A narrative inquiry into schooling in China: three images of the principalship

Cheryl J. Craig; Yali Zou; Rita P. Poimbeauf

This article was downloaded by: [Cheryl J. Craig] On: 24 October 2014, At: 05:23 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Journal of Curriculum Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tcus20 A narrative inquiry into schooling in China: three images of the principalship Cheryl J. Craig, Yali Zou & Rita P. Poimbeauf Published online: 08 Oct 2014. To cite this article: Cheryl J. Craig, Yali Zou & Rita P. Poimbeauf (2014): A narrative inquiry into schooling in China: three images of the principalship, Journal of Curriculum Studies, DOI: 10.1080/00220272.2014.957243 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2014.957243 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. 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POIMBEAUF This narrative inquiry exploring contemporary Chinese schooling involved three researchers who worked collaboratively as a team. Each researcher resonated with a different image of the principalship embedded in the storied account proffered by Xu Xiaozhang 校长, leader of Hexie Elementary School in Tianjin, China. (1) Principal as the lead teacher; (2) principal as an agent of a harmonious learning community; and (3) principal as a teacher-maker were the images Principal Xu held and expressed. In the interpretive analysis, Xu Xiaozhang’s images of principal were nested one within the other in ways that brought Deweyan pragmatism and Confucian thought fruitfully together. The subtle nuances of the images provide an upclose view of schooling on one elementary campus in China that is of international interest and value. Keywords: principal images; narrative inquiry; teaching and leading; cultural context; intercultural learning There was something magical about Xu Laoshi 老师1 as a teacher. The memory of that special year has remained with my friends and me since our fourth grade of school. We [My friends and I] get together quite often and we always reminisce about the remarkable year we spent with Teacher Xu. With the passage of time, that year has remained a special one … (Rainbow Deng) While driving to Hexie Elementary School,2 Rainbow Deng, a representative of the office of international cooperation at Tianjin University confided3 that Hexie’s principal had previously been her teacher. Thus, we would not only be visiting the campus with which her university was associated, we would be meeting for the first time the educator who had the most profound impact on her as a student. Moreover, Rainbow’s former teacher, Xu Laoshi, was now the principal of one of the most highly esteemed elementary schools in Tianjin. The city of Tianjin, we learned, is a powerful metropolis like Beijing and Shanghai, because it is a municipality directly reporting to the central government of the People’s Republic of China. Needless to say, as we stepped out of Rainbow Deng’s vehicle at Hexie Elementary School, our sense of curiosity was piqued. Cheryl J. Craig, PhD, is a Professor in University of Houston CUIN, 304E Farish Hall, 4800 Calhoun, Houston, TX, 77204-5027, USA; email: ccraig@uh.edu. Yali Zou, PhD, is a Professor and Director, Center for Asian American Studies, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204, USA. Rita P. Poimbeauf, EdD, is a Researcher in the Center for Asian American Studies, College of Education, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204, USA. © 2014 Taylor & Francis Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 2 C.J. CRAIG ET AL. What would we learn about schooling in China during our time at Hexie? Would it be of interest and value to researchers and practitioners worldwide? What would Rainbow’s former teacher be like as a principal? Would our relationship with Principal Xu be as memorable as Rainbow’s and her fourth-grade friends’ bond has been? How would we communicate with two of us not speaking Chinese [普通话 (the Chinese common language)]? In this article, we address these queries. We begin by introducing ourselves (Cheryl Craig, Yali Zou, Rita Poimbeauf) and Xu Xiaozhang 校长, whom we came to know. We then present our research method, followed by reconstructed field notes gathered in situ with Principal Xu, which provide the grist for an account of schooling in China from her point of view. The field texts emerging from Principal Xu’s elucidations of her experiences were then analyzed using three different interpretive lenses: (1) the image of principal as the lead teacher (Cheryl Craig); (2) the image of principal as an agent of China’s harmonious society (Yali Zou); and (3) the image of principal as a teacher-maker (Rita Poimbeauf). The reasons why these three principal images are spotlighted become apparent in the individual narratives we share. Also, we have chosen to thread the relevant literature throughout this article as opposed to presenting a separate literature review. We want to reinforce the idea that our research puzzle about contemporary schooling in China did not begin with ‘what theoreticians, researchers, and policy makers know but rather with what [Principal Xu, our research participant] knew, and had found in [her] professional practice’ (Clandinin, 2000, p. 29). In short, a naturalistic approach (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), a widely accepted social science method, is used to communicate our research findings to JCS’s international reading audience. Introducing the researchers When Cheryl Craig began her journey as a narrative inquirer, she first conducted research that involved beginning teachers, their images of teaching (Clandinin, 1986; Connelly & Clandinin, 1985) and the knowledge communities (Craig, 1995a, 1995b) with whom they shared their stories of experience (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). While conducting research with beginning teacher, Tim, she discovered that Tim’s principal was as desirous as Tim to discuss his practice as a school leader. This developed into a ‘study within a study’ whereby she simultaneously explored Tim’s and Benita’s images of beginning teaching and Tim’s principal’s image of the principalship revolving around the notion of ‘principal as rebel’ (Craig, 1999). Cheryl Craig came to intimately understand image as ‘a kind of knowledge, embodied in a person and connected with the individual’s past, present and future’ (Clandinin, 1985, p. 379). She began to see image as ‘emerg[ing] from the imaginative processes by which meaningful and useful patterns are generated in minded practice’ (Connelly & Clandinin, 2003, p. 155). She came to know image as ‘the Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 A NARRATIVE INQUIRY INTO SCHOOLING IN CHINA 3 glue that melds together a person’s diverse experiences, both personal and professional’ (Clandinin, 1985, p. 379). After completing this early work, Cheryl moved from Canada to the USA and began to study inservice teachers, most specifically practicing teachers’ knowledge communities within the context of organized school reform efforts. This resulted in her identifying several novel (invented) metaphors (Craig, 2005; Schön, 2003) that the teachers borrowed from oral language and published literature to narrate their knowing of school reform. These metaphors included ‘the monkey’s paw’ (Craig, 2001), ‘the rainbow fish’ (Craig, 2003) and ‘the dragon in school backyards’ (Craig, 2004) to list a few. But it also led Cheryl Craig to co-construct accounts of particular teachers’ lived images of teaching: for example, Laura’s likening of teaching in the midst of mandated reforms to being like a ‘butterfly under a pin’ (Craig, 2012) and Anna’s experience as a beginning teacher of ‘coming to know “in the eye of a storm”’ (Craig, 2013a). Recently, Cheryl’s focus has turned to the study of the teacher’s ‘bestloved self’ (Craig, 2013b), a provocative idea introduced by Schwab (1954/ 1978) that she has connected with Clandinin and Connelly’s (1992) image of the teacher-as-curriculum-maker. In the teacher-as-curriculum-maker view, the teacher is understood to be ‘the most responsive creator of curriculum’, because he/she ‘negotiates the formal planned curriculum of governments and publishers within his/her practice, alongside the lives of learners’ (Murphy & Pushor, 2010, p. 658). Hence, the teacher-as -curriculum-maker image turns attention away from written plans, authorized textbooks and government mandates (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992; Connelly & Clandinin, 1988, Craig & Ross, 2008), which typically privilege subject matter and confine the teacher to a dispenser of knowledge role. In contrast, attention becomes focused on curriculum as it is lived within the context of people’s lives (Downey & Clandinin, 2010, Chapter 19), a mingling of Schwab’s (1983) four curriculum commonplaces (teacher, learner, subject matter, milieu) mediated by the teacher. This runs against the grain of the image of teacher-as-curriculum-implementer (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992), the dominant image in the field of education where teachers’ knowledge is preordained by those in positional authority. With the latter image, teachers use expert’s predetermined knowledge, but are not recognized as being creators of knowledge of their own accord (i.e. Hlebowitsh, 2013; Silin & Schwartz, 2003; Yang, 2013). Yali Zou, this article’s second author, entered this study as a native of China, fully fluent in Mandarin and keenly aware of Chinese culture and history. Although she emigrated to the US after China’s Cultural Revolution and became an American citizen in 2000, she has maintained close ties with her homeland, family and friends. Since 1995, she has organized groups of students and city leaders on China Study Abroad Program trips that have been an integral part of the programme offerings of the Asian American Studies Center which she founded and directs. On these study trips, she teaches curricula she has developed around the themes of multiculturalism, diversity and educational and social emancipation. Through participating in the China Study Abroad Program, the educators meet face-to-face with diverse others and become immersed in thinking about Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 4 C.J. CRAIG ET AL. the aforementioned concepts. They necessarily consider what culturally relevant teaching and learning (Gay, 2010; Ukpokodu, 2011; Zou & Trueba, 1998) might be. Yali Zou, an ethnographer by training (Zou, 1994, 1998, 2006; Zou & Trueba, 1998, 2002), has conducted numerous research projects in China concerning minority education, empowerment for minority students and cultural therapy (Spindler & Spindler, 1994; Zou, 2001) as a form of teacher development. Most recently, she has investigated the achievement of high performing Asian and Hispanic youth in her local area (Zou, under review). Yali Zou is particularly sensitive to how culture and context shape what it is that people know and do and the ways in which they know and express their personal experiences. Hence, when Principal Xu chronicled her career and beliefs about school leadership, Yali immediately reflected on her own educational experiences in China and understood what Principal Xu was talking about. Yali Zou’s personal experience of the Cultural Revolution helped her to more deeply comprehend Principal Xu’s teaching philosophy (Zou, 2002, 2003). Yali recalled being sent to the countryside for two years as a young girl to fend for herself, away from the comfort of her family and the security of her educated parents. There, she learned that her survival depended on her ability to help the struggling peasants. She became what the villagers affectionately called a ‘barefoot doctor’ through her expert use of acupuncture, a skill she learned to overcome a personal life-threatening illness. She similarly became a ‘barefoot [self-taught] teacher’ by instructing children who lived in isolated areas how to read. Given that Principal Xu appeared to be about Yali Zou’s age, Yali could not help but wonder how the Cultural Revolution might have also impacted Principal Xu’s life (and that of Rainbow, who was of a younger generation, and similar in age to Yali’s daughter). She also thought about how the underlying philosophy of China as a harmonious society might be shaping the narrative account Principal Xu shared about schooling in China. When it was later learned that Principal Xu had also suffered from the persecution of intellectuals and had spent three years teaching in the countryside, a commonplace of experience (Lane, 1988) was forged between Yali Zou and Principal Xu. Even so, Principal Xu’s life appeared to be more ‘hard scramble’ (Vinz, 1997) after the Cultural Revolution than Yali’s due to Principal Xu’s around-the-clock school leadership duties and her unexpectedly becoming a widow and sole family supporter. Joining Cheryl Craig and Yali Zou in this research study was Rita Poimbeauf, a retired principal with a distinguished 35-year career in education. After teaching for a few years and serving as a teacher supervisor, Rita became an elementary school principal in the local school district. Her first appointment was to a small community school in a Mexican American neighbourhood. Over the years, she moved as principal twice to larger elementary school campuses, one with an enrolment of over 1000 students. In addition, during these years, Rita Poimbeauf wrote the charter for and founded the first year-round school in the state of Texas. Later, she accepted the principalship of a large, minority middle school Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 A NARRATIVE INQUIRY INTO SCHOOLING IN CHINA 5 with a gifted and talented magnet school component. All in all, Rita Poimbeauf served as an administrator in the same district for 27 years. Upon retiring as a school leader, Rita continued to work for an additional eight years as the executive director for one of the teachers’ associations with 2000+ members. Her duties as executive director included negotiating teachers’ insurance policies and working conditions, representing teacher grievances at the school level and higher, defending teachers who had complaints and/or charges filed against them, acting as a witness in state hearings, testifying at school board meetings, conducting inservice sessions on teacher rights and responsibilities (Poimbeauf, 2008) and so forth. Rita Poimbeauf, as executive director, worked directly and indirectly with over 300 schools, gaining valuable insights into what makes exemplary schools and excellent principals and what changes need to be made to campuses in need of assistance. Rita currently works as a researcher in the Asian American Study Centre at the university and has cultivated an ardent interest in Asian culture and philosophy. As a student of the narrative inquiry research method, she brought her personal practical knowledge (Clandinin, 1985) of the principalship to the study, especially her understandings of what being a school leader entails (Brown & Anfara, 2003; Greenleaf & Spears, 1999/2002). Upon hearing Principal Xu’s narrative, Rita Poimbeauf was reminded of the responsibilities principals shoulder as they nurture teachers and students to become the best they can be within the boundaries of school district, state and national school policies. As she listened to Principal Xu, Rita was struck by the similarities between their administrative experiences, despite their lives unfolding continents apart. For Rita Poimbeauf, there were many narrative resonances (Conle, 1996) between her personal story as a principal and the one Principal Xu was communicating, the main one being their shared devotion to teachers and teachers’ personal professional development. Together, our research team members, due to our personal biographies (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Denzin & Lincoln, 1998) and career trajectories, brought different experiences and perspectives to our collaborative inquiry into schooling in China. These orientations, in turn, awakened us to different held and expressed images of the principalship present in Principal Xu’s co-constructed narrative of experience. These different lived images helped us avoid the methodological problem of the ‘sure interpreter’ or ‘reigning interpreter’ (Lindemann Nelson, 1995) who shuts down the meaning-making of participant’s texts rather than generatively opening them up for interpretation. Our multiperspectival interpretive approach increased the likelihood of our encountering views and practices that would inform the field of education internationally. Introducing Principal Xu When the three of us first met Xu Xiaozhang 校长, she was in her final year of working in the field of education, having served 16 years as a teacher and 13 years as a principal. Unlike most Chinese people of her Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 6 C.J. CRAIG ET AL. generation who did not have the opportunity to enter higher education, Principal Xu was ‘university-learned’, as she explained in an interview. After China’s Cultural Revolution, where she educated unschooled peasant children for three years, Teacher Xu ‘performed well’ in a competitive college entrance exam. Her high test score gained her admittance to Beijing Normal School for Teachers, the institution from which she subsequently graduated. Teacher Xu’s preparation in a normal school setting preceded teacher education being offered by China’s normal universities (i.e. Beijing Normal University, Capital Normal University, etc.). This meant that the focus of her introduction to teaching was on practical rather than on theoretical understandings. Accordingly, the knowledge Teacher Xu developed was, ‘practical’, as she repeatedly emphasized. In fact, her sense of knowing continued to be of a practical nature, because it increasingly was carved out of her on-the-job experiences as a teacher and principal. When appointed leader of Hexie Elementary School, she became responsible for enacting the national policies of the Educational Ministry of the People’s Republic of China and communicating school policies to the student body, faculty members and parents. In a nutshell, the overall functioning of the campus was mostly entrusted to her. Working with Principal Xu was Deputy Principal, Shijing He. Her work responsibilities were the school’s academic programme and curriculum. Together, the two females facilitated Hexie’s success. Never once did they question the imperatives of the government officials in charge (Yang, 2013), although both, by virtue of their body language and silence around particular topics, seemed aware of tensions between China’s Confucian legacy and its Marxist political system (Cheng & Xu, 2011; Deng, 2011) among other societal forces. Consistent with China’s one-child policy, Xiao Xu had one daughter. Her daughter majored in telecommunications at Tianjin University and currently works in student services there. Principal Xu also informed us that her spouse, an engineer, had died a few years earlier. She said she was ‘looking forward’ to her retirement, but also ‘felt sad’ because her partner was not alive to spend time with her. She regretted that their many years of working in the professions had, in her view, ‘kept them apart’. Like the vast majority of Chinese (Heyhoe, 1995), Principal Xu and her spouse had focused more on professional service than on personal life, a value consistent with China’s communitarian culture and social mobility ladder (Cheng, 2011). Introducing Hexie elementary school Hexie Elementary School is located near the heart of downtown Tianjin. As foreshadowed, it is a university-affiliated campus serving children mostly of campus employees, but also a few youths from outside the university’s gates. Surrounded by high-rise apartment buildings, Hexie is on the Tianjin University campus. Tianjin University, one of China’s first modern universities, ranks ‘among China’s top four’ (Tianjin University Welcome Speech). The buildings overlooking Hexie are inhabited by Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 A NARRATIVE INQUIRY INTO SCHOOLING IN CHINA 7 university faculty, their mostly one-child families and extended family members (i.e. grandparents from one or both sides of the family). In them, Principal Xu, Deputy Principal He and Hexie’s teachers, as well as their families, also reside. So, too, do other university employees, such as Rainbow Deng. This means that Hexie’s student population exhibits little diversity: all children are native Chinese (a few being non-Han); all speak 普通话 (the common language); all are learning English; all have extended family members living at home; all families rent apartments whose sizes are pro-rated according to income/status; and the vast majority have university-employed parents. Unlike most North American schools, Hexie Elementary School neither has a cultivated front lawn nor an imposing front entrance. What it does have is a spacious, immaculately clean concrete driveway, a small memorial garden with the flag of the People’s Republic of China flying overhead and a marble wall exhibiting the campus’s many awards. According to Principals Xu and He, these nine honours came from the Education Ministry, the Education Commission of the City of Tianjin and Tianjin University. The wall additionally informs visitors that Hexie is a model school, one of many experimental campuses that emerged after John Dewey’s two-year visit to China (Ornstein & Hunkins, 1988). In fact, Dewey became so revered in China that he was awarded the Order of Jade, a civilian honour reserved for outstanding heads of foreign states (New York Times, Obituary, 1952). Many Chinese still consider Dewey as ‘the second Confucius’ (Han & Feng, 2013). To these individuals (i.e. Tan, 2011), the educational philosophies of Confucius and Dewey are more complementary than different. This point will intrigue readers in North America and elsewhere. Also, engraved on Hexie Elementary School’s wall was the campus’s motto, ‘happy teaching, happy learning’ (乐教爱学）. As researchers, we immediately became interested in probing the meaning of this motto, mostly because it embraced the emotions of teaching and learning (Cheng, 2011). This mission statement was one we typically do not encounter, while conducting research in Western school milieus (Elbaz-Luwisch, 2001; Newberry, Gallant, & Riley, 2013). Introducing the research study Our research study began when we received invitations to give keynote addresses in Beijing. As part of that trip, we travelled to Tianjin for five days to contribute to a two-day workshop and to visit schools for the remainder of our time. From the outset, our inquiry broadly examined schooling in China from an insider point of view. This was because two of us had absolutely no conception of what we might observe in Chinese schools. In the spirit of the narrative inquiry research method, experience (Connelly & Clandinin, 2000) would lead the way. Put differently, we would study ‘what the situation “pull[ed] out” of [each of] us’ (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988, pp. 25–26). Rainbow Deng, our assigned Tianjin driver for five days, became a supporting research participant. Rainbow fortuitously introduced us to Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 8 C.J. CRAIG ET AL. Principal Xu, our main research participant. On this first visit, we shadowed Principal Xu for two days at the conference and three days at Hexie Elementary School. We also ate lunch and dinner with Principal Xu and Deputy Principal He, who we met through Xu Xiaozhang 校长, and who became our second supporting research participant. During all of these Tianjin interactions, Yali Zou served as a co-researcher and a language interpreter for our research participants and for Rita Poimbeauf and Cheryl Craig. As mentioned earlier, Rainbow Deng was fluent in Mandarin and English as well, and helped Yali Zou with translation when necessary. After our research team returned to the US, we (Cheryl, Yali, Rita) analyzed our field notes and realized each of us had many more questions that needed to be asked. This revelation resulted in several lists of questions being drafted and eight additional telephone exchanges between Principal Xu and Yali Zou. After that, Yali and Rita returned to Tianjin to conduct other work. Face-to-face interactions with Principal Xu and Rainbow Deng additionally took place at that time. Also, a coat was forgotten in Rainbow’s car. Arranging the return of the coat fortunately led to several additional telephone conversations between Yali Zou and Rainbow Deng, along with ongoing discussions with Principal Xu. Our last personal contact with Xu Xiaozhang 校长 occurred when Yali visited China alone. On this final trip, Yali learned that Principal Xu had retired and of her retirement activities. Altogether, our field work totalled 18 months. Research method Narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Murphy, 2009; Craig, 2011; Huber, Caine, Huber, & Steeves, 2013; Li, Conle, & Elbaz Luwisch, 2009) is both the method and form of this investigation (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). According to Clandinin and Connelly (2000), … narrative inquiry is a way of understanding experience … It is a collaboration between researcher [s] and participants, over time, in a place or series of places, and in social interaction with milieus. An inquirer [or inquirers] enters this matrix in the midst and progresses in this same spirit, concluding the inquiry still in the midst of living and telling, reliving and retelling, the stories of the experience that make up people’s lives, both individual and social. Simply stated … narrative inquiry is stories lived and told. (p. 20) Following Dewey (1908/1981, 1938), Schwab (1969, 1983) and Jackson (1968), this particular study unpacks the human experience of schooling in China in one research participant’s own terms. The focal point of this school-based narrative inquiry (Xu & Connelly, 2010) is the thinking, understandings and emotions of Principal Xu of Tianjin University’s affiliated campus. Through our research study with her, we could gain an upclose view of one campus in China and of Teacher Xu’s personal philosophy as a principal. The research tools of broadening, burrowing, storying and restorying (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990) and Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 A NARRATIVE INQUIRY INTO SCHOOLING IN CHINA 9 fictionalization (Clandinin et al., 2006) support the research purview of this study. First, we employ burrowing to examine Principal Xu’s thinking and to highlight particular situations she experienced as a principal. Second, we use broadening when we ponder her knowledge of the Cultural Revolution and her administrative experiences of Education Ministry directives. At the same time, the current Chinese government is not discussed because our research participant did not bring it up. When possible, we weave in Western ideas about schooling for comparative purposes and to communicate with that portion of our international reading audience. Where, storying and restorying, the third research device is concerned, we consider Principal Xu’s career trajectory and enduring beliefs she has held despite transitioning from a teacher to a principal. We also explore significant shifts in thought she experienced concerning how good teachers are developed and educators’ roles and responsibilities with respect to children’s parents. To the extent that we were able, we used the final tool, fictionalization, to disguise the identities of other Chinese educators with whom we came in contact on our journeys. Also, while the campus can technically be traced, the circumstances of people’s employment within it have changed. The Hexie Elementary School (pseudonym) we visited in 2011, for example, is significantly different from the Hexie Elementary School (pseudonym) that currently exists. This research study is presented in the form of a narrative exemplar (Lyons & LaBoskey, 2002; Mishler, 1990, Craig & Olson, 2002) whose ‘validity’—understood in narrative terms—has to do with its ‘lifelikeness’ (Mishler, 1990)—or what is considered to be ‘true for now’ (Bruner, 1986). According to Lyons and LaBoskey (2002), narrative exemplars are ‘concrete examples … elaborated so that members of a relevant research community can judge for themselves their “trustworthiness” and the validity of observations, interpretations, etc’. (Lyons & LaBoskey, 2002, p. 20, italics in original). These co-constructed exemplars, irrespective of the topic of investigation, share five characteristics in common. They: capture intentional human actions that not only tell a story, but convey developing knowledge of those involved; are lodged in socially and contextually embedded situations; draw other people into the mix as the narrative exemplar is unpacked; implicate people’s identities; focus on interpretation, often including different points of view (Lyons & LaBoskey, 2002). In a nutshell, a narrative exemplar, such as the one of Principal Xu, presents for reflection and analysis a storied life lived in relationship with people, places and things. That exemplar is the closest we can come to communicate the ‘truthlikeness’ of Teacher Xu’s professional life as a principal of a Chinese elementary school to JCS’s international readership. Ultimately, JCS readers will decide the veracity of the co-constructed account and the extent to which it informs their knowledge and future practices. 10 C.J. CRAIG ET AL. Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 Narrative exemplar of Xiao Xu’s lived experiences as principal According to Teacher Xu, her primary ambition was not to become a campus principal. Rather, her original intent was to be ‘an excellent teacher’. In the words of a person with whom she worked (Deputy Principal Shijing He) and a person whom she taught (Rainbow Deng), teacher Xu realized ‘her dream’. She was, by all accounts, an ‘outstanding teacher’ who ‘let [students] learn’ (Heidegger, 1968, p. 8 in Wu, 2011, p. 573). Her ‘devotion and dedication to the work’ (Deputy Principal Shijing He’s words) as well as her ‘fascinating’ approach to teaching (Rainbow Deng’s words) made her stand out from the rest. According to her colleagues with whom we interacted, Teacher Xu was ‘the best’. Teacher Xu’s areas of specialty were Chinese literature and language arts, which may partly explain her Confucius orientation. She ‘put her heart into interpreting the meanings of texts’ at a level that elementary school children could understand. Teacher Xu’s words give life to the Confucian characterization of ‘teaching as a heart-to-heart encounter’ (Cheng & Xu, 2011, p. 608). In this approach, … a teacher’s capacity for teaching is not that … she is clever and more knowledgeable than … her students; rather it is the interpretive capacity to detect the horizons of the learner’s fore-sight or pre-understanding, and to offer a language to help the learners to hear for himself or herself the articulation of what calls [him/her] in the particular pedagogic engagement. (Wu, 2011, p. 573) In response, fourth grade students such as Rainbow Deng and her classmates prepared additional layers of analysis that built on their pedagogical exchanges with their teacher. For Teacher Xu, this deepening of understanding through interpersonal communication, another principle of Confucianism (Heyhoe, 1997), was the key to her ‘beautiful lessons’ and the foundation on which she built her ‘fascinating’ approach. Maintaining close relationships with students, cultivating a spirit of humility and creating reflective spaces so that children could develop personal understandings of traditional texts were also critically important to her ‘winning strategy’. Taken together, this was the ‘magic’, according to Rainbow Deng, which she and her peers reportedly experienced and that they have fondly remembered since fourth grade. Because Teacher Xu was such an excellent instructor of Chinese literacy, her teaching colleagues decided—by virtue of an unofficial survey— that she should lead Hexie Elementary School. Like elsewhere in China, principals are ‘elected’ through teacher input and ‘confirmed’ by external stakeholders (i.e. government officials, university officials, city officials) (Hexie Elementary School Welcome Lecture). Our co-researcher, Yali Zou, further explained that principals are sometimes appointed by the local reigning party officials and sometimes naturally inherit the position through seniority. In Hexie’s case, the Human Resources Department of Tianjin University agreed with the teachers’ collective recommendation and named Teacher Xu as Hexie’s principal. That was how Teacher Xu Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 A NARRATIVE INQUIRY INTO SCHOOLING IN CHINA 11 became a principal over a decade ago, after having worked as a teacher for close to two decades before that on other campuses. In Teacher Xu’s words, every principal has a ‘distinct style and psychological approach’ to working with teachers, students and parents. No principal can possibly ‘be the same as any other’. Neither can teachers be carbon copies—‘replicas’, according to Principal Xu—of each other. The same goes for students. In her view, she learned to be a good principal through remembering that teachers are people who keep ‘school in [their] hearts’. It, therefore, made sense that she, as a principal, would keep teachers ‘in her heart’. Principal Xu speculated that if the principal chooses not to keep the thoughts of the teacher in the foreground, then ‘the teacher will not work for you’. In turn, the school will suffer as well as the students. Things will not run like a fine-tuned ‘machine’; people will not experience the ‘beautiful synergy’ (完美协作), in Principal Xu’s description. To her, they will not reach their maximum potential, which is a principal’s ‘big responsibility’ regardless of the continent or country where they are globally situated. Being a principal, however, can be a ‘demanding’ job. Distilled to one word, Principal Xu described it as ‘exhausting’. As the principal, Xu is responsible for making certain that the policies and procedure determined by the China Education Ministry are fully enacted at Hexie Elementary School. This includes the mandated curriculum for which Deputy Principal, Shijing He, is co-responsible. Keeping 25 teachers and close to 800 students ‘happy teaching; happy learning’（乐教爱学) (the school’s motto) is no easy feat. Principals must develop ‘winning strategies’ in both teachers and students. Like ‘conductors of symphonies’, they must make certain everyone in the orchestra is playing their instruments in tune, on time, and with the appropriate calibration of emotion (Eros) (see Schwab, 1954/1978)—otherwise ‘beautiful music’ (美妙的音乐), as Principal Xu explained, will not occur despite the conductor’s expertise at waving the baton. If one note in a performance is missed, she said, the ‘whole effort of the team fails’. Needless to say, teachers, students and families present challenges for principals. How to create group harmony and collective purpose, while appreciating personal preferences, propensities and personalities is a difficult task (Cheng & Xu, 2011; Wu, 2011). Where teachers are concerned, Principal Xu used to think she could control teacher quality solely through ‘the hiring process’. However, as principal of Hexie School, she quickly learned that she is not ‘the only person’ responsible for the selection of faculty. Because Hexie Elementary School is an affiliated school of Tianjin University, university officials also have significant input into the school’s staffing. Hence, Principal Xu has had to alter her stance. She recognizes that good teachers cannot only be hired, but they also, in her words, ‘can be made’. Further to this, it is her job—along with that of Deputy Principal Shijing He—to help teachers become better practitioners. Through observation, dialogue, feedback, reflection and role modelling, teachers’ practices can be improved. Thus, she, as principal, must, in her view, ‘guide them every day’. She must strive to make herself present to the teachers and mindful of their ‘every Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 12 C.J. CRAIG ET AL. moment’ so they can develop their teaching abilities ‘like their mentors’ (Principal Xu, Deputy Principal He). As for students, some are not performing at their potential despite the high expectations held for them by Principal Xu, Deputy Principal Shijing He and the remainder of Hexie’s teaching staff. In the US and elsewhere, students’ failure to achieve success is shouldered by teachers. However, in China, emphasis is not placed on teacher accountability as it is the US (i.e. Darling-Hammond, 2007) and Australia (i.e. Kleinhenz & Ingvarson, 2004), for instance, or teacher performativity as it is called in the UK (i.e. Troman, 2008) and Belgium (i.e. Kelchtermans, 2007), for example. Rather, responsibility is borne by the whole community so as to ‘avoid conflict and maintain balance’, as Principal Xu maintained. Hence, politics is never openly discussed. A group solution is sought to sustain school excellence or the school will be stripped of its model status and the special funding it receives from China’s Education Ministry. In short, the campus stands to lose the positive inducements it has received in the past. This situation is something to be ‘avoided’, Principal Xu told us. Financial penalties can restrict what happens in schools in terms of programming, personnel, field trips and materials. Loss of privileges can propel schools such as Hexie on a downward spiral. Families also present issues at Hexie Elementary School. As foreshadowed, children enrolled on campus are from one-child families with both parents and grandparents comprising the nuclear family unit. Further to this, Hexie, as earlier mentioned, is a university-affiliated school serving the families of professors, all of whom have advanced expertise in their specialized fields. Needless to say, this sense of expert knowledge and an accompanying sense of entitlement often seep into the Hexie School milieu. Principal Xu recognizes that parents who are ‘very challenging and demanding’ need to be gently reminded that they are not ‘elementary education experts’. Because they do not understand ‘elementary’ practices and processes’, they, in Principal Xu’s view, are like students and teachers: they, as parents and grandparents, need to be educated on the schooling of young children. As principal, she teaches them about developing ‘student personalities’, and learning ‘study habits for life’, in order for students to succeed. In two words, ‘communication’ must be fostered and ‘guidance’ must be proffered. All of this must be sorted out, because, as introduced earlier, the principal and the faculty of Hexie Elementary School live in the same community as the parents (professors/campus workers), grandparents and children. Interactions cannot be avoided; concerns cannot go unaddressed. Principal Xu, as leader of Hexie Elementary School, is on 24-h call seven days a week. Her telephone rings throughout the dayand into the night. Her job, unlike that of principals in the US and elsewhere in the Western world, has an all-encompassing quality to it due to boundaries not existing between her personal and professional life. It is not surprising, then, that Principal Xu also considers herself responsible for harmony in the community, where Hexie is located. Such Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 A NARRATIVE INQUIRY INTO SCHOOLING IN CHINA 13 harmony begins in the school building—with both teachers and students contributing to a strong team effort. Being good as individuals is important; however, the goodness of the team is paramount. In Principal Xu’s words, ‘team honor’ is of highest importance. Individuals in the school feel ‘guilty’ (her assessment of the situation), not because they personally performed poorly, but because they let other members of the school ‘orchestra’ (her choice of metaphor) down. Such a philosophy presents a considerable burden for Principal Xu where teachers are concerned. She explained her more expansive role this way: ‘You not only take care of their job, you take care of their families, their lives … you invest in their families and their emotional development [as well]’. For Principal Xu, it additionally means taking a ‘kind and considerate’ look at ‘each teacher, their strength and their shortcomings’ at the end of each year. It simultaneously means keeping in mind how the work of an ‘exemplary team’ might be advanced. This, to her, is ‘the most important principle [of] harmony’. The teacher–principal relationship lays the groundwork and sets the tenor for all teacher–student relationships that follow. Teachers, Principal Xu explained, ‘prepare young people … [they] guide them, their academics, their personal development, their personal characters’. In the same way, principals provide individually tailored leadership to teachers. Further to this, the principal and the teachers work and live alongside the students, parents and grandparents in the community as prefigured. Here, too, seeds of harmony are intentionally planted through rigorous attention to how ‘the parts’ complement ‘the whole’, with ‘the whole’ being of greater significance than the component parts. At no time is the individual, despite his/her acknowledged value, placed above the welfare of the group. As prefigured, group harmony is the most highly prized value in Chinese culture. Never—Principal Xu reiterated—can authority be questioned since the government takes on the role of parent (elder) in Confucian thought. This makes it difficult—if not impossible—to challenge educational policy, despite teachers and principals possibly thinking differently due to tensions existing between Marxism and Confucianism (Cheng & Xu, 2011; Deng, 2011). In terms of Principal Xu’s future plans for Hexie Elementary School, there are two things she has in mind. First, she wants Hexie to be a global school through developing international partnerships such as the research relationship that has started with us, which she hopes will help her to situate her practice in a theoretical framework. Her personal view is that ‘schools are like bodies of water: if water does not circulate, it stagnates’. The same goes for campuses and people. If there is no contact or conflict, no ‘new sparks’ exist to produce ‘creativity’ and ‘vitality’. Despite societies and processes being different (i.e. China/USA; East/West), human nature is fundamentally the same, in Principal Xu’s view. It is neither inherently good nor entirely evil as Laozi, a Chinese philosopher (Ivanhoe & Van Norden, 2003; Laozi, 1959, 2005; Lau, 1963) states. Rather, what transpires for human beings in context is reflective of the forces influencing the water as Principal Xu, consistent with her cultural upbringing, described. 14 C.J. CRAIG ET AL. Principal Xu’s second future plan concerns herself. Her most fervent desire is to return to teaching in the final stages of her career. ‘I really want to go back to the classroom’, she asserted. Bringing her career full circle—through returning to the point at which she first began—would bring her much satisfaction. ‘Only in the classroom’, Teacher Xu declared, ‘can I find the vitality inside of me’. Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 Images of principal Having presented Principal Xu’s reconstructed narrative account of schooling in China from her perspective, we now launch into its interpretation through the use of three lived images held and expressed by her: (1) image of principal as the lead teacher (Cheryl Craig), (2) image of principal as an agent of a harmonious learning community (Yali Zou) and (3) image of principal as a teacher-maker (Rita Poimbeauf). After that, we present a synthesis of the images, which provides readers located around the globe with further insights into Chinese schooling and draws our article to a close. Image of the principal as the lead teacher (Cheryl Craig) When Principal Xiao Xu was addressed as Xu Laoshi 老师 (Teacher) and she personally declared that her overarching goal was ‘to be an excellent teacher’, the image of principal as the lead teacher (Aoki, 1989/1990) rose to the fore. The image was also palpable when she said that principals should keep ‘teachers in their hearts’, because ‘teachers keep schools in their hearts’. In fact, throughout the narrative exemplar we created around Principal Xu’s experiences, the lead teacher image of the principalship glued together her personal and professional practices at Hexie Elementary School. What Xiao Xu has to say about being a principal resonates with the historical roots of the administrative position when the word, principal, was not a noun as it is currently used, but as an adjective, as in ‘principal teacher’—meaning first or lead teacher. The image of principal as the lead teacher is evident in her opening line as we foreshadowed above and was drawn to conclusion in her closing statement when she expresses her fervent desire to return to teaching, because it is the source from which her ‘vitality’ springs. In between, the image finds further expression in her ‘teaching’ parents about ‘elementary education’ and her keeping teachers ‘in her heart’ so that teachers will keep ‘the work of the school’, that is, relentless attention on children, ‘in their hearts’. In this latter explanation, Principal Xu understands that her ‘best-loved self’ (Craig, 2013a, Schwab, 1954/1978) as a teacher greatly informs what she knows as a principal about others as teachers. If school principals do not keep thoughts of teachers front-and-centre, Principal Xu explains, teachers may work against, rather than, ‘for you’. Also, the way in which Xiao was selected as the principal additionally suggests the principal as the lead teacher image that others may have resonated with in her practice. A NARRATIVE INQUIRY INTO SCHOOLING IN CHINA 15 Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 Readers will recall that Hexie’s faculty participated in an informal survey to determine the individual they would recommend as their school leader. The individual who was chosen—and the one officially authorized by Tianjin University—was Teacher Xu—as the faculty interchangeably called her. In essence, Principal Xu was identified through peer review as the school’s lead teacher. She was the teacher whose storyline faculty members most wanted to spotlight and emulate. A further dimension of Xu’s image of principal as lead teacher specifically had to do with how she interpreted the teaching act. Throughout Principal Xu’s narrative account, one quickly recognizes her ‘wakefulness’—that is, how watchful and aware she is of human interactions around her. Aoki, an East Asian Canadian, provides insight into this exemplary pedagogical strategy. He observes that Teaching is not only a mode of doing but also a mode of being-with-others. Teaching is a relating with students in concrete situations guided by the pedagogical good. Teaching is a leading out (from ex ‘out’ and ducere ‘to lead’)—leading students out into a world of possibilities, at the same time being mindful of their finiteness as [human] beings (Aoki, 1989/1990, p. 4). Here, we learn that it takes only one small leap to connect leading out through teaching than to leading out through administrating—as Principal Xu does in her narrative of experience, where she states that. ‘… you not only take care of their (teacher’s) job, you need to take care of their family, their life …’ In the first scenario, teachers are more than what they do; they ‘are’ the teaching (Aoki, 1989/1990, p. 8). In the second scenario, principals like Teacher Xu are more than the sum of their actions; their beings—in the Confucian sense—are wrapped up in their lived images of their school principalships. When good principals—such as good teachers—are watchful, they are awake to the good that flows out of situations. Even when principals are pejoratively referred to as administrators, the original meaning of ‘ad’ means ‘to’ and ‘minister’ means to ‘serve’. ‘To serve others, to be servants, to minister to the well-being of others’ (Aoki, 1989/1990, p. 9) is what the word, administration, originally meant. As can repeatedly be seen, the idea of leading out is intricately interwoven with understandings of what it means to be a teacher and a principal in Xu’s narrative. Further to this, the word, education, additionally means ‘leading out to fresh possibilities’. This reflects what Xu Xiaozhang 校长(and Yali Zou) attempted to do for the peasants during the Cultural Revolution. It also speaks of Principal Xu’s ongoing high expectations at Hexie and her desire for everyone to ‘reach their potential’. Lastly, her image of principal as the lead teacher raises the question of what the nature of such an excellent person would be, regardless of whether he/she was a teacher or a principal. Aoki’s explanation is instructive in this regard as well. He draws attention to the elegance of the Chinese language [普通话 (the common language)] and tells us that such a person would have: 16 C.J. CRAIG ET AL. 耳 Ears, to hear 嘴 Mouth, to speak 领导者 Leader who stands between heaven and earth 人 Person (It takes at least two to make a person). (Aoki, 1989/1990) Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 In sum, principals—such as teachers—lead through the wisdom of their beings as Principal Xu personally shows and tells us in her narrative of her school experiences. Having spotlighted the significance of the image of principal as lead teacher, we now examine Xu’s narrative of experience of schooling in China through the lens of the image of principal as agent of a harmonious learning community, the embedded image that drew Yali Zou’s attention in the co-constructed exemplar of Principal Xu’s principal experiences. Image of the principal as an agent of a harmonious learning community (Yali Zou) Throughout Xu’s narrative of experience, a second image of principal that she enacted emerges: that of principal as an agent of a harmonious learning community. Standing between heaven and earth with ears to hear and a mouth to speak, Xu, as school leader, has a particular societal role to play at Hexie Elementary School. Xu’s school leadership role and adherence to ‘team honor’ is particularly evident when conflict arises. When students are not performing as well as they should or parents/grandparents are displeased with their children and/or Hexie’s teachers, Principal Xu told us that she does not assign blame to any individual or group in the school. Instead, she discreetly consults those involved, seeking ways to promote productive interactions rather than stifling opportunities for future growth. This is apparent in Principal Xu’s admission that not all of Hexie’s teachers are of the calibre she desires. Some, she told us, ‘need to contribute to their teams better’. It is also evident when Principal Xu says that not all Hexie students are performing to the best of their abilities and in her similar acknowledgement that not all parents/grandparents are cognizant of the boundaries of their expertise. It additionally can be found in her forthright attempts to educate them and in her gentle reminders that advanced knowledge in one area does not constitute advanced knowledge in another—even within the field of education as broadly conceived. Principal Xu, at all times, remains focused on school harmony. ‘Harmony’, according to Han (2008), ‘is a feeling or perception people have when their values—what they treasure in life—are realized in their experiences’ (p. 26). We see this when Principal Xu attends to students’ and teachers’ ‘every moment’ in her efforts to harmonize processes and relationships in synergistic ways at Hexie. Further evidence of Principal Xu’s appreciation for harmony is apparent in ‘the body of water’ metaphor she uses to describe schools. That metaphor suggests the importance of Ying–Yang/East–West Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 A NARRATIVE INQUIRY INTO SCHOOLING IN CHINA 17 influences—but also the dangers of stagnation. Harmony requires different voices of different registers. Richness comes from careful harmonizing, not from harsh dissonances. Principal Xu acts and reacts to her school situations in a manner that reflects her traditional, cultural heritage and the ancient philosophy embedded in her thoughts and prior education. To further understand Xu Xiaozhang 校长 as a person and as a principal, it is necessary to review two Confucian concepts: Datong (大同) and Taiping (太平). According to Sujian Guo and Baogang Guo (2008), Datong (大同) or ‘great unity’ ‘embraces a worldly community and universal brotherhood based on universal humanity and harmony … [a] one-world philosophy’ (p. 4). The essence of Datong (大同) society is that it is a society in which every social member is given what he or she needs (Guo & Guo, 2008, p. 4). Datong (大同), together with the Taiping concept (太平), which is the final phase of the ideal society—‘the state of eternal peace’ (p. 4)— describes where Principal Xu is in this world. She has given others what they require and received what she needs in return. Thus, it makes sense for her as a school leader to seek peaceful solutions and view the world through a more congruous lens—one of harmonious union. As an active agent, she wants to blend all people on Hexie’s professional knowledge landscape (teachers, students, parents/grandparents and university representatives) into a peaceful ‘whole’. This view, according to Ai Guo Han, is honourable since ‘a harmonious society has been the dream and pursuit of the Chinese people for centuries’ (p. 13). Ai Guo Han further describes this ancient Chinese philosophy as ‘the most desirable accomplishment for many in Chinese culture’, it is the ‘Tian ren he yi’ (天人合一) or ‘heaven and people in harmony’ way of living (p. 13) applied to a Chinese school setting. Chinese culture dictates that all should strive for this continuity of being (Heyhoe, 1995, 2006; Tu, 1979, 1985). Han (2008) reminds us that harmony is within the power of the individual to achieve. Therefore, it is logical that Principal Xu administers Hexie Elementary School with this belief foremost in mind and that her actions can be attributed to her enacting this philosophy. Once again, we are reminded of the school motto, ‘happy teaching, happy learning’ where harmony is foregrounded and conflict is downplayed. It is little wonder that Principal Xu is so respected and loved as Hexie Elementary School’s principal; she embodies the Confucian harmony around which Chinese culture and education have historically been formed and actively lives it in Hexie’s school community. The concept of social harmony and balance can be dissected further as the ‘winning team’ strategy that Principal Xu employs. Reciprocities of relationships exist on Hexie Elementary School’s landscape, creating the synergistic balance necessary for success. People are both dependent and independent, a state necessary for ‘harmony’. Furthermore, Principal Xu’s desire to partner with our research team shows she is willing to be an agent of a harmonious learning community on a global scale. She ultimately believes all people have the same basic needs, one of which is the Confucian desire to get along in mutually beneficial ways. In other words, she sees herself as a catalyst to expand the dependence and independence Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 18 C.J. CRAIG ET AL. necessary for ultimate harmony (ying/yang). Consequently, she expands her circle of relationships to include world partners. In many ways, Principal Xu’s ideas fit with those of the Chinese thinker, Lu Xun, who recognized in the 1930s that ‘there is no road in this world; the road is made as one walks’. Principal Xu certainly wants to forge new roads at Hexie Elementary School—roads eventually encompassing the world. In review, Principal Xu is a modern-day school leader who combines and transforms her personal interpretation of conventional Chinese culture and Confucian philosophy. She derives her winning team strategies from this strong set of ideals and employs the golden mean (achieving balance) strategies as the manner in which she administers her school. In Western terms, her actions can be described as a mix of arbitration, negotiation and consultation, which is, in turn, seasoned with honour and patience. Principal Xu’s goal is to bring success to her students, satisfaction to her school community and a sense of achievement to her teachers. The principle, which guides and underpins her achievement of these goals, is the school motto, ‘happy teaching, happy learning’ (乐教爱学). Principal Xu also looks to the future and realizes that she cannot keep the world out of her Hexie School community. Without reservation, she opened her doors to us as international researchers, and expressed her desire to create for her school worldwide partnerships that would broaden the horizons of both teachers and students. As researchers, we observed Principal Xiao Xu as the lead teacher, as an agent for the harmonious society and as a teacher-maker. There may be other dimensions of her leadership developing as she explores international connections. This remains to be seen as she has now retired from Hexie Elementary School and is being sought by other institutions desiring her leadership and wisdom. Having elaborated the image of principal as an agent of China’s harmonious society, we now direct readers’ attention to the image of principal as a teacher-maker, the image Xu Xiaozhang 校长 enacted in her co-constructed narrative account, according to Rita Poimbeauf. Image of the principal as a teacher-maker (Rita Poimbeauf) The image of principal as a teacher-maker is a third image apparent in the warp and weft of Xu’s narrative of experience. Interwoven throughout her interviews are several passages, recorded below, where she focused on Hexie’s teachers and her responsibilities toward them: … so you not only take care of their (teacher’s) job, you need to take care of their family, their life … We (Principal Xu and Deputy Principal He) spend the most time, to invest in their families, their emotional development … We look to find this person who is having difficulty and we look at how to help them … It is not—it’s useless to blame. You need to help them achieve … A NARRATIVE INQUIRY INTO SCHOOLING IN CHINA 19 Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 As a principal, your major role is to develop potential, maximum potential –each student—each teacher, each person—make them feel their potential. That’s your big responsibility. If you don’t put teachers in your heart, the teachers won’t work for you. At no time in our work with Principal Xu did she reveal a teacher’s failure. Rather, she served as their cheerleader and advocate. If something/someone needed improvement, it was her job as a Chinese school leader to help them progress. Her role was one of actively championing teachers as curriculum-makers and positively developing their best-loved selves. As Principal Xu stated, ‘… we look at how to help them …’ Through her actions as a teacher-maker, she expressed what we interpreted as a Deweyan view of ‘experience’ and a keen pursuit of ‘curiosity’ (Dewey, 1938). She gave Hexie’s teachers and students plenty of space to undertake learning, to make mistakes and to be guided into the exploration of their dreams in a positive, supportive environment. Fullan (2008) suggested that one of the ways to show love for your employees is by placing them in a successful environment and by fashioning conditions necessary for them to succeed. Principal Xu made certain teachers succeeded at Hexie; she provided the contextual conditions and worked alongside them as their success facilitator. She emphasized that ‘if you do not put teachers in your heart, the teachers won’t work for you’. She stressed that she needed to ‘… make them feel their potential.’ Furthermore, she viewed teacher-making as the primary duty of her position. ‘That’s your big responsibility’, she maintained. When she discussed Hexie’s teachers and how she intentionally groups them on different teams every year, Principal Xu explained, ‘I think of this person [teacher], the stress, the shortcomings—Then, you need to think of the personal relations, their abilities—that is how you put the best team together … I think is the most important principle of harmony’. Fullan (1997) speaks of allowing a work group to develop their own balance. The leader only intervenes when absolutely necessary in this process of finding effective interaction between employees. The leader steps back to allow the group to interact, to experience and to create a successful work atmosphere. Principal Xu mirrored this concept as well by creating team experiences that ultimately make for successful teachers who produce flourishing students: in a nutshell, the principal as a teachermaker in action. Although Fullan did not know Principal Xu, his description of first-rate principal leaders is illustrative of her. He describes ‘the focused, interactive, interdependent principal’ and defines this principal as ‘a socially responsible being, working avidly on the improvement of the school’ (Fullan, 1997, p. 39). A further description of an involved school leader was proposed by Kouzes and Posner (1993) who borrowed the words of US business leader, Max Du Pree who said: ‘The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In-between, “the leader must become a servant”’ (p. 23). In Principal Xu’s experiential narrative, her reality is well defined. She is the leader of an elementary school and a member of a Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 20 C.J. CRAIG ET AL. community composed of everyone associated with her campus through faculty or familial ties. She can never escape the school principal duties assigned to her by the state, because she lives alongside everyone in the community. However, Principal Xu does say thank you every day by carrying ‘the school in her heart, the teachers in her heart’. Moreover, Principal Xu is the servant of her community. She is there for her students ‘you need to guide them, their academics’, their parents (as she assumes the role of their mentor in child rearing) and, most of all, for her teachers. She has the teachers’ families and their welfare in her heart as well. As a servant leader (Greenleaf, 1977), Principal Xu is committed to advancing Hexie’s teachers to their fullest reach. She realizes that ‘it’s useless to blame [them]. You need to help them achieve …’ A servant leader is one who recognizes what needs to happen and empowers her teachers to make that happen by providing the means, i.e. extra time, preparation materials, meeting arrangements, etc. A servant leader stands back and allows her teachers to work. This was the Principal Xu we witnessed in action. Fullan observes that leaders must organize the fundamental tasks while accepting the fact that learning occurs every day on the job in different ways. Such ongoing learning shapes the people associated with the institution, bringing them closer to their goals. Principal Xu allows for her teachers to evolve and provides the means for them to achieve their ambitions. Nichols (2011) furthermore suggests that servants are committed to building, sustaining, expanding and refining society. Servant leaders, in this sense, are doers and are not people who stand back and wait in anticipation of hopes and prayers being answered. Likewise, Principal Xu does whatever she can to sustain her school community and promote her teachers’ life abilities and teaching skills. Although Principal Xu admitted to being ‘exhausted’ by her work, we, as schools observers, immediately recognized that she treasured what her colleagues, the Hexie students and what she was able to accomplish in this university-elementary school microcosm of Chinese society. This was her opportunity to serve and be satisfied by the results, whether the results were qualitative ‘moments’ of outstanding teaching and learning that became connected over time or external awards for exemplary achievement etched on the campus’s entrance wall. ‘Serving is a benefit to the served and a blessing to those that serve’, Nichols (2011) additionally informs us (p. 95). Visitors to Hexie Elementary School cannot leave without being inspired by this warm, almost grandmotherly, figure who is keeper of the vision and leader of this unique community. As Greenleaf (1977) points out, service and leadership sustain trust. Xu Xiaozhang 校长, through living the principal as a teacher-maker image, has masterfully earned the trust of her school and its surrounding community. Synthesis of lived images of the principalship in a Chinese school setting The co-constructed narrative exemplar of Principal Xu’s storied experiences at Hexie Elementary School provided us with entrée into her beliefs Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 A NARRATIVE INQUIRY INTO SCHOOLING IN CHINA 21 about teaching and learning, her school leadership practices, her ‘stories to live by’ (Connelly & Clandinin, 1999) as a human being and the extent to which culture and context shaped what she knew and did as Hexie’s administrator. Additionally, Principal Xu’s shaping effects on teachers, students and parents and on the school’s professional knowledge landscape became evident. These things, in turn, formed a springboard from which we began to interpret her lived narrative of schooling in the Hexie context through three different lenses: the image of principal as the lead teacher; the image of principal as an agent of a harmonious learning community; and the image of principal as a teacher-maker. Readers will recall that we took this approach because we recognized in the midst of conducting the study that different aspects of our personal narratives influenced the meanings we individually made of Xu’s lived and told experiences. To reiterate what Clandinin and Connelly said, each of us is ‘what our experiences pull out of us’. Because we came from different backgrounds and individually had different experiences, we areautomatically connected with different aspects of Xu’s narrative of experience. Also, we fundamentally believe that qualitative research texts should remain open to interpretation and not be conclusively shut down by a ‘sure’ or ‘reigning’ interpreter determining the definitive answer, for all occasions, for all people, for all times. In a sense, we became humble interpreters drawing on our personal preparations and experiences in much the same way as Principal Xu expressed humility in her work as a school principal. We, too, grew in the process by becoming more attuned and awake to the subtleties of the harmonious society that Confucius described. Against this backdrop, we begin the synthesis of the three images of principal by confessing, as we earlier indicated, that it is entirely possible that our international readers may have already laid their stories of experience alongside those of Xu and resonated with images of the principalship different than our own. Having admitted that this possibility exists, we additionally recognize that some aspects of some images reflecting Xu’s living of schooling in China can be more strongly defended than others. Where our interpretations of Xu’s images of the principalship are concerned, however, we learned that the images embedded in her co-created narrative exemplar reflected her worldview: they peacefully co-existed. Her professional life unfolded at the nexus of them and could best be described in Western terms as ‘culturally relevant leadership in support of teaching, learning and community living’. To illustrate this point, we have created a set of concentric circles to represent the nested images we were able to name in Principal Xu’s nested knowing (Lyons, 1990) of life in schools in China. These circles show the nested relationship (Murphy, 2009) between images that rang true for each of us in Xu’s narrative exemplar of the principalship in a Chinese school context. In the outer circle of figure 1 lies the image of principal as agent of a harmonious learning community, which is largely fuelled by traditional Confucius thought and cultivated through Xu’s unfolding life in China and informed by her major in Chinese literature. In figure 1’s middle circle, we have placed the image of principal as a teacher-maker, an image that supports Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 22 C.J. CRAIG ET AL. Figure 1. Xiao Xu’s images of principal: Culturally relevant leadership in support of teaching, learning and community living. a major duty assigned to Xu as a school leader/agent of a harmonious learning community in the Chinese sense. This preferred lived image was given Xu’s personal twist, something she believes all principals would do if given the chance. Finally, the historically rooted image of principal as the lead teacher is positioned in figure 1 at the centre, because it arises from Xu’s career trajectory, is the source from which she declares her ‘vitality’ springs and the note on which she expressly wishes to end her career. That image is greatly influenced by Dewey’s nature of knowing and continuity of human thought and similarly finds expression in the principal as a teacher-maker image. The latter image resonates beautifully with the teacher-as-curriculum-maker image earlier introduced in this article, which shares intellectual roots with the principal as the lead teacher image. With all three images, the idea of principals in Chinese schools creating pathways through walking them merges the continuity of being so vital to Confucian philosophy with the continuity of knowing associated with Deweyan pragmatism (Xu, 2011; Xu & Stevens, 2005). At no point in Principal Xu’s narrative did we find unresolved tensions between and among the three images we have presented in a conjoined fashion. Having been steeped in Confucian thought (her Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 A NARRATIVE INQUIRY INTO SCHOOLING IN CHINA 23 subject area specialty) over her 29-year career, Principal Xu learned to deftly manage challenges through mindful watchfulness, rigorous inquiry and wise decision-making. Admittedly, another individual holding and expressing the same images might not have achieved the ‘synergy’, the ‘balance’—the golden mean (中庸)—between and among them to the extent that Xu has. One possible contrary example is reflection verging on solipsism on the part of an individual teacher who as a principal is desirous of supporting. However, it would be difficult to defend such an emphasis if the teacher’s reflections—i.e. ‘the part’—failed to inform his/ her face-to-face encounters with children—i.e. ‘the whole’. Another potential contrary example would be parents/grandparents who demand that mathematics be taught abstractly rather than experientially through the use of manipulatives. While theoretical approaches are entirely appropriate for sophisticated adult learners, elementary principals like Xu Laoshi would be unlikely to agree that such orientations make sense for young learners from a child development point of view. Once again, an approach advantageous to a few could not be endorsed due to its failure to prosper ‘the whole’. Parting words Taken together, Principal Xu’s lived narrative of experience and the three nested images we culled from it have provided an in-depth look at schooling in China from the point of view of one principal on one campus. For Westerners, this research, albeit conducted in an elementary school context, debunks—to a certain degree—myths about China’s pervasive focus on rote memorization that is sometimes erroneously linked with Confucianism (Tan, 2011). Of course, the high stakes testing mania is present in China (Deng, 2011) as it is evident elsewhere in the world. However, it is possible that the singular focus on test scores may not have yet reached China’s elementary campuses. Additionally, Xu’s image of principal as lead teacher remains robust in mostly private schools in North America (Ornstein & Hunkins, 1988) and on international campuses embracing the traditional British notion of ‘principals’ (North American term) as ‘headteachers’ (British term) (Darish & Male, 2000; Evetts, 2002). We wondered if the image lived by Principal Xu in China could be traced to Confucianism, was a holdover from China’s colonial years or was some combination of both. Perhaps, as Cheng (2011, p. 597) suggests, it is both ‘Western’ and ‘Chinese’ in that it resembles practices that have—in the past—been championed in the West, but additionally have a distinctive Chinese meaning-making flavour present in them. Also, education and schooling appear to be more tightly coupled in China with teachers and principals having no distinct boundaries between their public roles and their personal lives. This, along with the unquestioned relationship between the Chinese government and its citizenry, allows public policy to have a more immediate and direct influence of schooling. It seems that situations do not become bogged down (as they do in the US) to the point where no action can be agreed upon—let alone acted on (Levine, Downloaded by [Cheryl J. Craig] at 05:23 24 October 2014 24 C.J. CRAIG ET AL. 2006). On the other hand, citizens of democratic countries still have a voice where public education is concerned. Admittedly, it is becoming increasingly contested because US business leaders, for example, are more frequently equating global competition with a ‘battle of the classrooms’ (Norman Y. Augustin, Former CEO of Lockheed Martin and Former Chair of the US Business Roundtable’s Education Task Force, in Strauss, 2001, p. 31). To end this article, we wish to return to where we began. Prior to interpreting, synthesizing and analyzing Xiao Xu’s enacted principal images, we introduced Hexie Elementary School’s motto, ‘happy teaching, happy learning’（乐教爱学） Having resonated with Xu’s embedded principal images, we are now in a better position to understand the import of Hexie’s mission statement. As a consequence of this narrative inquiry, we have come to know that ‘happy teaching, happy learning’（乐教爱学）reflects the reciprocity between teaching and learning at Hexie Elementary School and the delicate balance (golden mean 中庸) needed between teachers and students, teachers and administrators and the school and the community it serves. Such a synergy can only be realized, for example, when the principal’s/teacher’s desire (Eros) to help teachers/ students learn is matched by teachers’/students’ longings (Eros) to want to know (Schwab, 1954/1978). In sum, the best-loved self of one (i.e. Principal Xu as lead teacher) triggers, nurtures and sustains the best-loved self of the other (i.e. Rainbow Deng/her classmates as learners). Through this vitally important and infinitely complex process, educators like Xu Xiaozhang 校长4 ‘touch eternity’ (触摸永恒) (Barone, 2001) through leaving ‘enduring legacies’ (经久不衰的传统) (Barone, 2001) that imbue the lives of those with whom they interact in schools in China with personal and intellectual meaning and purpose. Afterword Xu Laoshi: Have I said too much about schooling in China? Not enough? Are you able to make sense of what I mean? Acknowledgements The authors thank ‘Principal Xu’ for sharing her stories of experience with them and the patient way she handled our questions across time and place. They also appreciate the help of Xiao Han, a research assistant, and Shijing Xu, who provided us with helpful feedback during the formative stages of this paper’s preparation. This research was supported by the Asian American Studies Center. The centre’s mission is to generate knowledge, increase awareness and foster appreciation of the Asian and Asian American experience in the ‘US’ and abroad and to provide faculty, students and community members with rich opportunities to learn about Asian and Asian American cultures. This work was first presented as a paper at the American Educational Research Meeting held in Vancouver, Canada, in April 2012. A NARRATIVE INQUIRY INTO SCHOOLING IN CHINA 25 Notes 1. In conversations, the Chinese frequently addressed Principal as Xu Xiaozhang, Laoshi, which means Teacher. 2. 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A narrative inquiry into schooling in China: three images of the principalship

A narrative inquiry into schooling in China: three images of the principalship