Xu and Connelly's (2013-2020) "Reciprocal Learning in Teacher Education and School Education between Canada and China" Partnership Grant Project involves two Canadian and four Chinese universities, two Canadian school boards and over forty Canadian and Chinese schools, and is advised by an International Advisory Committee comprising of members from China, Singapore, Austria and the USA.
The purposes of this project are to build educational knowledge and understanding from a cross-cultural perspective and to support new approaches to research on curriculum, teaching and learning in schools and teacher education programs in response to change brought on by heightened global awareness.
This project integrates two programs: the University of Windsor-Southwest University Teacher Education Reciprocal Learning Program and the School Education - Sister School Network (Windsor - Chongqing Sister School Network, Toronto - Shanghai Sister School Network, Toronto - Changchun Sister School Pairs, Windsor - Beijing Sister School Pairs). The Teacher Education Reciprocal Learning Program consists of exchange visits of teacher candidate cohorts between Southwest University and the University of Windsor. The Sister School Network consists of paired schools in curriculum and teaching exchanges along with exchange visits. The overall Partnership program aims to draw on these two foundational programs to create a comprehensive cross-cultural knowledge base and understanding of school education, teacher education and the cultural contexts for education in Canada and China as well as the development of a communicative platform and methods of educational exchange of use in a broad range of settings.
The Partnership consists of six research teams, each with Chinese and Canadian team leaders, faculty membership, and graduate students: General Education and Culture, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), Language Education, Mathematics Education, Science Education, and Teacher Education.
Knowledge Mobilization/ Reaching Out/ Making a Difference: The Partnerships has ambitious aims of making a difference to school children, teachers in training, teachers, administrators and teacher educators. Research findings will be presented at public conferences and Annual General Meetings that rotate among Partner universities. The first of these takes place at the University of Windsor April 7-10, 2014. Interested people may click for the two day public conference April 7-8 at the following website https://reciprocallearning.ca/conference2014/. The second of these takes place at East China Normal University May 9-11, 2015, at the following website https://reciprocallearning.ca/c2015/?page_id=2. The third of these takes place at Southwest University April 17-19, 2016, at the following website https://reciprocallearning.ca/c2016/. The work will be mobilized for academic, professional and public audiences by traditional methods and by the use of an electronic communication platform developed by the ICT research team.
China-Canada Educational Research Centre Unveiling, Southwest University, Chongqing, June 2013 | Envisioning Reciprocal Learning Between Canada and China 1st Annual International Conference - Windsor, Canada 2014 |
Reciprocal Learning and Symbiotic Relationships in School Development 2nd Annual International Conference - Shanghai, China 2015 |
Teacher Education Symposium and 3rd Annual International Conference - Chongqing, China 2016 |
One of our major purposes is to build a systematic educational partnership framework between Canada and China. We want to create an educational knowledge base that fosters educational learning between Canada and China and we want to build lasting relationships among educators and a sustainable framework to foster future reciprocal learning. In June, 2013, Southwest University held a teacher education conference built around the Partnership. At that meeting a Sino-Canadian Teacher Education Research Center linking Southwest University and the University of Windsor was unveiled. Michael Connelly was appointed Honorary SWU Professor and Shijing Xu was appointed SWU Adjunct Professor and Affiliated Research Associate at the China National Research Center for Foreign Language Education, Beijing Foreign Studies University