Sample of the Study Research site:

In this research, a classroom environment of a mainstream middle school served as the research site. It is a full-day school, meaning the students attend school from seven in the morning to five in the evening, Monday through Friday.

Before choosing this particular research site, three middle schools in the same level with similar educational quality were initially included as research sites. All of the schools were listed as model schools in the city, which have good facilities and high quality teachers, most of whom are model teachers, and they are supposed to be the pioneers of the New Curriculum Reform; this fact helps me in choosing these schools for the purpose of observing the current state of teacher-student rapport in the middle school classroom.

Desensitization Field Work Data Analysis

Research Techniques Employed:  Observation  Interviews Identification of subjects and approval from relevant agencies

99 School A was then selected as the final research site, based on the fact that I observed some form of teacher-student rapport which is highly advocated by the New Curriculum Reform existing in some of the classrooms, as well as the attempt to employ more dialogue in the classroom. The New Curriculum Reform advocated that ―teacher interacts with students actively, guide students to explore and learn in practice, respect student‟s personality, pay attention to individual differences, meet the different needs of students, create an educational environment which can guide students to participate actively, stimulate the enthusiasm of students, foster student‟s attitude and ability of mastering and learning knowledge‖ (Ministry of Education of China, 2001, p. 4). Furthermore, compared with the other two model schools, the principal of school A was quite concerned about building positive teacher-student rapport which is an important part of implementing the New Curriculum Reform from theory into practice; school A especially organizes and provides a lot of training for teachers in response to the New Curriculum Reform. Aside from the regular training during school holidays and every Wednesday evening (5:30pm – 7:30 pm), the principal also sends teachers to other model schools in other cities, even overseas.

100 Detailed here is brief information on the school:

School A, which was founded in 1989, is a middle school affiliated with J University. School A has 96 classes, more than 8000 students and over 300 teachers. The school established an educational net amongst the school, family and community in order to build connection and cooperation of educational power. School A emphasizes social practice; thus, every student will experience life of the countryside, visiting Beijing (the capital of China), visiting Beijing University and Qinghua University to widen their field of vision. One unique characteristic of this school is the multi-level teaching that was started in 1997. Students can choose classrooms according to their own level on subjects of English and Mathematics, and it is adjusted every one or two months. Currently, this school has a good relationship with about 20 famous middle schools in China, and keeps a friendly relationship with several schools and colleges overseas; such as River Valley High School in Singapore, Vancouver College of Canada and so on. The school principal emphasizes teacher training. In recent years the

principal has sent teachers overseas to visit other schools for training in order to promote different understanding and knowledge regarding healthy teaching practices.

101

Participants: Students:

Given that the research was carried out in a middle school classroom, the participants consisted of the teachers and students from a model class of second grade. The students are aged around 13. The middle school level was chosen because the age of the students places them in the formal operational stage according to Piaget‘s developmental theory.

Regarding aspects of language, middle school students‘ language continues to develop in subtle but important ways. They add a wide variety of abstract words to their vocabulary and can define them easily and accurately. Formal operations permit middle school students to become masters of irony and sarcasm (Berk, 1998). Their ability to move beyond the literal meaning of words and the grammatical structure of speech becomes more complex. Thus, they already have the ability to dialogue with teachers.

Also, students in the model class (sample class of this research study) were selected through a mathematics exam before they entered this school. Thus they were believed to possess comparatively high level of abstract and logic abilities.

Teachers:

Three teachers of the sample class were chosen. They were the Chinese teacher, history teacher and biology teacher. Before collecting data, I informally but purposely visited the sample school to observe the three teachers who were recommended by the principal of the sample school. There were a lot of dialogue between teacher and students going on in three teachers‘ classes, which provided rich information for this research study.

102 Only in the biology teacher‘s class did I capture a lot of deep dialogue. In Chinese and history class, most of the dialogue was shallow dialogue. But this fact on the other side provided me an angle of view of what makes teacher have only shallow dialogue with students, in other words, what might be the problems hindering teachers from

implementing deep dialogue with students.

The three participant teachers were purposively chosen also because the principal of the sample school believed they were in different phases of implementing dialogue in their classes.

Thus those attributes of teacher-student rapport represented through classroom dialogue would contribute to the big picture – the status of teacher-student rapport in a middle school classroom.

Background Information of Teachers

Listed in Table 3.2 is information on these three teachers. In order to protect the privacy of the teachers, their names have been coded. Thus, in this research Chinese teacher, history teacher and biology teacher were coded as teacher A, teacher B and teacher C.

103 Table 3.2

Teachers‟ Information

Name Position Subject Gender Age teacher A Chinese teacher Chinese Female 30s teacher B History teacher History Female 30s teacher C Biology teacher

Vice-principal

Biology Female 40s

Teacher A – the Chinese teacher of the sample school, is a model teacher of Changchun City and Jilin Province. She won the special prize in the national teaching competition in 2010.

Teacher B – the history teacher of the sample school, is a model teacher of Changchun City and Jilin Province; she is the first batch of education and teaching expert-steering group of history subject; judge of evaluating excellent classroom teaching in primary and secondary school; member of proposition group of history subject for high school entrance exam; member of compiling teaching materials of PEP ―history‖ (PEP means People Education Press); team leader in proposition group of history subject in 2009 high school entrance exam; she had also participated in compiling examination instruction for the high school entrance exam for many years.

Teacher C, also the vice principal of the sample school, is a special-grade teacher. She is a well-known scholar in the field of biology teaching and the vice chairman of the Biology Teaching Association of Changchun city. She participated in compiling the PEP New Curriculum standard high school experimental textbook. She was hired as the

104 national New Curriculum standard textbook of biology subject (middle school and high school) training mission specialist, and trains model teachers nationwide. She was hired as a part-time professor and supervisor for master degree students by the Northeast Normal University, and is a visiting professor in Changchun Normal College. She always gives speeches in seminars to college students on career planning and provides teaching skill training for teachers in other provinces. She often leads teachers of this sample school to visit middle schools in the United States of America.