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Enjoying Teaching Makes a Good Teacher——an interview with Du Li
Author:Wencai Fei  Date:2016-04-12  Clicks:

“Enjoying teaching makes us good teachers,” said Du Li, an associate professor from Wuhan University’s School of Economics and Management, and also the first prize winner of the first National Young Teachers’ Teaching Competition.

Standing on the classroom podium, Du delivers her lectures, and believes students will always be inspired by her sonorous voice and infectious passion. During academic exchanges with other teachers, her sharing about the teaching experience often draws heated responses among her counterparts. During our interview, we are also deeply impressed by her affection for teaching.

Born and raised in Wuhan University, Du Li is just like its child. Her family background got her exposed to teaching from an early age. Her father, Du Jinyuan, is one of the first Top Ten Excellent Teachers elected by his students. In Du’s memory, her father is by no means a stagnant or dogmatic teacher, who would often sit on the desk and talk with a strong accent when inspired and excited. However, this eccentric senior professor cared much for his students. When Du was a child, she was deeply impressed by her father’s attitude towards teaching. He would write his remarks for students’ papers on the computer since oftentimes his writing was illegible. She said, “I always doubted whether his action was worthwhile since no one would pay attention to those remarks after the exam.”

It was not until Du Li became a teacher that she understood her father’s intentions. Her attitude impacted positively on her students when she pointed out all the minor mistakes in their assignments. Some students blushed, and many of them even rewrote it.

Just as M.von Laue, the Nobel Prize winner in physics said, “Education is what remains when a learnt thing is forgotten.” For Du Li, what she wants is the ethos of preciseness, the scholarly research spirit and the qualities of conducting oneself.

Another label attached to Du is ‘teaching competitions winner’ who has won a remarkable amount of prizes in a significant amount of competitions and contests. As a matter of fact, her success was by no means an accident. As known to all of her students, she was always willing to share her handouts. But in fact, she scarcely follows or repeats the content covered in the handouts in class because, as she pointed out, the development of economic theory was so fast that once she had some enlightenment on certain points, she would update her handouts. Her success was largely attributed to her dedication to ensure students received the latest and most up to date theoretical and statistical information on her subject. Subsequently, Du Li further instilled the stimulus to her daily teaching activities and integrated that when competing for awards.

To ensure the quality of teaching, Du Li kept urging herself to enhance her teaching ability. The subsequent teaching competitions and discussions benefited her considerably. Even in daily life, she behaved like a student eager for knowledge. She learned from Li Jingyi, who once taught a renowned CCTV program lecture room. She would also turn to her colleagues who modestly shared good pedagogical methods. Meanwhile, she would consult her students skilled at courseware design about relevant techniques.

More importantly, Du Li was enlightened with the essence of heuristic teaching methods during the competition once considered an consolidating instructional method of teaching. According to her, she reformed her teaching mode in the past and adopted a new way with the aid of predecessors. She now started a new chapter in her vocation, presenting ideas first inspired by her students to find the key points that reflected the definition . This process changed the students into critical thinkers with thirst and enjoyment instead of the recipients of knowledge in a passive way. She always insisted on teaching with more blanks and crossing time and space. Such joviality was passed from the after-class discussion among the students to the private life of this devoted associate professor.

Recently, Internet Plus has aroused heated debate in society, which has also attracted Du’s concern.

Her research experience in Macquarie University further motivated her to apply the lecturing mode of Internet plus classroom to her teaching. She separated a class with 90 students into 9 groups. After 10 minutes’ discussion, every group chose the most outstanding cases and share with other groups. “I input 9 cases into SOJUMP and then I got a two-dimension code which students could scan and vote.” said Du Li. She also applied the game rule adopted from a recreational program to prevent cronyism during the vote. She would select the 3 best groups out of 9 groups together with a bonus on score in the finals.

Where there is will, there is education and instruction. Du Li epitomizes this idea.

( source: sciencenet.cn)

( Rewritten by Yiwen Jin, edited by Wang Mengtian, Mark & Sijia Hu)

 

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