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Teaching Public Administration As a Fulbright Scholar In China:Analysis and Reflectionswhich met once a week from 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. The classroom was equippedwith a computer that offered PowerPoint, Internet access, and a projector. Oncea student started the system to get past the all-Chinese-language screens, I wasable to function pretty much as I would at home. Desks and other amenitieswere similar to those in U.S. classrooms.While Chinese students typically study English starting in sixth grade, and areexpected to be able to understand lectures in English, the dean realized that theymight have some difficulty, and assigned a junior faculty member to assist me inthe classroom, and to help translate as needed. This teaching assistant, Dr. LIWenzhao, encouraged me to speak slowly, and then translated most of what Isaid for the first few lectures. After that he answered questions in Chinese whenthe students did not understand my explanation. By the middle of the semester,he determined that the students understood me well enough so that translationwas not needed.Dr. Li was more than just a teaching assistant. His job for the semester was tohelp me out. He did everything from meeting us at the airport, helping us buycell phones, to taking us out to lunch or dinner periodically throughout ourstay. Universities that participate in the Fulbright program are required to have aliaison, but in most cases it is an administrative staff person from theinternational affairs office. I was fortunate to be able to work with someonefrom my academic department. As a result, Dr. Li and I initiated a jointresearch project that we hope to continue to pursue.Teaching Program EvaluationU.S. courses in Program Evaluation often require students to perform studiesfor real-world clients. Based on my correspondence before arriving in China, itbecame clear that this was not a realistic expectation here. First of all, whileresearch design and analysis is a required part of the MPA curriculum, mystudents had not yet taken it. Therefore, a significant portion of the coursenecessarily introduced topics of research design and data collection before gettingto specific issues of their application in a program evaluation. More importantly, Iwas told that it would be extremely difficult for students to gain access to publicand nonprofit organizations where they could conduct evaluations. Finally,because the students were carrying such a heavy course load, the available time forany specific class assignment was much less than we would expect in the U.S.For this course, there were two main, graded assignments. The first was abrief critique of an outcome- or impact-evaluation of an existing program foundon the Internet — in either English or Chinese. The second assignment was thedevelopment of a proposal to evaluate a program. This assignment wasdeveloped in two parts: (1) a description of the program, again located on theInternet, and including the student’s specification of measurable objectives, and(2) a detailed research design and implementation plan. Each of theseJournal of Public Affairs Education 337
Teaching Public Administration As a Fulbright Scholar In China:Analysis and Reflectionsassignments posed significant challenges to these first-year MPA students, duemostly to their general discomfort with working in the English language. Inaddition, the notion that in their future careers they might be either conductinga program evaluation or making decisions based on evaluation findings seemedto make them uncomfortable. Since most of the students had come directlyfrom undergraduate school, it was difficult for them to relate the tools of publicadministration to the activities and responsibilities of the professional world.Other Fulbright lecturers also noticed that Chinese education is very theoretical,and that students generally do not know how to address real problems in the“real world.”After my semester of teaching in China, I thought it would help me gaininsight into my experience to review the literature on cross-cultural teaching.The following section uses the academic literature as a framework to examinethe process of teaching public administration in contemporary China.CROSS-CULTURAL TEACHING LITERATUREResearchers in education and educational psychology have exploreddifferences in teaching Western and Chinese students. Studying in English is asignificant challenge for all non-English-speaking students. Huang (2004)identified specific problem areas with professors’ use of English for Chinesestudents. Another important aspect of Western-style teaching is the use of casestudies. Thompson (2000) examined the use of cases in teaching Chinese MBAstudents. Finally, Watkins and Biggs (1996) conducted a meta-analysis toexamine American and Chinese views of what makes a good teacher or a goodstudent, conceptions of teaching, use of group work, and styles of questioning.Following a brief summary of each of these aspects of teaching, descriptiveexamples from my experience are used to examine the differences betweenteaching public administration to first-semester graduate students in China andthose in the U.S. In addition, for each area I summarize lessons on Americanteaching, as developed by my Chinese teaching assistant, Dr. Li. The dean ofthe School of Public Administration, Dr. DONG Keyong, asked Dr. Li to sharehis thoughts about my teaching methods and style with the faculty of theschool. His “Eight Lessons on American Teaching Style” are listed in Table 1and referred to in the analysis below. (See Table 1.)MY TEACHING EXPERIENCE VIS-À-VIS RESEARCH ON TEACHING IN CHINA1. Chinese Students’ English and Academic ListeningAccording to Huang (2004), there are six areas of English speech that make itdifficult for Chinese students to understand professors. They include rapidspeech, a lack of clear pronunciation, long and complex sentences, colloquialand slang expressions, a lack of clear definitions, and the use of discourse338 Journal of Public Affairs Education
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