Knowledge Instruction And Academic Inquiry: The Developing Picture Of The Discipline Of Chinese Educational History

In terms of the history of production and development of the disciplines, they initially were the categories of academic knowledge or the branches of knowledge, and they didn't have the meaning of the teaching by themselves, but there are natural relationship between discipline and instruction, all of disciplines actually recognized the education as their origin of producion, or they were results that were brought by the forms of education.Since the formation of medieval universities, the disciplines were the cells of university, meanwhhile, the university was the main base promoting academical development. Especially on account of the cultivating manner of inherited talents combining their disciplines, and the interaction between teaching and research, the disciplines acquired developing differentiating and integrating. This was the reason why, under the conditons of the modern academics increasingly oriented specialization, the knowledge of specific categories was often considered as a professional teaching discipline in universities. When defining the implication of discipline, people not only highlighted the classifictions or caterogies of knowledge and but also can not avoid the fact that various disciplines of a university put the teaching subject as their carrier. So the developing process of the discipline of Chinese educational history which was founded by the system of Chinese modern education and the rising of teacher education had the same experience.At the early 20th century, with the creation of new schools and the promulgation and implementation of China's new modern school system - "Guimao Academic System", Chinese educational history was a main teaching subject educating teachers and was regarded as formal subject in Large Schools and the Normal Schools. From the beginning China's educational history was known as basic professional courses in the university, particularly in the educational department of Teachers College, and as an elective course or a general course in other departments. Through the way of imparting knowledge in the classroom, Chinese history of education was brought into people's vision as a category of knowledge. From initially introducing and translating the Japanese history of education and teaching materials to self-edited and and self-compiled the handouts and works of Chinese educational history, from only putting Chinese educational history as a teaching content in the classroom to treating it as a research on the development of national history of education connecting with new Chinese education, during this developing process, history of education in China had gradually formed its own unique contents of knowledge, scopes of knowledge and systems of knowledge. So it became a "discipline"with a modern sense.After the founding of new China, duing to the affluence of learning the Soviet Union to build higher education institutions with "College-professional" oriented,China had founded a professional study class about educational history of early China.By way of training methods of academic professional talents to teach the knowledge and pass the academics,the universities, therefore, were recognized as the centre of study bases about Chinese history of education,as well as the normalizating development of subject and its completing form are promoted. The knowlegde system of subject about Chinese educational history was initially founded under the guidance of historical materialism. Unfortunately, according to political movements, during the "Cultural Revolution" movement, the discipline of Chinese educational history like the other subjects came to a standstill.After reform and opening up, owing to the clarification of the basic theories about researching ranges, the reflection of subject system, and the creation of a course of educational history about Chinese universities, the history of education in China was recovered and developed. On the one hand, under the promotion of formal degree system of university, the subject of Chinese educational history started to enroll the postgraduates of master and doctor. During the process of educating academic heirs for the profession, through adopting the means of combination with teaching and research, the universities carried out imparting professional knowledge and exploring the academic, which not only training professional academic talented workform about history of education in China, but also became the very important platform of the new developing era. On the other hand, under the interaction between teaching and research in the university, since the 1980s, the discipline of Chinese history of education had gained numerous achievements in the study field. It had formed its characteristics in these aspects, such as the transform of research conceptual, the application of research methodology, the extension of research fields, and the expansion of research content, all of which accelerated the specification and development of the discipline. But since the early years of the new century, facing challenges of the new times and society, especially, the status of courses of China's educational history was weakened in the universities, the living space of subject continually was compressed. Bases on these facts, the researchers called for reforming curriculum development, inqiring for changing research paradigm, placing the gravity of research down, and having an interdisciplinary perspective. Through the many perspectives, researchers should reflect on the subject itself, and forward it, which can make the development of the subject show a kind of new trend.This study is based on the relationships of mutual dependencies between the discipline and the University,and is built on the characteristics presenting during the development of the Chinese Educational History itself, and takes the imparting knowledge and exploring academic as study perspectives, and applies research methods combinating historical documents with oral history,and inspects the cultivating process about academical talents of Chinese educational history and analysizes the passing of academics,and explores the discipline of Chinese educational history how to form, to evoluve, and to develope under the interaction of teaching and research. Consequently, the aim of this study presents the developing picture of the Chinese history of education in different historical periods.