Research on Nick Wang

Crash Course on How to Interview People Effectively

Wed, 23 Jul 2014 08:35:00 +0000

On Sunday, Bobby from YES Network met up with Mabo, Mulberry Tree Unschool’s head teacher, to give him a crash course on how to interview people effectively. The reason for this was because Mabo will be going on a grand tour of kindergartens and children’s museums in the US. Mabo used to work on the frontline at the kindergartens and Children’s Museum in San Francisco. Now, he has been living in Hong Kong for four years, and Hong Kong is lagging completely behind in Early Childhood Education. He’s looking forward to this trip to catch up with the latest and bring the knowledge back to Hong Kong.

(Thanks Bobby and The Yes Network for helping us on such short notice!)

I’ve always felt so lucky to have found Mabo! Before he joined us at Mulberry Tree, we were in a bit of chaos as I wasn’t formally trained as an Early Childhood Educator. I asked Mabo if he could volunteer to help us, first with the environment. The questions he asked, the answers he gave, the things he brought in and his interactions with children, everything told me that he is the real deal - he is passionate about Reggio and ECE, so he lives and breathes it instead of treating it as a job.

Being such a top quality, passionate Early Childhood Educator, yet aren’t able to put his skills to good use in Hong Kong until we came along… that speaks a lot about the state of education in Hong Kong, doesn’t it?

Here’s a list of the establishments Mabo will be visiting, if you know anyone at these places, or any other Reggio-inspired organizations in the North East, please do connect us. Thank you.

Wheelock College

Lesly University

Hampshire College Early Learning Center

Eric Carle Museum

Garden Gate Child Development Center

MacDonald Montessori School

Boston Children’s Museum

Expert Interview - Meeco Wong

Tue, 29 Apr 2014 20:44:00 +0000

“I’m a lucky mommy, my daughter was accepted into St. X, one of the most sought after kindergartens! In K.1, I just let her play, I didn’t sign her up to any after school activities or tutor schools. It was OK, but now in K.2, her classmates can WRITE, in English, a story! They can do additions, 2 digits with 1 digit! And multiplications!! I have no choice but to push my daughter too, otherwise, come interview time, she may lose everything…”

Last Wednesday, we met up with Meeco Wong, a local teacher with 9 years of experience teaching at both local and international kindergartens. She is Sarah’s teaching partner and when we heard from Sarah about how even though she knows early childhood development, the importance of free play and attachment, she “had no choice” but to push her daughter at a competitive local kindergarten, we knew we must interview her to understand what may be a very common conundrum that parents face in Hong Kong.

Meeco is a young mother of two, she claimed that she had a horrible childhood, (she didn’t elaborate and I didn’t want to press on) but she really loves children and she wanted to become a mother one day. Because of that, she studied Early Childhood Education and became a kindergarten teacher.

We were very impressed by her answers to our questions, she showed a high level of professionalism at her profession - observing both parents and children and the interactions between them, acknowledging the parents’ concerns while demonstrating how to respect children, forming a close bond with them and trusting them to discover their own knowledge.

During our weekly team meeting yesterday, Soren, Mrinalini and I discussed our “Top 3 take-aways” for this interview. Two of the most profound take-away were:

“As a kindergarten teacher, I can’t change much in the education system. I can’t even change my school. But what I can change is how I treat my own children.”

“The education system is not helping my daughter to become the full person that she can be. My husband and I are the ones who’re helping her.”

What’s the role of the education system? What’s the point of sending our children to it if it doesn’t help our children learn? How can we change this system so that it can truly nurture children into capable human beings? We think we’re beginning to see the leverage points within this system that can bring about the changes the society needs!

Secondary Research Report: Developing School-based Curriculum in HK Kindergartens: Insights, Challenges & Solutions by Dr. Hui Li

Sun, 21 Jul 2013 12:00:00 +0000

In order to better understand Hong Kong’s early childhood education system, we started to do secondary research, which means reading existing research others had done, based on some questions we want to find out. Some of my questions are:

What are parents doing with their young children?
What options do parents have?
What attributes do parents value or feel it’s important for the 0-3 age group?
What do parents hope to get out of the playgroups / activities?
How much are they spending?
How early do parents start taking their children to playgroups / activities?
Who is the primary caregiver? (Domestic helper? Grandparents? Parents?)
How many have used daycare services? How often?
What is their perceived current situation Vs. what’s their ideal, wishful world?

I just finished reading Dr. Li Hui’s paper: “Developing School-based Curriculum in Hong Kong Kindergartens”, here are some excerpts and my take aways.

“Kindergarten principals and teachers are stuck between the Education Bureau and the parents. The Education Bureau follows the new SBC policies, they say schools are teach too much and should lower homework volume. Parents say the opposite! The role of policy makers and parents has reversed.”

“Many HK kindergartens had tried some ‘Reggio Emilia Activities’, but encountered problems. Teachers described how the activities are supposed to be done in a way, but they can’t seem to make the right ‘flavor’. One must take into account of cultural differences when importing western ideas. Heidi Laylin(?) cautioned American Early Childhood Educators to learn and research the Reggio Emilia Approach (REA) but don’t blindly copy as most American kindergartens don’t have the right conditions. Li & Wong (2001) pointed out, HK is not suitable for the REA as HK’s Early Childhood Education conditions are much worse than the US.”

“HK Kindergartens’ environment do not reach China’s requirements. Mainland Chinese government has many standards (minimize space, teacher qualifications) that are higher than HK. HK’s ‘high land prices policies’ have caused great harm to Early Childhood Education.”

Teacher qualifications is low. HK Early Childhood Education teachers typically have lower professional and academic qualifications than Beijing and Shanghai’s (Li & Rao, 2000)

Problems found in school-based curricular:

97.1% of principals think their curriculum could cater for children’s needs. 35% teachers disagree.

Too much content to cover within very limited time (29.4%)
Teaching focused on academic achievement, irrelevant to children’s daily experiences (23.5%)
Curricular were not develop mentally appropriate (17.6%)
Curriculum could not cater for individual variations (11.8%)
Their kindergartens lacked curriculum and teaching resources (5.9%)
Teacher-student ratio was very low (5.9%)
Teachers not able to satisfy high-demanding parents when developing school-based curriculum (5.9%)

Difficulties encountered in SBCD

Principals (78%) and teachers (75%) reported they encountered difficulties in preparing teaching plans:

Their curriculum couldn’t match with parental needs (29%, 21%)
Teaching resources were insufficient or mismatched (27%, 60%)
Daily time for learning and teaching were not sufficient or mis-arranged (27%, 39%)
Teachers’ qualifications were not enough to develop SBC (26%, 17%)
Teacher-student ratio very low (13%, 11%)
School management didn’t allow teachers to develop curriculum (7%, 16%)
Confined by environmental constraints (0, 2.8%)
They couldn’t properly handle linkages and differences between the curricular for different age groups (0, 1.4%)

Insights of the reality of SBCD in HK Kindergartens

Li’s study found teacher’s qualification was main factor influencing SBCD, which is consistent with Zhou’s (2004) studies.

Li’s study found 4 major barriers for SBCD in HK kindergartens:

Lack of curriculum experts and their guidance
short of resources for curriculum development
under-qualified teachers
overlook on SBCD by school management which, again, are identical with findings in Zhou’s (2004) Shanghai study.

The big gap between the reality and educational authority’s ideals about SBCD reflects the policy-makers are idealistic in nature and have no idea about the operational difficulties of implementing SBC in HK / Shanghai.

Balancing teacher-directed and child-centered approaches

NAEYC and High/Scope have advocated the child-centered approach since 1980’s. HK and Mainland China have followed this direction to fight against traditional teacher-directed approach since 1990’s (Li & Li, 2004).

Effective teacher training made almost all early childhood educators accepted the so-called “child-centered approach” in their teaching beliefs. However, their daily practice in classroom is still “teacher-directed”.

Reflections - Keeping Myself on Track

In my questions, I had identified parents as one of the main stakeholders in the system. While Li’s research is on what schools are doing for the children and doesn’t directly answer my questions, we can still see indirectly how parents and the greater socio environment had impacted the schools, particularly the curricular. Based on this indirect evidence, I believe that parents are not aware of what’s truly good & important for young children, and are pushing for academic excellence too much, too early. Further problem discovery is needed for “parents stakeholder” in our user research phase later.

As for the research itself, one thing most of the respondents and Dr. Li himself repeatedly iterate is the low level of teacher qualifications. This reflects several interesting observations:

Early childhood educators are undervalued, underpaid and general disrespected.
Typical Chinese mentality - low self-esteem, low self-worth, often think they’re “not good enough”.
How do teachers overcome the fact that they themselves lack a good, creative early childhood education? (Assuming they grew up in Hong Kong.)
Is further education and certifications the right way to improve teacher “qualifications”?