Entering a Culture of Teaching: Teacher Induction in Shanghai

Abstract

Li Mei is an energetic, cheerful woman who feels that teaching “is the hardest job under the sun, but the happiest”. [2] In her second year of teaching lower secondary mathematics, she teaches thirteen periods a week (the average load for most lower secondary teachers in Shanghai): six each to two different sixth-grade classes and one to an elective ‘activity class’ (huodong ke) that is geared at strengthening and deepening pupils’ interest in mathematics and hel** them develop ‘divergent’ ways of thinking that stretch beyond the textbook. Her load is like that of most teachers in her school.