Research On Value And Its Realization Of General Technique Curriculum In General Senior School

As a newly-created required course in the latest round of senior school curriculum reform, it has been seven years since the implementation of general technique curriculum in the first experimental areas of China. However, there are still divergent views on the rationality of the curriculum’s existence. The value of curriculum is of great importance because it is the premise and foundation determining the existence of curriculum, which means it can restrict the curriculum’s design, development, implementation and evaluation. Moreover, it can also guide teachers’action and direct students’development during the whole teaching process.Through the use of document analysis, questionnaire surveys, interviews, classroom observations, etc. this research reviews the unique value of general technique curriculum from the perspective of theory and analyzes the practical implementation of this curriculum. By doing this, it aims at endowing general technique curriculum with value in current social and educational background and exploring a successful path to implementation of this curriculum, which can provide theoretical guidance and practical basis for the effective implementation of general technique curriculum programs in China’s general senior school.First, based on the analysis and summary of general technique curriculum’s standards and literature in the United States, Britain, Japan, Russia, Sweden and other countries, this paper comes to the conclusion on value orientation of common features of international general technique curriculum. These common features include emphasizing the training of students’technology literacy and taking their future life and employment into consideration so that they can better adapt to the future society. Meanwhile, these technique curriculum can play an educational role in students’comprehensive literacy.Based on the value analysis of foreign technique curriculum, this paper builds specific contents of the value systems of general technique curriculum in China’s senior schools. The systems are built on the basis of the philosophy of curriculum elements, high school students’learning theory and theories related to curriculum and teaching. At the same time, they are built on the practical basis of value positioning of our country’s high school technology education since 1950s. Throughout China’s different periods’syllabus (or curriculum standards) and international value positioning of technique curriculum, it can be seen that the contents of general technique curriculum have been enriched and expanded constantly. The value contents of its common pursuit are the basic production and technical education, vocational orientation education, life education, labor education and comprehensive quality education, etc. The main characteristics of this curriculum’s value systems combines traditions and times and has structure hierarchy. According to the framework of general technique curriculum’s value system in senior high school, this research studies general technique teachers’curriculum values and curriculum value orientation, students’curriculum value orientation and their performance, factors of value realization of general technique curriculum in practice. Generally, students hold a positive attitude to the value of this curriculum, showing high recognition of this curriculum’s practicality, necessity and effectiveness. They particularly believe that the learning of general technique curriculum can promote the value of life, improve technology literacy and develop practical ability. In spite of the high recognition of this curriculum, students do not attach much importance to it. Through the implementation process of general technique curriculum, students’perception of this curriculum has turned into reality curriculum value, which include life education, practical ability, enhancement of academic learning and comprehensive literacy training. From the perspective of their technology literacy, students have acquired related knowledge of general technique curriculum, but their knowledge of this curriculum is fragmented, unsystematic and inconsistent. Apart from this, different teachers’implementation of this curriculum have different impact on their students. Although teachers have stress the training of techniques and methods, students only learned basic knowledge of this curriculum. They still lack the ability to operate technique activities independently and sound judgments of specific case analysis.Overall, general technique teachers hold a positive attitude to the curriculum. As far as the implementation environment inside and outside schools, the teachers are convinced that general technique curriculum’s value orientation should be focused on life education and comprehensive literacy education, which can be seen from these teachers’goal orientation, content orientation and method orientation. The features showed by general technique curriculum’s practice result from students themselves, value orientation of the curriculum and a variety of technical and environmental intermediary factors.According to the above research and findings, this study makes specific recommendations on the effective implementation of the general technique curriculum, which includes the reconstruction of the contemporary curriculum value system of China’s general technique curriculum in high school. Furthermore, promoting teacher’s professional development and improving curriculum evaluation mechanism can provide technical support for the curriculum’s value realization. Besides, to provide supportive environment for value realization we should also develop general technique curriculum resources.