On The Constructivism Of College Curriculum

Curriculum"has existed for a very long time, but has got only a very short history". Since 1970s, the research on curriculum has undergone the process of exceeding the"curriculum development paradigm"characterized by rationalism and represented by"Tyler Principle"and then changing to"curriculum understanding paradigm". The"curriculum development paradigm"represented by"Tyler Principle"was actually a kind of pre-given curriculum viewpoint, because it was based on the classical natural science, and the mission of curriculum research was mainly to find out a universal model and procedure to develop curriculum, this viewpoint emphasized that the curriculum objective should be certain, the curriculum content should be pre-given, and the teaching process should be controllable; as a result, a kind of dualistic contradiction began to appear between the curriculum objective and methods, curriculum and teaching, teachers and students, and ultimately overshadowed the constructivism of curriculum. The"curriculum understanding paradigm"represented by William F. Pinar was enlightened by the new achievements in natural science and also influenced by phenomenology and philosophical hermeneutics, therefore it emphasized that the curriculum was complex, uncertain and contextual, and curriculum was considered to be a kind of pervasive social and cultural phenomenon, this paradigm advocated a kind of pluralistic understanding on curriculum, broadened the connotation of curriculum and thus disclosed the constructivism of curriculum. These influential schools of ideas on curriculum either overshadowed or disclosed the constructivism of curriculum, and this shows that the ideas of curriculum constructivism have undergone a very uneven process of development.The development of curriculum theory is always closely knitted with the philosophical ideas, new achievements in natural science and the development of humanistic and social sciences in a certain period of time. While different theories like the theory of indeterminacy, the theory of postmodern knowledge, the theory of social constructionism, the theory of intercourse behavior, even phenomenology and philosophical hermeneutics appeared one after another, the research of curriculum began to have a broader and diversified vision. The indeterminacy of the world was no longer considered as a kind of"accidental representation", and people began to pay more attention to the world we are living in and also became more curious about how the world was constructed. Indeterminacy, inter-subjectivity, social construction, experiencing, understanding and intercourse all became important categories in both cognition and social practice. All these can be regarded as the cultural and idealistic background of curriculum constructivism, or a kind of new philosophy on curriculum.The curriculum constructivism refers to the indeterminacy, growing capacity and integration of curriculum in the process of constructing knowledge meaning and relationship. In this process, teachers and students are the subjects of activity; the discipline, individual experience, problems (projects) are the relative logic starting point of curriculum; experiencing, understanding and intercourse are the main behaviors of the subjects; curriculum are continuously endowed with new meanings, reconstructed, criticized and exceeded.The theory of curriculum construction considered curriculum as neither a kind of pre-given structure, nor merely a product of individual experiences of the learners, it considered curriculum as a dynamic construction process in a complex and uncertain context, in this process, the curriculum subjects endeavored from a relative curriculum starting point. According to the theory of curriculum construction, curriculum is regarded as the integration of both the static"runway"and the dynamic"running". When considered as the static"runway", curriculum should have a pre-given objective and plan; while considered as the dynamic"running", curriculum was a mutual interactive process between teachers and students in a specialized context. In the colleges and universities, the disciplines, individual experiences, problems (projects) are the relative starting point of college curriculum; and the internal driving force for the curriculum construction is all the activities taken by the college teachers and students, those activities include endowing the curriculum with new meanings, reconstructing, criticizing and exceeding the curriculum.The college curriculum consists of four basic elements, namely the relative starting point of the college curriculum, the subjectivity and inter-subjectivity of the college teachers and students, the pluralistic existence of curriculum subject and the implementation environment of the college curriculum. With the guidance of the creation-oriented curriculum implementation, the interaction between all these elements facilitates the curriculum diversification and the knowledge symbiosis, then enriches and upgrades the meanings of curriculum, and also helps to establish a kind of equal and democratic relationship between teachers and students, and ultimately forms the internal principle of curriculum construction.In Chinese colleges and universities, the constructivism of curriculum has somehow been overshadowed. The reasons are mainly as follows: the curriculum objective is aberrant, the curriculum structure is not reasonable enough, the subjectivity of the teachers are over-emphasized while the inter-subjectivity between teachers and students is missing, the curriculum assessment tends to be too scientific, all these restricted the construction of curriculum. Therefore, the constructivism of curriculum should be emphasized and advocated, and reforms can be carried out from the following aspects: establishing a creation-oriented curriculum objective which is highly integrated both internally and externally; forming a curriculum structure with a diversified relative starting points; enabling both teachers and students to become subjects in curriculum construction; enriching the existence styles of the subjects; making the curriculum assessment appropriately quantitative and qualitative.