Table Of ContentLi Jilin
The Theory and
Practice for Children’s
Contextualized
Learning of Their
First Language
Translated by Yi Jin
’
The Theory and Practice for Children s
Contextualized Learning of Their First Language
Li Jilin
The Theory and Practice
’
for Children s Contextualized
Learning of Their First
Language
Translated by Yi Jin
123
LiJilin
TheJiangsu Institute ofSituation Education
Nantong,Jiangsu Province
China
TranslatedbyYiJin,AssociateProfessor,InstituteofCurriculumandPedagogy,Facultyof
Education, Beijing NormalUniversity, Beijing, China,Email: [email protected]
ISBN978-3-662-55602-3 ISBN978-3-662-55604-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-662-55604-7
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Foreword
Children’slearningusuallystartedfrom learning native language.Nativelanguage
wasnotonlyinstrumentthatchildrenneededtograsptocommunicatewithothers,
but also enriched children’s intelligence and spiritual world. Ms. Li Jilin’s study
was about contextualized teaching of native language. In order to fulfill the
objectives of Chinese classes to make students get knowledge, competence, and
intellectual development, she included or created specific environments or atmo-
spheres according to teaching content to inspire students’ enthusiasm to learn,
arouse their emotional experiences, help them accept new knowledge and skills
quickly and effectively in pleasant teaching atmosphere, and enhance harmonious
and all-round psychological development.
The traditional Chinese teaching strengthened explanation and analysis of the
content of the textbooks and remembering concepts and knowledge. Students’
learningwasmostlyseparatedfromtherealsituationoflife,justaswhatwassaidin
ancient time: ‘Both ears were shut to what goes on outside the window, while the
whole mind was concentrated on the sages’ books.’ Contextualized teaching made
attempts to break the shackles of traditional Chinese teaching by paving a road to
mix together the abstract with the concrete, intuition with rationality, and emotion
withcognition.Everyone’sdevelopmentwasanoutcomeofinteractionsamongthe
nature, the society, and the inner potentials. The contexts that teacher Li Jilin
proposedincludedspecificemotionalfeelingsabouttheouterworldratherthanthe
environment itself, and settings and atmospheres that students could directly
observe and experience, which provided a more realistic condition for interactions
between the outer and the inner world.
Incontextualized teaching, optimizedcontextswereappliedto provide students
rich information and materials for learning, encourage them to connect knowledge
and skills with experiences, actively inquire and construct knowledge, think
divergently,andmakeuseofknowledgeflexiblytoresolvepracticalproblems.The
optimized contexts not only inspired interest and motivation to learn, but also
enhanceddevelopmentofbeautifulemotions,makingstudentslearntotreatothers,
themselves,andtheenvironmentappropriatelythroughempathy,andthencultivate
positive attitude toward life and enrich spiritual world. The context in
v
vi Foreword
contextualized teaching was combination of the emotional environment, the cog-
nitive environment, and the behavioral environment, etc., which was beneficial to
students’ all-round development as well as personal development.
Itwasprovedbypracticesofmanyyearsthatcontextualizedteachingwasanew
type of view of Chinese teaching by which good teaching atmospheres could be
created, teaching effect and learning quality could be improved, so that it was
highly valued by many educators.
In2014atthefirstnationalawardsforteachingachievementinbasiceducation,
Teacher Li Jilin’s Practical Exploration and Theoretic Research on Contextualized
Educationgottheonlyspecialpersonalaward,whichwasapraiseandhonorforher
engagementinthisresearchformanyyears.Butinmyopinion,itwasmorevalued
that the general significance of contextualized education was widely recognized as
much more than a teaching approach in Chinese teaching.
Thegeneralobjectivesofeducationshouldbeaddressedinthefirstplaceofeach
subjectteachingandmergedintotheprocessesofsubjectteaching.Contextualized
teaching embodied the educational purpose for cultivating whole personality by
reflecting both uniqueness of the subject of Chinese and the generality of all sub-
jects. Teacher Li Jilin’s study was overall, revealing rules and ways for children’s
joyful and effective learning in optimized contexts from diverse perspectives. She
proposed the theory of law of children’s emotional and thinking development,
creatively combined emotional activities with cognitive ones, and constructed the
contextualized Chinese learning paradigm linking emotion and cognition and with
high teaching effects. The basic principles and models of contextualized education
had distinctive characteristics, and there were many original researches having
important values to substantially promote children’s healthy development and
increase the educational quality. In this sense, contextualized education was a
model of integration of theory and practice.
Particularly,thespiritsreflectedinherinnovationmightencouragemorepeople
to devote themselves to innovative practices. At the beginning, contextualized
education was a teaching reform in a subject in a primary school, but the educa-
tional ideas, philosophies, and approaches embodied had made wide impact to
promote improvement of educational ideas, philosophies, and approaches and
provided valuable experiences for other subjects and even education of the whole
school.TeacherLiJilindrewamagnificentscrollofeducationalreforminthenew
erabased onhersuccessful theoretic study andpractice, which ledthedirection of
educational reforms, and had important significance for guiding primary school
children’s Chinese learning and reforms and development of basic education.
It was especially valuable that Teacher Li Jilin summarized four elements of
children’slearningofChinese,i.e.,reality,beauty,emotion,andthinking,fromthe
artistic conception theory of classical Chinese literary theory. She creatively made
useoftheclassictheoryinmodernprimaryschooleducation,constructingthebasic
theory and curriculum model of contextualized education by combining it with
modern educational theories such as brain science and science of learning and
integrating ancient theories with modern ones, and oriental theories with the
Western ones. It was a perfect integration of humanity spirits and scientific spirits,
Foreword vii
and of the theory and the practice. While inheriting the excellent educational tra-
dition of China, it challenged the disadvantages of Chinese traditional education.
Reality—traditionaleducationtookestablishingtheauthorityofteachers,having
students obey to superior authorities and believe only in what the book says as a
prerequisite for the realization of educational tasks. The practice proved that the
dialectical relationship between subjectivity and objectivity in educational pro-
cesses proposed by contextualized education accorded with objective law. Li Jilin
urged that elementary education should give children a real world, taking them to
the nature and to experience social life, and presenting a lively and colorful world
that they could watch, listen to, touch, and dialogue with. Learning content was
linked to reality of life, and a benign interaction was formed between them. The
contextsselectedorreprocessedfromtheworldinwhichchildrengrewupprovided
the best learning environment making children experience and feel the real world,
which benefited their cognitive, emotional, and intellectual development. Starting
fromreality,thenrealitywasusedtoinspireintelligence,topursuethebeauty,and
to advocate kindness.
Beauty—aesthetic education was the aim of education; however, in many
schools it was viewed as an item of work rather than the aim of school education.
Aestheticeducation was a form offreedom,trying topurifyhuman mindssilently,
enrichpeople’sspiritualworld,andformaconsciousrationalpowerbypenetrating
such spirits into their inner world and life. The objectives of aesthetic education
were not only to foster and improve students’ receptivity, discernment, and cre-
ativity, but also to help students to set up beautiful ideals, and develop beautiful
virtues and sentiment. The fundamental purpose of aesthetic education was to
cultivate children’s mind and personality. There was no lack of beauty in life. In
fact, there was no lack of beauty in education but lack of teachers’ conscious,
purposeful, and skillful attempts of aesthetic education. Contextualized education
put objectives of aesthetic education into conscious educating activities, as an
education of creating beauty. Teacher Li Jilin deeply felt the infinite charm and
profoundsignificance of beauty for teachingand pointed outtohave beauty asthe
soilforcultivatingchildren’sinnovativespirits.Shebelievedthatbeautycouldplay
afullrangeofeducationalfunctions,enlighteningintelligence,cultivatingmorality,
uplifting the mind, and encouraging expression. She proposed to get rid of the
instrumental and abstract rational pressure of subject teaching with beauty, and in
the sense of beauty to naturally embody cultural connotation of native language
learning.Wheninstrumentalknowledgeandskillsweresetintothebeautifulartistic
andculturalcontexts,knowledgebecamelivelyandvivid,sothatchildren’syoung
minds were molded, spiritual growth was enhanced, and the vitality of young life
and rich beauty of the appearance were publicized.
Emotion—Teacher Li Jilin strengthened emotions as the lifeblood of contextu-
alizededucation.Whentheteacherguidedchildrentoenterthecontexts,emotional
links among students, teachers, and textbooks made them interact and influence
each other. She concluded one of the operational elements of contextualized cur-
riculum was taking emotion as a bond. Teacher Li Jilin thought highly the edu-
catingprocess,especiallystudents’psychologicalexperiencesduringtheeducating
viii Foreword
process. She thought that if students could maintain good attitudes and form
motivation to sustainable development through emotions and beauty, they could
develop a good foundation of attainment through the process of accumulation. It
was found that the optimized contexts could inspire children’s enthusiasm to form
subjective needs to be involved in learning activities, making them feel joys and
satisfactionandgetinfluencesinlearningactivities.Duetothefunctionofemotion,
students’ confidence was derived from the teacher’s care, expectation, and
encouragement and their intellectual activities such as thinking, imagination, and
memorywereinthebeststate,sothatcognitionandemotion,learningandtasting,
and education and culture were integrated in the curriculum.
Thinking—changes of the times and progress of the society made education
undertakingfacingmanynewmaladjustmentsandconfusions.Newresearchresults
wereemerging,whichmadeusrethinkaboutthepreviousknowledge.Theprocess
tocatchtheruleswasaccompaniedtheprocesstoexploretherules.TeacherLiJilin
started from the problems common in primary school classrooms such as boring,
rote memorization, and high scores with low abilities and tried to find the knot
of the matter, during which she felt the lack of educational theory. Based on
development of brain science research, she took thinking as the bonding and
breakthrough point for applying brain science research results in education, trying
to make teaching reforms return to the basic propositions of learning and thinking
from learning theories ignoring or parting from thinking. Her study was based on
basic intelligence theory of two kinds of thinking, especially strengthening rela-
tionshipbetweenimagerythinkingandeducation,whichbrokelimitationofsimply
stressing abstract thinking. In addition, she made inquiries in the internal connec-
tion mechanism between overall development of thinking and all-round develop-
mentoftheperson.Thinkingwasthecoreofcontextualizededucation,andTeacher
Li Jilin especially strengthened developing children’s potential intelligence and
thoughthighlytheparticularroleofinspiringimaginationfordevelopingchildren’s
creativity and power of understanding. Children were guided to combine obser-
vation with thinking and with imagination, and deepen emotional feelings by
imagination. Therefore, inspiring children’s imagination was an indispensable
effective way to develop children’s creativity.
Based on 60 years ofteaching experiencesas a Chinese teacher,Li Jilindeeply
felt,‘PrimaryschoolChineseclassshouldbecloselyrelatedtothecolorfullifeand
helpchildrenviewthelargeworld.Everytextwasproductoftheauthor’semotions
and intelligence, telling their love to the life, the career, and all other good things,
and their pursuit for noble spirits. The Chinese teacher in primary school should
bring children into the vivid contexts that the author described, experiencing and
feeling the emotions and ideas between the lines, and planting seeds of truth,
kindness,andbeautyinsimpleways.Undoubtedlyitwasanundertakingwithgreat
significance and when taking the undertaking, we became happy Chinese teachers
of primary schools.’
Educationwasascienceandanart,andmorelikeakindofpractice.TeacherLi
Jilinhadherwisdomofeducationstimulatedwithherscientificattainments,artistic
conservation,anddeeploveforchildren.Asshesaid,lovecouldproducewisdom.
Foreword ix
Children’s contextualized learning challenged the disadvantage of traditional edu-
cationinChina,lettingstudentsgrowuphappilyandcomprehensively,andleading
and promoting reforms of basic education.
I respect Teacher Li Jilin very much. She is a true educator. When facing
challenges of the times on education, she bravely made attempts to create and
answered questions people asked about education. There was hardly easy envi-
ronmentorsmoothroadfor educationalinnovationandresearch,sothat itwasthe
mostimportantthataneducatorhadfightingspiritsofnever-endingpursuitthatwas
differentfromordinarypeople.Thus,educatorswerenotflowersinthegreenhouse,
butpetrelsfightingwindandwave.TeacherLiJilin’slifeisaportrayalofthespirit
of educators!
The unique advantages of contextualized education benefited from her attempts
tocombinetheadvancedmoderneducationaltheorieswithChinesenationalculture
classics, which impressed contextualized education with mark ofChina. Due to its
values and significance, in December 2008 the International Forum of Li Jilin’s
SituationalEducationwasheld,wheneducationresearchersfromChina,USA,UK,
andJapandiscussedandcommunicatedwitheachother.Someofthemmentioned,
‘situational education was a school of educational thought with Chinese charac-
teristics and born and brought up on native soil of China.’ ‘It was a Chinese voice
responding to the international education reforms.’
Eight years later today, Teacher Li Jilin’s works are going to be translated into
English and distributed globally. I sincerely congratulate and hope Teacher Li
Jilin’sthoughtofcontextualizededucationcouldinfluencegenerations ofteachers,
makingeducationinChinahavemoreinnovationandcontributemoretoeducation
in the world.
Tao Xiping
Member of China National Education Advisory Committee
Honorary president of the World Federation of UNESCO
Honorary president of Beijing Federation of Social Science Circles
Preface: A Heart Song for Children
From contextualized teaching to contextualized education, and then to contextu-
alized curriculum, there were three steps of my thirty years exploration and
research.Someexpertsandteacherscalledthat‘trilogyofcontextualizededucation’
and suggested to publish a series of books entitled to that. When looking back the
long journey, I had lots of thoughts and feelings. There were enough thoughts to
expressthroughaseriesofbooks,andthepoeticandartistictitlemademehavethe
mind to try.
What was reflected in the ‘trilogy’ was my journey of constantly approaching
children, listening to their voices, and watching their growth with vitality and
energy. I had a chance to record wonderful musical notes from the child’s heart,
feeling thechild’semotionalwavesandsprays asamusician touching thebeloved
strings, and I made efforts to get the rhythm and guess the child’s dream and
longing. The colorful pictures, graceful songs, and sounds of laughter intoxicated
me, making me meditate alone for long time and carefully feel the beauty and
pureness. Many times, I drew nourishment of life and intelligence and finally saw
‘Flowers in the Field’ germinating, heard ‘the Song of the Lark’ sung, and looked
forward to ‘the Paradise of Beauty.’
Day after day and year after year, I was never tired or slack. The Trilogy of
ContextualizedEducationwasarecordofmyemotionalandintelligentinteractions
withchildrenthatIimmersedin,andthememoriesofmyinnerfeelings,reflections,
and harvests of crossing the three steps. When taking up the pen, I often felt that
children were in my heart and even had a literary impulse.
Professor Gao Wen from East China Normal University made warm praise of
contextualized education in my book The Poem of Situation Education:
Rooted in the context of Chinese cultural tradition,
Focus on THE CHILD.
For more than twenty years, completed the trilogy of situation education,
With the mark of ‘Constructed in China,’ go to the world.
xi
