April.15th, 2014
In April 2014, Professor Rainer Kokemohr from the University of Hamburg paid a visit to Institute of German Studies (IGS) on academic purpose at the invitation of IGS. Professor Rainer Kokemohr is the Chief Professor of general pedagogy, in University of Hamburg, as well as an educator. His research focuses on the process of education, the interaction in the education, cross-cultural communication, the pedagogy of biography and the philosophy of education. Except for the contribution to the educational theory, Professor Rainer Kokemohr has done field researches in Cameroon every year since 1986 and has rich experience in practice.
During the visit, Professor Kokemohr carefully prepared six seminars for the students and teachers in IGS and some German teachers from PLA University of Foreign Language and other colleges and universities in Zhejiang Province. Prof. Kokemohr vividly introduced theories and methods of research on oral biography in forms of explaining theories, giving examples, discussing in groups, practicing in class, summarizing according to the feedback and analyzing the cases. All the participants responded positively.
During the seminars on April 3rd and 4th, Professor Kokemohr showed two real interviews. By analyzing the language in the interviews with high academic sensitivity, he explained two different narrative structures of oral interview, namely, single deduction and complex deduction. He also pointed out that all the informationwas just data, which can be connected with narration subject only in some certain interpretation space.
During the seminars on April 8th and 9th, Professor Kokemohr shared his experience of interview and the method he summarized based on his years of practice. He simulated and demonstrated it on the spot and tried to made everyone clearly realized what should do and not do during an interview. Later on, he provided another interview and let participants analyze the specific case with the theory they got before. Everyone engaged to talk and had a wonderful time.
During the seminars on April 14th and 15th, Professor Kokemohr summarized the theory and cases he explained before and gave some feedbacks on the reports of participants. On this basis, he made an in-depth comment, which had risen to the analysis of interviewees from the analysis of language, on previous interview analysis and showed a complete process of research on oral biography for participants. During the last seminar, Professor Kokemohr selected an interview in both Chinese and German and let participants analyze the content and interviewees in dual perspective, which was a wonderful opportunity to consolidate the knowledge they learnt before.
The lectures came to an end, while all the participants were still longing for more. All of them benefited a lot from lectures and said that they were looking forward to the next meeting.
(Translated by Lei Jialin)
