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I wish I were there attending this interesting talk!
I guess the first group is from rural students and the second is from urban students. I think urban students are more inclined to focus on subjects like “well-being”, “emotion”, and “personal problems” since they are in a better economic situation and don’t have much pressure in learning and passing exams. On the other hand, rural students have to stand more pressure from learning so they may pay more attention to factors affecting teaching and learing, like effectiveness in delivering information, “shorcuts for passing exams”, combination of curriculum objectives and interests. Besides, the existing discrimination between urban and rural areas might promote rural students’ expectation for fosters who are “not judgmental”.

Wow, just as the old saying one coin always has two sides, I’m getting more and more confused and uncertain after comparing the two group of characteristics again and again. I’d better post before I change my mind:)

First group urban.
Second group rural.

I initially started out thinking the former applies to urban school and latter to rural school. But then, like Zhenyu, the more I thought, the more complicated it became – because I wasn’t sure what types of urban and rural schools were surveyed (good or mediocre schools?), and what grade level students were surveyed (different grades would have different focus and needs; boarding middle school children in rural area may need more socio-emotional support as they’re away from families, etc.). So I guess I wouldn’t make a clear vote here… which may defeat the purpose… sorry Weiji!

I agree with what Vivian says. Looking for shortcuts on tests seems like a characteristic of urban school students.

First group urban.
Second group rural.

hah…………..interesting!!!!
hmmmm, it is hard to guess, especially when lack of infomation about how Xiaoqi conducted the survey, but I am going to give it a try anyways.
It seems to me that the first group of children emphasis more on learning vs. personal issues (1. 3. 4. 5. are all about learing, only 2 is about personalities or personal issues), however the second group of children showed different focus. They focus on people-people interaction with teachers and take a broader and also more general view of teacher’s roles. To me, knowledge delivery and personal development are both very important characters of teachers, and a good teacher should be good at both. However it is very interesting to do a little analysis of why different group of children emphasis on different things.

Hmmmm, I still havn’t made a guess yet, and I don’t feel confident about my guess. It seems that I can immediately come up with explanations for either group to be rural students….My analytical tendency is so strong that it holds me from being decisive. OK, let me be frank here and give my would-be explanations for either option:

1) if the first group of children turn out to be rural kids:
I won’t be surprise because in my view, rural kids are very eager to learn things and the tough environment they live in makes them more mature or more purposeful/goal-driven compared to their lucky urban counterparts. If this is true, we should pay even more attention to our curriculum(especially in last year), which used to be focus a lot in FUN, but didn’t focus on knowledge delivery and formal learning that much.
However I will have little concern for them if they emphasis “short-cut to passing exams”. In one hand, this shows how eager the kids are to change their situation and to move on to higher education. But as we’ve discussed enough in RCEF, though understandable and natural, exam-preparaion is really not going to help them to learn life-related skills or help them to succeed in future career, if they failed to pass.

2) if the second group of children trun out to be rural kids:
I won’t be surprised because rural kids, expecially those 留守儿童, must be very eager to receive careness, friendship and mentorship from people they respect, their teachers. If this is the case, I think our RCEF volunteers should pay even more attention to emotional needs of rural kids, conduct more interaction and communication with them, be careful to not to hurt their feelings and to educate them how to grow mentally healthy.

Well, no matter which one turn out to be rural kids, I think we should pay attention on both effective learning and emotional growth. As I said before, both are important to be good teachers.

Ok, so I am not making any guess…because I got really confused by myself, as always, hehe. Eager to know which one is right!

First group is more Urban, second group is more rural. But teachers from rural and urban share some common characteristics which describe in both groups:)

For those of you who didn’t attend the conference, the topic was “What are the Roles of a Good High School Teacher in Urban and Rural China – Students Perspectives”

That should help clarify the questions earlier.

I think the first group is from rural China because they focus on the original purpose of school which might be more about learning knowledge, getting better in exam, and at same time, it will be great if teacher will make lectures sound more interesting.

For similar reasons, I think second group is from urban China. They have access to the learning sources, so they just need to know which one to pay more attention. On top of that, they also need a good listener.