Social Studies Curriculum Studies: Reflection And Construction

In the autumn of the year 2001, China's Basic Educational Curriculum Reform Program (Trial) was completed. The results suggested that guidelines for social studies curriculums needed to be offered. Thus research into both the aspects of theory and practice of social studies curriculums has grown. This reflects the fact that the curriculum practice needs strong theoretical support. This paper is a product under such a background.The dissertation centers around the basic theoretical concerns of a social studies curriculum, and develops along the two main threads: reflecting and constructing the curriculum's theory and practice. It strives to describe the true state of social studies courses and outlines the way to the "should-be" of social education from three aspects, that is the social education concepts of content, teaching, and learning.The first part of the paper - "looking for understanding" reflects on traditional social studies characteristics, goals, and value systems and seeks a new idea , which bears the spirits of a new era. The analysis of the course background points out that traditional definition of the characteristics of the curriculum is rather fuzzy, ever evolving. The course practice orientation also floats between "subject - centered culture transmissions orientation" and " social problem - centered criticism orientation". Probing into the evolution of the traditional course, the paper reveals the fact that influenced by various modern philosophic standings, educational and curriculum views, the social studies curriculum has been confined to a traditional epistemological position and duality, which results in courses losing their value. In responding to the reflection of traditional social studies, the paper discusses and constructs a new idea by analyzing the hermeneutics orientation of human science. Guided by this new idea, which seeks an understanding of social life and the meaning of life as the core, the goal of social studies is to grasp an understanding of social life, and ultimately to understand the self. The course should serve as a resource from which students seek understanding and meaning. The key to understanding is that the teaching of the course should reflect the real world, combining the real world and societal knowledge in the form of readings and daily discussions as well as interaction between teacher and students.The second part of the paper "an umbrella of curriculum" reflects upon the content. Social studies curriculum is based on humanistic social science, which is intended to cultivate the citizen quality, and also relates to several other humanistic social science courses such as history, geography, sociology, politics, economics, law, and anthropology, etc.. This part maintains that the social studies curriculum is a whole covering citizenshipeducation, moral teaching, global education, STS education, etc.. It can be considered the text, consisting of respective humanistic social science contents. In this sense, it can be compared to an umbrella. The whole is more than the combination of parts. The way to systematically integrate these parts into a social studies course is to set the life as the core, the subject content as the backbone, thus extracting the essence of systematic integration rather than the mechanical combining of the subject content. On the basis of analyzing content integration of the core and the supporting subjects, the paper illustrates the goals and their implications of the curriculum goals system . In summary, the second part strives to construct a rational framework for social studies content.The third part examines three approaches: "knowing, experiencing, and reflecting" that make up the practice of teaching. Curriculum and teaching is an inseparable whole. As a common experience shared by both teacher and students, the vivid and complicated practice of teaching the course must be investigated in course research. This part adopts a qualitative research method by telling the stories of four teachers, named Wenzhen, Yezi, Xiaoyu and...