Adaptation of Western Pedagogy in Chinese Higher Education: A Case Study of Project-Based Learning

Abstract

Recent decades have witnessed increasing attempts from higher education institutions (HEIs) worldwide, including those in China, to see to cultivation of both learner hard skills like cognitive knowledge (Vogler et al., 2018) and soft skills like teamwork, effective communication and networking skills (Ragusa et al., 2022). The latter are however hard to achieve via the entrenched, didactic form of instruction (Alorda et al., 2011).

Amid the pressing need for rising beyond the long-standing, traditional teacher-centredness in Chinese higher education (HE), a set of western pedagogies have been deemed favourable by some Chinese HE scholars, for instance Project-based-learning (PjBL) (e.g., Chen & Yang, 2019; Zhang & Ma, 2023) which features learner autonomy, constructive investigations, collaboration, communication and self-directed learning within authentic practices (Kokotsaki et al., 2016) and has attracted attention in Chinese universities. The scarcity of PjBL-relevant literature domestically is justification for more empirical work to appreciate the implementation of PjBL across multiple institutional, departmental and classroom contexts in China.

This thesis presents an analysis of two qualitative case studies of two lecturers’ undertaking PjBL as a module pedagogy at two HEIs in southwestern China. In light of the Chinese HE context, the study utilises the perspectives of complexity theory and cultural scripts for teaching, to understand the complexity of lecturers’ experimentation with PjBL and the surrounding context, guided by an interpretive, non-participatory approach. The methods of data collection include the researcher’s weekly observations of the two modules featuring PjBL and other modules within the same department, examination of documents of departmental/institutional policies and regulations relating to teaching and learning activities and semi-structured interviews with the lecturers, their managers and members from the same module group/team, over a longitudinal time frame.

The findings indicate that the lecturers’ adaptation of PjBL are subject to their educational beliefs and the cultures of their situated context, further dividable into classroom, departmental, and institutional levels. Their education beliefs present a complex, co-adaptive system nested within other broader, macro systems. Also, their beliefs as a system comprises different interactive components, which complicate the nature of their belief systems and affect their subsequent practices with PjBL on the ground. The use of PjBL in Chinese HE by the lecturers is characterised by an ongoing set of epistemological conflicts and choices between learner-centredness, experiential learning as advocated by PjBL, and teacher-centric instruction prevalent in Chinese HE. As a result, the lecturers, at the forefront of pedagogic innovation, resort to an ‘eclectic approach’ featuring both given tenets of PjBL and that of traditional, didactic instruction. By shedding empirical light on the complexity inherent in pedagogical choices/practices of lecturers, who, as active agents reconcile a given western pedagogy with the local context, this thesis generates implications concerning pedagogic innovation in Chinese HE.