Being Taught to Learn Together: An Ethnographic Study of the Curriculum in Two Chinese Kindergartens

This paper reports the findings of a pilot study which adopted an ethnographic approach to investigate the cultural features of the Chinese kindergarten curriculum by means of "semi-participant" observations, semi-structured interviews, daily conversations and open-ended questionnaires in two Chinese kindergartens. The paper first introduces the debate over teaching and learning in the early years in Western contexts. It then demonstrates that the curriculum in Chinese kindergartens is mainly implemented by means of teachers' formal collective teaching. Children seem to be taught to learn; their spontaneous learning interests are welcomed but seldom developed in depth. The preference among teachers for this formal collective teaching, coupled with their perception that this teaching is required in their particular situations, creates a tension between teaching and children's learning. The shift in parents' views of education, from an over-emphasis on children's knowledge-based study to support for children's harmonious overall development, also contributes to this tension.