Wong, "The influence of gender and culture on the pedagogy of five western EFL teachers in China," 2000

Mary Shepard Wong, Ph.D.

Abstract (Summary)

This two-year study investigated various influences on the pedagogy of five Americans teaching English in China. In-depth interviews conducted in Asia and the US were transcribed, coded, analyzed, and corroborated with other data. On the basis of these data, an analytical framework was developed consisting of 30 pedagogical influences clustered into three sources: (a) the teachers' experiences and expectations, which include the teachers' teaching experiences, cross-cultural experiences, learning experiences, goals, gender, interests, skills, religion, the sending organization's goals, and their supporters' goals; (b) the reality and constraints of the local context, which encompass the administration's goals, classes, textbooks, resources, political events, tests, students' ages, interests, learning experiences, and gender; and (c) emerging issues, which comprise the students' attitudes, relationships with teammates and Chinese colleagues, personal issues, and professional development.

The specific research questions addressed the impact of culture and gender. In terms of culture, Western teachers: (a) regarded Western and Chinese cultures of learning as opposites, yet they described exceptions to the dichotomy; (b) felt the segregation of Western and Chinese teachers hindered the development of a pedagogical synthesis of communicative language teaching (CLT) developed in the west and traditional Chinese methods; (c) found ways to adapt their pedagogy to be more culturally appropriate, especially through action research or ethnographies; (d) adapted their pedagogy by adding more structure to their classes, using small group work sparingly and with more guidelines, permitting Chinese to be spoken in the classroom, calling on students by name, allowing for choral responses, and granting more time for students to prepare.

In terms of gender, Western teachers felt: (a) their gender affected which students they socialized with and the amount of status and authority the teachers were given; (b) more males enrolled in higher status schools and majors and aspired to loftier positions; (c) English classes were "female domains" in which female students excelled in terms of achievement and participation; (d) CLT did not lead to male students dominating speaking opportunities, rather in some cases it fostered greater female participation.