2021-2022 UNNC Outreach Teacher Training Project
15 September 2022
A long-term development plan should be education-oriented and an education plan should be teacher-centred according to President Xi Jinping. Teachers are the backbone of developing high-quality education. Currently in China, there are more than 2.9 million teachers in rural areas. As the mainstay of lifting people out of poverty, revitalising rural areas and developing high quality education in them as well as building an education powerhouse, this group of teachers has long faced problems such as insufficient teaching experience and a lack of teaching resources. In recent years, an outreach teacher training team from the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) has attracted widespread attention and been reported upon by media. Since 2017, the UNNC Outreach Teacher Training project has benefited nearly 400 teachers in rural and underdeveloped areas, receiving unanimous praise from the participating rural educators.
The UNNC Outreach Teacher Training project was initiated by the Centre for English Language Education (CELE) of UNNC. With the approval and financial support of UNNC’s Education Foundation (EFUNNC), CELE cooperates with a number of public welfare and educational institutions to help English teachers in primary and secondary schools in rural and underdeveloped areas improve their English proficiency and teaching skills. In August 2022, with the closing ceremony of the project, the 2021-2022 UNNC Outreach Teacher Training project came to a successful conclusion.
The Centre for English Language Education (CELE) at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China is one of the largest and most well-established English language teaching departments in the world. CELE’s teaching team consists of around 120 experienced tutors from 21 countries and regions around the world. CELE provides a range of academic English teaching courses and academic development support for UNNC students. In addition, CELE gives full play to the role of universities in serving society, and provides a series of knowledge exchange courses for off-campus organisations, covering teacher training, medical English, business communication English and other fields, which are widely praised by students from all walks of life. In the Outreach Teacher Training project, CELE selected a total of 14 experienced teachers to guide the trainees. In addition, CELE has hired 2 external coaching experts to provide special training in education management for rural educators.
The UNNC Outreach Teacher Training project directs resource and support to rural English teachers in underdeveloped areas. The beneficiary teachers are selected by the Jack Ma Charitable Foundation, Beijing Normal University, Shanghai Huochaibox and other public and educational organisations according to specific criteria: The recommended participants are devoted to the development of education in their region. Participants should actively seek to apply what they study at UNNC to their own teaching and be in a good position to positively influence students and colleagues around them. After this selection, a total of 108 rural teachers from 17 regions participated in the project.
In August 2021, CELE adapted their training methods according to the requirements of Covid-19 prevention and control. The project pivoted to monthly online training courses, online skills workshops, teacher sharing sessions, communication horizon and external expert training using digital media.
The UNNC Outreach Teacher Training project was interactive and received a warm response from the participating teachers. Although most of the courses were converted from off-line delivery to on-line due to the impact of the Covid-19, the enthusiasm of teachers and students was undiminished. Almost all the beneficiary teachers said that they had gained a lot from the series of courses provided by the project. Among the 108 rural teachers, 54 were awarded certificates and souvenirs. In addition, UNNC and its partner 21st Century Newspaper co-sponsored the top 20 outstanding rural teachers to participate in the 2022 International Conference on English Education in China (TESOL Conference). After the end of the project, feedback from teachers heavily featured how inspiring they found the course, its down to earth delivery and its real life applications.
Yantao Tan, a primary school English teacher from Yongping County, Dali Prefecture, Yunnan Province, said: “The project has refreshed my ideas around teaching, and I have gained a better understanding of modern English education. I changed my methods from knowledge-based education to student-based education, and I reflected upon the English class’s objectives and positioning. In the past, many teachers tended to put ourselves at the centre of the class and asked the students to revolve around us. Teachers acted as the imparter of knowledge while the student was simply the receiver, and we even treated the students like a tape recorder to record the content taught by us. The spirit of new education requires us to make classroom observations, take students as the main focus, and respect students' emotions, personality, needs and aspirations for development. Secondly, teachers should keep an open mind and curious disposition, create a fresh classroom for students, listen to them more, create more games to learn and consolidate knowledge. Finally, I would like to thank UNNC’s organisational team, including all the teachers who attended the class and all the staff who worked behind the scenes for this project. The teachers who participated in the project teach in various rural schools across the country, and they rarely have the opportunity to learn and train, so such high-quality training project is really meaningful to us.”
2022 is the 101st anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, it is also the first year of running the new-era Basic Education Strengthening Teachers Programme, and the fifth year that UNNC has actively responded to the country’s call to support rural teachers through implementing its Outreach Teacher Training project. Fairness, openness and inclusivity have always been the most fundamental values of UNNC. The university is committed to supporting the development of teachers in rural and underdeveloped areas teachers, contributing resources to promote regional education equality, and reflecting upon the fortunate situation that UNNC finds itself in by giving back to communities. In the future, the UNNC Education Foundation will continue to support the CELE so as to ensure that more and more rural educators benefit and we may continue to develop and revitalise education in rural areas together.