Dr. Min Fan is a visiting scholar at the Faculty of Education (ZUOCHEN ZHANG/University of Windsor)
By Kate Hargreaves
For visiting scholar Dr. Min Fan, one of the biggest surprises about Canadian elementary education has been the relatively limited presence of artificial intelligence (AI) in her daughter's classroom compared to schools in her native China.
An associate professor at Southwest University in China, Fan is spending time at the University of Windsor's Faculty of Education studying how digital technologies are shaping teacher education and what Canadian approaches to curriculum development might offer educators in her home country.
The visit marks Fan's first trip to Canada, made possible through the China Scholarship Council's visiting scholar program and a longstanding partnership between the two universities.
"Through the Reciprocal Learning Program between our Faculty of Education and the College of Teacher Education at Southwest University, we have had a variety of exchange programs between the two faculties in the past decade," explains Dr. Zuochen Zhang, a professor in the Faculty of Education at UWindsor and Fan's host supervisor.
"I found Dr. Fan's research plan aligned with my research interests, so I invited her as a visiting scholar."
Together, Fan and Zhang are examining how digital tools are influencing the preparation of future teachers in Canada and how those approaches could inform teacher education reform in China.
"We hope to identify advanced practices in Canada’s teacher education curricula," says Fan.
"I can then share these findings with colleagues in China so as to inspire and promote the curriculum reform of teacher education in our country."
Beyond her academic research, Fan is gaining another perspective on Canadian education through her experiences as a parent.
Her daughter, who accompanied her to Windsor, is attending Grade 3 at a local elementary school. The experience offers Fan a firsthand glimpse into Canadian classrooms while giving her daughter an opportunity to develop her English-language skills.
Fan says the differences in how AI appears to be integrated into her daughter's classroom compared to her experiences in China have been particularly striking.
Outside the classroom, Fan is discovering differences in daily life, too.
"I feel that not just Windsor, but Canada as a whole has a much slower rhythm, which is quite different from mainland China," Fan says, adding, " Windsor enjoys a pleasant climate, a nice living environment and a relatively low cost of living, making it an ideal place for both study and daily life."
As her research continues, Fan hopes to bring more than memories of her time in Windsor back to China. She aims to share insights that could help shape how future teachers are educated in her home country.