EHE Research Forum - Ho-Chieh Lin

This is my first time to attend the research forum held by our college of EHE on Feb 23, 2018. I am glad a piece of my work, male teachers in elementary schools, got accepted. Because I went to observe in a class in the morning, I only joined the lunch and poster session. It’s interesting to see the presenters outnumbered the audience. The audience who came to check my work were people we met before. They were surprised at the topic I did. They thought I would present something with STEM. My colleague, Vinta, in STEM education program stayed at my station the longest. She was very interested in my work. I later figured out in her country, Indonesia, male and female teachers in elementary schools are about the same in numbers. It will be very interesting to do a comparative study. Vinta also offered a good suggestion that I should put the phrase “literature review” at the back of the title.

Thank my advisor, Dr. Chao, came to check my work. He suggested me talk about the social context historically- females were not expected to work. I think it’s a great idea. It made me reflect on the history of the Chinese society. Yes, over a hundred years ago, females were not encouraged to study at schools, let alone being a teacher. Think about this. How can you teach if you have never studied? Therefore, we can find that most of well-known scholars or artists are males, such as Confucius. It was in the turn of 20 century that many females began to go to school in China. Then during the second world war, men went to wars. After the war, men have many opportunities working for industrial jobs. Then female began taking the education field gradually. There is a lot to talk about. I will look for more literature in the future. After all, a great experience!