Introduction

In a recent BBC documentary, five teachers from China were invited to create a “Chinese school” within a British public school (Bagnall, Quaglieni & Rumney, 2015). In four weeks, a group of 50 ninth graders fully experienced the “Chinese way of learning,” which include a large classroom setting with 50 students of mixed abilities, longer school hours (12 hours per day), a descriptive teaching style featured with lectures from the teachers and note-taking from the students, and grueling learning materials and homework. By the end of the four-week experiment, they then competed with the rest of students of their age group from the same school to test the results of their learning. Despite constant rebellion from the students and chaotic classroom at least in the first two and half weeks, students from the “Chinese school” outperformed their counterparts from the “British school” in mathematics and sciences by 10%.

The results shocked both the school and the Chinese teachers, as they all felt the Chinese classroom would not fit to the British students. Before the experiment, the school headmaster, Neil Strowger, visited public schools in Shanghai and made comments to the 2012 Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA) results that put Chinese students from Shanghai on the top of test in mathematics and sciences among 65 countries and economies.

Mr. Strowger's view probably represents most Western observers’ perspective regarding cross-national differences in academic achievement. The results from the experiment, however, challenge the view. There ought be something valuable about the Chinese way of teaching, or the way of teaching was in the West few decades ago, which is worthwhile to examine further. The documentary sparked a new round of global interest from both the general public and educational professionals to reflect their own educational systems. What have we done well and what can we learn from others?