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As aforementioned, rural areas make up a large proportion of the country’s territory.Many of these regions are on the inland or border part of the country and in areas where diverse ethnic groups reside. Because of the vastness or geographic remoteness,most of the multiethnic regions are less resourced and lagging behind in sociocultural development. It is not surprising that before the millennium, there were not many professional development programs for primary and secondary school English teachers in multiethnic regions like Xishuangbanna.
In order to improve the quality of teaching, especially to enhance the pedagogical competence of primary or secondary school teachers in the not well-resourced rural areas, the NTTP, a national-level teacher training program was implemented in 2010(MOE, 2010, 2011). From 2010 to 2013, the central government invested about RMB 4.3 billion to support the training activities across the country (Yan et al., 2013). The training contents of the NTTP mainly focus on the enhancement of teaching ethics,subject knowledge and pedagogical competence. Teachers’ ethics are firstly stressed in order to help teachers become more aware of their social values and responsibility;training courses on subject knowledge are designed to broaden and improve teachers’knowledge about the specific subject they teach in school; and lessons on pedagogy aim to strengthen teachers’ ability in teaching skills and methods. Pawan et al. (2017) summarize three major approaches implemented in the NTTP. The first approach is to utilize theoretical or conceptual models that are developed and then applied across programs. The second one is a field-based approach of “teacher replacement” programs in which undergraduates from universities in urban centers temporarily exchange places with in-service teachers in rural areas. The third one is a blended (face-to-face and online) approach to providing instruction.
In 2009, the Ministry of Education (MOE) formulated the overarching framework of this nationwide teacher training project. The MOE stated that:
Depending on the key normal universities and teachers’ colleges,teams of training experts, high quality training resources will be established and developed and then will be sent to teachers and schools in rural areas.Backbone teachers will be selected and be trained in this project. In terms of the high-quality training resources, training resources outside provinces, within the province and in local regions will take up 1/3 respectively. Front-line master teachers and outstanding backbone teachers from primary and secondary schools across the country will make up no less than 50% within expert teams.
(MOE, 2009)
As can be seen from the government document by the MOE, the normal universities in each province played their part in implementing the project. The teams of training experts basically formed by lecturers or professors from universities are the major force to fulfil the project.
In order to strengthen the educational quality of the primary and secondary schools in border and multiethnic regions, the Ministry of Education assigns Northeastern Normal University and other MOE a filiated normal universities to provide no less than 50 class-hour training for 3,000 primary and secondary school backbone teachers from Inner Mongolia and other autonomous regions or provinces alike. Universities will provide collective training in the form of “sending training programs to each province” ( song pei dao sheng ) [ 送培到省 ] and “sending training courses to schools” ( song jiao shang men ) [ 送教上门 ]. For example, Northeastern Normal University to Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Shaanxi Normal University to Ningxia Hui Ethnic Autonomous Region, Southwestern University to Guizhou province respectively. About 1,000 primary and secondary school backbone teachers from each of the above regions or provinces will receive training, among whom 70% trainees should be teachers working at county levels and below (MOE, 2009).
As for Yunnan province, Yunnan Normal University (YNNU) and other three teachers’ colleges are assigned to be in charge of providing training courses for teachers in autonomous prefectures like Xishuangbanna and Dehong. Based on the reality of local educational context, training professionals from YNNU developed three major modules tailored to training teachers from multiethnic regions, namely, Trainer-Training Module ( pei xun zhe pei xun ) [ 培训者培训 ], Demonstration Module ( song jiao xia xiang , sending demonstration class to countryside schools) [ 送教下乡 ], and Distance Education Module ( wang luo yan xiu , taking training courses on the Internet) [ 网络研修 ] .