What does it mean to teach thinking in China? Challenging and developing notions of 鈥楥onfucian education鈥?/span>
详细信息 查看全文
- 作者：Li Li ; Rupert Wegerif
- 关键词：Confucian education ; Thinking skills ; Reflection ; Chinese learning
- 刊名：Thinking Skills and Creativity
- 出版年：March, 2014
- 年：2014
- 卷：11
- 期：Complete
- 页码：22-32
- 全文大小：11485 K
文摘
The Confucian tradition of education is frequently referred to in ways that make it seem antithetical to the aim of teaching thinking. 鈥楥onfucian education鈥? as depicted in the literature, implies rote learning in large classrooms where students learn not to question authority. However, in what is referred to in the literature as the 鈥榩aradox of Chinese education鈥? it seems that what appears to many western observers to be rote learning often leads to depth understanding. In this paper we use critical literature review and some analysis of empirical data to argue that this paradox might be an effect of the continuance in Chinese education of a distinctively Confucian approach to teaching thinking. Confucius, we argue, taught thinking in the form of inner dialogue between multiple voices in the context of relationships and responsibilities. Having made the scholarly and theoretical case for this form of teaching thinking, we then offer illustrations of it, taken from recent classroom research in China. We conclude that the Confucian approach to teaching thinking that we uncover still survives and is a significant part of the Confucian heritage. It may have been overlooked in the past simply because it does not fit easily with more demonstrative and individualistic traditions of teaching thinking familiar in the West. Our aim is to correct a common misinterpretation of Confucian education and so perhaps to open the way to developing a more truly Confucian approach to education that is appropriate for the needs of the 21st Century.