Curriculum Enactment Of Pre-school Education

Curriculum enactment, as a major theme in the contemporary curriculum reform, helps to satisfy the society's needs of high-quality personnels. It takes into account pre-school education characteristics and pre-school children's development characteristics and is in line with the pre-school curriculum management policies and the current circumstances of our country. Therefore, in recent years, it has become an issue of great concern in China's pre-school educational reform. While there are abundant theoretical and practical studies of Preschool Curriculum Enactment (PCE), until recently there has been little specialized and systematic studies on this issue. Therefore, aiming at promoting the comprehensive, initiative, and personality development of preschool children, the author widely absorbs the relevant ideas of practical curriculum, process curriculum, situational curriculum, and concept reconstruction curriculum. The thesis tentatively constructs a theoretical system of PCE by comprehensively utilizing research methods ranging from historical research to investigation and case study.Chapter one mainly demonstrates the essence, characteristics, and significance of PCE and lays a theoretical foundation for the whole thesis. In this study, PCE refers to the process in which kindergarten teachers creatively develop and implement curriculum based on children's interests, demands, and developmental levels so as to not only effectively promote and construct their experience but comprehensively and initiatively realize their personality development as well. In this process, the essence is creatively developing and implementing the curriculum which aims at gaining effective promotion and construction of children's experience; the starting point is a consideration of children's interests, demands, developmental levels, the current situations of the kindergartens as well as the district in which the kindergartens are located; the principal part in the enactment are teachers; and the purpose is to comprehensively promote children's personality development. The basic characteristics of PCE are children-oriented, dynamic constructional, differences coexistent, critical reflective, and teachers-children co-constructional. It is of great theoretical and practical significance to put forward the idea of PCE, which brings ultimate changes to preschool curriculum concept, endows the kindergarten teachers with powers to develop curriculum, promotes the mutual development of the initiative of teachers and children, and greatly enhances the pertinency of preschool curriculum.Chapter Two is mainly devoted to the study of the development of PCE and its historical origin with the acknowledgment and respect of children's initiative as its logical basetone, and ideological sources and system construction as two main clues. The study shows that PCE in the western world experienced three stages: the appearance of several elements in the ancient times, the appearance of the important constituents in the modern history and the really and truly appearance and fast development of modern PCE. PCE in China appeared in 1920s and 1930s. It also experienced three stages: beginning to be attached importance to, being neglected, and regaining recognition. It is shown that the demand for and standards of talents as a result of social development, especially the economic development is the root motivation of the creation and development of PCE. The acknowledgment and respect of children's initiative is the necessary prerequisite and the decentralization of curriculum decisive power serves as the basic systematic guarantee of the creation and development of PCE.Chapter Three presents the current situations and problems of PCE. The investigations conducted in many kindergartens of Shandong Province show that most kindergarten teachers hold a positive attitude towards PCE. However, they gave a relatively low evaluation of their own enactment ability and the enactment efficiency within the kindergartens. Most of the kindergartens and teachers have made tentative attempts to the curriculum enactment, and almost 60% of them often conduct it. Currently, kindergarten-based curriculum is the most common form of PCE. However, there are still some problems: poor self-consciousness of PCE; big gap between theories and practice; lack of enactment depth and ability; and unsound curriculum enactment theories, system and cultural atmosphere.Chapter Four analyzes the basic constituents of PCE. In the thesis, there are four dimensions in the design and implementation of curriculum enactment: first, in curriculum goal enactment, comprehensiveness, initiative, and differences must be taken into consideration; second, the content of the enactment must be multifactorial, in conformity, and founded on real-life, with foundation on real life the key element; third, in the enactment of curriculum implementation, initiative activity, dialogue-based method, and dynamic constructional organization are of great importance, with initiative activity as the basic form applied; and finally, in the enactment of curriculum evaluation, the effective promotion of children's experience and sense construction are the main focus, with critical reflection as the basic approaches. Reflections should be focused on whether the curriculum meets children's interests and developmental needs, whether the curriculum is developed with a consideration of children's existing experience, and whether it has provided the children an arena for initiative activities.Chapter Five puts forward the modes and realization route of PCE. Based on its current situations, the author puts forward three modes of PCE, namely kindergarten-oriented, class-oriented, and student-oriented curriculum enactment. Kindergarten-oriented curriculum enactment can integrate all the possible curriculum resources in and out of the kindergartens based on their current situations. Class-oriented curriculum enactment can make full use of the class resources and creatively construct the curriculum that fits the children in the class based on children's common developmental characteristics, common problems and the current situations of teachers. Based on the interests and demands of preschool children, student-based curriculum enactment creatively constructs the curriculum that can promote the development of every child and it is the real children-oriented curriculum enactment. The thesis also illustrates the route of realizing PCE: problems focus---feasibility analysis---scheme design--- environment creation---scheme implementation---reflective evaluation.Chapter Six mainly explores the supporting system of PCE from three perspectives: enactment qualifications of kindergarten teachers, kindergarten curriculum management, and kindergarten curriculum recourses. First, teachers'enactment qualifications, including the knowledge structure of dynamic construction, persistent professional pursuit, strong enactment consciousness, and outstanding enactment abilities, etc. are the core guarantee to the successful implementation of PCE. The curriculum enactment abilities include mainly participation and observation ability, listening and recording ability, learning and application ability, course-design ability, emergency-dealing ability, supporting and guiding ability, cooperation and communication ability, reflection and construction ability. Second, the kindergarten enactment management is the mechanism guarantee, with the support and guidance of kindergarten leaders as the main supporting stand; the establishment of curriculum enactment encouragement system as the motivation; and the creation of the cultural atmosphere as the"field effect"mechanism. Third, kindergarten resources are the basic guarantee of PCE. At present, low sense of developing and applying curriculum resources, single enactment structure, and low implementation efficiency are three main problems in the development of PCE. To deal with the above problems, it is necessary for the kindergarten leaders and teachers to strengthen the consciousness of developing and utilizing enactment resources, to reasonably construct and optimize enactment structures, and to promote the efficiency of developing and applying the curriculum enactment resources.