1. What do I want to improve? What is my concern?

I want to develop my value of educational responsibility in the context of teaching new methodology groups and working on a new teaching methodology pilot programme for China with my Dean in Guyuan Teachers College in the People's Republic of China.

2. What are the reasons for my concern?

I think methodology is crucial to enable student teachers to develop their own educational range, so that they might, in an informed way, become good teachers of English in the future Chinese school system. I believe, together with VSO and the Chinese government, that this is important, because the teaching of English is one vital way in which China may seize more political, economic, social and cultural opportunities in a world context. I believe that my particular educational values cohere with my context in ways, which are cumulatively generative and educational when I can understand in practice over time what it is I am doing and learn to explain its contextual and individual value. I have two main areas of concern:

• The college has not had teaching methodology for second year students on the curriculum before and I am concerned about the students' standard of English, sense of newness about the course, and my own inexperience in teaching this subject at this level. My one term of teaching third year students at the college already has been exploratory, although in some ways has appeared successful (by which I mean that the students seemed to gain insights and methods about teaching practices which they and I and my colleagues in the college and VSO value as educational). However, these students haven't yet had their teaching practice, which would test their new understandings. In other words, I have little practical evaluative experience upon which to draw for this innovation. The college sees this innovation as experimental, and thus I feel an enormous responsibility for its success as I am convinced that it is an educational move forward to have teaching methodology brought forward to the second year programme.

• My Dean and I have not had any opportunity to discuss the pilot, as he has been ill for two months. As a consequence, I don't know how closely connected it is to the innovation in the second year curriculum or the expectations the college may have about their implementations. The college and I do not always equate educational outcomes in the same ways, which could lead to misunderstandings on both sides about progress. My time is limited there, only another eighteen months, and I don't want a dependency culture to develop on either side: I would like myself and my colleagues and students to own our developing abilities to generate good educational practice before I leave in July 2003.
• I sense a huge shift in my consciousness in China, which is subtly, but inexorably altering my parameters, my perception and the development of my values. I sense a lesser clarity around what I want there and how to effect it. I know more now about my emerging value of responsibility yet have less idea how it can educationally evolve in practice over time. My practice is partially unknown in ways I have not experienced in the past with new groups. My context is largely obscure to me to a degree I have not encountered in new places (language, culture, customs, climate, expectations, race, values, politics, perspectives) which makes it less easy to plan or even to validate. I feel insecure on all the above fronts at the moment. I fear that this insecurity which I have never experienced before, will limit my educational influence. I am concerned that I may not be able to develop a synergetic dialectical link between my own inner abilities to regenerate inspiration and the appropriate learning about my context in time to make the most of my educational influence in China.

1. What might I do to improve my practice?

I think there are several ways in which I can improve my practice.

• Teaching: Teach the second years methodology (and fortunately as well, oral English - a intended development by the Dean and Vice Dean, to encourage a unity of process); find ways to combine my oral classes with an enhancement of their understanding of the methodologies being used and vice-versa; introduce students to processes of evaluation (see Laidlaw, 2002).
• Talking: Keep talking to my Dean and other colleagues in order not only to understand the specifics of the intended pilot programme, but also to understand more about my context at the college in general. Find out how the pilot programme and improvements in methodology in the college can be united. Discuss with colleagues about the work I am doing with the new second year programme. Invite them to my lessons. Talk with third year students on their current and only teaching practice to see how they are implementing the methodology we studied last term. Discuss the process with my present second year students as it evolves. Discuss with the Dean the possibility of enabling more teaching practice for the second year students. Discuss ideas with Jack and members of the action research group. Visit in July to monitor progress.
• Observation: Go to my colleagues' and third year students' lessons and ask them to come to mine in order to develop more of an inclusive culture at the college.
• Reading and Reflection: Evaluate my progress with the third years to date and as this new term develops. And unusually, I feel the need to read a great deal. For example, Jacqui Scholes-Rhodes' work (Scholes-Rhodes, 2002), in a bid to understand better the links between my own ontology, practice and their connections with my own living and developmental standards of judgement, which include in my sense of responsibility, meaning and awe (Laidlaw, 1996). I also want to understand more fully her 'exquisite connectivity' as this seems key to something I am trying to understand about the quality of my own internal educational and ontological evolution. I also want to understand Paul Murray's work (Murray, 2002) which I believe will help me elucidate my block about racial factors influencing my sense of insecurity in China. Robyn Pound's work (Pound, 2002) seems important to me in the development of her thesis on her value of alongsidedness which could aid me in my understanding of working with people whose values I may not share, when our desired outcomes might yet have vital areas of unity. Jack Whitehead's work (Whitehead, 2002) seems to offer me the possibilities of facilitating my understanding of the significance and consequences of a shift in perspective in my present stage of my educational development and enquiry. I want to engage in the 'we' of educational action research enquiries through e-mail and the internet because I sense that paradoxically, this shift in perspective will help to clarify both my own inner contexts and the outer contexts of places, people and processes.

• Students - by enabling me to see my educational impact through their eyes;
• The Dean and Vice Dean of the English Faculty - by talking through with me their expectations;
• Chinese Colleagues - by helping me better to understand the context and their expectations of my presence in the college; by sharing their practice with me and allowing me to share mine;
• Bath Action Research Group and individuals - by enabling me to remain a part of the research group during my time in China and to share our research processes and progress; by sending me their writing and reading mine if appropriate;
• VSO - my programme officer, Han Yongchun, and other volunteer-colleagues, like Lewis Husain in Wenshan.

1. How will I know that my practice has improved?

• My second year students will be confident about their learning about methodology and perceive its relevance to their future lives as English teachers;
• My second year students will have an increased desire to become teachers in the future with a greater insight into its complexities and relevance for the development of China's economic, social, political profile on the world-stage, as well as a sense of how these improved conditions will influence individual and collective future lives;
• My Chinese colleagues will have a greater confidence in their role as future methodology teachers in the college;
• I will understand more profoundly and meaningfully, the contexts I am in and their connection with the processes of educational development with which I am involved;
• I will have a greater understanding, implementation of, and ability to articulate and explain, my developmental value of responsibility and its dialectical connection with my own and others' educational development;
• My research group in Bath will be able to discern significant educational development in my work through my writings and evidence from students and colleagues.