I. Overview of the course
(A) the origin of the curriculum
1, the word "curriculum" first appeared in the Tang and Song Dynasties in China. In the Tang Dynasty, Confucius wrote a note for The Book of Songs: "It is legal for a gentleman to supervise the maintenance of the curriculum." This is the earliest use of the word "of course" in the history of China. But the courses mentioned here are not in the modern sense. In Song Dynasty, Zhu mentioned courses many times in On Zhuzi's Complete Books, such as "wide deadlines and tight courses", in which courses refer to homework and its process.
2. In the west, the word "course" first appeared in the book What is the most valuable knowledge by British educator Spencer? In the article. " It comes from Latin, meaning "runway". According to this etymology, the most common definition of curriculum is "learning process", which is referred to as learning process for short.
3. It is generally believed that the book "Curriculum" published by American scholar bobbitt 19 18 marks the birth of curriculum as a special research field, which is also the first book on curriculum theory in the history of education. He put forward the "activity analysis method" of curriculum research, which became the bud of the target model.
4. The Basic Principles of Curriculum and Teaching published by Taylor 1949 is recognized as the cornerstone of modern curriculum theory or a classic book of curriculum theory. Taylor's curriculum development model is also called "target model".
(B) the definition of curriculum
Curriculum is the foundation of school education, and curriculum reform is the core of education reform.
1, general course
In a broad sense, curriculum refers to the sum of what students learn during their school days and the arrangement of the process. The courses we study are in a broad sense, which are the sum of the learning subjects and their processes stipulated by schools at all levels to achieve the training goals.
2. Narrow curriculum
A course in a narrow sense refers to a certain subject. For example, Chinese, mathematics, English and other specific subjects are the performance of the curriculum. In China, curriculum is embodied in curriculum plan, curriculum standards and teaching materials (teaching plan, syllabus and teaching materials). As the basic element of teaching activities, curriculum also embodies the basic principles that education serves social development and education adapts to individual development. It is the blueprint to realize the educational goal of the school, and it has special value and significance to ensure the realization of the educational function of the school.
Second, the types of courses.
(1) According to the content attributes (inherent attributes/design methods) of courses: subject courses and activity courses.
1, subject course
Subject curriculum mainly refers to the knowledge system composed of contents selected from various subject fields and according to the logical structure of the fields. Subject courses have a long history. The "Six Arts" in ancient China, the "Seven Arts" in ancient Greece and the "Seven Skills" of samurai can all be said to be the earliest subject courses.
Subject courses have three obvious advantages:
(1) Subject courses are selected basic knowledge from various cultural fields, which is conducive to students' understanding level reaching a new historical height in a short time; (2) Subject courses can effectively ensure the logicality, systematicness and integrity of learning, deepen students' understanding of a specific field and cultivate their professional quality; (3) Subject courses are beneficial to teachers' teaching and students' learning and consolidating knowledge.
The subject curriculum also has obvious defects:
(1) The content of subject courses is the experience gained by predecessors, and the teaching process is mainly classroom teaching, which is not conducive to students' profound experience of knowledge and experience; (2) The knowledge of subject courses is pre-set in combination with various factors, so it is not flexible enough to take care of students' needs, interests and hobbies; (3) The teaching of subject courses focuses on knowledge accumulation and students' learning results, but not on the cultivation of students' learning process and learning methods.
2. Activity courses
Activity curriculum, also known as children-centered curriculum and experience curriculum, is an activity-centered curriculum based on children's interests and needs and aimed at breaking the logical organizational boundaries of disciplines.
Activity courses have the following advantages:
(1) is conducive to meeting children's interests and needs and taking care of their learning psychological process. (2) It is beneficial to strengthen the connection between education and society and students' life. (3) It is conducive to the cultivation of students' practical ability and the improvement of problem-solving ability.
Disadvantages of activity courses:
(1) exaggerates the importance of children's personal experiences, which is one-sided. (2) Ignoring the inherent logical connection and order of knowledge itself makes the course very accidental and random, so it can't guarantee the continuity and systematization of course teaching, and only enables students to acquire some fragmentary knowledge, but can't master systematic cultural knowledge, which reduces students' knowledge level and makes it difficult to guarantee the quality of education.
(3) On the surface, it aims to give full play to students' subjectivity, but in essence it limits the development of students' subjectivity. (4) Taking children as the center, it is easy to despise the social task of education.
(B) According to the organizational form of course content: subject courses and comprehensive courses.
1, subject course
Subject-specific courses refer to courses that select knowledge from different disciplines and impart knowledge to students in the form of subject-specific teaching according to the logical system of knowledge. Subject courses and subject courses are basically the same.
2. Comprehensive courses
Comprehensive course refers to a course that breaks the knowledge field of traditional subject courses and combines two or more subject fields. Comprehensive courses can be divided into subject-oriented comprehensive courses, social comprehensive courses and children-oriented comprehensive courses. According to the comprehensive degree of comprehensive courses, they can be divided into the following categories: related courses, comprehensive courses, wide-area courses and core courses.
Comprehensive courses have obvious advantages:
(1) Breaking the boundaries of disciplines is conducive to cultivating students' overall understanding of things; (2) Reducing the categories of courses will help to reduce the burden on students; (3) Starting from the reality of life and society, it is practical and conducive to cultivating students' ability to analyze and solve problems and practical ability.
Comprehensive courses have two main disadvantages:
(1) It is difficult to compile textbooks, and it is difficult for teachers who only specialize in knowledge to be competent for the teaching of comprehensive courses, so it is difficult to teach.
(2) It is difficult to provide students with systematic and complete professional theoretical knowledge, which is not conducive to the cultivation of senior professionals. It adopts the method of merging related disciplines, reduces teaching subjects, and organizes the teaching contents of several disciplines into a comprehensive discipline. Its leading value lies in promoting the all-round development of students' understanding and forming a comprehensive vision and method to grasp and solve problems through the collection of related disciplines.
(c) According to the learning requirements for students: compulsory courses and elective courses.
1, required course
According to the needs of human development and social development, it is a subject that all students must study. It is the foundation of individual socialization, and its leading value lies in cultivating and developing students' commonness. As far as the current situation of basic education courses in China is concerned, compulsory courses generally include national courses and local courses.
2. Elective courses
It is put forward in view of the shortcomings of compulsory courses, and it is a course to develop students' interests, hobbies and individuality.
(D) According to the presentation of courses: explicit courses and implicit courses.
1, explicit course
Explicit course, also known as open course, is a course published by the education system or educational institutions with official documents and provided for students to learn. After passing the exam, students can obtain specific academic qualifications or qualification certificates, which are clearly listed in the curriculum plan and have special requirements. One of the main characteristics of explicit curriculum is planning, which is the main symbol to distinguish explicit curriculum from implicit curriculum.
2. Hidden curriculum
The term hidden curriculum was first put forward by American educator Jackson in 1968. Hidden course, also known as hidden course, refers to the "unplanned" knowledge, ideas and emotions that students get from a specific learning environment during the learning process, rather than what is expected in the curriculum plan.
The manifestations of hidden curriculum are: (1) conceptual hidden curriculum. Including ideology, school style of study, school spirit, educational concept, values, knowledge, teaching style, teaching guiding ideology of relevant leaders and teachers, etc. (2) Material hidden curriculum. Including school buildings, classroom settings, campus environment and so on. (3) Institutional hidden curriculum. Including school management system, school organization, class management mode and class operation mode; (4) Psychological hidden courses. It mainly includes interpersonal relationships in the school, the unique mentality and behavior of teachers and students.
(4) According to the subjects of curriculum design, development and management: national curriculum, local curriculum and school-based curriculum.
1, national curriculum
National curriculum refers to the curriculum developed by the national unified organization and implemented nationwide.
Features: authority, diversity and compulsion.
2. Local courses
Local curriculum refers to the curriculum independently developed and implemented by the local government, that is, according to the national education policy, curriculum management policy and curriculum plan, while paying attention to the common development of students, combining local advantages and traditions, making full use of local curriculum resources and directly reflecting the needs of local social, economic and cultural development.
3. School-based curriculum
School-based curriculum refers to the curriculum independently developed and implemented by schools according to their actual conditions. Its leading value lies in creating school-running characteristics, improving school-running level and contributing to the development of students' personality.
(6) According to the course tasks: basic courses, expanding courses and research courses.
1, basic course
Basic course is a course centered on cultivating students' basic academic ability, that is, basic education centered on cultivating students' "three basics" (reading, writing and calculating), which is the main component of primary and secondary school courses.
2. Extended courses
Expanding courses focus on expanding students' knowledge and ability, broadening their knowledge horizons, developing students' different special abilities, and turning to other aspects of learning.
3. Research courses
Research-oriented courses focus on cultivating students' inquiry attitude and ability. This course provides students with certain goals, so that students can explore and draw conclusions by themselves.
Third, the main factors restricting the curriculum
1, the requirement of social development in a certain historical period and the possibility of providing it (social demand).
2. The development level of human culture and science and technology in a certain era (subject knowledge level).
3. Students' age characteristics, knowledge and ability foundation and their acceptability (the needs of learners' physical and mental development).
4. Curriculum theory: Among them, society, knowledge and children are the three major factors that restrict school curriculum.
Fourth, the main schools of curriculum theory
(A) the subject-centered curriculum theory/knowledge-centered curriculum theory
1, basic idea
(1) Knowledge is the core of the course.
(2) School curriculum should be based on subject classification.
(3) The core of school teaching is subject teaching.
(4) Master the basic structure of the subject (organizational structure, entity structure and syntactic structure).
(5) Subject experts play an important role in curriculum development.
2. Representative figures
In the history of education, the representative knowledge-centered curriculum theories are: Bale's essentialism curriculum theory, hutchins's eternalism curriculum theory and Bruner's structuralism curriculum theory.
(1) Essentialism Curriculum Theory
Essentialism, also known as traditionalist education and conservative education, is a school of educational thoughts that appeared in the United States in 1930s, with Baglai as its representative. The emergence of essentialism curriculum theory stems from the reflection on Dewey's pragmatic "child-centered" curriculum, and holds that it is difficult for children-centered curriculum to ensure students to acquire basic knowledge and skills, and education and curriculum should impart human cultural elements to the next generation.
The main viewpoints of the curriculum theory of essentialism are: the content of the curriculum should be the "common element" of human culture, and the interests of the country and the nation should be considered first; Subject courses are the best way to provide students with experience; Pay attention to the teaching of systematic knowledge and subject courses.
(2) Eternism curriculum theory
The representative figure of eternalism is hutchins. Eternism education holds that the task of education is to promote the development of eternal human nature by understanding eternal truth. It emphasizes that eternal truth is taught to students through knowledge teaching, so that students can understand the eternal world and develop the highest attribute of human beings-rationality. Put forward the "masterpiece course" plan for students to learn world masterpieces.
The specific contents are as follows: ① The essence of education is eternal; The purpose of education is to "draw out the common elements in our humanity"; Eternal classical subjects should occupy a central position in the school curriculum and advocate entertaining.
(3) Structuralism curriculum theory
Structuralism curriculum theory is an important curriculum theory in contemporary western countries, and its representative is Bruner, the founder of this curriculum theory. Structuralist curriculum theory takes discipline structure as course center, and holds that human learning is a process of continuous improvement and perfection of cognitive structure. Therefore, the study of basic subject structure is the most valuable for the development of learners' cognitive structure.
Structuralism curriculum theory emphasizes that the study of the basic structure of a subject should be consistent with the students' cognitive development level, so when compiling a subject curriculum, it should be compiled in a spiral way according to the learners' thinking development level. In curriculum implementation, structuralist curriculum theory advocates discovery-based learning methods and attaches importance to cultivating learners' intuitive thinking and independent thinking ability.
Step 3 evaluate
Advantages: (1) Compiling courses according to the subject-centered curriculum theory is conducive to imparting systematic scientific knowledge and inheriting human cultural heritage; (2) Pay attention to students' systematic study of knowledge, so as to facilitate students' mastery and application of knowledge; (3) With the support of a long tradition, most teachers are used to it; (4) The composition of the course is relatively simple and easy to evaluate.
Limitations: (1) It is easy to separate all the knowledge when writing the course with the discipline as the center, and it is impossible to study it as a whole and in connection; (2) The curriculum is completely based on the life needs of adults, without paying attention to or even ignoring children's interests and needs, which is not conducive to teaching students in accordance with their aptitude, and easily leads to the disconnection between theory and practice and the application of what they have learned; (3) All subjects are prone to unnecessary repetition, which increases students' learning burden.
(B) the student-centered curriculum theory
1, basic idea
(1) Students are the core of the course; (2) School curriculum should be based on students' interests or life; (3) School teaching should focus on activities and reflection on problems; (4) Students play an important role in curriculum development.
2. Representative figures
The representative theories of this school include naturalism curriculum theory represented by Rousseau, children's empiricism curriculum theory represented by Dewey, existentialism curriculum theory represented by Naylor and humanism curriculum theory represented by Rogers.
(1) naturalistic curriculum theory
This theory is a curriculum theory based on naturalistic educational thought. Comenius used the external natural laws related to human beings to infer or analogize the educational laws of human beings. Rousseau further put forward the theory of natural education.
(2) Empirical curriculum theory
Dewey is a representative figure of empirical curriculum theory, whose main viewpoints include: ① The curriculum should be centered on children's activities.
Curriculum should take children as the starting point and purpose to promote children's growth and development. The content of the course should not exceed the children's experience and life scope, but should take into account children's thinking needs and interests, thus triggering children's learning motivation; ② The organization of the course should be psychological. The logical organization of traditional subject courses is only suitable for adults, and children, as beginners, cannot accept the complete experience of adults. Therefore, curriculum organization should consider the order of psychological development in order to make use of children's existing experience and ability.
(3) humanistic curriculum theory
Rogers is one of the representatives of humanistic curriculum theory. The main viewpoints of this theory include: ① the goal of the course is self-realization; ② The principle of course content selection should be appropriateness; ③ In the course implementation, students should experience all kinds of experiences and form self-concept and independent personality.
Advantages: (1) Attach importance to students' psychological preparation for learning activities, meet children's interests in curriculum design and arrangement, and have great flexibility to mobilize students' initiative and enthusiasm for learning; (2) Emphasizing practical activities and attaching importance to students' direct experience and active exploration through personal experience is conducive to cultivating students' ability to solve practical problems; (3) Emphasis on carefully designing and organizing courses around various fields of real social life will help students gain a complete understanding of the world.
Limitations: (1) It is one-sided to exaggerate the importance of children's personal experience; (2) Ignoring the inherent logical connection and order of knowledge itself makes the course very accidental and random, so it can't guarantee the continuity and systematization of course teaching, and only enables students to acquire some fragmentary knowledge, but can't master systematic cultural knowledge, which reduces students' knowledge level and makes it difficult to guarantee the quality of education.
(3) On the surface, it aims at giving full play to students' subjectivity, but in essence it restricts the development of students' subjectivity; (4) Taking children as the center, it is easy to despise the social task of education.
(C) the curriculum theory of social reformism
The curriculum theory of social reformism focuses on the problems of contemporary society, the main functions of society, social phenomena that students care about, social transformation and social activity plans. This theory does not pay much attention to the knowledge system of the subject, but thinks that courses should be organized around major contemporary social issues to help students develop in society. The core view of this curriculum theory is that curriculum should not help students adapt to society.
But to establish a new social order and social culture, with Brameld and paulo freire in Brazil as the main representatives. Brameld believes that the curriculum is the carrier to realize the future social change, so the curriculum design of general education or overall education "must make the curriculum structure have a meaningful unity". Moreover, he believes that human tasks and goals should be unified in the sense of social transformation.