From August 19th to 22nd, the National Finals of the Third National Teaching Innovation Competition for College Teachers was held in Zhejiang University. A total of 1,701 teachers from 465 courses participated in the national competition after passing the provincial competition, among which 898 teachers of 239 courses were nominated for the on-site evaluation of the national competition. The team of “English and American Literature from the Perspective of Western Modernization” led by Prof. Li Chengjian of the Department of English participated in the fierce competition and won the first prize of the National Competition in the New Liberal Arts Track of the Professors Group.

The National College Teacher Teaching Innovation Competition is one of the events approved by the Ministry of Education and included in the “List of Retained Items of Three Evaluations and One Competition for Units Directly Under the Ministry of Education”, and it is currently the only teaching competition activity for college teachers in the list of projects. Since its launch in January 2023, this competition has received widespread attention and participation from universities across the country. A total of 83,224 teachers from 1,194 general undergraduate colleges and universities nationwide participated in the school competition; 23088 teachers participated in the provincial competition. After multiple rounds of selection, 72 first prizes, 166 second prizes, and 227 third prizes were ultimately selected. Among them, there are 7 first prizes, 17 second prizes, and 24 third prizes in the New Liberal Arts Track of the Professors Group.

In the national finals, Professor Li Chengjian reported on the “Teaching Innovation and Practice of the General Education Course “English and American Literature from the Perspective of Western Modernization”, Guided by Value Shaping, and achieving the organic integration of communication, intelligence, and learning. Since its launch in 2015, this course has adhered to the educational purpose of “cultivating virtue and nurturing talents” in eight years of teaching practice, guided by the “new liberal arts” ideology, and has carried out a series of teaching reforms to address the pain points in the teaching of cross-cultural general education courses in science and engineering universities. Guided by value building, the curriculum reflects on the achievements of Chinese path to modernization through the historical process of western modernization, implements the ideological and political goal of “understanding contemporary China”, achieves innovative breakthroughs in three aspects, namely, team organization mode, ideological and political perspective of the curriculum, and building a learning community, cultivates undergraduate students’ cross-cultural communication ability, and serves the needs of complex and international talents of the “the Belt and Road”, which has been unanimously recognized and highly praised by the competition judges.

the Department of English

September 8th, 2023