” in research. I only filled out some research questionnaires, and was interviewed by my friend when she conducted a survey for her thesis. When I was a college student, I majored in Physical Education and most of my time was spent on physical training, therefore I seldom had chances to do research by myself either. But I indeed conducted a simple research about the effect of selenium (Se) on algae in my third year in university. Because my father is a professor in Biology department and my mother is a laboratory assistant in the same department, I have more chances to contact with biology and experiments. Affected by my parents, I am interested in microbiology, especially micro-algae. Therefore, I took some elective courses of botany and physiology in university. I liked to study unicellar red algae, especially Porphyridium sp., which has a great commercial value and broad application for synthesizing many high-value bioactive substances such as phycobiliprotein, polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), exopolysaccharide and so on. I also know that selenium is one of human essential bio-trace elements, having many physiological and biological functions such as scavenging free radicals, antioxidation, antitumor activity, etc. Porphyridium sp. can enrich and bio-transform selenium when cultured in medium containing sodium, which is an easy and effective way to get organic se-compounds. Therefore, I conducted a very simply research to investigate the effect of selenium on the algal growth and the major biochemical components. Although I searched a few relative references and got some useful advice from my physiology teacher as well as my parents before I conducted my research, I made many mistakes during the process of experiments. For lacking of rich biology knowledge and relative experimental skills, this research finally was not completed totally. But from the data I got, I found that selenium can promote the algal growth and selenium also stimulates algae to produce more exopolysaccharide. My friend Ava thought my finding was interesting and did more research during her graduate study. She published an academic article last year, named “The Accumulation and Distribution of Selenium in Protein, Polysaccharide and Lipid of Porphyridium sp.”.

As a graduate student in educational area, I find there are many interesting issues or subjects to be researched, such as teacher leadership, educational policy, quality education, differences between eastern and western education, distance education, teacher training, etc. Among all these issues, I am really interested in the quality education and curriculum reform in China. In order to call for an end to the overemphasis on imparting “book knowledge”, the Chinese curriculum reforms for grades 1-12 were officially launched in 2001, when the Ministry of Education issued a circular entitled “Guidelines for Curriculum Reform of Basic Education”. Shandong Province was famous for high-quality education and the senior high school where I studied, High School Affiliated to Qufu Normal University, was one of the first bath sample schools which implemented quality education and curriculum reform in China. As a student who experienced such reforms during 2000 to 2003, I realized that the undertaking curriculum reform brought tremendous challenges to school administrators, teachers, students, and parents. Ten years has passed away since the reform was implemented, does the reform change the old traditional teaching way? Does the reform solve the problems generated by examination-oriented education? Does this reform really reduce students’ study pressure? What are people’s thoughts of this reform, including administers’, teachers’, students’ and parents’ opinion? … Although I know the research concerning this reform will be very difficult and I even have no idea about how to conduct such a research, I am really interested in participating in the relative research about it.

Research, in my eyes, is an activity which needs time, money, energy and talent. Just like not all the people can be athletes, not everyone is suitable to do research. If you like to do research and the subject lies in your favorite area, it will be happiness; but if not, it will be a nightmare.