1. What do you think are the three most important tasks for each student after entering the university?
Principal Levin: ① Questioning everything; ② Study hard; ③ Think for yourself.
President Xu Zhihong: ① Study; 2 learn to be a man; ③ Cultivate the ability to serve the society.
2. If you choose to interview two senior students, as the principal, the three questions you want to ask them most are:
Principal Levin: ① You said that you started a magazine in the past. What magazine? What do you think is your greatest gain in your study? What excites you and helps you become a boss?
President Xu Zhihong: ① Do you think curriculum is important or practice is important? (2) What have you lost from China's education system? What kind of teacher do you like?
The answers given by the two principals are wonderful, and there is a thought-provoking understanding that education needs to cultivate students' innovative spirit and practical ability, and schools must attach importance to students' practical learning.
In the past five years, there are still many people who don't understand the curriculum of comprehensive practical activities in primary and secondary schools, saying that "the curriculum of comprehensive practical activities has nothing to do with the senior high school entrance examination and college entrance examination, and it is not worthwhile to spend time on this course", "comprehensive practical activities are not helpful to improve students' test scores" and "comprehensive practical activities are imported from abroad" and so on. As a matter of fact, there are sufficient reasons for offering comprehensive practical activity courses in China's basic education, but there are ten fundamental reasons.
(A) the times refused to "nerd"
One of the most prominent problems of basic education in China is to train a large number of students who can take the exam. Many primary and secondary schools pay too much attention to sending them to higher schools or universities. Facing the complicated information society, the open era, the wave of globalization and the fierce competition living environment, it is difficult to have a good comprehensive quality only by taking the exam and lacking sufficient problem awareness, practical ability and innovative spirit. We investigated the reasons for the unemployment of 400 college graduates from four universities. The results show that in recent years, 25-30% of college graduates in China are unemployed. The reason for this is the following：
Table 1. 1. Causes of unemployment of college graduates
Category and proportion
I think this is mainly due to
key university
%
the ordinary university
%
To study at school/university
three
eight
Poor academic exam results
18
27
Interpersonal communication barriers or lack of ability.
2
eight
sexism
19
40
Lack of practical experience
Sixty-nine
8 1
Didn't publish any articles
67
Eighty-nine
Depends on the arrangement of parents and teachers.
64
Seventy-eight
Don't understand society and occupation
6 1
Seventy two
Why are it difficult for these college graduates to find jobs? It may be related to the lack of comprehensive practical activities. The lack of problem consciousness, innovative spirit and comprehensive practical ability, and the limitation of overall understanding of nature, society and self are obviously incompatible with the requirements of the information age, globalization age, knowledge economy age and sustainable development age. The "bookworm" who can only take exams was abandoned by society as soon as he left school, and he was unemployed as soon as he graduated. This is the tragedy of education!
Primary and secondary education should not only focus on the present, but also pay attention to each student's lifelong educational responsibility and behavior, offer comprehensive practical activity courses, improve the curriculum structure, update the talent training model, and give students complete development opportunities.
Doing things is better than solving problems.
The Delauer Report of UNESCO, namely "Education-the Wealth Contained in it", points out that in the face of the challenges of the times, basic education in all countries in the world must guide students to "learn to know, learn to do things, learn to get along with others and learn to survive", and call these "four societies" the four pillars of basic education.
It is not the core value pursuit of basic education to acquire knowledge and be good at solving problems. Guide students to learn to learn, form the desire and ability to acquire knowledge independently, and develop the quality of thinking; Promote students' practical ability and innovative quality of using what they have learned to ask, analyze and solve problems in actual situations; Cultivate students' awareness and ability to get along and cooperate with others, and have team spirit and ability; Cultivating students' desire and ability to adapt to the society and develop independently, guiding them to share the core values of human beings, and forming good emotional attitudes and values of treating people are increasingly becoming the essential requirements for basic education in this pluralistic era.
In the era of innovation, the cultivation of innovative talents calls for practical education.
(3) Practice makes true knowledge.
Professor Ji Baocheng, president of China Renmin University, said that more than 90% of the outstanding graduates of China University were students who participated in practical study and various social practice activities during their college years, and the proportion was even higher in key universities. World famous universities, such as Harvard University, Yale University, Cambridge University, Oxford University, etc. 65,438+0,000% of the high school students admitted to China every year are students who often participate in various social practice activities in ordinary high schools and have particularly strong practical ability. These students are definitely not the students with the highest test scores in ordinary high schools in China.
For students, most of the knowledge transmitted in education belongs to "public knowledge", and only students' personal experience, understanding, feelings and thoughts are their "personal knowledge". The depth, breadth, quality and structure of "personal knowledge" largely determine a person's success in life.
Where does "personal knowledge" come from? From practice, from reflection. In school education, the ways and channels for students to acquire knowledge rely too much on teachers' teaching and book knowledge learning, and lack independent thinking, hands-on operation and practical learning. This is the problem of talent training mode that needs to be solved in current basic education.
Holistic education
Education is not only an activity of imparting knowledge, but also the acquisition of knowledge is not the whole task and responsibility of education. Even knowledge is not just a scientific problem, but a problem related to the fate and happiness of students. Education points to the all-round development needs of a complete person. Education must pay attention to the development of students' cognitive field, emotional field, sports skill field and interpersonal skill field.
Students are living people who need all-round development, not containers of knowledge. As Proteus, an ancient Roman educator, said, "Children are not a jar that can be filled, but a kindling that can be lit." Facing the needs of a pluralistic society, it has lagged far behind the needs of the times to regard students only as containers of knowledge and the transmission of knowledge as the whole of education. People with all-round development need all-round education, and they need to deal with the relationship between "formal education" and "informal education". For the development of every student, the study, accumulation and even training of book knowledge are indispensable. Similarly, the accumulation, perception and sublimation of life experience are also indispensable.
(5) Life is a big classroom.
It has become an educational axiom that education is related to students' life and social reality, and it is also one of the basic concepts of the new curriculum in China. Because life always has education, life has educational significance; There is education everywhere in life, and there are rich educational resources in life.
Realistic basic education must pay attention to the changes in real life. Basic education is the need of both personal life and social life. Facing the complicated social background, basic education should reflect its functions of simplifying, purifying and balancing social life, integrate primary and secondary school students into the realistic social life background in a planned, systematic and organized way, and reflect the life significance and life significance of education. Education itself is not only a kind of life, but also a process of children's growth and development, and an activity of constructing an ideal life. Therefore, basic education should not only let children experience the happiness of life, but also pay attention to children's lifestyle in basic education and construct children's lifestyle from the perspective of development.
For a long time, one of the outstanding problems of primary and secondary education in China is that education and teaching are far away from students' life and social reality, and only attach importance to the teaching and training of book knowledge, emphasize cognitive learning extremely, and ignore the important way of life learning and practical learning. The single teaching method of book knowledge education deprives students of educational opportunities to develop in the open social background, social life and social practice, resulting in problems such as low ability to get high marks and low marks, lack of practical ability and social practice ability, which greatly hinders students' lively, all-round development and personality development. It's time to change education away from the disadvantages of life!
(6) "School is not a birdcage"
Open era calls for open education! Talking about education says: primary and secondary schools "can't keep teenagers in books and houses all day, but let them participate in some social practices, broaden their horizons and increase their social experience." This passage hits the nail on the head, points out the long-standing problems in primary and secondary education in China, and puts forward some suggestions for reforming primary and secondary education.
Over the years, primary and secondary schools have been too closed, and students' growth experiences have been confined within the school walls. "Don't listen to things outside the window and concentrate on reading sage books" and closed school education activities lead to students' lack of full overall understanding and understanding of nature, society and self. In the information society and learning society, students' ways of acquiring knowledge are diversified and all-round. School education should have an open educational concept and educational vision, especially beyond the limitations of school space on students' growth.
Experience is wealth.
In 20001year, the big composition topic in the national unified college entrance examination Chinese paper was "honesty". Chinese education experts in Jiangsu Teaching and Research Section found that the examples cited by ordinary high school graduates in their compositions showed that their experiences were generally immature and false. Due to the lack of life experience and social experience, candidates have nothing to say, can't go straight to the subject, and lack a basic understanding and depth of the topic of "honesty" closely related to social reality. According to analysis, one of the reasons is that students lack basic social life experience and knowledge and understanding of practical social problems. Lack of real social life experience and social experience has become a common problem in the development of primary and secondary school students in China.
For everyone's growth, experience is the wealth of life, the process resource of development and the conditional resource for students' growth. Experience is the basis, condition and background of understanding. The formation and establishment of life wisdom, lifestyle, way of thinking and values necessary for students' growth is always just a kind of "material", not a kind of "nourishment". The transformation from public knowledge to personal knowledge requires the participation of experience, the transformation of experience and various "practical learning" processes. Students' "personal knowledge" comes not only from the transformation of "public knowledge", but also from the sublimation of personal experience. For the growth of students, if the process of transforming "public knowledge" into "personal knowledge" is called "external blood transfusion process", then the process of sublimating students' personal experience into "personal knowledge" is "self-hematopoietic process". Enriching students' experience and accumulating experience and understanding of nature, society, self, people and even culture has become a difficult problem that must be solved in the innovation of talent training mode in primary and secondary schools in China.
(8) Classroom teaching is not the main channel.
There are many factors that affect students' academic performance, and classroom teaching is not the only important factor. According to the data analysis of the International Student Assessment Program (PISA) of OECD, the average interpretation rate of school teaching to students' reading and writing scores is 36% in OECD countries that take the PISA test. However, in Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and other Nordic countries, the explanation rate of school education behavior for the difference in students' performance is only 10% or even lower. In Germany, Austria, Belgium and other countries, the school's explanation rate for the difference in students' grades is about 60%. The PISA system for data analysis of students' learning quality established by the "New Curriculum Learning Quality Evaluation Project Team" of China Ministry of Education shows that the interpretation rate of Chinese, mathematics and English classroom teaching is 40%.
From this point of view, the so-called teaching law that people believe in "classroom teaching is the main channel" for many years is questionable, and it is necessary to reinterpret the connotation of "classroom" and "classroom teaching" and rethink the ways of students' development and learning methods.
The new curriculum emphasizes the diversification of learning methods, opposes single receptive teaching, and advocates active participation, willingness to explore and hard work, which is essentially beyond closed classroom teaching and single receptive learning. Learning style refers to the way students grow up in the process of education.
(9) World education trends
Offering activity classes and practice classes is not the originality of the new curriculum, but the same measures taken in the face of the development of the times and the change of human learning methods. Since 1990s, the United States, Britain, Australia, Japanese, Norwegian, French and China Taiwan Province Province have all attached importance to offering comprehensive practical activity courses in the basic education curriculum reform. However, the title of this course is different in the curriculum standards of various countries and regions:
1. United States of America
There is no unified "comprehensive practical activity" course in the curriculum standards of American States, but each state has designed specific and different types of comprehensive practical activity courses. Mainly includes:
① Science, Technology and Social Studies (STS). Learning through investigation and problem discussion can not only enable students to acquire inquiry ability, but also enhance their inquiry ability, scientific spirit, sense of social responsibility and comprehensive social practice ability. ② Project or Design Learning (PDL). This course is an applied learning course. Compared with research-based learning, design learning emphasizes students' independent design and practical operation, such as comprehensive art design, application design, product design, activity design, etc., and emphasizes the solution of practical problems in students' lives. ③ Social participation in learning. The focus of social participatory learning is to participate in social life, get in touch with social reality, and pay attention to various social participation activities, such as community service (including participation in nursing homes and social welfare activities). ), social investigation, investigation and visit (including visiting heads of government or local government officials, etc. Social participatory learning often reflects the historical and cultural traditions, social lifestyles and development of different places, and is reflected in the curriculum plans of different school districts. [ 1]
2. Britain, France
The design of comprehensive practical courses in British national curriculum standards is similar to that in American States, which mainly focuses on social subjects and project or design learning. Social studies in British primary and secondary schools focus on the formation of citizens and prominent political, spiritual, moral, social or cultural issues to design practical and exploratory themes. [2] Design learning mainly includes comprehensive art design, information and communication technology, etc. A "comprehensive learning" course is designed in the French curriculum standard, and its basic norms are shown in two basic aspects: first, comprehensive learning needs to span two or more learning fields and comprehensively use multidisciplinary knowledge and skills; Second, comprehensive learning activities should be diversified, involving basic learning activities such as acceptance, inquiry and application.
3. Japan
Since 1980s, there has been a kind of curriculum in Japanese primary and secondary schools: "special activities", which includes traditional school activities, student activities and class guidance activities. Because the "special activities" are not closely related to social real life, they can not fully meet the social needs of students' development. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan added "comprehensive study time" to the study guidance syllabus issued in February 198 and March 1999. With the increase of comprehensive study time, the curriculum structure of primary and secondary schools in Japan has changed from three sections of compulsory subjects, morality and special activities to four sections of compulsory subjects, morality, special activities and comprehensive study time. [3] "Comprehensive learning time" attaches importance to students' hobbies, devotes itself to cultivating students' attitude of actively carrying out problem-solving learning and inquiry learning, guides students to master scientific learning methods and thinking methods, and requires different ways such as "comprehensive experiential learning" and "project-based learning". [4]
4. Taiwan Province Province, China
Taiwan Province Province, China promulgated the new curriculum standards for primary schools and the curriculum standards for secondary schools in 1994. The new curriculum standard stipulates that primary and secondary schools have designed a variety of comprehensive practical activity courses, which are called "comprehensive activities" in the curriculum standard, mainly including domestic and life science and technology activities, local art activities, counseling activities courses, group activities and so on. [5]
The comprehensive practical activity curriculum designed by western developed countries and Taiwan Province Province of China covers a wide range of fields, which embodies the "comprehensive" characteristics of the activity field. But "comprehensive practical activities" does not mean that every activity is comprehensive, and "comprehensive" is relative. The fields involved in the comprehensive practice of design in foreign countries and Taiwan Province Province generally include:
1. Thematic investigation or research
Project inquiry is a research-based learning activity that focuses on the problems or topics that students are interested in and follows the most basic norms and steps of scientific research. Project research and design research are intrinsically linked. Students put forward solutions or strategies through research on related issues, such as project research and environmental protection research, and students generally put forward countermeasures to solve environmental protection. The problem areas involved in thematic inquiry include:
The study of natural phenomena or problems. The field of natural inquiry is very extensive, mainly involving the study of natural things or phenomena related to people's living environment. The core of this activity field is the natural environment of people's real life. The middle school affiliated to Miyagi University of Education in Japan began to implement "project research and learning" in April 1998, which stipulated four fields: designing real life environment, international understanding education, information and health, among which "real life environment" was the main field of "project research and learning". [6]
Table 1.2 Natural Inquiry Fields and Problems of Primary and Secondary School Students in Foreign Countries
Natural inquiry field
Ask questions and give examples.
Grain resources
Food production, agriculture and farmland protection
Population and survival
Regional or national or world population growth, migration, carrying capacity, architecture
Air quality and atmosphere
Acid rain, automobile exhaust and air pollution, carbon dioxide, ozone depletion and global warming.
water resource
Wastewater treatment, estuaries or ports, water supply and distribution, groundwater pollution
Warfare technology
Neurotic gas, nuclear development, threat of nuclear weapons
Land use
Soil erosion, reclamation, urban development, deforestation, salinization
energy shortage
Synthetic fuels, solar energy, fossil fuels
Flammable material
Waste treatment, toxic substances and their prevention
plant
Urban vegetation and greening, inheritance and protection of plant diversity
animal
Study on wildlife protection and animal characteristics
Human health and disease
Infectious and non-communicable diseases, noise and health, diet and nutrition, exercise, mental health
(2) Social studies. The study of social problems is the basic content of primary and secondary schools in various countries, involving the historical changes of society or community, community culture (such as the investigation and discussion of cultural traditions and customs), socio-economic issues (such as the study of securities and stocks, industrial structure) and so on. ), as well as social politics (such as "American government" and "American nation" in most social studies classes in American States). Exploration of science, technology and society, exploration of individuals, groups and systems. [7] The field of social research is centered around social real life, and these areas of activity are directly related to the formation of knowledge citizens with social responsibility. The social research fields of foreign primary and secondary school students can be found in the following table (Table 1.3. ):
Table 1.3 Social Research Fields of Foreign Primary and Secondary School Students
Social investigation field
Ask questions and give examples.
history
survey
Community and local history
Geographical changes and historical investigation of community or hometown
Race and national history
Study on the Formation of the Country and Nation (My Motherland) and Major Historical Events
economy
survey
industry
Community industrial structure, design and development of emerging industries, tourism, bio-agriculture, industrial competitiveness, IT industry.
market
Securities and stocks, e-commerce, market development strategy
occupation
Gender and occupation, occupational adaptability, occupational design and choice
politics
manage
explore
discuss
government
Government structural adjustment, military strategy, international relations
democracy
system
Children's interests, women's issues, ethnic minorities, news media and criticism, law, who can be president, election and life.
decision-making
Reflection on decision-making and war in history
culture
survey
nation
culture
Food culture research, black music and economy, black music and politics, Indian culture, beliefs, ancient architecture, modern architectural art and cultural heritage sites.
cultural exchange
Foreign cultural issues, understanding foreign countries (international understanding)
society
crisis
survey
political crisis
Politician scandal, racial discrimination, avoiding war, global village
economic crisis
Economic depression, unemployment, stock market on Friday
Survival crisis
Drug problem, environmental protection, AIDS prevention, abortion, school violence.
2. Social practice learning
The basic feature of social practice learning is social participation, that is, students participate in the whole social life as members of society and become social political life, economic life and cultural life. The main ways are social service activities, social investigation activities and community public welfare activities.
(1) Social service activities. Social service activities in primary and secondary schools in Taiwan Province Province are well designed, including community service, school service, elderly service, childcare service, transportation service, life picket service, environmental protection service, blind service (i.e. helping the disabled) and so on, and there are annual activity time standards. [8] Most primary and secondary schools in the United States have similar service activity courses. South Middleton School District in Pennsylvania has stipulated a series of school service and community service activities for primary and secondary schools in the school district, and put them into the curriculum planning calendar for implementation. [9]
(2) Social investigation activities. Social investigation has the function of social investigation, and the curriculum standards in some countries regard social investigation as "comprehensive experiential learning", through which students get in touch with and understand society. For example, investigate the historical evolution of communities or local areas, environmental protection issues, the current situation and policies of school violence, and understand the government's strategy for social or community development. Social investigation activities include special investigation and comprehensive investigation. Japan's "Guidelines for Comprehensive Learning in Middle Schools" clearly stipulates that primary and secondary schools should carry out "comprehensive experiential learning".
(3) Social welfare activities. There are two ways of social welfare activities: the school organizes students' collective activities and students' individual activities. For example, the curriculum reform in Taiwan Province Province requires middle school students to participate in all kinds of "volunteer" (that is, voluntary work) activities, requires students to respect the elderly at any time, and stipulates the number of times students participate in voluntary work. Social welfare activities in primary and secondary schools in the United States are generally set up by school districts and organized and implemented by schools, such as public welfare activities in nursing homes and fund-raising activities for African victims, in order to cultivate students' sympathy, social responsibility and sense of obligation.
3. Life and study
Life learning has always been one of the basic fields of curriculum design in primary and secondary schools abroad. Life learning is practical learning related to students' living ability and adaptability. In the curriculum design and implementation of foreign primary and secondary schools, it is reported that the field of life learning includes the following aspects:
(1) Life skills training activities. American school education has designed different levels of life skills practice activities from kindergarten to high school. The life study in the middle and lower grades of primary school includes activities such as making food, sewing, simple manual work, etc. The life study design of students in grades 5-9 (senior grades of primary school and junior high school) includes activities such as family financial management, family investment, family life culture design, and living environment adaptation activities, such as outdoor survival.
(2) Life skills and creative activities. In order to improve students' basic abilities of life adaptation, value judgment, problem solving and creative thinking, as well as their positive attitude of hard work, cooperation and love for community and service in the science and technology society, foreign primary and secondary schools have set up science and technology application, design and creation activities in their lives. Such as clothing design, bedroom decoration design, living building design and other activities. This kind of activity is not entirely technical, which contains complex values and requires students to make value judgments in design and creation.
(10) Public problems in curriculum reform.
With the deepening of the new curriculum in China, "comprehensive practical activity curriculum" has gradually become a public or central topic in the new round of basic education curriculum reform. Studying and discussing the theory and implementation of comprehensive practical activity curriculum has become a hot topic in the new curriculum. It is generally believed that the comprehensive practical activity course is the highlight and difficulty of the new curriculum. The following set of figures is worth considering:
1. There are national, provincial, regional and inter-school comprehensive practical activities seminars almost every day all over the country. Since 200 1, the comprehensive practical activities project team of the Ministry of Education has organized five national seminars on comprehensive practical activities in the experimental area of curriculum reform, and the participants are very enthusiastic.
2. The website of 148 comprehensive practical activities has been established all over the country; Among them, the click rate of comprehensive practice websites such as "New Thinking Comprehensive Practice Activity Network", "Dole Network" and "Jiaxing Comprehensive Practice Activity Network" exceeds 300,000 people per week; Network search found that more than 600 "comprehensive practice groups" have been established on various websites.
3. There are 18 provinces and cities in China that have established the "Professional Committee of Comprehensive Practical Activity Curriculum" academic research institutions.
4. China's education core periodicals, such as Educational Research, Curriculum Textbooks and Teaching Methods, Global Education Outlook and Education Development Research, and educational publications at all levels all attach great importance to the publication of research papers on comprehensive practical activities, and there are countless research papers on comprehensive practical activities; Three special issues of comprehensive practical activities were published nationwide.
5. More than 100 cities in China have incorporated junior high school students' comprehensive practical ability into the senior high school entrance examination and the enrollment index of ordinary high schools for comprehensive assessment.
6. The implementation of comprehensive practical activity curriculum and research-based learning in general education has improved students' comprehensive quality. The number of high school students admitted to internationally renowned universities in China increased from less than 100 in 2000 to more than 2,000 in 2005.
Comprehensive practical activity curriculum has become a hot issue and public topic in basic education. With the consent of the State Council, the Guiding Outline of Comprehensive Practical Activities and the Guide to Inquiry Learning in Primary and Secondary Schools are listed as one of the supporting policies of the State Council on implementing the Outline of the National Medium-and Long-term Science and Technology Development Plan and implemented.