School-based curriculum development has been a highlight of China's new curriculum reform since 1999. This reform introduces a curriculum policy change towards devolving partial power in curriculum decision-making to teachers, and invites their active involvement in transforming their role from being book-knowledge transmitters to curriculum…

Since the introduction of the action research into China in the 1980s, especially since the start of the twenty-first century, Chinese education researchers have been trying to localize it in relation to the backdrop of the national curriculum reform in basic education. This article presents three cases in which educators aimed for a conscious…

China has attracted a huge amount of interest from around the world over the last two decades because of its rapid and vigorous development. Rapid economic growth has brought with it significant structural reforms in all trades and professions across China. Within this context of rapid social change, the Chinese basic education system has been…

Before 1997, no formal curriculum on Chinese cultural education for primary schools was developed in Hong Kong although the education authority had started to introduce some items of Chinese cultural learning into the Chinese language syllabus when the Target Oriented Curriculum was implemented in 1996. However, such items were incorporated into…

This study reports findings from an analysis of the 2002 Chinese National Physics Curriculum Guidelines and the alignment between the curriculum guidelines and two most recent provincial-level 12th-grade exit examinations in China. Both curriculum guidelines and test content were represented using two-dimensional matrices (i.e., topic by level of…

This article examines China's senior high "Thought and Politics" ("sixiang zhengzhi") texts, analyzing how these seek to legitimize the regime's developmental strategy. It is argued that their overriding emphasis on the strengthening of the state is premised upon the imperative of securing China's position within global order…

This article provides a brief picture of social studies education in the United States, China, and South Korea. It begins with a brief account of the K-12 curriculum structure and history of social studies education in each country in the 20th century. It then turns to a contemporary look at the social studies, the national curriculum standards…

Although it seems obsolete to analyse and criticise a curriculum from the point-of-view of "subject-centredness", this is the situation we face during the Chinese basic education curriculum reform. This article gives a brief introduction to the ideas behind the development and practice of the Chinese curriculum reform and the progress of…

This study looks at the curricula for mathematics, science and literacy, comparing England's curricula with those of other countries based on performance in international comparative surveys. The main objective was to answer the question: How does the content of the Primary Curriculum in England at Key stage 2 compare in literacy, math and science…

This paper presents systematically China's New National Curriculum Reform (CNNCR). It covers the background, origin, essence, goals, features, evolvement, schedule, implementation, the alignment in primary, secondary and middle schools' curricula and inter-subjects, the outcomes and the challenges and strategies of CNNCR.

This article proposes a conceptual framework to examine the development of the teacher education system in contemporary China. Within the framework, three development periods, including the era of shifan, and the era of post-shifan, the era of professional teacher education, are investigated in terms of governance, institutional structures, and…

Taking the recently released Junior Secondary School Chemistry Curriculum (JSSCC) in the People's Republic of China as a case, this paper approaches the issue of how to realize the idea of scientific literacy within a secondary school science curriculum. Subject matter and its companion meanings were used as the framework to explore the embedding…

This paper sets China's education of English majors within the changing global and national context. It examines the impact of accelerating globalisation and the rise of global English, the adjustment of China's English language policy, the growth of the education of English majors and the challenges faced by this sector of education. To adapt to…

When Singapore underwent decolonization after World War II, its government--keen on constructing a Singapore-centered identity--sought to replace Chinese schools, which taught a China-centered worldview. This attempt provoked tough resistance from the local Chinese. Succumbing to this pressure, the ruling regime accommodated Chinese schools as…

Ku looks at the history of education in China and describes a World Bank project to assist the State Education Commission in upgrading and expanding the vocational-technical education system and the teacher training program. Karwatka describes the British National Curriculum and how technology fits into it. (JOW)