About-2

Hello, everyone. I am the website https://www.pedagogism.com/  founder Yuxin Hou. I received my PhD in Anthropology in 2012. Now, I teach and conduct research at the College of Staten Island of The City University of New York.

This is a nonprofit social networking website for educators, students, parents and general pubic to share their pedagogies and concerns on education. It aims to promote overall educational success for all and serve the public interests as well as the development of academic research.

Education is an interlocking system, and problems in any link will affect the performance of other parts.  Just like a building, a solid foundation is the key to the leveling of a tall building, and and the floors are very closely related to each other.  Therefore, any stage of pre-school, kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school and higher education is a key part of the overall success of education, and none of them can be missing. Therefore, this website includes all stages of education as a whole.  The education system also includes other important components, such as, indigenous education, education for sustainable development, opening educational resources (OER), online education, etc. Only when every stage or type of education is successful can it be considered as the success of overall education.  At present, many of our social, cultural, economic and global problems are directly or indirectly related to the lack or failure of one or more types of education. However, only when we pay attention to the success of each educational component and individualized education can we not only achieve the success of the overall education but also the fulfillment of the overall progress of human civilization. Therefore, the purpose of this website is to promote the success of overall education.In addition to this, another important purpose of this website is to promote academic research. This is because the development of academic research also plays an important role in the promotion of education.

From starting school, to becoming a researcher, to becoming a university teacher, I have a lot of deep insights about teaching and research. In the present world, different countries and even different regions in the same country have both identical and different pedagogy and policies. We have been exploring a successful educational model and trying to universalize this attempt in order to realize the equality of education and promote the academic success of all students. However, in fact, we are facing many challenges, such as the use of teaching materials, the effective teaching modes, distribution of teaching resources, etc. In particular, in the current era of Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic, teachers all over the world are facing many challenges, including how to teach from offline to online, how to use various online teaching software, how to solve the problem of online classes for hearing and vision impaired students, how to help students lacking network and learning equipment, how to make online teaching more effective and interactive, how to overcome many limitations of online teaching, etc.

Through some years of teaching practice at Colleges, I found that how to make students achieve academic success is not only a question for students themselves, but also how to adopt more effective teaching methods and how to pay attention to the needs of students themselves and the problems that need to be solved urgently.  In that the classroom itself is not only the teaching place, but also a “family”. I often tell my students in the first class at the beginning of the term that the classroom is not only a place to study but also their home. In other words, I try to make students establish their sense of belonging to the class and teachers, which is very important for students’ enthusiasm for learning and academic success. At the same time, from the beginning of teaching, I began to adopt “Zero Textbook Cost” policy because I found that some students gave up the courses they wanted to choose because the teaching materials were too expensive, which is a great challenge to the equality of teaching. According to an article by USATODAY, “People over 25 or those with children are enrolling in college classes — so many that nearly 74 percent of American undergraduate students are ‘nontraditional.’ They’re compelled by a recession that especially hurt less-educated employees, along with the worry that advancing technology could leave them without a job.”   

It can be seen that many students have their own pressures besides studying. Some of them have the part time and even full time job to support themselves. As teachers, we should fully consider these factors and adjust our teaching methods so that students can obtain more customized learning experience.  At present, OER (Opening Educational Resources) has been used by more and more universities and has achieved good teaching results. For example, according to the New York State Open Educational Resources Funds CUNY Year One Report, “in fy2018, the funding from New York State has resulted in a savings of $9.5 million for more than 76,000 students in over 2,  800 newly converted course sections. More importantly, the funding has laid the groundwork to accelerate the conversion of general education courses to OER and to create Z-degrees.” Thus it shows that how to proceed from the diversity and needs of the students themselves can make our teaching practice become the driving force for the success of the students. In addition, how to adopt effective Note Taking and assessment, how to pay attention to students who need accommodation and how to establish a good teacher-student relationship are very important as well.

These thoughts have become more and more obvious in my online teaching practice. I know that educators, students and parents and general public are facing many challenges. In 2019,  I participated in the “Student Success Workshop” organized by “Academic Affairs/Undergraduate Studies and Students Success” and “The Faculty Center for Professional Development” of the College of Staten Island. I benefited a lot from the discussion and learning process with different teachers, and practiced these methods in the following teaching, the effect is very obvious. However, the number of participants was limited at that time, and only the participated teachers could benefit their teaching and students.

At present, we have a lot of discussions about teaching methods, but these discussions are limited to a small group. At the same time, these discussions also lack the voices of educators, students, parents and general public. Therefore, we lack a platform for all educators, students, parents and general public to share their experiences and concerns on education. As a result, based on the above considerations and personal experience, I built this nonprofit educational social networking website to provide a platform for educators, students and parents as well as general public to network and share their pedagogy and concerns on education, so as to benefit everyone. It also aims to promote academic research.

With the progress of human civilization, anthropocentrism is continuously destroying the sustainable development of mankind. This kind of destructive behavior includes excessive consumption of natural and animal resources, social inequality, improper waste management, global poverty, etc. Although many scholars, government agencies, non-profit organizations and other agencies have invested a lot of energy to study the coping strategies or formulate relevant policies, the effect is not as we wish.  What are the underlying reasons behind this?  The lack of sustainable education in our modern education system is an important reason, and sustainable education should run through every stage of education. It should have the same status as basic courses and become a compulsory subject in education. This is an important reason for this website to set up “Education for Sustainable Development” forums. It is hoped that through active discussions of the general public, the all-round development of sustainable education will be promoted.

As a scholar of anthropology and sociology, I also pay close attention to the research of Indigenous People.  As a honorary member of ICCA Consortium (‘ICCA’ is an abbreviation for territories and areas conserved by Indigenous peoples and local communities), I have been committed to promoting the economic, cultural and development research of the indigenous peoples.  In the study, I found that not only do indigenous students face many challenges in their study, but also the whole education system lacks relevant courses on aboriginal culture, such as teaching in aboriginal languages, teaching on aboriginal cultural heritage, history and tradition, etc.  The lack of this kind of education has further exacerbated the general public’s lack of understanding of aboriginal culture. According to relevant research, every 14 days an aboriginal language disappears from the earth, which is not only the death of language but also the end of culture.  We lack a common platform for communication, so I have set up “Indigenous Education “Forms. One of the important purposes is to arouse public attention to the history, language, culture and nature protection of indigenous people by participating online forums or group discussions, at the same time, it is also aimed at promoting the education department to fully integrate indigenous education into different stages of education in order to achieve the goal of protecting the indigenous culture from the public basis.

In this website, all people can share their experience and concerns on education through “Group Discussion”, “Forum Discussion”,  “Submit papers and opinions” as well as “Commenting”. I hope this website can become the platform to network educators, students, parents and general public so as to understand the voices and needs from a more diversified perspectives.

Everyone’s wisdom can inspire more teaching inspiration and provide more “real-time teaching methods”.  Put differently, you can share and learn in this website at any time, and then apply good strategies to your teaching practice, so the “real-time” is very important. At the same time, this platform also provides educators, students, parents and general public the opportunity to share their lives, because how to maintain the balance between life and work and life and learning is of great significance. This website promotes the concept of “Overall Education Success” and “Academic Development”. I believe that with everyone’s efforts and participation, we will achieve “Overall Successful Teaching” in every stages and academic development in order to benefit everyone and the countries as well as the world.