Curriculum Reform in the Course of Social Transformation

Curriculum reform is an important reform for China in the course of its social transformation since its inception in 1996. With curriculum reform as its core, the current education reform has a decade-long history. Internally, the objectives of the current round of education reform by the state government are in support of the ‘socialist market economy’ and ‘the economic development’ for the restructuring of the social fabric. Externally, the objective is to enhance the human capital of China in preparation for the new challenges and increasingly fierce competition of the global knowledge-based economy. Senior secondary school education has become the focal point of the current round of reform in basic education. The education reform is also an attempt for the state government to ease some of the pressure brought by the social transformation in areas like the school examination system and employment; to handle social inequalities resulting from economic reforms and others, and to enhance the ethics and values of the next generation, a growing concern in the transformation process. These attempts have created tensions with the objectives of enhancing human capital and economic development. Under such context, the mission of the curriculum reform and the new mechanism of curriculum production imply changes in the way the state produces its core values in school education. This paper examines the ‘Phase II Curriculum Reform’ in Shanghai and elucidates the tensions among the diverse reform objectives, the underlying concept, institutional design, organization, actual reform outcomes as well as the path of the reform. In so doing, the paper further reveals the predicament that a developing country is currently facing in its education reform

Astronomy · Curriculum · Mathematics education · Pedagogy · Physics · Political science · Social change · Social transformation · Sociology · Chemistry · China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations · Higher Education and Teaching Methods · Ideological and Political Education · Law · Psychology

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