By Amelea Ng and Xiaoyue Dai
In the February 2025 SI newsletter, our team shared the story of the One Village One Preschool Project. We shared unique elements of our design and delivery of a professional development series for pre-service teachers in rural China. Today, we will share what our research team has begun to learn from our partnership!
Recap: What’s the Project About?
Briefly, our work is part of a larger national initiative in China called One Village One Preschool (OVOP), expanding early education to China's most remote, rural communities. The joint team from Harvard Graduate School of Education and Chinese University of Hong Kong are designing and evaluating professional development for pre-service and in-service teachers. We aim to prepare pre-service rural educators in China as they enter their professions.
Our Approach: Focusing on Simple, Meaningful Interactions
Traditionally, pre-service Early Childhood educators’ academic preparation included lectures on developmental theories and pedagogical practices. Our intervention focused on one critical but rarely used learning material - actual video recordings of the simple, but meaningful interactions between adults and children from the OVOP schools.
Traditional professional development courses would often use exemplary material from schools in big cities like Beijing or Shanghai. Often, the content was delivered through a top-down approach and delivered by model teachers from well-resourced setting. In well-decorated classrooms and with beaming smiles, these “exemplary” teachers upheld the standard of a “perfect teacher.” Our prior field research suggested that such Professional Development content was disconnected from rural teachers' realities.
Recap: What’s the Project About?
Briefly, our work is part of a larger national initiative in China called One Village One Preschool (OVOP), expanding early education to China's most remote, rural communities. The joint team from Harvard Graduate School of Education and Chinese University of Hong Kong are designing and evaluating professional development for pre-service and in-service teachers. We aim to prepare pre-service rural educators in China as they enter their professions.
Our Approach: Focusing on Simple, Meaningful Interactions
Traditionally, pre-service Early Childhood educators’ academic preparation included lectures on developmental theories and pedagogical practices. Our intervention focused on one critical but rarely used learning material - actual video recordings of the simple, but meaningful interactions between adults and children from the OVOP schools.
Traditional professional development courses would often use exemplary material from schools in big cities like Beijing or Shanghai. Often, the content was delivered through a top-down approach and delivered by model teachers from well-resourced setting. In well-decorated classrooms and with beaming smiles, these “exemplary” teachers upheld the standard of a “perfect teacher.” Our prior field research suggested that such Professional Development content was disconnected from rural teachers' realities.
In contrast, the One Village One Preschool project seeks to transform this top-down approach to teacher training. By using OVOP videos with the SI tool, we sought to provide a strength-based training to emphasize that – for both in-service and pre-service teachers - who you are and where you come from is not your weakness, but it can be your greatest strength in the classroom. We focus on the resources and strengths of teachers in real, rural environments.
For example, a preschool teacher might ask a child to act out an animal or guide them through a routine everyday activity, like pretending to be a crab during read-aloud (example footage illustrated by our alum Stephanie Chiang below). These small interactions, though simple, show how teachers build everyday relationships with their students in ways that match the local culture and context.
For example, a preschool teacher might ask a child to act out an animal or guide them through a routine everyday activity, like pretending to be a crab during read-aloud (example footage illustrated by our alum Stephanie Chiang below). These small interactions, though simple, show how teachers build everyday relationships with their students in ways that match the local culture and context.
[In this image, the teacher interacts with a group of children who sit in a semi-circle during reading class in an OVOP preschool. There is a story displayed on the board and the teacher turns to speak to the children to bring up a character in the story. “Now...who has come around again?” In the image, you can see the students shifting and glancing. Speech bubbles show that she says, “The little crab’s hands are like this. Aren’t the claws...”, and “Won’t they be like this, crawling? The little crab?” If you were to look at this image again and again, you might savor the little meaningful interactions that build incrementally, in their overall relationship with the story and with the teacher.]
Short clips such as these were fundamental to our research design, as students watched these clips over and over again to discuss: What did we notice? What did this make us think of? The Simple Interactions Tool guides these observations and discussions.
In this design, we focused on pre-service teachers’ sense of professional identity, understanding of classroom relationships, and appreciation for these small, meaningful moments. In our research analysis, we assess all of these dimensions of their learning.
What We’re Learning So Far
With our data, we want to know: What was the students’ experience of the intervention? How did they feel about the training compared to the traditional teaching methods they’ve experienced? And ultimately, does this approach empower them in developing relationships with children and/or their peers?
Here’s what we know so far:
In this design, we focused on pre-service teachers’ sense of professional identity, understanding of classroom relationships, and appreciation for these small, meaningful moments. In our research analysis, we assess all of these dimensions of their learning.
What We’re Learning So Far
With our data, we want to know: What was the students’ experience of the intervention? How did they feel about the training compared to the traditional teaching methods they’ve experienced? And ultimately, does this approach empower them in developing relationships with children and/or their peers?
Here’s what we know so far:
- Students mentioned that they were able to engage, respond, and collaborate in an interactive, constructivist class that is focused on observing simple, human interactions.
- Students mentioned that they challenged their own perspectives about teaching and learning while watching OVOP footage with the Simple Interactions Tool.
- Students in recordings and interviews showed an eagerness to connect and build relationships in class with peers.
- Students recalled class moments when their own relationships and identity were shared, such as an introduction activity where they shared the meaning of their name, or a developmental relationship that had an impact on their lives.
- Students were able to integrate language from the Simple Interactions tool into their own observations about teaching and learning.
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Years from now, what will be the true impact of a changed mind? In the long term, the team plans to gather extra rounds of data to track students who took part in our intervention. This data will measure any change in students’ beliefs toward teaching and to see if the message of the workshops stayed with them during, and after, their in-field internships. Their responses will help our team understand the long-term impact of the intervention.
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