Chapter 4: Findings
4.1 The Ideas Behind the TWIYC.tw program
4.1 The Ideas Behind the TWIYC.tw program
4.1.1 The motivation of the TWIYC.tw program
Motivation is the trigger for a group or an individual to develop towards a particular goal (Chan, 1994). TWIYC.tw, being a new program, many of its stories, background and motivation have not been disclosed on their developing website or stated publically. However, it is important to understand this history and ideals to better comprehend their services and potential. The paper thus hopes to organize the information and unveil TWIYC.tw program’s value towards developing ICC.
In the interview on Jun 22, 2017, the founder of the TWIYC.tw program, Pia Lin, explained the reason she brought the prototype from the Netherlands back to Taiwan. In 2015, she was a Taiwanese exchange student to the Netherlands. She noticed the TWIYC in The Hague was recruiting foreign volunteers to share their cultures with local middle school students. She joined this program in The Hague, in its third year, hoping to promote Taiwan. However, she soon realized that similar to the Netherlands, Taiwan also had many foreign travelers and foreign residents that can contribute to Taiwan’s intercultural education, but there was no such program in Taiwan yet1. Pia then started to
1 In Taiwan, there are currently two more programs working on bringing foreigners into the classroom.
Both of them have been given different goals from TWIYC.tw. One is ‘沙發客來上課’: ‘Couchsurfers In Class', which puts emphasis on inviting foreign travelers and couchsurfers to visit remote schools in Taiwan to share their culture in local schools and enjoy a local homestay. This group is non-profit, unregistered and volunteer-based. The other group is “TEEP: Taiwan Experience Education Program, National Chengchi University” founded by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education. The program invited foreign
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annually by the local government, and run by a non-governmental organization, PEP Den Haag. On the other hand, the TWIYC.tw, which Pia founded in 2017, was a non-governmental organization formed by voluntary staff members and did not rely on government funds. TWIYC.tw provides free services for its participants and hopes to develop its service area to the whole Taiwan rather than being limited to one city.Taiwanese students rarely had chance to interact with foreigners even though more and more were arriving in Taiwan. In this research, among the mini focus group students, only those from Jingmei Girls Senior High School said that their school offered more free cultural exchange opportunities to students. For example, students can volunteer individually or as a class to receive exchange students and foreign sister school students coming frequently every year. Students from other schools stated that such opportunities were limited and were mainly given to the school’s language gifted class (語文資優班), leaving the majority of normal classes neglected. This is the situation in schools in Taipei, the capital city. Resources of this type for schools in the countryside were even scarcer. Pia also found that though some schools were located near famous tourist destinations frequented by international travelers, the chance of intercultural interactions with students did not increase. She once brought a foreigner lecturer to a school in Beitou, a popular scenic area. Students “were as excited as it could have been their first time seeing a foreigner,” stated Pia. Therefore, the TWIYC.tw could serve as a bridge between students and foreigners, bringing them to classes. It also welcomes all middle school classes to join without any charges from its participants.
Photography, Tea Making and Unicycle Riding. The aim is to have foreign students promote the advantages of Taiwanese education in their home country.
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volunteers, the TWIYC.tw program provides the special experience of integration and interaction with local students, which was not accessible for foreign travelers or even foreign workers in Taiwan before. In Pia’s experience, foreigners from Indonesia or Philippines where their cultures are less popular or less discussed in Taiwan, they especially enjoyed sharing their cultures and found their participation meaningful. “This is exactly what I hope for--volunteers could think this is an enriching experience for them”, said Pia. For local teachers, the organization hopes that they can make use of the resource as many times as possible. “Teachers should have broader horizons other than only offering textbook contents and exams”, said Pia. The culture lectures could not only broaden teachers’ horizon but also inspire them to incorporate more materials and knowledge beyond text books in their teaching. For high school students, the TWIYC.tw hopes that they can think differently and have a greater understanding to the introduced countries. Especially with additional assistance from teachers, the expected effects on students can be further extended. Such assistance may include adding preview activities, worksheets or collecting students’ feedback, though there is no unified method to be practiced in each class, the sharing event can become more impressive to students. Thus, for students who do not speak up in class, their thoughts and reaction can also be shown and recorded. Due to the program benefits all stakeholders, its popularity can be seen from the 40 sharing events they organized in the first year and the frequent inquiries they received.The TWIYC.tw hoped to tackle the problem that normal school curricula lack stimuli to trigger and develop students’ curiosity about the world. However, for Pia this program has its limitations:
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“We do suggest teachers and volunteers work towards developing ICC, but whether students actually gain something from this experience, we cannot guarantee…to be honest, what students can learn from this 45 to 50 minutes activity is limited. In fact, TWIYC.tw doesn’t want to force students to learn, that loses the meaning of bringing foreigners to class. We keep emphasizing on the fact that this activity is a trigger, a trigger to open the door of curiosity in students’
hearts towards the world beyond Taiwan. We can never be sure about students’
development in the future, but we can increase their courage of getting to know the world and its people.”
Pia’s goal for this program is clear and without exaggeration. Though through the program, intercultural learning could happen in local high schools, Pia still has a more reserved attitude towards the development of students’ ICC through the lecturers. The following findings of this research will specify the lectures’ effects and limitations on ICC.
4.1.2 The Design of TWIYC.tw’s Culture Sharing Activities
Teaching practices and teaching beliefs are strongly related (Knowles & Holt-Reynolds, 1991; Carter & Doyle, 1995). Before reviewing students’ feedback on the TWIYC.tw program, it is important to investigate the ideas that shaped the culture lectures.
Pia reviewed her experience with TWIYC in The Hague and made considerable changes for the Taiwanese version, including training for both school teachers and foreign volunteers, strengthening the structure of culture lectures, and designing the sharing
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content based on students’ abilities. These three changes are strongly related to students’
development of ICC, and will be elaborated below.
From Pia’s experiences there, she as the volunteer did not have the chance to meet the teacher before entering the classroom. She needed to take the initiative of contacting her host teacher and discuss teaching materials with them online. Without discussion about reception details, when Pia arrived at the school gate, she was surprised that there were not any guides or passes prepared for her to enter the campus, nor any indicators of where the classroom was located. The sharing event could not have been completed successfully if the volunteer had not shown initiative in the process. Hence TWIYC.tw invited both foreign volunteers and school teachers to join the Training Day, a one-day briefing and teaching workshop for the culture lectures, unlike the one in the Hague was for foreign volunteers only. TWIYC.tw hoped that both sides would understand their duties better. They regard school teachers as hosts. Hosts are encouraged to arrange receptions and welcoming activities for foreign volunteers. Foreign volunteers are considered as guests. They will be given tips and a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for before, during, and after the sharing events, which emphasize communication with host teachers and preparation before class. TWIYC.tw thinks setting up both parties’
mindsets is an essential first step for success.
In addition, the TWIYC.tw strengthened the structure of the lectures. In The Hague, the Training Day was led by a speaker with education background. It included a Dutch education system introduction, basic steps on writing lesson plans, and brainstorming about the problems that might happen in class. The organization left plenty of room for volunteers to design their own classes. As a result, the class structure volunteers delivered varied a lot. Some volunteers brought treats to class or planned craft
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activities. One volunteer chose to speak to students without presentation slides and told Pia that, in the end, the students were indifferent to her sharing. Her negative experience inspired Pia to provide more teaching resources for volunteers, who might not have a teaching background or abundant teaching skills. “I think the most important thing is to make every sharing event meaningful, so we have to let volunteers know what to share and how to share their experiences,” she said.
Therefore, in the Training day in Taiwan, TWIYC.tw strongly suggests volunteers present in class with slides. They also provide past volunteers’ slides and lesson plans for new volunteers. Due to Taiwanese students’ tendency to be more shy, they advise volunteers to incorporate more interactive elements into their sharings, such as by asking questions for students to guess the answers to. A volunteer’s sharing time in class is around fifty minutes. However, with assistance from school teachers, the impact on students can go beyond the time limit. TWIYC.tw encourages school teachers to introduce or discuss the volunteers’ country and culture before and after the sharing event.
With these ideas, the organization successfully helps its participants and increases the quality of its lectures.
In The Hague, Pia noticed that once, when a speaker talked about her countries’
trade and economy to students with less academic interest, most of the students lost their interest and fell asleep. “One obstacle of the program is volunteers don’t know what students want,” Lucie Herraiz Cunningham, the director of TWIYC in The Hague, told Pia. To enhance the effectiveness of the lectures, TWIYC.tw gave a list of reference topics to volunteers, including: news, tourist sites, festivals and foods; in order to assist volunteers in structuring their classes. Discussion about religion, with the intent to convert, and politics are the two more sensitive topics that TWIYC.tw hoped volunteers would
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think twice about before discussing. In addition, TWIYC.tw encouraged teachers and volunteers to discuss each class’ interests and levels of understanding. With this knowledge, foreign volunteers could decide what themes they wanted to cover, and how deep they would introduce certain topics for each class. If teachers had suggestions and specific requirements, they could communicate these with the volunteers. For example, TWIYC.tw once sent three volunteers to a class in Taichung to cooperate with the teacher.
They organized sharing and discussion activities in smaller groups. As a result, sharing activities were more varied and customized to fit the class’s needs. Behind these changes, Pia hopes to optimize the TWIYC model and cultivate positive intercultural experiences among its participants (students and foreign volunteers).
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