FIELD MAPPING TRAINING WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS

We review our recent experience teaching a ten-day field mapping class for Chinese (Nanjing University) graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in the Dabie Mountains of central China. The teaching style that we employed emphasizes independent use of the scientific method: most work consisted of one-day independent field mapping exercises across regions and rocks that are unfamiliar to the students. Independence comes at the expense of use of pre-existing knowledge (for example, the students are not taught regional stratigraphy prior to mapping) and thus also at the expense of map quality. By emphasizing independent work in this way, this course broached a specific academic culture issue in China: emphasis on the value of received information.

Chinese workers can display some bias towards the richness of existing knowledge, whereas Western workers may commonly be biased towards the scant information at the frontiers of our understanding. This cultural difference leads to distinct field mapping approaches. For example, in China a geologic map made by a senior researcher is generally assumed to be fully correct, whereas in the West, it is generally assumed that even the best mappers make incomplete and/or occasionally problematic maps. Chinese field mapping students are thus accustomed to building from existing knowledge. In contrast, our students mapped new areas independently and without prior knowledge. They developed their field mapping abilities, and also pursued scientific exploration in a style new to them. Initial student responses ranged from mild shock and trepidation to persistent difficulties working fully independently. With few exceptions, students became comfortable with the field mapping approach by the third independent mapping exercise, and produced increasingly competent efforts as the course progressed. We argue that teaching field mapping with dominant use of one-day independent field mapping exercises delivers superior benefits to geology students across most or all cultures, and in particular fosters confidence in independent inquiry for students in academic cultures that lean towards valuing received information.