---
title: "Professor Jiang on teaching for creativity, agency, and empowerment @PredictiveHistory transcript"
description: "Source-synced transcript archive for Professor Jiang on teaching for creativity, agency, and empowerment @PredictiveHistory."
source_title: "Professor Jiang on teaching for creativity, agency, and empowerment @PredictiveHistory"
published_at: "2026-04-05"
source_class: "interview"
public_url: "https://jianglens.com/interviews/interview-vhruuvmkxje/transcript/"
markdown_url: "https://jianglens.com/interviews/interview-vhruuvmkxje/transcript.md"
text_url: "https://jianglens.com/interviews/interview-vhruuvmkxje/transcript.txt"
source_url: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHRuUvMKxJE"
data_url: "https://jianglens.com/data/lens/interviews/interview-vhruuvmkxje.json"
---

# Professor Jiang on teaching for creativity, agency, and empowerment @PredictiveHistory transcript

- Source: [Professor Jiang on teaching for creativity, agency, and empowerment @PredictiveHistory](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHRuUvMKxJE)
- Published: 2026-04-05, day precision
- Human transcript page: [/interviews/interview-vhruuvmkxje/transcript/](https://jianglens.com/interviews/interview-vhruuvmkxje/transcript/)
- Interview page: [/interviews/interview-vhruuvmkxje/](https://jianglens.com/interviews/interview-vhruuvmkxje/)
- Transcript Markdown: [/interviews/interview-vhruuvmkxje/transcript.md](https://jianglens.com/interviews/interview-vhruuvmkxje/transcript.md)
- Transcript text: [/interviews/interview-vhruuvmkxje/transcript.txt](https://jianglens.com/interviews/interview-vhruuvmkxje/transcript.txt)
- Interview JSON: [/data/lens/interviews/interview-vhruuvmkxje.json](https://jianglens.com/data/lens/interviews/interview-vhruuvmkxje.json)

## Transcript

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You are listening to the Edu Salon podcast, a space for connection and conversation around education. Each episode, Dr. Deborah Nedolitsky talks with a global education thought leader to provide insights into where education is now and where it might move next.

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Hello, and welcome to the Edu Salon podcast, recorded on the lands of the Whadjuk people of the Noongar Nation, to whose elders past, present and emerging, I pay my respects. My name is Deborah Nedolitsky, and today I'm thrilled to welcome Jiang Xueqin. Jiang is an educator, writer, speaker, and a recognised expert in Chinese education. He's currently principal at a Beijing -based private high school and was previously a curriculum director at Shenzhen Middle School and deputy principal of Peking University High School. He's a judge for the Global Teacher Prize, the Global Student Prize and the World's Best School Prize. Jiang is a researcher at the Harvard Graduate School of Education's Global Education Innovation Initiative and a fellow of the Royal Society. He has authored two books that share his extensive work in promoting the teaching of creativity in the Chinese public school system, Creative China and Schools for the Soul. He's spoken at education conferences around

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the world, has been interviewed by CNN and the BBC, and has written for the Wall Street Journal and the Chronicle of Higher Education. I'm feeling very privileged to have you here. Welcome, Jiang. Thanks, Deb. Thanks for inviting me. It's a pleasure. So let's start the conversation. And I guess I'd like to start with that concept that you're really an expert in, in the Chinese context, which is creativity. And I'm wondering if you could talk about how you define that in the work that you do. So what is creativity? What isn't it? How do we know it when we see it? What can you tell us about that?

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Yeah, so I specialize in the teaching of creativity here in China to Chinese students. And I have a very specific and precise definition for creativity. For me, creativity is to help students understand the scientific process and use it in order to problem solve. That's what I mean by creativity.

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So it's the solving of problems, essentially?

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Using the scientific process, yeah.

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The scientific process. So, you know, some people might see creativity as artistic or thinking laterally and outside the box. Your work's really about science, technologies, and problem solving. So how does that enable creativity, do you think?

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I've been in China for the past 20 years, and I've been thinking very deeply about how to make the society more creative. And so what I've realized is that the major difference separating China from the rest of the world is that China never underwent the Sino -Russian Revolution, those 100 years when the West built a system of processes and protocols in order to discover truth and to solve problems. So China doesn't have concepts that are well embedded into Western culture, concepts such as truth, progress, and individuality. What I've discovered is that unless you have these concepts in place, you can't really teach creativity. And so I'll give you a concrete example of this. You go inside a Chinese classroom, you'll find that it's actually not creative. It's actually anti -creative, meaning that there are certain cultural habits of mind and work that inhibit creativity. The first is the lack of autonomy and agency among students.

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So teachers are in complete control, and they demand obedience and conformity from students. That's the first problem. Second problem is that there isn't a focus on processes, just results, but very, very quick results. So an example of this is to learn English, kids here just memorize English words. They don't actually go for reading, they don't do writing, they don't debate, they don't communicate. So there's a lack of focus on processes. And the third problem is that mistakes are found upon here in China. Now in the West, we understand that making mistakes, failing, is really the best way in order to learn and to grow. But here in China, it's really found upon. And my argument is that we have these cultural habits of mind and work in place, because China never went through the cultural, never went through the scientific revolution. And so what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to replicate the essence and the spirit of the scientific revolution inside the classroom.

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So I agree with you that artistic, musical, athletic creativity are also very important. But I think that here in China, the primary concern is to learn science in order to solve problems rationally. And so part of that, it sounds like,

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is that we have these cultural habits of mind and work in place because China never went through the scientific revolution in order to solve problems rationally. And so part of that is that the scientific process also potentially teaches you to take risks and to be okay with making mistakes or failing, trying again. So it's partly an openness to failure, but also those things that you talked about, obedience, conformity, sort of the opposite of those sort of agency and confidence to try things oneself. Is that sort of what you're thinking?

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Sure. I mean, the father of science, Galileo, right? I mean, his argument was that we don't have to listen to the Catholic church. We don't have to rely on authority. We came through, through experimentation, through observation, through logic, through the collection of evidence, discovered truth for ourselves. And so there's a heavy emphasis on anti -authority, heavy emphasis on individuality, and a heavy emphasis on curiosity. And this very much works against Chinese traditional culture and thinking.

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And so what are the kinds of challenges that you come up against? Because what you're talking about is that China needs this kind of creativity and this scientific process in order for its citizens to, to kind of, you know, to, you know, to, you know, to, you know, to, you know, to, you know, to kind of end up as problem solvers in the world. But then you're saying that some of the underlying values of that are things that are maybe culturally embedded in China as well, like respecting authority and being obedient and results being really important. So are there particular challenges that teachers and schools and school leaders, people in, in schools are coming up against as they're trying to bring in this kind of an approach?

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Creativity is very much front upon here in China. And, and again, as you mentioned, it's very much cultural. Um, it's culturally important. Um, it's very much cultural. Um, it's culturally embedded this conservatism and this very narrow minded way of seeing the world to use a metaphor. I mean, a lot of people see China as this landmass, right? It's the third largest country in the world, but really culturally and intellectually it's an ocean. So people here took pride in the continuity of 5,000 years of China's civilization, the stability, the balance, the harmony. What this means is that this country is uniquely set up for, for anti -change for anti -creativity. Um, so maybe these 30, 40 years, there's been tremendous economic progress and people in the west are extounded by what's happening in China. You see these massive skyscrapers, you see these massive highways. Um, you think that China is prospering, booming, but culturally China hasn't really changed at all.

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And, um, maybe in the grand scheme of things, we'll see these past 30 or 40 years as basically just a tempest in the grand scheme of the grand arc of Chinese history. Um, so China has been through much change and tumult. In these past thousands of years that China has stayed consistent. So I think that, uh, Chinese secrets are implied in that, uh, the continuity, the stability, the harmony of, of China's culture, but at the same time, um, people in the west may see this as a very deep rooted conservatism that inhibits, uh, progress and change. And so there's probably a need there to

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continue to honor tradition, culture, values, and so on while still pushing for progress in education and in the way that schooling and teaching and teaching students to think happens.

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Yeah. I mean, I mean, that's a great point. So a very concrete example is the role of teachers here in, uh, China. Now there have been surveys done, um, that said that teachers are extremely well respected profession here in China. Doc teachers are, uh, as well respected as doctors. And that's a great thing. I think that educators all around the world deserve respect and status, but here in China, I think we take a bit too far in that the authority of teachers, you cannot question the authority of the authority of, um, of, of teachers. And so students aren't actually allowed to allow, allow to ask questions, you know, because that might embarrass the teacher. The teacher might lose face and the teacher will intentionally, um, lower expectations. He will ask really silly questions, simple questions for students, because if students fail to answer the question, he might lose face. So, um, here in China, the

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T the role of teachers, I mean, it's very prestigious, but, um, unfortunately, saving face is much more paramount than getting students to think deeply about the world, and getting, getting them to, um, express individuality.

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And how do teachers feel then about changing the culture in their own classrooms? If they're a very prestigious profession, who's highly respected and treated really well by parents in the community and the classroom, where is the teacher's motivation to change their practice? And change the way in which they encourage students to maybe behave differently in a classroom?

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I think for the past 30 or 40 years, there's been a consistent demand among the general public, among economists, among policymakers, to promote creativity in the Chinese school system. And these past 34 years, we've seen two major sources of opposition. The first is from teachers, because they don't want to lose their status and prestige in society. They're very comfortable. They're very happy with the way things are. So they are a consistent source of opposition towards any sort of curriculum reform here in China. The second are parents. And the reason why is that parents see education as a zero -sum game. It's almost like a prisoner's dilemma in that only a few students can win out. And they fear that if there's any curriculum changes, then all students might lose out. And so because of this widespread opposition from both teachers and parents, little has been actually done in promoting creativity here in China. There's been

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a lot of talk, but if you actually go into the classroom, it's no different from the way that teachers were teaching 30, 40 years ago.

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And so how does that opposition to this influence the work that you do kind of at a systems and consultant level, but also now, you know, in a school environment where you're leading teachers, but then also the work that you do with other schools and so on? How do you address some of those concerns that people have, or how might you start to move that forward?

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So I was unaware of this massive cultural opportunity. When I first started in education, 20 years ago in China, and I myself have evolved greatly these past 20 years. I mean, I first started as a high school teacher, and I was fine because I was working with kids, and I was having an immense impact on my students. They were getting into good universities. Their English was great. So I found that work very rewarding. And then I got promoted to become a school leader in charge of developing new programs. And that's where I ran into a lot of problems because, as I mentioned, any change will......ruffle a lot of feathers. And so just because I was proposing new ideas, a lot of teachers, a lot of parents were upset about what I was doing. And so that was a tremendous learning experience for me. And because it was such a failure, because there was so

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much opposition and protest against what I was doing, I've modified a lot of my techniques and strategies over the years. So I switched to teacher training because I felt that if you really want to implement change, you have to change the mindset. And the habits of teachers, you also have to empower teachers to be agents of change, right? So if teachers discover that creativity can actually... The teaching of creativity can actually help increase my status and prestige in society, then they will be advocates for it. So I've been trying out for the past five years, and it's not been going well just because even if you do, in fact, help change teachers, teachers themselves will run into this massive social opposition embedded in their lives. And so I've been trying out for the past five years, and it's not been going well just because even if you do, in fact, help change teachers, teachers themselves will run into this massive social opposition embedded in their lives.

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So now I've returned to school leadership, but working at a principle level. So I have complete control over the curriculum. I am better advocating on behalf of students. So my strategy going forward is to basically collect concrete evidence that change is possible inside the classroom and that change is beneficial for students. And that's how you convince parents. If you can convince parents, then you can slowly convince teachers. And so for the past few weeks, good, good, good. I've been teaching students directly, collecting a lot of evidence, meaning that we'll run a lot of tests. I invite teachers and parents to come observe my class. But what they see is that if you change your teaching in subtle manners, students thrive. So an example of this is English teaching, right? So right now I'm teaching English. And again, the problem in China is that they believe that the best way to teach English is to get students to memorize word lists.

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And I have always been opposed to that. And so I've been slowly trying to get kids to read books and to act out certain scenes in the book, to write literary analysis essays. And only in two weeks, we've seen students, their minds just blossom and open. And so we arranged for a two -hour presentation where students become advocates of this sort of education in front of their parents. And parents, you know, they don't see, because I mean, they live with their kids, they themselves see how much happier, how much more confident, how much more engaged are when kids become agents of their own learning. So you're communicating with parents,

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you're giving teachers permission to try these things out, you're being an exemplar in your own classroom, and then you're kind of allowing the students to be advocates for their own learning. Would you say that these students that you're teaching at the moment, that their experience in the classroom with you is? Quite different to the experience in the classroom that they've had previously?

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Absolutely. So, I mean, first of all, I think you've summarized in a really nice, nice, eloquent way. I think the most important thing, just to be clear, is that the principal has to be the role model. The principal has to be the agent of change. The principal has to be the person inside the classroom in the trenches doing the work so that others can see and emulate. I think here in China, the biggest problem is that school leaders talk the right talk. They have great ideas, but it's just talk. And unless parents and teachers see for themselves concrete change implemented by the principal, people will just sit back and be passive. So I think it's really important that principals be agents of change. So to answer your question, what sort of changes have happened among students? Students traditionally, as I say, in class, they're passive learners. So maybe teachers will make them learn certain words, and they'll sit and they'll memorize a lot of words.

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And they become very accustomed to it. And it becomes almost pleasurable to them because they become very, very good at it. One thing that I need to do in the beginning is to basically coax them out of their addiction to memorization and move them towards a new way of thinking in the classroom, which is get them to imagine new ideas and to communicate and express these ideas, even at the possibility of failure, even at the possibility of losing face. And so what I need to do in the classroom is create a democratic, a very open, and a very tolerant, caring environment in which I, the teacher, am always encouraging students to speak out and am very non -judgmental when students respond, while giving very concrete and specific feedback on how students can improve. That's actually very difficult to do, to be both non -judgmental, at the same time, be able to provide very precise feedback on how students can improve.

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But if you're able to do that, you're able to do a lot of things. And I think that's what I need to do. And I think that's what I need to do. And I think that's what I need to do. Then what happens is that kids feel empowered to speak out. There's no risk of failure. And they want to be agents of their own learning. They want to speak out. They want to share their ideas. And so the classroom becomes a much more vibrant, a much more tolerant, and a much more happy learning environment.

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And as the teacher, are you still feeling that sense of respect from students and so on that hasn't gone away because of this environment of trust and openness and non -judgmentalism?

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I mean, the reality is that if you can prove to students you're a good teacher, they respect you even more, right? I mean, I think all teachers understand this. If you're a really good teacher, students love you. And it doesn't really matter what your personality is. It doesn't matter how you teach. But if students know they're learning, they respect you as a teacher. So as long as you are able to demonstrate professional competence, I think everyone respects you, right? Parents, your colleagues, students respect you. And I think that's what I need to do. I think that what students have figured out is that the best teachers are the most confident teachers. The most confident teachers will encourage students to speak out and to ask questions because that's a demonstration of professional confidence.

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As the principal, you are sort of setting yourself up there as the lead teacher, the lead learner, and you doing that, by example, is helping your students to learn in this way, but also help giving teachers permission by saying, hey, I will back you here because this is what I'm doing in my own classroom. And this is what can happen. You can still be respected. And here are the benefits of teaching in this way.

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Yeah, absolutely. And I think the most important thing as a school leader is to make it an open door policy, right? So you, the school leader, you need to be the role model. You need to demonstrate courage. You need to make mistakes and you need to own up your mistakes. At the same time, you need to have your door open so that when teachers are trying this and they are running into problems, they feel they have a resource to do it. So I think that's what I need to do. I think that's what I need to go to. And there's no friction. There's no sort of hierarchy. There's no sort of distance between the school leader and the teachers.

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And as you've been doing this work recently, have you had any particularly surprising or interesting feedback, something from a teacher or parent or student that is unexpected, something that you didn't think you would hear, whether that's good or bad?

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Well, I mean, what's really surprised me, the feedback from parents is that, okay, like I knew this with teaching, where in the classroom, you get kids to read texts, difficult texts, and you ask them difficult questions. Their English ability would go way up. But what the feedback I'm getting from parents that really surprised me, that really shocked me is that kids go home and they're happier. You know, they go home and they want to learn more. So that sort of shocked me because I thought at first that kids would feel this is so much hard work and this is so stressful because they're being asked to do such difficult texts and their English ability isn't really up to snuff. But what's really surprised me is that once you start to challenge kids, they become more confident, they become more happy, and they become much more engaged, regardless of their English ability, which to me is shocking.

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And so there's almost a wellbeing piece there where you're doing it because of the learning and the thinking that you want them to do. And that is happening and the engagement is there, but actually that they are more happy as learners and as people, if they are engaged in this thinking and in this work.

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Yeah. I mean, one thing that I didn't really do in the early stages of my career was think about a student's wellbeing, his psychological profile, how he is developing as an individual, especially in the crucial teenage years, right? From 14 to 18. I discounted that mainly because I was a robot in school. I mean, I was a very good student. I just did my work. I was not very emotional. And as I became a father, as I became a more experienced teacher, I prioritized the wellbeing. Mm -hmm. And I have a lot of experience in learning and safety of students. So the way I teach, I mean, I'm always staring at people's faces and eyes to study for discomfort. I'm okay with discomfort. I'm okay with that because it shows that students are thinking, but I don't want anxiety in the classroom. I don't want stress. I think that's kind of productive, especially when kids are 12, 13.

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Remember, I'm teaching sixth graders. They're 12, 13. So it's a very fragile, a very sensitive age. So I want, I want to make sure that want to do scaffolding. I mean, I want to support them, but I don't want to be another source of stress because they have so much stress in their lives anyway. So that's really, I think, the most fundamental change in my worldview as an educator these past 20 years. Before, I only prioritized economic outcomes regardless of the cost. Now I prioritize well -being and I see well -being as key to strong economic outcomes. They're definitely interrelated. Absolutely impossible to extricate one from the other, I think, in lots of ways.

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And the pandemic has been, I think, something that's also really shone a light on well -being as well as equity issues. And China's had a pretty hard experience of the pandemic and a lot of remote learning. Has any of your thinking changed due to the experience of the pandemic and schools and education? Yeah.

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So, I mean, the pandemic these past two years have, I think, been a big part of my life. I mean, really clarified for me how broken our school system is. And so I think that we need to really focus on the ideas of meta -learning and collaboration more. And right now, we're still stuck in a talk and talk model where teachers deliver information. And this is really obvious in China. I think China had the least disruption during the pandemic. Even when there was lockdown, teachers were still able to deliver lectures online. And the reason, why, is that the sort of style of learning that happened offline and online in China was consistent, right? I mean, offline at school, teachers would just step in a podium and talk for 45 minutes. And then when they went offline, the same thing happened. So there was no disruption at all. And students didn't really learn that much in school. And they learned even less when the lockdowns happened.

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So that really solidified for me and clarified me the importance of meta -learning. We need to teach students to learn for themselves. And so a lot of my teaching is really in helping students better understand meta -learning. How do you go about better developing a memory, a stronger memory? How do you start to be able to construct your own learning goals and developing your own learning strategies? So in my class, we focus a lot on reading strategies, on how to quickly identify the plot of the book, how to read psychological profile, and identify change lines. And I think that's really important. And I think that's really important. And I think that's really important. And I think that's really important. So we can learn and apply change, change in character. And so the idea is that, you know, I want to teach students in a way that maybe a year or two years from now, they don't even need a teacher.

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That's my goal as a teacher to sort of make myself redundant in their lives. So not just teaching them the content,

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but actually teaching them how they learn and how they can help themselves to be learners and to continue to improve.

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Yeah. And that's why students enjoy learning because it's empowering for them. It's, it's, it's like you're, you're giving them a new learning opportunity. It's, it's, new set of tools a new pair of eyes in which to see the see the world and to see themselves and to see the text and that's why they enjoy it so much because they feel that wow this is liberating this is empowering and it's liberating right because once if you're going to teach meta learning properly they feel so much more empowered about themselves so it's interesting that you've

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talked about the sort of anti -creative pro -authority system that sort of still exists with a lot of consistency of chalk and talk kind of teaching which has its goals I guess in results and positive academic outcomes for students but would you say I'm trying to think about how to summarize what seems to be your goal here which is around that empowerment of students as learners and as thinkers would you say that's your kind of end goal or is there another way to put that

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I think that's a great way of summarizing it but another way of understanding what I'm trying to do is even though I'm teaching a classroom I'm still very much engaged in field research meaning that I'm not delusional I don't think that I myself will change the Chinese school system you know Chinese school system is you know tens of millions of kids millions of teachers it's been around for a very very long time I'm not going to change how this thing operates in a year or two right what I'm doing is I'm conducting field research so I can better understand about how to devise a blueprint so that future generations can come along and use this blueprint in order to better promote education reform and change in China another way of understanding what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to think of education more more of a science than as an art and so the

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analogy I like to you use is that you look at medicine about 20 years ago it very much was an art it was basically doctors did what they want and a lot was intuition a lot was fear a lot was just local practice and then about 20 years ago you had certain individuals who came in who were scientists and they brought the idea of science scientific process into medicine and they modernized medicine so that medicine today it's really a rigorous set of systems and protocols that allow doctors to provide individualist feedback so that all patients get better regardless of income regardless of education regardless of demographics so that's my ambition really I want to be able to write this blueprint down and better inspire future generations of educators not just

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in China but around the world one thing I am wondering though is that China you're saying you know has a has some way to go in terms of creativity and so on but when we look at PISA results China does really really well and many countries look to those PISA results so the OECD's program for international student assessment that measures 15 year olds proficiency in reading maths and science lots of countries look to that and Australia's results are declining we're often told to look to some of the provinces of China like Beijing Shanghai Jiangsu and Zhejiang which really outperform other countries and provinces around the world are there things that other countries can learn from China you talked even in your approach just then that you were talking about and with education as a science there's a value there about consistency and about knowing what works and therefore applying that is there something that other

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countries can learn from that big system that is Chinese education

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sure I think there are a lot of things that the world can learn from China I think the first thing the most important thing is that there's tremendous respect for education here in China there's this belief among all Chinese that through hard work for education people's lives can change for the better there's this incredible optimism about education here in China and that's why people here in China are so obsessed with education if you go to restaurants all these restaurants are full of tables of parents and all they talk about are the kids schools school rankings here in in China are obsessed over as much as sports rankings in Australia or or the United States so there's this massive obsession about education here in China and I think that can be learned um the importance of education is widely believed here in China that's the first thing second thing is that means is that teachers teachers

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are expected to grow all the time I think a third of all uh work uh for teachers is in professional development so they spend a third of their working hours learning and that could be that could mean learning from other teachers going into other people's classrooms observing taking notes and giving feedback it could mean going to city -wide sponsored uh teacher developing sessions that could mean simply something simply as attending lectures on your own getting credits at a community college so a third of teachers working hours is in learning and I think that's a great thing I I think that's something that all school systems can learn from the third thing that the world can learn from from Chinese schools is that teachers even in primary school are expected to do research they're expected to do dissertations they're expected to do presentations for other other teachers so that that's why there's so much respect for

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for teaching because here in China primary school teachers are expected to do research and scholarship at the level of University professors I think that's something that's wonderful I I think that all countries can learn from this and understand that teaching it's not a job but it's actually intellectual Pursuit and it requires a lifetime of constant study and reflection that is definitely

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something that my colleagues in Australia would resonate with I think teachers at the moment are not necessarily feeling like a respected profession there's shortages and there's high attrition rates in both teaching and school leadership across sectors and across districts I suppose you'd call them so that respect for education and for schooling as well as respect for teachers in the teaching profession and the teachers themselves being proud of what it is that they're doing and given that time and space that you're talking about for their learning so I'm interested when you say that a third of their working hours are in professional learning are the other two -thirds teaching or is that still some planning and preparation and assessment time so how much of a Chinese teachers timetable day would

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be taken up with teaching a third would be teaching so that Chinese teachers would teach like I think 18 hours a week and then the other third is would be in planning and in market homework now remember that Chinese teachers teachers actually teach very large classrooms they teach 50 students or more so there's a lot of homework to grade and there's a lot of lesson planning to do but the great thing about Chinese teachers is that they collaborate very closely together so that they actually share lesson plans and that reduces a lot of the workload and I think that that's another thing actually that the world can learn from in China teaching is considered a collaborative activity you know if a teacher's not doing well in the classroom don't blame the teacher blame blame the school culture in the leadership because you're not actually encouraging collaboration among teachers and

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what might that collaboration look like in a Chinese school when teachers are working really hard sharing of resources is it meetings is it cross -marking work like how does that support work

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well there are different ways this unfolds in Chinese schools the first is mentoring right so older teachers will mentor younger teachers they will spend a lot of time together second thing is in collaborative lesson planning so the entire department will sit down together and maybe develop the entire lesson plan for the semester for all classes then there's peer -to -peer learning so teachers will go into each other's classrooms and make presentations and then at the end of the classroom they'll have this very Frank open discussion about how the teacher can improve and I've been in a lot of these sessions and what's incredible is that the teacher who's been observed and who has been critiqued the teacher's not offended the teacher is doesn't feel that his or her autonomy is has been infringed upon in fact the teacher is very welcoming and very receptive to a lot of this critique and feedback because the teacher

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knows that this could take in feedback it's just to help him or her grow as a teacher but I think that's also a great thing about Chinese schools there's an interesting

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tension there between what you talked about earlier with students not necessarily being encouraged to take risks to deal with failure to collaborate a lot but then the teaching profession it sounds like they do see feedback as an opportunity to grow collaborate highly together so the actual education system or a school environment does reflect some of those things that we might want for our students as well as for our teachers right so a lot of the issue is

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um the culture of teaching the professional teaching in China is great but the end goal the assessment system is problematic because all anyone cares about in China are the test scores right so this is all in the name of getting higher test scores and so a lot of pressure is is on the students perform and that I think is very problematic this teaching culture it's great but I I think that the um the end goals are very problematic I think that China needs needs to move to more holistic uh assessment system uh to encourage more individuality and creativity here and what might

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that look like so you know school leadership role at the moment as school principal and obviously test scores are always a really important data set for any school leader and for parents and for students what other kinds of measures are you either bringing in or thinking of applying in your school environment that might be measures of the kind of learning that you want to see in

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the students in your school I place a huge emphasis on growth mindset so I don't really care about the results I care about the value system I want students to challenge themselves I want students to be able to engage in constant self -reflection I want them to be aware of the limitations and have the courage to overcome their limitations that's what I'm I'm interested in the ceiling in my students and that's why I don't really prioritize the best students I mean here in China the best students are are giving preferential treatment but in my experience I think the very best students I mean meaning the best academic students are much more problematic than the worst students because the worst students I mean they have no pretensions I mean they have no arrogance they know their limitations they're bad students and so whatever advice you give them they're open to it for the very best students

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they basically develop a very kind of productive set of values so for example they tend to focus on easy tasks which gives them easy rewards and praise they tend to do things quickly and they do not like uh to be challenged they do not like to step outside the comfort zone and so I often have problems dealing with the best students I don't have any problems with the worst students because quite honestly um they they're open -minded but the very best students here in China can be very close -minded can be very narrow -minded can be very stubborn and

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um can be very anti -creative and in some ways gaming the system or working the system for those outcomes those testing outcomes rather than wanting to be a learner the change School System

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it's addictive it's just addictive as playing video games right this with this test system in place there are students as you say who are able to game the system they develop techniques that allow them to in a very short amount of time memorize core information and then regurgitate this information on test they're very good at that but because they're so good at that they've become addicted to that so that when you ask them to do something else for example can you rather than then fill out these multiple choice uh and you can do that but like I said if you're good at that uh answers, can you give me a long form answer to a question without a very standardized answer? And they can't do that. They freak out, they stress out and they break down emotionally. I've seen students cry because I've asked a hard question and they're just not used to being asked hard questions before.

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So it's a very problematic system. I mean, one of the things that I'm

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teaching my year 12 literature students this year is that, you know, they can get a B with that sort of memorization regurgitation. What have people previously said about this text, but that actually the way that the marking system works in the course that we're doing to get an A, they really need to show personal engagement with the text and that they have thought about it themselves, not just that they are repeating all of the things that have been said about it previously, but that they've got some kind of personal connection, obviously high level analysis and so on, but that it needs to be more than repeating what they've learned.

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Yeah. So evidence -based reasoning is a huge problem here in China. Kids never learn it. They don't even learn it at university. And that's why even the best students here in China, when they go over, they struggle immediately. They never really learn the importance and value of evidence -based reasoning.

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It's difficult too, because I know some of a similar kind of thing. Those students that study the hardest and the most are often the ones who feel the least flexible in a test situation where they have to come up with something that might be slightly new or something they haven't thought of previously. That's something that's not pre -prepared because they want to use all those things that they've worked so hard to remember.

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That's true. And the other thing I've noticed about the best students is they lack empathy. It's very hard for them to see problems from another perspective, from someone else's perspective. And they're used to only interacting with other students who are like them. They really don't like diversity and difference.

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I'm just remembering that earlier in the conversation, you said that in your own schooling, you felt like you were a robot. You were going through the motions of schooling. What was it that inspired you then to come into schooling and education as a space if your experience of it was quite automated?

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My personal background is that I was born in China. I was born into a poor family here in China in 1976, and we went over to Canada, Toronto, when I was six, seven years old, and I had for the first 10 years of schooling a very traumatic experience. I couldn't speak English. I stuttered all the time. My name was weird. My family was poor, so my father cut my hair. I wore secondhand clothes for my cousins. So it's very easy for kids to tease me. And I was always a very sensitive child. So the stress. The chronic stress. The trauma really inhibited my learning, and I was a terrible student through primary school and through junior high school. And in high school, students, teachers took notice of me. They thought that I gave some interesting answers in class. They found a spark in my eyes and they started to encourage me.

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And I started to read more books. I started to take school more seriously. And so it's this experience of education. I see education as both empowering and liberating. Because I experienced the power and liberation of education myself that inspired me to become an educator. I went to Yale College and studied English literature there with the intention of being a lawyer, a corporate lawyer, because I wanted to be rich. My family was poor. And before I went to law school, I wanted to come to China for a couple of years, teach English, because I was always interested in learning. And I fell in love with education because for me, teaching, I mean, it's intellectually very stimulating in the classroom. Even though I'm teaching. Sixth graders, I might be teaching students who barely speak English, but it's really stimulating for me to think about how to communicate complex ideas in a compelling manner to kids who have very limited experiences.

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I find that very intellectually stimulating. So it's always been a passion of mine.

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Wow. That's an incredible story of your why you've ended up as such a passionate advocate in the education space and an educator. We're coming to the end of our time together. And so I'm going to move us to the last five questions. The in the chat. And I'm going to ask you a couple of questions that you might have already answered in the lightning round of this podcast, and I wonder if you might have already answered the first one, but I'll ask you anyway, there might be something else. The first one is what is something unexpected that people might not know about you?

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I'm a science fiction writer. I've been writing. I've been working on a nine part, a nine book science fiction saga. These past few years, I finished three books. I have six more to go. Those three books exhausted me. They're very stressful to write, and I'm thinking that I might want my children to finish the saga for me. So I'm strategizing on how to best convince my children, manipulate them into finishing my saga for me. So that's something that no one knows about me. Yeah.

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And are they, they're not published yet then?

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They're not published. I'm still working on it. It's just a passion of mine. I don't think it'll make any money.

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Must be an absolute labor of love. I'm sure. So three novels in a nine part series so far.

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That's right. Amazing.

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Wow. And what about something that is currently on your desk?

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Yeah. So on my desk is Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume. It's something that I teach sixth grade Chinese. I love the book. It's fantastic. I highly recommend Judy Blume for any teachers who teach Chinese students, just because she's a fantastic writer. She's able to write very deep ideas in very simple language and a lot of themes that she writes about, adolescence, family. It's something that really resonates. And it's something that I think is really important for me to be able to share with my students and my students who have Chinese students. Great.

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Who is someone that inspires you in the work that you do?

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The most important person in my life, of course, is my wife. She completes me. We have two children together. We're hoping to have four all together.

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You'll need the four to finish your books.

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That's why we're having so many children because we have so many books to write. But I mean, I, you know, I was a very good student. And because I was such a very good student, I saw the world in a very narrow way. I'm not a very emotional person. I'm a very rational person. She's more of a human being than I am. And so she's able to tell me how ordinary people think. And that's really helped me in the work I do.

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Well, high praise for your wife there. What about one thing that you have coming up that you're excited about?

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These past two weeks, I've been teaching critical reading skills, reading strategy to my students. And next week, I'll be teaching them writing, specifically evidence based reasoning. So I've never taught this course before. But the idea is for me to propose topics to them. And then they go online, they do interviews, they do surveys, collect information, and then turn that into a coherent and compelling essay. So I've never taught this course before, but I'm really looking forward to it.

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Fantastic. I find that teaching is the thing that is often my favorite thing to do in my job in my in my day. And finally, if you were to distill your current thinking about education to its essence, what is one thought or resource that you would like to leave listeners with?

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I am a beneficiary of what we call the meritocracy, right? I worked hard, my IQ was very high, I did well on tests. So I got a full scholarship to Yale College. And in my education career, I've become very skeptical about the meritocracy. I think that if we are to develop further as a species, if the world has become better, then we need to think of ways to make our school system much more democratic and much more accessible. So my dream is that every student is able to access an elite education, not just the very best students. So that's something that I think we all have to work towards.

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So challenging us to design a more equitable system for everybody.

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Right.

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Well, Jiang, thank you so much for joining me on the Edu Salon. It's been a pleasure talking to you today.

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It's been a pleasure, Bea. Thank you for listening to the Edu Salon podcast. You can join the conversation by subscribing to this podcast and sharing it with your network, by giving this podcast a rating or review, and by connecting with Deb and her guests on social media.