By Amelea Ng and Xiaoyue Dai
What is the One Village, One Preschool (OVOP) Project? 🚀
“这个不太难。这个我也可以!” 💭
Translation: “This isn’t too hard for me. This, I can do too.”
How hard is teaching, really? What does it take to step into that first day and keep going year after year? These are questions in the minds of 18 and 19 year olds preparing to be early childhood educators for rural communities in China. Our project is part of a larger national initiative in China called “One Village One Preschool,” expanding early education to the most remote, rural communities. The joint team from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Chinese University of Hong Kong are designing and evaluating professional development for pre-service and in-service teachers.
When thinking through these questions, we started our professional development design sessions with the goal of helping students feel “这个不太难。这个我也可以.” As learning designers, we found ourselves asking: How can we help our students see teaching as full of possibility – not the possibility we imagine for them, but one they create for themselves in their future professions?
In traditional Chinese higher education, students are commonly supported by theory-based education and teaching examples from high-resource settings – sometimes called “model programs”. But the gap between theory (often limited in relevance for rural, low-income settings) and practice often presents challenges for new teachers entering rural, low-income schools. At institutions like Yunnan Technology Business University (YTBU), our partner on this project, Early Childhood Education (ECE) majors receive valuable lectures. In contrast, however, what role does practice-based education play, and can we imagine a more interactive course that can better support student teachers’ efficacy when they step into real classrooms? Can models of rural early education practices be the raw material to help students learn to teach in the same communities?
Rural Videos at the Heart of our Design: One Village, One Preschool
These were the questions our lab set out to explore, using videos from rural Chinese classrooms as the heart of our intervention and workshop sessions. The Simple Interactions (SI) Tool has been used for professional development with in-service teachers, but this was the first time it has been used with pre-service educators in China. We applied the SI tool, alongside rural OVOP school videos, to design a 13-session training for pre-service ECE teachers at Yunnan Technology Business University. The SI Tool became a provocation that we shared with these YTBU students. Together, we asked: what can we see when we slow down and zoom in on these One Village One Preschool schools? What do we notice?
Intervention Launch: The Big Kickoff! (from Xiaoyue, our Design Team Member and Sessions Facilitator)
In March 2024, after more than half a year of preparation, we brought Simple Interactions workshops, designed by our team of 6 to the Yunnan Technology and Business University (YTBU) in Yunnan, China for pre-service early childhood teachers in low-resource settings. We hoped to explore whether a relationship- and interaction-focused course with culturally relevant video material from actual rural Chinese preschools could impact the way that pre-service teachers see themselves and understand their work in this career. During a span of two weeks, we delivered a 13-session workshop to over 60 freshmen studying early childhood education at YTBU. Almost all students came from different rural parts of Yunnan province and will likely work in a local kindergarten after graduation. The workshops were broken down into three themes: introducing the four dimensions of SI, SI application in the classroom, and teacher value in the classroom.
When thinking through these questions, we started our professional development design sessions with the goal of helping students feel “这个不太难。这个我也可以.” As learning designers, we found ourselves asking: How can we help our students see teaching as full of possibility – not the possibility we imagine for them, but one they create for themselves in their future professions?
In traditional Chinese higher education, students are commonly supported by theory-based education and teaching examples from high-resource settings – sometimes called “model programs”. But the gap between theory (often limited in relevance for rural, low-income settings) and practice often presents challenges for new teachers entering rural, low-income schools. At institutions like Yunnan Technology Business University (YTBU), our partner on this project, Early Childhood Education (ECE) majors receive valuable lectures. In contrast, however, what role does practice-based education play, and can we imagine a more interactive course that can better support student teachers’ efficacy when they step into real classrooms? Can models of rural early education practices be the raw material to help students learn to teach in the same communities?
Rural Videos at the Heart of our Design: One Village, One Preschool
These were the questions our lab set out to explore, using videos from rural Chinese classrooms as the heart of our intervention and workshop sessions. The Simple Interactions (SI) Tool has been used for professional development with in-service teachers, but this was the first time it has been used with pre-service educators in China. We applied the SI tool, alongside rural OVOP school videos, to design a 13-session training for pre-service ECE teachers at Yunnan Technology Business University. The SI Tool became a provocation that we shared with these YTBU students. Together, we asked: what can we see when we slow down and zoom in on these One Village One Preschool schools? What do we notice?
Intervention Launch: The Big Kickoff! (from Xiaoyue, our Design Team Member and Sessions Facilitator)
In March 2024, after more than half a year of preparation, we brought Simple Interactions workshops, designed by our team of 6 to the Yunnan Technology and Business University (YTBU) in Yunnan, China for pre-service early childhood teachers in low-resource settings. We hoped to explore whether a relationship- and interaction-focused course with culturally relevant video material from actual rural Chinese preschools could impact the way that pre-service teachers see themselves and understand their work in this career. During a span of two weeks, we delivered a 13-session workshop to over 60 freshmen studying early childhood education at YTBU. Almost all students came from different rural parts of Yunnan province and will likely work in a local kindergarten after graduation. The workshops were broken down into three themes: introducing the four dimensions of SI, SI application in the classroom, and teacher value in the classroom.
Each session began with a quick check-in followed by a warmup game that tied to the main goal of the session. The design team went back and forth on these activities to make sure that there was a clear linkage between the game and learning. For example, when introducing the Opportunity to Grow dimension of SI, the warmup game was the cup song challenge. We used different levels of support (no support, verbal and graphic instruction, verbal cues) to demonstrate how to scaffold students’ learning. This was followed by a video-watching exercise to demonstrate the application of SI in real classroom settings. All of the videos were from rural kindergarten classrooms and were carefully chosen by the design team to demonstrate what interactions may look like in settings that are familiar to the students. After watching the videos, students would have in-depth discussions about what they saw in the videos and how the teachers in the videos use different SI dimensions to interact with their students. Each session concluded with a reflection session for students to digest their learning.
As a facilitator, I walked into the classroom expecting a more silent reception from learners, and I expected to use gentle nudges to encourage students to participate. I was told that Chinese students were used to sitting and listening in class, without the expectation of participating. The actual content delivery was way more interactive than I expected. There were frequent laughs and discussions during group activities. Students were also highly engaged in whole group share-outs. By session 5 or 6, I had heard every student’s voice in the class and was amazed by the depth and progression of their thinking. Some students shared with me after workshops that they had never experienced a class like this before and would love to have more classes like this in the future.
I only had the chance to spend two weeks with the students talking about SI. Even though all the designed content was delivered, I couldn’t stop wondering if we had a semester with them, or if the workshop schedule wasn’t compacted into a two-week period (students sometimes received four workshop sessions in one day, leaving them with less time to digest the material), how much more in-depth would their understanding of SI become? This marks students’ first encounter with Simple Interactions. Further interviews and analysis will continue to track the impact of these workshops on the students and how SI can translate into their work. We will share some of those results in the next newsletter!
As a facilitator, I walked into the classroom expecting a more silent reception from learners, and I expected to use gentle nudges to encourage students to participate. I was told that Chinese students were used to sitting and listening in class, without the expectation of participating. The actual content delivery was way more interactive than I expected. There were frequent laughs and discussions during group activities. Students were also highly engaged in whole group share-outs. By session 5 or 6, I had heard every student’s voice in the class and was amazed by the depth and progression of their thinking. Some students shared with me after workshops that they had never experienced a class like this before and would love to have more classes like this in the future.
I only had the chance to spend two weeks with the students talking about SI. Even though all the designed content was delivered, I couldn’t stop wondering if we had a semester with them, or if the workshop schedule wasn’t compacted into a two-week period (students sometimes received four workshop sessions in one day, leaving them with less time to digest the material), how much more in-depth would their understanding of SI become? This marks students’ first encounter with Simple Interactions. Further interviews and analysis will continue to track the impact of these workshops on the students and how SI can translate into their work. We will share some of those results in the next newsletter!