Classroom management in EFL classes: perception in China and Russia

Effective teaching in the 21st century, which is often characterized as an age of turbulence and uncertainty, poses many challenges for university teachers. Many of these challenges deal with the growing significance of knowledge and information, expansion of global education, unprecedented development of information and communication technologies and changes in societal needs and requirements to graduate competency. The requirements include not only subject-specific competencies but also many generic “soft” skills: problem- solving, time and information management, working in teams, communication in intercultural contexts and others. As logically assumed, these challenges call for the renewal of teaching and learning practices in a number of fields.

New requirements of the knowledge economy to university graduates demand flexibility and creativity of university teachers. Teachers’ function has been changed from just teaching content and cramming information into students’ minds to teaching students to learn, construct their own knowledge, communicate effectively in teams and multicultural groups, and adapt to the ever-changing demands of professional and social environments. In this sense, a university teacher should “adopt a mind-set of learning from challenges” and “design new learning milieus and curricula that really encourage motivation and independence so as to equip students with learning, thinking and problem-solving skills” [1].

In relation to the incorporation of ICT (Information and Communications Technology) into teaching, E-Learning has formed a paradigm. On one hand, E-learning creates many chances, for instance, higher academic mobility [2]. On the other hand, “the change is expressed as a need to acquire new competencies, which the teacher often perceives as an added complication to their workload and functions” [3]. However, few would dispute that today’s university students who are digital natives have very high expectations of the teachers’ competencies to incorporate ICT in different teaching contexts and instructional formats.

With the expansion of internationalization of education and the opportunities provided by international academic mobility programs, university teachers became concerned with the issues of creating a positive working atmosphere in multicultural groups of students. Teaching in such groups requires taking students’ cultural backgrounds into account. According to Tartwijk et al., “teachers should become knowledgeable about the cultures and communities in which students live, but they should, at the same time, teach students mainstream ways to interact so that students can use these to succeed in dominant social spheres” [4].

In view of this approach to teaching as regulation and dealing with complexity, it should be noted that “smooth regulation of complex systems in teaching” [5] to a great extent depends on teacher expertise in maintaining order, promoting student engagement, responding to problems, creating positive and stimulating environment. The required knowledge base for addressing these issues is being created within the field of classroom management, which draws on a wide array of disciplines and focuses on the management strategies used by teachers to achieve multiple and complex goals of teaching and learning.

Research in the field of classroom management that evolved in the last decade addressed a wide variety of topics reflecting the new challenges and teaching practices of the twenty-first century. However, it is little known about classroom management strategies in a comparative cross-cultural perspective, especially at the university level between China and Russia. As found, there exist a number of comparative studies which focus on:

– particular aspects of classroom management, such as cross-cultural analysis of teacher images [7], in-class communication [8], teacher misbehaviors as learning demotivators [9];

– Chinese and Russian collaboration study [10; 11] or educational system in general1;

– difference and similarity between China and US, China and UK, China and Australia [12–14].

The paper starts with an overview of the literature on understanding of classroom management since each study at the first place needs a sound concept explanation2. It continues with materials and methods, including description of the samples and context, method and data processing. The findings and analyses consist of results of questionnaire illustrated by charts. The key similarities and differences in perception of classroom management of Russian and Chinese teachers and students has been revealed and analyzed.