Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Perspective on Learning

From my personal investigation into the topic, I have identified three key contributions of Vygotsky in the framing of a socio-cultural perspective on learning. These contributions include his claim for “social sources of development” and his description of “the zone of proximal development” and “semiotic mediation”. These ideas have contributed to explaining where and how learning takes place, who are the main actors and what are the active agents in the learning processes. However, translating these ideas into classroom practice is a challenging task that requires considerable time and effort of different involved parties.

Firstly, development, from Vygotsky’s point of view, is the transformation of social shared activities into internalized processes. Individual development which includes higher mental functioning has its origins in social sources. Mental action is situated in cultural, historical, and institutional settings. The social dimension of consciousness is primary, while the individual dimension of consciousness is derivative and secondary. Learning, therefore, takes places first at the social level and then at the individual level. Social interaction, therefore, plays a key role in enabling learning processes to happen; in other words, learning occurs in social interactions.

Secondly, Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD), which is also connected with his claim about the social origins of higher mental functioning in the individual, explains the way in which social and participatory learning takes place. The zone of proximal development is seen as the distance between the actual and the potential developmental levels within an individual. The later can be reached when the individual is in the interactions or work in collaboration with more mature, more experience or more capable people and peers. Learning, therefore, is to create a ZPD or to awaken numerous and various internal developmental processes that occur only when the individual is interacting with people in his environment and in cooperation with his peers. Also, since an individual’s learning is expected to occur at his potential level, his conceptual development goes through a journey of departing as “pseudo concept” and arriving as “true concept”. He first imitates more mature, more experienced and more capable people’ mode of understanding and then abstract out his own concept. For Vygotsky, the transformation of “pseudo concepts” to “true concepts” requires the co-participation of the individual and other more mature, more experienced and more capable people in activities. To sum, learning is a co-participatory and co-constructive process.

Thirdly, Vygotsky explained how human mental functioning is tied to cultural, institutional, and historical settings by introducing the term “mediation”. Mediation refers to cultural tools, which include material/technical tools, mental/psychological tools, and conceptual/symbolic tools and are mastered by individuals to form this functioning. These tools might be termed “the carriers of socio-cultural patterns and knowledge”. They are, therefore, the key to all aspects of learning process. It mediates social and individual functioning. It connects the external and the internal or the social and the individual. The process of internalization is, therefore, transformative rather than transmissive, and learning is a mediated process, but not a being-influenced process.

In brief, learning, from socio-cultural perspective, is an interactive, collaborative, co-participatory, co-constructive, and mediated meaning-making process. It takes place at both social and individual levels. The main actors or the active agents in these processes are both human actors and non-human factors, including adults, teachers, children, peers, with different degrees of expertise, and artifacts such as books, CDs, videos, wall displays, computers and so forth. However, there are some challenges facing attempts to translate these ideas from Vygotsky into classroom practice. Considerable planning work need to be done, and substantial changes should be carefully dealt with.

The first challenge is the development of curricula which adopt the socio-cultural perspective. The selection of the right contents and effective instructional methods requires a large amount of effort, expertise, and time. Also, removing the existing curriculum is a difficult task, and convincing different parties of the values of the introduced curriculum is even more challenging. Resistance to changes is nature of human beings, for the desire for safety tend to win the will to take risks. However, as far as the development of effective curricula is concerned, I believe that a number of studies should be conducted first to test the effectiveness of proposed patterns of educational programs, methodologies, instructional methods, instructional strategies, and instructional resources. As long as the results are positive, they can be implemented in larger scales. It should also be noted that the methodology of conducted studies should also be informed by socio-cultural theoretical perspective.

The second challenge is the possibility of teachers’ misinterpretation of the methodological concepts. For example, that learning is a socially interactive process does not mean that students learn from social interactions, but in social interactions. The former focuses on the product, while the later emphasizes the process. If misinterpretation occurs, teachers may, at times, see her role or some of her students’ role in classroom activities as observers, while any of them, teacher and students, at any times, should always play the roles of the participants in all the activities where learning is always embedded. Similarly, collaborative learning may be inadequately taken as the process of role taking between teachers and students, and students and peers in the construction of knowledge. However, from a broader view, students go to class with their complex social relationships and different cultural values, which shape their intellectual interdependence in the construction of knowledge. Collaborative learning, therefore, means “a fluidity of roles and a reliance on various areas of expertise from the students and the teachers in the joint construction of knowledge.” To avoid this potential problem, teachers need to be trained or retrained before they can start applying this approach, and teacher follow-ups, supervision, mentoring and coaching at work are necessary. They should comprehend the theoretical perspective embedded in the curriculum and be able to realize this in every single content piece of the instructional material and in every single activity in the classroom. They should be engaged in the apprenticeship of instructional activities where they can learn how the theory is translated into practice and be convinced in these activities that the methodologies really work. Continuous mentoring and coaching at work should be provided to teachers to ensure the consistence of proper practice and to identify the need for immediate intervention.

The third challenge is only a socio-cultural school environment can enhance the implementation of a socio-cultural curriculum. Every school has its own established climate and culture which may be positive or negative to the success of the school as a learning community. Changing the school climate or culture to build an effective environment for the learning process is challenging in the sense that it requires substantial changes in the concepts, views, attitudes, habits, behaviors, and everyday practice of all school stakeholders. This change cannot happen overnight. Therefore, the very first thing that can be done to bring about this change is to convince school members of the ideas and inspire their positive attitudes. They should be inspired in believing that learning only can take place in interactions and interactions are crucial to how and what students learn. The co-construction of knowledge requires the school to be a family or a learning community in which “each participant makes significant contributions to the emergent understandings of all members, despite having unequal knowledge concerning the topic under study.” Students’ various abilities should be seen as opportunities for the cooperation among themselves for the construction of knowledge and not as the sources for discrimination. Complex social relationships and different cultural values that students gain both in and outside the school setting should be considered to be the contributions to the shaping of the intellectual interdependence in the co-construction of knowledge. Teachers and students see themselves as family members who can learn from each other and support each other by co-participating in all school activities including economic, religious, legal, political, instructional, or recreational activities.

The next challenge is the availability of proper school facilities and instructional resources to facilitate the learning process. As learning is a mediated meaning-making process, suited material tools as mediation play a great part in enabling learning to occur. For example, suited types of desks and chairs may make the classroom activities such as group-work or pair-work effective. Multiple halls can host students and teachers for school events of various interactions. Other facilities such as swimming pools, sport centers or drama stages are crucial for the socialization among school members. However, the challenges we face lie in the affordability for these facilities and the making of right decision in choosing the right resources. A number of schools have identified the facilities they need but found no finance source. Some have spent a lot on luxurious facilities such as computer labs and laboratories, but with on-and-off visits by teachers and students and poorly-designed technologically-integrated lessons. The suggestion is that school should write a proposal that clearly states how the targeted facilities or resources can play the role of effective mediation, how they go in line with the contents, methodologies and instructional methods embedded in the curriculum, how they are going to be used to enhance the learning process and how the teachers and students are going to be trained to use them properly and professionally. For example, there are some computer games aimed at training students’ social skills. Teachers should know this aim to use it for the right purpose and with the right instruction, techniques, attitudes, observations and evaluations.

Furthermore, supportive school leadership and governance are crucial in maximizing the success of a sociocultural learning community. Much research has shown positive correlation between school leadership and governance and teachers’ performance. Whether or not teachers can converse their classrooms into a learning community depends on the support and capability of school leadership and governance. Teachers bring into classrooms with their world view, attitudes, moods, habits and practice that are partly shaped by their working environment in which their interactions with school leaders, administrators, supervisors, and colleagues play a crucial part. All these factors will influence how they behave in classroom and then affect students’ learning process. Thus school leaders and administrators need to be trained to have the suited leading and managing skills and qualities. For example, from socio-cultural perspective, the principal must play different roles as the instructional leader, the emotional leader, a community leader and the facilitator of culture to supervise and evaluate instruction to make sure that students are given optimal learning opportunities, to ensure that teachers are intellectually equipped, emotionally stimulated, and encouraged to assume decision-making positions of leadership in schools to increase student achievement, to inspire and provide incentives for student-centered communal learning, to realize the limitations of leadership on student achievement, and to begin to shape and reshape school culture.

The most challenging factor is whether or not national education policies really support the translation of the socio-cultural learning theory into practice. It is said that the longest distance on earth is from the office of education minister to the classroom. The implication behind this statement is that educational policies are sometimes made without relevance to other aspects of education system. The lack of cohesiveness in the system causes the inefficiency of the implementation of a new idea. For example, from socio-cultural perspective, learning is to create a zone of proximal development or to awaken potential internal developmental processes. Thus, in order for teachers to design instruction and participate in the learning process that can create this zone, teachers not only need rich and various sources of instructional resources that junction as suited mediation to different students but also need time and effort to attend to them both collectively and individually to identify their unique zones. However, the existing class size of most Asian schools is too big for teachers to complete this task. Therefore, ideas are big but the translation is narrow. The suggestion is that education policy makers should not only be academic, professional, creative, but practical and cohesive as well.

From my personal experience as a teacher, I wish to share the following advice for teachers to build a socio-cultural classroom context. First, teachers need to learn that different class have different cultural expectations for teacher-student talk, so multiple discussions as negotiations are needed to establish the class rules. Second, it is important for teachers to know what the students expect their role to be. Negotiating the roles and responsibilities of the students and the teacher in the co-construction of knowledge is crucial because mutual understanding will lead to their active and effective participation in classroom interactions. However, it should be noted that students’ discourse which may reflect their community or family discourse and may not reflect their intellectual ability. Teachers should not be one-minded to have wrong perceptions on students’ academic abilities. This may cause teachers to limit their students’ learning opportunities and inaccurately evaluate students’ contributions to class discussion. Third, students and parents should be invited to share their unique knowledge and ways of knowing with the class. This can be done through school events such as Parents-Children’s Day, Occupation Day, and Father-Child Reading Day and so on. Fourth, if students are bilingual and are reluctant to share their own understanding of the text in the targeted language, teachers should encourage them to use mother tongue to do so. Considerable studies have shown that many bilingual children can demonstrate higher levels of comprehension when encouraged to think about and discuss the text in their native language. Fifth, teachers should play a part in building up the students’ classroom social web and become an active agent of this network. Teachers can also inspire students in peer bonding by having them choose their partners in pair activities. Teachers should not forget to value and praised the unique skills or practice that culturally diverse students might introduce into a classroom task and that make them popular and desirable partners. Sixth, teachers should develop an environment where students feel safe to make errors, for human beings are incomplete and “errors” are valued as an opportunity for students to learn and as a step in “risk-taking” and learning. Last but not least, all students need a classroom environment where they are treated to be active participants or valuable members. Students need to feel safe to speak their voice, using their home language and experiences in the classroom to discuss and critique the world. They need to have a feeling of belonging to a learning family where all of their intellectual, psychological, physical and emotional developmental aspects are attended to and taken well care of.

Care, Forgiveness and Happiness

I always believe that “care” and “forgiveness” are the precious values that contribute to our exploration of happiness. To me, “caring” and “forgiving” mean “giving”. As long as you decided to give and were willing to give, you would feel that you have done something for others unconditionally, and you feel happy about it. To make a stronger stance, I wish to add some more scholastic arguments for the importance of students’ exploration of “care” and “forgiveness” and the need for moral education curriculum to include an effective approach that helps students to explore these values. More scholastic arguments will also be provided to show how important students’ concept of happiness is, how “care” and “forgiveness” are related to happiness, and whether school curriculum today, especially moral education curriculum, promotes happiness.
Gilligan (1982) proposed a concept of care as a complex of six virtues or behavioral dispositions: acquaintance, mindfulness, moral imagining, solidarity, tolerance and self-care. Gregory (2000) described democracy in term of two divergent but compatible sets of practices: social non-interference social co-operation. His behavioral analyses of Gilligan’s concept of care and his concept of democracy led him to conclude that “certain behavioral habits that partially constitute a person’s or a community’s caring also partially constitute that person’s or community’s democracy. Specifically, the caring virtues of acquaintance, mindfulness, moral imagining and self-care also belong to the virtue of democratic co-operation, and the caring virtue of tolerance constitutes the democratic ideal of non-interference.” He continued to argue that since most of the virtues of care are also virtues of democracy, they should be appropriate aims of public education, and that the enculturation of caring and democratic virtues requires that children practise the kind of inquiry in which these ideals are constructed.
The recognition of the importance of “forgiveness” is increasing in psychological and educational fields. The research on the experience of offering forgiveness to others and receiving forgiveness so far suggests positive the outcomes. These effects are explored from psychological, social and moral perspectives. Consider Fitzgibbons (1986) and Hope (1987) had similar observation that forgiveness is powerful in freeing people from their anger and from the guilt which is often a result of unconscious anger. In a carefully controlled experimental design, Huang (1990) found that those with a high level of forgiveness were significantly lower in both blood pressure and levels of negative emotion. Al-Mabuk (1990) showed significant correlations between forgiveness and the following variables: lower levels of psychological depression, lower levels of anxiety, and higher levels of self-esteem. Gentilone & Regidor's (1986) reported that there has even been a demonstration on the group level that forgiveness can benefit communities, not just individuals. However, those in a just and merciful community could explore distinctions between the equality of justice and the equality implied in forgiveness. There are considerable differences between the two. For example, “the point of justice is to restore equality where inequality exists. In forgiveness, the offended person does not restore equality. Instead, in forgiveness the offended, relative to the offender, recognizes that the equality of their commonly shared humanity existed before, during, and after the hurtful event. Thus we do not restore what was never taken away--our humanity, our basic worth. Forgiveness helps us recognize that such equality has existed unconditionally and will continue to exist regardless of one person's behavior towards another.” “It is true that a forgiver may take steps to help self and others and recognize this unfailing equality, but restoration is not implied in such behavior. It is also true that a forgiver's steps in this way may restore a friendship, but the equality of the two (their worth as human beings) would exist whether they reunited or not.” In sum, the equality human beings struggle for in justice concerns how they treat one another, while the equality seen in forgiving others concerns who they are regardless of how others treat them. These distinctions may cause students to seek justice differently and with different motives. Moral education programs may take into consideration the following points. First, it is recommended that short-term moral education programs which are focused on one particular virtue such as care or forgiveness be explored, for these virtues can be supported by short term intervention. Some studies have shown that the practice of a particular virtue may be realized with short term interventions in spite of the fact that some forms of moral education may require substantial time, such as moral stage-re-structuring from a Kohlbergian paradigm. Second, although there would be good presentation of “what forgiveness is and is not” by educators and numerous philosophical arguments for and against forgiveness, giving students chances and allowing them to formulate his or her own position through discussions and argumentations with given rich contexts may help students in the process of choosing to embrace or reject forgiveness.
In addition to the supporting attitudes towards values, students’ concept of happiness is very important, for it affects their attitudes towards community, family, schools, teachers, friends and study. It also determines their behaviors and guides their actions. What constitutes students’ happiness has become the focus of a number of studies in happiness field. Maltby, Day and Barber (2005) believed that caring means giving, including giving forgiveness and found that there is a relationship between forgiveness and happiness. This relationship may vary depending on one’s concept of happiness. Thus, helping students to explore “forgiveness” may be related to helping them to construct their own concept of happiness. The question at this point is whether school curriculum, especially moral education, concerns about this matter. There have been a large number of international debates on the focus of school curricula today. Many conclusions have been made on their narrow aim. Social scientists, researchers, and educationalists claim that school curricula today only focus on preparing students for work or financial success and neglect preparing them for personal life (Noddings, 2003). Therefore, many advanced education systems fail to enable their students to identify their happiness, the most important thing in life. It is time the educationalists should look into the aims of education as its fullest meaning – yielding happiness and improve school curricula, especially moral education curriculum which is believed to aim at helping students to explore and construct life values and forming their life concepts – key components of happiness, in both contents and teaching approaches to make teaching and learning a dialogic, affective and influencing process and learning as ecstatic experience.

What is not right?

I came across this website on which I found the article "Understanding life experiences through a phenomenological approach to research". The main ideas of the articles are as follows.

First, phenomenology is one type of qualitative research that examines human's lived experiences, and phenomenological researchers work to gain understanding of the essential "truths" of the lived experience.

Second, phenomenology has been described as a philosophy, methodology, and method. Seeing phenomenology as a philosophy, "phenomonologists believe that truth and understanding of life can emerge from people's life experiences."

Trotman (2005), Conceicao (2006), and Moustakas (1994) shared the idea that phenomenological research is a description of the givens of immediate experience and a process of sharing experience which contains rich insights into various phenomena to understand experiences. Thus, experience is a valid source of knowledge.

From Trotman, Conceicao, and Moustakas points of view, I would argue that saying truth can emerge from people's life experience is not appropriate. Human beings experience the world with a kind of mediator we call "the tool" or "the artefact" which includes material/technical tools, mental/psychological tools, and conceptual/symbolic tools. Different people experience the same world with different tools, so their report on their own experience will be different. Thus, there will be no universal truth about human experience accordingly.

Phenomenological Research and Its Limitations

Phenomenological research has been adopted by a large number of researchers for its unique qualities. The researchers who adopt this methodology believe that "experience is a valid source of knowledge" and research is a process of sharing experience which contains rich insights into various phenomena to understand experiences. Thus, it "allows readers to begin to understand and empathize with the phonomenon, and in turn, determines the extent to which interpretations make meaning for them." While grounded theory generates theory and other methodologies add substances to the subject matters, phenomenology "facilitates the expansion and development of more adequate theory building". It is "pre-theoretical in nature". It is objective to some extent, for it "provides a clear process for setting aside the researchers' preconceptions about the phenomenon." Also, it offers a deep investigation into "the soft, soulful, subtle, and sensitive areas" in the process of identifying "the rich and authentic educational experience and practice."
However, this methodology has some limitation. At the end of the day, the approach has a high chance to create an "entry into an entire realm of subjectivity and inter-subjectivity" which is, by nature, inspired by dualism. Human nature is seen through human lenses. To understand one's experiences is, in the end, acquiring a state of intersubjective transparency.

Growth in My Personal Epistemology

Before and when I first joined the Contemporary Foundations of Learning, knowledge, to me, is product of reasoning. Every second, we import information through different modes and from various sources such as personal experience or third parties. These inputs of information are cognitively processed and filtered with the reference to pass experience and prior knowledge to become new “justified true beliefs”. Thus, knowledge acquisition is a new-information- producing process which involves three distinct sub-processes: collection of raw information, reasoning, and judgment making. For example, after getting the raw information from an article on the topic of values and happiness which states that value-based happiness lasts longer than pleasure-based happiness, one may start to reason by recalling the feeling one experienced at a moment when one was lying on the beach to enjoy the beauty of nature and at the other moment when one cycled a 40 kilometer-distance everyday to see mom in hospital. One now really feels the happiness of seeing mum lying on the bed, look at him and smile happily. One starts to compare the two kinds of happiness. Then, judgment is made, and the new information is that the statement that “value-based happiness lasts longer than pleasure-based happiness” is true. As long as the new information and the old one coincide, the belief is justified true.
However, since my Contemporary Foundations of Learning classes have been going on with 30-minute time excess every day and endless discussion on every single new topic, my personal epistemology has been more or less changed. Every one may have their own system of beliefs. These beliefs are based on other beliefs and may cause the other beliefs. Different systems of beliefs may share some identical beliefs and have different, unique ones. This indicates that knowledge is not always universally-shared belief, so knowledge cannot only be acquired by transmission. Reasoning is also a human-created concept. It is a name given to a process of human’s mind which is still a secret to its owner. Knowledge is, therefore, an undiscoverable truth, and knowledge acquisition is a knowing- process rather than a fact of knowing-that. For example, the statement that “value-based happiness lasts longer than pleasure-based happiness” may be an undiscoverable truth, but making the inquiry whether or not value-based happiness lasts longer than pleasure-based happiness and pursuing an explanation is the process of knowing.
With this change in my personal epistemology, I now find “teaching values” , “helping students to construct values”, and “facilitating the process of exploring values” are different concepts in moral education. “Teaching values” is imposing moral norms of a social group, a community, or a nation on individuals. There is little cognitive and rational thinking involved in this product-based learning. “Helping students to construct values” may emphasize more on process than product. However, there are two possibilities. One is that students are assisted to construct their own values, while the other is that students are helped to construct pre-determined values. The former promotes moral autonomy and is individual-centric, while the later gives students certain room for cognitive and rational thinking. Thus, “helping students to construct values” is either to foster individual moral valuing or to transmit social codes. I prefer “facilitating the process of exploring values” to “teaching values” and “helping students to construct values”. The two later concepts have much to do with the assumption that “values” are “justified true beliefs” or products of learning, while the former is based on the belief that morality is the outcome of the organic relationship between individuals and social settings. This interaction is a continuous process, so the outcome is also a never-ending process of moral exploration.
From my point of view, facilitating the process of exploring values should be a challenging task. Moral educationalists need to break out of well-established and well-defined constraints to tailor a new conceptual synthesis. The totality of atmospheric forces and multi-dimensional interactions is crucial for the process of moral exploration and development. The child, family, class, school, and community are all active agents in this process. It is important that the child actually participates in moral dialectic process where various moral deliberation activities are involved. Schools and families should cooperate to organize free-time activities, family events, and weekend and holiday programs for students, and these events should be considered to be an important part of the total educational planning of the schools. Also, the dynamics of the class as a social group plays an important role. Teaching and learning should be seen as a dialogue of relationships. Teachers should create a safe environment for students to talk, to communicate, to play roles, to improve their interpersonal skills, and to explore their values. Students should be encouraged to talk about and consider their own value concerns by teachers’ well-designed learning activities. Teachers should inspire their students in expressing their own opinions and ideas about the values and should never control their thoughts. Teachers also should empower students to actively take part in the process of moral reasoning, developing learning materials, inventing classroom activities, and, after all, improving curricula. Formal curricula and extra curricula should be combined harmoniously to promote a total atmosphere for moral exploration. They should provide a system of educational experiences that first inspire students in the activities of their interests and then present them with desired modes of moral reflection. Moral education textbooks should not be totally responsible for students’ moral development. The integrations of different disciplines or school subjects including philosophy, psychology, sociology, history, literature, art, cinema, and educational practice should also be actively involved. The study of philosophy may help students to develop the necessary traits and abilities to engage in the moral reasoning process. Science and history are the two important curricular areas for moral growth, since they are about life of facts, and they enable students to truly confront and understand these facts. Literature works about the experience of different values are believed to promote students’ support for these values. School-based projects can produce a systematic body of teaching and learning materials for moral curriculum. Whole-school approach has great potential for the active participation of school members in the process of moral reasoning and exploration and for affecting moral growth. The role of moral community in the process of moral education is also very crucial. A caring moral community will help to develop moral sense and nurture moral growth.
In conclusion, facilitating moral exploration process means creating a rich and effective environment for the active participation of all moral agents including the child, family, class, school, and community in the social interactions as natural forces that enable the child to grow naturally and morally.

Care

I had planned to write a beautiful blog entry on the topic of values and happiness during a long weekend. However, my plan has just remained to be a plan. I am now sitting at a dressing table in a hospital ward thinking of how to start with this blog entry. It seems to be difficult as an assignment for a course at school, and it is really much more difficult when the writer, while writing, needs to ensure that her friend, a patient just discharged from the surgery theatre, has all her needs noticed and addressed.

The short hand of the clock on the wall is touching 12. A new day is coming near. A very special day. The day I turned into 35. For every passing year, my birthday came with much excitement about wishes and gifts. This birthday looks different. I am sitting here thinking of what my friend was just now thinking about and why the tear kept running down her cheeks. Everyone needs to live this moment of life to slow down a bit and think of what is the meaning of his or her life. Jewellery, fashionable clothes and expensive cosmetics are all useless materials for this moment. My friend now needs to have her hands held tightly, her tear wiped out, and her pain noticed. She needs to have her family members and friends here to share the pain. Care is a gift of life that can keep her from loneliness in a very cold hospital ward. I am here and happy to be here to live this moment of life though leaving many of my tasks incompleted. Caring for a friend in need is not less important than completing an assignment, but much more important than writing a beautiful blog entry.

Literature and Soul Engineering

I was born and brought up in a beautiful village surrounded by bamboo ranges, paddy fields, lakes, rivers and mountains in the outskirt of Hanoi. My childhood was filled with poems, fairy tales and afternoons flying kites with friends in the meadows. Nature or motherland became part of my life, and I tend to love it more through every page of school text books. My teacher was a slim woman with a very sweet voice. My heart was shaken every time she read a poem to my class. I can feel and learn from the poems she read that a woman bailing out water in the paddy field in a night of full moon is actually playing with the moonlight, that father’s love is bigger than mountains and mother’s care is as gentle as water running in the streams, and that in life we need to have a heart gone with the wind.

My classmates and I developed our knowledge of the world and values primarily from dialogues of relationships through language lessons in class, extra-curriculum activities at school, and childhood games in the meadow. We became close friends and have been traveling on the same journey of life with all the values we own and share together. Every time there is a gathering among us, dozens of stories of our childhood time are retold, and we never forget to mention our teacher and her beautiful poems. We appreciate and cherish all the values such as love, care and forgiveness that we developed since a child. We feel a pain deeply inside to share the same observation that our children today seem to be shallow in love for nature, people, relationships, family, and motherland. They are more attracted to material life and less passionate about relationships. They are more addicted to technological products and less engaged in reading. They are losing deep understanding and affection for the world created by the language of literature.

This is, from my point of view, partially because of the changes in school curriculum today. To meet the demand of an ever-changing and competitive global economy, schools keep changing curricula to prepare students for a bright future of career and for the strength of a nation. Curricula become work-oriented and nation-oriented, which means they are committed to preparing students for occupational knowledge and skills and for a strong national economy. Individuals’ personal development seems to be neglected. Less curriculum content and approach are dedicated to engineering the souls. Values are taught, not constructed. Students being able to think right and doing the right things as named in curriculum is the aim of moral education. The true motive for students to do the right things and their feeling following this is never a school curriculum’s concern.

The implication is that change is not always positive. No matter how much change is needed for the sake of a nation, the school of old days and the school today should always be the second home to our children where children are given opportunities to construct their values, discover their feelings, and attain their happiness.

I was trained to be a language teacher and have been working as a language teacher for 13 years in Vietnam and Singapore. To me, language is not just what I teach, but more importantly how I am going to teach. Teaching, from my point of view, is touching students’ heart, mind and soul partially by the language. Accordingly, my 13-year-experience as a teacher of English and Vietnamese languages has been dedicated to creating considerable changes in my students in term of knowledge extension, knowledge application, behavior, and soul enrichment. Considerable positive feedbacks from students on the quality of course materials, teaching approach, and teacher’s passion have driven me to answering this question – How important is the language in creating these changes? And how important is literature as artistic language in shaping one’s concepts of life and happiness?

My Philosophy of Teaching

My 7-years of being a mother and 11-years of being a teacher with a great number of events have helped me to gradually discover my philosophy of teaching.

One day, my daughter came back from school and looked really sad. I came closed to her and asked why she was so sad. She burst out crying and said “my teacher is not nice”. She continued: “She asked other students to laugh at me when I colored my mango black. She said I should have colored it yellow as other students did because a mango was yellow. I explained to her that my mango was a rotted one, but she kept saying I should never think of a rotted mango in an Arts lesson.” I started to understand that teaching and learning should be a process of teachers and students sharing their own interpretations of the surrounding world. Teachers should inspire their students in expressing their own opinions and ideas about the world and should never control their thoughts. Moreover, teaching is a dialogue of relationships. Teachers should create a safe environment for students to learn, to communicate, to play roles and to improve their interpersonal skills. Teaching also means empowering students to actively take part in the process of teaching and learning, developing learning materials, inventing classroom activities, conducting assessments and improving curricula.

Another time was when I accepted an invitation to teach an evening class for the students who were going to take the university entrance examination. The exam was in 3 months’ time. With all enthusiasm, I started the course with careful and detailed explanation of the whole system of English syntax. However, two of the students quit the class after my two lessons. I felt so sad because there was no precedence for that in my so far teaching career. I started to look for the reason by asking one of the students in the class after the lesson. She revealed that those two students did find the lessons too easy for them, and they had expected to have knowledge of higher standard from my lessons. I kept quiet for a while and thought I had failed to be a good teacher this time. I should have known that teaching is a process of identifying individual students’ needs and satisfying them with the most effective methods. I decided to start an investigation into my students’ needs and made a detailed plan to use different teaching methods and techniques to be able to satisfy their different needs in my lessons.

What is more, the first time I was invited to teach Vietnamese Standard 2 classes in X school was when the key teacher there was on leave for her mother’s death. When the teacher came back, we shared these classes. However, the students wrote to the school director to ask for my lessons only. I had no chance to know their reasons. It was not until the last day of the course when the students wrote to me that I realized how much impression I had made on them. They wrote: “Ms. V, we are so lucky to have you as our teacher of Vietnamese. Up to our middle age, this is the first time we have looked forward to every of our lessons. You are a clever teacher who is able to make your lessons to be a dialogue of life and help your busy students like us to memorize the lessons right in the class. You are a charming Vietnamese woman who can bring here in the class a charming Vietnam image and spirit. You are also a good mother who can feel how hard we have to try to learn Vietnamese at this time when we have family and children to take care of after working hours at office.” I finally understand that teaching is not only touching my students’ mind but also touching their hearts and souls.

In my language teaching career, I have found that this philosophy really works. Failures and successes in my teaching are really contributions to the identification of my teaching philosophy.