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The purpose of this study was to compare and contrast philosophical beliefs commonly shared among American pre-service and in-service teachers and their Chinese counterparts. A total of 100 responses was included in this study. A philosophical inventory with 34 items was used. The causes for the similarities and differences as indicated in the findings were examined. This study pointed out the danger of stereotyping people based on cultural backgrounds. lt also encouraged teacher educators to challenge our own habitual view and vision of our practice. Numerous studies have been conducted on cultural differences between American and Chinese people (Reagan, 1996; Stevenson and Stigler, 1992; Zhu, 1991 ). The visible differences, such as food, holidays, costumes, linguistics can be identified rather easily, and many of the variables can be imitated and followed without a deep understanding. With the intensive development of multicultural education, crosscultural analysis has gone beyond triviality. The invisible factors, such as people's belief systems, cultural and historical principles underlying the visible and invisible factors, deserve thorough exploration. International comparative studies have indicated that Asian students, including Chinese students, have outperformed American students in standardized tests. The stereotypical image of American education and that of the Chinese is progressivist vs. conventional prac64 NORTHWESTPASSAGE tice. According to Stevenson and Stigler (1992), the reason behind the discrepancy was due to the conceptions that originated from differing social, cultural and political systems. The purpose of this study was to compare educational philosophical beliefs between American undergraduate and graduate students in education and their counterparts in China. The research questions in this study are: 1) What are the different perceptions between the two groups?2) What are the commonly shared beliefs among the two groups of teacher education students? 3) What are the causes for the similarities and differences as indicated by the results? And 4) What are the implications of the findings for our efforts in promoting multicultural understanding and improving our educational practice? 1 Liu: Who Are We and Who Are They? A Comparison of Philosophical Belief Published by PDXScholar, 2004 THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS The most vital agent in improving students' performance is the classroom teachers; they have the most often and direct contacts with students on a daily basis of all professionals. The classroom teachers' philosophy will reflect in their decisions of pedagogy, selection of content, and modeling interactions with students who are different from the mainstream. While classroom teachers are held accountable for their students' learning, each decision a teacher makes in a classroom may produce impact upon the success or failure of his/her students academically, emotionally and culturally. To improve success, know ledge and comprehension of educational philosophies are becoming increasingly important for our teacher education students to justify their practice and evaluate their effectiveness in working with students (Segall & Wilson, 1998). At the same time, as teacher education professionals, our students must acknowledge and understand multiple perspectives of educational philosophies. This could lead to reflective development of their own educational philosophy as well as comprehension of others. Examining philosophical beliefs commonly shared among pre-service and in-service teachers, and identifying the difference(s) would be significant in helping to understand American education and educators as well as their counterparts from another educational system. The current highstakes testing movement requires educators to be philosophically competent in developing a clear definition of accountability so as to build an accountability system appropriate for improvement and assessment of American students' performance (Littleton, 2000, & Bogotch, 2001 ).

Who Are We and Who Are They? A Comparison of Philosophical Beliefs Between American and Chinese Teacher Education Students