Research On The Credit System In Senior High Schools

Over the past decade, some high-quality senior high schools in China have gained a great deal of valuable experience through exploring "credit system". Although the experiments of using the credit system in these schools are enthusiastically carried out, explorations and researches on it are still a virgin ground in the academic world. Therefore, this is the reason why it is chosen as the theme of this dissertation.This dissertation defines that the credit system is the basic condition for students to achieve the graduation with the prescribed minimum of credits based on the elective system and the calculation of students' study quantity by credits, and is a flexible curriculum management system integrated with some corresponding systems such as the elastic study system and the mutual credit identification system.Since the credit system was initiated from institutions of high learning, it has aimed at breaking the barrier resulting from traditional curriculum management so as to foster and develop students' individual personality. There are historical reasons and backgrounds of educational development for the credit system to be transplanted and applied in the high school. The fundamental reasons for the credit system to be introduced into secondary education and flourish in it are: the educational concept of equal opportunities for students' academic achievement, the respect of individual personality and the consequent pursuit of curriculum diversity. The establishment and development of the elective system and comprehensive schools have laid the foundation for wide application of the credit system in senior high school.This research is a non-reactive measure and literature analysis are mainly used in. On the one hand, the research explores the common characteristic of applying the credit system in the management of education in several countries and reveals the common international trend through examining and understanding deeply the emergence of the credit system and institutional setting as well as philosophic essence in American secondary education. On the other hand, it compares domestic and foreign policies and practice of using the credit system, and analyses experience and problems in current school experiments of using the credit system in China. Meanwhile, it also points out these schools haven't make full use of the role of the credit system and only take it as a method of identifiable assessment for students, owing to the defect of the present curriculum structure and subsidiary systems.On the basis of the analysis, the research not only constructs the elements for China to implement the credit system in terms of curriculum policy, but also puts forward suggestions for China's senior high schools to put it into practice. In addition to the uniform regulation and identification of the lowest credit for senior high school graduates and of their credit structures, and to the establishment of the mutual credit identification between schools, the prerequisites of implementation of the credit system in terms of curriculum policy are to build various curriculum, to grant schools the rational and full independence, and to optimize the external assessment. In terms of school management, the implementation of this system means that schools must develop the curriculum structure with both required and elective courses, establish new management methods including course-selection guiding method, guide students to form an individualistic course-study plan. This gradual formation of flexible methods in curriculum management has justified, from a systematic perspective, the selectivity of courses in senior high schools.