Cultural Adaptation Study In Curriculum Reform

The policy of another new round curriculum reform was officially issued in 2001, which means that China has abandoned the old educational model used for decades, and that China has arrived at a new stage of educational development. Along with the arrival of the new curriculum, there appear some problems in the enforcement of the new curriculum reform, such as formalism, externalization and exhibition. After several years of tryout, the new curriculum has become less and less sustainable to the real teaching situations, and many teachers have become less and adaptable to the new curriculum, some of whom even become indifferent and impatient to it. Teachers are the key factor and determine the success or failure of the curriculum reform. If a curriculum has not been accepted and internalized by teachers, and practiced in their actual teaching behaviors, it will lose the value and significance of its own, no matter how perfect it is. Therefore, it is important to make it clear why teachers respond so negatively to the new curriculum, what are its potential influence and restrictions, and how we deal with the negative attitudes and behaviors. Studies on cultural adaptation in curriculum reform help us to have a correct understanding of teachers' behaviors and attitudes, of setbacks and resistance met in the enforcement of the new curriculum, and to work out corresponding resolutions and guarantee the success of the new curriculum reform. Seen from a cultural perspective, all these problems are of a cultural adaptation, i.e. the teachers' adaptation in the process of confliction, fusion and transformation from the old educational culture to the new curriculum culture.Part I is an introduction. It deals with the purposes of this dissertation. It gives a detailed review of research concerned at home and abroad, points out the problems in the existing research and the significance of this study.Part II is to explain culture and cultural adaptation. By explaining the definition of culture and its common features, the basic views of cognition, analysis frame and methods of this study are established. The concept, stages and patterns of cultural adaptation in cultural anthropology and cross-culture psychology have provided the references for clarifying the connotation of cultural adaptation in curriculum reform. Part III defines the cultural adaptation in curriculum reform. The studies of cultural adaptation by western anthropologists, sociologists and cross-culture psychologists lay particular emphasis on the immigrants, refugees and sojourn workers' adaptation to the mainstream culture of the immigrated nations, and on the developing nations' adaptation to the dramatic cultural changes under the global background. This part aims to explain the connotation of cultural adaptation in curriculum reform, that is, it refers in particular to the adaptation to the changes from the old educational culture to the new educational culture, caused by the introduction of educational theory originated in other countries in the process of confliction, fusion and transformation under the background of the new round elementary education curriculum reform. The cultural adaptation discussed here includes many different levels: cultural adaptation of the whole school, cultural adaptation of teachers and students, and cultural adaptation of parents and other aspects of the society to the educational cultural changes. This dissertation focuses on the study of teachers' cultural adaptation.Part IV devotes to the status quo of the cultural adaptation in the curriculum reform. In this part, first, the status quo, the method, the research sample, the data collection, and the validity are illustrated. Second, the questionnaire investigating teachers' patterns of cultural adaptation is analyzed. According to the result of the analysis of the questionnaire, teachers mainly adopted three ways in their adaptation to the new curriculum culture: assimilation, separation and peripherization. Third, to test and improve the validity of the study, the writer makes an on-the-spot anthropological inspection about school, focusing on observing and recording classroom teaching and interviewing teachers and students. According to the on-the-spot inspection and the analysis of the data, we hold that when teachers are confronted with the conflict between the old educational culture and the new curriculum culture, they mainly adopt the adaptation pattern of peripherization or separation.Part V is the attribution analysis of cultural adaptation in curriculum reform. There must be some subjective and objective factors that influence and restrict teachers' adoption of cultural adaptation pattern of separation or peripherization. The clarifying of these factors of influence and restriction can help us understand why teachers have adopted the attitudes and behaviors of separation or perpherization in the new curriculum reform. Thus, it will provide backgrounds for strategies of improving the new curriculum culture. From the questionnaire and interview of teachers, it shows that teachers tend to favor external attribution in their self-attribution analysis, that is, they mainly attribute their attitudes and behaviors of separation or perpherization to the deficiency in time and vitality, the insufficiency of teachers' training, the big class, the scarcity of curriculum resources, and the lagging of the testing and appraisement system, etc. The nature of teachers' attribution analysis has reflected difference and nonconformance between the current underdeveloped material civilization of China, the centralized systemic culture, and the material and systemic culture of the country from which the theory is introduced. Surely these factors affect teachers' active adaptation to the new curriculum culture. Besides, there are other factors influencing teachers in deeper-level, which, though not perceived by teachers, can be really influential, and can dominate teachers' actual attitudes and behaviors. These deeper-level factors are determined by the difference in educational culture caused by the difference in values between the Chinese culture and the Western culture.Part VI is a recollection of the cultural adaptation in curriculum reform. The discussion of the issue, and the inspection and analysis of teachers' adoption of patterns of cultural adaptation does not mean to judge the value of the introduced theory, or to negate the significance of the introduction and the use for reference of other theory, or to make diagnosis of the curriculum reform to see whether it is successful or not. The discussion of the cultural adaptation in curriculum reform aims to help us recollect the malpractice in the curriculum reform, such as the alienation of knowledge and culture, and alienation of reform and tradition, to obtain some enlightenment, and to find a thread of problem-solving.