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Teaching Public Administration As a Fulbright Scholar In China:Analysis and ReflectionsTable 1.Eight Lessons on American Teaching StyleLesson 1Lesson 2Lesson 3Lesson 4Lesson 5Lesson 6Lesson 7Lesson 8The whole teaching process and course design are planned in advance.Students are made aware of the whole syllabus in the first session, whicharranges the whole process of the course. It is just like a contract between theteacher and students.The reading materials and essays are very rich and provide much informationfor students. They are divided into two parts, the textbook and essays [articles].The course exercises and essays are very useful for improving the ability ofstudents. Students are encouraged to use the tools and methods learned for thesolution of actual problems.Pay attention to the case study and case analysis. In the everyday classes, manyconcrete cases were provided for students. Also, the students are stimulated tocriticize the case themselves.Academic honesty is required in the whole class and plagiarizing is forbiddencompletely.Be generous with encouragement, inspiration, and praise of students.Be confident in the process of teaching and enjoy the experience of contact withstudents.American professors earn high salaries and enjoy good welfare [quality of life].markers or transitions. While Huang’s (2004) analysis was based on Chinesestudents in U.S. classrooms, it is likely that these issues would be even moreproblematic in China, where the students are less familiar with listening tospoken English.Despite years of studying the language, first-semester MPA students havesignificant difficulty in understanding spoken English. Most had taken only oneEnglish course taught by a native speaker. I made every effort to address each ofthe items identified by Huang (2004). For example, during the first class, Idistributed small yellow flags for students to wave if I was going too fast. Thisgot a good laugh, but students didn’t use it as a tool. I also asked students tobring to each class session a word from the reading that they didn’t understand.Since they were accustomed to using a dictionary, only a few took advantage ofthis opportunity. Since spoken English goes by so quickly, it is difficult forstudents to interrupt and ask for a definition. However, highlighting technicalterms on PowerPoint slides helped facilitate explanation and discussion.Despite my efforts, it was extremely difficult to know what students did ordid not understand. Colloquial expressions were particularly problematic.Toward the end of the semester, one brave student asked what I meant when Iused my index and middle finger in bending motions, when I demonstrated aphrase that was in quotation marks. I had been unconsciously using this gesture,and undoubtedly several others all semester, and the students had no idea what Imeant. Even terms we take for granted in the U.S. could cause problems. In myhealth policy class it took me some time to realize that the students did notJournal of Public Affairs Education 339
Teaching Public Administration As a Fulbright Scholar In China:Analysis and Reflectionsunderstand the concept of “insurance.” Because they don’t own cars or homes,and health care is provided by the government, they have had no need topurchase insurance. As a result, I added a module to introduce the basic idea ofinsurance as shared risk.My experience in trying to communicate to non-native English speakershelped make me more sensitive to the clarity of my presentation style when Ireturned to the U.S. If I had stayed in China for a second semester, I think Iwould have been able to significantly improve students’ understanding byfurther slowing down my speech, and by providing more detailed explanationsof even minor points and terms throughout the course.E-mail was extremely helpful as a tool to communicate with students. Therewas a listserv of all of the students in my class that I used regularly. After eachsession, I sent a message detailing what was expected for the next class, andoffered specific guidance on what to look for in the readings. These messagesoften generated e-mail-based dialogue during the week that helped students stayon track with course requirements and expectations.2. Teaching with CasesCases are widely used in U.S. graduate-level education. Thompson (2000)explored whether cases were appropriate for Chinese MBA students, and foundthat cases that were recent, decisional, and about well-known organizationswere “unequivocally considered highly important in a generally good MBAcourse” (p.109).My MPA students were very receptive to case materials. I intentionallyselected a very basic textbook on Program Evaluation so I could supplement itwith articles and cases that could be accessed through the Internet. For eachtopic in Program Evaluation, I initially assigned a chapter in the textbook andtwo short case studies. The cases were based on reports or articles in areas ofdevelopment, education, and health. Valuable case materials were located on theInternet from the Asian Development Bank, U.S. Agency for InternationalDevelopment (USAID), UNESCO, the World Bank, and the World HealthOrganization. I also used a report from the China Daily as a case example ofdata presentation.While the students were able to navigate the Internet in English to find materialrequired for course assignments, it seemed that they were not generally expectedto do this. Typical Chinese classes appeared to be textbook-based, withoutsignificant supplementation with articles or case materials. Dr. Li noted this in oneof his lessons to the faculty of the School of Public Administration: “The readingmaterials and essays are very rich and provide much information to students. Theyare divided into two parts, the textbook and essays [articles and cases].”In order for the students to understand the role and methods of evaluationused in each case, it was first necessary to spend significant time describing the340 Journal of Public Affairs Education
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