Reading a good book is like making a good friend.

 – A Sustainability Lens on the Paradox of Chinese Learners: Four Studies on Chinese Students’ Learning Concepts under Li’s “Virtue–Mind” Framework

 The California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory represents one of the first valid and reliable measures of a person’s critical thinking disposition.

–  A Look across Four Years at the Disposition toward Critical Thinking Among Undergraduate Students

Educationists describe cultural differences between the ways in which Chinese and Western students approach their studies. A group of researchers in China wanted to find out if Chinese students had a distinctly Eastern mindset and how that impacted their creativity and critical thinking. They concluded with advice for students on how to benefit from a mixed approach.

Their study is interesting and informative for a number of reasons. They set out clearly what the Chinese approach is, best encapsulated in the term Virtue and what the Western approach is, best encapsulated in the term Mind. They described the strengths of each approach and suggested a “sustainable learning model balancing virtue and mind”.

According to the researchers, the Chinese approach is for students to aim and train to focus within themselves to stay on track and achieve breakthroughs while the Western approach relies on external tools, settings and processes to improve learning.

They clarified misconceptions regarding the Chinese classroom. In particular, they dispelled the notions that Chinese students studied primarily through rote learning and that they were passive receivers of knowledge. They clarified that while it is true that Chinese students tend to be alert, focused and quiet during lessons, this is so they can absorb better. They do engage their teachers in discussions to clarify doubts after lessons.

These researchers had a number of questions in their mind which shaped the design of their study. They wondered if Chinese students also had a Western mindset about their studies since over a significant period of time, they have been exposed to Western teaching methodologies. They wondered if their approach and beliefs about studies changed as they grew older. They also wanted to know if the belief system of students from places in China which had a much stronger Confucian influence remained more Eastern compared to places in the South which were more open to the outside.

To address the last question, they enrolled students from Shandong Province, which is where Confucius is believed to have been born. Shandong Province houses the Temple of Confucius which is a UNESCO world heritage site. They compared the responses of these students to those in Guangdong Province which is in the Southern part of China.

Before discussing their findings, it will be useful to first get a sense of what Virtue is and how it differs from Mind.

In the Virtue approach, students learn to become good people who are valuable members of society because they work to better it. Students learn as many things as they can and as much about these things as they can. In this approach, students aim to earn the respect of their fellows through their contributions.

In the Mind approach students learn to explore, understand and shape the world by developing their skills and abilities. They are fuelled in their journey through praise and rewards.

At first glance, the two approaches are not altogether different.

The Virtue approach focuses on virtues as its name suggests. Some of these are, Love and Passion, Diligence, Cherishing Time, Perseverance, Endurance of Hardship, Concentration, Humility and Lifelong Pursuit.

Just looking at these words does have a strong, inspiring effect and one would be able to appreciate why these would always be relevant.

The Mind approach focuses on abilities – intelligence, talent, smartness, thinking, comprehension, exploration, discovery, discussion, innovation and interest.

Everyone involved in education now acknowledges that training makes a difference. There is every reason for students to develop the abilities in the Mind approach.

A student who has a Virtue mindset would practise more and revise feedback received on assignments to better performance. Students who have a Mind understanding of progress would make changes to external processes and their environment to make progress. They may for example, look for a more conducive place to study or more effective ways to process and understand things, create a time-table, form study groups and seek to further or correct their understanding through talking with parents, peers and teachers.

With these differences (or similarities) between the approaches in mind, we will now turn to what the researchers found.

Young and younger Chinese students had a strong focus on values. When asked to write down words, phrases, or idioms associated with the word “learn/learning”, they wrote words and phrases like, hao hao xue xi, tian tian xiang shang – “study hard and make progress”; nu li – “hard work”; qinfen – “diligence” and shu shan you lu qin wei jing xue hai wu ya ku zuo zhou – “Long-term diligence is the road to the mount of knowledge; endurance of hardship is the boat to the boundless sea of learning.”

As they progressed towards university, Chinese students associated learning with the external environment and learning processes more. In this sense, they appeared to realise that while the values they imbibed when young were essential, there were things they could do differently to make learning more efficient and effective.

Students in Shandong province did indeed display a much stronger Virtue mindset towards learning compared to those from Guangdong province. This led researchers to conclude culture does impact the way students learn. Students from both regions were more influenced by the Virtue mindset compared to the Mind approach. Interestingly students in Shandong had as much awareness of the Mind approach as those from Guangdong.

Students who did very well in their studies had higher awareness of and reliance on both the Virtue and the Mind models. Researchers found that these students relied on all the values of the Virtue approach except for Recitation. These students also did not believe that intelligence, talent, smartness and interest from the Mind approach were important to perform well in their studies. The researchers highlighted that it did not matter to high-performing Chinese students whether they were interested in what they were learning. If they were learning it, they did their best anyway.

Both the Virtue and Mind approaches were useful for creativity and critical thinking. The Mind approach did appear to be more useful than the Virtue approach for these outcomes.

The researchers, taking the view that Chinese students would benefit from developing the skills of the Mind approach, formulated an integrated and balanced framework. In their model, they chose the virtues of, concentration, perseverance, endurance of hardship as well as diligence and combined them with the skills of, innovation, exploration, critical thinking and curiosity.

To mix is to create.

The Brain Dojo