Educating for Citizenship in a Canada-China Sister School Reciprocal Learning Partnership: A West-East Collaborative Inquiry (Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education) 3031180771, 9783031180774

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INTERCULTURAL RECIPROCAL LEARNING IN CHINESE AND WESTERN EDUCATION

Educating for Citizenship in a Canada-China Sister School Reciprocal Learning Partnership A West-East Collaborative Inquiry Yishin Khoo

Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education Series Editors

Michael Connelly University of Toronto Toronto, ON, Canada Shijing Xu Faculty of Education University of Windsor Windsor, ON, Canada

This book series grows out of the current global interest and turmoil over comparative education and its role in international competition. The specific series grows out of two ongoing educational programs which are integrated in the partnership, the University of Windsor-Southwest University Teacher Education Reciprocal Learning Program and the Shanghai-Toronto-Beijing Sister School Network. These programs provide a comprehensive educational approach ranging from preschool to teacher education programs. This framework provides a structure for a set of ongoing Canada-China research teams in school curriculum and teacher education areas. The overall aim of the Partnership program, and therefore of the proposed book series, is to draw on school and university educational programs to create a comprehensive cross-cultural knowledge base and understanding of school education, teacher education and the cultural contexts for education in China and the West.

Yishin Khoo

Educating for Citizenship in a Canada-China Sister School Reciprocal Learning Partnership A West-East Collaborative Inquiry

Yishin Khoo University of Windsor Windsor, ON, Canada

Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education ISBN 978-3-031-18077-4    ISBN 978-3-031-18078-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18078-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: ©Adelevin/DigitalVision Vectors/Getty This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Series Foreword

The Series and East-West Contrasting Educational Narratives This book series focuses on Chinese and Western education for the purpose of mutual understanding and reciprocal learning between the East and the West. The East has been a puzzle for the West, romanticized or demonized depending on the times. East-West relations have a long history of inquiry, and action has often been framed in competitive, ideological, and colonialist terms. In 1926 Dewey complained that “As far as we have gone at all, we have gone in loco parentis, with advice, with instruction, with example and precept. Like a good parent we would have brought up China in the way in which she should go” (p. 188). This “paternal” attitude, as Dewey called it, has not always been so benign. Economic, cultural and intellectual matters have often been in the forefront since the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century. Intellectually the East-West dynamic is equally dramatic as found in works by authors such as Said (1978), Tu Wei-ming (1993), Hall and Ames (1999), Hayhoe and Pan (2001) and many others. These writers are part of a rich conceptual knowledge across cultures literature on the historical, philosophical, cultural and educational differences of the East and West. Education is a vital topic of international discussion and essential component part of our global consciousness. Global discussions of economics, national and regional competition, and national and regional futures often turn to education. Meanwhile local educational discussions take place in social environments discourse of international awareness. “How are our v

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international neighbours doing?” “How do they teach values?” “We have to catch up.” These matters are vitally important. But they are not new. Higher education in universities and other forms of postsecondary education has occupied most of the attention. What is new, and what, in our view, is likely to have far-reaching impact, is the focus on school education and early childhood education as well as pre-service teacher education. For several reasons, not the least of which is national competition, the focus on school education has been driven by comparative achievement studies. When Shanghai school students topped the chart in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) studies the information was broadcast worldwide and generated ferocious discussion. One of the positive outcomes of this discussion is comparative research interest, the process of comparing educational similarities and differences in school practices, official policies, and social cultural influences. This comparative interest is all to the good and should help frame potential positive comparative futures. But comparative research on similarity and difference is not enough. We believe we need to reach beyond the study of similarities and differences and to explore life filled school practices of people in different cultures coming together and learning from one another. In this postmodern world of instant worldwide communication we need to go beyond comparative premises. Ideas, thoughts, images, research, knowledge, plans and policies are in constant interaction. This book series hopes to move our international educational research onto this collaborative and interactive educational landscape of schools, parents, communities, policy and international trends and forces.

Series Objectives and Contribution to Knowledge The book series grew out of our seven-year Canada-China partnership study on reciprocal educational learning between Canada and China (Xu & Connelly, 2013–2020). The partnership developed from the current global interest and turmoil over comparative education and its role in international competition. The specific series grows out of two ongoing educational programs which are integrated in the partnership, the University of Windsor-Southwest University Teacher Education Reciprocal Learning Program and the Shanghai-Toronto-Beijing Sister School Network. These programs provide a comprehensive educational approach ranging from preschool to teacher education programs. This framework provides a

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structure for a set of ongoing Canada-China research teams in school curriculum and teacher education areas. The overall aim of the Partnership program, and therefore of the proposed book series, is to draw on school and university educational programs to create a comprehensive cross-­ cultural knowledge base and understanding of school education, teacher education and the cultural contexts for education in China and the West. The first few books in the series will be direct outgrowths of our partnership study. But because of current global conditions, there is a great deal of important related work underway throughout the world. We encourage submissions to the series and expect the series to become a home for collaborative reciprocal learning educational work between the East and the West. The starting point in our Canada-China Reciprocal Learning Partnership’s is the idea of a global community in which ideas, things, and people flow between countries and cultures (Xu & Connelly, 2013). There is intense public discussion in Canada over international relations with China. The publication of international student achievement scores that rank China at the top has resulted in growing scholarly and public discussion on the differences in our educational systems. The discussion tends to focus on economic and trade relations while educational reciprocity and reciprocal learning are often absent from educational discourse. Given that the Chinese are Canada’s and Ontario’s largest immigrant group and that Chinese students have statistically shown academic excellence, it is critical to explore what we can learn from Chinese philosophies of education and its educational system, and what Canada can offer China in return. The Partnership’s overall goal is to compare and contrast Canadian and Chinese education in such a way that the cultural narratives of each provide frameworks for understanding and appreciating educational similarities and differences. We expect other work generated outside our partnership Grant to have different starting points and socially relevant arguments. But we do expect all series works to share the twin goals of mutual understanding and reciprocal learning. Built on these twin goals the purpose of the book series is to create and assemble the definitive collection of educational writings on the similarities, differences and reciprocal learnings between education in the East and the West. Drawing on the work of partnership oriented researchers throughout the world, the series is designed to:

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• build educational knowledge and understanding from a cross-­ cultural perspective; • support new approaches to research on curriculum, teaching and learning in schools and teacher education programs in response to change brought on by heightened global awareness; • provide a compelling theoretical frame for conceptualizing the philosophical and narrative historical trajectories of these two compelling worldviews on education, society and culture; • provide state of the art reviews of the comparative Chinese and English language literature on school curriculum and teacher education; • model, sustainable, school to school structures and methods of communication and educational sharing between Canada, other English speaking countries and China; • model, sustainable, structures and methods of initial teacher training in cross-cultural understanding; • contribute to a documented knowledge base of similarities, differences, comparisons and reciprocal learnings in elementary and secondary school teaching and learning curricula.

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto Michael Connelly  Toronto ON Canada Canada Research Chair, Faculty of Education University of Windsor, Windsor ON Canada

Shijing Xu

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References Dewey, J. (1926). America and the Far East. Survey, 1 May, 1926, 188. Later published in: John Dewey, The Later works, 1925–1953, (1984). Southern Illinois University Press. Volume 2: 1925–1927, pp. 1173–1175. Hayhoe, R., & Pan, J. (Eds.). (2001). Knowledge across cultures: A contribution to dialogue among civilizations. Comparative Education Research Centre, The University of Hong Kong Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. Vintage Books. Tu, W. (1993). Way, learning, and politics: Essays on the Confucian intellectual. State University of New York Press. Xu, S., & Connelly F.M. (Project Directors) (2013). Reciprocal learning in teacher education and school education between Canada and China. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) 2013–2020 [Grant 895-2012-1011].

Foreword

What does Canada have to learn from China in teacher education and the nurturing of global citizens? This book is the ninth in a remarkable series entitled Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education. Its author has served as facilitator and bridge builder over a seven-year period in which teacher education students and faculty members from universities in Canada and China spent time living in each other’s worlds and engaging in collaborative research. School principals and teachers in both countries also welcomed visitors into their classrooms and opened their hearts to rich cross-cultural learning experiences. While considerable international travel was involved in the research as well as the annual conferences held year after year in Windsor, Chongqing, Shanghai, Toronto, Changchun and finally Windsor a second time, a great deal of communication took place through the use of the internet, SKYPE and other digital forms of dialogue, beginning well before COVID made this a necessity. There is thus a sense of the culmination of a tremendously rich process of deepening intercultural understanding in this volume, as its author has been intensely engaged in organizing and facilitating every single phase of this seven-year journey. This happened initially from her base as a doctoral student at the University of Toronto, then as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Windsor, where she orchestrated an incredibly rewarding final conference in 2019. This volume is adapted from a doctoral thesis with the title “River Flowing and Fire Burning: A Narrative Inquiry into a

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Teacher’s Experience of Learning to Educate for Citizenship.” In it she engages the reader in every step of one Canadian teacher’s journey of transformation. The musical analogy to the structure of a sonata as Ann’s journey proceeds, with contrasting themes interacting in creative ways, draws all of the reader’s senses into full engagement with this absorbing intercultural experience. The connections to nature and the environment open up another dimension of learning, as this Canadian teacher collaborates in creating a shared water culture while learning from a partner school in Shanghai that has a sophisticated approach to enhancing children’s awareness of the importance of water and the need for vigilance and responsibility in its use. The final section of the book carries the reader into an experience of polarity engendered through the contrasting images of water and fire. Water functions as a root metaphor, with channels flowing continuously, filling all openings and always flowing downward in the ever-widening connections to community, nation, region and globe. Bridge-building becomes a metaphor for the ever deepening understanding around students’ development into global citizens as the partnership between Minzhu School in Shanghai and Bay Street School in Canada is strengthened. Adding Fire to the Water image enables the reader to experience a fundamental Chinese concept of the interactive energy flowing between yin and yang, opposites that feed each other, create an ongoing balance and a sense of movement, yet remain always apart. This is a completely different way of thinking from the linear processes common in the West, with attention given to cause and effect, forward movement and progress. The presence of the author as researcher in both Minzhu and Bay Street Schools is not for the purposes of calculating or figuring out what gains are being made through this partnership by the application or testing of theories, but rather to function within the Confucian understanding of the “good guest.” In this role she learns how to listen, inquire and observe. She notes the rituals that shape action and communicates in ways that are fitting, foster harmony and observe behavioural propriety. And from this kind of involvement she gains insights into the lives and thinking of both teachers and students that answer the question of what Canada can learn from China and what the West can learn from the East in fascinating ways! The book is thus a tribute to narrative inquiry as an approach to research that not only informs the shape, structure and understandings of this

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volume, but makes it a fitting culmination to the series of nine books emerging from seven years of intense and demanding collaboration. The resultant intertwining of teacher education students, teachers, scholars and school leaders will continue long into the future and bodes well for a more harmonious and balanced relationship between Canada and China in future. University of Toronto Toronto, ON, Canada

Ruth Hayhoe

Preface

This book emerged from my doctoral dissertation work conducted in a Toronto-Shanghai Sister School network. The Sister School network was an important program component of the Canada-China Partnership study on reciprocal educational learning between Canada and China (Xu & Connelly, 2013–2020). In this book, I take an in-depth look at how a Toronto-based inner-city teacher, Ann Barton, grew her knowledge of educating for citizenship in the Sister School network through learning from and collaborating with school educators in Shanghai. I especially highlight those enabling conditions that allowed Ann to develop her citizenship educational knowledge—from local to global—in the Shanghai-­ Toronto Sister School setting. My involvement started during the second year of my doctoral study at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, under the supervision of one of the network directors, Dr. Michael Connelly. I was a member of Dr. Connelly’s research team based in Toronto. Together with professors and graduate researchers in Toronto and Shanghai, we helped support elementary and secondary principals and teachers participating in the Toronto-Shanghai Sister School network to communicate with each other and develop joint projects together. Since each pair of schools in the network was unique and involved educators of different cultural backgrounds, interests, expertise, and priorities working together, any researcher dwelling in the Sister School network could discover many interesting educational phenomena and puzzles worth exploring from diverse standpoints and perspectives. In my case, I decided to carry out a collaborative inquiry with Toronto teachers looking xv

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at the issue of educating for citizenship, not only because the topic spoke to the teachers’ initial motivation to get involved but also because it resonated with my personal-professional interests. Prior to my doctoral study, as a new immigrant to Canada I had the experience of running a community-based civic engagement program with Chinese Canadian youth in the heart of Toronto’s Chinatown. Since I did not have any K–12 schooling experience in Canada, I was very curious to find out what kinds of formal citizenship educational programming Chinese Canadian youth had grown up with. Listening to their experience of growing up in Canada made me realize that meaningful citizenship educational work within the Chinese Canadian community could not, and should not, be accomplished by community or school educators alone. More collaborations were desirable between Chinese Canadian communities and school educators and across formal and non-formal educational boundaries. In fact, this collaboration should extend across and beyond generations and nations, engaging the deep cultural histories underlying all Canadians, including those of many other Asian societies that numerous Canadian youth can trace their roots to. Upon learning about the opportunity to collaborate with Toronto teachers to explore citizenship education practices in a Canada-China Sister School setting, I was elated. Even though I was unsure about how our research partnership would evolve, I was ready to learn from the teachers and gain a better sense of their citizenship educational programs as well as their professional landscape. I was also eager to share what I knew about working with Chinese communities with my collaborators and supported them to build connections with educators in China. This journey turned out to be a challenging but also a fruitful one as I had to unlearn many assumptions about citizenship teaching and learning and learn new ways of conducting research with teachers in Canada-China/West-East reciprocal-learning school-­ based settings. In different parts of this book, I show my learning journey of working alongside Ann Barton to understand her citizenship education knowledge and support her exploration of citizenship teaching and learning during her interactions with Shanghai educators. At a more philosophical level, having been born into a Chinese family in Malaysia and exposed to Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist beliefs during my own youth, the more I studied and applied citizenship education theories and practices in North American settings, the more I found a difference between Chinese and Western approaches to cultivating “good” citizens. For instance, when I approached from a Western lens, I found

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myself cultivating an imagery of a citizen who is a leader, critical thinker, and problem solver, one who directs her problem-solving energy outward towards making a difference in her society and enacting positive social-­ ecological transformation in the world. Contrarily, when I conducted citizenship educational work from a Chinese lens, I noticed that I focused more on nurturing the inner transformation and spiritual dimension of a person, while encouraging a more relational way of knowing and being in the world that sees humans as not separated from each other and from nature. Often, these two lenses clash with each other in my thinking, doing, and being. A big motivation for me to conduct my doctoral dissertation in this network was to find a non-authoritarian, non-Western-­ dominated space where I could sort out the similarities and differences between Western and Chinese ways of knowing, and bring them together to inform how I think, educate, and move between Sinophone and Anglophone worlds and as a member of the global community. Likewise, I was committed to holding a non-authoritarian, non-expert dominated space for my teacher collaborators to clarify and explore their teacher-­ citizen identities in a Western and Chinese educational partnership. For readers who are familiar with the scholarly field of citizenship education, you will notice that this book does not focus intensively on the discussion of citizenship-education theories and practices in Canada, nor does it compare citizenship pedagogies between Canada and China. Written with an intention to showcase lived experiences of collaborative reciprocal learning educational work between the East and the West, this book narrates what happens when a researcher of Chinese descent (aka me) works with teachers in Canada to approach citizenship education as an open-ended puzzle for West-East collaborative inquires within unpredictable, often challenging Toronto-Shanghai Sister School situations. By following the story of Ann Barton, readers will see how the inquiry process itself became an intercultural learning experience for both teachers and researchers alike, as we strove to find more collaborative, reciprocal, and bottom-up ways to educate for citizenship in a Canada-China Sister School partnership. As we witness a widening West-East and North-South divide during the COVID-pandemic, this ground-up collaborative and reciprocal learning approach to citizenship education may be just what we need as educators to generate new insight and energy to protect ourselves, one another, all beings, and the Earth. Windsor, ON, Canada

Yishin Khoo

Acknowledgements

This book could not have been completed without the support and understanding of numerous teachers, mentors, colleagues, and family members. I am indebted to Dr. Michael Connelly and Dr. Shijing Xu, advisors for my Sister School work, Dr. Karyn Cooper, my thesis supervisor, and Dr. Mark Evans, my mentor in the field of citizenship education. Thank you for giving me all the space, guidance, and support needed to explore ideas and grow as a school-based researcher. Special thanks to Dr. Ruth Hayhoe, whose scholarship continues to inspire me to build mutual dialogues and understandings between China and the West. I also wish to extend my thanks to Dr. Jack Miller, Dr. Kathy Bickmore, Dr. Mary Kooy, and Dr. Sarfaroz Niyozof whose scholarship in curriculum, teaching, and learning had all contributed to how I think about school-based research in international and cross-cultural settings. Next, I would like to say a big thank-you to all the teachers in Toronto and Shanghai who opened up their classroom doors and welcomed me to conduct my study with them in the Sister School network. In particular, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Ann Barton for collaborating with me on my doctoral project and sharing our findings at different conferences and professional workshops. Without your passion in intercultural collaboration, teaching, and learning, this book would not have been born. I am honoured to have had the opportunity to become a member of your classroom and learn from your practices and perspectives. I appreciate all your effort in challenging the West-East competition narrative and making your classroom an exciting and meaningful learning space where all students can belong and grow. xix

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My sincere thanks goes to other researchers and colleagues whom I have had the chance to collaborate and exchange ideas with during the compilation of this book. My fellow colleagues from the University of Toronto: Annette Ford, Carlos Ossa, Cathy Kim, Cynthia Zhu, Keith Brown, Momina Afridi, Sabrina Qin, Xuefeng Huang, and Ying Chen. Thank you so much for your friendship and encouragement while I figured out my study and wrote this book. Special thanks to Keith for proofreading an early version of this book manuscript. To my research collaborators from Shanghai East China Normal University: Dr. Bu Yuhua, Liu An, Sun Tong, Yang Qian, and Zhong Cheng. Thank you for sharing with me your refreshing ways of thinking about school education and conducting educational research from Chinese philosophical perspectives. Your presence and contributions were invaluable to my study. I also wish to acknowledge the outstanding, timely, and professional editorial support provided by my book editor, Patrick Farrell. Also, thanks to everyone on the Palgrave Macmillan team who were ever so patient in helping me during the publication process. Last but not least, I would like to thank my parents who have taught me how to speak, read, write, and think like a Chinese person. Thank you for nurturing me and supporting everything I do in life. To my partner, Lee, thank you for always being there whenever I need a shoulder to lean on. To my two siblings, Yuehaw and Yuelee, and to sisters and brothers from my spiritual family, Ghan, David, Julie, James, Ann, Alana, Kobi, and Linda, thank you for bringing joy and light to my writing journey. I end with my heartfelt gratitude to Mother Earth. May I continue to learn from your loving qualities and your way of nurturing life as I seek my way to become a better relative to this Land I call home. Financial support for this study is provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership Grant Project titled “Reciprocal Learning in Teacher Education and School Education between Canada and China” (Grant 895-2012-1011, 2013-2020), the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program, and OISE/University of Toronto’s Graduate Funding package.

Contents

Part I Background   1 1 Introduction  3 Citizenship: A Complex Concept   3 Citizenship Education Puzzles in a Canada-China Inter-School Reciprocal Learning Landscape   4 The Canada-China Reciprocal Learning Partnership (RLP)   5 Toronto-Shanghai Sister School Network   6 Emerging Puzzles   7 Practical Inquiry into Citizenship Teaching Beyond West-East Boundaries   8 Research Significance   9 Mapping the Study  11 References  12 2 N  arrative Inquiry: A Way-Seeking Framework to Re-Search Teachers’ Knowledge of Educating for Citizenship 15 Key Terms and Literature Review  16 Teacher Experience  16 Teacher Knowledge  17 Curriculum-Making  18 Citizenship Education  19 Sister School Reciprocal Learning Landscape  23 Teacher Learning, Growth and Development  24 xxi

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Starting in a “Narrative Inquiry” Maze  25 School-Based Narrative Inquiry as a Framework  27 Narrative Thinking of Experience  28 Being an Ideal Guest  30 A Way-Seeking Mentality to Re-Search  32 Teachers’ Knowledge of Educating for Citizenship  33 A Personal Practical View on Teachers’ Citizenship Education Knowledge  36 Moving Forward  37 References  37 3 Narrative  Methods in the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School Reciprocal Learning Landscape 43 The Sister School Context  43 An International Research Team  46 Fieldwork Methods  47 Interpreting the Story of One Teacher: Ann Barton  48 Representing Ann’s Story Using the Sonata Form  50 References  52 Part II Ann Barton’s Narrative of Making Citizenship Curriculum  55 4 Ann  as a Citizenship Curriculum Maker 57 Ann’s Curriculum-Making Rhythm  57 Building a Classroom Community  57 Nurturing a Democratic Ethos Amidst Conflicts and Differences  59 Engaging Students in Shared Activities and Actions  64 Reflection: Ann’s Citizenship Education Knowledge in the Form of Building a Democratic Community  66 Challenges and Hopes in the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School Landscape  68 References  71

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5 Ann  as a Collaborative Learner 73 Negotiating Collaborative Projects with Shanghai Teachers Through Skype  73 Reflection: Ann’s Ritual as a Collaborative Learner  78 An Unfinished Reciprocal Learning Partnership Story  81 References  82 6 Educating  for Citizenship from the Local to the Global Through Reciprocal Learning Around Water 83 Encountering Minzhu School’s Water Culture  83 Planning for an Integrated Water Science Project  86 Rebuilding a Democratic Classroom Community Through Learning from and Sharing Minzhu’s Water Culture  89 Inquiring into Minzhu School’s Water Culture as a Classroom Community  89 Learning from and Emulating Minzhu School’s Water Culture  90 Co-Creating a Shared Water Culture  96 Ripple Effects 101 Multiple Shifting Storylines 102 Reflection: Ann’s Citizenship Education Knowledge Manifested in the Image of a Global Inquiry Community 109 References 111 7 Educating  for Citizenship from the Local to the Global Through Collaborative Inquiry Around Water113 Planning for Inter-School Collaborative Water Inquiries 114 Rebuilding a Democratic Classroom Community for Collaborative Inquiries around Water 115 Challenges 117 Collaborative Inquiries Amidst Constraints 120 Turning Points 123 A Global Inquiry Community in the Making 126 Reference 129

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8 Becoming  a Globally Oriented Citizenship Educator Through a Sister School Reciprocal Learning Partnership131 A Consummatory Story of Collaborative Reciprocal Learning 132 The Learning Continues: Reconstructing the Image of a Global Inquiry Community 140 Reference 143 Part III Re-Storying Ann’s Narrative from both Western and Eastern Lenses 145 9 River  Flowing and Fire Burning: Re-Storying Ann’s Developing Knowledge of Educating for Citizenship147 Water and Fire in Chinese Thinking 151 Water as a Root Metaphor in Chinese Philosophy 152 Water and Fire, Yin-Yang Thinking 154 Ann’s Citizenship Curriculum-Making Experience as a Flowing River and Burning Fire in a Canada-­China Sister School Landscape 156 A Treacherous Global Landscape 156 Flowing River: Ann’s Knowledge of Educating for Citizenship as a Flowing River 160 Burning Fire: Researchers’ Support 171 References 180 10 Conclusion185 Supporting Teachers’ Citizenship Professional Learning in a Canada-China Sister School Reciprocal Learning Partnership 186 The Way (Dao 道) of Narrative Inquiry 186 Nurturing an Inter-School Reciprocal Learning Community: Some Practical Suggestions 189 Classrooms as Spaces for Global Citizenship Professional Learning 193 Final Thoughts 194 References 198 Author Index201 Subject Index203

List of Figures

Fig. 4.1

Ann’s classroom on the first day of the 2014–2015 school year, before the students’ arrival 60 Fig. 4.2 Students working in groups on the mental health bulletin board designs65 Fig. 6.1 The water science and technology centre at Minzhu Primary School84 Fig. 6.2 Ann’s students generating questions to ask their friends in Shanghai91 Fig. 6.3 Students brainstorming ideas for the Water Week to promote a culture of water at Bay Street School 92 Fig. 6.4 Students designing the Chinese water character for their T-shirt fundraiser with the help of Ann 93 Fig. 6.5 Students working in groups to discuss different water science activities they would like to deliver to other children during the Water Week 94 Fig. 6.6 Adults and children working together to turn Room 18 into a Watery Wonderland 95 Fig. 6.7 Students creating slogans for their class banner to express their ideas and feelings about local water problems 97 Fig. 6.8 Students’ water art work 98 Fig. 6.9 Ann’s students receiving student visitors from all grade levels and engaging them in a wide range of water science activities 99 Fig. 6.10 Establishing a common value and a shared water culture between Bay Street School and Minzhu Primary School (left: water science centre at Minzhu; right: water science centre at Bay Street) 100

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List of Figures

Fig. 6.11 Dr. Connelly from the Canada-China Partnership research team participated in water activities put together by Ann’s students101 Fig. 7.1 Students working in groups to brainstorm what they can do together to have an amazing year as a class 118 Fig. 7.2 Students posing questions to each other’s drawings on the water graffiti 124 Fig. 7.3 Wang Laoshi showing different kinds of water filters to her students127 Fig. 8.1 A puppet show made by Ann’s students honouring the life story of an Indigenous Water Walker, Grandma Josephine141 Fig. 9.1 Artificial Wonderland II: From the New World. [ultra giclee print, 200 x 400cm]. A digitally rendered take on traditional Chinese landscape art by Chinese artist Yang Yongliang created in 2014 156

PART I

Background

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Citizenship: A Complex Concept The idea of “citizenship” is fluid, multifaceted, and contested. On one hand, citizenship can refer to: (1) a person’s status in and loyalty to a political unit, (2) a feeling of belonging to a community of citizens and a sense of identity, (3) the allocations, understandings, and exercises of rights and an obligation to participate in political processes individually and with others, and/or (4) a set of virtues, values, and capacities (Evans, 2014; Osler & Starkey, 2005). On the other hand, the term “citizenship” can have different meanings in different national, socio-cultural, historical, temporal, political, and personal contexts (Arthur et al., 2008; Lawson & Scott, 2002; Lee & Fouts, 2005). In western societies such as those in Canada and United States, conceptions of citizenship are often characterized by state-individual concerns and are essentially political; whereas in eastern societies such as those in mainland China, Malaysia, and Singapore, the notion of citizenship tends to be understood as relational, stressing on harmonious relations to oneself, others (such as family and friends), the state, and nature (Lee, 2009). Subsequently, a Western idea of citizenship may lead to a stronger focus on socio-political change whereas an eastern notion of citizenship emphasizes self-cultivation, spiritual development, and relational transformation. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Khoo, Educating for Citizenship in a Canada-China Sister School Reciprocal Learning Partnership, Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18078-1_1

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Since the 1980s, the concept of citizenship has been increasingly discussed in the context of education (Davies, 2012). In North America, public schools are widely recognized as sites that socialize youngsters to cultivate a certain set of values, skills, and knowledge to become informed, responsible, engaged, and active citizens. The turn of the twenty-first century has witnessed a further resurgence of government and academic interest in citizenship and citizenship education (Davies, 2012; Sears & Hughes, 2006; Sim & Print, 2009, Osler & Starkey, 2006). This elevation of interest is said to be spurred by ongoing injustice and inequality at both local and global levels (Osler & Starkey, 2006); political, social, and cultural globalization and migration that continue to challenge social cohesion and traditional views on rights, obligations, identity and belonging of citizens (Autio, 2014; Osler & Starkey, 2006); and general concerns for anti-social behaviours as well as a lack of civic and political participation among youth (Osler & Starkey, 2006; Sears & Hughes, 2006). Regardless of their political regimes and orientations, nations in this new millennium are increasingly grappling with three dimensions of citizenship in education, i.e., the global, the national, and the personal (Lee, 2009). Within schools and classroom spaces where citizenship education actually gets enacted, teachers are usually the ones who need to attend to and navigate a balance of all these multiple dimensions of citizenship in their curriculum making.

Citizenship Education Puzzles in a Canada-China Inter-School Reciprocal Learning Landscape This book grows out of my doctoral dissertation that looked at how elementary teachers in the province of Ontario, Canada developed their knowledge and experience of educating for citizenship through engaging in an inter-school reciprocal learning partnership program with teachers in Shanghai (Connelly & Xu, 2019, 2020; Xu & Connelly, 2017). In particular, it tells the story of a Toronto-based teacher, Ann Barton (pseudonym), who learned to make citizenship curriculum—from the local to the global—by collaborating with Shanghai teachers on joint education projects focused on water.

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The Canada-China Reciprocal Learning Partnership (RLP) My doctoral study was carried out in the context of Dr. Shijing Xu and Dr. Michael Connelly’s Reciprocal Learning in School Education and Teacher Education between Canada and China (2013–2020) Partnership funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) with in-kind contributions from partner organizations. The Canada-China Reciprocal Learning Partnership (RLP) involved two Canadian and four Chinese universities, two Canadian school boards, more than 40 schools in Toronto, Windsor, Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Changchun, and six research teams co-led by Chinese and Canadian researchers and advised by an International Advisory Committee. According to Xu and Connelly (2017), the partnership was founded on the idea of “reciprocal learning as collaborative partnership” and structured so that Canadian and Chinese researchers, school board administrators, and teachers and students could come into direct contact, creating an opportunity for the comparative study of knowledge, values, and teaching methods (Connelly & Xu, 2019). One of the project’s program infrastructures was the Canada-China Sister School Network, which provided a platform for school educators and researchers in Canada and China to engage in cross-cultural reciprocal work and collaborative inquiry. Within the Sister School Network program, “reciprocal learning” goes beyond the idea that two or more people or groups may learn from one another to the idea that one society’s historical-cultural narratives could convey meaning and be useful to another society’s different historical-cultural narratives (Xu & Connelly, 2015). Informed by Schwab’s (2013) notion of “the practical,” the Canada-China Reciprocal Learning Partnership (RLP), alongside its Sister School Network program, explores the school practices of people in different cultures coming together, working on shared tasks, and learning from one another (Connelly & Xu, 2019; Xu & Connelly, 2017). This partnership foregrounds practice and action, instead of theory and meaning, as the starting and end points of the comparative study of knowledge, values, and teaching in education between Canada and China (Connelly & Xu, 2020; Xu & Connelly, 2017). When conducting research, university researchers in the RLP are encouraged to become part of the practical situation under study such that “their views were treated as legitimate participation, not arrogant, expert academic judgment” in the inquiry process (Connelly & Xu, 2020). While theoretical

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knowledge is important in generating defensible decisions in practice and in the practical, it is held as only one type of knowledge among many others particular to a situation. Toronto-Shanghai Sister School Network As a graduate researcher who joined the Canada-China RLP during its inception in 2013, my first task was to work with Xu and Connelly as part of an international research team to rejuvenate a Toronto-Shanghai Sister School network, which had been providing a platform for principals and teachers in Toronto and Shanghai to engage in curriculum exchanges and collaborations. The Toronto-Shanghai Sister School network was established in 2008 following a visit Xu and Connelly made to Shanghai where they met with Professor Ye Lan (叶澜), a leading theorist in basic education and school reform in China (Hayhoe, 2007). During their visit, Professor Ye Lan took Xu and Connelly to one of the key schools participating in her “New Basic Education” research project, which aimed to systematically transform schools to respond to what were seen to be rapid social and economic changes facing China. Both Xu and Connelly were captivated by what they encountered at the school, which had an interesting variety of energy and water conservation amenities installed in classrooms, hallways, washrooms, and even on the roof (E. Robbins, personal communication, January 4, 2019). They returned to Canada, feeling that there was a great deal that educators in Canada could learn from this Chinese example. On the other hand, they also recognized that Chinese education could be more reflective in its learning from approaches found in the West (Xu & Connelly, 2009), given that Chinese experiences of learning from the West tended to involve adopting Western ideas instrumentally and superficially without a solid understanding of the philosophical and historical trajectory of the Western worldview (Bai, 2013; Zhao & Deng, 2015). Formed in 2008 with the support of Ye, the ShanghaiToronto Sister School network selected experimental schools affiliated with Ye’s New Basic Education program in Shanghai to form partnerships with schools in Toronto. Between 2008 and 2012, the network created opportunities for principals and teachers in Toronto to interact and develop relationships with their peers in Shanghai. In 2013, the network became a key component of Xu and Connelly co-directed Canada-China RLP’s Sister School Network program, which provided support for Toronto, Windsor, Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Changchun-based

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teachers to engage in reciprocal and collaborative work. As a Torontobased researcher fluent in both Mandarin and English, I joined the Toronto-Shanghai Sister School network in 2013, tasked with helping elementary school principals and teachers in Toronto to communicate and develop reciprocal-learning collaboration with Shanghai school principals and teachers via online exchanges and during in-person school visits. Emerging Puzzles While supporting Toronto-based teachers to connect with Shanghai teachers in the Toronto-Shanghai Sister School network, I noticed that all of them, at one time or another, regarded the reciprocal-learning network as an opportunity to educate for “global” citizenship and bring their students closer to the “world.” Some teachers told me from the outset that they hoped to use the network as a springboard to nurture students’ global awareness and competence. Other teachers came to view the Sister School network as providing them with curriculum resources and to fulfil their local school board’s global citizenship educational mandates. Although none of the teachers told me exactly what they meant by “global citizenship” or how their interaction with teachers in Shanghai could enhance the teaching and learning of it, they were all eager to start providing global citizenship education on the changing inter-school landscape, which they participated in shaping. Meanwhile, a series of local community protests in 2013 against the involvement of the Chinese government in Toronto schools had diminished school-board support towards the RLP project. The more I worked alongside Toronto teachers, the more I realized they were engaging in the Canada-China RLP’s Sister School Network with little logistic-­ administrative support, and in some cases, without many resources or technological supplies. Over time, I became interested in understanding how those teachers who wished to educate for global citizenship through the Canada-China RLP managed to fulfil this aim within such a complex, uncertain, and constrained context. I asked a series of questions: What did “global citizenship” mean to the Toronto teachers in the context of the Toronto-Shanghai Sister School network? What were those favourable conditions in the Sister School network that supported Canadian teachers to develop their knowledge and practice of globally oriented citizenship education? How could my research as a doctoral student play a role in nurturing favourable conditions that contribute to teachers’ citizenship

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growth and learning in a changing Sister School landscape? These questions emerged in my mind as I worked alongside the Toronto-based teachers who were participating in the RLP’s Sister School Network program and formed the impulse of my study. Practical Inquiry into Citizenship Teaching Beyond West-East Boundaries As mentioned above, the idea of citizenship is a complex and contested one. While many scholars have attempted to study and compare citizenship education and practices in the West and the East, my study did not start with such a comparative intention. Contextualized within the Canada-China RLP and influenced by Joseph Schwab’s (2013) idea of “the practical,” I focused on school-based practices and oriented my study towards adding practical contributions to the schools and teachers participating in my study (Xu & Connelly, 2010). More specifically, my questions arose while working with Toronto teachers in their particular Sister School situations while trying to understand how their collaborative and reciprocal work with Shanghai teachers may contribute to their practice of educating for globally oriented citizenship. The Toronto-based teachers welcomed my role as cross-cultural translator, mediator, collaborator, and bridge-builder in their interactions with partnering teachers in Shanghai, and I received ample opportunities to explore the supportive conditions that allowed the teachers to grow their knowledge of educating for citizenship beyond national, cultural, and linguistic boundaries. The following general question and subquestions guided my inquiry: How do RLP-participating teachers in Toronto utilize the Toronto-­ Shanghai Sister School network to develop their experiences and knowledge of educating for globally oriented and informed citizenship? • What are teachers’ curriculum-making experiences while participating in the Toronto-Shanghai Sister School network informed by the ethos of reciprocal learning? • How do the teachers’ evolving curriculum-making experiences reflect their knowledge of educating for citizenship? • What enables the teachers to reconstruct their knowledge and experience of educating for the global dimension of citizenship in the reciprocal-learning Toronto-Shanghai Sister School network?

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In this book I present the approaches, processes, and results of my inquiry. In particular, I highlight one Toronto teacher’s curriculum-­ making experiences in her Sister School setting and how these experiences reflect her knowledge about and approach to educating children for citizenship within a local-global, West-East dialectic. I discuss the conditions that this teacher sees as favourable to her construction and reconstruction of her knowledge and experiences of making citizenship curriculum— from the local to the global. Throughout my inquiry, I engage an eclectic use of Western and Chinese theories and methods to inform, support, and understand this Canadian teacher’s growth in educating for citizenship. It is my hope that this approach can contribute to reciprocal learning and collaboration of educational understandings and research practices between China and the West.

Research Significance My study of teacher Ann Barton’s experience, which comprises the heart of this study, in the context of Canada-China RLP is timely because current studies show that practicing teachers receive very little curriculum support, relevant resources, or ongoing professional learning opportunities to reflect upon and grow their citizenship education knowledge in the complexity and practicality of their workplace (Mundy & Manion, 2008; Schugurensky & Myers, 2003). While the twenty-first century has witnessed an increased call for Canadian teachers to educate for a global dimension of citizenship (Pashby, 2013; Evans et al., 2009; Eidoo et al., 2011), the question of exactly how teachers come to understand, enact, and develop a more globally oriented and informed citizenship curriculum in their multicultural classrooms demands further research (Carano, 2013; Zong, 2009). Furthermore, despite a growing body of empirical research on teacher education and professional-learning initiatives that support teachers in becoming more globally competent citizenship educators, most studies focus on professional learning opportunities for pre-service teachers or teacher candidates, but not in-service or practicing schoolteachers. My study, with its focus on Ann’s story, sheds light on in-service citizenship professional learning (Carano, 2013; Zong, 2009), with regards to how practicing teachers come to develop globally informed personal understandings, competencies, and practices of educating for citizenship at their workplaces through a Canada-China Sister School reciprocal learning partnership.

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In addition, in the recent study Who Needs Global Citizenship Education?: A Review of the Literature on Teacher Education, Marta Estellés and Gustavo Fischman (2021) found that a trend around global citizenship education (GCE) in teacher education is the idealization of GCE, which leads to an overly romanticized picture of the transformational potential of schools and teachers. Estellés and Fischman show that in teacher education literature produced between 2008 and 2014, GCE is mostly framed as a “redemptive educational solution to global problems” and teachers are required to “embrace this redemptive narrative following a model of rationality based on altruistic, hyperrationalized and overly romanticized ideals” (Estellés & Fischman, 2021, p.  223). The authors raise concerns about this particular trend of GCE in teacher education as it overlooks the importance of emotion and lived experiences in citizenship teaching and learning; minimizes the social and public dimensions in civic education; and increases the risk of blaming teachers for not achieving the goals of GCE by neglecting the difficulties teachers face when implementing GCE lofty goals. Going against the popular tendency in educational training to idealize GCE in teacher education, my study examines the daily lived and told narrative of Ann Barton, a Canadian teacher who has aspired to educate for globally oriented citizenship in her Grade 4 and 5 classroom informed by the Canada-China RLP. Instead of judging and evaluating Ann’s citizenship education practices against a set of idealized citizenship education standards and guidelines, my narrative inquiry takes a participatory, contextual, temporal, and interactive look at how Ann comes to develop her teacher knowledge and experiences of educating for more globally oriented and informed citizenship through learning from and making curriculum with teachers in Shanghai, China. I believe that this narrative approach enriches the current discourse around GCE in teacher education by showing how difficulties, challenges, and constraints are part and parcel of a Canadian urban teacher’s experience of educating for global citizenship in the Canada-China Sister School reciprocal learning landscape. Instead of positioning global citizenship teaching and learning as a set of fixed goals to be attained by teachers alone, this book approaches global citizenship teaching and learning as an unfinished lifework in progress and as situated curriculum problems to be inquired collectively by university researchers, schoolteachers, and students in the spirit of reciprocity and community. Readers will see that as diverse university researchers and Sister School teachers in Toronto and Shanghai come together and embark

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on intercultural reciprocal learning in a collaborative partnership characterized by an ethos of open-ended reflective inquiry (Connelly & Xu, 2019, 2020; Xu & Connelly, 2017), a sustaining and culturally imaginative space for global citizenship teaching and learning could emerge. In this space, GCE becomes less a romanticized ideal or individual matter than a collective and practical manifestation of educators’ knowing, doing, and being amidst shifting and imperfect educational landscapes. Teachers’ agency and creativity in educating for citizenship is nourished in this inquiry-based intercultural collaborative and reciprocal setting. All partners (e.g., university researchers, principals, teachers, students, and parents) are encouraged to become agents of global citizenship education, not just the teachers, in and through collaborative and reciprocal practices across cultural, linguistic, and national boundaries. Last but not least, I have made a conscious effort throughout my study to inquire into and understand citizenship education phenomena not only through theoretical lenses generated in the West, but also reciprocally through Chinese ways of thinking. When I use categorical terms such as “Western” and “Eastern,” “Canadian” and “Chinese” in my study, my intention is to recognize the unequal relationships, as well as perceived differences between Eastern and Western or Chinese and Canadian cultures, but not forgetting that these categorical relationships are historically constructed, dynamic and complex, with fluid boundaries. In addition, in spite of differences and divisions, common grounds can be sought, cultural bridges built, and dichotomous thinking replaced, with more progressive imagining of mutual dialogues and reciprocal learning between the “West” and the “East.” By building bridges between Western and Chinese thinking and practice in education, my study intends to challenge popular ideas about educational differences between Canada and China in particular, and West and East in general. It hopes to carve out communicative and educative spaces that resist oppressive and divisive forces that deprive us of the individual and collective capacity to educate for a more democratic, just, and harmonious world across differences.

Mapping the Study In the next chapter, I unpack the key terms I have used to orient how I work with teachers in Canada-China Sister School research settings while studying their experience of educating for citizenship. I also explain the narrative inquiry lens that has informed the overarching theoretical and

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methodological framework of my study. In Chap. 3, I detail the narrative methods I used to construct, interpret, and represent Ann Barton’s story in this book. In Chaps. 4–8, I present key findings from my inquiry, focusing on presenting Ann Barton’s curriculum-making experience. Chapter 9 inquires into how Ann’s curriculum-making experience reflects her knowledge growth in educating for citizenship from the local to the global. I explore her growing knowledge not only from her personal, historical, and cultural narrative, but also from Chinese metaphorical knowing. I also highlight those favourable conditions identified by Ann as sustaining her learning and growth when it comes to educating for citizenship in the Sister School setting. Lastly, in my final chapter, I discuss the implications of narrative inquiry on providing conditions for citizenship teaching and learning in a globalized world and suggest a few practical strategies educators can employ to promote global citizenship professional learning in international, intercultural, inter-school settings.

References Arthur, J., Davies, I., Hahn, C., & (Eds.). (2008). Sage handbook of education for citizenship and democracy. SAGE Publications Limited. Autio, T. (2014). The international of curriculum research. In W.  Pinar (Ed.), International handbook of curriculum research (pp. 17–31). Routledge. Bai, L. (2013). Practicality in curriculum building: A historical perspective on the mission of Chinese education. Frontiers of Education in China, 8(4), 518–539. Carano, K. T. (2013). Global educators’ personal attribution of a global perspective. Journal of International Social Studies, 3(1), 4–18. Connelly, F. M., & Xu, S. J. (2019). Reciprocal learning in the partnership project: From knowing to doing in comparative research models. Teachers and Teaching, 25(6), 627–646. Connelly, F. M., & Xu, S. J. (2020). Reciprocal learning as a comparative education model and as an exemplar of Schwab’s the practical in curriculum inquiry. In Oxford research encyclopedia of education. Oxford University Press. https:// doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.1161. Davies, I. (2012). Citizenship education (Chapter 40). In J. Arthur & A. Peterson (Eds.), The Routledge companion to education (pp. 228–235). Routledge. Eidoo, S., Ingram, L., MacDonald, A., Nabavi, M., Pashby, K., & Stille, S. (2011). Through the kaleidoscope: Intersections between theoretical perspectives and classroom implications in critical global citizenship education. Canadian Journal of Education, 34(4), 59–85.

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Evans, M. (2014). Lecture 1: Understandings of citizenship and imagining the key purposes of citizenship education: Beginning the conversation [PowerPoint slides]. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, Graduate Course: Citizenship, Pedagogy and School Communities. Evans, M., Ingram, L.  A., MacDonald, A., & Weber, N. (2009). Mapping the “global dimension” of citizenship education in Canada: The complex interplay of theory, practice and context. Citizenship Teaching and Learning, 5(2), 17–34. Estellés, M., & Fischman, G. E. (2021). Who needs global citizenship education? A review of the literature on teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 72(2), 223–236. Hayhoe, R. (2007). Portraits of influential Chinese educators (Vol. 17). Springer Science & Business Media. Lawson, H., & Scott, D. (2002). Introduction. In D. Scott & H. Lawson (Eds.), Citizenship education and the curriculum (pp.  1–6). Greenwood Publishing Group. Lee, W. O. (2009). Conceptualizing citizenship and citizenship education: A trajectory of exploring Asian perspectives. Chair Professors Public Lecture Series, The Hong Kong Institute of Education. Lee, W.  O., & Fouts, J.  T. (Eds.). (2005). Education for social citizenship: Perceptions of teachers in the USA, Australia, England, Russia and China. Hong Kong University Press. Mundy, K., & Manion, C. (2008). Global education in Canadian elementary schools: An exploratory study. Canadian Journal of Education, 31(4), 941–974. Osler, A., & Starkey, H. (2005). Changing citizenship: Democracy and inclusion in education. McGraw-Hill International. Osler, A., & Starkey, H. (2006). Education for democratic citizenship: A review of research, policy and practice 1995–2005. Research Papers in Education, 21(4), 433–466. Pashby, K. (2013). Related and conflated: A theoretical and discursive framing of multiculturalism and global citizenship education in the Canadian context (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, OISE/University of Toronto, 2013). Schugurensky, D., & Myers, J. P. (2003). Learning to teach citizenship: A lifelong learning approach. Encounters on Education, 4, 145–166. Schwab, J.  J. (2013). The practical: A language for curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 45(5), 591–621. Sears, A., & Hughes, A. (2006). Citizenship: Education or indoctrination. Citizenship and Teacher Education, 2(1), 3–17. Sim, J., & Print, M. (2009). The state, teachers and citizenship education in Singapore schools. British Journal of Educational Studies, 57(4), 380–399. Xu, S. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2009). Narrative inquiry for teacher education and development: Focus on English as a foreign language in China. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(2), 219–227.

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Xu, S. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2010). Narrative inquiry for school-based research. Narrative Inquiry, 20(2), 349–370. Xu, S. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2015). Reciprocal learning: Comparative models and the partnership project, reciprocal learning and symbiotic development [Keynote Speech]. Reciprocal Learning & Symbiotic Development: An international conference to promote interschool, interregional and intercultural school improvement. East China Normal University. Xu, S.  J., & Connelly, F.  M. (2017). Reciprocal learning between Canada and China in teacher education and school education: Partnership studies of practice in cultural context. Frontiers of Education in China, 12(2), 135–150. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11516-­017-­0013-­6 Zong, G. (2009). Developing preservice teachers’ global understanding through computer-mediated communication technology. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(5), 617–625. Zhao, G., & Deng, Z. (Eds.). (2015). Re-envisioning Chinese education: The meaning of person-making in a new age. Routledge.

CHAPTER 2

Narrative Inquiry: A Way-Seeking Framework to Re-Search Teachers’ Knowledge of Educating for Citizenship

The Canada-China Reciprocal Learning Partnership (RLP) project, from which this study emerged, was conceived by Dr. Shijing Xu from the University of Windsor and Dr. Michael Connelly from the University of Toronto. Both are known for their scholarly work in the fields of narrative inquiry and teacher education under cross-cultural conditions (Xu & Connelly, 2009, 2010; Xu et al., 2007). Working as a graduate research assistant in the Canada-China RLP and its Sister School Network program, I came to appreciate Xu and Connelly’s idea of narrative inquiry, which provides a theoretical frame for the construction of the Canada-­ China RLP project, as well as its rich potential in advancing Western and Chinese reciprocal learning in Sister School settings. The term narrative inquiry was coined by Michael Connelly and Jean Clandinin (1990). According to Xu and Connelly (2013–2020), narrative inquiry is a theoretical resource for thinking about social science inquiry because it is grounded in ideas of human experience. Specifically, the idea behind narrative inquiry is that: human experience is never what it seems, but is an expression of personal and cultural history. Observations, survey results and other descriptors of experience are not so much empirical solutions or answers as they are portals to further inquiry. In the context of the Canada-China RLP project, using © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Khoo, Educating for Citizenship in a Canada-China Sister School Reciprocal Learning Partnership, Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18078-1_2

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narrative inquiry theory implies that the study of school or teacher experience needs to be treated as posing questions for follow up research and eventual interpretation, rather than data to be reported. (Xu & Connelly, 2013–2020)

In my study, I adopted Xu and Connelly’s narrative inquiry perspective to explore and understand how Toronto-based teachers develop their experience and knowledge of educating for citizenship while teaching in a Toronto-Shanghai “inter-school reciprocal learning landscape,” discussed below. This chapter presents the theoretical and methodological framework of my study, which is grounded in a practical orientation of narrative inquiry foregrounding narrative thinking about experiences, the idea of an “ideal guest,” a Way-seeking mentality, along with an understanding of teachers’ citizenship education knowledge as personal and practical. In what follows, I describe my framework of inquiry; to start, I explain some of the key terms as well as key literature I used to anchor and inform my study.

Key Terms and Literature Review Teacher Experience There are many approaches to studying human experience in today’s post-­ modern world, ranging from a relatively technocratic and positivistic framework, to more critical, emancipatory, interpretive, and empirical viewpoints. Underlying these distinct approaches are different conceptions of experience, from Aristotle’s dualistic metaphysics to Marxist conceptions of experience distorted by ideology, and post-colonial/ post-structuralists’ ideas of experiences as the product of discursive practices (Apple, 1979/2004; Clandinin & Rosiek, 2007; Kanu, 2006; Kumashiro, 2000). In this study, I adapt John Dewey’s theory of experience to better understand the experience of teachers. As such, teacher experience, like all human experience, is characterized by an interaction between their subjective thoughts and their personal, social, and natural environments (Dewey, 1938). It has a temporal past-present-future dimension and occurs continuously as the result of teachers’ ongoing contact, communication, and social interaction with their environments inherent to the very process of living (Dewey, 1934). Furthermore, teacher experience involves complex

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interaction between teachers’ thoughts, feelings, and actions. It also carries a sense of creative individuality and is constantly moving forward through processes of doing and undergoing. Given that all human experience is situated and has an interactive and continuous aspect, all experiences undergone by a teacher shapes the environment within which she lives and works, and which shapes her in return (Grange, 2004, p.  6). Simultaneously, a teacher’s experience “both takes up something from those which have gone before and modifies in some way the quality of those which come after” (Dewey, 1938, p. 35). Experience is thus not a thing, but a kind of story-like event that always happens somewhere within a specific situation, which is itself progressing into the future. In addition to this philosophical understanding of teacher experience, my study differentiates experiences that are educative from those that are mis-educative. According to Dewey (1938), both educative and mis-­ educative experiences demonstrate the principle of continuity and hence are susceptible to growth. However, a mis-educative experience “has the effect of arresting or distorting the growth of further experience,” whereas an educative experience creates conditions for the further growth of experience (Dewey, 1938, p. 25). Educative experience, in particular, “arouses curiosity, strengthens initiative, and sets up desires and purposes that are sufficiently intense to carry a person over dead places in the future” (Dewey, 1938, p. 38). It has an instrumental quality and involves the revision of habits that facilitates more reflective, consummatory (fulfilled), and open future experience; the kind of experience that enables a person to participate more fully in and with his or her social and natural environments (Morris, 2015). Informed by Dewey’s notions of experience, whenever I worked alongside teachers in a Sister School situation, I made an effort to attend to the three-dimensions of their experience: interactivity, temporality, and situatedness. I also focused on the educative aspect of their experience and worked towards its growth through collaborative inquiry with the teachers. Teacher Knowledge Another key term is the notion of “teacher knowledge.” Throughout this study I maintain the view that teachers know a great deal about teaching in general, and about citizenship teaching in particular, as the result of their lived and living experience as teachers and citizens within specific jurisdictions. Experience and knowledge are not separated entities in my

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thinking. Teachers’ knowledge grows out of teachers’ experience and ultimately returns to inform subsequent experience, which then shapes future educational practices. An educative experience would lead to a positive growth in teacher knowledge and vice versa, whereas a mis-educative experience would have the opposite effect. In retrospect, the reason why I tend to maintain this particular view of teacher knowledge as experiential and inseparable from teachers’ life experience might have been due to my Chinese upbringing. Since I was young, my parents repeatedly told me that a knowledgeable person who is qualified to instruct other people on what they should do is one who is moral, and who realizes this moral dimension and puts her knowledge into action and practice. In other words, one cannot say that she knows the meaning of “harmony” if her daily action and interaction with others does not embody and manifest the qualities of harmony. Likewise, one cannot educate for peace if she does not experience and become the peace she wants to see in the world. This procedural sense of knowledge as being articulated and realized in concrete performance is said to be found in the Analects, a collection of the teachings and thoughts of Confucius (551–479 BCE), an influential Chinese thinker, political figure, educator, and founder of the Ru School (儒家) of Chinese thought (Lai, 2016; Riegel, 2013). And I suspect that this way of understanding knowledge has prompted me to see teachers’ knowledge as situated in their experiences and practices, and that the most important way for a teacher to grow their knowledge to educate for citizenship is through daily educative experiences and practices of citizenship, especially those that are of a moral, reflective, and intelligent sort (Lai, 2016). Later in this chapter, I further explain my thinking about teachers’ citizenship education knowledge. Curriculum-Making Readers will see that I frequently use the phrase “curriculum-making” to describe and make sense of teachers’ experiences teaching in schools and classrooms. The idea of curriculum, in this context, is broader than a rigid course of study, mandated subject matter, or prescribed school textbooks. It can be regarded as a teacher’s life experience or “one’s life course of action” (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988, p.  1). Curriculum reflects what teachers think, what they do, and who they are (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988).

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In addition, the notion of curriculum-making encompasses Schwab’s (1969, 1973, 1977) idea of “curriculum commonplaces,” which refers to the four interconnected constituents or “bodies of experience”—subject matters, learners, contexts, and teachers (Craig & Ross, 2008). When a teacher makes curriculum at any point in time, they could be coordinating and balancing these four bodies of experience. For instance, the subject matter commonplace asks for a teacher’s familiarity about a subject’s content, methods, curriculum materials, and its related discipline(s). The learner commonplace stresses the need to develop general as well as intimate knowledge about a group of students through direct involvement with them. The context commonplace alludes to one’s teaching and learning contexts, which include classrooms, school environments, and parents, as well as surrounding communities, including their values and cultures. Finally, the teacher commonplace involves teachers’ personality, biases, knowledge, and feelings about themselves, and their professional relationships with others. Ideally, in a process of curriculum-making, a teacher would coordinate and make decisions on all four curriculum commonplaces or experiences, not letting anyone overpower the others. The idea of curriculum-making therefore involves not only the development of curricular materials and the teaching of school subjects, but also includes the making and remaking of teachers’ and students’ lives in context. When researching alongside the Toronto-based teachers in the Sister School network, seeing their teaching experiences as a form of curriculum-­ making has greatly helped me attend to the creative, personal, and practical nature of their thinking and reasoning in a Sister School professional setting that continuously shifts due to a complex interaction of peoples, places, things, ideas, stories, and global-local forces. It reminds me that teachers are knowers of their pedagogical situation and are not mere implementers of other people’s knowledge (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988). As curriculum makers, they daily make moral and practical choices and decisions based on what they know about themselves and their subject matters, learners, and teaching contexts. They also have authority in constructing and reconstructing their life course of action while co-­creating curriculum with others and their students. Citizenship Education In Canadian public schools, an emphasis on education for citizenship can be seen across all grade levels, especially in subject areas like social studies

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and history. In addition, citizenship education promoted through Canadian public schooling has been historically influenced by civic republican and liberal values that emphasize individuals’ performance of duties in public settings as well as their freedom to exercise individual rights (Arthur et al., 2008). An active, democratic conception of citizenship is frequently endorsed in schools, emphasizing the importance for youngsters to exercise rights and responsibilities and actively participate in the society and contribute to the common good. The themes of cultural diversity and social cohesion also form crucial parts of Canadian citizenship educational landscapes (Joshee, 2004). In the face of intensified international migrations and increased influences of neoliberal ideology on communal, egalitarian, and public ideals, concerned scholars and citizenship educators in countries such as Canada and United States are urging a reconceptualization of democratic citizenship education towards more inclusive, equitable, critical, humanizing, empowering, and transformative ends. Joel Westheimer and Joseph Kahne (2004) discuss three approaches to democratic citizenship education, i.e., the personally responsible, the participatory, and the social-justice oriented. In their view, education for personally responsible citizenship seeks to build character and personal responsibility in young learners by emphasizing honesty, integrity, self-discipline, hard work, and treating others respectfully. Education for participatory citizenship encourages learners to be informed and actively participate in the civic affairs and social life of their communities at local, state/provincial, and national levels. Finally, education for social-justice oriented citizenship helps learners develop critical understandings of the interplay of social, economic, and political forces and find ways of effecting systemic changes through exploring the root causes of social problems. Jennifer Tupper further argues that the social-justice oriented citizenship proposed by Westheimer and Kahne is not enough. Education for social-justice oriented citizenship needs to “shift the focus from the other to the self” (Tupper, 2007, p.  261), in which students not only work to improve the conditions of others, but also learn to account for their own privileges and understand how these privileges are implicated in the perpetuation of social, economic, and political inequities (Tupper, 2007). Seeing how North American societies continue to be impacted by transnational migration under the influences of globalization, James Banks (2008) challenges the mainstream assimilationist, liberal, and universal conceptions of citizenship education and advocates for a kind of

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multicultural citizenship teaching and learning that allows immigrant and ethnic groups to maintain attachments to their own cultural communities, to a transnational community that they may still maintain ties with, and to simultaneously participate effectively in a shared civic and national culture. Inherent in this notion of citizenship education is the importance of enabling learners to develop flexible personal-cultural/collective identities, as well as a sense of belonging and responsibility to multiple local, regional, and global communities. Likewise, Audrey Osler and Hugh Starkey (2005) propose the idea of cosmopolitan citizenship education which they perceive as crucial in helping students gain knowledge, skills, and values to participate actively at all levels, from the local to the global. Cosmopolitan citizenship emphasizes a common humanity and global solidarity but does not seek to deny regional, national, or local identifications (Osler, 2011). It attempts to enable one to conceive citizenship as a status, a feeling, and a practice at all levels (Osler, 2011). Importantly, it recognizes universal values, humanist principles and norms, celebration of diversity, and an assumption of human equality in dignity and in rights as its standards for all contexts, from the local to the global (Osler & Starkey, 2005). While these scholars spotlight the personal/cultural, national, and global dimensions of citizenship education that educators may want to attend to in a globalized and multicultural world, others look at how citizenship may extend globally beyond its local boundary and abstraction and what the global dimension of citizenship and citizenship education actually entails. For instance, Richard Falk (1994) highlights a four-level approach to conceiving the extension of citizenship from the local to the global domain. The first level tends to be aspirational in orientation, “drawing upon a long tradition of thought and feeling about the ultimate unity of human experience, giving rise to a politics of desire that posits for the planet as a whole a set of conditions of peace and justice and sustainability” (Falk, 1994, p. 131). The second level sees recent trends in globalization influencing the aspirational orientation. The third level highlights an “expanding consensus of informed opinion around the world, especially with respect to energy, resources and environment,” and the understanding that “effective global citizens are required to redesign political choices on the basis of an ecological sense of natural viabilities, and thereby to transform established forms of political behaviour” for human survival (Falk, 1994, p. 132). The fourth level moves beyond mere aspiration (first level), a set of global tendencies (second level), and informed

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understanding of the world (third level) to emphasizing taking action for “the impossible” to happen. Similarly, Derek Heater (2002) contends that the vaguest form of global citizenship is “the sense of identity with the whole of humanity, of membership of the human race.” The less vague is the acknowledgement of some moral responsibility towards the world, including its human and nonhuman inhabitants. And the more precise form of global citizenship “embraces the need for some effective forms of supra-national political authority and for political action beyond the nationstate” (Heater, 2002, p. 12). Applying these interpretations of global citizenship in the field of education, scholars have come up with a way to think about global citizenship education along a continuum (Table 2.1): Table 2.1  The global (citizenship) education continuum Global (citizenship) education teaches

Global (citizenship) education does not teach

Global interdependence (linking local to global) Global social justice Solidarity Tolerance Diversity as a positive value Cosmopolitan or post-national citizenship (all humans share same rights and responsibilities) Active citizenship  • Transformative potential of individual and collective action; role of international organizations in fostering global citizenship Environmentalism Critical thinking  • Including deliberative and decision-­ making skills Attention to sources of disagreement and conflict  • Including forms of “structural violence” and structured social exclusion Strong sense of moral purpose (often including a sense of outrage about injustice)

Us-them mentality

Source: Mundy and Manion (2008, p. 945)

Global competitiveness Charity Chauvinism Uniformity as a positive value National citizenship (emphasizing the nation as main or sole allegiance, and national competitiveness) Elite forms of citizenship  • Sole focus on formal mechanisms of the national and international government: leadership, laws, electoral politics, etc. Androcentrism Passive or uncritical thinking  • “transmission approaches to learning” Issues and cultures in ways that ignore conflictual and contested issues

A value-neutral view of world issues

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In this study, I have adopted a pragmatic notion of citizenship in my effort to explore what individual teachers know about educating for citizenship and how they develop their citizenship knowledge in the local-­ global, West-East context of a Sister School partnership. Pragmatism emphasizes the “activity of inquiry,” richness of experience, and the idea that the content of a thought like “citizenship” is determined by the role it fills in our activities of inquiry (Hookway, 2013). Having engaged a pragmatic lens in my thinking about citizenship, I make no claims of absolute or final truth around the notion of citizenship in my study, nor do I regard my own citizenship theoretical-cultural perspectives, or those that I have gathered from the wider academic community outlined above, as the sole way of defining the idea of citizenship. My thinking of citizenship is flexible and fluid, yet not without an undergirding framework. It is dependent on the teachers I have worked with, the historical and cultural narrative underlying their personal-professional contexts, and the Canada-­ China Sister School RLP landscape in which I have situated myself. Moreover, it is constructed through collaborative problem solving and through consideration of those citizenship habits, customs, and traditions that are brought to bear by each body of experience to an inquiry situation for the improvement of shared citizenship practice and experience. In short, the notion of citizenship is empty until it has been experimented with and given meanings by the collaborative acts of inquiry between me (the researcher) and my teacher-partners in concrete, emerging educational contexts. Sister School Reciprocal Learning Landscape Throughout this book, I employ the term Sister School or “inter-school reciprocal learning landscape” to describe the specific Canada-China cross-cultural research setting that has given rise to my study and that has provided a professional environment for teachers to become more globally oriented and informed citizenship educators. The term “landscape” is inspired by Clandinin and Connelly’s (1995) idea of “professional knowledge landscape,” which is a way of describing teachers’ life spaces—the physical and psychological environment of an individual or group—as having both in- and out-of-classroom locations that are temporal, interactive, and composed of dynamic relationships among people, places, and things shaped by historical, moral, emotional, and aesthetic forces. By seeing Toronto teachers’ professional work settings in the form of the Sister

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School reciprocal learning landscape, I acknowledge that the life spaces of these teachers include in/out of-classroom places, as well as diverse people, things, and events that are located not only in Canada but also in China and in various spaces in between the two countries and Sister Schools in Toronto and Shanghai. Under the influence of the Canada-China RLP project, individuals dwelling in such a landscape are encouraged to engage in collaborative and reciprocal learning which “goes beyond the idea that two or more people or groups may learn from one another to the idea that different historical cultural narratives convey meaning and be useful to another society’s different historical cultural narratives” (Xu & Connelly, 2015). These reciprocal learning relationships, together with numerous shaping forces—local, global, and cross-cultural etc.—on the Sister School landscape can potentially influence teachers’ development of experience and knowledge to educate for citizenship. My role was thus to attend closely to the different social-cultural, political, and educational forces sweeping across the Sister School landscape while facilitating those opportunities and conditions that would enable teachers in Toronto and Shanghai to learn from each other, as well as work together across cultural, political, linguistic, and geographic boundaries. With an increased understanding of and intimacy with the different people, things, environments, and forces that comprise the Sister School reciprocal learning landscape, I am much more able to inquire into how Sister School teachers grow their experience and knowledge of educating for citizenship through reciprocal and collaboration interactions with each other in a Sister School setting. Teacher Learning, Growth and Development My study was driven by the impulse to support reciprocal learning among teachers in general, and teacher citizenship learning in particular. Throughout I have thought about teacher learning from the perspective of growth and development that “is not dependent on the reaching of any predetermined goals, but… [an] increasing ability to resolve problematic interactions with the environment and to recover from loss” (Beattie, 1995, p. 64). It involves the construction and reconstruction of experience with an increased capacity and intelligence to adjust to and meet new conditions and situations, and to seek meanings from each fresh experience (Beattie, 1995). Informed by this idea of growth and development, when I refer to teacher citizenship learning, I mean a teacher’s enlarged

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capacity and intelligence to make citizenship curriculum within indeterminate curriculum and social situations that result in her further growth and development as a citizenship educator. Similarly, when I employ the notion of “teacher reciprocal learning” in my study, I mean teachers with different cultural histories coming together to inquire into each other’s lives and practices, learn about and from one another, adapt to each other’s professional situations, and find novel and educative ways to move forward in manners that promote further growth (Xu & Connelly, 2017). Teacher reciprocal learning is opened-ended and creative and is an inquiry-­ based collaborative learning effort that could potentially tie individuals together through a web of obligations and interdependencies that enrich growth and development amidst differences and diversity. Having clarified the meanings of key terms employed in this study, I now proceed to explain the narrative inquiry—personal practical knowledge framework—I used to explore how teachers develop their experiences and knowledge of educating for citizenship. Given that this framework largely grew out of an activity of inquiry into what seemed to be a puzzling yet practical Canada-China Sister School research situation, instead of giving a static and transcending view of my framework, I provide a temporal account with an attempt to preserve the sense of inquiry experienced in the process. It began in 2013, just as I entered the second year of my doctoral study at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), when I participated in a research meeting that ended up shaping my theoretical and methodological orientation.

Starting in a “Narrative Inquiry” Maze In September 2013, I attended my first Canada-China RLP project meeting organized by the RLP project directors, Dr. Shijing Xu and Dr. Michael Connelly. Xu and Connelly mentioned that the key goal of the Partnership project was to build multidimensional bridges between “Western and Eastern” education to foster “WE consciousness” (Xu, 2011; Xu & Connelly, 2015). This West-East reciprocal learning would be carried out among school educators located in Canada and China. Moreover, the project would prioritize ethical and collaborative research relationships between both countries, and between researchers and school partners/ participants.

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With regards to how the Partnership project would promote Canada-­ China reciprocal learning, Drs. Xu and Connelly raised the notion of narrative inquiry as the project’s theory and methodology: Dr. Connelly: There is a difference between methods and methodology. In this partnership project, narrative inquiry is the methodological framework. Some people equate narrative inquiry methodology with storytelling methods, but narrative inquiry as methodology is really a way of thinking. Guided by this way of thinking, researchers can adopt various types of methods to work on and apply in their project. Even survey could be a method in narrative inquiry. Dr. Xu: I also want to highlight that one of the most important things for researchers to do in this partnership project is to take reflection notes and field notes along the way. We can imagine ourselves [researchers] as matchmakers and bridge-builders for schools and educators in Canada and China… Student A: … Could you perhaps elaborate more on what narrative inquiry is? Dr. Xu: Narrative inquiry is like the story of the Daoist monk trying to seek the Way of Dao (道). The process of inquiry is to seek the Way [An analogy from a Chinese folklore, the Daoist of the Mountain Lao 崂山道 士]. (Meeting Minutes, September 17, 2013)

Xu and Connelly did not explain further what narrative inquiry was at the meeting. Based on my interest in conducting research in elementary schools and with teachers, they suggested that I work with a team of researchers from the University of Toronto and East China Normal University in Shanghai to support partnership building between two pairs of elementary schools in the Toronto-Shanghai Sister School Network. They also encouraged me to conduct my doctoral research within the Canada-China RLP context. I was thrilled to be given the opportunity to work with an international group of researchers. However, upon leaving the meeting, my mind was flooded with thoughts and questions. To a certain degree, Xu and Connelly’s explanation of how narrative inquiry as a methodology is really a way of thinking (i.e., theoretical) challenged my preconceptions of the application of narrative inquiry in educational research. I have long associated narrative inquiry with research methods such as qualitative interviewing. I did not quite understand how narrative inquiry could serve as a way of thinking for research and for building bridges and reciprocal learning

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ties among Canadian and Chinese school educators. I also found Xu’s analogy comparing narrative inquiry with the Chinese way of seeking the Dao (“Way” or “path”) both interesting and puzzling. I wondered what makes narrative inquiry a framework of thinking and Way-seeking in the context of the Sister School RLP project.

School-Based Narrative Inquiry as a Framework To figure out what makes narrative inquiry a framework for thinking and Way-seeking for a researcher in the Toronto-Shanghai Sister School setting, my first thought was to read a set of narrative-inquiry literature related to Xu and Connelly’s line of thought (Carter, 1993; Clandinin, 2007; Clandinin & Caine, 2008; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Clandinin & Huber, 2005; Conle, 1997; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990, 2006; Craig, 2011; Xu & Connelly, 2010). From this literature review, I learned that narrative inquiry is a widely known concept in the field of educational research. Often associated with a form of qualitative social science inquiry, narrative inquiry has gained a certain level of popularity among educational researchers globally for its use in researching educational experience and phenomena collaboratively with research participants. Narrative inquiry has also been frequently used by researchers to examine educational experience and phenomena in international and cross-cultural contexts (Phillion & He, 2008; Trahar, 2006), as well as in teacher education settings where researcher/teacher collaboration often results in professional learning opportunities for the teachers (Beattie, 1995; Conle, 2000). The reason why narrative inquiry is viewed as a particular way of thinking is because at the heart of narrative inquiry lies the philosophical idea that humans, individually and socially, lead “storied” lives (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006); that as humans, we understand, give meanings to, and shape ourselves and the world by living and telling, and reliving and retelling, stories individually and in relation (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; Connelly & Clandinin, 2006; Andrews et al., 2013). As such, story is “a portal through which a person enters the world” and by which his or her “experience of the world is interpreted and made personally meaningful” (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006, p. 477). For all those stories lived and told by humans, they could be examined, interpreted, and inquired into. Therefore, narrative inquiry is a way of thinking about human experiences as stories, in addition to being a methodology that examines human

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experiences as storied phenomena (Clandinin & Caine, 2008; Connelly & Clandinin, 2006). The more I read about narrative inquiry, the more I learned that there are many different approaches to it in social science research (Clandinin & Rosiek, 2007). Catherine Riessman and Jane Speedy (2007), for instance, commented on how the field of narrative inquiry had been characterized by “realist,” “modernist,” “postmodern,” and “constructionist” strands (p. 428). Clandinin and Connelly (2000) further noted that different narrative inquirers could bring different inquiry histories and ways of thinking to their inquiry experience. As a result, one may find different traditions of inquiry come together in one’s undertaking of narrative inquiry. For mine, I decided to adopt Xu and Connelly’s (2010) framework of school-based narrative inquiry, grounded in Joseph Schwab’s notion of “the practical.” This framework does not begin with top-down theory-­ driven methods to solve educational problems arising from “states of mind,” nor is it concerned with generating universal knowledge and theories that are expected to be true, durable, and extensive (Schwab, 1969). Instead, it begins in practical communicative actions between researchers and teachers and is more interested in using bottom-up and situation-­ driven methods to solve problems arising from “states of affair” that are particular and are deemed in need of improvement (Schwab, 1969). In the process of narrative inquiry, theoretical knowledge continues to hold an important role in generating defensible decisions in practical actions. However, this knowledge is held as only one type of knowledge against many others particular to a situation. Its relevance and applicability to a practical inquiry is also to be deliberated upon as people work together across cultures negotiating shared meaning at a particular time and space (Xu & Connelly, 2017). Narrative Thinking of Experience At the core of this practically oriented inquiry framework is a narrative way of thinking about human experience in general, and teachers’ (citizenship) curriculum-making experiences in particular, that is essentially fluid, openended, experiential, and inquisitive, and that takes into account individuals’ cultural and historical trajectories as well as personal-professional situations (Xu & Connelly, 2010). This narrative way of thinking is built

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upon Dewey’s pragmatic theory of experience, which sees experience as a storied-like event that is temporal (having a past, present, future), social (displaying interaction between people and environment), and always happening within a situation (Dewey, 1938). All experience carries a sense of creative individuality and is always moving forward through processes of doing and undergoing (Dewey, 1934; Grange, 2004). At times, immediate experience of doing and undergoing could give rise to reflective experience where one not only “has” the experience but understands its meaning through inquiry (Mathur, 1966). When immediate experience is imbued with the significance and meaning of its reflective inquiry phase, especially through cooperative inquiry, it is rendered more rich, educative, and fulfilling. Dewey called this richer and more fulfilling experience a consummatory experience, or simply, an experience. He further emphasized that a consummatory experience is both educative and necessary for democratic living because it is the result of reflective reorganizing and reconstructing of individual experience toward more fulfilling ends. Conversely, a democratic way of living characterized by rich associations and a plurality of ends is most conducive to consummatory experience, because it presents individuals with diverse relationships that provide the best social conditions for personal growth. Adopting a narrative way of thinking about human experience informed by Dewey’s philosophy, my narrative inquiry framework includes but also goes beyond a static and interpretive view of teacher curriculum-making experiences. It is interested in the consummatory potential of teacher experience made possible through the teacher retelling and reliving their stories individually and socially within changing, problematic, and particular intercultural and inter-school reciprocal learning landscapes (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Pushor & Clandinin, 2009). It furthermore prioritizes lives lived together democratically through collaborative, intelligent inquiries (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 189), and through responses to novelty among teachers and between teachers and researchers in Canada and China (Xu & Connelly, 2017). At the heart of narrative inquiry is change, growth, and cooperative intelligence, not merely storytelling (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). That is why Clandinin and Connelly once wrote, “narrative inquiry is an experience. It is people in relation studying with people in relation” to achieve more consummatory growth and transformative learning (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. 189, emphasis added).

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Being an Ideal Guest While reading about narrative inquiry gave me insights into its usefulness as a theoretical framework that could potentially promote reciprocal learning among educators in Canada and China, as well as their personal growth in knowledge and experiences, it was not until I started doing the narrative inquiry that I gained a real and embodied understanding of a narrative approach to thinking. I noticed that to learn to think narratively in the practical and contingent context of the Toronto-Shanghai Sister School network involved unlearning and relearning many of my own research habits. Thinking narratively is not only an intellectual exercise; it is also a kind of thinking which cannot be separated from practice. For instance, when I first started assisting teachers in Toronto to forge reciprocal learning partnerships with teachers in Shanghai, I was routinely advised to negotiate entries into the teachers’ life spaces, such as their classroom/school, and familiarize myself in ways that attended narratively to their experiences, as well as ways that responded to their personal-­ professional interests and reciprocal learning needs and ideas. In particular, I was asked to “bite my tongue” and restrain myself from imposing my research agenda on the teachers and giving them advice when interacting with them. At first, I did not quite understand why I had to keep quiet when I felt I had good ideas that could potentially advance a teacher’s collaboration with her Shanghai partners. I was also worried that if I did not tell the schools or the teachers my exact research plans, I would not get any research work done in a Sister School setting. Yet, after biting my tongue for a period of time, I noticed that I became better able to suspend my research ideas, plans, and judgments about a particular Sister School situation, and be more present to the diverse lived experiences that were existing and unfolding in front of me. Subsequently, I experienced more fully the depth, breadth, and complexity of lives in a Canada-China Sister School landscape, and developed more relevant and collaborative inquiry relationships with teachers in areas of mutual interest, such as citizenship teaching and learning. I also became more receptive and open to the cultural and historical narratives of Toronto and Shanghai schools, of which I had little prior knowledge, as well as to participate in, learn from, and work with their multi-layered narratives instead of exercising my knowledge over them.

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This narrative way of working with school educators that developed through biting my tongue was very different from other approaches commonly found in school settings where policy makers, university researchers, or teacher educators propose and prescribe guidelines for teachers to follow and implement, without first understanding their stories or experiences and developing a relationship of inquiry with them in context. It further reminded me of the Confucian image of an “ideal guest” (Ivanhoe, 2014), who knows how to carry out rituals (li 礼), commonly understood as practices, relationships, and roles that aid social interaction and promote solidarity and harmony that have stood the test of time but are not unchangeable (Tan, 2003, p. 176). According to Philip Ivanhoe (2014), the Confucian notion of an ideal guest is implied in Analects 3.15. This classical text suggests that an ideal guest is one who practices rituals when entering other people’s life spaces by displaying humility, engaging with others in an agreeable and humane way, and joining in shared social activities. As such, an ideal guest is open-­ mindedly curious about others’ life spaces and ask appropriate questions about things she sees in them even though she might already have a certain level of understanding of them (Ivanhoe). She is also willing to defer her judgment about what she is seeking to understand until she can see the whole in the particulars (Ivanhoe). At the heart of the Confucian image of an ideal guest is an exemplary person (junzi 君子) who has a love of learning and who knows how to learn through listening (wen 闻), reading (dushu 读书), inquiring (wen 问), observing (guan 观), and familiarizing oneself with cultural norms (wen 文), and behavioural propriety (li 礼; Lai, 2016, p. 108–109). Because such a guest is able to attend to the nuances and particularities of all situations, she demonstrates the art of discernment, and knows how to communicate in an appropriate and fitting (yi 义) manner in other people’s life spaces and relate to people in a harmonious manner. Looking back, I realize that by biting my tongue and withholding my academic theories, judgments, and assumptions, I was able to not only think more narratively about and inquire collaboratively into life experiences in ways that support teacher reciprocal and citizenship learning, but to engage and develop my own cultural experiences and ancestral knowledge of being an ideal guest (if not ideal, at least a good guest) when working in teachers’ life spaces. After all, in the Canada-China RLP project, knowing the details of a specific theory is not as important as being able to find meaningful ways of understanding people’s narratives and to

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work collaboratively, intelligently, and appropriately with them to devise new and educative ways to move forward (Connelly & Xu, 2019; Xu & Connelly, 2017). Any theories I have would have to be discerned, deliberated, and applied in specific Sister School situations to see if they continue to hold “true”—true such that they would not hinder further reciprocity, learning, and growth of individuals and their relationships. A Way-Seeking Mentality to Re-Search As I further reflect upon my experience with the narrative inquiry approach, I find that it is similar to the Daoist monk’s journey of seeking the Way or Dao (道) alluded to by Dr. Xu at the first research meeting I attended. David Hall and Roger Ames (1998) once said that Way-seekers—unlike Truth-seekers who are concerned with generating absolute true beliefs and representations—orient themselves to understanding the complexity and richness of life, proactively moving forward by adapting indeterminate opportunities and guiding experience. The philosophic concern of the Way-seekers is not “What is Truth?” but “Where is the Way?” which would lead to “a search for the right path, the appropriate models of conduct to lead one along the way, the ‘way’ that life is to be lived, and where to stand” (Hall & Ames, 1998, p. 103). In addition, seeking the Way requires a dissolution of the subject-object dichotomy, a unity of knowing and acting, and an engagement of any pertinent theories and ideas that make a difference in a particular situation. It further demands human association and activity, discernment and intelligence, and a great level of flexibility, creativity, and openness. In Chinese thinking, seeking and living by the Way ought to bring one into the most productive course of action in the world (Grange, 2004, p. 23). And in my narrative inquiry, through biting my tongue and performing the ritual of an ideal guest, I have attempted to develop a Way-seeking mentality in my research with Ann Barton, which foregrounds narrative understandings of her curriculum-making experiences and the building of her reciprocal learning relationships, without getting caught up in a priori citizenship theories or notions. Through mutual interaction, collaboration, reflective inquiries into, and retelling and reliving of curriculum-making experiences in Sister School RLP settings, it is hoped that both Ann and I (and our Sister School colleagues in Shanghai) develop deeper understandings of where we stand and what we know about educating for citizenship in a complex global and multicultural world.

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Having explained the narrative inquiry framework of my study, in the next section, I illustrate how this framework has oriented my lens to explore Ann’s evolving knowledge to educate for citizenship in a shifting Toronto-Shanghai Sister School reciprocal learning landscape, as well as the conditions that have supported the development of her knowledge.

Teachers’ Knowledge of Educating for Citizenship A review of journal articles published between 2000 and 2014 and located through search terms—“teacher” or “teaching” and “citizenship” or “civic”—from European/North American academic databases tells us that there is no lack of research interest in finding out what teachers think or know about citizenship education. Most scholars working in this area do not use the term “teacher knowledge” in their research program, nor do they identify their studies as research on teachers’ citizenship education knowledge. However, their studies do generate a certain kind of knowledge about teachers and citizenship teaching. For instance, many researchers have attempted to find out how teachers understand and enact citizenship concepts, contents, and pedagogies as expressed in government-issued policies, curriculum standards, guidelines, and prescribed textbooks (Davies et al., 2004; Ortloff, 2011; Osler, 2011; Wood, 2012). Take for an example, Ian Davies and his colleagues (2004) who examined how teachers interpret the citizenship and enterprise dimensions of their countries’ educational policies. Osler (2011), on the other hand, has looked at teachers’ perceptions of the official citizenship curriculum in England and found that teachers hold multiple conceptualizations of citizenship from the local to the global. In addition, some researchers have found that teachers’ understandings of citizenship education are frequently at odds with the prescribed citizenship curricula. In some contexts, teachers bring in a personal, and at times, more critical and progressive, understanding of citizenship education to what seemed to be a conservative, prescribed citizenship curriculum (Myers, 2007; Ng, 2009; Pang & Gibson, 2001). Most researchers believe that teachers have different interpretations of citizenship and citizenship education based on divergent conceptions of democracy (Kubow, 2007; Marri, 2005; Westheimer & Kahne, 2004), and pre-established values, beliefs, and interests about citizenship and citizenship teaching and learning (Kennedy et  al., 2002; Patterson et  al., 2012). Regarding what influences teachers’ citizenship values, beliefs and

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interests, scholars have found that teachers’ personal and professional experiences such as: (1) their educational, career, family, and traveling backgrounds; (2) experiences of racism, discrimination, and political activism; (3) learning from past and ongoing teacher education activities; and (4) professional responsibilities like subject matters and grade-levels taught, have all played a role in determining their citizenship values, beliefs, and interests (DiCamillo & Pace, 2010; Dilworth, 2004; Kennedy et  al., 2002; Kubow, 2007; Myers, 2007; Ng, 2009; Pang & Gibson, 2001; Wood, 2012). Furthermore, the ways teachers interact within their larger social and educational contexts, also play a part in shaping their citizenship values, beliefs, and interests. Specific contextual factors such as national educational traditions (e.g., progressive Deweyen), school communities’ socio-economic level (e.g., lower income or higher income neighbourhood), school ethos and atmosphere, existing social inequality and injustice, specific political contexts and policy environments, and the design and contents of citizenship curriculum and textbooks, could all impact teachers’ experiences and subsequently their citizenship thinking and understanding (Akar, 2012; Dilworth, 2004; Kennedy et al., 2002; Kubow, 2007; Myers, 2007; Pang & Gibson, 2001; Saada, 2013; Wood, 2012). Interestingly, many researchers have pointed out that even though teachers’ ideas about citizenship and citizenship education tend to dictate their instructional practices (Dilworth, 2004; Marri, 2005; Ng, 2009; Sim & Print, 2009; Westheimer & Kahne, 2004), their thinking sometimes might not translate into actual practices due to personal factors such as a lack of capacity and confidence (Akar, 2012; Davies, 2006), or other curriculum/contextual constraints, such as unclear citizenship education guidelines, students’ diverse characteristics and language competencies, unsupportive school environments, a lack of instructional time, and high-­ stakes testing (Akar, 2012; Misco et al., 2011; Myers, 2007; Ng, 2009; Sim & Print, 2009; Tammi, 2013; Pang & Gibson, 2001; Tupper, 2007). Despite a possible disconnection between teachers’ thinking and doing, there are still teachers who continue to develop clear purposes for citizenship curriculum and enact what they believe is right and appropriate in practice. Many teachers exercise moral agency in not letting high-stake testing or their educational and political context drive their teaching (Myers, 2007; Ng, 2009; Pang & Gibson, 2001). Some teachers go beyond the official curriculum by infusing it with their own curriculum goals aligned with their views of citizenship (Marri, 2005; Pang & Gibson,

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2001). Others look for networks, allies, and professional groups to support their citizenship educational efforts (Mirra & Morrell, 2011; Schweisfurth, 2006). While this scholarly literature has provided me with a general understanding of teachers and citizenship teaching, it also alerts me to the fact that the kind of study I have pursued while researching teacher experience and knowledge of educating for citizenship in the Toronto-Shanghai Sister School context is quite different from those existing in the field. Epistemologically speaking, my study takes a narrative look at teachers’ lives and is interested in understanding and advancing teachers’ experiential knowledge of educating for citizenship in their own terms without it being distorted, ignored, reduced, or reconstructed under an imposition of theories or established social science rules and procedures that aim at a certain level of abstraction and generalization (Fenstermacher, 1994). By contrast, many of the studies I have surveyed are inclined toward generating formal knowledge about citizenship teaching by employing accepted theory and methods. They are more interested in knowing whether a teacher is successful or effective under a certain citizenship education paradigm, whether her citizenship teaching practices are predicted by some theories, or how a teacher thinks about citizenship teaching given this or that theory (see Fenstermacher, 1994). The result is that they tend to highlight causal relationships between teachers’ past/present experiences and their personal citizenship education understandings, or how their personal understandings influence their actual practices and experiences of educating for citizenship in the present/future. Teachers’ understandings of citizenship education is also often examined as a piece of objective information or a set of fixed understandings that reside in teachers’ heads, which could thereby be categorized, controlled, measured, and evaluated against certain citizenship educational standards and philosophies. When working with Ann Barton, the key character in this book, I intentionally rejected this formal approach to conceptualizing teachers experience and knowledge of educating for citizenship. This is because once I started thinking narratively about Ann’s curriculum-making experience and bringing a practically oriented narrative inquiry lens to understanding the temporal and interactive dimension of her teaching experience in context, I saw a creative, holistic, situated, and embodied sense of knowing, particularly citizenship-curriculum and pedagogical knowing, embedded in her curriculum-making practices. Indeed, Ann is a knowledgeable citizenship “curriculum maker” (Schwab, 1983). Every day, she makes

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practical curriculum decisions to educate for citizenship based on her experiential knowledge of herself as a professional/person/citizen, knowledge of diverse subject matters, knowledge of her students, and knowledge of her professional and socio-ecological-political environments, including the Shanghai-Toronto Sister School landscape. The result of seeing Ann as a curriculum maker led me to adopt the idea of “personal practical knowledge,” a term initially developed by Michael Connelly and Barbara Dienes (1982) and Clandinin (1985), to think about teachers’ knowledge to educate for citizenship in school and classroom settings. A Personal Practical View on Teachers’ Citizenship Education Knowledge Personal practical knowledge refers to the ways teachers experientially know themselves and their work in particular professional settings (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988). Personal practical knowledge resides temporally in a person’s past experience, in the person’s present mind and body, and in the person’s future plans and actions (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988). It carries teachers’ narratives of experience, which are both personal—reflecting a person’s life history—and social—reflecting the contexts in which teachers live and work (Connelly & Clandinin, 1999). Personal practical knowledge is “knowledge carved out, and shaped by, situations” (Clandinin, 1992, p. 125), and it reflects teachers’ “stories to live by” (Connelly & Clandinin, 1999), i.e., “stories that teachers live out in practice and tell of who they are, and are becoming, as teachers” (Clandinin et al., 2009, p. 142). Often, this knowledge is tacit and “is not organized and coded according to any of the traditional disciplinary and cognitive ways of organizing knowledge and skills,” nor can it be engineered and applied logically, generically, and technically (Xu & Connelly, 2009, p. 203). It may not even be easily noticed by the teachers themselves, but would get expressed variably depending on the practical situation (Xu & Connelly, 2009). In many ways, the longer I collaborated with teachers in their classroom/school, the more I was able to get in touch with their evolving personal practical knowledge to notice how this knowledge often has a cultural narrative history and a strong moral/value dimension while being simultaneously complex, affective, and aesthetic. This c­ultural/moral/ value dimension of their personal practical knowledge reflected and intertwined with who they are as teachers and what they know as persons and

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citizens in Canada and in the world (Connelly & Dienes, 1982). It conveyed the kinds of “good” citizens and society they wanted to educate towards, and how to achieve it, at a specific time and space. I attempted to further inquire into this aspect of teachers’ personal practical knowledge, while exploring how it developed over time, and under what kinds of favourable conditions in a changing Toronto-Shanghai Sister School reciprocal learning landscape. Furthermore, I tried to use narratively informed languages such as images, metaphors, narrative unity, rhythm, and ritual to think about and give meanings to this citizenship dimension of teachers’ knowledge (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988). Narrative languages were chosen because, unlike conventional scientific languages, they have a greater ability to represent the diverse mental lives of teachers—their thinking, reasoning, motives, aspirations, ruminations, planning, imagination, and purposes—that arise from their mundane, day-to-day experiences as teachers-citizens (Connelly & Clandinin, 1987, 1988; Fenstermacher, 1994).

Moving Forward In a nutshell, my framework for inquiry is informed by the idea of narrative inquiry and a narrative way of understanding and representing teachers’ evolving personal practical knowledge of educating for citizenship. This framework follows a Way-seeking philosophical outlook, is enacted through narrative thinking of experience and the ritual of an ideal guest. It is geared toward finding appropriate ways to contribute to the retelling and reliving of citizenship curriculum-making experiences and knowledge within West-East, global-local dialectics. It is not a framework for analysing curriculum-making practice against certain citizenship educational theories. Rather, it is a framework that allows relational understandings of teacher knowledge and experience in a global and cross-cultural context for the practical purpose of facilitating its consummatory growth. In the next chapter, I describe the specific methods and approaches I have engaged in my narrative inquiry process with Ann Barton.

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Ng, S. W. (2009). Transformation of students into active and participatory citizens: An exploratory study in Hong Kong. Educational Research for Policy and Practice, 8(3), 181–196. Ortloff, D. H. (2011). Moving the borders: Multiculturalism and global citizenship in the German social studies classroom. Educational Research, 53(2), 137–149. Osler, A. (2011). Teacher interpretations of citizenship education: National identity, cosmopolitan ideals, and political realities. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 43(1), 1–24. Osler, A., & Starkey, H. (2005). Changing citizenship: Democracy and inclusion in education. McGraw-Hill International. Pang, V. O., & Gibson, R. (2001). Concepts of democracy and citizenship: Views of African American teachers. The Social Studies, 92(6), 260–266. Patterson, N., Doppen, F., & Misco, T. (2012). Beyond personally responsible: A study of teacher conceptualizations of citizenship education. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 7(2), 191–206. Phillion, J., & He, M. F. (2008). Multicultural and cross-cultural narrative inquiry in educational research. Thresholds in Education, 34(1), 2–12. Pushor, D., & Clandinin, D.  J. (2009). The interconnections between narrative inquiry and action research. In S.  E. Noffke & B.  Somekh (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of educational action research (pp.  290–301). SAGE Publications Limited. Riegel, J. (2013). Confucius. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/confucius/ Riessman, C.  K., & Speedy, J. (2007). Narrative inquiry in the psychotherapy professions: A critical review. In D. J. Clandinin (Ed.), Handbook of narrative inquiry: Mapping a methodology (pp. 426–456). SAGE Publications Limited. Saada, N.  L. (2013). Teachers’ perspectives on citizenship education in Islamic schools in Michigan. Theory & Research in Social Education, 41(2), 247–273. Schwab, J. J. (1969). The practical: A language for curriculum. The School Review, 78(1), 1–23. Schwab, J.  J. (1973). The practical 3: Translation into curriculum. The School Review., 81(4), 501–504. Schwab, J. (1977). Translating scholarship into curriculum. In S.  Fox & G.  Rosenfield (Eds.), From the scholar to the classroom: Translating Jewish ­traditions into curriculum (pp.  1–30). Melton Research Center for Jewish Education of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Schwab, J. J. (1983). The practical 4: Something for curriculum professors to do. Curriculum Inquiry, 13(3), 239–265. Schweisfurth, M. (2006). Education for global citizenship: Teacher agency and curricular structure in Ontario schools. Educational Review, 58(1), 41–50.

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Sim, J., & Print, M. (2009). The state, teachers and citizenship education in Singapore schools. British Journal of Educational Studies, 57(4), 380–399. Tammi, T. (2013). Democratic deliberations in the Finnish elementary classroom: The dilemmas of deliberations and the teacher’s role in an action research project. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 8(1), 73–86. Tan, S.-H. (2003). Confucian democracy: A Deweyan reconstruction. SUNY Press. Trahar, S. (2006). Narrative research on learning: Comparative and international perspectives. Symposium Books Ltd.. Tupper, J.  A. (2007). From care-less to care-full: Education for citizenship in schools and beyond. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 53(3), 269–272. Xu, S.  J. (2011). Bridging the east and west dichotomy: Harmonizing eastern learning with western knowledge. In J. Ryan (Ed.), Education reform in China: Changing contexts, concepts and practices (pp. 224–242). Routledge. Xu, S. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2009). Narrative inquiry for teacher education and development: Focus on English as a foreign language in China. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(2), 219–227. Xu, S. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2010). Narrative inquiry for school-based research. Narrative Inquiry, 20(2), 349–370. Xu, S. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2013–2020). Reciprocal learning in teacher education and school education between Canada and China. Unpublished research project proposal. Funded by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada [Grant No. 895-2012-1011]. Xu, S. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2015). Reciprocal learning: Comparative models and the partnership project, reciprocal learning and symbiotic development [Keynote Speech]. Reciprocal Learning & Symbiotic Development: An international conference to promote interschool, interregional and intercultural school improvement. East China Normal University, Shanghai, China. Xu, S.  J., & Connelly, F.  M. (2017). Reciprocal learning between Canada and China in teacher education and school education: Partnership studies of practice in cultural context. Frontiers of Education in China, 12(2), 135–150. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11516-­017-­0013-­6 Xu, S. J., Connelly, F. M., He, M. F., & Phillion, J. (2007). Immigrant students' experience of schooling: A narrative inquiry theoretical framework. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 39(4), 399–422. Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004). What kind of citizen? The politics of educating for democracy. American Educational Research Journal, 41(2), 237–269. Wood, B. E. (2012). Scales of active citizenship: New Zealand teachers’ diverse perceptions and practices. International Journal of Progressive Education, 8(3), 77–94.

CHAPTER 3

Narrative Methods in the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School Reciprocal Learning Landscape

Having detailed the theoretical and methodological framework of my study in Chap. 2, in this chapter, I describe the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School reciprocal learning landscape in which my study has unfolded. I present details about the Sister School research context. Additionally, I discuss the narrative fieldwork methods I have used to study teachers’ citizenship curriculum-making experience. Readers will understand why I focus on inquiring into one teacher’s experience and how I use the “sonata form” to re-story her evolving experiences of making citizenship curriculum in the Sister School context.

The Sister School Context My narrative inquiry began while working with five elementary teachers in Toronto to support their cross-cultural interactions with teachers in Shanghai. Ann Barton1—a Grade 4 and 5 teacher from Bay Street School in Toronto—was the first teacher to welcome me into her classroom and do my doctoral research with her. She soon invited me to assist her in developing communications and collaborations with teachers from 1

 Pseudonyms are used for all teachers and schools.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Khoo, Educating for Citizenship in a Canada-China Sister School Reciprocal Learning Partnership, Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18078-1_3

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Shanghai Minzhu School, a suburban school in Shanghai known for its “green” educational initiatives. Besides working and inquiring alongside Ann, I also supported Cassandra and Karen—two of Ann’s colleagues—as well as two Grade 6 teachers from an elementary school in a Toronto suburb as part of their reciprocal learning engagement. Bay Street School is a K–8 model inner-city school located in downtown Toronto. The school follows the province of Ontario’s elementary curriculum2 and serves about 400 students who are mainly from immigrant and low-income backgrounds. Bay Street School ranks fairly low on the Toronto public school board’s Learning Opportunities Index, which means that its students face a high level of external challenges that could affect their success. Further, more than half of the school’s student population speaks a second language other than English. While Bay Street School students come from a wide variety of backgrounds, students of Chinese heritage continue to constitute a large proportion of the student population. In 2008, Bay Street School established a relationship with Shanghai Minzhu Primary School as part of the Shanghai-Toronto Sister School network initiated by Connelly and Xu (2009–2012). Minzhu is an experimental school located in a Shanghai suburb affiliated with a renowned school-reform research program in China, called the “New Basic Education.” Initiated by Professor Ye Lan from Shanghai East China Normal University in the 1990s, the New Basic Education program is equipped with its own philosophical foundation and methodology informed by Chinese educational thinking and socio-cultural-political contexts (for more information about New Basic Education, see Ye, 2020). It is conceptualized to respond to the urgent need for contemporary Chinese schools to reform their management, educational thinking,

2  Canada does not have a national system of education and there is no ministry or department of education at the federal level (Government of Canada, 2022). In Canada’s 10 provinces and 3 territories, each province and territory has its own ministries/departments that manages its own school system (CMEC, 2022). Through the Council of Ministers of Education Canada (CMEC), an intergovernmental body, different provinces and territories work together to ensure educational quality and consistency across the country. In Canada, each provincial and territorial government sets the curriculum for its public schools. There are 72 schools boards in the province of Ontario and these school boards handle the local governance of education, e.g., deciding how to spend funds from the province, providing school programs, develop local educational policies etc. (People for Education, 2022).

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and practices in response to rapid social changes, economic reforms, and opening-up policy in China since the 1980s (Bu & Li, 2013). The New Basic Education approach regards nine-year compulsory education as the unit of practical research, as well as classroom teaching, classroom life, and school management as the three main sites for experimentation and reform for schools (Ye, 2009). At the time when Bay Street formed Sister School partnerships with Minzhu, the latter had engaged in more than ten years of school-reform research collaboration with Professor Ye’s New Basic Education research team. Studies showed that Minzhu had transformed from an ordinary small-scale neighbourhood school serving lower-middle class students, into a model school that had not only reformed its educational philosophy, organizational structure, school culture, policy, and system, but also boasted a strong team of reflective and research-oriented school educators who were capable of enriching classroom life, as well as leading other teachers forward towards mutual improvement (Bu et al., 2017). In 2012, the New Basic Education research team entered into an agreement with a local district-level education bureau to deepen district-wide school transformation using the model of “school communities.” Minzhu Primary School was appointed as the lead school in one of six New Basic Education school communities. As such, it was responsible for taking up leadership roles and working with partnering schools in its local school community to find relevant ways to cultivate whole-school transformation using their experience and knowledge from collaborating with the New Basic Education team. In 2013, principals and teachers from Minzhu and Bay Street received additional support from professors and graduate researchers in the Canada-­ China RLP project (Xu & Connelly, 2013–2020) to deepen their Sister School collaboration guided by the ethos of Sino-Western reciprocal learning. Principals and teachers from both schools were encouraged to deepen their ties through the support of graduate researchers who were being trained and mentored by partnering Chinese and Canadian professors experienced in school-based, cross-cultural research. Ann Barton is among the few teachers who joined the Bay Street-­ Minzhu Sister School project during its inception in 2008 through to when the Canada-China RLP project team began working with her in September, 2013. In December that year (December 2013), another Bay Street School teacher, Karen, joined the project but left the partnership after six months to handle other emerging projects in the school. After

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Karen left, Cassandra, a junior elementary teacher, resumed Karen’s partnership with Minzhu teachers. Cassandra got more involved in developing her ties with them in the fall of 2015.

An International Research Team When I started supporting teachers to form reciprocal learning relationships with each other, I was not on my own. I was part of a graduate research team led by the Canada-China Reciprocal Learning Partnership Project Co-Director, Dr. Michael Connelly from the University of Toronto. I also worked with New Basic Education researchers from East China Normal University (上海华东师范大学)—Dr. Bu Yuhua, Dr. Liu An, Dr. Yang Qian, and others—who were familiar with Minzhu School. Together, the research teams in Toronto and Shanghai co-facilitated communications and interactions between partnering Toronto and Shanghai Sister School educators and kept close contact with each other throughout the process. Interactions between the teachers took place through regular synchronous and asynchronous online communication as well as annual exchange visits supported by our Toronto-Shanghai research team. Graduate researchers and project assistants proficient in English and Mandarin played an essential role in providing translation and communication help to Sister School teachers during their interactions. In fact, one can say that whenever teachers from Bay Street and Minzhu interact with each other, there is always a graduate researcher offering their presence and assistance to the teachers. While working alongside the teachers, graduate researchers would co-­ construct research field texts with them to document their reciprocal learning experiences under the mentorship of research team leaders. These field texts include field notes, pictures, videos, interview transcripts, and student work. It is worth mentioning that graduate researchers associated with the University of Toronto and the East China Normal University’s New Basic Education team are trained in different research traditions and therefore, use different methods when it comes to working with the teachers. Rather than a hindrance, this variety helped promote mutual and reciprocal learning opportunities between researchers and motivated the research team to search for a shared method to advance the teacher reciprocal learning. The longer researchers from Shanghai and Toronto worked together and learned from each other, the closer we became in our understandings and approach to school-based research.

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Fieldwork Methods My interest in understanding narratively and supporting Toronto teachers’ personal experience and knowledge in educating for citizenship in this setting led me to pay attention to the day-to-day curriculum-making experience of teachers, especially its educative growth and development, over a period of time. As Connelly and Clandinin pointed out, “Narrative… is concerned with the everyday business of schooling whether tense and problematic or routine and cyclic… narrative is primarily concerned with the mundane; with the day-by-day ongoing activities of schooling, parts of which might be seen as problematic” (Connelly & Clandinin, 1987, pp. 135–136). To make sense of teachers’ mundane day-to-day stories of curriculum-­ making, I used ethnographic fieldwork methods such as participant-­ observation, informal individual and group interviews/conversations, and collected school artefacts, photos, and videos. My participant-observation was conducted both in and out of the classroom, in spaces such as field trips, online conversation groups, Sister School virtual meetings, restaurants, staff rooms, and school yards. I would think narratively, recording the continuity and interaction of a teacher’s curriculum-making experience in their specific and immediate professional context. As such, I would not only participate in and observe teachers’ ongoing curriculum-making activities that involve Sister School work (e.g., teaching students to write letters to their pen pals in China), but also attend to those activities that had little to do with the Sister School project (e.g., an educational field trip to a local film festival). In addition, I would pay attention to the verbal and non-verbal interactions between my teacher partners and their students, colleagues, Sister School partners, university researchers (including myself), and parents. During times when I did not understand a certain episode in my teacher partners’ curriculum-making and wanted to figure out what they were thinking, feeling, and planning, I would carry out informal conversations or interviews with them. When necessary, I would gather school artefacts and policy documents, and speak with other teachers on and off the Canada-China inter-school RLP project, all for the purpose of deepening my understanding of my teacher partners’ classroom—why they were making curriculum in a certain way at a certain time, and what makes them the kind of teachers they are. While conducting my fieldwork, I also refrained myself from using citizenship education theories to evaluate

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teacher curriculum-making experience and practices. To make sense of teachers’ evolving personal practical knowledge of educating for citizenship, I tried instead to pay attention to the moral/value dimensions of their curriculum-making experiences as stories lived and told, relived and retold by the teachers—both personally and socially. Overall, my fieldwork methods are informed by my theoretical and methodological framework which emphasizes narrative thinking of teacher experiences, the idea of an ideal guest, a Way-seeking mentality, along with an understanding of teachers’ citizenship education knowledge as personal and practical.

Interpreting the Story of One Teacher: Ann Barton Over a four-year period (September 2013–May 2017), I composed a significant amount of field notes, conversation/interview transcripts, photos, videos, and school documents as the result of working with my teacher partners under a practical narrative inquiry framework. As much as the field notes depict my teacher partners’ evolving experiences and knowledge of educating for citizenship in a Sister School landscape, they also documented my interaction with, engagement in, and co-construction of these stories. The remaining chapters focus on re-storying and inquiring into the citizenship curriculum-making story of one teacher, Ann Barton, who became involved in the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School partnership in 2008. Although I worked with different teachers in diverse Toronto-Shanghai Sister School settings, I chose Ann’s story to best convey my research philosophy, approaches, and findings. To give meanings to the citizenship dimension of Ann’s curriculum-­ making experience and knowledge in a shifting Sister School landscape, I employed a narrative inquiry process called “broadening” and “burrowing” (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). Broadening urges me to contextualize Ann’s developing experience and knowledge in the context of ongoing changes and difficulties of the teaching profession. It also requires me to understand Ann’s narrative in the context of the social, political, cultural, and historical trajectory of events unfolding locally in the teachers’ immediate personal and professional contexts and globally across the Bay Street-­ Minzhu inter-school reciprocal learning landscapes. Burrowing, on the other hand, involves a more up-close look at particular curriculum-making experiences that Ann has lived and told, relived and retold, in order to shed light on her citizenship education knowledge and

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experience. When burrowing into Ann’s storied experiences of curriculum-­ making, I pay attention to her feelings, hopes, desires, aesthetic reactions, and moral dispositions, along with her social environment, including the surrounding factors and forces, people and otherwise (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006). Furthermore, I look at how various organizing structures (macro constructs such as policies and mandated curriculum; the cultural and historical narratives of Canadian and Chinese societies as well as their education systems; Ann’s family; Minzhu’s culture and curriculum) frame Ann’s narrative, especially her personal practical knowledge of making citizenship curriculum in a reciprocal learning Sister School setting. I also try to understand those contents, forms, and contexts of her narrative (Halliday, 1973) that have prompted Ann to retell and relive her stories of educating for the global dimension of citizenship. Given that narrative inquiry is very much a form of living, both the broadening and burrowing processes were engaged not only after but also during my fieldwork, when I felt the need to make sense of Ann’s curriculum-­making practices and facilitate her reciprocal learning partnership with the Minzhu teachers. Often, the understandings generated through broadening and burrowing into Ann’s narrative enabled me to relate further with Ann and help her bond more effectively with her Shanghai Sister School counterparts. New stories and citizenship pedagogical opportunities emerged as the result. As I re-story Ann’s curriculum-making experience for the purpose of this book, I keep Ann’s narrative as whole and unfragmented as possible while allowing “stories and their endings to change with time, context and audience” (Frost, 2009, p. 10). I go through my field texts a couple of times to look for stories that reflect a succession of citizenship curriculum-­ making events in Ann’s classroom that also capture the totality of reciprocal learning interactions and situations on the Bay Street-Minzhu inter-school landscape. Next, I make an effort to capture Ann’s citizenship-­ education knowledge using narrative terms while paying attention to various stories and storylines that have catalysed and sustained Ann’s retelling and reliving of her curriculum-making stories. To open Ann’s narrative up for reimagining, I sometimes alter time and rearrange chronology to enable different plotlines and new understandings of her narrative (Chan et  al., 2012). I further draw upon my personal experience, Minzhu School’s narrative, and various scholarly works that bridge Chinese and Western educational knowing and thinking to give meanings to Ann’s narrative.

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Representing Ann’s Story Using the Sonata Form The following chapters offer a reconstructed version of Ann’s curriculum-­ making narrative that highlights how she developed her experience and knowledge of educating for citizenship in a shifting China-Canada inter-­ school reciprocal learning landscape. This reconstructed narrative attends to the elements of place, scene, plot, tensions, and end points in Ann’s curriculum-making stories (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p.  131). It enables an understanding of how Ann retells and relives her stories of global citizenship learning and growth while meeting diverse lives, and the interactions of dominant cultural, historical, institutional, linguistic, and social narratives (Huber et al., 2011). When I took a step back and looked at Ann’s narrative as a whole, I saw a consummatory citizenship curriculum-making experience that was meaningful and growth-oriented, characterized by a plot line and a sense of rhythm and tempo, as well as unique moral and aesthetic qualities. One of my intentions when re-storying Ann’s narrative is to search for an equally moral and aesthetic way to represent this storied, rhythmic, and consummatory curriculum-making experience over time, without playing down Ann’s creative effort in reconstructing her (global) citizenship education knowledge. This search led me to the metaphoric idea of music or 乐 (yue), which from an ancient Chinese philosophical perspective, not only embodies the Chinese ideal of harmony—that is, the ultimate unity of truth, goodness, and beauty in society—but it also has a practical effect of vitalizing and harmonizing the world (Li, 2014, p.  58). Composing Ann’s curriculum-making experience using the idea of music/乐, I highlight the overall aesthetic and moral quality of Ann’s curriculum-making experience, alongside her particular and evolving citizenship education knowledge, allowing this narrative to move our understanding of citizenship teaching/learning in a globalized world. The five chapters that follow provide a narrative representation of Ann’s curriculum-making experience in the Sister School landscape, using a narrative-­like musical (乐) structure of the sonata form. The sonata form originates in Europe and was developed by composers beginning in the eighteenth century to deliver their musical ideas. It has a three-part structure—exposition, development, and recapitulation—in which a musical subject matter is stated, explored, or expanded, and restated (Jacobson, n.d.). The exposition consists of two contrasting themes (e.g., Theme A and Theme B) marked by their tonal or key differences. These two themes

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are connected by a transition that allows one key to modulate into another. As a result, the exposition more often than not ends on a different key from where it started, creating a certain sense of unfinishedness and opposition awaiting to be reconciled. In the development section of a sonata, the two contrasting themes initially introduced in the exposition go through a process of free and creative development. Sometimes new keys appear, while other times they are combined to form new melodies (Jacobson, n.d.). Because of the rapid sequences and key changes, a development section normally creates a feeling of rhythmic, harmonic, and tonal instability, not without a sense of imagination. Finally, in the recapitulation section, the entire material of the exposition is repeated in the same order as before. The key difference between recapitulation and exposition is that recapitulation closes in a single key which conveys a feeling of equilibrium, whereas exposition is characterized by a feeling of oppositional tension due to its open key structure. The transformation in the recapitulation section provides listeners with an opportunity to perceive the musical subjects in a new relationship “like a traveller who glimpses the constituent parts of a valley separately as he climbs a hill and then, when he reaches the summit, sees the entire landscape for the first time as a whole” (Jacobson, n.d.). Ann’s curriculum-making narrative in the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School landscape and her story of becoming a more globally informed and oriented citizenship educator will unfold in a sonata form according to the following outline: • Exposition (Chap. 4): Ann’s narrative opens with a portrayal of her curriculum-making situations in a challenging inner-city classroom setting at the beginning of the 2014–2015 school year. One sees her personal practical knowledge of educating for citizenship manifests most strongly in her rhythm of orchestrating a democratic classroom community of 25 students. Meanwhile, after years of failed attempts in forging Sister School partnership with Minzhu educators, Ann decides to give the partnership a final try under the support of the Canada-China RLP project research team. However, the prospect of her collaboration with Shanghai educators remains uncertain. • Development (Chaps. 5–7): A collaborative reciprocal learning opportunity occurs where Ann connects with Ms. Feng from Shanghai Minzhu Primary School via online interactions facilitated by the research team. Learning from Ms. Feng’s and Minzhu’s nar-

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rative prompts Ann to recompose her curriculum-making rhythm, reconstruct her knowledge to educate for citizenship from the local to the global, and rebuild her democratic classroom community in a challenging Sister School landscape. The watershed moment in her curriculum-­making takes places when she develops collaborative and reciprocal learning partnerships with her Sister School counterparts around the theme of water. By engaging her students to promote a shared Sister School water culture and through ongoing reflective inquiries and reciprocal learning collaboration with her partners and university researchers, Ann reconstructs her narrative unity, rhythm, ritual, and image of educating for global citizenship. • Recapitulation (Chap. 8): In March 2016, after two years of interacting virtually with her Shanghai colleagues, Ann receives an opportunity to visit Minzhu School in person. The school visit allows Ann to gain a more nuanced and contextual understanding of Minzhu and the Shanghai school system. It also strengthens her personal ties and communication with her Sister School partners. Following the school visit, Ann’s curriculum-making narrative reaches a new key. Despite felt professional constraints, Ann continues to reconstruct her curriculum making rhythm in the Sister School landscape with renewed educational visions for helping the planet, a better grasp of the contour of the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School landscape, a greater appreciation of the purpose of her Sister School collaboration, a clarified understanding of who she is and what she knows as a citizen-teacher, and a stronger sense of togetherness with her Chinese colleagues.

References Bu, Y. H., & Li, J. C. (2013). The new basic education and whole school reform: A Chinese experience. Frontiers of Education in China, 8(4), 576–595. https:// doi.org/10.3868/s110-­002-­013-­0038-­5 Bu, Y. H., Yang, Q., & Lu, Y. Q. (2017). The construction of school communities through inter-school cooperation. Educational Science Research, 7, 66–71. Chan, E., Keyes, D., Ross, V.  D., & (Eds.). (2012). Narrative inquirers in the midst of meaning-making: Interpretive acts of teacher educators. Emarald Group Publishing Limited. CMEC. (2022). Some facts about Canada’s population. Retrieved from https:// www.cmec.ca/299/education-­in-­canada-­an-­overview/index.html

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Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1987). On narrative method, biography and narrative unities in the study of teaching. The Journal of Educational Thought, 21(3), 130–139. Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1990). Stories of experience and narrative inquiry. Educational Researcher, 19(5), 2–14. Connelly, F.  M., & Clandinin, D.  J. (2006). Narrative inquiry. In J.  L. Green, G. Camilli, & P. Elmore (Eds.), Complementary methods for research in education (3rd ed., pp. 477–488). American Educational Research Association. Connelly, F. M., & Xu. S. J. (2009–2012). Principal Investigators. Cross-cultural school narratives: Shanghai and Toronto sister school network. Funded by Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), SSHRC Standard Research Grant. Research Collaborators: Professor Ye Lan, East China Normal U., Shanghai China. (Operating Grant #486954). Clandinin, D.  J., & Connelly, F.  M. (2000). Narrative inquiry: Experience and story in qualitative research. Jossey-Bass Publishers. Frost, N. (2009). “Do you know what I mean?”: The use of a pluralistic narrative analysis approach in the interpretation of an interview. Qualitative Research, 9(1), 9–29. Government of Canada. (2022). Learn about education in Canada. Retrieved from https://www.cmec.ca/299/education-­in-­canada-­an-­overview/index.html Halliday, M.A.K. (1973). Explorations in the functions of language. . Huber, J., Murphy, M. S., & Clandinin, D. J. (2011). Places of curriculum making: Narrative inquiries into children's lives in motion: Narrative inquiries into children's lives in motion (Vol. 14). Emerald Group Publishing. Jacobson, B. (n.d.). Sonata form. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/ art/sonata-­form Li, C. Y. (2014). The Confucian philosophy of harmony. Routledge. People for Education. (2022). Publication education in Ontario. Retrieved from https://peopleforeducation.ca/public-­e ducation-­i n-­o ntario/?gclid= Cj0KCQjw_viWBhD8ARIsAH1mCd5PxRW-­KaPyp-­xecOeTqtjDUw757_-­4 VyT8y2xCCjsYJs93tNRfRioaAoQcEALw_wcB#howitworks Xu, S. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2013–2020). Principal Investigators. Reciprocal learning in teacher education and school education between Canada and China. Funded by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada [Grant No. 895-2012-1011]. Ye, L. (2009). “New Basic Education” and me: Retrospective notes from the past ten years of research. Frontiers of Education in China, 4(4), 558–609. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s11516-­009-­0031-­0 Ye, L. (2020). Life-practice educology: A contemporary Chinese theory of education. Brill.

PART II

Ann Barton’s Narrative of Making Citizenship Curriculum

CHAPTER 4

Ann as a Citizenship Curriculum Maker

Ann’s Curriculum-Making Rhythm Building a Classroom Community It was the first day of the 2014–2015 school year at Bay Street School. I arrived at 8:40 a.m., feeling excited to experience Ann’s classroom and to work with her to find ways to build relationships with her Shanghai Sister School colleagues. In the school yard, I saw many adults and children already gathering. Some children were with their parents; others were chatting with their friends. Ann and some other teachers were busy handling student registration work under a maple tree. I waved at Ann, whom I had already met during the summer break, from afar, letting her know that I had arrived. Ann smiled and waved back at me while talking to a group of parents and students with papers in her hand. A Chinese parent happened to stand next to me. We chatted about her daughter, who was entering Grade 1 at the school. Through our conversations, I learned that a large portion of Bay Street School’s students came from low-income families. What makes the school unique, however, is that it has a special program that combines English and Mandarin instruction in the delivery of the Ontario elementary curriculum. Because of this program, many parents not living in the neighbourhood have chosen to send their children there. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Khoo, Educating for Citizenship in a Canada-China Sister School Reciprocal Learning Partnership, Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18078-1_4

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I wanted to ask the parent further about the strength and challenges she experienced sending her daughter to Bay Street School, but our conversation was interrupted by the principal’s call for all students to line up according to their grade levels under the lead of their homeroom teachers. I looked at my watch: It was almost 8:50, time for students to enter the school for their first morning class. I quickened my step and walked towards a line of students forming under Ann’s supervision. Ann was in the middle of greeting her students and doing a headcount. I went to the end of the line and waited to enter the building along with Ann’s students. Ann had a combined class of Grade 4 and 5 students from different ethnic, racial, and gender backgrounds. There were 25 of them, I counted. Some of the students had been in Ann’s Grade 4 class last year and stayed on with her for Grade 5. As I observed Ann’s interaction with her students, a recent conversation I had had with Ann cropped up in my mind. It was three days earlier. Ann and I had a lunch meeting at a local Vietnamese restaurant just a few blocks away from Bay Street School. During our meeting, we chatted about her incoming students for the new school year and about her plans for the Canada-China Sister School project. Halfway into our meal, Ann raised concerns about a student named Neil, who would be joining her class this year. According to her, Neil had previously falsely accused many teachers of inappropriate behaviour,1 including his homeroom teacher. Ann was worried about whether Neil would accuse her of the same this year. Regardless, she knew that Neil was facing some learning difficulties, and had not gotten along well with a few other students who were also be joining her class. Because of this concern, one of her main teaching goals was to ensure that learning was exciting for all her students and to encourage them to cooperate and seek conflict resolution, including among those with behavioural issues and special needs, so that together, the class would be more ready to build relationships with children in their Shanghai Sister School. “When you have extreme behaviours in your class,” said Ann, wiping her mouth with a paper napkin:

1  When this study was being conducted, increased reports were showing that false accusations of teachers for abusing students or acting inappropriately in the classroom had been on the rise. To learn more about false accusations against teachers in Canada, please visit https://www.edcan.ca/articles/false-accusations-a-growing-fear-in-the-classroom/.

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You have to track everything you’re doing, every minute, document it and make notes the whole time. Behavioural issues do not usually involve just one student. I might have three or four students that I have to document throughout the year. And this takes me away from being a facilitator of student learning to be almost like a prison guard. It’s tiring! It’s very frustrating! You don’t have the ability to run away with a project idea. It’s not that a child is a bad kid. They are seriously troubled children and they need my full attention. They have to be my primary focus. It’s like me meeting the needs for shelters and water and food and things like that. Until that is solved, I could not go off and do other project work and, as a matter of fact, take part in joint projects with our Shanghai Sister School colleagues. A lot of my students need structure and routine. The unpredictability brought on by a new project doesn’t work for all students. So this year, the first thing I’m going to focus on in my teaching is to help my students become good human beings and to build a classroom community. Academic achievement is important but no learning can take place unless students can be respectful of each other, get along and learn together. In fact, the first week of school will be all about cooperative learning. If you are looking for students just working on math problems and worksheets, you might not see that in my classroom.

“Do all other teachers in Bay Street School do the same thing you do at the beginning of the school year, for example, getting students to cooperate with each other and building classroom community?” I asked, curious. “Well, only very few teachers do, not all,” said Ann. The line started moving and I refocused my attention on the students in front of me, still finding it hard to believe that one of them had accused teachers in the past. I wondered how Ann would guide her diverse students to cooperate with each other while building a strong classroom community in the midst of differences and diversity. Would she be able to engage her students in joint projects with Shanghai Sister School students this year, if at all? I wondered. Nurturing a Democratic Ethos Amidst Conflicts and Differences Ann warmly welcomed her students to her classroom—Classroom 18— and with a radiant smile on her face handed out a fabric chair pocket to each. Ann told them that she handmade the chair pockets and that they were to be hung on the back of their chairs. She also told everyone that

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she had not assigned them any seats and that they needed to look for a puzzle piece in their chair pocket to guide them to the table where they were to sit for the day. There was an easy-going manner in the way Ann spoke with her students. Soon, all were able to locate their seats using their puzzle pieces. Perhaps because it was the first day of school, there was a fair bit of strangeness in the air among the students. The classroom was quiet, and the students were not talking with each other. They sat in groups of four at six round tables. Ann secretly made sure that a fair mix of students from different grades and backgrounds were sitting at each table using the puzzle pieces she had handed out. Feeling awkward standing in the classroom, I quickly found a chair at the back and sat down. Next to me was Ann’s worktable, which did not look any different from her students’ tables. Like the other tables, Ann’s was round and exhibited signs of age around its greyish edge. Looking at the tables in Ann’s classroom, I soon understood why there was a need for chair pockets in the classroom. None of the round tables came with any drawers. Chair pockets had to be used as “drawers” for students to store their notebooks and other materials (Fig. 4.1). When the students were settled in their sports, Ann walked to the front of the classroom and started playing a short video clip on the interactive whiteboard about her summer in England. The video featured the

Fig. 4.1  Ann’s classroom on the first day of the 2014–2015 school year, before the students’ arrival

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commencement of the 2014 Tour de France, an annual multiple stage bicycle race primarily held in France (though this year the race started in England). She explained to the students what the race was about, and described a few interesting events that happened when she and her family were watching the race. She also spoke about her visit to her relatives in England. After showing them her summer highlights, Ann introduced herself and shared a quirky fact about herself—the fact that only half of her face sweats because she had broken a nerve in her neck long ago. I gazed around the classroom and saw that all students were listening attentively to Ann. A couple of students raised their hands and asked her more questions about her trip to England. Ann answered each student’s question in a conversational manner almost as if she was responding to a friend of hers. After a brief name game to warm up the classroom atmosphere, Ann moved on to show a short video clip about “Good Teamwork and Bad Teamwork” on the interactive whiteboard. The video depicted an animated story of bad teamwork, followed by a story of good teamwork. In the first half, we saw a large blue bird wanting to play with a group of tiny birds. However, the tiny birds made fun of the big blue bird and did not seem to want to play with him. The big blue bird, disregarding the exclusions from the smaller birds, found ways to interact with the tiny birds. Yet the interaction escalated into fights and conflicts between the big blue bird and the tiny birds. No one seemed to win in the end. In contrast to the bad teamwork exemplar, the video next featured a group of crabs who were able to unite and fight off a predator. These crabs exemplified the spirit of good teamwork. Ann prompted a class discussion about the video. She asked her students if they could identify what they saw at the beginning of the video and also the plot of the story. The classroom became livelier with different students sharing their views about the video. One student, Lily, commented that the tiny birds were making fun of the big blue bird for being different. Ann thanked Lily for sharing her insight. She then asked the class, “So what makes someone different? Why might they be excluded?” Seeing that there were no immediate responses from the students, Ann asked the students to discuss ideas amongst themselves in their table groups. To make sure that all students understood what she was asking, she typed out her questions on the interactive whiteboard and projected the questions to the entire class.

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When it was time for a whole-class discussion again, Ann gathered everyone’s attention and asked, “Why was the big bird different in the video?” Neil, who had been rocking his body back and forth in his chair since entering the classroom, raised his hand and made a general comment about how the big bird had special needs and that was what made him special. Ann asked further with a curious tone, “Neil, how could you tell that the big bird had special needs?” With his body still rocking, Neil answered quickly and firmly, “Because I could see how the big bird acted differently and walked differently when he approached the small birds.” Ann smiled and praised Neil for his observation. Another student, Meena, spoke at this time and said that she thinks the big bird is special in his own way. Ann thanked Meena for her comment and asked the whole class, “Why don’t the tiny birds want the larger bird to be around? Why are people so uncomfortable with people who are different? What makes someone different in our school playground?” Ella, whose family was from Afghanistan, said that religion can make someone different in the playground as it can sometimes be considered by others as stupid. Dahlia, the only student wearing a hijab in the class, said that dressing differently could also make someone different in the playground. Lily, a student of Chinese descent, commented on how one’s school achievement could also make him or her different. Neil further said that skin colour and other kinds of physical appearance like freckles and pimples could make someone different in the playground. Ann responded to her students by sharing how her mom used to dress her up differently to the school, and that would make her feel different. She also said that skin colours should not distinguish people but it can often make people think that others are different. She added that people could often exclude others who are different out of fear. She gave an example of a teacher at Bay Street who had lost two of her fingers. This teacher, because of her missing fingers, might look strange in the eyes of others. Ann shared with her students what she did when she saw that teacher with missing fingers: instead of talking behind her back about the missing fingers, she went up to her and try to reach out and get to know her by asking questions. Her advice to the students was therefore not to be afraid of asking questions about what they do not know or what seems different. Rather than excluding people, she encouraged them to try to understand differences in others in a respectful manner.

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The recess bell rang and the students left the classroom headed for the school yard. Ann and I walked toward the school yard to check out how the students were spending their recess time. On our way, I shared with Ann my appreciation of her open and conversational way of communicating with her students about ways of handling differences. Ann talked about how even though Neil had falsely accused other teachers in the past, she found him interesting and wanted to know more about him. For the rest of the day, I stayed in Ann’s classroom to observe and support her other teaching activities. Ann’s classroom impressed me with its strong sense of warmth, openness, and inclusiveness. The atmosphere was friendly, welcoming, relaxed, caring, participatory, and non-authoritarian. It reflects what Trafford (2008) has called the “democratic ethos,” i.e., the day-to-day democratic “feel” or climate that comes through the informal democracy that characterizes how people interact with each other (Harber & Meighan, 1989). Indeed, the democratic feeling in Ann’s classroom was informed by a sense of respect she herself fostered. Everyone, including myself, was valued as a contributing member of the classroom and was allowed to be who we are as individuals. On various occasions, Ann helped her students understand that it was okay to be different, and that it is important to respect and embrace differences in order to create a strong team. By sharing her personal stories in a conversational manner, Ann made an extra effort to bridge the differences between herself and her students. Students were not afraid to express their opinions as they knew that their individuality, voices and differences were valued, respected and cared for by their teacher. In fact, the more Ann treated each student with respect over the school year, the more they responded in kind. Perhaps it was this ongoing respectful relationship between Ann and her students that enabled the friendly, open, and diverse atmosphere without losing a certain level of boundary and cohesion. Within this opened boundary, students were willing to engage themselves and participate in various cooperative learning activities under her guidance. In turn, Ann was able to build a stronger sense of classroom community that allowed her to further understand and support individual students’ learning and growth, while meeting the official curriculum mandates and guiding her students to learn more about their relationship with the local community, Canadian society, and the wider world.

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What follows is a reconstruction of Ann’s curriculum-making stories at the beginning of the 2014–2015 school year. It highlights Ann’s experience and knowledge of building a classroom learning community within a democratic environment that not only respected and embraced diversity and individuality, but also fostered students to collaborate to address shared concerns. Engaging Students in Shared Activities and Actions Early in 2014, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) released its four-year strategic plan to promote children and youth mental health and well-being. The goal of the plan was to “create a culture where mental health and well-being is integrated into every aspect of a student’s school experience” (TDSB, 2014). Under the plan, a mental health team was to be established in each school with the responsibility of facilitating student mental health and well-being. Ann had volunteered to be on the Bay Street School’s mental health team for the year of 2014–2015. To engage her students in learning about and contributing to mental health well-­ being, she decided to develop a unit on mental health integrating language arts and digital learning. To kickstart the unit, Ann spoke with her students about finding more concrete ways to help other children at Bay Street handle their mental problems. Upon receiving a suggestion to make a school bulletin board that allows students to share mental health messages with their peers, Ann guided them through a two-week process of creating a bulletin board with mental health information. While the students were working in groups on this task, the TDSB announced the launching of student email accounts to further support digital learning in all schools. Ann, being an active user of technology in her classroom teaching, took the opportunity and taught her students how to use their email accounts to log onto the school board’s digital student workspace, and work collaboratively to complete their bulletin board designs using Google Slide, an online collaborative presentation software available on the digital workspace. As they worked on their slides for the bulletin board, Ann played a quiet and supportive role, giving them lots of space to explore different functions on the site and figure out their own ways of working together (Fig. 4.2). That said, on certain days, she would find herself handling conflicts that erupted, especially over laptops. Despite the need to attend to students with different educational

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Fig. 4.2  Students working in groups on the mental health bulletin board designs

needs and resolve classroom tensions, Ann did not neglect to move each project team forward to completing their assigned task. The unit ended with students assessing each other’s mental health bulletin board design. Ann invited different groups of students to present their design to the entire class. During the oral presentation, all students were given equal opportunities to ask questions and evaluate the strength and weaknesses of each design, including the bulletin board layout as well as its mental health messages. Ann listened attentively and provided constructive feedback to each student presenter. At the end of the presentation, she asked each team to vote for the best design. A week later, after Ann’s students had finished creating their bulletin boards, they received a letter from the public health nurse who regularly visits Bay Street School with the following notes: To Ann Barton’s Class: I was impressed with the attention to detail and accuracy of health content. The creativity you used to present the material was inspiring. The different use of art and imagery—humour and visuals—made the boards accessible to all learning types. Mental wellness is an important topic for all ages—but especially for children to help them build resiliency and coping skills in the face of challenge. Thank you for promoting mental health in your school, and in the Bay Street School Community. There is no health without mental health.

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Yours truly, Ada Public Health Nurse

Reflection: Ann’s Citizenship Education Knowledge in the Form of Building a Democratic Community In many ways, joining Ann and her students in producing the mental health bulletin board allowed me to further experience the classroom’s democratic atmosphere and develop a feel for Ann’s curriculum-making rhythm, especially her citizenship education knowledge as a teacher in a culturally diverse inner-city school. By participating in Ann’s classroom life on a regular basis, I was able to see how Ann’s curriculum-making rhythm was centred on coordinating all the “curriculum commonplaces”—comprised of the learners, the subject matter, the schooling context, and her interests and concerns as a teacher—while actively integrating new initiatives into her lived curriculum to support students’ growth. Not only did Ann’s rhythm of curriculum-making demonstrate her skill at balancing new curriculum forces and bodies of experience, it was also not value free. For instance, in her mental health unit, Ann had tried to develop a democratic and inclusive learning environment that was cohesive yet diverse; where individual students’ voices, choices, and cooperative intelligence were nurtured; and where their interests and capacities to contribute to shared concerns and common good were developed through a process of social inquiry. She did so by ushering her students into a participatory learning space where they could feel, share, and inquire into issues facing their own and other children’s mental well-being, and to work together to address shared mental health concerns through the making of public bulletin boards. In the process, Ann encouraged her students to communicate their ideas with each other and to problem solve together. She also provided chances for the students to practice the skills of democratic deliberation and dialogue as a class, through reflecting, refining, and deciding collectively which messages and designs should be ultimately featured on the school’s mental health bulletin board. Lastly, she made sure that the students’ inquiry process resulted in a certain level of fulfilment for the students so that the learning experience itself became a source of growth and motivation for their future learning and inquiry. Ann’s efforts to engage her students in participating in the broader social life of the Bay Street School, to share their concerns about the

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mental health problems of other children, and to contribute to shared problem solving using their individual and cooperative intelligence through inquiries, reminded me of the notion of community described by Dewey. For Dewey (1927/2012), human beings, given their social nature, learn to develop their humanity and become distinctively human through the moral process of community living that is emotionally, intellectually, and consciously sustained. “No amount of aggregated collective action of itself constitutes a community,” said Dewey (1927/2012, p.  123). For human interaction to give rise to a strong sense of community, one that is moral, consummatory, and intelligent, individuals have to participate in the activity of sharing and making something in common through communication (Dewey, 1916). They need to have space to develop and contribute their unique individuality to the life of the community. They also need to learn to collaborate with others in addressing the common ills of their common lives and for achieving the common goals which are fashioned (Campbell, 1998). In Dewey’s view, public schools in a democratic country such as Canada can provide ample opportunities for children to grow into democratic citizens and good human beings through democratic community living. Instead of imparting an image of an ideal citizen to their students, teachers can educate for democratic citizenship through building classroom community that engages democracy as a way of life, that nurtures a mode of associated living (Dewey, 1916), which “foregrounds the importance of collective decision-making and the building of social intelligence through group problem-solving, communication, and the sharing of experiences” (Stizlein, 2014, p. 62). Overall, Ann’s curricula-making at the start of the 2014–2015 exhibits a rhythm of building a classroom community that reflects Dewey’s ideal of a moral and intelligent community and that provides students with continuous new experiences for further growth and democratic learning. Ann’s rhythm, as it beats through the school year, makes possible a citizenship teaching and learning environment that prepares her students to become democratic citizens on the broader political landscape of Canada, a country of immigrants that generally defines itself—on the premises of The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982), and the 1988 Canadian Multiculturalism Act—as a democratic country that strives to ensure the equality and freedom of all individuals while focusing on the common good (White & Cooper, 2017). This emerging classroom community, as I will show, would also enable both Ann and her students to reach out, again and again, to a wider horizon of novelty, growth, and

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citizenship learning in a Canada-China Sister School landscape, without losing a sense of identity and tradition. By emphasizing the need to build a strong democratic classroom community at the beginning of the school year, Ann asserted her educational belief that cultivating citizens through daily democratic classroom living is just as important, if not more so, than preparing students to become competitive in the global economy—the latter being what Canadian teachers had been increasingly pressed to do under globalizing influences of neoliberal and neoconservative forces, most notably through the standardization movement in education (Raptis, 2018; White & Cooper, 2017).

Challenges and Hopes in the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School Landscape Experiencing and inquiring into Ann’s rhythm of building a classroom community at the beginning of the 2014–2015 school year, I was reminded that I, too, had a community that I wished to nurture in the larger Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School landscape. This community would provide a platform for teachers who possessed diverse and unique cultural and historical narratives at both schools to enquire about each other, learn from each other, and work collaboratively to explore new and educative ways to move forward in our interconnected, pluralistic world. Like Ann, who had a set of practical curriculum-making challenges that she had to deal with before she could engage her students in working with the Shanghai students, I was aware of numerous roadblocks I had to overcome if I wanted to strengthen reciprocal learning ties between Bay Street and Minzhu teachers. One of the challenges had to do with stereotypic storylines that certain educators in Bay Street continued to claim about school systems in Shanghai. For instance, there was an assumption held by some Bay Street teachers that rote learning is still the norm in Chinese schools. Such judgments or assumptions prevented these educators from learning further about the reality of schooling in Shanghai and disallowed meaningful collaboration and reciprocal learning to take place between them and the Minzhu teachers. Furthermore, given that there was a high principal and staff turnover rate at Bay Street, staff investment in the Sister School project was lacking. For instance, six months into negotiating a pen pal joint project with her Shanghai Sister School colleague, Karen, a Bay Street teacher, left the project due to the need to attend to other more urgent programming in the school.

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Meanwhile, at Minzhu, we noticed a similar lack of teacher involvement in the Sister School project. Teachers who joined the project were lead teachers who juggled multiple teaching and leadership responsibilities. Given their busy schedules, these teachers often had limited time to get fully involved. A handful of teachers from Minzhu also expressed their doubts whether they could collaborate at all with teachers at Bay Street given the differences they saw between Toronto and Shanghai curriculum. For example, elementary teachers at Minzhu are mainly specialist teachers who focus on teaching one subject area whereas teachers at Bay Street are mostly generalists teaching multiple subjects using integrative, cross-­ curricular approaches. Finding a way to collaborate across this specialist vs generalist difference requires skills and time and not all teachers in Minzhu School had the ability to delve fully into this work. Witnessing the general lack of time, energy, and interest among both Canadian and Chinese Sister School teachers to communicate with each other and learn collaboratively and reciprocally, I thought many times of quitting my involvement in facilitating teacher interaction in the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School landscape. However, getting to know Ann and listening to her stories and perspectives of her partnership with China helped me regain some hope about communication challenges between Bay Street and Minzhu Sister School. Ann told me: You know what, I was actually quite reluctant to join the Sister School project this year. Since I work in a unionized environment, my administrator could not force me or other teachers to join the project without our consent. But when I learned that there will be researchers and grad students who would help support the development of my partnership with Shanghai… and when I actually saw people coming into my classroom to help me communicate with Minzhu teachers, I thought I would give the [Sister School] project a final try. In many ways, I still think that project is a worthwhile project to get myself involved in.

Ann further shared the reasons behind her interest in interacting with teachers in China. She emphasized how she had always been a collaborative learner. In fact, even before the idea of “professional learning community” became a mainstay in Canadian schools (The Literacy & Numeracy Secretariat, 2007), she had been participating in various professional learning communities inside and outside the school to improve her teaching practices. Ann said that she joined these communities of

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teacher-­learners out of her own passion and desire to continuously grow as a teacher, through collaborating with teachers different from her and being introduced to new ideas. When she learned about the Sister School project with Shanghai, she immediately connected it to the idea of a “global” professional learning community. One of her main motivations for participating in the project was therefore to improve her pedagogies in a global professional learning setting and to grow as a teacher through working with teachers from Minzhu School. Said Ann: You asked me about why I wanted to join the Sister School project. Well, I can tell you that I have always learned well from people who are radically different from me who do things differently. I am that kind of person that needs to be exposed to new ideas. If I go to a teacher’s classroom and that classroom looks very much like mine, then I will be, like, ‘Okay, whatever, it’s not that interesting.’ I just find personal growth and my own reflection, always with people different from me. Some other days, a person said to me that you are amazing, you are always doing different stuff in your classroom. In my mind, I thought, ‘I don’t always do them well though, I am just always trying new things.’ I always just embrace what’s new. For me, I always seek to expand my pedagogy and teaching practices in different ways, bringing in different elements. One thing that China’s known for is that they excel in math. As a generalist teacher, I do love teaching math and I am interested in learning from Chinese teachers’ math teaching practices in order to enhance my own.

Listening to Ann’s story as she explained why she was interested in working with Shanghai teachers in the middle of uncertainty and weak administrative and collegial support motivated me to continue my involvement in the Sister School project. I felt that perhaps what had brought Ann and me together first and foremost was our mutual desire to find ways that would enable the forming of a collaborative, reciprocal, and international teacher learning community. My personal desire was to bring teachers from Bay Street and Minzhu Sister School together for collaborative reciprocal learning and conduct inquiries with partnering teachers in the process. In Ann’s case, she wanted to have a platform to collaborate with and learn from teachers at Minzhu. Given that my other research colleagues from the University of Toronto and East China Normal University were also committed to further advancing the reciprocal collaboration between the teachers, I saw the hope for such an international, intercultural reciprocal learning community in the making between Ann and teachers in Shanghai.

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References Campbell, J. (1998). Dewey’s conception of community. In L. Hickman (Ed.), Reading Dewey: Interpretations for a postmodern generation (pp.  23–42). Indiana University Press. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. Macmillan. Dewey, J. (1927/2012). In M. L. Rogers (Ed.), The public and its problems: An essay in political inquiry. Edited and with an introduction by. Pennsylvania State University Press. Harber, C., & Meighan, R. (Eds.). (1989). The democratic school. Education Now Books. Raptis, H. (2018). The Canadian landscapes: Provinces, territories, nations and identities. In T. M. Christou (Ed.), The curriculum history of Canadian teacher education. Routledge. Stitzlein, S. M. (2014). Habits of democracy: A Deweyan approach to citizenship education in America today. Education and Culture, 30(2), 61–86. TDSB. (2014). January 28. Retrieved from. http://www.tdsb.on.ca/News/ Article-­D etails/ArtMID/474/ArticleID/482/TDSB-­L aunches-­M ental­Health-­Strategy The Literacy & Numeracy Secretariat. (2007). Capacity building series—professional learning community: A model for Ontario schools. Retrieved from http:// www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/inspire/research/PLC.pdf. Trafford, B. (2008). Democratic schools: Towards a definition. In J.  Arthur, I. Davies, & C. Hahn (Eds.), SAGE handbook of education for citizenship and democracy (pp. 410–423). SAGE Publications Limited. White, R., & Cooper, K. (2017). Contexts of Canadian educational leadership. In D. Waite & I. Bogotch (Eds.), The Wiley international handbook of educational leadership (pp. 433–452). Wiley.

CHAPTER 5

Ann as a Collaborative Learner

Negotiating Collaborative Projects with Shanghai Teachers Through Skype The research team paired Ann up with Feng Laoshi,1 a Grade 1 home room teacher specializing in math education at Minzhu. Feng Laoshi had ten  years of teaching experience and was known by her colleagues as a gentle and reflective teacher well-loved and respected by her students. To help Feng Laoshi gain a better understanding of Ann as a teacher, I worked with my research colleagues in Toronto and Shanghai to share with her narrative-based field notes generated from Ann’s classroom. All field notes were translated into Chinese and included Ann’s stories and pictures of her first day of class as well as her stories of guiding her students in making the mental health bulletin board. The field notes were meant to convey an authentic sense of Ann’s life as a curriculum maker within the context of a Toronto inner-city school. By sharing the story of Ann’s life as an urban teacher in Toronto, we hoped that Feng Laoshi would be motivated to share her personal curriculum-making stories with Ann. 1  Laoshi is the Chinese word for “teacher” (老师). It literally means old (老) master (师). In China, it is customary to refer to teachers with the title of Laoshi. Throughout the book, I will follow the same Chinese custom when referring to teachers from Minzhu Primary School.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Khoo, Educating for Citizenship in a Canada-China Sister School Reciprocal Learning Partnership, Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18078-1_5

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Between September and November 2014, Ann and Feng Laoshi had three video conference calls with each other via Skype.2 What follows is an excerpt depicting Ann’s interaction with Feng Laoshi at one of the Skype meetings. Negotiating a 12-h time difference, they would chat prior to the start of Ann’s workday and long after Feng Laoshi’s had finished. What follows depicts Ann’s second time communicating with Feng Laoshi, where they discussed areas of collaboration in math and classroom management. Feng Laoshi further introduced another math teacher, Wu Laoshi, to Ann. A Shanghai graduate researcher and I helped Ann and Feng Laoshi with the Mandarin-English translation. With both teachers’ permission, we recorded their conversations. Below is a transcript of their second meeting: (Note: The Skype meeting started after Feng Laoshi and Wu Laoshi appeared on screen. I sat next to Ann assisting with meeting translation.) Feng: Morning, Ann! Today, I have Wu Laoshi, another math teacher from Minzhu joining me in this meeting. Ann: Nice to meet you Wu Laoshi! Feng: Wu Laoshi is a new teacher in our school and is also my mentee. Both she and I teach Grade 1 math. Today, Wu Laoshi will be observing our meeting. Ann: Oh good (silence on both sides). I am aware that it’s the start of the year for both of us. How do you assess the children when they start Grade 1 mathematics? Feng: Usually in Minzhu School, we assess students at the beginning of the school year through observing the ways children perform activities. We have games that children can do together. Ann: Really! We do the same here in Toronto too! Feng: Yes, I have read Yishin’s notes about how you ran your class at the beginning of your school year. I find that you are a very creative teacher and have done a lot of creative games and activities with your children to teach them the importance of cooperation. I believe that you must be a very good teacher and your classroom must be very lively and joyful. Ann: Yes, that’s what I am trying to make it. I guess because our community is so diverse and we have many different students; therefore, learning together and respecting each other is important. This is the theme for our first month of school.

2  Skype is an instant messaging software that provides online text message and video chat services to users.

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Feng: I noticed that there was a student who often walked out of your classroom without any permission. May I ask, where is the student now? Ann: She is not at school this week. Her sister is having an operation, so Mom took her out of school for ten days. Yishin: Feng Laoshi, do you have any questions or observations about this student? Feng: Here in our school, some children also have special need and their parents don’t want them in special schools. These children will then study and play with other students together, like the students in Ann’s classroom. Ann: Same thing here. I have a lot of students that are having more special needs than other students. Feng Laoshi, you talked about the creativity in my classroom. How much creativity are you able to put into your lessons? Feng: In Minzhu School, all Grade 1 math teachers have to teach toward similar curriculum goals. Students have to meet a set of learning expectations. However, teachers could choose how to teach towards those goals and expectations. Ann: Do you teach any other subjects besides math? Feng: I also teach some science. Ann: Great. You teach both math and science. How much integration do you have for the two subjects? Feng: We have more integration at the skill level but not at the content level. The knowledge points and knowledge goals are not integrated and are pretty much separate. Ann: I see. In Bay Street School this year, the primary and junior teachers are supposed to work on integrating science, mathematics, and also engineering and technology. We are being asked to develop units that bring those four together. We call them STEM. STEM is one of the goals of our schools and is also encouraged by our school board. Feng: Integrating all four subjects is creative but not easy for teachers. Ann: Yeah, this is a challenge especially when many teachers don’t have the same level of competency with science and math. Here in Ontario, elementary teachers are typically generalists and teach all subjects. So I teach my students art, science, math, gym, English, geography, history, everything. Feng: You teach everything? Ann: Except French and music. Feng: Wow! You are a super teacher! This year I teach Grade 1 and you teach Grade 4 and 5. I think we have a lot to discuss in terms of collaboration between your Grade 4s and 5s and my Grade 1s. Ann: For sure. This morning, my Grade 5s and some of my Grade 4s are going to work with some Grade 1 students in another classroom to help them with their writing. My students work as their peers, as student editors. I am thinking how my Grade 4 and 5 students could share the Grade 1

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students’ work they have been working on with your Grade 1 students. And since in language arts, my students are expected to write for an audience, they could learn to write for your class as an audience. In terms of mathematics, a lot of my students are quite weak in math and might not be at the Grade 4 and 5 level. So my Grade 4 and 5 students could record and share mini lessons with your Grade 1 students. Also, since you and I can communicate pretty quickly on social media, we could even have our students posing questions to each other. What do you think? Feng: These are great ideas. In terms of what the students can share with each other, here in Minzhu School, our students have been working on projects that involve geometric shapes. The students have to put geometric pieces together and use them to represent meanings in Chinese classical poems. Would your children be interested in this activity? Ann: When you said geometric pieces, are you referring to tangrams? (Ann went to a corner of her classroom and brought back a geometric set that contains one parallelogram, one square, and five triangles. She showed the geometric set to Feng Laoshi.) Feng: Yes! That’s what I meant. The geometric set you just showed me is a Chinese traditional puzzle made of a square divided into seven pieces. We call them 七巧板 (qi qiao ban) in Chinese. Ann: I like the idea. I can get my students to do the tangram activity similar to what you are doing with your students. Can you send us photographs or a web link to your tangram-poetry lessons? Feng: Okay. I can share our curriculum with you. If you and your students are interested in this, we can collaborate on it. Ann: That’s a great idea. It’s nice to pair tangram with language learning. For many students, geometric shapes promote openness and creativity. Math becomes less intimidating for them. They can be more successful. Feng: Through the tangram-poetry activity, we can approach the beauty of math as well. Ann: That’s beautiful! Here in Ontario, we have five different strands in the elementary math curriculum and usually we focus on different stands at different times during the year. It will be nice to know what math concepts you will be teaching to your Grade 1 students through the tangram activity. Then I can have my students work on similar activities but at a different grade level. When your Grade 1 students are asking questions my Grade 4 and 5 students can be their experts. Feng: Sure, once we have our tangram-poetry teaching plan, we will send a copy to you. Yishin: What other information do you need from Feng Laoshi, Ann? Ann: That’s all. I think we can just start. If we get each other’s plans, we can pick one math area we want to focus on.

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Feng: By the way, both of us are homeroom teachers. Right now, in my class, I am teaching students to understand traditional cultures. I am wondering if we could exchange ideas about designing and organizing activities on traditional cultures, like different festivals. Ann: That’s very interesting. In my classroom, my children are from all over the world. So, we are trying not to just follow the traditional European ones which is, you know, Christmas and Easter. We try to have a number of different festivals. We also celebrate the Lunar New Year, the Light Festival. We try to acknowledge traditions from all over the world. Yishin: (Turning to Ann) In that case, will there still be a possibility for an exchange? Ann: Sure, it will be interesting. I think students at Minzhu School might be surprised because we have their festivals, not as many, but we celebrate some of the same festivals they did. In fact, our first festival is coming up. It is the Terry Fox Run. Terry Fox is considered to be a Canadian hero, and I think it would be nice if my students could prepare something for your class and tell them about Terry Fox a little. Maybe you won’t be able to use it, but the English teachers or someone else could use it as well. There are Terry Fox runs across Canada every year. His goal was to raise a dollar from every Canadian towards cancer research. Feng: That’s interesting. I also saw that this semester, Ann is concerned about cultivating students’ ability to collaborate with one another. Since I am a homeroom teacher, cooperative learning and building students’ characters are very important to my work. Perhaps in the future, we can talk more and compare our ways of promoting student collaboration. Ann: Last year, our teacher community here in Bay Street School talked about how our students often came back to class after recess in a fighting mode. They couldn’t get along, and they brought their problems in the playground back to the classroom. So, one of the things I focus on with students for the beginning of the school was talking about how do we get along in the school yard. So we have done a lot of writing, a lot of cooperative work around what recess is, how do we play with others, and how do we accept differences. I am very interested in working with you on this, Ms. Feng. Feng: In your class notes, there is a part where you asked your students to think ahead what they should do during the recess. It is very impressive for me, so today in my own class I used the same strategy. Since we had a very long break time during the day—about 30 min—I asked the students to think about the purpose of being together as a class, and what kind of behaviour would turn happiness into sorrow. I thought the impact of the activity was pretty good. Ann: Nice. I am glad you tried it. That’s really good.

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Feng: Thank you. Children always have trouble during the break. Actually, they don’t know how to play, don’t know what games they can play. We had tried to let them know what games might be suitable for them to play with. Yishin: (Checking the clock) We have to wrap up this meeting very soon. Ann’s class starts at 8:50. And some of her students will be arriving soon. Ann: So, our day is beginning and your day is about to end! Feng: Perhaps before we end our meeting, we can summarize some of the points we have discussed. I wonder if we want to start our collaboration on the geometric shapes and poem activity first? Ann: I like that one too. Also, because my Grade 5s are working in the Grade 1 class, I would have some of my students go or work with them on the same tangram activity. So we can see the works from our Grade 5s and 1s. Feng: Very good! Ting: Have we decided when the next meeting will be? Feng: How about October 24th? Ann: The evening of October 24th works for me. Feng: Wonderful! Then let us meet on the 24th. Look forward to the next meeting. (Note: Yishin showed Ann’s classroom through the Skype screen. The Skype meeting ended at 8:45 a.m., 5 min before Ann’s morning class started.)

Reflection: Ann’s Ritual as a Collaborative Learner This interaction between Ann and Feng Laoshi was significant as it marked the start of a more communicative encounter between Bay Street and Minzhu educators. This encounter would eventually lead to the establishment of a collaborative and reciprocal learning community between Ann and Minzhu teachers, which will be described in the latter part of this book. For now, readers may simply want to appreciate how Ann expressed her personal practical knowledge as a collaborative learner in the Sister School setting. In many ways, Ann’s way of developing collaboration with Minzhu teachers resembles the ritual (礼) of an ideal guest discussed earlier in Chap. 2. For instance, at the beginning of Ann’s online interaction with Feng Laoshi, Ann intuitively asked questions that allowed her to express her different perspectives working as a math teacher in a Shanghai school. Even though she was eager to develop joint projects with Feng Laoshi, she did not offer her idea of a joint project right away. Instead, she started by asking her questions such as how she assessed her Grade 1 students in

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math at the beginning of the year, whether her math curriculum was integrated with other subjects, and to what extent she could exercise creativity in math teaching. This was a wise and appropriate approach on Ann’s part because in a global educational development context where the developed West/North continues to be seen as having more expert knowledge than the developing East/South, any of Ann’s joint project proposals could have been accepted without hesitation or questions by her Shanghai colleagues. Minzhu teachers could also simply adopt Ann’s proposal out of their courtesy or desire to connect with their Canadian friend while silencing their own interests and ideas. In either situation, no dialogue, reciprocity, or mutual sharing of meanings would be possible. If communication and sharing of meanings is what underlies a strong sense of community, then it is likely that such a sense of community could not possibly be established between Ann and Feng Laoshi under those circumstances. Questions helped Ann explore Feng Laoshi’s experience of being a teacher at Minzhu, the next thing Ann did during their meeting was to look for common grounds between them. Ann found out that, despite the differences between her integrated curriculum/teaching environment and Feng Laoshi’s single-subject teaching context, there was much commonality between their pedagogical approaches and situations. For example, Ann realized that they both paid attention to the thinking of their students in the process of math learning; they both valued the cultivation of student collaboration in learning; and they both welcomed students with special learning needs in their classrooms. Furthermore, Ann saw that even though math teaching in Minzhu was more single-subject focused, the tangram-poetry program mentioned by Feng Laoshi demonstrated a certain level of subject integration and creativity, not unlike her own math program. Based on the commonality observed between their math programs, Ann decided to adopt Feng Laoshi’s tangram-poetry project idea and together build a joint Sister School project where they could share teaching goals, and where their students could have an opportunity to collaborate with each other. Likewise, Feng Laoshi inquired into Ann’s experience of promoting corporative learning among students and proposed the possibility of her students working with Ann’s to share how they celebrate different festivals in their own contexts. The Skype meeting ended with Ann and Feng Laoshi both eager to initiate collaborative projects that involved not only themselves, but also their students. Overall, Ann’s ways of communicating with Feng Laoshi in their Skype meeting demonstrates her knowledge of collaborating with people who

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do not necessarily share her lived experience as an urban teacher in Toronto. This knowledge includes (1) giving space for differences to be expressed in a mutual learning situation; (2) taking time to explore not only differences but also similarities between herself and others; and (3) learning from the unfamiliar, the new, and the different while finding common grounds, values, and meanings that enable collaboration. From my perspective, Ann’s approach resembled the Confucian ritual (礼) of a good guest because like a good guest, she tended to suspend her judgments when entering another person’s (e.g., Feng Laoshi’s) life space. When dwelling in others’ life space, she asks good questions that allow her to relate to and meet others where they are in their spaces. While remaining open to participating with and learning from others, she did not conform herself entirely to the others’ knowledge and experiences. Instead, she grounded herself in what she valued and knew personally and practically, while contributing her knowledge and experience to the dynamic of collaborating and growing together. If rituals can be understood as a set of cultural habits that are ingrained in one’s way of experiencing the world and that provide one with a sense of continuity and connection between past and present, then one could say that Ann’s personal ritual or cultural habit of a good guest is exhibited not only during online meetings with Feng Laoshi but also in all other educational situations where collaborative interactions are favoured—as for example, when she is working with her students to build a classroom community, or when she is working with other Sister School partners towards shared curriculum goals and activities. Ann’s collaborative ritual has enabled her to collaborate with her students and with Shanghai teachers, providing conditions for West-East reciprocal learning to arise. In my four years facilitating teacher interactions in this project, I noticed how many Toronto-based teachers were able to maintain a good level of curiosity and open-mindedness when interacting with educators in China. However, unlike Ann who actually took time to find common ground with Shanghai teachers and incorporated Shanghai teachers’ practices into her own classroom, most teachers did not have the interest nor the time to learn further about Shanghai teachers’ thinking and practices, or participate in shared collaborative activities with them. Of course, this is not to depreciate the efforts of other teachers in forging Sister School reciprocal learning partnerships with Shanghai teachers. My point is to highlight that Ann’s ritual, albeit seemingly common-sense in nature, was not generally practiced by all the educators engaging in the Sister School work. Ann’s

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ritual was an integral part of her stories to live by and her knowledge of herself as someone who learns best through collaboration with people different from her. Like many rituals characterized by rules and guidelines, which function to connect past and present, build relational patterns and structures, and orient their participants in space and time (Schirch, 2005), Ann’s collaborative-learning ritual provides unspoken rules for her to know how she would act in changing social situations. It helps her create ties and boundaries in her relationship with people different from her. It also allows her to maintain a sense of continuity when navigating terrains of difference while retelling and reliving her stories as a collaborative learner with her Minzhu colleagues.

An Unfinished Reciprocal Learning Partnership Story During the remainder of 2014, Ann had two more online Skype meetings with Feng Laoshi. Their negotiated plans did not seem to quite light a fire in either teacher’s heart, as they did not end up following through with their idea to engage their students in collaborative work. Even though their joint projects failed to materialize, their regular online meetings and email correspondences did provide opportunities for the two teachers to relate more closely to each other, inquire into the similarities and differences in their lives and work, and brainstorm what they may learn from each other’s curriculum-making experiences. A reciprocal learning community was starting to form. This community demonstrates qualities of a knowledge community (Craig, 1995, 2011), which is a safe and non-­ hierarchical storytelling space where teachers can narrate the rawness of their curriculum-making experience, authorize their own and others’ stories of situations, co-construct new ways of knowing through collaboration, and retell stories to live by. In spite of its fragility and imperfection, this emerging Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School knowledge community, supported by researchers in Toronto and Shanghai and aided by information and communication technology, gave Ann a chance to express and develop her ritual as a collaborative learner and allowed Minzhu teachers to express and contribute what they know. As she read more classroom stories shared by Minzhu teachers through emails, Ann was able to pick up other aspects of Shanghai curriculum she had not encountered before. This discovery of fresh perspectives, partly through her collaborative ritual

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and partly through Feng Laoshi’s willingness to share her stories, created favourable conditions for Ann to continue her exploration and understandings of the educational narrative of one Chinese school. Using the language of Dewey, the Sister School online exchange “experience” has been an educative one for Ann, as it has encouraged her continuous interest and support for the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School landscape.

References Craig, C.  J. (1995). Knowledge communities: A way of making sense of how beginning teachers come to know in their professional knowledge contexts. Curriculum Inquiry, 25(2), 151–175. Craig, C.  J. (2011). Narrative inquiry in teaching and teacher education. In J. Kitchen, D. C. Parker, & D. Pushor (Eds.), Narrative inquiries into curriculum making in teacher education (pp.  19–42). Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Schirch, L. (2005). Ritual and symbol in peacebuilding. Kumarian Press.

CHAPTER 6

Educating for Citizenship from the Local to the Global Through Reciprocal Learning Around Water

Encountering Minzhu School’s Water Culture A few weeks into Bay Street School’s Winter semester in 2015, I received three video clips from Feng Laoshi highlighting Minzhu School’s unique water culture curriculum. Feng Laoshi asked that I help interpret the video content for Ann as the videos were recorded in Chinese. On a snowy Thursday afternoon after Ann had submitted all her students’ report cards, we found time to watch the videos together in the comfort of her classroom. To make sure that I captured the substance of what was being said in the videos in English, I paused the videos intermittently to translate and interpret for Ann. Ann had a note pad with her. Throughout the viewing, her eyes were locked on the screen. Occasionally, she would scribble down notes on her note pad. The first video clip contained a slideshow of photos showing Minzhu students visiting a local wastewater treatment plant, under the lead of two teachers. The second clip was a TV news report about a water science and technology centre (Fig. 6.1) that had recently opened at the school itself. The centre occupied the entire first floor of a four-story building in Minzhu. Students were shown busily exploring different interactive exhibits at the centre, and sharing what they were learning with the news reporter. Through the reporter’s lens, we learned that Minzhu is not only © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Khoo, Educating for Citizenship in a Canada-China Sister School Reciprocal Learning Partnership, Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18078-1_6

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Fig. 6.1  The water science and technology centre at Minzhu Primary School

equipped with the water science and technology centre but has other facilities, such as a water science laboratory and an integrated rainwater recycling and harvesting system for water educational purposes and for providing water to the school. The school’s principal told the reporter that the newly established centre aimed to provide water education not just to Minzhu students but also to neighbouring schools and the broader local community. Her hope was that the initiative would not only benefit Minzhu students, but also enable local community members to develop a deeper love and understanding of water, along with habits for innovation and water conservation. The third video was a comprehensive 12-min introduction to Minzhu School’s “Water Culture” school-based curriculum (水文化校本课程). The video began with an image of a river flowing downhill from its mountain source, over stones and around big rocks. As the water flowed on, the narrator explained that China’s water culture has a long history and has brought inspiration and imagination to numerous generations. Water has long been used as a means for Chinese people to symbolize human virtues and characters, as reflected in a famous Chinese saying: “The intelligent find joy in water, whereas the humane find joy in mountains (仁者乐 山，智者乐水).” Superimposed on the flowing river slowly appeared an image of Huangpu River, Shanghai’s largest river. The narrator pointed out that Minzhu School was built in the late 1950s and is located about 500 m away from the middle course of the Huangpu. Because of this proximity, the school decided to tap into this local environmental resource and develop a “water culture” school-based curriculum with the goal of conserving local water resources. In 2008, Minzhu School became a member of the NGO-initiated Yangtze China Water School Project. Since then, it

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has built several educational infrastructures around water to enhance a culture of water across its campus, which is home of just over 900 students and about 90 staff members. Additionally, the school has produced its own school-based curriculum materials and organized in-house teacher training programs to support the delivery of water education during science lessons, extracurricular activities, and class meetings (班队课). It also has a Water Club where students can deepen their inquiries around water through guest lectures and additional educational field trips related to water quality sampling. The video ended with joyful pictures of Minzhu students painting an ocean sunset together with students from a school south of Shanghai in Zhoushan, China’s largest archipelago. A short paragraph conveying Minzhu’s vision for water-culture school-based curriculum appeared at the close of the video: Through the ‘Water Culture School-Based Curriculum,’ we, Minzhu staff members, aspire to internalize the virtues of water and utilize ‘water’ as an important curriculum resource. We will diligently cultivate a school culture that is based on the ideal of ‘interdependent regulation of water and fire, and mutual awakening of reason and emotion’ (水火相济，理情互启). We will also strive to foster students’ global perspectives and consciousness in energy-saving behaviours, so that they can become excellent and innovative builders of our future society.

Upon watching the video, I thought to myself, “What an extraordinary vision that the Minzhu School had set out to fulfil for its students and the society!” I had not visited the school in person, yet watching the three videos about its water culture curriculum helped me put together an image of a contemporary Chinese school that was community/society-oriented with a strong sense of identity, values, tradition, and social responsibility. Instead of using imported and decontextualized theories to guide the development of its school culture, Minzhu chose to cultivate its own path through seeking inspiration and wisdom from the local Huangpu River, as well as from the virtues and characters traits associated with water so prominent in ancient Chinese philosophical texts. Using the concepts of water and fire, they found a way to further activate the yin-yang theory of harmonious opposition that underlies many branches of classical Chinese science and philosophy (Allan, 1997), while using it to inform its science (yang/reason) and art (yin/emotion) integrated water culture

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curriculum. Indeed, against multiple changing forces and cultures, Minzhu seemed to be able to sustain a deep reverence for Chinese traditional knowledge and values, while allowing them to be re-adapted, re-moulded, and reshaped in the nurturing of the lives of students and teachers. In many ways, Minzhu appeared to be a cosmopolitan school that demonstrated a sense of tradition (Hansen, 2013) and openness to recreate educational meanings in modern times. Planning for an Integrated Water Science Project I asked Ann what she thought about the videos. She turned to me and told me, eyes shining, that she wanted to initiate a similar water culture in her classroom by carrying out an integrative art and science unit with her students on the theme of water. For the next 30 min, Ann shared her ideas about a potential water unit as passionately as if she had all the different components of her project already planned out. Only later did I realize that she was still in the midst of planning, and was thinking aloud about her teaching plans. And I was the one trying to catch up to her rich funds of knowledge in water and science. Ann told me that her integrated water science and art unit would be meeting two curriculum standards stated in Ontario’s Grade 4 and 5 science and technology curriculum: (1) understanding matter and energy; the properties of and changes in matter; and (2) understanding earth and space systems; conservation of energy and resources. After discovering through an Internet search that Canada, like China, marked a “Water Week” between March 17–23, 2015, to coincide with the annual World Water Day on March 22 (https://www.un.org/en/observances/water-­day). Ann decided that her water unit should lead to a culminating task, where her students would share their final Canada Water Week projects with the entire Bay Street School community as well as students at Minzhu School. “During Canada Water Week, this entire classroom is going to turn into a water world!” exclaimed Ann, excited. “What do you mean?” I asked, puzzled. “You see, my students could use what they have learned about water and organize a water science expo in this classroom.” Ann grinned and continued: “To prep for the science expo, they could also create all kinds of aquatic organisms for the classroom. In this way, we could incorporate art and craft to the water science project, and the unit could become more

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integrated and multidisciplinary. They also need to find ways to promote the event. To do so, they have to learn and apply their language and media literacy skills.” “Oh… sounds very exciting!” I responded, eager to learn more about Ann’s ideas. Ann continued saying, “Also, since most water in Canada would still be frozen around February and March, the students could share this unique aspect of water with children in Minzhu School as a component of their Sister School project.” Ann generated more content for her lesson plan, and I helped type them down on a laptop that I carried with me every time I visited her classroom. Ann stressed that the whole integrative water unit will be inquiry-based, meaning that it will lead students to ask questions and investigate as they develop a deeper understanding of concepts such as those related to matter, energy, the earth system, environmental protection, etc. Ann wanted to make sure that, when the project started rolling, her students would be empowered to play a major role in its generative process. She also said that even though in Canada, inquiry lessons are supposed to be based on what the students want to know, she believed that teachers should come up with something spectacular to help students learn through their own agency and investigation. “As much as I would like to hear the students’ ideas, I also feel that sometimes I need to share my ideas with them as well,” Ann remarked. After our meeting, I returned home and typed up my conversations with Ann to be shared with Feng Laoshi. While arranging my field notes, I looked up more information about Ontario’s Science & Technology curriculum (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2007) and included this information in my notes, hoping that the additional information would provide Feng Laoshi a chance to peek into Ann’s curriculum context. Through reading the official curriculum document, I learned that Ontario’s Grades 1–8 Science and Technology curriculum is standards-­ based, placing a great emphasis on linking science and technology to society and the environment, in addition to developing student’s skills, strategies, and habits of mind required for scientific inquiry and technological problem solving, alongside the ability to understand basic science and technology concepts (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2007). One of the fundamental concepts that provide a framework for the acquisition of all such knowledge in Ontario schools is that of sustainability and stewardship, which Ann hopes to promote through her water unit.

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‘sustainability’ is defined as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. ‘Stewardship’ involves understanding that we need to use and care for the natural environment in a responsible way and making the effort to pass on to future generations no less than what we have access to ourselves (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 5).

In addition to these goals, the Ontario Ministry of Education also encourages teachers to provide cross-curricular learning and/or integrated learning opportunities for their students. For instance, teachers are welcome to engage their students in learning and applying language art skills in a science and technology program (cross-curricular learning). They are also asked to combine into a single unit of science and technology, expectations from different subject areas, such as the arts, social studies, language arts, and math, in order to provide students with various opportunities to reinforce and demonstrate their knowledge and skills (integrated learning) (p. 30). Besides imparting scientific knowledge, teachers are expected to create opportunities to learn and master: (1) scientific inquiry/experimentation skills, (2) scientific inquiry/research skills, and (3) technological problem-­ solving skills (p.  12). Inquiry-based learning is identified as an instructional approach that can be used by teachers to help students learn and apply these skills effectively. As stated in the curriculum document: Research and successful classroom practice have shown that an inquiry approach, with emphasis on learning through concrete, hands-on experiences, best enables students to develop the conceptual foundation they need. When planning science and technology programs, teachers will provide activities and challenges that actively engage students in inquiries that honour the ideas and skills students bring to them, while further deepening their conceptual understanding and essential skills (p. 29).

Reading the Ontario Science and Technology curriculum documents, I found myself developing a better understanding of Ann’s thinking around her water unit. The Ontario curriculum provides many entry points for a generalist teacher like Ann to teach about water and promote water sustainability and stewardship in her elementary classroom using inquirybased, cross-curricular approaches. It also allows her flexibility to adapt an unusual idea like Minzhu School’s “water culture” into her daily curriculum making.

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Rebuilding a Democratic Classroom Community Through Learning from and Sharing Minzhu’s Water Culture The day after we watched the Minzhu water videos, Ann decided to unfold her water unit right away in her classroom, with the goal of promoting a shared culture of water between Bay Street and Minzhu. Ann’s water unit lasted for two months. During this period, I worked as Ann’s classroom assistant to document and share her water curriculum-making process with Minzhu teachers. What follows is a summarized version of the notes I shared with teachers in Minzhu School. The notes provided a snapshot of Ann’s curriculum-making story that took place between February and April 2015. This story highlighted Ann’s way of reconstructing her rhythm of building a democratic classroom community toward exploring, learning from, sharing, and contributing to Minzhu’s water culture, despite resource constraints. By reconstructing her community-building rhythm from the local to the global, Ann helped challenge stereotypical storylines that community members held about Bay Street students. She also helped other teachers at her school see the value of the Canada-China reciprocal learning partnership. More importantly, working with her students to learn from and share Minzhu water culture had inspired Ann to retell and relive her stories to live by as a teacher and a citizen of the world. Inquiring into Minzhu School’s Water Culture as a Classroom Community Ann kickstarted her water unit by introducing her students to Minzhu’s water culture through an inquiry-based learning process. She began by encouraging an open discussion with her students about the idea of “culture.” She asked them to think beyond traditional and static concepts of culture in the forms of festivals and customs, suggesting to them that culture is dynamic that can be actively shaped and re-created. After helping her students gain a more flexible understanding of the notion of culture and the possibility of remaking a culture, Ann showed the class the three videos. When discussing the content of the three videos with her students, she mentioned how they reminded her of a childhood memory of spending time with her late father, who was a freshwater biologist, as he examined and tested water from the Great Lakes:

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The cool thing for me when watching the Minzhu students taking water samples and using litmus paper to test the water quality is that that’s what my father did. When I was a kid, I would follow my father, dig mud from the lake, and spend lots of time looking at water quality. I was lucky enough to do that when I was a kid, and that’s where I learned about ways of testing water quality. You have to scoop water out of the lake to test it.

Ann asked her students to think closely about “Why is water important to Minzhu School?” “Why is there a water culture at Minzhu School, but not other kinds of culture?” Then through a round of questions and answers, Ann led her students to co-construct a shared understanding of the importance of water, and its significance to their Shanghai peers: All around the world there is water and we use it every single day. However, our earth is polluted; so are the lakes, oceans, rivers, seas, waterfalls, tidal pools, water in pipes, swamps, icebergs, sewage, and ponds. We must have water to survive. Located close to the Huangpu River, Minzhu School values water and therefore has a water culture.

Next, Ann invited her students to generate a list of questions that they would potentially ask their friends at Minzhu about their water culture (Fig.  6.2). Examples developed by the students, under Ann’s guidance, were: (1) Do students at Minzhu make hypotheses and design their own experiments?; (2) If all the water in the world was polluted, how would you get clean water?; (3) What have you discovered about the water in Huangpu River; (4) How do you use the rainwater you have collected through your school’s rain-harvesting system? Ann promised to present the students’ questions to Minzhu teachers. She encouraged them to come up with more ways to learn from Minzhu’s water culture to create a shared water culture here at Bay Street. Learning from and Emulating Minzhu School’s Water Culture Inspired by Minzhu School’s lessons on testing Huangpu River’s water quality, Ann conducted a water science experiment with her students to test the quality of the snow in the school yard (snow being the most accessible water source in the snowy month of February in Toronto). To get her students excited, Ann had them brainstorm ways in which they could organize a school-wide Canada Water Week celebration together with their Sister School friends, who were also celebrating their

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Fig. 6.2  Ann’s students generating questions to ask their friends in Shanghai

own water week. For the brainstorming exercise, Ann divided students into groups of four. Each group received a piece of construction paper and several coloured markers to start their brainstorming process. Ann encouraged everyone to be open to all kinds of ideas and opinions, and to not be afraid to think “big” and “of the impossible” when brainstorming (Fig. 6.3). Once each student group shared their own and listened to each other’s preferred water week activities and ideas alongside their reasons for carrying out these activities, Ann invited them to vote for two water events that they would like to organize as a class during the Canada Water Week. As it turned out, a visit to the Ripley’s Aquarium, located at the bottom of Toronto’s iconic CN Tower, received the most votes, followed by the organizing of a water fun fair at the school. Given that some students in Ann’s class could not afford the expensive Ripley’s Aquarium entrance fees, to financially support their visits, she suggested the idea of designing, printing, and selling their own water

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Fig. 6.3  Students brainstorming ideas for the Water Week to promote a culture of water at Bay Street School

t-shirts and possibly using the money obtained from the sale to buy their class tickets to the aquarium. She mentioned that their t-shirt could have the Chinese character for water, 水 (shuı ̆), printed on it to honour their reciprocal learning partnership with Minzhu School (Fig. 6.4). Moreover, the water character could be designed using woodland style painting inspired by local Indigenous artists. This would involve filling in the Chinese character with drawings of different kinds of aquatic animals found in Canada. The students became extremely animated when they heard about Ann’s idea. Tammy said that she would find out how a t-shirt fundraiser could be carried out because her family just did one. Faaz said that his parents knew a friend who printed t-shirts, and he could ask his parents for more info. Under the guidance of a student teacher doing her placement in Ann’s classroom, the students started making aquatic animal drawings for the t-shirt with great enthusiasm.

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Fig. 6.4  Students designing the Chinese water character for their T-shirt fundraiser with the help of Ann

Ann further discussed with her students about their water fun fair proposal. Through revisiting aspects of Minzhu School’s water culture, they decided that they would turn their classroom into an interactive water science centre, similar to what Minzhu students had access to in their school. It would be called the “Watery Wonderland” to attract other Bay Street School students’ attention. Their hope was that students from different grade levels would enjoy a variety of fun water science experiments and activities. To make sure that all her students felt a sense of ownership over the water science centre and its activities, Ann allowed ample class time for them to work in small groups and generate activity ideas that spoke to their interests (Fig. 6.5). After a week of brainstorming, discussion, and deliberation, the classroom community eventually agreed upon eight water science activities that they would like to prepare and present the Water Week. The eight activities were: (1) Building Beaver Dams, (2) Iceberg Experiment, (3) Cleaning the Oily Feather, (4) Cleaning the Oil Spill, (5) Oil and Water Experiment, (6) Plastic Ocean, (7) I-Spy, and (8) Float the Boat. Ann made sure that each student worked on an activity that they were most passionate about in preparation.

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Fig. 6.5  Students working in groups to discuss different water science activities they would like to deliver to other children during the Water Week

Two weeks prior to the Water Week, Ann gave her class a media literacy assignment where students had to either go online and find videos that could be shown at the water science centre, or make posters to promote the activities that would take place during the water week. Noticing that more decorative items were needed to turn Classroom 18 into a Watery Wonderland, she invited her students to create underwater world paintings that could be displayed on the classroom bulletin boards. She also made several trips to ArtsJunktion—a depot for receiving and distributing donated materials and supplies to teachers—to find materials that could turn their classroom into a real water science centre. There were very few financial resources available to support the Watery Wonderland project; Ann had to be creative and make do with any resources she could find. While the students were busy preparing their water science activity, making posters, painting pictures, and finding videos, Ann hung blue streamers on the classroom ceiling, covered all cupboards and bookshelves

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with blue cloth, and gathered equipment and other materials needed by her students to run their water science activities. There was a sense of togetherness in the classroom; I helped paint a giant octopus mural. Both adults and children were engaged in working toward the smooth running of the activities. Everyone had a task, and no one was idle (Fig. 6.6). Even Shelly who used to walk out of the classroom during independent work time stayed in the classroom to work on the task in front of her. The week before the water week, Ann asked different student groups to familiarize themselves with their water science equipment and create handouts for their particular activity, which would be made into a booklet for guests who visited their Watery Wonderland. Ann also made sure that each group of students rehearsed and knew what and how they would speak to the children who would come to participate. For groups that were still struggling to finalize the content and structure of their water science experiment, Ann held separate meetings to address their blind spots and help them move their activity forward. At one point, Ann noticed that most students had not been able to connect their activity with the idea of protecting and conserving water. To help students make the connection, Ann invited a guest speaker to talk about the lost rivers that once flowed through their local neighbourhood.

Fig. 6.6  Adults and children working together to turn Room 18 into a Watery Wonderland

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She also created a class banner where her students could express their ideas and feelings about water. “We have talked about climate change in this class and how scientists said that things had to change,” said Ann to her class, in a serious tone. “The flood season is coming to Toronto and imagine the water run-off carrying melted and polluted, snowy water to Lake Ontario. When I was a kid in the 60s, I could just jump into Lake Ontario and swim. But in the 70s, my father had to start doing water testing to prevent e-coli in the water!” Ann asked them to think about the words they could write down on the banner to express their opinions, concerns, and ideas about water and the environment. “Look at all the beautiful water creatures you have been painting and imagine how they might be gone in the next generation if we don’t take care of the water,” Ann said. “Think of writing something connected to water, especially the importance of protecting water and environment and what you can do with students from Minzhu School.” Following Ann’s instruction, students wrote down their slogans—first using pencils, then permanent markers—on pieces of blue paper fish prepared by Ann (Fig. 6.7). She invited a few students to share their water slogans with the class. Randy contributed, “Water keeps us alive—why don’t we return the favour!” When it came about time to glue the blue paper fishes on the banner, Ann asked about how best to represent Bay Street and Minzhu students coming together to tackle global water problems. She had two ideas: the paper fishes on the banner could be positioned to swim in one direction, or they could be swimming towards a converging point. The students voted for the fish swimming in one direction, as it symbolizes a sense of togetherness and the achievement of a single common goal. Harry, a new student who had shown increased attention and participation in classroom discussions, suggested the possibility of having two paper fish holding the end of the banner in order to symbolize the joint water effort between Bay Street and Minzhu School. Ann thanked all her students for their wonderful ideas and they completed the banner accordingly. Co-Creating a Shared Water Culture With the help of graduate researchers, Ann’s stories of rebuilding her classroom community to share Minzhu’s water culture reached the ears of Ma Laoshi, the architect behind Minzhu’s water culture curriculum. At a Sister School Skype meeting, Ma Laoshi applauded Ann’s idea to have her

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Fig. 6.7  Students creating slogans for their class banner to express their ideas and feelings about local water problems

students design a t-shirt with the Chinese water (水) character filled with images of water creatures. He asked if his students could come up with other Chinese water characters for Ann’s students to draw inside and then display the joint art project during Minzhu School’s Water Week. Ann liked Ma Laoshi’s idea and agreed to proceed with it. Two days later, Ann received an email from Ma Laoshi containing twenty ancient Chinese water characters made by his Grade 5 students. Ann showed her students the characters and let me tell them the story of two particular characters. I picked the characters, and , and told them that these were the predecessors of the 水 character, which they had chosen for their water t-shirt design. I explained that Chinese characters were based on pictographs that had evolved over thousands of years. The water character, when it was first written on oracle bones, looked like this— —suggestive of a picture of water flowing down over a cliff face. When the first

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Chinese emperor unified China, he decided to unify Chinese characters so the water character evolved into: Over time, to make writing and communication less time consuming, Chinese people broke away from pictographs and 水 became more common in writing as a result. I encouraged the students to observe the differences between the different water characters. Ann added that Ma Laoshi would like them to draw images that reflect the theme of water protection and conservation in characters, as they had for the t-shirt. She gave examples of what water conservation meant, while mentioning how Canada’s per-capita water consumption is amongst the highest in the world. Here are examples of students works sent back to Ma Laoshi (Fig. 6.8). On March 23, the much anticipated Bay Street School Water Week finally arrived. Outside Room 18, Ann had put up all the 水 water characters jointly made by both her and Ma Laoshi’s students. She also covered all the big windows with thin pieces of turquoise tablecloths. The morning sun shone through the turquoise windows cast a blue ambience all over the classroom, turning Room 18 into a blue watery world. Between March 24–26, Room 18 Watery Wonderland received more than 200 student visitors from kindergarten to Grade 6. Every time a group of students visited, Ann would give them a water booklet, tell them about the annual World Water Day (March 22), along with the importance of learning about water. Student visitors would then rotate from one station to another in small groups, learning about water issues while participating in the water science activities that had been carefully put together by the class (Fig. 6.9).

Fig. 6.8  Students’ water art work

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Fig. 6.9  Ann’s students receiving student visitors from all grade levels and engaging them in a wide range of water science activities

Local media visited Room 18 one morning and Ann shared with the reporter that the Watery Wonderland project was part of a partnership with Minzhu School in Shanghai (Fig.  6.10). Bay Street Principal Mr. Milton was present, and he emphasized that there had been no additional funding for the water project. The project was done because it was the teachers and the students who found it exciting and relevant. On the final day of water week, Ann’s students seemed to have mastered the techniques of making their water science activity interesting to diverse age groups, including excitable and jumpy kindergarteners. After the last group of student visitors left the classroom, Ann gathered her students in a circle at the front and told them how amazingly they had performed throughout the event. Ann talked about how, in all the seventeen years she had been teaching at Bay Street, never had she conducted such a large-scale and long-­duration event with the participation of her students, involving so many other children. She was impressed by everyone’s active engagement and told them

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Fig. 6.10  Establishing a common value and a shared water culture between Bay Street School and Minzhu Primary School (left: water science centre at Minzhu; right: water science centre at Bay Street)

that she understood how tiring it was to be teaching for three days continuously. She asked if everyone agreed with her that there were times when they just got so frustrated and tired that they felt like quitting. Many students raised their hands and said yes. One student took the opportunity to ask Ann how she was able to teach in Bay Street School for so many years without quitting. Ann replied that she continued to teach because she always had amazing students. “When I saw how you all were so excited and engaged in learning about water and caring for water, I felt inspired to keep on teaching!” said Ann. Ann did not forget to let her students know that now they were becoming leaders at the school, and that the other children will be looking up to them as leaders and not just as other students. She asked whether they would like to open up the Water Week to students from feeder schools1 in the community. All the students yelled out in unison, “Yes!” 1  A feeder school is a school from which many graduated students continue their education at another specific school. Bay Street School is a K–8 public school that has been receiving students from surrounding K–6 feeder schools.

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Ripple Effects On Earth Day (April 22), Ann guided her students to put together another water science expo for children from neighbouring schools. Ms. Fuentes, a local superintendent, and Dr. Connelly, the co-director of the Canada-­ China Reciprocal Learning Partnership project, also attended (Fig. 6.11). While the students were entertaining their visitors with all sorts of water activities, Ann told Ms. Fuentes and Dr. Connelly how the Watery Wonderland was the culmination of one-and-a-half months of preparation work by the students. Ann added that the Watery Wonderland had personal meanings to her as well. “Everything’s coming back in a full circle,” said Ann tenderly, gazing at a group of students who were cleaning oil from birds’ feathers at one of the stations. “When I looked at the Watery Wonderland, I thought of my father, who was a freshwater biologist. He had a great influence on me.

Fig. 6.11  Dr. Connelly from the Canada-China Partnership research team participated in water activities put together by Ann’s students

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Part of the reasons why I wanted to put together this water project with my students was to continue his legacy.” Dr. Connelly asked Ann further about her father. He also asked about her intention behind organizing an Earth Day water science expo for students from nearby schools. Ann explained that Bay Street School had a bad reputation in the community for being the school for “bad” kids. Its students were often not held in high regards by the local community. In addition to raising environmental awareness, the purpose of the Earth Day celebration was to give an opportunity for her students to shine. It was also intended to let students from neighbouring K–6 schools know that there were great student leaders at Bay Street School, and that they should not be afraid of enrolling themselves in Bay Street School for Grades 7 and 8. In the afternoon, after all the guests had left, Ann commended everyone for their hard work. After school, Ann told me that she planned on using the theme of water to reorient her curriculum-making for the rest of the school year. Another project she would like to do was to make a short film integrating language art and social studies to spread water awareness beyond the Bay Street Community. She thought the project had the potential to win a $5000 award towards greening Bay Street School. I shared with Ann that Ma Laoshi was impressed by the Beaver Dam activity put together by her students. In one of his messages to me, Ma Laoshi mentioned his plan to re-create a Beaver Dam water play station in Minzhu School’s yard. Ann did not anticipate that her class could offer something back to Minzhu School community and enrich its well-­ established water culture. She noted that the Beaver Dam idea came from one of her special needs students, Neil, and that he would be very proud to hear that his idea will be contributing to Minzhu School’s water culture.

Multiple Shifting Storylines It was almost four in the afternoon. Ann had finished cleaning the classroom that was used as a venue for the Earth Day water activities organized by her students. Ever since I joined Ann’s classroom, we had been meeting regularly after school to discuss her teaching plans and progress, and reflect upon her collaborative work with her Shanghai colleagues. This day, Ann told me that she was available for a longer conversation to reflect upon her water. Sitting at an empty desk facing each other, I invited Ann to share

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how she felt about her experience conducting the integrated water unit in the context of the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School partnership. Ann praised her students’ impressive transformation of their classroom into the Watery Wonderland, and success conducting interactive water science activities with diverse audiences during the Canada Water Week and on Earth Day. She said that some teachers and students from neighbouring feeder schools were at first not that interested in visiting the Watery Wonderland. However, their attitudes changed after paying the visit. In fact, many of them commented on the creativity of the water activities as well as the strong oral speaking skills of Ann’s students. One child from a feeder school in the neighbourhood even told Ann that he was more comfortable entering Bay Street School for his study because he saw great students in the school. I joked with Ann that the Watery “Wonderland” seemed to be quite magical indeed, as it was able to transform connections and relationships between Bay Street School and its surrounding feeder schools. I added that following the success of their Canada Water Week efforts, Cassandra, another teacher at Bay Street School expressed a renewed interest in forging a reciprocal learning partnership with Minzhu School teachers, out of her admiration of the water work that had been carried out by Ann and her students. The Watery Wonderland appeared to not only shift many people’s ideas about Bay Street School, but also other teachers’ ideas about the Canada-China Sister School partnership itself. “Yes, Cassandra had asked me to be her mentor so that she could get more involved in the Sister School project,” Ann acknowledged. “Cassandra is a new teacher at Bay Street School. Her students are in the afternoon Mandarin immersion program offered by the school. So, I think she recognizes the opportunities for her students as part of their parents’ goals of learning Mandarin.” I told Ann that I would share this good news with Minzhu School and help Cassandra develop a connection with teachers in Shanghai. I further asked Ann how she felt about her collaboration with Minzhu teachers so far and whether anything has shifted in her? “I’m having an amazing year,” she said. “Even my husband noticed it. He was asking me if I would leave Bay Street School this coming year because every year in the past, I have told him that I would like to leave the school and get hired somewhere. This is the first year I am really not thinking about leaving.”

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“You’ve been wanting to leave Bay Street School all these years?” I asked, feeling slightly shocked at Ann’s statement. She explained: Well people said that if you want to move up and get a position of leadership somewhere, you need different school experiences so you should go to different schools. I have been teaching at Bay Street School, the same school, for 17  years. Here, recruiters look down on teachers who spend over 15 years in one school. You have to broaden your experiences, and when you work in an inner-city school like Bay Street School, you get credibility for your classroom management and for your dedication to the profession, but you don’t get the same kind of ability to work in a school system, where you have lots of parental support and you need to build those community bridges. Another reason for leaving is that if you work with the same people all the time, you stagnate. So, sometimes, I felt that if I want to become a better teacher, I need to find it somewhere else. But maybe not. Maybe I don’t need to leave this year because having the opportunity to work with university researchers in Toronto and Shanghai have brought different experiences into my life. And through partnering with Minzhu School and other Sister School reciprocal learning opportunities, I feel that I have not been stagnating. I see the Sister School partnership as a very rich opportunity for myself and also for my students.

“I’m glad to know that your partnership with Minzhu School has been beneficial to you and that it has encouraged you to stay in Bay Street School,” I replied. “A few months ago, I asked you about your purpose of joining the Sister School project. You told me that you wanted to collaborate with and learn from teachers who were different from you. Has your goal changed at all after all these months of interacting with the teachers in Shanghai Minzhu School?” “You know, when I started interacting with Minzhu teachers I was looking more at my own learning, more so than student activism,” she said, continuing: The students in my classrooms are either first generation Canadians or most recent immigrants. So, in terms of the Sister School partnership being a cultural exchange to learn about China, I never saw it as that. I mean, lots of times, schools in Canada have international partnerships and that’s what it’s about—learning about different cultures. To be honest, that is not my primary goal. For myself, the Canada-China Sister School partnership is a way for me to look at teaching in different cultures and learn from teaching excellence around the world. And more recently, it has been looking at the

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need for global collaboration in terms of dealing with environmental issues, and making students understand that we are all going to make positive change to the future, slowing down the global warming—and the solution is really going to come by international collaboration. It’s important that my students share that water culture in Minzhu. When my students were trying to figure out the kind of water event that they could put on for Bay Street and the community and sort of emulate Minzhu’s water culture, for the first time I saw that my students really had an ongoing understanding and experience of the Sister School reciprocal learning partnership. Talking about globalization and working together as an international community, participating in and sharing that water culture in Minzhu really helped my students know every step of the way. There was a sense of togetherness, and the feeling of a community was palpable!

“Uh huh, I could see that in the past three months,” I said. “You’ve tried to use the Sister School partnership as a springboard to help your students understand the importance of working with others to tackle environmental problems.” “Yes!” Ann affirmed, “Since the environment is a global issue, it’s a great one to be partnering with Minzhu on. My students can look at lots of different other things, like social justice issues, gender equity issues in a Sister School partnership, but the water issue probably covers every point on the globe, so that is a very good entry point for a Sister School partnership that was of global nature.” “There also seemed to be something in you that pushed you forward to do the water work despite challenges,” I pointed out. Ann responded: Yeah, an important aspect of sharing the water culture was a way for me to find something that was true to myself, in terms of my own environmental commitment. It is important that I help my students become more aware of the environment. Just yesterday, I finished watching the documentary Blue Gold. The film was very depressing. It talked about the depletion of groundwater in different parts of the world and how corporate giants, private investors, and corrupt governments are now competing to control the dwindling water supply. Watching the film makes me realize that so many of us have been living in ‘Lalaland’ thinking that everything will be good forever, but it’s not. Our young people today are living in a world that is more finite than my generation. I am an atheist, but I have been feeling my father’s spirit calling me to continue his legacy… I think I’ve been too quiet for too long and now I’m looking at the idea of not only teaching children for a career, but teaching them so that they have a future.

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“Could you tell me a bit more about your father?” I asked, “He seems to have a big influence on you.” Ann paused before continuing: Well you know my father was a freshwater biologist. When I was born, he just started his job as an associate professor at the University of Toronto. I had four other siblings then, and my parents wanted a house, so we all moved to Port Credit, a small town that was about 40 min drive away from downtown Toronto. There was nothing in Port Credit so my two sisters, brothers and I got to spend our days outside of school running around by the lake. We all liked to swim. And my father had a very strong feeling that living beside a lake, a body of freshwater in Canada, you should know how to swim. My siblings and I were all really good swimmers before we even went to school. We would spend hours and hours in the water, and Port Credit was a beautiful place to be in the water. I have great memories of this beautiful big rock that was completely manmade. It stopped the erosion of the shores. Then there is this giant rock that stretched further way out in the water. It was our diving rock. We would swim out to it and then we would just jump off and repeat it, like, for hours. I also remember making money as a child from collecting milkweed and selling it to researchers at the University of Toronto who were working on monarch butterflies that feed on milkweed. So, from a very young age, I was pretty much involved in ecology, water, and science, because of my father. And when I got a bit older, I would take up summer jobs at research stations for freshwater biology where my dad collaborated with other people on research.

“It seemed that because of your father, you had a great childhood surrounded by water and had spent a great chunk of your life hanging out with scientists!” I commented. “Yes, I am fortunate that way,” Ann replied. “The other thing with my father was that he worked with many scientists from around the world. Our door was always open to people from everywhere, and it became even more so when my father started working at McGill University and became the chairperson of his department. So that’s the other part of my life: my house was always diverse in terms of nationalities and people that came through. Perhaps that’s why I love working at Bay Street School, because it is so diverse.” “Has your mom influenced you in any way?” I asked. Ann replied: I think I have the wonderful artistic side of my mom. My mom painted. She drew. She made things. She was very creative and was the root for my

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father’s genius. From her, I can do things like bulletin boards and try to come up with ideas for art and for presentation in my water science unit. I believe that both my parents have made who I am, so I do my channelling thing when I am stuck on something in my teaching. I ask the father and mother in me, ‘what would you do with this? How would you make it work?’ And somehow I would see in my mind my mom creating her coasters, building a doll, or designing something. And then the same thing with my father.

“No wonder you were so resourceful when it came to running the integrated water science unit in your class,” I noted. “Would you say that your inspiration in teaching mostly comes from your family or your parents, and not from, say, the teacher college?” It did not take much time for Ann to reply. “Yes, for sure, a lot of my inspiration for teaching came from my parents. For me, my one-year teacher college experience2 did not play such a fundamental role in s­ haping my teaching, partly because I had other teaching experiences before becoming a teacher. I do love teaching, though, and I am still learning all the time. I never feel like I’ve become the teacher that I want to be yet. I still feel like I’m halfway there.” “So what kind of teacher would you like to become?” I enquired. You know, I want to be that kind of teacher that inspires kids to learn more about things, like how my mother would just read something and wanted to know more about it. I want, not to teach children what they need to know, but to inspire them to learn what they need to know or what they want to know. I want school to be fun, to be a place where learning is exciting and purposeful and not repetitive. Talking about inspiring students and teaching them to have a future, the first thing I want to do is to deepen the water culture in Bay Street School. The water culture has generated so much excitement and learning in my classroom and in the school. However, it should not be a one-time thing. I have to talk to other local organizations and to different partners to try to bring in more money and create a more sustainable culture of water across Bay Street School. I also need to bring someone on board that can excel in and work with our students on the water issue. With regards to our future Sister School partnership, I really want my students to move beyond the idea of sharing our Sister School’s  Ann attended a Bachelor of Education program in Ontario after her Master’s degree in the field of science. The B.Ed. program was a one-year program. 2

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water culture. I would like them to undertake more of an investigative inquiry around water in our own watersheds and also look at what’s going on in Shanghai. We always think that Canada is greener than the rest of the world, but we are just as detrimental to the rest of the world. There are people in other countries who have better ideas than we do which we could learn from. So, I want my students to connect with Minzhu, not only because we have students from China in our class and that our school is situated near the Chinatown. It’s not just that. It’s a matter of global citizenship. It is the idea that, in order to work in the future, they need to be more global and they need to be able to work with citizens around the world, inquire into shared problems and solve them together. You can’t have Canada solving this problem and China solving that problem. We have to do it together, because one person is not going to make an enough of an impact unless the whole planet gets going on this together. I want to develop this kind of global learning community with my students, and give them the opportunity to solve problems with people from other parts of the globe.

I asked Ann to tell me more about her future plan of fostering global citizenship. Ann thought for a while and replied: Global citizenship for me is about global responsibility. Using environmental issues to teach my class, that’s what I can do. Maybe someone else will teach global citizenship through arts, but for me, science is my passion, so it comes more naturally to me. So science is probably where we find the solution, that’s what I want my students to be prepared for. There was a short video clip I showed my students last month when we were researching for our oil-spill water activity. The video showed a young man who was trying to invent an effective device for cleaning up the BP Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico after hearing about its devastating effects.3 What’s interesting for me to see was that that young man put his design out there for other people around the world to experiment with, to look at, investigate, and refine his ideas, making the design public knowledge on the ground. The purpose of this work is not to get the most money. The main idea is that you are working on designing a solution for a global issue collaboratively and the only thing that is required is that whatever you try if it doesn’t work, tell us why it doesn’t work and what happens. And I think that was one of my moments this year, I was like, that’s it, that’s the power of collaboration! If I could do 3  Here is a link to the video https://www.ted.com/talks/cesar_harada_a_novel_idea_ for_cleaning_up_oil_spills.

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that with my students, if they could start realizing that we could solve problems together, that we can learn faster, by all of us sharing knowledge and creativity and figuring out a problem from different perspectives and doing something with it together, how powerful is that! That collective knowledge built through learning from each others’ learning is inspiring to me and gives me great hope. When it comes to working on the water project with Minzhu, I think we can use this sort of a model, where we work on these ideas together and learning about the problem from different ways.

Reflection: Ann’s Citizenship Education Knowledge Manifested in the Image of a Global Inquiry Community Ann’s decision to stay on at Bay Street, and to retell and relive her story of building classroom community towards educating for more active and globally oriented citizenship on the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School landscape, touched me deeply. That same year, three other teachers left Bay Street School—an urban school with a reputation for high staff turn-over. Ann, however, chose to stay, mainly because she saw an opportunity “to become a better teacher” brought on by her collaborations with university researchers and with teachers at Minzhu. Instead of feeling like a stagnant pool of water that year, she saw spaces for flow and growth offered by the Sister School reciprocal learning partnership, and she held onto those spaces and opportunities, worked with them, and allowed them to inspire her students’ learning and reconstruct her lived and told story as a citizen-­ teacher. In particular, her collaboration with Feng Laoshi allowed her to connect her local curriculum with Minzhu’s water culture approach, which led her to generate a more globally oriented and ecologically informed way of teaching—one which, in turn, also engaged and developed a feeling of integrity and meaning in her personal/cultural experience and knowledge as a teacher, a daughter of a water biologist, and a global citizen. Recognizing that solutions for addressing a global problem such as the water crisis might not be solely found in Canada—and that collective wisdom and cross-cultural knowledge were needed to tackle global water problems—Ann gradually developed a more globally oriented and informed vision of educating for citizenship through building a global inquiry-based community between her own and Minzhu School students, where inter-cultural reciprocal learning, scientific inquiry, collaborative knowledge-building, and problem solving could be foregrounded, and where learning is exciting and meaningful.

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In my view, this image of a “global inquiry community” expressed in Ann’s thinking and doing reflects a transformationalist approach to educating for global citizenship discussed by global citizenship education scholar Lynette Shultz. According to Shultz (2007), the globalization we are experiencing today has resulted in “new patterns of inclusion and exclusion, as well as the erosion of North-South hierarchies” (p.  249). Therefore, to educate for global citizenship is to help all learners, regardless of whether they are residing in the “Global North” or the “Global South,” to develop an understanding that they are intricately connected to people and issues that cross national boundaries, and that an important dimension of their role is to build relationships with each other and to create local and global communities through embracing diversity, finding shared purposes across national boundaries, and linking local experiences with the shared global experience (Shultz, 2007, p. 255). At a more personal level, Ann’s image of a “global inquiry community” resonated with me given my belief that a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world can only be possible when individuals and groups from different civilizations, nationalities, and cultural backgrounds work together to embrace each other’s knowledge, wisdom, intelligence, uniqueness, and differences and participate in communicating, healing, and problem-solving together against a backdrop of historical injustices and violence. Working with Ann, I felt that part of my educational aspiration was being nourished. I recognized that as an educator-researcher, I was not alone in my quest for a better world through better educational practices and outcomes. Supporting Ann to develop a global learning community in the Sister School landscape mattered to me personally, educationally, and politically. And I saw this work as fulfilling my personal citizenship educational responsibilities in our interconnected world. Overall, Ann’s curriculum making stories, retold, and relived in the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School landscape during the 2014–2015 school year, opened my eyes to the educational potential of a Canada-China inter-­ school reciprocal learning partnership in fostering teacher growth and citizenship learning. I was inspired to witness how a localized water culture grown out of a Shanghai elementary school enabled a Toronto-based teacher like Ann to connect with and develop her identity as a teacher; her aspiration to become a better teacher that sparks students’ interest in learning; and ultimately her citizenship ideal to educate for a more

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sustainable future. Ann’s ability to find continuity and alignment between herself—her identity, purposes, beliefs, and core qualities, such as passion, creativity, commitment, care, and a love of learning—and the new ideas, people, and objects on the Sister School landscape, enabled her to experience a greater degree of narrative unity and meaning in her stories to live by as a teacher-citizen (Connelly & Clandinin, 1987; Korthagen, 2014). Perhaps it was these increased meanings, alignments, connections, and wholeness she had experienced in her daily curriculum-making in a Sister School landscape that gave her the energy needed to continue to teach and grow, and to retell and relive her citizenship curriculum making stories, in an isolated professional environment and a resource-constrained public school. Ann knew that she could not leave Bay Street School as yet because the ties between Bay Street and Minzhu had provided her with renewed energy to exercise and develop her citizenship identities and responsibilities. Learning reciprocally across cultures and nations also gave her opportunities to make learning exciting, refreshing, and purposeful for her students in the age of globalization, thus helping her to become a better teacher. The next chapter shows how Ann retold and relived her story of educating for the global dimension of citizenship in the new 2015–2016 school year, guided by her image of a “global inquiry community.” Even though new challenges continued to emerge on the evolving Sister School landscape, Ann managed to experiment with and improve her democratic classroom community building rhythm into one that embodies and expresses her citizenship education understanding of a global inquiry community. She did so through working reflectively and collaboratively with her students, Minzhu partners, and university researchers residing in the Sister School landscape.

References Allan, S. (1997). The way of water and sprouts of virtue. SUNY Press. Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1987). On narrative method, biography and narrative unities in the study of teaching. The Journal of Educational Thought, 21(3), 130–139. Hansen, D.  T. (2013). Cosmopolitanism as a philosophy for life in our time. Encounters in Theory and History of Education, 14, 35–47.

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Korthagen, F.  A. J. (2014). Promoting core reflection in teacher education: Deepening professional growth. In L.  Orland-Barak & C.  J. Craig (Eds.), International teacher education: Promising pedagogies (part A) (pp.  73–89). Emerald Insight. Ontario MOE. (2007). Science and technology curriculum (Grades 1–8). Retrieved from http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/scientec18 currb.pdf Shultz, L. (2007). Educating for global citizenship: Conflicting agendas and understandings. Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 53(3), 248–258.

CHAPTER 7

Educating for Citizenship from the Local to the Global Through Collaborative Inquiry Around Water The story of Ann’s Watery Wonderland classroom attracted Ma Laoshi’s curiosity and interest in further collaborating in reciprocal learning around water education. During a visit to Minzhu School in the spring of 2015, I had an opportunity to talk with Ma Laoshi about his role in Minzhu School’s water culture curriculum, as well as his thoughts about his Sister School collaboration with Ann. From my conversation with Ma Laoshi, I learned that he is one of the lead science teachers at the school, which means that he holds the responsibility of helping other science teachers at Minzhu and at other schools in the neighbouring community to improve their science pedagogies. He described three types of science lessons—core/mandatory lessons, elective lessons, and inquiry lessons—as well as a wide range of science-related extracurricular activities that Minzhu School provides for students. These science lessons and activities reflected Shanghai’s “three-block curriculum structure” established in 1988 that was part of curriculum reform to encourage schools to move away from centrally issued textbooks and nationally standardized syllabi (NCEE, 2021). Ma Laoshi oversaw the science inquiry lessons at Minzhu School and had been designing and delivering such lessons for a number of years. Similar to Ann, he had full autonomy in creating the content, themes, and goals of his inquiry-based

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Khoo, Educating for Citizenship in a Canada-China Sister School Reciprocal Learning Partnership, Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18078-1_7

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lessons. However, unlike Ann, who has the freedom to conduct a scientific inquiry process with her students for a sustained period, Ma Laoshi’s inquiry lessons are provided in a 35-min “rotary instruction” approach.1 Therefore, he is often constrained in terms of what he can teach and for how long. I asked him how he would like to proceed with his partnership with Ann, and he indicated that he wanted to learn from Ann’s approach to cultivating science literacy among her students. Like Ann, he wanted his students to be able to collaborate further with their Canadian peers. He was particularly interested in having his students learn more from Canadian students’ approach to thinking scientifically. He also supported Ann’s idea of having Bay Street and Minzhu students collaborate on a science inquiry project around water.

Planning for Inter-School Collaborative Water Inquiries Two days before the start of the 2015–2016 school year, an online Skype meeting took place between Ann and Ma Laoshi where they discussed their plan for forging collaborative water inquiries among their students. Ma Laoshi’s mentee, Wang Laoshi, who was in charge of running the Water Club for Grade 4 and 5 students at Minzhu School, also attended the meeting. The meeting began with Ma Laoshi and Ann comparing their water educational plans for the new school year. As they spoke, Ann learned that the likelihood for a deep collaborative inquiry with Ma Laoshi’s students would be small, given that he teaches a rotary style inquiry-based lesson to 200 students every week. Each of his lessons lasts for only 35 min and so it is quite challenging for Ma Laoshi to coordinate his students and engage them in ongoing water inquiries with Ann’s 25 students. Ann’s Grade 4 and 5 students would however be able to forge partnerships with students from Wang Laoshi’s Water Club, the structure of which allowed more time and flexibility for students to inquire into water issues of their own interest and at their own pace. With regards to how their students could pursue a joint scientific inquiry into water, Wang Laoshi suggested that they focus on one shared 1  Rotary instruction is an instructional approach that involves a teacher teaching the same subject to at least two or more different classes.

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water topic and inquire into it collaboratively. The shared topic could be chosen by students communicating among themselves throughout the inquiry process. In fact, students from both countries could communicate with each other from the outset of planning till they presented their findings and action plans to each other. When they encounter challenges during their inquiries, they could also discuss ways of solving those challenges. In this way, teachers could see how students in both countries think similarly and differently. Ann and Ma Laoshi supported Wang Laoshi’s idea. Ann said that she would start the inquiry process with her students by creating an environment where her students could explore different Canadian water problems in their immediate surroundings. Based on their expressed interest, she would then guide them to making global connections with water issues in other parts of the world such as in Shanghai. She would then let the students come up with their own questions for scientific inquiry. Ann explained that she usually does not define an inquiry topic for the students at the beginning, other than to suggest a set of water problems they could look at. Her students would not be able to start generating questions for their water inquiry until November 2015, after they had explored various water-related issues and information. Both Wang Laoshi and Ma Laoshi indicated their willingness to work with Ann’s approach and timeline. Before the meeting ended, the three teachers finalized a list of tasks and a timeline for engaging their students. They agreed that the students should send introductions to each other to initiate their friendships and partnerships. They also promised, with the help of graduate researchers in both cities, to keep each other posted about their lesson progress and the different water issues their students expressed an interest in, so that they could help their students negotiate a shared point of inquiry together.

Rebuilding a Democratic Classroom Community for Collaborative Inquiries around Water Similar to the previous school year, to start of the 2015–2016 school year Ann began her curriculum-making with her usual rhythm of building a democratic classroom community. As such, she modelled democratic interaction and engaged her students in cooperative learning activities. She also created a safe, open, and respectful learning atmosphere for her

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Grade 4 and 5 students to express themselves, participate in shared activities, and engage in problem solving. What was interesting was that, unlike in the previous year, Ann’s rhythm of community building was now characterized by a stronger emphasis on the cultivation of shared environmental goals as a class, as well as the promotion of ecological literacy, environmental ethics, and stewardship. It began with Ann’s attempt to invite her students to share her environmental vision and values. For example, on the first day of school, Ann made explicit the need to safeguard the environment and the possibility of having a fun and fulfilling school year, through taking collective action on environmental issues as a classroom community. When introducing herself to her students, she said: Before we begin our school year, it’s important that we first recognize the First Nations Peoples that were here before we were, that took care of the land for us. So often, we had forgotten about that, and we had also forgotten about some of the important things and responsibilities that the First Nations Peoples believed in. As a result, our environment was not as healthy as it could be. So, we wanted to thank the Wendat, Anishinabek Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nations. They were all the First Nations Peoples who have lived and clustered in Toronto before the Europeans arrived to the land and took over their access to water and brought in all sorts of diseases. It’s important that we recognized that the First Nations were here first. I am a first generation Canadian, [and] my parents were immigrants to Canada. I had to thank First Nations that this is in fact their lands.

Ann spoke about how she had taken an environmental studies course over the summer and had learned a lot about the environment and human impact on it. She said that this learning about the environment had changed her and caused her to question a lot of the choices she had made in terms of the environment. Ann carried on describing the kind of classroom learning she would like to co-create with her students: Last year, in this class, students had a water challenge. Some of you who were in my class last year learned to conserve water, and we put together a water science centre. The class worked really hard and was able to go to the Toronto aquarium using the money they earned from selling water t-shirts. This was the project that the students decided to work on. So, in our class,

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whatever our class gets to do, it all comes from the students’ energy. Wherever you put into the class, you will get out.

Ann then showed a video clip of an American spoken-word artist, who felt the urge to say sorry to future generations because of the mass environmental destructions made by his generation out of greed. While dialoguing with her students about the content of the video clip, Ann told her students that she shared the artist’s sentiments: I apologized to my entire class last year, saying how the adults have messed up the environment for you. We, the adults, were really focused on getting a lot of stuff done, without thinking about our impacts on the world around us. So unfortunately, we’ve destroyed quite a few things in the process of getting what we wanted. And now we are at the point where your own children may never see a living lion, or a living elephant; they may not exist anymore because they are going to become extinct as such a rapid rate. So, for me, my passion now is to do everything I could to make sure that your grandchildren and your great, great grandchildren have a place where they can see trees, where the animals still exist, where they are not struggling for water or having to move their houses, because the cities have been flooded, because the ice kept melting. So, I am really committed to making changes in my life and in my teaching that will help you take better care of the planet than what we have done in the past. This is my passion and commitment.

After introducing herself and describing the kind of collaborative learning space she aspired to establish with her students, Ann asked them to brainstorm a list of activities that they could do to create an amazing year ahead (Fig. 7.1). Almost half of the ideas generated by the students were related to “greening” the school ground, and doing more projects related to water. The other half pertained to ways in which they could associate with each other more effectively by having empathy and responsibility, as well as the desire to cooperate and make friends with each other. The students’ idea of a great year in many ways aligned with Ann’s vision of an environmentally aware classroom community that practices democracy as a way of life. Challenges While it is one thing to imagine a shared vision of learning together and protecting the planet as a classroom community, it is another thing to live

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Fig. 7.1  Students working in groups to brainstorm what they can do together to have an amazing year as a class

out the shared vision in actual day-to-day teaching and learning. This year, Ann’s classroom witnessed a demographic shift from the year previous. In her combined Grade 4 and 5 classroom, there was a higher proportion of Grade 4s who needed more guidance and support when undergoing inquiry-based learning, compared to the Grade 5s. One-in-four students were reading and writing below grade level. Some were English-language learners who were trying to gain a higher English proficiency. Others had special needs and required specific educational attention and support. At the same time, this year brought an increased number of students in Ann’s classroom coming from families with higher socioeconomic status, and from a Chinese background. This demographic shift was because Ann had been assigned a class of which half also attended a Mandarin immersion program supported by a group of well-resourced Bay Street School parents. Compared to the previous year, there was greater diversity and

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polarity among her students with regards to class, race, ethnicity, language, and learning abilities. Because of the increased diversity and complexity in Ann’s classroom demographics, the start of the school year saw Ann putting extra efforts in bridging differences, differentiating learning styles, and building an inclusive and harmonious community in the classroom. There were days when Ann only had time and energy to focus on restoring relationships and resolving conflicts among students who had been causing each other distress using hurtful language; conflict resolution circles were a common sight. As Ann said to her students, “We could not have an amazing year if we cannot learn to work together.” As if building an inclusive democratic learning community in the midst of differences was not enough, Ann’s first two months of curriculum-­ making in the new school year were thwarted by a prolonged job action announced by the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario in April. Under the work-to-rule condition, all public elementary school teachers, including Ann, were directed not to carry out any field trips and extracurricular activities in their school and classroom. Ann considered this lengthy work-to-rule situation somewhat “depressing” because it prevented her from carrying out those community excursions and various outdoor educational activities that could allow her to build a strong classroom community. A new principal had also just arrived at Bay Street School, among other various unpredictable changes brought about by the new administration that impacted Ann’s professional landscape. Despite all these changes, constraints, and uncertainties, Ann found ways to keep her passion for the environment alive, especially her commitment to cultivate global citizenship through the Sister School collaboration. To get the Sister School water project rolling during the work-to-rule constraints, Ann created a lesson period titled “water” on her time table. By allocating a formal time slot for water education, Ann legitimized her water work with Minzhu School as an integral component of her curriculum, and not just a then-prohibited add-on or an extracurricular activity. This allowed her students to start forming a cross-cultural partnership and collaborative water inquiry with Minzhu students as part of their formal learning, an effective workaround the teachers’ union work-to-rule situation.

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Collaborative Inquiries Amidst Constraints To prepare her students, Ann had several conversations about the Sister School reciprocal learning partnership at the beginning of the school year. In the first water lesson, for example, she said: As a class, we will be working with the Minzhu students on a water project. I have apologized to you all before about how adults have messed up the environment for you. So, this year, we will come up with some water research questions that you are going to investigate with children in Minzhu. At some point during the year, we will all come together to share our discoveries, perhaps at some sort of an international teleconference. You will have the opportunity to tell your partners the work you have been doing and what you have learned, and they will also be able to do so. This is a really important project for our class this year, and a really exciting one.

Ann asked them to think of challenges they might face when working together with their peers in Shanghai. Many students recalled the ways their family members communicated with extended family members in other parts of the globe. They raised the issues of geographical differences, time differences, and language differences. Ann noted how children tend not to have the kind of fixed mindset that adults do. She trusted that, in spite of distances, their imaginations and tech savviness will allow them to come up with creative ways to maintain connection with their peers in Shanghai. Before ending her first water lesson, Ann asked them to describe the benefits of working with students in Shanghai. A student said that working with students in Shanghai would allow them to understand the environmental problems that children there experience. Another said that the Sister School partnership would help them to not only learn about the environmental problems in Shanghai but also to see similar problems in Toronto. From there, children in both cities can work together to find solutions to similar problems. Ann and I exchanged a look upon hearing the student’s response. It seemed that children were quick to understand the significance of an international, intercultural Sister School collaboration. Ann did not forget to reaffirm her students’ answers, and reiterated the idea that adults have made a mess of the world, and children will be the ones who are going to help fix the problem. “We are really going to work hard together with our partners in Minzhu School to find solutions to problems in the environment that we want children all over the world to work on together!” Ann said.

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To start building bridges with Wang Laoshi’s students, Ann divided her class of 25 into groups of 4 and asked each group to make a few multimedia slides introducing themselves to their Sister School partners. It took Ann’s students about two weeks in October 2015 to finish their introductory slides. While they worked on their introductory slides, I showed them pictures of Minzhu in order to help them develop a better idea of their friends’ lives in Shanghai. Ann also showed them a series of water documentaries to spark their interest in Canadian water issues and to deepen their desire to collaborate with Wang Laoshi’s students. Ann told me that even though she was not able to take her students on field trips during the legal work-to-rule, she was fortunate to discover three excellent water documentaries that showed the alarming state of the melting ice caps in Canada’s Arctic, the invasion of Asian carps into the Great Lakes, and drinking water crises in First Nations communities. She felt that the films were useful not only because they were able to help students develop a more critical look at pressing global water issues that simultaneously existed in their backyard, but also because they could help them meet the knowledge requirement of the Ontario Science curriculum. After showing each documentary, Ann would lead the class to identify, discuss, and inquire into the water issue highlighted in each film. She would clarify key terms and guide them in recognizing the “big idea” underlying each documentary storyline. The big ideas generated as the result of each viewing, classroom discussion, and inquiry would then be framed into a short paragraph that would be used for further scientific inquiries. For example, upon watching and discussing the film, “Water Everywhere but not a Drop to Drink,” Ann worked with her class to reconstruct and rephrase the water issue in the form of a problem statement to aid future scientific inquires: No Safe Water for First Nations Peoples   Many First Nations Peoples on reserves in Ontario don’t have access to safe drinking water. There is lots of chlorine, a type of bleach, in the tap water. The chlorine gives people bad rashes but people have no other choice but to use it to wash, bathe, and cook. Their drinking water has been flown in by plane for 18 years (2 L per day for each person). There is bacteria in the lake water so there is a boil water warning. Too much algae is growing in the water and causing problems.

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Ann’s students completed their self-introductions and sent them off to their Shanghai partners at the end of October. By this time her students had been exposed to various water issues in Canada, and Ann’s own passion for environmental values toward water, in a consistent and collaborative manner, but some continued to show little interest in water. Others were struggling to understand her lessons, due to a lack of English proficiency. After seeing that many of her students had a difficult time generating inquiry questions around the topic of water, Ann decided to re-galvanize her classroom community’s interest in water before engaging them in developing further collaboration with Minzhu students. Meanwhile, Wang Laoshi at Minzhu School had emailed Ann a set of PowerPoint slides in Mandarin that contained her students’ own introductions, water research topics, and plans. They touched on the themes of water pollution, water purification, nutritional values of tap water versus bottled water, and hydropower. With translation by several graduate researchers, Ann was able to review Minzhu students’ works in English prior to sharing them with her students. Ann told me that the Minzhu students’ work demonstrated a different way of teaching about scientific inquiry, which was quite distinct from how she would normally approach “inquiry” with her students. Said Ann: I read through the slides and found that the water topics generated by Minzhu students were quite knowledge-based and had little sense of inquiry. Their research projects also did not seem to contain any concrete issues that would require a process of scientific inquiry. Take the example of one of the projects—comparing the nutritional value in tap water and bottled water. For that project, I could just go online and check what are the minerals and nutrients that I could find in tap water and bottled water, compare them, and had my answers ready. I do not need to collect any tap water samples or do any experiment to find answers to my puzzles. To me, this is not a real inquiry project. A real inquiry project requires students to define their own unique inquiry or research question where they kind of have to design an experiment to answer their question. You can’t get the answer for an inquiry project easily from a book.

I asked Ann if she could still foresee a collaboration between her students and Minzhu students, given their different approaches to scientific inquiry. Ann answered:

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I think I could still present those water topics from Minzhu School to my students. I can ask my students to find out how they can support their peers in Shanghai in their inquiry process. I could also encourage them to ask different questions about those topics such as tap water vs. bottled water, water pollution and purification, and develop their own inquiry into issues related to these topics. In many ways, our students’ inquiry questions were not any better than those of the Minzhu students. Certainly, there is a lot that my students and Minzhu students could learn from and support each other.

I found Ann’s reply interesting. Even though she did not totally agree with Wang Laoshi’s approach, she suspended her judgment like a good guest entering into other people’s life spaces and did not regard the other approach as wrong or insignificant. Once putting her thoughts and judgments aside, she proceeded to perform the ritual as a collaborative learner through (1) giving space for differences to be expressed; (2) taking time to explore not only differences but also similarities and connections; and (3) reconciling the differences to allow further generation of shared meanings, reciprocal learning, and collaboration. In particular, she connected and reconciled differences between her Sister School’s inquiry situations by thinking about the possibility of using Minzhu students’ water topics as a curriculum resource for her students. She further planned on using water topics developed by Minzhu students as entry points for her students to explore other water issues and ask different questions that they might have initially overlooked. Overall, in the process of leveraging the water inquiry activities and processes on both sides, Ann refused to think that her own knowledge/truth was superior to any other’s. She allowed both herself and Wang Laoshi to preserve the soundness of their different pedagogical approaches, which subsequently enabled her to make creative use of these differences to support her curriculum-making, and move toward a collaborative reciprocal learning partnership in situations of conflicts/tension. Turning Points On November 3, the six-month teachers’ work-to-rule action finally ended. The same day, Ann carried out a “water graffiti” activity with her students, dividing them into groups of four, and having them use coloured markers to fill a big poster with pictures, words, and expressions about water.

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Fig. 7.2  Students posing questions to each other’s drawings on the water graffiti

The water graffiti activity injected much life into Ann’s water inquiry project. Students were talking with each other cheerfully, while putting down colours and ideas onto the posters (Fig. 7.2). The energy level in Ann’s classroom was high. I asked Ann what made her decide to do the water graffiti activity with her students. Ann explained: Initially, my purpose of doing the water graffiti was to help my students build a deeper and more affective connection with water. I also wanted to get an overall understanding of what my students know about water, what they want to know further, and what they have learned about water, so that I can move them forward in their inquiry. As you know, my students had tried to generate inquiry questions earlier, but their questions were quite superficial. They were not related to research or connected to any actual water issues. There was also no passion in their thinking process. I had already looked at the water research that is going on in Minzhu School, and I really wanted my students to get going and define their own questions for inquiry, not just any question but richer questions that excite them and that address actual water problems. So, the water graffiti was a way for me to get my students excited about water and generate further inquiries about water.

“The students did seem excited,” I commented. Ann continued:

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Yes. When the students started drawing their feelings about water and what water meant to them, you could just feel the excitement in the room. For the longest time, I had felt like I was just dragging an anchor through sand whenever I had my students do anything related to water. There was no interest and energy in the room. Yet when they started on the graffiti activity, there was suddenly an excitement and an interest to share knowledge. It seemed that the graffiti has been able to take the pressure off the students to come up with a perfect inquiry question. It had allowed students who had been struggling with reading and writing to be included in expressing what they know and feel about water. One day, I had an English-language learner who actually included a graffiti drawing on what she had learned from watching a video at home about Plastic Planet [a short YouTube clip made for children about the danger of plastic]. She had not told anyone about what she had learned but she put her understanding of the danger of plastics on the graffiti. Her graffiti drawing got other students to talk about those plastic problems they had experienced in their daily life.

The water graffiti became a turning point in the water collaboration between Ann’s and Wang Laoshi’s students. It successfully reinvigorated Ann’s students’ interests and desire, including among those who were facing language difficulties, to explore and reflect further upon water issues. Ann knew that without such interest, it would be difficult for the collaboration to take place. A global inquiry community could not be formed without a shared passion and concern for water. During the rest of November, using her students’ water graffiti ideas alongside Wang Laoshi’s students’ water topics, Ann worked with her students to finalize a list of water issues that could be shared with Minzhu for further collaborative inquiries. Among the issues identified, the ones concerning microplastics in tap water, First Nation communities’ access to safe drinking water, and water pollution caused by surface runoff, were seen to overlap with those water research topics and interests previously shared by the Minzhu students. Once a set of water issues had been determined, Ann regrouped her students based on their preferred issues for inquiry. She then guided each group to generate one specific research question around each water concern. Ann said to her students, “I want you to ask questions that we don’t have any answer to, nor does anyone else. Later you will either design a solution or do an experiment based on the question you have generated.”

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A Global Inquiry Community in the Making Upon reviewing the list of water research issues generated by the Bay Street students, Wang Laoshi informed Ann that a number of Minzhu students were interested in researching about water pollution and purification. She planned on inviting those students to partner with Ann’s class to inquire into the First Nations drinking water issue, because the issue might require a deeper understanding of the cause of pollution and appropriate water purification methods. Ann responded warmly to Wang Laoshi’s plan and said that she would share resources and her students’ inquiry process with her so that she could engage Minzhu students in the collaborative inquiry. In January and February 2016 after the termination of the work-to-­ rule action and with the support of the graduate researchers, Ann and Wang Laoshi became the bridge for their students in their collaborative water inquiry. They helped their students understand what their peers in another country were doing and thinking about with regards to water and how they could learn from each other. The different inquiry foci and approaches displayed between Ann and Wang Laoshi’s students had enabled further reciprocal learning and exchanges among the students. For instance, Ann showed her students a set of systematically organized slides made by Minzhu students that depicted the different steps involved in their water inquiry—e.g., research background, questions, literature review, methods, and findings. Ann further encouraged her students to use a similar logical approach when they wished to share their inquiry results in return. Wang Laoshi’s Water Club was shown the First Nations drinking water documentary that Ann had showed her classroom. She carried out discussions with her students on the water crises in First Nations communities in Canada and guided them in finding appropriate water purification methods/devices to address First Nations drinking water problems. At one point, Wang Laoshi showed her students pictures of a natural water purification device that Ann’s students had designed to address the drinking water problems in First Nations communities. She led her students to see the scientific thinking process behind the work of their Sister School peers. She then asked her students to apply information gathered from the internet as well as from their previous learning on water purification, to come

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Fig. 7.3  Wang Laoshi showing different kinds of water filters to her students

up with a few design suggestions for Bay Street School’s water purification device (Fig. 7.3). One month after the water inquiry project, I asked Ann what she thought of the Sister School collaborative water inquiry process. Ann said that, because of the work-to-rule situation that lasted for two months at the beginning of the school year and a lack of a bilingual online platform that would facilitate instant exchanges between Toronto and Shanghai students, her students did not ultimately get the chance to collaborate directly with the Minzhu Water Club students to share their entire scientific inquiry process and findings. Despite this setback, Ann felt that the students’ collaborative inquiry around the First Nations’ drinking water problem was not a bad place to start. In this collaborative initiative, they were able to learn from Minzhu School students’ systematic approach to conducting scientific research. They were also able to share a contemporary water issue in Canada with their Sister School partners and carry out a cooperative problem-solving and knowledge-building process with them. In addition, Ann felt that the inquiry process had led her to think about how she could improve her pedagogical approach in conducting inquiry-­ based learning with her students, especially in a international inter-school educational setting:

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With the water inquiry project, not because I have taken on more than I could chew, but I think I now wish that we had sort of set a more specific task and perhaps in some ways defined a single topic and had the students work on different aspects of that topic as they go. I think the learning would have been more powerful that way. I had hoped to establish a community of researchers who could learn from each other and work together through looking at the issue of water. However, I am not sure if I did that because some of the projects were too broad. The reason I didn’t narrow down the inquiry topics for the students at the beginning was because I wanted them to find their own level of inquiry. I still completely believe in inquiry-based learning, but I realized that if I want to establish a stronger community of researchers across the Sister School within the time frame I had, I really need to step in earlier, narrow down the topic, and give my students more structures than the one they have established for themselves. I was very excited when we were able to find commonalities between our research in Shanghai and the one in Toronto—for example, looking at First Nations’ drinking water and the tap water versus bottled water. That was the highlight for me in the inquiry process.

Finally, Ann realized that throughout her partnership with Minzhu teachers, she had been mostly relying on the graduate students to be her messengers/mediators in communicating with them; she had not actually developed direct communication, as well as that kind of global community of inquiry she had hoped to establish among her students, with her own teacher partners from Minzhu. Based on this realization, Ann learned that if she wants to help her students form a tighter community of inquiry with their Shanghai peers, whether it is through exchanging ideas online or tackling a global problem together, she needs to first be able to model and develop such a community with her own teacher partners in Shanghai. Commenting on the WeChat2 instant messaging platform that the graduate students and teachers at Minzhu used to share files and field notes, 2  WeChat is China’s most popular instant messaging app. Teachers in China use it to communicate and collaborate. As Chinese teachers do not have access to Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, and other social media sites commonly used by teachers in Canada, learning how to use WeChat to communicate with Chinese colleagues became a skill that most teachers in Toronto had to acquire during their partnership with Shanghai. WeChat has an automatic translation program that translates Chinese texts into one’s preferred language, thus allowing English-speaking Canadian teachers to communicate more easily with Chinese-speaking teachers.

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Ann said, “Even though I have been invited to join WeChat, I have never been on the platform myself. I understand that the teachers in China do not have access to those instant communication platforms that we in Canada take for granted. I need to start populating the WeChat online space more regularly and have more communication with Ma Laoshi and Wang Laoshi directly. We will figure out what else we could do in terms of water collaboration on WeChat.” Overall, even though Ann’s initial attempt to build a collaborative, reciprocal global inquiry community between her students and Minzhu students did not go as planned during the first half of the 2015–2016 school year, she did learn a few lessons about conducting inquiry-based water lessons in a Canada-China Sister School setting. The next chapter will show how Ann strengthened her direct communication with colleagues in Minzhu by visiting the school in person during the 2016 March Break (three months after Toronto teachers’ job action). The Shanghai school visit not only deepened Ann’s understanding of Minzhu School and her Shanghai partners’ teaching contexts, it also allowed her to collaborate more effectively with Minzhu teachers to build stronger collaboration and reciprocal-learning bridges between their students.

Reference NCEE. (2021). Top performing countries: Shanghai-China. Retrieved from http://ncee.org/what-­w e-­d o/center-­o n-­i nter national-­e ducation-­ benchmarking/top-­performing-­countries/shanghai-­china/shanghai-­china-­ins tructional-­systems/.

CHAPTER 8

Becoming a Globally Oriented Citizenship Educator Through a Sister School Reciprocal Learning Partnership

During the 2016 March Break, Ann and Cassandra had the chance to visit Minzhu School for a week under the financial support of Xu and Connelly’s Canada-China Reciprocal Learning Partnership project (2013–2020). Upon arrival at Minzhu, Ann and Cassandra toured the campus and observed how science and math lessons were taught. On the third day of their visit, they were invited to conduct a demonstration lesson to Minzhu teachers where they shared their approaches to building classroom community. On the fourth day, Ann and Ma Laoshi each taught a renewable energy lesson using Minzhu curriculum and had an in-depth debriefing conversation with Minzhu teachers afterwards. At the invitation of Ma Laoshi and Wang Laoshi, Ann also joined a field trip to a local environmental theme park where Minzhu students learned about the history of the once-polluted Suzhou Creek that passes through the Shanghai city centre, and the efforts that have been in place to restore the creek. The visit brought Ann closer to her Sister School colleagues as well as improved her understanding of Minzhu’s curriculum, culture, student population, water educational facilities, and daily teaching-learning activities and routines. Importantly, it enabled her to facilitate stronger collaborative and reciprocal learning relationships between her students and Minzhu students upon her return to Toronto.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Khoo, Educating for Citizenship in a Canada-China Sister School Reciprocal Learning Partnership, Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18078-1_8

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This chapter recapitulates Ann’s teaching sonata, presenting the consummatory story of collaborative, reciprocal learning co-composed by Ann together with Cassandra, her Minzhu Sister School colleagues, and university researchers (including myself) during the last day of her Shanghai visit. I conclude with a description of Ann’s enriched experience and knowledge of building a Sister School global inquiry community, and of educating for the global dimension of citizenship, in a challenging and uncertain professional landscape.

A Consummatory Story of Collaborative Reciprocal Learning It was the last day of Ann and Cassandra’s intensive five-day visit to Minzhu School. Minzhu’s principal, Ms. Lin, organized a debriefing session where Ann and Cassandra had a chance to reflect upon their Shanghai school visit together with Ma Laoshi, Feng Laoshi, Wang Laoshi, and a few other teachers participating in the Sister School partnership. Principal Lin commenced the meeting, followed by a round of sharing and reflection from each teacher at the table. Researchers from Shanghai and Toronto joined the meeting as a note taker and cross-cultural translator for the teachers. Principal Lin: It’s so wonderful that we can have this opportunity to gather and reflect upon what we have learned from each other over the past few days. This week, all of us have been living and working together under one roof and our friendship has significantly deepened. Ann and Cassandra, I cannot imagine that both of you will be leaving Shanghai tomorrow. It’s very hard for me to see you leave. We hope that in the future, we could still have the opportunity to meet face-to-face, learn from each other, understand each other, appreciate each other and grow together. All our teachers and students have enjoyed your presence. They like you so much. Ann: We feel so loved and we love you back! Principal Lin: Even though we will be far away from each other, we can keep in touch, through email and social media platforms. I trust that with the help of these online platforms, we could maintain our friendship and reciprocal learning relationship on a daily basis. In the next half an hour or so, I would like to invite all of us to say a few words about how we are feeling right now, after all these days of getting to know and learning from each other. Ann: I’m happy to share first. I think the most amazing part of my experience is that I have a much deeper understanding, appreciation and love for

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what you are doing here at Minzhu. Now that I know more, it has fired me up and brought my passion back. I believe that the work we are continuing to do will be richer and will support our students in a really wonderful way. So I thank you for everything you’ve done this week. Cassandra: I want to add that this week we just feel like it’s not enough; I came to your school and see so much. After seeing what I have seen, I want to grow so much more with this Sister School project. I want to take on more, and I want to be able to work more with you all. Now that we have met each other, know who we are, and have seen how things work in Minzhu School, I feel that I can take the Sister School project further, for myself and for Bay Street School. Feng Laoshi: For me, I was most impressed by Ann and Cassandra’s attention to individual children’s interests and growth in their educational thinking. I had a discussion with both teachers after they had observed my math lesson. From my conversation with them, I find that they are always concerned about what a student is thinking, what kind of challenge he or she is facing in the class. Minzhu teachers might be very good at overall teaching, but I think we could improve much more on our attention and care for individual students’ learning and growth. Wang Laoshi: As for myself, I’m most inspired by Ann and Cassandra’s passion towards teaching. Their passion for teaching originates from their love and care towards student learning. It’s very easy for those of us who have been teaching for years to feel fatigue and boredom in our career. But when I see Ann still demonstrating so much passion towards teaching in her 50s, I feel extremely moved and inspired. Xiao Laoshi: I agree with Wang Laoshi and Feng Laoshi. Another thing is that I’ve had the great opportunity to participate in the community circle led by Ann and Cassandra in my classroom. I saw how both teachers integrated the spirit of democracy when interacting with my students. They do not just talk democracy. They embody it. They show the students what good citizenship and moral characters means through their ways of being. I think both teachers are good role models for the students. I have learned a lot from their way of being. Teng Laoshi: My observation is that although Ann and Cassandra are from Canada and have been teaching in the Canadian system, they share many similar pedagogical approaches and educational values with those of us in China. Minzhu has been going through a series of school reforms under the support of researchers from the East China Normal University’s New Basic Education research program. I find that Ann and Cassandra are the kind of ideal teachers New Basic Education has been envisioning to foster. They are actively developing individuals that demonstrate a strong sense of life consciousness (生命自觉) and who are capable of leading their

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own destiny. We might talk about education using different terms due to our cultural differences. However, there are similarities underlying the differences that could help us generate a more concentrated vision for our mutual learning and collaboration in the future. Ann: I’m flattered and honoured by all your compliments and I want you to know that Cassandra and myself have been in different lessons during our time here at Minzhu. We could see the overall teaching excellence from one room to the next. All of your lessons are so well crafted, and I’ve learned how much you can accomplish in 35 min. You talked about my passion. I guess for myself, my passion isn’t just teaching, my passion is becoming a better teacher. What I did yesterday will not be as good as I do tomorrow, because it’s about growing and learning myself. And regarding my focus on individual children’s interests and needs, I think that is a philosophical focus within our school board. As teachers working under the Toronto public school board, we are expected to move every single student forward in learning, so it’s something we worked as a school community collaboratively; I can’t take credit for that completely. And I’ll say one more thing, I know Feng Laoshi and all the other teachers possess such joy to the specific subjects that they are teaching, so I think that’s an incredible gift that you are giving your students. I think that’s something that I have to go back and reflect upon and ask myself. I do show the passion but do I show the joy in the subjects that I’m teaching? Clearly the excitement you bring and enthusiasm about the subject is something that I want to work on, that I’ve learned from you. Cassandra: I agree, I’ve seen a lot of joy, I mean you’re saying we have passion in our teaching, but I do see some of that in your teaching as well. I see that you care about your students and I see you trying to build such a strong community within your school and classrooms. It’s important to me that students come to school and they feel they are welcome and that they have somewhere they belong where they can learn to grow to the person that they want to be. You can only learn to become a well-balanced human being where you feel so welcome and belong. I think all of you provide such a sense of belonging to your students through the community you build within the school and classrooms. Principal Lin: Thank you so much for all your heartfelt sharing. We only have a short time for our sharing today. However, within this short period of time, I could feel that we have been speaking from our hearts. We are really expressing what we truly feel about each other. I feel that we are becoming more like a family. I’m extremely touched by our sincerity and authenticity. I think we all agree that the foundation of our sister school partnership is strong. We established our partnership in 2008 and had experienced many ups and downs. However, with the recent help of our ­graduate

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researchers, our communication with each other had become smoother. Especially since we now have a better understanding of our similarities and differences, we could find more effective ways to deepen our working relationships and reciprocal learning partnerships. From my perspective, both Minzhu and Bay Street are community schools that serve students from the local community. The two schools have been able to maintain our connections due to our shared commitment to the well-being of our children. Because of our care towards children’s learning and growth, we, as educators are willing to change, grow, and improve ourselves. We are also committed to creating a nurturing environment where our children could become self-directed and develop their individuality. I believe that all these commonalities shared between both schools will sustain our partnership and growth. I look forward to seeing further collaboration and reciprocal learning between the two schools around the theme of water, citizenship education, language, science and technology, as well as the arts. May our friendship last forever!

As I translated for Ann and Cassandra, I felt a deep sense of togetherness between both teachers and their Sister School colleagues, which I had not before felt in the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School landscape. It was as if all the communicative efforts Ann had put into the Sister School project, and all the energy the researchers had invested in supporting reciprocal inquiries and partnership building between Canadian and Chinese teachers had borne fruit, giving rise to a consummatory experience of growth and learning shared among teachers and researchers. As everyone sat face-­ to-­face in the meeting room, distances between the West and the East, Canada and China, researchers and teachers, Bay Street and Minzhu faded and were replaced by a greater sense of appreciation, trust, and interconnection. Based on Ann and Cassandra’s sharing at the meeting, we know that both teachers have become more motivated and committed to grow and learn together with their Sister School colleagues in the years to come. A similar sentiment and desire for mutual growth and learning was expressed by their Minzhu partners. The debriefing meeting at Minzhu concluded with gift exchanges, bidding of farewells, and promises for future reunion and collaboration. After the meeting, both Ann and Cassandra had a further opportunity to share their Sister School visit experience with Professor Bu, who was a researcher affiliated with the East China Normal University’s New Basic Education program. Professor Bu and her graduate students had been supporting Minzhu principal and teachers in forging ties with Ann and Cassandra. In

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their conversations with her, both Ann and Cassandra commented on how the Shanghai Sister School visit, alongside the support of graduate researchers from both Toronto and Shanghai, had provided them with opportunities to reflect upon and deepen their learning from Minzhu teachers. Ann especially pointed out the importance of the Sister School project in her professional life, which had been suffering from a lack of school-based opportunities for professional development. Both Ann and Cassandra reiterated their excitement to grow and learn further with their partnering teachers from Minzhu. They also expressed the need for teachers to receive ongoing researcher support to sustain their cross-cultural inter-school reciprocal learning partnership. Below are the conversations between Professor Bu, Ann, and Cassandra, which took place at a Chinese pavilion on Shanghai East China Normal University’s campus. Bu: Ann and Cassandra, in the past few days, I’ve learned much from your teaching experience and educational wisdom, and I am sure the same goes with the teachers from Minzhu School. Cassandra: We are happy to hear that and we have learned so much from everyone too! Bu: In a sense, we are learning reciprocally, thanks to the Canada-China Reciprocal Learning Partnership project. Ann: Exactly, the project is a success and it will grow from here. Bu: I feel that both of you have been key players in contributing to the success of the visit and the partnership project. Ann: Please don’t say that! It’s not just us. We have had the help from so many graduate researchers from both University of Toronto and East China Normal University. In fact, during our visit to Minzhu, we have this huge documentary team comprising of graduate researchers that supports us and follows our discussions every day. Having extra people around us has given us the opportunity to reflect upon our learning throughout our visit. We would stay up late at night in the hotel room or during dinner time to just chat about what we saw in Minzhu. It’s hard not to reflect upon the day. The discussions and conversations we had in between our school visits with graduate researchers were exciting and powerful. I think it would have been a great learning experience for others to watch how different people in terms of education perspectives and levels of education can work together in education to make it better. It was just an incredibly overwhelming experience in terms of the stimulation in my own brain. Bu: I have noticed that both you and Cassandra are very reflective and good at thinking. This is reflected in your classroom teaching. Because you are good at thinking, when you teach, you also get your students to reflect and think.

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Cassandra: It might be because we teach in a school system where we are not given a set curriculum. Because we are required to create our own lessons, we have to always stop and think. We have to be very reflective about what we do. We have to be willing to take risks, experiment, reflect and learn from our errors. Ann: And I think Cassandra and I don’t represent all the teachers in Toronto. We are very willing to take risks, and be willing to fail. We are also very comfortable in letting our students know that we’ve made a mistake, and to participate in our reflective moment. The teachers can say, you know what, I really tried my best but I made a mistake and I want to do it again. That’s important, that’s part of their learning. Bu: I think here, in China, students expect their teachers to know everything. It is difficult for teachers to be vulnerable. Talking about being reflective, I wonder what have you been reflecting upon these past few days during your visit to Minzhu? Ann, you said you have been staying up late at night in the last few days. What kept you awake? Ann: Well I wasn’t necessarily reflecting upon teaching. I’ve been thinking about my involvement in the project. I’ve joined the project for a long time. I’m feeling more hopeful and excited about some of the relationships that have been formed through meeting with Minzhu teachers this time. I actually said to Yishin a few years ago that I have tried since the very beginning of the Sister School project to form ties with Minzhu teachers, but it never got going. When Yishin came on board and we started working together, she asked me on behalf of the Canada-China research team if I wanted to pay a visit to Minzhu in Shanghai. And at that time I said, ‘No, I think we can do whatever we need to do through the internet, we can just talk online.’ And I said to Yishin yesterday that, I don’t regret not coming to Shanghai earlier because I think all the online exchanges I have had with Minzhu teachers over the last few years have built the framework that has made my school trip this time much more powerful than it would be if I came to China three years ago. So, I think the teachers at Minzhu have a better understanding of some of the things that I’ve done and I know more about them before coming to Shanghai. Having worked with them this time, face to face, has been a really fulfilling journey. It’s hard to contain my excitement and my desire to learn more. The teachers at Minzhu said that I’m passionate about teaching. One thing I said to them this morning is that I’m not passionate about teaching: I’m passionate about being a better teacher. I’m passionate about growing and learning to be better. That’s what my passion is and that’s what I want to share. Bu: You are a great teacher, in my view! Ann: (laughs) You know, I will be a better teacher tomorrow. Bu: I am curious to know whether you have ever experienced a time in your teaching career where you feel confused, frustrated or simply tired?

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Ann: Yes…when I am not collaborating with people, when I’m not talking about teaching, when I’m not reflecting with other teachers. Cassandra and I now have very good relationships in the school. We talk about what we are doing in our class all the time. However, I was with a group of teachers a few years ago and they just all closed their doors, and nobody talked about what they were doing, and it was suffocating. And then I said to my husband (Ann’s voice shaking), he said to me, “I’ve never seen you so depressed, you are so sad.” And I said to him, that I have a beautiful group of students, I love being in my classroom, it was amazing, but it’s just so hard because I feel so lonely. So when Yishin approached me a few years ago, I was like finally, I have someone to talk to about education and about what I was doing. Through her, I was able to reach out for more people from Minzhu and the university. I was involved in math collaboration with Feng Laoshi. And then I got involved in environmental education through talking with Yishin and other teachers at Minzhu. I said to my husband that I had found people outside my school to talk to. Cassandra: Yes, I agree with Ann. I think it’s really important for teachers to be able to bounce ideas off each other, because that’s the only way I’m going to learn to make my lessons better. Ann: It also doesn’t matter to me whether I’m talking to a teacher. I love that both our graduate researchers from University of Toronto and East China Normal University are comfortable enough to ask us questions and make us think and reflect on what we are doing. And if they have an idea, we are not offended by them. They might have something to say and I will be like, ‘why I have never thought of it in that way.’ The power of collaboration is just like that. It helps you to grow. Bu: Actually, your capacity to find hope, joy, and strength in the midst of darkness through partnership and collaboration reminded me of the idea of life consciousness that my mentor, Professor Ye Lan, talks about all the time as being the ideals for teachers to work towards. Professor Ye Lan is the professor who started the New Basic Education movement in China. She emphasized again and again to school educators that one of the purposes for education is to cultivate actively growing individuals: individuals who have the inner strength to realize the value of life in the midst of all life situations. I see that inner power in you. Now that both of you have a renewed sense of energy, I am curious to know what your Sister School project plans are like after returning to Toronto? Cassandra: I’m very new to the Sister School project. Looking forward, I want to continue my exchange and interaction with my partnering teacher at Minzhu. We can have our students engage in a pen pal relationship. I have also seen how Minzhu teachers are very good at building classroom and school community, and infuse character education in the process. I hope to

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partner with a teacher and learn more from him or her about ways of incorporating character education systematically in the building of a classroom community. Ann: For me, I’m excited to continue to work with Ma Laoshi around the theme of water. I also learned that Minzhu is starting to integrate STEM into their teaching model; so is Bay Street School. It’s a really interesting opportunity that he and I are both sort of beginning that journey together, and I think by working together we are stronger and we’ll learn more. Another thing I want to say is that in the past few years, I have University of Toronto graduate students like Yishin supporting me in the Sister School project. A graduate researcher does a lot of background work for me, sharing my classroom stories with Minzhu and in supporting me. I could not have done anywhere near the amount of things that I’ve done without her and other graduate students. Minzhu teachers know so much about what I do because of the notes and stories she had shared with them. A graduate researcher helps keep the communication that has started, and the partnership that we have formed. Because so often Minzhu teachers and I start an initiative, and we are together, and we are strong, but next week we are all tired, and we go back to our usual routine, and the Sister School partnership stops, it stops (voice trembling). I feel that it is important Minzhu teachers also receive enough graduate student support in terms of keeping the Sister School partnership and making it stronger and stronger. I have seen how busy Ma Laoshi is with all the administrative as well as teaching tasks he has to do. He will probably be exhausted after hosting our visit. I would love to know more about Ma Laoshi’s teaching, but this can only be done if he has someone from the Shanghai research team who would support him in sharing his teaching with me. Bu: Yes, our Shanghai graduate researchers may have to play a stronger supportive role. In this Sister School project, researchers are teachers’ companions. While Minzhu teachers used to see me as an educational expert and were quite afraid of me, increasingly they see me as their friends. I think this emerging friendship will help us, the researchers, to play a more active role in supporting Minzhu teachers in their collaboration with you.

Upon returning to Toronto, Ann shared with me that her trip to Minzhu had given her a clearer understanding of what had brought her and her Shanghai colleagues together for collaborative reciprocal learning. Said Ann: I think in the beginning, I didn’t understand the motivation of Minzhu teachers and why they wanted to join the Sister School reciprocal learning

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partnership. Personally, I joined the partnership because I’m interested in education and I’m interested in teaching practice. It’s also important for me to partner with a very different school system and to improve my own practices over time, and learn from other teachers. I didn’t see why the Minzhu teachers were interested in the partnership with us in Toronto until Cassandra and I sat at the meeting in Minzhu on the last day of our visit, answered questions, and listened to Minzhu teachers’ perspectives of our teaching. I started realizing that the Minzhu teachers are really committed to, if not to this project, changing their teaching and improving the education system of their school. Now as I see it, we have a common goal really in terms of improving our pedagogies and working with our students to give the best education we are able to do, by collaborating with and learning from each other. This is what has brought all of us together in a collaborative reciprocal learning partnership.

The Learning Continues: Reconstructing the Image of a Global Inquiry Community In the new 2016–2017 school year, Ann proceeded with her plan of partnering with Ma Laoshi in the areas of STEM and water education to enrich student learning as well as their mutual growth and professional development. Despite an ongoing lack of school board and administrative support towards the Sister School project, Ann continued to share her teaching practices, discuss lesson plans and negotiate joint water projects with Ma Laoshi asynchronously on social media platforms and synchronously on Skype. As Ann shared with me one day: After actually sitting down and listening to what Minzhu teachers think and telling them what I think during my visit to Minzhu, I feel that I have made a personal connection with my partners. Because of this connection, I have to stick with our partnership no matter what. It’s like, you can’t disappoint someone you don’t know. But once you know someone, you feel like you need to do your part. We are working as a team now, and I have to keep up my part of the commitment.

That year, given her improved communication with Ma Laoshi and an increased familiarity of people, things, and relationships on the Sister School landscape, Ann also managed to engage her students more effectively in communicating directly with their Sister School peers through

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Skype, where they shared and discussed results of their water inquiry in the form of dramas and puppet shows. For instance, Ma Laoshi’s students showed Ann’s students a drama that they had created about the life journey of a water drop. Their play creatively infused elements from Chinese folk stories and scientific knowledge around the water cycle and water pollution. It portrayed water as a virtuous being whose forbearance and life-giving nature is something students could learn from. In turn, Ann’s students shared a puppet show created under her guidance. Their puppet show honoured the real story of an Indigenous Elder, Grandma Josephine, who walked around the Great Lakes to inspire the next generation of water walkers and water protectors (Fig.  8.1). The show reminded students to care for the land and take action to protect shared water resources. All in all, the improved personal connection and communication between Ann and Ma Laoshi had strengthened the personal connection and communication between their students around the issue of water. A global inquiry community was being reconstructed through reciprocal interactions among the Sister School students. This community foregrounds local inquiries on shared water concerns. It emphasizes transnational and transcultural togetherness, reciprocal sharing of knowledge and responsibility, and personal contact and communication. It further

Fig. 8.1  A puppet show made by Ann’s students honouring the life story of an Indigenous Water Walker, Grandma Josephine

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promotes global citizenship as day-to-day living and learning that forms an authentic part of formal education, instead of an add-on. As pointed out by Ann at the end the school year, I think having a school on the other side of the world that has the exact same values and concerns around water that we have has been important to my classroom teaching and my students’ learning. I could have my students read about certain water issues in the newspaper or show them videos of water problems. But for my students to know that they are connected with a group of children around the world that are committed also to environmental issues brings that global citizenship teaching piece to a level of authenticity. Students knew that when they shared a water work with Minzhu, they were sharing it with a real group of audience in another part of the world, who would be responding to it and building on top of it reciprocally. This connection made the global water learning a much more authentic experience for my kids. They realized that they had to put more effort and responsibility in their work and their thinking process. Global citizenship became a real-life experience for my students through the direct connection that they made with kids in Shanghai.

Indeed, over a three-year period of sharing, inquiring, learning from, and participating in each other’s lives, a reciprocal learning community of inquiry, bound by a shared concern for water, started deepening between Ann and her Minzhu colleagues as well as their students. It was not unusual for me to hear remarks such as, “Now, this Sister School partnership feels like a family” or “We are like a family” expressed by teachers and research members participating in the Sister School project. Within this reciprocal learning community, teachers and researchers in both countries have become more skilful in being good guests to each other, collaborating on joint inquiries, and working to transform tensions, differences, and disagreements without losing sight of their shared bonding, just as family members would often do in times of tension (Ivanhoe, 2014). The teachers and researchers are also more capable of inquiring into and learning from each other’s personal, cultural, and historical narratives to promote personal and professional growth, as well as the growth of their students. They would even be willing to consider each other’s educational beliefs, customs, and practices to deepen their own understanding of curriculum, teaching, and learning. As for Ann, her experience of citizenship curriculum-making, grounded in her rhythm of building a democratic learning community, her collaborative-learning ritual, and her

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ideal of a global inquiry community, continued to develop in the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School reciprocal learning community for three more years after I have completed my collaborative inquiry with her as part of my doctoral study. As Ann’s teaching sonata tentatively comes to an end in this chapter, I would like to pause Ann’s story for the time being. The next chapter re-­ stories and interprets Ann’s educational narrative development thus far from West-East, teacher-research collaborative perspectives, in relation to the original intention of my study. It describes Ann’s evolving citizenship education knowledge in the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School landscape, especially the global dimension of this knowledge. It examines more closely those favourable conditions that she identified as sustaining her reconstruction of knowledge and experiences of educating for citizenship, from the local to the global. I start my discussion by recounting a presentation that Principal Lin delivered to Ann and her Bay Street School colleagues during her 2017 visit to Toronto, and a conversation I had with Ann following the Principal Lin’s presentation. I showed how my conversation with Ann helped inform my interpretation of Ann’s citizenship education knowledge as it developed in the Canada-China Sister School reciprocal learning partnership.

Reference Ivanhoe, P.  J. (2014). Confucian cosmopolitanism. Journal of Religious Ethics, 42(1), 22–44. https://doi.org/10.1111/jore.12043

PART III

Re-Storying Ann’s Narrative from both Western and Eastern Lenses

CHAPTER 9

River Flowing and Fire Burning: Re-Storying Ann’s Developing Knowledge of Educating for Citizenship

In May 2017, Principal Lin, Ma Laoshi, and other teachers participating in the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School project paid a one-week visit to Bay Street School in Toronto. Under the invitation and encouragement of Ann and Cassandra, Principal Lin gave an overview of Minzhu School’s history, culture, and reform initiatives to a group of Bay Street staff members. She mentioned that Minzhu School was founded in the late 1950s to serve children living in nearby worker’s villages at a time when Shanghai was undergoing rapid industrialization. In 1999, Minzhu started participating in Dr. Ye Lan’s New Basic Education (NBE) research program, which attempted to not only develop practices that reform contemporary Chinese schooling, but also reconstruct Chinese educational theory and methodology through practical application and assessment. As an NBE research school, Minzhu was committed to carrying out reforms towards fulfilling its mission “to build a harmonious and publicly satisfying green school, and to foster healthy, active and happily growing new persons” (创 办和谐发展，百姓满意的绿色学校，培养健康主动，快乐成长的现代新 人). As part of its reform strategy, Minzhu’s staff members developed and made prominent a harmonious (he 和) and happy (le 乐) school culture that builds upon the school’s motto—the interdependent regulation of water and fire, and the mutual awakening of reason and emotion (水火 相济，理情互启). According to Principal Lin: © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Khoo, Educating for Citizenship in a Canada-China Sister School Reciprocal Learning Partnership, Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18078-1_9

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In Chinese culture, water and fire are regarded as two of the most basic elements that give rise to the universe. Water is the most ordinary thing in our daily life. Yet water is one of the most powerful substances in nature. The ordinary but powerful nature of water is demonstrated in an ancient Chinese saying, ‘constant dripping of water wears away the stone.’ (水滴石穿) Unlike water, fire is passionate. It brings light and energy into human life. As two opposite elements, water and fire balance each other and inter-­ depend on each other. They also interact with each other and transform each other. Life will not be possible if we have water without fire, and fire without water.

Principal Lin continued by mentioning how Minzhu had applied the concepts of water and fire when thinking about its school culture and reform efforts: For those of us in Minzhu School, we believe that the way of fire and water constitutes an important aspect of Chinese culture and wisdom and can inform our understanding of the world and education. The interdependent coexistence between fire and water has especially reminded us that differences and opposing forces need to be nourished together in our school curriculum if we want to create a more harmonious and joyful school culture. Guided by the imagery of water and fire, therefore, Minzhu School focuses on what’s essential and commonplace [water], as well as what lights up one’s passion [fire] in its curriculum. We also focus on both ‘reason’ [fire] and ‘emotion’ [water] in our teaching and learning processes.

Knowing that differences and diversity are important for harmony and happiness, we are committed to nurturing diverse learning interests among our students through a wide range of school activities and pedagogical approaches. We have also tried to nurture the uniqueness and individuality of our teachers, as we believe that the growth of our school depends on the enriched life of each teacher. Principal Lin provided a few more examples of how Minzhu staff worked towards cultivating a he le (和乐) school culture guided by the ways of fire and water. She noted how the development of a strong school culture depends on the collaboration, reflection, innovation, and learning of all stakeholders. She ended her presentation by re-emphasizing that everyone—the principal, teachers, students, parents, and community members—is key to this process of building a thriving school culture.

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Principal Lin’s presentation that day made a strong impression. She recounted Minzhu’s reform history through its collaboration with the New Basic Education research team, but even more striking was her description of the school’s genuine effort to create a reflective, participatory, and vibrant school culture utilizing Chinese cultural images and philosophical thinking. As I listened, I started pondering the notion of water, especially its significance in Chinese culture, and its relation to Ann’s growth as the result of her reciprocal learning interaction with Ma Laoshi. I wrote to an email to Ann after Principal Lin’s visit: Dear Ann, I have been going through all the stories we have co-created together in the past 3 years and am increasingly drawn to the significance of water in these stories. In the past few years, I have tried to bring more of my cultural understanding of water to your classroom as a bridge-builder between you and Ma Laoshi, only to find that I don’t really know much about the meaning of ‘water’ from a Chinese historical-cultural perspectives, Principal Lin’s presentation inspired me to explore further what water means to me as a Chinese person and I have managed to locate a few articles and books that talk about water in the context of Chinese culture and philosophy. I understand that you plan to incorporate different cultural understandings of water in your class next year. I very much look forward to sharing with you what I have learned from my readings! (Email Correspondence, July 29, 2017).

And Ann wrote back to me the next day: Dear Yishin, What you proposed was very exciting. I look forward to discussing the goals of our water education for the 2017–2018 school year. It seems to me that I learn as much from you as from Ma Laoshi. Ma Laoshi is a catalyst for the water events that have happened in my classroom and is a role model for me. It is the collaboration with you [from the Canada-China Reciprocal Learning Partnership research team] that has fuelled the fire. Water and Fire, I am grinning! (Email Correspondence, July 30, 2017)

Ann’s email was illuminating. It seems that for Ann, there were two elements that stood out in her experience in the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School setting, to which she had given meaning using the paired imageries of water and fire embedded in Minzhu’s motto. One was her reciprocal learning collaboration with Ma Laoshi, which she had captured using the

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idea of water; the other was her reciprocal learning collaboration with university researchers affiliated with the Canada-China Reciprocal Learning Partnership (RLP), including myself, which she had described using the image of fire. Up until that point, I had never thought of seeing my inquiry with Ann, or her evolving narrative in the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School landscape, from the metaphorical lens of water and fire. When Ann used these images to make sense of her evolving experiences, I sensed that she was hinting at a different, cross-cultural way of rethinking and re-storying her curriculum-making experience and knowledge in the Sister School landscape. I recalled Cheryl Craig’s (2018) study that shows how school educators use metaphors to convey their lived experiences and to bring coherence to their knowing, doing, and being, “not because others demand it of them (which is the case of propositional knowledge); but in their own non-­ propositional knowledge terms” (p.  300). Craig identifies four types of metaphors that often characterize teachers’ knowledge and experience, which can help enrich our understandings of teacher education and teaching. Novel metaphors have imaginative qualities, are generative, and reflect Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) notion of new metaphors, which are conceptual and marked by their capability of creating realities and giving new understandings of our experience. Novel metaphors are contrasted with stock metaphors, which are established metaphors that can “become so common and trivial that they unreflectively shape practice in non-­ enlightening ways” (p. 302). Emergent metaphors, on the other hand, are metaphors that are intuitively held and expressed by teachers during the unfolding of practice; they are different from ascribed metaphors that are intentionally employed by researchers to describe “what they view teachers’ perceived experience of teaching” (p. 302). To me, Ann’s use of water and fire, given their spontaneous expression following her interactions with Minzhu teachers and RLP researchers, demonstrate Craig’s notions of emergent metaphors and novel metaphors. These metaphors helped Ann capture and give meanings to her emerging lived experience in the context of Sister School interactions. They also opened new ways for me to reinterpret our curriculum inquiries in this Canada-China inter-school reciprocal learning landscape. Next, I will use Ann’s emergent and novel water-fire metaphors as entry points to shed new light on her citizenship curriculum-making experience and knowledge that she had developed through interactions with Minzhu

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teachers. To give depth to this work, I first trace Ann’s water and fire metaphors back to their conceptual roots in Chinese thought, through to their local meanings when employed by the Minzhu community. I then engage these metaphors from a Chinese philosophical standpoint to think about and illuminate Ann’s evolving knowledge of educating for citizenship. These metaphors are also useful when considering the conditions that she perceived as supporting her citizenship teaching, growth, and learning. This Chinese/Eastern way of thinking and interpreting Ann’s storied experiences is enabled by a practical-oriented narrative inquiry framework and a personal-practical view on teacher knowledge described in detail in Chap. 2. Finally, I also utilize relevant theories from Western educational contexts to think about Ann’s narrative, so to weave together a narrative inquiry that embodies a sense of West-East reciprocity in action.

Water and Fire in Chinese Thinking Comparative philosophers like David Hall and Roger Ames (1995) have persistently pointed out that there are different assumptions and norms of rationality that have shaped the respective cultures of China and the West. In the West, the presence of creation myths as well as stories of overcoming chaos have produced a strong inclination for causal rationality and transcendental order in Western thinking (Hall & Ames, 1995). In China, on the other hand, the genealogical narratives that tell the emergence of “ten thousand things” (万物) have made Chinese thinking grounded less in a search for a single-ordered whole, and more on an analogical and correlative mode of thinking (Hall & Ames, 1995). Analogical and correlative thinking prefers “change or process over rest and permanence” and a way of “understanding large issues of cultural life by appeal to correlative procedures rather than by presuming determining agencies or principles” (Yu, 1997, p. 321). Sarah Allan (1997), an American scholar of ancient China, added that in the absence of transcendental concepts, the ancient Chinese turned to the natural world and studied those principles that governed it, in order to understand the forces that underlay the human world and devise more abstract philosophical concepts and thinking from it. If we recognize that people in ancient China assumed a commonality between principles governing the natural and human worlds, then it is not difficult to understand how Chinese reason is rooted in analogical and correlative thinking (Allan, 1997).

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Water as a Root Metaphor in Chinese Philosophy Among all natural phenomena, water, due to its central place in people’s lives, was widely discussed by early Chinese philosophers and became a foundational metaphor to formulate greater abstract concepts that inform the basis of social and ethical values in Chinese society (Allan, 1997). Philosophers in the Chinese Confucian tradition have especially used water analogies to construct ideas around education, teaching, and learning (Gao, 2015). For instance, through studying the form and functions of water, Confucius himself developed insights into the kinds of virtuous qualities that a person could develop within themselves, or that toward which a teacher educates. We can locate these insights in the Confucian text, Xunzi (third century BCE), where in a recorded dialogue Zigong, one of Confucius’s most important disciples, asked Confucius, “Why is it that when an exemplary person sees a great body of flowing water/river, he always gazes at it?” Confucius answered: Water, which extends everywhere and gives everything life without acting (wuwei 无为) is like virtue (de 德). Its stream, which descends downward, twisting and turning but always following the same principle, is like rightness (yi 义). It’s bubbling up, never running dry, is like the way (dao 道). Where there is a channel to direct it, its noise is like an echoing cry and its fearless advance into a 100 m valley, like valour (yong 勇). Used as a level, it is always even like law (fa 法). Full, it does not require a ladle, like correctness (zheng 正). Compliant and exploratory, it reaches to the tiniest point, like perceptiveness. That which goes to it and entered into it, is cleansed and purified, like the transformation of goodness (shanhua 善化). In twisting around 10,000 times but always going eastward, it is like will (zhi 志). That is the reason that when a gentleman sees a great river, he will always look upon it (28 You Zuo, 1 p. 390–391, in Allan, 1997, p. 24).

Confucius compares an exemplary person to a flowing stream of water, which exemplifies nine characteristics—virtue, rightness, the way, courage, law, correctness, perceptiveness, transformation of goodness, and will. 1  This dialogue appears in the 28th chapter (“Youzuo” 宥坐 chapter) of the book of Xunzi. The original text in Chinese is as follows:《荀子•宥坐篇第二十八》孔子观于东流之水。子 贡问于孔子曰:“君子之所以见大水必观焉者，是何?“孔子曰:“夫水遍与诸生而无为 也，似德。其流也埤下，裾拘必循其理，似义，其洸洸乎不淈尽，似道。若有决行之， 其应佚若声响，其赴百仞之谷不惧，似勇。主量必平，似法。盈不求概，似正。淖约微 达，似察。以出以入以就鲜絜，似善化。其万折也必东，似志。是故见大水必观焉。

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These qualities are what an exemplary person would desire to develop within themselves (Allan, 1997). The goal of education in the tradition of Confucian thought is therefore to cultivate water’s virtuous characteristics in learners (Gao, 2015). In addition to deriving educative ways of becoming human from observing flowing rivers, early Confucian philosophers also found principles from considering the sources of still water bodies, like lakes and ponds (Allan, 1997; Gao, 2015). In the Chinese text ascribed to the Confucian philosopher Mencius (372–289 BCE), for instance, we see Confucius pointing out the difference between a body of water with a spring as its source, and a body of water that seemingly had no source.2 Confucius further observed that water with no source, such as rain water in a puddle, will soon dry up, whereas water with a source, such as spring water, will flow continuously (Allan, 1997, p.  36). Based on this natural principle, subsequent philosophers asserted that if a person’s reputation does not have a natural endowment as its source of renewal would stop flowing (Allan, p.  36). Likewise, learning without an established and cultivated root or source, given its lack of reinvigorating energy, would cease to progress (Gao, 2015). The book of Mencius also includes a passage that suggests how educators can learn about teaching by contemplating flood water and flood control. Mencius describes a big flood in remote times that had caused widespread damage and loss of life. Yet, by understanding that water flows along a course, and that the best way to control flooding water is to dig irrigation channels that allow it to flow without resistance and follow its natural tendency, a Chinese ruler at that time, Yu the Great, was able to successfully control the big flood (Allan, 1997). This flood story implies 2  The original texts appear “Lilou” chapter in the book of Mencius. There Mencius explains Confucius’s praise of water. Legge’s translation of the texts, later edited by McIntyre (2009) are as follows: The disciple Hsü said, “Chung-nî [Confucius] often praised water, saying, ‘O water! O water!’ What did he find in water to praise?” Mencius replied, “There is a spring of water; how it gushes out! It rests not day nor night. It fills up every hole, and then advances, flowing onto the four seas. Such is water having a spring! It was this which he found in it to praise.” “But suppose that the water has no spring. In the seventh and eighth month when the rain falls abundantly, the channels in the fields are all filled, but their being dried up again may be expected in a short time. So a superior man is ashamed of a reputation beyond his merits.” 《孟子•离娄下》 徐子曰:“仲尼亟称于水，曰:’水哉，水哉!’何取于水也?“孟子 曰:“源泉混混，不舍昼夜，盈科而后进，放乎四海，有本者如是， 是之取尔。苟为无 本，七八月之间雨集，沟浍皆盈；其涸也，可立而待也。故声闻过情， 君子耻之。”

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that if educators want to guide learners effectively, they should work with learners’ natural tendencies and not force them down a certain path (Gao, 2015). There are many more water analogies found in Confucian texts, as well as in the Chinese philosophical texts of Daoism and Buddhism, that demonstrate how ancient Chinese thinkers formulated abstract thinking from studying the natural ways of water.3 Water and Fire, Yin-Yang Thinking Oppositional yet complementary forces are fundamental to Chinese thought. When the ancient Chinese observed their natural surroundings, they understood the universe and human life to be made up of a balance of entities and forces, such as day and night, heaven and earth, and sun and moon, so on. Water and fire were regarded as an oppositional, complementary pair as well, given that water descends and fire rises; water extinguishes fire and fire evaporates water (Allan, 1997). The ancient Chinese subsequently developed the more abstract yin-­ yang model of thinking wherein yin etymologically means the shadowy side of a mountain, and yang refers to its sunny side. To think from a yin-­ yang perspective is to think dialectically of oppositional relationships. In contrast with deductive logic that asserts that “a thing x cannot be p and not-p at the same time,” Chinese yin-yang logic sees that: x must be p and not-p at the same time, since in reality each thing is a unity of opposites p and not-p… [Therefore] it is logically true to say that each thing is the same as other things and yet each thing is different from other things... Everything is in this sense a unity of generality and individuality (Jiang, 2013, p. 443).

Thinking that everything is a unity of yin-yang opposites led Chinese thinkers to conceptualize the idea of zhongyong(中庸)captured in such Confucian philosophical texts as the Doctrine of the Mean. Zhongyong points toward the idea of balance, moderation, and appropriateness, which are essential guiding principles of the Chinese sense of harmony (Li, 3  Due to the limited scope of this study, I will not expand further on these examples. Interested readers can refer to Sarah Allan’s (1997) work on The Way of Water and Sprouts of Virtue for further examples.

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2014). A person who enacts zhongyong is someone who is able to artfully find middle ground in any situation in an appropriate, moderate, and timely manner (Li, 2014). Rather than viewing the contradiction of extreme ends as needing to be dialectically resolved, a person with zhongyong sees interdependence, correlation, and reciprocity in all extremes and oppositions. From a Chinese standpoint, the yin-yang way of thinking and the principle of zhongyong, therefore, makes it impossible for an entity like water to exist without fire, and vice versa; both elements maintain their uniqueness while in balanced, enabling the flourishing of life and a sense of harmony. All in all, learning about the significance of water and fire in ancient Chinese thinking has helped me recognize the cultural, historical, and philosophical roots of Minzhu’s harmonious (he 和) and happy (le 乐) culture. More importantly, it has made me realize that Minzhu’s use of water-fire imagery in guiding its reform and development is deeply rooted in Chinese ways of knowing; it is also no less rational and conceptual than, say, Western educational theories. In many ways, Minzhu’s reform efforts are grounded in Chinese analogical thinking informed by the root metaphor (Allan, 1997) of water and a yin-yang balanced way of philosophizing. Perhaps it is Minzhu’s tapping into these ancient sources that has enabled its narrative to flow continuously like spring water, and ultimately to influence not only Ann’s curriculum-making in Bay Street School, but also the course of my own inquiry alongside Ann’s. The imagery of flowing water gives meanings to Ann’s growing knowledge of educating for citizenship—from the local to the global—in a Canada-China Sister School reciprocal learning landscape. The imagery of fire is also helpful, to explore and understand the conditions that have sustained this growth. Following in the footsteps of ancient Chinese philosophers and contemporary educators at Minzhu, I have come to understand Ann’s experience of educating for citizenship through the properties of water and make sense of the social and educational conditions that support her growth of citizenship education knowledge through the nature of fire. Knowing that “Chinese argumentation is predominantly analogical, that is, metaphorical” (Wu, 1997, p. 344), and that “globalization that inter-cultures to inter-deepen requires Chinese thinking to be Chinese, not Western” (Wu, 2010, p. 193), as an educator and researcher of Chinese descent, I engage in metaphorical thinking as much as possible throughout the rest of my inquiry.

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Ann’s Citizenship Curriculum-Making Experience as a Flowing River and Burning Fire in a Canada-­China Sister School Landscape A Treacherous Global Landscape If I pause and listen again to the sonata of Ann’s evolving curriculum-­ making experience in the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School context (see Chaps. 4–8), the image of a Chinese landscape painting arises in my mind (Fig. 9.1). This painting shows a stunning yet treacherous mountain scene with flowing water, sharp rocks, and steep mountain cliffs, as well as signs of human habitation. From the left to the right side of the painting runs a series of interconnected mountains. Two rivers, each with a source, flow down two high mountains located, respectively, on each side of the painting. These two rivers never meet at their source, but by following their own unique courses, they eventually join each other and merge into a single confluence at a lower course, nurturing local communities and surrounding lands before flowing into the ocean. Together, the mountains (standing for what is permanent) and the rivers (symbolizing temporality and continuity) convey a relational and dynamic sense of time and space to the landscape (Allan, 1997). Amidst

Fig. 9.1  Artificial Wonderland II: From the New World. [ultra giclee print, 200 x 400cm]. A digitally rendered take on traditional Chinese landscape art by Chinese artist Yang Yongliang created in 2014

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this time and space, biological and cultural diversity have emerged; individuals and communities, each possessing different cultural and historical narratives, have told and retold, lived and relived their stories of birth and demise, joy and struggles. The most recent stories that the people retell and relive take place at a time of rapid technological development and globalization, where individuals from two isolated communities can instantly communicate with each other, as well as participate in trade, travel, investment, and exchange ideas more freely and intensely, thanks to advances in communication technologies and transportation (Zhao, 2010). Ironically, this is also an increasingly precarious time where rivers have stopped flowing, diverse animal species have gone extinct, and local knowledge has stopped flourishing, due to economic structures and an imbalanced reproduction of knowledge that has enabled global corporations and financial institutions to accumulate more wealth and power, while silencing alternative visions and information, at the expense of local environments, cultures, and both animal and human well-being. As I take a closer look at the Chinese landscape painting to appreciate its sense of time, space and movement, I see Toronto’s Bay Street School and Shanghai’s Minzhu School on opposite sides of the landscape. Although geographically distant from each other and situated in different cultural, historical, and ecological contexts, both schools are publicly funded serving children in their local communities. As public schools, both were initially conceived, albeit at different times and under different political regimes, to foster modern citizenry as part of Canadian and Chinese nation-building and development agendas (Osborne, 2000; Law, 2013). Over time, under forces of globalization and an accelerating global flow of educational ideas, the two schools have shared an increasingly common and converging official curriculum, which includes the teaching of core elementary subjects such as language arts, math, science and technology, and social studies (Anderson-Levitt, 2008). Further, they have engaged in similar efforts around how curriculum and pedagogy should be improved or reformed (Anderson-Levitt, 2008). For example, between 2013 and 2017, informed by their respective governments’ educational policies and directives (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2013; Sinay, 2014; Sinay et al., 2016), both schools attempted to more effectively incorporate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education into their school curricula, diversify their student-assessment strategies, blend traditional in-class teaching with online instruction and digital technologies, and encourage inquiry-based learning in classroom teaching.

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During this period there was also a heightened discussions within both school systems about the need to foster global competencies among young learners (Law, 2007; Lee & Leung, 2006; Ontario Ministry of Education, 2016). Global competency discourse calls upon schools like Bay Street School and Minzhu School to prepare children to become more globally aware, engaged, versatile, competitive, responsible, and knowledgeable. It particularly urges educators to develop within students a wide range of knowledge, skills, and values in the areas of communication, collaboration, inquiry, problem solving, creativity, and entrepreneurship. In addition, it encourages educators to promote global citizenship and perspectives among young people so that they gain early opportunities to learn about global conditions, systems, and issues from different perspectives. The aim is to provide children with the tools to make informed, responsible, and ethical actions to protect the planet, fight for injustice, safeguard humanity, and promote global sustainability, including for people with whom they might not share any commonality. At Bay Street School, an inner-city school located in the heart of a culturally diverse global city like Toronto, the theme of global citizenship rubs shoulders with the themes of cultural diversity and social cohesion that form crucial parts of the school’s national citizenship educational landscape. This landscape in turn has been historically and culturally influenced by citizenship values emphasizing individuals’ performance of duties in public settings, as well as their freedom to exercise individual rights (Arthur et  al., 2008; Joshee, 2004). Not only are Bay Street educators charged with negotiating between recognizing the diverse cultural experiences of individual students and engaging them in contributing to the common good, but they are also now required to find effective ways to prepare students to “succeed in the ever-changing competitive global environment” (Sinay & Ryan, 2016), and become stewards of the global commons. For Minzhu School, located in a suburban Shanghai district that has experienced rapid development after China’s economic reform and opening-­up policy, the global citizenship discourse adds another layer of complexity to the school’s citizenship curriculum. Following Shanghai’s increased participation in the global capitalist market, its preparation for becoming a top-tier global city, and its need to ease intra-ethnic tensions between locals and migrants from elsewhere in China, caused by rapid industrialization and urbanization, Minzhu is also tasked with a progressively intricate multi-leveled, multi-dimensional citizenship educational

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situation (Law, 2007). Generally speaking, not only are Minzhu educators encouraged to develop collective local identities among diverse learners coming from different places of origin, but they are also mandated to cultivate national and global identities among their students, while fostering in them good habits and characters, and preparing them to understand global problems and issues, and to thrive in local and global economies (Law, 2007, 2013). Recent changes in China’s national strategy have further urged a school like Minzhu to develop in students a national citizenship identity grounded in traditional Chinese culture, as a way to balance overseas (i.e., Western) influences, in the midst of nation-building (Law, 2013). Given that both schools share a certain level of commonality in their educational functions, in their official core curriculum, and in their reform initiatives under the shaping forces of globalization, it is not surprising that when Canada-China RLP researchers sought to connect the two schools, educators from both were able to find common curriculum vocabularies to communicate with each other. This does not mean that miscommunication never happened; behind the converging, common curriculum concepts like “STEM,” “inquiry-based learning” and “global citizenship” remain nuanced cultural differences that colour these common curriculum ideas with localized meanings (Anderson-Levitt, 2008). These divergent localized meanings do not easily surface during online encounters, resulting in educators in both schools often talking past each other and undermining each other’s local meanings. However, with the support of researchers who facilitate their story sharing with narrative-­ based field notes and exchanged school visits, educators from both countries have been able to develop greater capability to interpret their shared perspectives in the light of local differences (Khoo, 2017). Guided by the spirit of reciprocal learning, Sister School partners were able to build from both their commonality and distinctiveness to create novel trans-local curriculum hybrids that enriched their students. In fact, what brought educators from Bay Street and Minzhu together, over time and space, was not simply their improved capacity to negotiate and collaborate on joint projects across cultural, linguistic, curriculum, temporal and geographical differences. Rather, it was their realization that as educators, they shared a common passion for personal and professional growth and for bringing out the best in themselves and their students. For authentic and meaningful growth to happen, teachers participating in the Toronto-Shanghai Sister School network proved willing to “voyage into the new, the

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unscripted, the unexpected, the unplanned, and the unpredictable” together, not just for themselves and their students, but for the world itself, including the protection of water and places they love (Hansen, 2010, p. 21). It was through these shared educational meanings and aspirations that our reciprocal learning community took root in the interconnected but potentially treacherous mountain landscape, against a backdrop of globalization, globally converging curriculum ideas and approaches, and divergent localized educational meanings. Flowing River: Ann’s Knowledge of Educating for Citizenship as a Flowing River On one side of the mountainous landscape, a river has managed to move out of stagnancy, follow its own course, and flow continuously over sharp stones to places without resistance. It twists and turns, descends downward, but always follows the same principle. It runs near the Bay Street School and ultimately converged with the river that flows by the Minzhu School. The flowing water reflects Ann’s storied life as well as her evolving narrative of continually developing her practical knowledge of educating for local-to-global citizenship in a complex professional setting. As a teacher who has spent almost half of her life teaching in an underfunded inner-city school in Toronto, serving children from low-income, immigrant, and marginalized racial and ethno-cultural backgrounds, Ann developed a repertoire of practical knowledge to educate for citizenship that goes beyond the locally mandated Ontario curriculum and the Toronto school board’s global competency framework. Her citizenship education knowledge intertwines with her past, present, and future experiences; it reflects her local sense of belonging, rights, and responsibilities as a Canadian, as well as her care for the earth and people in other countries. It also encompasses her identity as a teacher and the citizenship education meanings she has constructed over time, through her interaction with diverse educators and children in her specific socio-cultural, institutional, ecological, personal, and professional contexts. Like water that twists and flows and demonstrates a sense of history and virtuous qualities, Ann’s personal-practical knowledge of educating for citizenship is inherently tentative, changing and becoming, as it largely grows out of her interactions in practical curriculum-making situations that are always shifting and contingent on various social forces (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988). It is also cultural, moral, intelligent, and aesthetic.

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To appreciate Ann’s evolving knowledge on educating for citizenship in the Toronto-Shanghai Sister School landscape is to feel temporally and understand narratively Ann’s professional-personal life as a whole—her childhood, family, teaching history, community ties, relationships with diverse people, and her aspirations, joys, pain, and commitment—while simultaneously understanding how she carries herself culturally, morally, intelligently, and artfully both in and out of classroom spaces, against a continuously changing, globalizing, and tension-filled context. It is also to pay attention to Ann’s curriculum-making experiences for a good period of time and be in tune with various languages such as images, principles, narrative unity, rhythms, metaphors, and rituals she uses every day (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988). Below, I present my appreciation of Ann’s citizenship education knowledge during our time working together between 2014 and 2017.  he Way of Water: Building Classroom Community and Nurturing T Democratic Citizens Ann’s knowledge of educating for citizenship is grounded in her local rhythm of building a strong classroom community that nurtures democratic citizenship as an associated way of living (Dewey, 1916). This rhythm is not separated from her attempt to foster individual students’ well-being and academic achievement as required under Toronto school board’s vision for twenty-first-century learning. Just as ancient Chinese people see water as the metaphor for the Way (道), or the source that sustains the world, Ann sees building a strong classroom community and nurturing democratic citizens as the foundation for all great teaching and learning taking place locally and globally. While Ann’s democratic citizenship curriculum-making efforts vary from year to year, depending on her professional contexts and particular students, her work necessarily repeats with the same rhythm of modelling and building from the outset caring and respectful relationships with her students, especially those who are struggling. For Ann, educating for democratic citizenship does not start with enacting the official curriculum guidelines, nor implementing the Ontario citizenship education framework prescriptively in her classroom. Rather, it begins with the creation of a welcoming classroom, in much the same way that her father would welcome scientists from around the world into her family home when she was young. She cultivates a welcoming atmosphere by respectfully listening and carefully and educatively responding to her often challenging

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students’ diverse interests, ideas, and needs; she makes herself present and available in their lives. This atmosphere also involves nurturing a safe and non-authoritarian story-telling space where both she and her students can tell and retell stories of themselves in ways that build connection, understandings, and shared learning. Generally speaking, education for democratic citizenship in Ann’s classroom takes place in the at times tense boundary between the curriculum as planned and the curriculum as lived (Aoki, 1991/2005). It starts from the ground up where she and her students, each with their own narrative, can encounter each other, and engage with each other in a genuine, safe, respectful, and open manner. Once a relationship has been initiated with her students, Ann knows that she would have a higher chance of building a strong classroom community that is inclusive, creative, cooperative, and responsive to new ideas and initiatives. In this community, individual students, regardless of their gender, skin colour, learning ability, and socio-economic background, would have equal opportunities to develop their voices and participate in shaping their own learning through deliberative, participatory, and collaborative inquiry-based learning processes that go beyond the classroom walls. They would be encouraged to challenge themselves with different perspectives and new information. She aims to guide them towards a sense of fulfilment and meaning that come from learning and playing together through confronting, navigating, understanding, and working with each other’s differences—personalities, ideas, opinions, and interests—whether during recess or a class project. It is on the basis of her steadfast rhythm of cultivating democratic citizenship through classroom community-building that Ann constructs further knowledge to educate for citizenship from the local to the global, year after year. The prospect of educating for more meaningful, active, and globally oriented citizenship prompts Ann to establish her locally grounded personal rhythm of building a strong classroom community and nurturing collaborative, intelligent, and engaged citizens at the beginning of every year. Like yin and yang, her knowledge to educate for the global dimension of citizenship through Sister School partnerships inter-depends on her local rhythm of building classroom community and nurturing democratic citizenship. The two knowledge dimensions— local and global— interact with and transform each other. To grow into a more globally oriented and informed citizenship educator, Ann knew that she had to first be a strong community builder in her local classroom level and then revise

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and develop her community building rhythm, again and again, within the local-global dynamics of her classroom participating in the Sister School setting.  lowing Out of Stagnancy: The Development of Ann’s Citizenship F Education Knowledge—From the Local to the Global While Ann strives to make her classroom community an oasis for student learning and citizenship development, she nonetheless is aware of the unsustainability of this effort, given what she perceived to be an ongoing lack of collegiality within Bay Street School. As she describes vividly: I was with a group of teachers [at Bay Street]… and they just all closed their doors, and nobody talked about what they were doing, and it was suffocating. I have a beautiful group of students, I love being in my classroom, it was amazing, but it’s just so hard because I feel so lonely.

Because of the lack of professional stimulation and collegiality, Ann has thought many times to leave Bay Street to seek further growth opportunities elsewhere (see Chap. 8 for Ann’s elaboration on this point). It is difficult to comprehend why, despite various efforts to improve in-­ school professional learning experiences for teachers in the local school board (The Literacy & Numeracy Secretariat, 2007), Bay Street School remains an uninspiring, isolated, and fragmented professional learning space for a teacher like Ann. Perhaps the high principal and teacher turnover in this inner-city school is one of the contributing factors (Buttram & Farley-Ripple, 2016). In any case, if I liken Ann’s citizenship education knowledge to a body of water that aspires to flow downward while nourishing numerous lives, this knowledge, as developed in a professionally constrained setting, constantly faces the danger of flowing into a stagnant pool of water. Remaining stagnant, there is always the looming danger of Ann’s energy and dedication drying up, as she gives her students the best of herself without getting enough replenishment. That is, there is always the lurking fear of being stifled in an educational workplace where people teach but do not talk about, reflect, and improve upon what they do with each other. One doubts to what extent Ann could expand her citizenship education knowledge effectively in her rhythm of classroom community building if she hardly experiences a sense of community in her local professional setting.

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Driven by her aspiration to become a better teacher who inspires student learning, and knowing herself to be a collaborative learner who learns best from people who are different from her, Ann ultimately found ways to move out of her stagnant water, through fostering reciprocal learning ties with Minzhu School educators via the inter-school bridges built by researchers from University of Toronto and Shanghai East China Normal University. Between 2014 and 2017, Ann developed professional reciprocal learning partnerships with three Shanghai educators—Feng Laoshi, Ma Laoshi, and Wang Laoshi—through the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School project. Each of her partnerships ushered her into an intercultural, inter-school situation that was simultaneously characterized by a certain degree of strangeness, uncertainty, and difference, as well as commonality, similarity, and familiarity. Each situation also provided Ann with collaborative reciprocal learning opportunities that injected new ideas and new life into her citizenship curriculum making, while contributing to her professional learning and growth, especially in expanding her citizenship teaching and learning to a more global domain. In all her encounters with her Shanghai colleagues, Ann found herself expressing and reconstructing her knowledge as a collaborative learner, as well as her knowledge of making curriculum with her students, within the dynamic binaries of Canada and China, the local and the global, and the West and the East. This manifestation, reconstruction, and development of her personal practical knowledge took place as she established cooperative ties with diverse “others,” and underwent a process of reflection, both personally and socially with different individuals, in and out of the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School reciprocal learning landscape (Clandinin, 1992). It is further intertwined with the telling and retelling, living and reliving, of her identities or “stories to live by” as a teacher, one passionately committed to building relationships and community with her students, and who aspires to keep on growing and inspire student learning (Clandinin et  al., 2009). In the Sister School landscape, both positive experiences (encountering Minzhu’s water culture, visiting the school in person, talking about education with Sister School colleagues and university researchers) and less positive experiences (an absence of administrative support for the Sister School partnership, the global water crisis), have prompted her to retell and relive her curriculum-making stories, and subsequently deepened her knowledge to educate for citizenship (for discussions of how teachers’ personal practical knowledge develops, please refer

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to Clandinin & Connelly, 1995; Connelly & Clandinin, 1999; Clandinin et al., 2009; Huber et al., 2011). In particular, Ann’s knowledge of educating for citizenship grew every time she reconstructed and varied her basic rhythm of building a democratic classroom community, by exercising her knowledge as a collaborative learner with her Sister School counterparts, and during the process of reciprocal learning and reflection with researchers and teachers participating in the Sister School project. The outcome of this reconstruction of rhythm was Ann’s improved knowledge of making globally informed curriculum and building a globally oriented classroom community that is cosmopolitan in outlook (Hansen, 2010, 2011, 2013), and that aimed at educating for more active and engaged citizenship. Below, I use two water analogies to capture and discuss Ann’s evolving knowledge of educating for citizenship from the local to the global that resulted from the development of her classroom community-building rhythm.  ater Fills All Openings, Takes Any Shape, Yet Always Flows W Downwards: Rebuilding a Democratic Classroom Community with a Cosmopolitan Outlook Ann’s rhythm of building a democratic classroom community underwent its first variation in the Sister School setting following her online interaction with Feng Laoshi in the 2014–2015 school year. Ann engaged her collaborative learning ritual of listening humbly and attentively to not only what felt familiar, but also what felt new and different in Feng Laoshi’s curriculum-making narrative. Then, like water that fills all openings between soil and rocks, she sought opportunities to engage the new and the different—what she calls “teaching excellence” among her Shanghai colleagues—into her existing curriculum-making repertoire. While doing so, she exposed her classroom community to new perspectives and different traditions and inheritances that the Minzhu teacher had used to such shared subject matters as tangram and water. Ann understood that to collaborate with Feng Laoshi involved her whole self and offered a chance to learn deeply from her Sister School partner, not as a spectator but as an actor. Like water that bends, twists and assumes the shape of whatever contains it (Allan, 1997), she had the willingness and flexibility to adapt herself—and her classroom community—to participate wholeheartedly in each new encounter and learning. Ann ultimately decided to learn from Minzhu’s unique tangram-art and water culture curricula and create new meanings in her localized and

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situated curriculum-making setting. She purchased a tangram set and other necessary curriculum materials with the help of graduate researchers, and arranged to have them mailed to her classroom. She also repeatedly watched the water videos sent by Feng Laoshi to further immerse herself in Minzhu’s water culture. Having very much appreciated the experience, Ann reflected upon her immediate curriculum-making situations alongside Ontario’s official curriculum requirements to detect local points of interest to welcome Minzhu’s curriculum ideas (e.g., water testing, the water science centre, etc.) into her classroom community. For example, after watching the water videos that featured the school’s water science centre and water culture curriculum, she went on to locate standards, strands, and themes within the Ontario curriculum, and in broader initiatives such as the Canadian Water Week, to connect them into her existing curriculum-making situation, rhythm, and context. Notably, Ann avoided simply grafting the whole Minzhu water culture curriculum unreflectively into her classroom, or resorting to a parochial and narrow way of making water curriculum, using only local resources and ideas. Rather, as water twists and turns while simultaneously retaining its own particular nature, she allowed space for herself and her students to experience and inquire into Minzhu’s water culture appreciatively, and ultimately co-­ created Bay Street School’s own distinctive water culture curriculum and water science centre. Ann’s water curriculum, co-created with her students, was simultaneously local and global, reciprocally integrating Canadian and Chinese curriculum ideas and symbols, and expressing a global dimension and responsibility. Over time, Bay Street’s students also learned that their effort to emulate Minzhu’s water culture was not meant to compete with their Sister School; it was to join their Shanghai peers to do something positive for globally shared water resources from their specific locality. Learning from Minzhu students’ unique strengths and accomplishments encouraged Bay Street students to apply their utmost intelligence, moral sensibilities, and creativity—both individually and collectively as a classroom community—in contributing to life in and around their school. In my view, the classroom community reconstructed by Ann with her students demonstrated a kind of everyday cosmopolitan sensibility described by Hansen (2010) that is “from the ground up,” or “embodied” cosmopolitanism. According to Hansen, cosmopolitanism from the ground up is embodied and “rooted in everyday life” (p. 4). It is an orientation or an outlook that needs the “local” in order to manifest itself.

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Essentially, cosmopolitanism from the ground up highlights “a fusion… of receptivity to the new and loyalty to the known” (p.  5). It supports a “critical appreciation rather than idolization of culture, roots and tradition” (Hansen, 2010, p.  18). From this cosmopolitanism perspective, learning from new contacts and encounters is encouraged but this does not require a disintegration and subjugation of the individual and community. When carried out in a reflective and reflexive manner, receptivity to the new might enable individuals or groups to experience a heightened sense of being “more fully at home” and an increased ability to “grasp the beauties, the distinctiveness, and the limitations in  local horizons” (pp. 19–20). Ann’s reconstructed classroom community on the Sister School landscape embodied an on-the-ground cosmopolitan outlook demonstrated most strongly in both Ann and her students’ openness to learning from Minzhu’s curriculum ideas, traditions, values, and practices, while maintaining a sense of loyalty to local curriculum commitments, traditions, and teaching-learning routines. When engaging her students in adopting a new idea like Minzhu’s water culture, instead of disintegrating her existing democratic classroom-community-building rhythm established at the beginning of the school year, Ann managed to recompose and revitalize her rhythm in a reflexive, creative, and consummatory manner, through involving her students (and to a certain extent university researchers and Sister School colleagues) and engaging her past curriculum-making experience, her funds of knowledge on water inherited from her family, and deliberation about the inner-city Bay Street School context. All in all, by rebuilding a democratic classroom community with a cosmopolitan outlook through her Sister School reciprocal learning partnership, Ann provided her students with greater opportunities to practice and develop some of the global competencies endorsed by the Toronto public school board (i.e., global citizenship, communication, critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration and leadership, creativity, inquiry, and entrepreneurship) in an embodied and local manner as part of their day-­ to-­day, ever-growing classroom community. Within such a cosmopolitan democratic classroom community, students learned to take collective actions to address Bay Street School’s lack of water culture and awareness, while sharing their responsibility to protect global water resources along with children in Shanghai. In other words, they learned to become democratic global citizens who are first and foremost inhabitants of a specific place, and open to learning and collaborating with others from multiple

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perspectives and cultural inheritances from around the world for the protection of global common goods. Like water that fills all spaces, takes any shapes yet continues to flow downwards, the students learned to open themselves to the wider global community while being loyal to the local, as modelled by their teacher.  ater with a Source Flows Continuously: Rebuilding a Cosmopolitan W Democratic Classroom Guided by the Image of a Global Inquiry Community Ann’s success in revitalizing her classroom community-building rhythm through learning from Minzhu School’s water culture curriculum not only enabled her to develop her experience and knowledge to educate her students for citizenship, but helps shift people’s stereotypes about Bay Street School students and the Canada-China Sister School project itself. Savouring the feeling of growth and learning while reflecting upon her own narrative unity around water, her father’s legacy of water protection, a gloomy ecological future, and her core qualities of passion for the environment and love for creativity and learning, Ann renewed her commitment to educate for more active citizenship, by reconstructing a globally oriented classroom community in the 2015–2016 school year. This commitment was crystallized in a mental image, which I have labelled as a “global inquiry community” of young water scientists at Minzhu and Bay Street schools. Ann’s image of a “global inquiry community” was tacitly embodied in her lived and told curriculum making narrative, explicitly manifesting when she guided her students to put together water science experiments with Minzhu students to address water problems in  local communities. Although she did not use the phrase “global inquiry community” to articulate her ideas at that time, she conveyed her vision of building such a community among her students when she described how she would like to remake her “global” citizenship curriculum in the Sister School context: With regards to our future Sister School partnership, I really want my students to move beyond the idea of sharing our Sister School’s water culture. I would like them to undertake more of an investigative inquiry around water in our own watersheds and also look at what’s going on in Shanghai… [this] is a matter of global citizenship… in order to work in the future, [students] need to be more global and they need to be able to work with citizens around the world, inquire into shared problems and solve them

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together… I want to develop this kind of global learning community with my students, and give them the opportunity to solve problems with people from other parts of the globe.

Ann later elaborated on why she thinks this global learning community is important: If [we] could start realizing that we could solve problems together, that we can learn faster, by all of us sharing knowledge and creativity and figuring out a problem from different perspectives and doing something with it together, how powerful is that!? I will give you any information you want as long as whatever you have learned from that information. You give that back to me. That collective knowledge built through learning from each other’s learning is inspiring to me and gives me great hope.

Ann envisioned building a kind of global classroom community in the Canada-China Sister School reciprocal learning landscape that could provide opportunities for her and Minzhu’s students to work together to solve shared water problems through scientific inquiries, inter-school collaboration, reciprocal learning, and collective knowledge building. In this community, her students would develop a cosmopolitan outlook about water issues with their Sister School peers, inquiring into similar water issues that they could address locally, and vice versa. What is more, they would share their scientific inquiry processes and findings with Minzhu students and receive feedback. They would also learn about the good ideas, strengths, and solutions that their Shanghai peers have generated, adapt and build on top of them in their own contexts. Compared to the previous year, the global classroom community that emerged in the 2015–2016 school year put a stronger emphasis on students inquiring into shared water problems and solving them collaboratively through local technologies and scientific inquiries. It also demanded teachers in both schools to work more collaboratively to create a supportive global learning environment for their students. The kind of citizen nurtured in this global classroom community was not only a strong cosmopolitan learner capable of learning from new ideas and collaborating with other people from other countries, but also a creative problem solver who was generous in sharing ideas despite cultural, linguistic, and geographic boundaries. To educate for the global dimension of citizenship was to build such a global learning community where students could

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exercise and develop a sense of planetary responsibility; foster personal connection, inter-cultural solidarity and problem-solving capability with children in another part of the world; and, finally, grow their global competencies as well as knowledge and skills in protecting the earth through inquiries. It is important to point out that having grown out of the changing Sister School landscape, Ann’s image of a “global inquiry community” can neither be captured entirely by any theoretical approach within the field of global citizenship education, nor can it be fully appreciated from Ann’s accounts, alone. Inquiring more deeply into Ann’s image from a narrative/personal-practical knowledge perspective, one sees that the image of a global inquiry community is a temporal/experiential construct with intellectual, moral, and affective dimensions (Clandinin, 1985). For instance, the image “melds together… [Ann’s] diverse experiences, both personal and professional” as a community builder and a collaborative learner (Clandinin, 1985, p.  379), in addition to being connected with her past (her previous teaching experiences and relationship with her late father whose moral and exemplary life influenced her thinking, being, and doing in the areas of water, ecology, and science); her present (her participation in reciprocal learning with Shanghai teachers, STEM and inquiry-­ based learning, contemporary global competency discourses in education, the ongoing water crisis in Canada and around the world); and her future (her aspiration to make learning exciting, inspiring, and authentic for her students; her wish to safeguard and sustain local and global water resources for future generations). Essentially, Ann’s image draws both her present and future into a nexus of experience (Clandinin, 1985), which enabled her to reconstruct her democratic and cosmopolitan rhythm of building classroom community in a personally and professionally meaningful way on a shifting Sister School landscape. The image also reaches into her past personal-professional experiences around water, ecology, science, and classroom curriculum-making, “gathering up experiential threads meaningfully connected to the present,” while reaching “intentionally into the future and creates new meaningfully connected threads as situations are experienced, and new situations anticipated from the perspective of the image” (p. 379). Because Ann’s image of a “global inquiry community” has its intellectual, affective, and moral origins, like water with a source that flows continuously without drying up, it has given her inexhaustible amounts of courage, commitment, and energy to rebuild her classroom community the new year

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and remake her citizenship curriculum, in this instance with Minzhu educators, amidst the contingency and unpredictability of her classroom life and an absence of administrative support. Even though her new school year witnessed an intense work-to-rule situation and students who are having a hard time getting along with each other, guided by the ideal image of a “global inquiry community,” Ann continued to demonstrate a strong sense of determination to rebuild a democratic and cosmopolitan-­minded classroom community that was concerned about water and the environment, and that showed interest and commitment in solving water problems. She found her own growth and learning in the midst of experimenting with different pedagogical approaches to enact the image of a global inquiry community in her curriculum making. Ann explained: The experimental side [of my teaching] has come out a lot more by being part of the partnership project… Being part of a research project has made me feel that maybe I need to try something new… it has motivated me to change things up, and be willing to say that what I have been doing could be done a different way.

All in all, guided by an image of a global inquiry community rooted ultimately in her childhood memory of water and her father’s water legacy, Ann found the energy and inspiration to expand and sustain her rhythm of rebuilding a democratic cosmopolitan classroom community in a Canada-­ China Sister School reciprocal learning landscape. During this process, Ann orchestrated again and again her own growth of knowledge and experience in educating for citizenship within a local-global, West-East dynamic. Like water with a source, Ann continued to flow and grow to become a more globally oriented and informed citizenship educator through learning from and working with educators from the other side of the globe. Burning Fire: Researchers’ Support The imagery of flowing water generates a sense of temporality and change in the seemingly stationery mountainous landscape of the Chinese painting. It reminds me that change marks the reality of teachers’ lives and understanding. Not only is permanence impossible in a living organism in an interactive world, it is also undesirable, as re-enactments of old habits and a resistance to change may be detrimental to well-being (Conle, 1997).

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In addition to change, teachers’ lives and knowledge also reflects a continuity with a past, present, and future. Like the water in the Chinese painting that continually flows downward in abundance from its source, Ann’s knowledge of educating for citizenship developed and moved into the future between the local and the global, over time in the midst of tensions and challenges. Her knowledge evolved following the reconstruction of her community-building rhythm, collaborative learning ritual, and image of a global inquiry community. It was further propelled by her openness to collaboration and learning from the new, the excellent, and the different during each of her encounters with her Sister School partners. While experiencing the growth resulted from her collaboration with Minzhu educators, Ann also saw her interaction with university researchers as crucial to her growth trajectory. In an email to me Ann said that she learned as much from a narrative researcher like myself and others who supported her communication with Minzhu educators. She further wrote that even though a Minzhu teacher like Ma Laoshi has been a “catalyst for the water events” that took place in her classroom and was a “role model” for her, it was her collaboration with researchers that fuelled her fire for learning. Given my interest in better understanding the favourable conditions identified by Ann, I became curious to inquire further into her use of this “fire for learning” metaphor. In the previous “Flowing River” section, we saw how, among all the ideas she learned from Minzhu educators, the idea of water culture—given its local relevance and connection to her personal water culture inherited from her family—was most the influential and provided her with favourable conditions to reshape her knowledge to educate for citizenship. In this “Burning Fire” section, I examine Ann’s fire metaphor and ask: In what ways does a university researcher in general, and a narrative researcher in particular, fuel the fire in Ann’s learning and growth, especially around educating for citizenship in a Sister School reciprocal learning landscape? Ann’s account of her learning experiences in this context provides a few hints.  raduate Researchers as Bridge Builders G During her visit to Shanghai, Ann spoke about the benefits of welcoming graduate students into her classroom and allowing them to observe, participate in, and support her reciprocal learning partnerships. She pointed out that for years, she had been feeling depressed, lonely, and stagnant as a teacher because there was nobody at her school with whom she could

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collaborate and discuss education, and grow into a better teacher. Therefore, she felt elated when graduate researchers from the Canada-­ China partnership project approached her to express their intention to help her collaborate with teachers at Minzhu School. In fact, she felt that she finally had someone to talk to and collaborate with outside her school that could potentially spark new learning. Said Ann: Finally, I had someone to talk to about education and about what I’m doing. Through [Yishin] I was able to reach out to more people from Minzhu. I was involved in math collaboration with Feng Laoshi. And then I got involved in environmental education through talking with Yishin and others at Minzhu.

Commenting on graduate researchers’ roles in connecting her with Minzhu educators and sustaining her partnership connections during difficult times, Ann remarked: [Yishin] does a lot of background work for me, sharing my classroom stories with Minzhu and in supporting me… Minzhu teachers know so much about what I do because of the notes and stories she had shared with them. She helps keep the communication that has started, and the partnership that we have formed. Because so often we start, and we are together, and we are strong, but next week we are all tired, and we go back, and the partnership stops.

Elaborating further on my role in her Sister School partnership, Ann added: [My partnership with Minzhu School] started off more slowly. And then when Yishin became or made that bridge… she really helped kick start that partnership. At the beginning, I didn’t feel the need to make any direct connection [with Minzhu partners] because I figured we could do everything electronically through emails. So Yishin became that direct physical connection between me and Minzhu teachers, and that Sister School connection went from being something that I thought about, maybe once a month or every other week when a Skype meeting or something came up, to something that became part of my everyday routine work in the school. She and I were constantly thinking about what we were sharing [with Minzhu School] and how that could connect to my own learning as well as my inquiry-based learning goals for my students. [The partnership] became part of my program. It’s become as common as taking the daily attendance. It’s just something that I am doing all the time.

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Ann eventually managed to communicate directly with her Shanghai colleagues on social media after a year of receiving communication support from participating graduate researchers.4 However, her initial reliance on them as her point of contact was necessary and paved the way for inter-­ dependent collaborative relationships between her and the university research team, which she regarded as beneficial for her learning and growth. Based on Ann’s remarks, the two roles I played in her classroom seem to have led her to see graduate researchers as supportive collaborators contributing to her learning. The first role involved helping her build bridges with her Sister School partners, to a point where the partnership became a seamless element of her teaching program. The second role involved keeping her Sister School partnership strong and steady, especially when teaching life got exhausting, gloomy, and overwhelming. In Ann’s view, these two graduate researcher roles created favourable conditions that supported her partnership building, growth, and learning in the Sister School reciprocal learning setting. To understand further how these roles helped fuel the fire in Ann’s learning, I have to trace them back to the narrative inquiry framework and methods that underlie my roles as well as this study.  aking Sister School Partnerships Part of Ann’s Daily Life: Narrative M Thinking, Becoming a Good Guest, Bridge-Building As explained in Chap. 2, my narrative inquiry methodological framework built upon Xu and Connelly’s (2010) years of scholarly work in school-­based narrative inquiry. It also engages the Confucian idea of a good guest in working with and understanding teachers’ experiences. The latter requires that a researcher thinks practically and narratively of teachers’ experiences, asks appropriate questions with a Way-seeking mentality, and learns to work with teachers’ experiences without imposing judgements and unrealistic agendas. Through conducting myself not so much as an expert but as a good guest in the life spaces of Sister School teachers, I learned to become much more attuned to teachers’ curriculum-making knowledge and rhythm (Khoo, 2017). This attunement helped create trust and bonding between researchers and teachers as well as collaborative inquiry spaces for a teacher like Ann to think aloud about her curriculum-­making practices, to bounce ideas and 4  Graduate researchers working with Bay Street and Minzhu teachers have been mentored by the Canada-China Partnership project directors and trained in school-based narrative inquiry methodology and methods (Xu & Connelly, 2010).

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make curriculum with, and to retell and relive her stories to live by. It also allowed the research team to build more effective cross-cultural bridges between partnering Sister School teachers. For instance, in my collaboration with Ann, I used my fluency in Mandarin to help her arrange and conduct online meetings and converse virtually with the Mandarin-speaking Minzhu educators. With my increased familiarity with Ann, I was able to act more effectively as her person-of-contact during her discussions and development of curriculum projects with Minzhu educators, particularly at the beginning of new joint projects. I was also able to translate curriculum terms more accurately across cultures which further helped build stronger ties between Ann and her Shanghai colleagues. I further worked with my research team leaders—Dr. Connelly, Dr. Bu—and  other graduate researchers from the University of Toronto and Shanghai East China Normal University to document and share Ann’s curriculum-making experiences (e.g., her experience of remaking her math curriculum using the tangram-art curriculum materials, her experience turning her classroom into a water science centre) with Minzhu educators, and vice versa, using narrative field note methods. The need to build bridges and convey an authentic sense of Ann’s curriculum making experiences to her Shanghai partners, including aspects of her life and work as a Toronto inner-city schoolteacher, was a great motivator for me to conduct regular participation-observation in Ann’s classroom, and to reflect with her on what stories should be told and shared with teachers in Shanghai. It is this constant researcher presence in Ann’s classroom and the reflective documentation of and inquiry into her curriculum-­ making experiences for reciprocal-learning purposes that gradually allowed the Sister School partnership to be a regular feature of Ann’s teaching horizon. By being immersed in a globally networked classroom environment on a daily basis with graduate students playing the roles of a “bridge,” Ann found ongoing collaborative learning opportunities (outside her stagnant workplace) for professional growth and learning. Some teachers might see the routine presence of a graduate researcher in their classroom disrupting. However, from Ann’s perspective, our presence in her classroom was key to her learning in the project. S ustaining Sister School Reciprocal Learning Partnerships: Nurturing Storytelling Spaces Among Teachers and Researchers As my bonding with Ann grew stronger over time, a safe and non-­ hierarchical storytelling/narrative inquiry space began forming between us. Within this space, both Ann and I were willing to be vulnerable in the

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presence of each other, acknowledge our fallibility, work to improve our weaknesses, envision the impossible, and respect each other’s space and needs. For Ann, she would listen to my stories of learning to conduct narrative inquiry and of building bridges between her and Minzhu teachers; she would give me advice, encouragement, and inspiration along the way. For myself, I would attend to Ann’s telling and retelling, living and reliving of her curriculum-making stories, especially those related to the Sister School project, and ask clarifying questions or make suggestions when necessary. I seldom asked Ann any direct questions about her conceptual understanding of citizenship or citizenship education because I found this questioning not entirely helpful in contributing to her citizenship curriculum-­making. Instead, I preferred to ask questions that help appreciate and contribute to Ann’s growth as a citizen-teacher, such as who she is (her deepest aspirations and learning interests with her Sister School partners, her curriculum-making rhythm and principles, her water lessons and thinking behind each lesson, her political perspectives), where she comes from (her family narrative, her past teaching experiences), and where she is going (her long-range teaching plan, her Sister School partnership goals, ways in which I can support her to better fulfil her personal-­ professional), and so on. These questions provided an opportunity for Ann to retell and relive her stories to live by. The more I attended to Ann’s curriculum-making stories in the evolving Sister School reciprocal learning landscape, the more I noticed Ann’s increased interest in and commitment to educating for the global dimension of citizenship. In fact, Ann’s conceptions of educating for “global” citizenship exist not in the form of knowing this or that theory per se, but in a way that intertwined most vividly in her democratic and cosmopolitan classroom community-building rhythm, her narrative unity around water and science, her image of a “global inquiry community,” and her aspiration to grow continuously to inspire student learning. As a narrative inquirer who engages Schwab’s “the Practical” and the Confucian ritual of a good guest in educational inquiries, my inclination was to understand, share, and co-create further understandings with her from a cross-cultural researcher/bridge-builder standpoint. I avoided framing Ann’s evolving curriculum-making experience using concepts from the scholarly field of citizenship education as I feared that doing so would limit her independent, creative, and imaginative development. Rather, my focus was to nurture a collaborative storytelling space between Ann and the research team, and between Ann and her Sister School partners, so that her citizenship

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education thinking and practice could become a subject of ongoing, collective inquiry in the context of multiple changing and shaping contextual forces. This process entailed working under various professional constraints while creating and sustaining enabling conditions that supported Ann to reconstruct her curriculum-making stories and knowledge of educating for the global dimension of citizenship in creative ways that are personally and professionally meaningful to her and her students. These enabling conditions include: watching and discussing environmental documentary films with Ann to find inspiration for her water projects; giving Ann a helping hand in her classroom or a listening ear during a difficult time so that she has extra energy to embark on the partnership; sharing external resources on global citizenship education with Ann without expecting her to read/use them; and exploring and maintaining virtual platforms that aid direct communication and development of joint water projects between Ann and her Sister School partners. All these conditions were nurtured experimentally through trial and error, close observations of Ann’s partnership, in collaboration with Shanghai research colleagues as well as Canada-China RLP project directors. They were intended either to reduce obstacles to Ann’s immediate citizenship curriculum-making situations, or to provide her with additional professional support and resources that would advance her citizenship curriculum making. In many ways, the collaborative storytelling space that arose between Ann and the Canada-China RLP research team reflects the characteristics of “sustaining spaces,” described by Clandinin et  al. (2009) as spaces where both researchers and teachers may act upon and live out those stories that reflect their changed knowing and what they stand for, to push back on institutional and socio-cultural narratives that push on them, and ultimately to relive new stories of themselves and education. Such spaces are sustaining for both parties because they are: relational spaces: spaces in which teachers and [researchers] can see and name relationships among teachers, children, families, subject matter, contexts, cultures, institutions and so on. They are temporal spaces: spaces engaged in over time and that understand lives as composed over time. They are spaces of imagination and playfulness, where we can imagine lives otherwise. They are spaces of world travelling: spaces where we can attend to our own and others’ lives with loving rather than arrogant perception (Lugones, 1987). They are spaces which acknowledge the multiplicity, sometimes contradictory plotlines, of our lives (Greene, 1995). They are storied spaces:

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spaces which allow for all of our stories, even the hard-to-tell conflicting stories we live as teachers and teacher educators (Huber & Clandinin, 2005). They are inquiry spaces: spaces where we can tell, inquire into, respond to, and imagine. They are sustaining spaces (Hollingsworth, 1994). (Clandinin et al., 2009, p. 152)

 uelling Ann’s Passion in Educating for Citizenship: Promoting F Reciprocal Story Sharing and Inquiries With the nurturing of a sustained storytelling space between Ann and the research team, Ann’s initial passion in forging collaborative reciprocal learning with her Minzhu peers was attended to, cared for, nurtured, and supported. Within 2 years, this passion managed to turn from a spark into a flame, that in turn ignited her students’ global citizenship learning through water science inquiries. I can still recall the intensely felt challenges and tensions that characterized the Bay Street-Minzhu Sister School landscape when I first met Ann. Constraints such as a lack of educators’ motivation in participating in the project, the prevalence of stereotypical assumptions among Sister School educators towards each other, an absence of strong leadership and administrative support towards the project (e.g., no released time for teachers to engage in international partnership work), and a general disinterest and disengagement from the school board were real, and hampered the development of friendships and relationships in both schools. Yet, like fire that brings warmth and brightness on a cold dark day, a sustaining storytelling space—being relational, imaginative, playful, caring, inclusive, non-hierarchical, narrative, and inquiry based—generated light in Ann’s stressful professional setting and provided hope during challenging Sister School situations. In this storytelling space, the research team listened closely to Ann’s stories to gain more nuanced and situated understandings of the life of a Canadian inner-city schoolteacher. Based on Ann’s lived and told stories, the research team tried to promote reciprocal story sharing and inquiries between Ann and her Sister School colleagues so that they could learn from each other’s cultural-historical narratives and work with each other’s curriculum making experiences. For instance, when the research team noticed the flame of Ann’s excitement upon her encounter with Minzhu’s water culture, we tried to fan it by documenting and sharing Ann’s water stories, hoping that these would in turn spark Minzhu teachers’ interests in sharing more stories about themselves and their school’s water curriculums, as well as developing a

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deeper reciprocal learning partnership with her. As it turns out, Ann’s stories were well received by Minzhu teachers who became interested to explore how Canadian educators conduct inquiry-based learning with their students. Like Ann who found ways to enrich her curriculum by learning from Minzhu’s water curriculum, its own teachers became observant and keen to explore Ann’s approach to inquiry-based learning through collaborating with her (Khoo, 2022). Over time, by observing how Minzhu educators put what they have learned from her into practice, Ann learned more about Chinese educators and culture, about Shanghai’s school system, about herself, and about teaching in general and in cross-­ cultural contexts. Ann understood that her curriculum-making stories could be documented and shared with Minzhu teachers, generating educational implications for Minzhu educators and students that would in turn have implications on her own teaching. This dynamic caused Ann to strive harder to perform her best in her curriculum-making and learn to become an exemplary teacher. And, since her knowledge to educate for citizenship was intertwined with her commitment to self-improvement and professional growth in the Sister School landscape, this reciprocity contributed somewhat to her reconstruction of her citizenship education knowledge. All in all, the bridge-building roles played by researchers, and the establishment of sustaining storytelling spaces between Ann and the research team, and between Ann and her Shanghai Sister School colleagues, directly and indirectly sparked the fire in Ann’s growth and learning to become a more experienced and knowledgeable globally oriented teacher. The stories shared and told reciprocally and collectively in these storytelling spaces allowed the research team to inquire more deeply into Ann’s knowledge as a teacher-citizen and to build stronger cross-cultural bridges accordingly. They also enabled teachers in both schools to explore and learn from each other’s school system, culture, and educational practices in a reciprocal learning community of inquiry. One interesting observation I noticed is that in order to sustain learning and growth in a Sister School reciprocal learning community, participating individuals must learn to come “closer and closer apart,” and “further and further together” (Hansen, 2011). In other words, becoming too similar to each other generates boredom in learning; conversely, insisting on differentiating oneself from another without the willingness to learn from and work with them can result in tension and a broken relationship (Khoo,

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2017). For Ann and her Sister School partners to share with and learn from each other as a community, they had to constantly reflect upon, rediscover, and establish their own unique educational knowledge and “differences” while maintaining a sense of closeness, collaboration, and solidarity. For all participating teachers, identifying and connecting with their cultural and historical origins and narratives enabled them to ground themselves locally in their own uniqueness, differences, and diversity, while fostering a sense of transnational and transcultural togetherness. Through promoting harmony without uniformity, this interdependent and collaborative reciprocal learning community acts like fire, lighting the way for Ann’s citizenship educational knowledge to flow as a river with passion and commitment, and with a sense of integrity, identity, and continuity. With the excitement of collaborative reciprocal learning burning brightly in the Sister School landscape, Ann was able to avoid a state of professional stagnancy. Researchers played a role in keeping this flame alive, ensuring that the “fireplace” of story-telling between participating teachers continued to benefit and motivate them, as well as teaching and learning in both Canadian and Chinese educational settings. Together, partnering university researchers and teachers in Canada and China supported each other to co-create new knowledge to educate for collaborative and reciprocal globally active citizens in diverse Chinese and Western educational contexts.

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CHAPTER 10

Conclusion

In previous chapters, I have engaged both Western and Chinese educational thinking to understand and narrate how a schoolteacher in Canada became a more globally oriented and informed citizenship educator, through telling and living, and retelling and reliving her stories of building a classroom community in a Canada-China inter-school reciprocal learning landscape. No matter how Ann’s citizenship educational experience and knowledge developed in the shifting inter-school landscape, it always came back to and rested on her personal rhythm of nurturing a democratic classroom community at the beginning of every school year. At the heart of her classroom community building efforts was her commitment to fostering cosmopolitan learners-citizens who are open to learning from and collaborating with others to address shared environmental concerns, especially water issues, be they local or global. She also came to see her collaboration with narrative researchers as crucial in fuelling her reciprocal interactions with Chinese educators as well as her aspiration to nurture environmentally conscious global citizens in the twenty-first century. Ann’s perspective is revealing as it implies that the way researchers conduct inquiries with teachers in intercultural inter-school partnership settings could create favourable professional learning conditions for the global dimension of teachers’ citizenship education knowledge to develop.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Khoo, Educating for Citizenship in a Canada-China Sister School Reciprocal Learning Partnership, Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18078-1_10

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Given that one of the primary intentions of this study is to explore how researchers may find more practical and productive ways of supporting Canadian teachers’ reciprocal learning interactions with Chinese educators to deepen their global citizenship education knowledge, in this final chapter, I provide several concluding remarks about my journey. I discuss my approaches to using narrative inquiry as a way to understand and support teachers in this context. I also point out how Canadian schools/ classrooms, through developing reciprocal learning partnerships with Chinese schools/classrooms with the support of narrative researchers, can become places where active and more globally oriented citizenship teaching and learning can potentially take place, and where teachers can learn to become globally competent teachers in a globalized, multicultural, and troubled world. I end this chapter with some final thoughts and questions for future inquiries.

Supporting Teachers’ Citizenship Professional Learning in a Canada-China Sister School Reciprocal Learning Partnership The Way (Dao 道) of Narrative Inquiry My study began by learning to build collaborative inquiries with Toronto-­ based teachers who expressed an interest in forging reciprocal learning ties with teachers in Shanghai and educating for global citizenship in the process. Having been influenced by Canada-China Reciprocal Learning Partnership (RLP) directors who are both experienced school-based narrative researchers (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; Xu & Connelly, 2010), I was interested in adopting a narrative inquiry framework in my work with teachers to see if it would be helpful and relevant to the Canada-China Sister School situation I found myself in. Learning from other narrative researchers who design and conduct narrative inquiry for the study of practical school-based settings, my own started in practice and was aimed at providing practical value to the schools/teachers participating in my study (Xu & Connelly, 2010). It foregrounds a narrative way of thinking about teachers’ experience, an understanding of teachers’ citizenship education knowledge as personal and practical, a Chinese Way-Seeking mentality in conducting research, and a Confucian way of being a good guest in teachers’ life spaces.

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As discussed in Chap. 2, narrative thinking prompts me to see teachers as knowledgeable “curriculum makers” who are constantly making citizenship curriculum based on their understandings of themselves, their subject matter, their students, and their educational, socio-cultural, and political contexts (Craig & Ross, 2008). Teachers’ knowledge of educating for citizenship is best understood narratively as it has a temporal dimension (i.e., past, present, and future), which is continually changing, and is characterized by teachers continuously interacting with their personal, social-cultural, political, and material environments (Dewey, 1938). As a narrative researcher in this reciprocal learning setting, my role was not to evaluate the teachers’ citizenship education knowledge against certain established theories or judge their ability to employ abstract theories or generate true beliefs. Rather, my purpose was to capture teachers’ work narratively in their own terms and proactively nurture conditions that allowed their underlying beliefs, values, morals, assumptions, and worldviews to be illuminated, convey meanings, and ultimately, to be useful to other teachers a world away. This process required that I stop worrying too much about collecting the right “data” from teachers to develop this or that theory. Instead, I participated in individual teachers’ life spaces as a good guest and seek out the appropriate path or Way to conduct narrative inquiry with them so that the collaborative inquiry process could engender additional meanings and growth to each teacher in their unique and particular Sister School setting. I did not try to change their knowledge or practices. Rather, I maintained a sense of flexibility, creativity, and openness; observed attentively and learned from teachers’ knowledge and practices; and engaged different Western and Chinese interpretive lenses, to promote reciprocal and collaborative partnerships in which all evolve, and through which all become more active agents in the understanding and practice of citizenship education within an West-East, local-global dynamic (Wilfong, 1994). These reciprocal and collaborative partnerships leave no one unchanged or unaffected as they are grounded in a unity of knowing and acting and a dissolution of researcher-teacher, theory-­ practice dichotomies (Hall & Ames, 1998). Bringing knowledge and practices developed in different cultural-historical and educational contexts, collaborating teachers and researchers gain invaluable access to one another’s perspectives within Canada-China partnership settings. The Canada-­ China Sister School platform is a place where all participants co-create new stories and knowledge around citizenship teaching-learning, and where teachers may expand their approach to educating for globally oriented citizenship in a complex, multicultural world.

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As illustrated in the narrative inquiry study of Ann’s curriculum making experience in Chaps. 4–8, and especially the discussions of her classroom and online/offline spaces where she engaged with Shanghai educators, I learned that challenges and constraints were part and parcel of her experience in this reciprocal learning landscape. Challenges that Ann and I encountered when exploring ways to progress engagement with her Shanghai peers include: an absence of school board and administrative support for the project, a lack of inclusive virtual platforms accessible to both English- and Mandarin-speaking teachers, teaching overload, a lack of released time for teachers to engage in international partnerships, and difficulties in engaging students with diverse cultural heritages and learning abilities to participate with students in Shanghai. These challenges suggest that even though the world is becoming more interconnected and interdependent, educational systems, infrastructures, and leaders in the West and in China remain isolated from each other (perhaps due to Cold War legacies) and lack the mechanisms and capacity for reciprocal learning and mutual collaboration. While Bay Street teachers may dwell in an increasingly globalizing professional landscape shaped by the Ontario Ministry of Education’s global competency discourse and by other transnational/transcultural immigration and forces, this does not automatically mean that they can immediately reorient themselves and their teaching to adapt to a changing professional, multicultural, and globalized context, even when explicitly informed by a Canada-China reciprocal learning partnership (Dewey, 1907; Narayan, 2016). In fact, even when populated by students with Chinese backgrounds, Bay Street School itself did not have the capacity to reap immediate educational benefits from its presence in a Canada-China Sister School reciprocal learning setting. These challenges help me understand the reality and complexity of making global citizenship curriculum in Canada-China Sister School settings. When researching with Ann in this context, I had to learn to let go of any idealized notion of global citizenship education and a romanticized picture of the transformational potential of schools and teachers (Estellés & Fischman, 2021). Instead of simply typifying socially and historically constructed identities and institutions, or holding tightly to certain theories around what global citizenship education should look like (Andreotti, 2015), both Ann and I found it more helpful to focus on building a reciprocal relationship together, and with educators and researchers in Shanghai, to co-create a reciprocal learning community that focuses on collaborative enquiries, interpretation and understandings of cross-cultural educational

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experiences. Similar to Ann’s classroom where diverse individuals were provided with equal opportunities to grow their cooperative intelligence and cosmopolitan sensibility, our community was centred around making sense and learning from each other’s personal and cultural history and participating in shared real-life educational activities. This West-East reciprocal learning community, when nurtured and sustained carefully by teachers and researchers committed to mutual growth and understanding, can provide inquiry-based professional learning conditions for a teacher like Ann to unleash her cultural imagination and collaborative capacity (Khoo, 2022). Further, it helped her to reconstruct her personal practical knowledge of educating for citizenship, and become more globally oriented and informed citizenship educator in a world divided by competitive nationalism, power politics, and ongoing West-East tensions. As Dewey (1927/2012) pointed out, becoming engaged members of a “Great Community” has never been more crucial in a globalizing world where technological advancements and accompanying new habits and social customs they engender could become quite detrimental to the communal basis of individual and group life. There is also a subsequent weakening of our capacity to systematically address problems arising from these indirect consequences (Campbell, 1998; Narayan, 2016). Based on my study, I have developed a few practical strategies that might help other educators/researchers who are interested in building a strong inter-school reciprocal learning community oriented towards collaborative inquiries among educators in Canada, China, and beyond. This community would also support educators’ efforts to become more globally oriented and informed in their daily citizenship curriculum making. The strategies presented below emerge out of a narrative inquiry standpoint and assume that a certain level of connection or linkage has already been initiated between schools or educators in Canada and China. Nurturing an Inter-School Reciprocal Learning Community: Some Practical Suggestions 1. Identify teachers who demonstrate cosmopolitan sensibilities There are always educators in every school who demonstrate a certain degree of cosmopolitan sensibility, i.e., an inclination to learn from the new and the unfamiliar, and an interest in ­collaborating with people who look, speak, and think differently from them. When

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time and resources are limited, it is wise to start building a CanadaChina inter-school community by working with open-­ minded, growth-oriented cosmopolitan educators, as they would be more likely to commit to an inter-school partnership and infuse it with a cosmopolitan outlook and a tendency for reciprocal learning and collaboration. Involving school administrators is extremely crucial but not always possible, as can be seen in my own study. Parental and community support can be helpful but not necessary at an initial stage. Given that the fundamental school relationship for students is with their teachers, the key feature of their daily classroom life (Ye, 2009), engaging teachers in the building of an inter-school community is key if this community is to hold great educational promise for the school and its students. 2. Establish cross-cultural inter-school bridges After identifying Canadian and Chinese teachers who have strong interests in inter-school collaboration and reciprocal learning, it is time to build cross-cultural bridges between the teachers by providing them with opportunities to communicate and interact with each other. Bridges can be built through accessible and convenient virtual platforms and, where possible, face-to-face encounters. Teachers who do not speak each other’s language will need a special kind of bridge builder—bilingual translator/interpreter—to help them with their cross-cultural communication. Ideally, these translators/interpreters should have a strong grasp of language that would not distort teachers’ meaning and messages when helping them communicate. They should also possess a familiarity with the cultural and practical curriculum-making contexts of the teachers, which can be developed by building a relationship with the teachers, participating in and observing their classrooms, and inquiring narratively into their lives and work as good guests and companions. Building bridges between principals is also crucial as a solid inter-­ school principal relationship can provide the administrative support needed by an inter-school reciprocal learning community. 3. Create storytelling spaces that spark a passion for reciprocal learning and collaborative inquiries Once inter-school bridges have been initiated, the next thing we want to do is to help spark teachers’ curiosity about learning from and collaborating with others. To this end, I suggest adopting a ­narrative way of thinking about teacher experience, being a good

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guest in teachers’ spaces, and engaging narrative methods in a practical manner, such as: a) inquiring into what motivates a teacher to participate in an inter-school partnership; b) making sure that teachers who demonstrate similar curriculum making goals, expertise, aspirations, and/or interests are in contact with each other; and c) establishing storytelling and narrative inquiry spaces between partnering teachers and within a teacher’s workplace, where they can inquire into each other’s personal-cultural-historical narrative and incorporate what they have learned into their daily curriculum making. Overall, the more partnering teachers from Canada and China share vulnerable stories of themselves, appreciate each other’s unique narratives, and value each other’s stories as an asset, the more they may be motivated to work together, learn from each other, innovate their curriculum, and improve as teachers. As this study shows, story-telling spaces built during this project, like the campfires that once allowed our ancestors to tell stories in the dark and solidify their connections to each other (Balter, 2014; Wiessner, 2014), had the power to transform a tentative Canada-­ China reciprocal-learning spark into fiery passion and commitment that deepened and sustained educators’ collaborations in constrained situations. As long as the teachers continue to share and inquire individually and socially, and develop creative capacity and imagination to learn from each other grounded in an expression and recognition of differences, they would be able to experience continuous personal-professional growth and a sense of interdependent solidarity that brings them closer and closer apart, and further and further together (Hansen, 2011). When a felt sense of growth, interdependence and solidarity persists, one can assume that a greater, more educative inter-school community has taken shape. Sister School educators demonstrated their ability to engage their highest moral, cooperative, and educational intelligence, in working towards shared goals, participating in shared activities, and co-creating shared educational meanings, much like siblings and relatives from the same family. 4. Work with teachers’ knowledge of educating for citizenship from its source Given that most teachers are tasked with cultivating global citizenship at the turn of the twenty-first century, teachers with the opportunity to participate in a Canada-China reciprocal learning

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partnership, will tend to see the partnership as a perfect platform to educate for citizenship at a more global level. If one attends carefully, narratively, and mindfully to these teachers’ knowledge of educating for citizenship without preconceived theoretical notions, one is likely to find that their understanding of “global” citizenship education is personal and practical, never abstract or theoretical; it embodies what they culturally and experientially know about themselves as citizen-teachers in both local and global contexts, and what they know about curriculum and teaching in their practical professional settings. If one enters further into these teachers’ life spaces and experiences their knowing in action, one will even see that their knowing exists in a narrative that includes images, rhythms, narrative unity, and metaphors. To support teachers, it is useful to inquire into their knowledge of educating for citizenship, while creating enabling conditions for them to further develop their knowledge, through reflection with other teachers and researchers residing in Canada-China interschool landscapes. In my experience, I found it especially helpful to engage in metaphorical thinking around water, and to think of teachers’ knowledge of educating for citizenship as a body of water that flows, twists, and turns but always continues to flow downwards, from its source. When teachers’ knowledge is disconnected from its source, their passion, creativity, and energy quickly dries up. However, when teachers’ knowledge connects with and flows from its source, it enriches all aspects of their curriculum—themselves, their students, the subject matter, the environment, and other people with whom they interact. Likening teachers’ citizenship education knowledge to water further reinforces the idea that this knowledge is essential to teachers’ ordinary daily lives. In particular, the image of a flowing body of water helps us see that nothing is fixed and that there is always space for teachers’ knowledge to flow, expand, and deepen. As water twists and turns yet continues to flow downward, we are reminded of the interactive, situated, localized, and principled nature of teacher citizenship education knowledge. That water with a source will continuously flow further helps us appreciate that different teachers carry with them different personal, cultural, and historical narratives of educating for citizenship and that it is important to provide opportunities for connecting with and reconstructing these narra-

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tives. Finally, knowing that water cannot exist on its own and needs to be counterbalanced with fire of passion, researchers can facilitate storytelling, sharing, and inquiry opportunities in ways that enable teachers to clarify and connect with the source of their knowledge. In this book, I have demonstrated how researchers can create inquiry-­ based opportunities that allowed teachers in Canada to explore the personal, cultural, and historical dimensions of their citizenship knowledge by working with teachers in China. This opportunity enables teachers to reexamine their identity, integrity, and passion, from a wider and perhaps alternative cultural perspective that can fuel their growth in educating for citizenship. As Parker Palmer (1997, 2010) once said, passionate teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher. Likewise, passionate citizenship teaching in a Canada-China inter-school setting necessarily comes from the identity and integrity of teachers as citizens in a diverse and interconnected world; it has to come from the heart, from a source, in an ever-widening, globalizing, challenging, and changing context. Classrooms as Spaces for Global Citizenship Professional Learning All the above-mentioned strategies can channel the method of narrative inquiry into a school-based educational/professional learning tool, which can be used to build an inter-school reciprocal learning community amongst teachers in Canada, China, and elsewhere. When this community is intentionally cultivated to support in-service teachers to develop their personal, cultural, and historical narrative of educating for citizenship amidst their daily classroom-curriculum making, it has the potential to transform classrooms into vibrant professional learning spaces where practicing teachers learn to educate for the global dimension of citizenship. In fact, in this study, we have seen how the progressively felt collaboration between Ann and her Shanghai colleagues, led her to build an increasingly communicative global inquiry community between her class and Minzhu students to nurture what she perceived to be a more authentic, collaborative, and environmentally aware “global” citizenship. The global dimension of Ann’s citizenship teaching reflects a cosmopolitan outlook demonstrated in its ability to “fuse reflective openness to new people, ideas, values and practices with reflective loyalty to local commitments and ways of life” (Hansen, 2013, p.  35). Moreover, it always includes, and builds upon, a locally/culturally rooted sense of citizenship, which was

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skilfully cultivated by Ann through daily democratic engagement with her students. It also builds on her own diverse classroom community, and her guiding her students to learn about and solve social and environmental issues at the local level. All this implies that when educators in different parts of the world come together to form reciprocal learning partnerships while being rooted in their local communities and professional settings, the kind of “global” citizenship education that takes shape does not oppose nor diminish students’ local, national, or cultural values and identities (Pike, 2000). The more a Canadian teacher like Ann cultivates democracy as a cultural way of life at the classroom level, the more democracy will manifest as “a way of life” between her students and Chinese students in a reciprocal-­ learning global classroom community (Narayan, 2016). In turn, educating for the global dimension of citizenship in this Canadian-Chinese inquiry community naturally demands, and reflects, Ann and her Sister School partners’ efforts to cultivating engaged students and citizens at the local level. Indeed, it was this need to nurture citizenship reflectively and creatively within a local-global and West-East dynamic that these teachers were able to expand their personal-practical knowledge to educate for different levels of citizenship. To educate students to be more globally oriented and informed, teachers in an international inter-school landscape have to first and foremost become collaborative and reciprocal learners, in addition to becoming active citizens both in the broader globalized and multicultural world, as well as in their local settings.

Final Thoughts Reciprocity, the idea of giving and taking and helping those who have helped you, has long been regarded in social sciences as a force that ties humans together through a web of obligations and interdependencies (Offer, 2012). A utilitarian perspective on reciprocity suggests that people or parties reciprocate because of the benefits they could receive by interacting with others, whereas a normative perspective argues that people reciprocate because they are impelled by moral obligations and sentiments to do so. Regardless of one’s perspective on reciprocity, most social scientists believe that it is crucial in the creation and maintenance of social ties and systems (Offer, 2012). When unbalanced exchanges happen—for example, giving too little or not at all in return—dependency, competition, rivalry, abuse, and exploitation could occur as a result (Offer, 2012).

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In the field of education, reciprocity plays an important role in creating and maintaining learning relationships and nurturing human growth. Reciprocal relationships can be observed among individuals and groups who engage in the mutual act of understanding, sharing with, and learning from each other. What is being exchanged in reciprocity is often not restricted to tangible assistance or objects but may take the form of knowledge of different sorts. Given that the expectation and obligation to reciprocate establishes a cycle of exchanges—which ties people together through a complex web of mutual dependencies that facilitate the emergence and maintenance of life and human bonding—one could assume that learning relationships that are based on reciprocity have strong potentials to generate powerful and creative learning. In the past 150 years however, reciprocity between Chinese and Western education witnessed a somewhat complex and strained history. While the modern Chinese educational system had had greater opportunities to learn from and experiment with Western educational patterns such as Montessori and American pragmatic educational philosophy against the backdrop of globalization (Deng, 2013; Hayhoe & Mundy, 2008), its learning from the West was mostly marked by a superficial and instrumental adoption of Western modernity alongside an over-simplistic appropriation of Chinese cultural heritages (Zhao & Deng, 2015). In fact, much of the Western learning in China was conducted out of fear and threat of colonial power and did not involve a contextual, coherent, and meaningful analysis and synthesis of modern Western/Judeo-Christian and Chinese Confucius and Daoist thought and narrative (Bai, 2013; Zhao, 2013). While Chinese educational learning from the West has been regarded as relatively superficial and lacking a deep understanding of the philosophical and historical trajectory of the Western worldview, Western educational learning from China was even more limited during most of the twentieth century (Zhao, 2013). This book demonstrated how collaborative reciprocity, when practiced and enacted by narrative researchers and teachers in a Canada-China inter-­ school partnership, can build a sense of community across West-East divides and provide teachers with rich opportunities to grow their personal practical knowledge of educating for citizenship—from the local to the global—in a multicultural world. In this community, teachers had an opportunity to connect with and share their best-loved self (Craig, 2020) in the presence of each other. They could narrate their teaching experience, authorize their own and others’ interpretations of situations,

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co-­construct new ways of knowing, and retell stories to live by (Craig 1995, 2011). They could also work on innovative joint projects, which allowed them to share and learn from the cultural and historical narrative underlying Western and Chinese societies while reconstructing their knowledge and practices of educating for citizenship in our time. As this book comes to an end, I once again reflect upon what my study means to the contemporary world, to the scholarly community, and to myself as an educator. For one thing, the world that we are living in today continues to witness the dominance of the European enlightenment project, alongside its emphasis on positivistic science, modernity, individualism, and rationalism, in all spheres of life. The globalized capitalist economy that has reached almost every corner of the world grows out of this Enlightenment project that has its origin in the West in the eighteenth century. Furthermore, the core values that underlie the rise of the modern West and its democratic politics: “liberty; equality; progress; the dignity of the individual; respect for privacy; government for, by, and of the people; and due process of law” (Tu, 1998, p.  44), are also indebted to the Enlightenment mentality (though they have been regularly presented as universal values in international area and introduced to/imposed on non-­ Western societies as the future of human community). Even modern schooling and higher education systems can find traces of Enlightenment thinking in their educational organization, curriculum, and structure (Wells et al., 1999; Tu, 1996). On one hand, as an educator and a scholar who has been educated in the West, I recognize the significant influences of the Enlightenment mentality, especially its liberating ideals, on my thinking, being, and doing. On the other hand, as a daughter of a Chinese family who holds differing ideas of self, personhood, nature, and society, and who has witnessed human and ecological suffering as well as material and cultural inequalities caused by excessive and exploitative pursuits of Enlightenment values like progress, scientism, and individual freedom, I am aware of the non-universality and limitation of the Enlightenment project and its inherent contradictions and flaws in non-Western societies. To help shape a kind of human flourishing that is more mutual and inclusive in our globalized context, I believe that educators can benefit from thinking holistically of yin and yang/water and fire, and find balance and reciprocity between the Enlightenment mentality and other humanizing visions and ways of being; not discarding the Enlightenment mentality in its entirety, but allowing those destructive dimensions of the Enlightenment mentality to be

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counteracted by other worldviews and to be healed and transformed in our daily life. This work cannot be actualized in abstract thinking. It requires an embodied, pragmatic, and relational notion of citizenship that practices cosmopolitanism from the ground-up, and that foregrounds a community of creative and caring individuals located in different/unfamiliar cultures, societies, and civilizations. Global citizens willing to learn reciprocally from each other’s diverse ways of being and knowing, resolving problems in the midst of differences and conflicts, working towards shared goals of personal, social, and ecological wellbeing, and co-creating new stories and new meanings for humanity and the world. Such a globally oriented citizenship education cannot remain an individual matter or achieved by a lone educator. It can never thrive on fixed assumptions, expectations, and understandings we have gained from established institutions. To reimagine global citizenship education otherwise, educators from different directions—West, East, North, South—and in different fields must go beyond the illusions that we are separated from one another and from the earth to find better ways to cooperate and engage our younger generations in recognizing our entanglement and complicity in harm, transforming systemic violence, and working with the limits of the planet (Andreotti, 2015). We have to work as one body, as a community to: deepen our learning of the current system’s limits and harmful tendencies as we dis-invest from its continuity while working within it and enabling different possibilities of existence and politics otherwise to emerge as we learn to ‘be’ differently together (Andreotti et al., 2019, p. 4).

This book represents my own humble steps to show how a group of researchers and teachers in Canada and China came together to form collaborative inquiry relationships, and subsequently a reciprocal learning community, where we learned to meaningfully relate to each other and prepare younger generations to protect the common good and live out a different sensibility of being human in our interconnected world. Our work of reimagining global citizenship teaching and learning will continue beyond the life of this study with each of us, in our ways, continuing to engage in reciprocal collaborations and group problem solving across complex and uncertain West-East differences. As the world continues to witness tension and competition between Chinese and the Anglophone worlds, the work of promoting ongoing reciprocity, open dialogues and collaboration becomes more crucial, if not more challenging. It is my

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hope that this book has demonstrated a practical path for educators and researchers to explore their own Way of educating for citizenship in a polarized West-East world. To end, I encourage readers to consider adopting the yin-yang metaphors of fire and water to re-story our shared story of inhabiting this beautiful planet: • Are my knowledge sources and those of my fellow human beings around the world flowing as rivers, benefitting all life on earth? • How can we, grounded in our strengths, differences, and uniqueness, co-create reciprocal learning relationships and communities in our global educational ecosystem to become each other’s fire in the darkness? • How can we work together to sustain rivers to flow and fires to burn through the night? I invite my fellow educators to join me in this contemplation and reflection.

References Andreotti, V. (2015). Global citizenship education otherwise: Pedagogical and theoretical insights. In A.  Abdi, L.  Shultz, & T.  Pillay (Eds.), Decolonizing global citizenship education (pp. 221–230). Sense Publishers. Andreotti, V., Stein, A., Suša, R., Č ajkova, T., d’Emilia, D., Jimmy, E., Calhoun, B., Amsler, S., Cardoso, C., Siwek, D., & Fay, K. (2019). Gesturing towards decolonial futures: Global citizenship otherwise study program. Retrieved from https://decolonialfuturesnet.files.wordpress.com/2019/05/decolonial-­ futures-­gce-­otherwise-­1.pdf. Balter, M. (2014). Ancient campfires led to the rise of storytelling. Retrieved from http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/09/ancient-­campfires-­led-­rise­storytelling. Bai, L. (2013). Practicality in curriculum building: A historical perspective on the mission of Chinese education. Frontiers of Education in China, 8(4), 518–539. Campbell, J. (1998). Dewey’s conception of community. In L. Hickman (Ed.), Reading Dewey: Interpretations for a postmodern generation (pp.  23–42). Indiana University Press. Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1990). Stories of experience and narrative inquiry. Educational Researcher, 19(5), 2–14.

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Craig, C.  J. (1995). Knowledge communities: A way of making sense of how beginning teachers come to know in their professional knowledge contexts. Curriculum Inquiry, 25(2), 151–175. Craig, C.  J. (2011). Narrative inquiry in teaching and teacher education. In J. Kitchen, D. C. Parker, & D. Pushor (Eds.), Narrative inquiries into curriculum making in teacher education (pp.  19–42). Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Craig, C.  J. (2020). Curriculum making, reciprocal learning, and the best-loved self. Palgrave Macmillan. Craig, C.  J., & Ross, V. (2008). Cultivating teachers as curriculum makers. In F.  M. Connelly (Ed.), The SAGE handbook of curriculum and instruction (pp. 282–305). SAGE Publications Limited. Deng, Z. (2013). On developing Chinese didactics: A perspective from the German Didactic tradition. Frontiers of Education in China, 8(4), 559–575. Dewey, J. (1907). The school and society: Being three lectures. University of Chicago Press. Dewey, J. (1938). Education and experience. Macmillan. Dewey, J. (1927/2012). The public and its problems: An essay in political inquiry. Edited and with an introduction by Melvin L. Pennsylvania State University Press. Estellés, M., & Fischman, G. E. (2021). Who needs global citizenship education? A review of the literature on teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 72(2), 223–236. Hall, D. L., & Ames, R. T. (1998). Thinking from the Han: Self, truth, and transcendence in Chinese and Western culture. SUNY Press. Hansen, D.  T. (2011). The teacher and the world: A study of cosmopolitanism as education. Routledge. Hansen, D.  T. (2013). Cosmopolitanism as a philosophy for life in our time. Encounters in Theory and History of Education, 14, 35–47. Hayhoe, R., & Mundy, K. (2008). Introduction to comparative and international education: Why study comparative education? In K.  Mundy, K.  Bickmore, R. Hayhoe, M. Madden, & K. Madjidi (Eds.), Comparative and international education: Issues for teachers (pp. 1–22). Marquis Book Printing Inc. Narayan, J. (2016). John Dewey: The global public and its problems. Oxford University Press. Khoo, Y. (2022). Becoming Globally Competent Through Inter-School Reciprocal Learning Partnerships: An Inquiry Into Canadian and Chinese Teachers’ Narratives. Journal of Teacher Education, 73(1), 110–122. Offer, S. (2012). The burden of reciprocity: Processes of exclusion and withdrawal from personal networks among low-income families. Current Sociology, 60(6), 788–805. Palmer, P.  J. (1997). The heart of a teacher identity and integrity in teaching. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 29(6), 14–21.

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Author Index1

A Allan, Sarah, 85, 151–156, 154n3, 165 Ames, Roger, v, 32, 151, 187 An, Liu, 46 B Banks, James, 20 C Clandinin, Jean, 15, 16, 18, 19, 23, 27–29, 36, 37, 47–50, 111, 160, 161, 164, 165, 170, 177, 178, 186 Confucius, 18, 152, 153, 153n2 Connelly, Michael, vi, vii, xv, 4–6, 8, 11, 15, 16, 18, 19, 23–29, 32,

1

36, 37, 44–50, 101, 102, 111, 131, 160, 161, 165, 174, 174n4, 186 D Davies, Ian, 4, 33, 34 Dewey, John, v, 16, 17, 29, 67, 82, 161, 187–189 Dienes, Barbara, 36, 37 E Estellés, Marta, 10, 188 F Falk, Richard, 21 Fischman, Gustavo, 10, 188

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Khoo, Educating for Citizenship in a Canada-China Sister School Reciprocal Learning Partnership, Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18078-1

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AUTHOR INDEX

H Hall, David, v, 32, 151, 187 Hansen, David, 86, 160, 165–167, 179, 191, 193 Heater, Derek, 22

S Schwab, Joseph, 5, 8, 19, 28, 35, 176 Shultz, Lynette, 110 Speedy, Jane, 28 Starkey, Hugh, 3, 4, 21

I Ivanhoe, Philip, 31, 142

T Tupper, Jennifer, 20, 34

K Kahne, Joseph, 20, 33, 34

W Westheimer, Joel, 20, 33, 34

M Mencius, 153, 153n2

X Xu, Shijing, vi, vii, xv, 4–6, 8, 11, 15, 16, 24–29, 32, 36, 44, 45, 131, 174, 174n4, 186

O Osler, Audrey, 3, 4, 21, 33 R Riessman, Catherine, 28

Y Yang, Qian, 46 Ye, Lan, 6, 44, 45, 138, 147, 190 Yuhua, Bu, 46

Subject Index1

B Bridge-building, xii, 174–175, 179 C Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 67 Citizenship, xv–xvii, 3–4, 7–12, 15–37, 43, 47–52, 67, 68, 83–111, 113–129, 131–143, 147–180, 185–198 Citizenship curriculum, 4, 9, 25, 33–35, 43, 49, 57–70, 111, 158, 164, 168, 171, 177, 187–189 Citizenship education, xvi, xvii, 4–11, 16, 18–23, 33–37, 47–50, 66–68, 109–111, 135, 143, 155, 160, 161, 163–165, 176–177, 179, 185–187, 192, 197

1

Citizenship teaching, xvi, 8–12, 17, 21, 30, 33, 35, 50, 67, 142, 151, 164, 186, 193, 197 Community, vi, vii, xii, xvi, xvii, 3, 7, 10, 19–21, 23, 34, 45, 51, 52, 57–59, 63, 64, 67–70, 74, 77–81, 84–86, 89, 93, 96, 100, 102, 104, 105, 108–111, 113, 115–129, 131–135, 138–143, 148, 151, 156, 157, 160–172, 176, 179, 180, 185, 188–198 Confucianism, xii, xvi, 31, 80, 152–154, 174, 176, 186 Curriculum making, 4, 8, 9, 12, 18–19, 28, 29, 32, 35, 37, 47–52, 57–68, 73, 81, 88, 89, 102, 110, 111, 115, 119, 123, 142, 150, 155–180, 188, 190, 191

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 Y. Khoo, Educating for Citizenship in a Canada-China Sister School Reciprocal Learning Partnership, Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18078-1

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SUBJECT INDEX

D Daoism, 154 E East China Normal University, 26, 46, 70, 136, 138 Enlightenment, 196 G Global citizenship, 7, 10–12, 22, 50, 52, 108, 110, 119, 142, 158, 159, 167, 168, 176, 178, 186, 188, 191, 193–194, 197 Global citizenship education (GCE), 7, 10, 11, 22, 50, 110, 170, 177, 186, 188, 192, 194, 197 Global inquiry community, 109–111, 125–129, 132, 140–143, 168–172, 176, 193 Good/ideal guest, xii, 16, 30–32, 37, 48, 78, 80, 123, 142, 174–176, 186, 187, 190, 191 H Harmony, xii, 18, 31, 50, 148, 154, 155, 180 Huangpu River, 84, 85, 90 L Life space, 23, 24, 30, 31, 80, 123, 174, 186, 187, 192 M Mental health, 64–67, 73 Metaphor fire, 150, 151, 172, 198

music, 50 water, xii, 150, 151, 161, 192, 198 N Narrative inquiry, xii, 10–12, 15–37, 43, 48, 49, 151, 174–176, 174n4, 186–189, 191, 193 New Basic Education program, 6, 44, 135 O Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), xv, 25 Ontario Ministry of Education, 87, 88, 157, 158, 188 Ontario Science and Technology curriculum, 88 P Professional learning, 9, 12, 27, 69, 70, 163, 164, 185–194 R Reciprocal learning, v, vii, viii, xvi, xvii, 5, 7–9, 11, 15, 16, 24–26, 30, 32, 44–46, 49, 51, 52, 68, 70, 78, 80, 81, 83–111, 113, 123, 126, 129, 131–140, 142, 143, 149, 150, 159, 160, 164, 165, 169, 170, 174, 175, 178–180, 186–194, 197, 198 Reciprocal learning landscape, 4–10, 23–24, 29, 33, 37, 43–52, 150, 155, 164, 169, 171, 172, 176, 185, 188 Reciprocal learning partnership (RLP), 4–10, 15, 23–27, 30–32, 45–47,

  SUBJECT INDEX 

49, 51, 52, 80–82, 89, 92, 101, 103, 105, 109, 110, 120, 123, 131–143, 149, 150, 159, 164, 167, 172, 175–179, 186–194 S Skype, xi, 73–81, 114, 140, 141, 173 Stories, xvii, 4, 9, 12, 17, 19, 26, 27, 29, 31, 36, 47–52, 61, 63, 64, 69, 70, 73, 81–82, 89, 96, 97, 109–111, 113, 132–141, 143, 149, 151, 153, 157, 159, 162, 164, 173, 175–180, 185, 187, 191, 196–198 T Teacher experience, 16–17, 29, 35, 48, 190 Teacher knowledge, 10, 17–18, 33, 37, 151 Teacher learning, 24–25, 70

205

U University of Toronto, xi, xv, 15, 25, 26, 46, 70, 106, 136, 138, 139, 164 W Water culture, xii, 52, 83–102, 105, 107–110, 113, 164–168, 172, 178 Water curriculum, 166, 178, 179 Way-seeking, 15–37, 48, 174, 186 WeChat, 128, 128n2, 129 Y Yangtze China Water School Project, 84 Yin and yang, xii, 162, 196 Z Zhongyong, 154, 155