| Self-study defined in this dissertation includes absolutely independent learning activities carried out by learners without any guidance of instructors, as well as relatively autonomous learning activities by learners with the guidance of instructors. Any educational activities without the self-study of learners, in a certain sense, are inefficient and useless. Therefore, it is of great significance to promote self-study and develop students’ability of self-study within the system of school education. Self-study has a long tradition in China. The traditional Chinese educational system had long been learning-centered, which was later, with the establishment and spreading of the modern school system in our country, replaced by the teaching-centered modern school educational system. Under this new system, students’self-study spirits have been constrained, meanwhile learning freedom has failed to demonstrate. So many people advocated schooling self-study, hence the rise of self-study thought. Then what have people been holding of self-study in the past100years? How have the self-study thought course evolved in the past100years? What revelation does it have to current and future school education? All of these issues are important and worthy of study. However, there is a lack of systematic and specialized research on them in the academia up to now. All of these considered,"Ideological History of Self-study at School in China in the Past100Years" is chosen as the topic of my PhD dissertation.Based on the analysis of the literature on ideological history of self-study in China in the past100years, through theoretical analysis, this dissertation sees the evolution course of the ideological history in eight periods.The first period was about the beginning of the schooling self-study ideology, lasting from the founding of the Republic of China to the May4th Movement. During this period, with the set-up of the modern school education system, teachers’"teaching" became the core of education and students’ learning was constrained. And the modern school system was constantly being criticized. After the founding of Republic of China in1912, self-study thought emerged under the promotion of the democratization of education and the influence of Western education thoughts.The second period, from the outbreak of the May4th Movement to the founding of the People’s Republic of China, was about the deviation of the self-study ideology. During this period, the self-study ideology was deviated under the impact of both the traditional and modern education systems.Some people reformed the modes of classroom teaching and proposed the idea of self-study under the influences of the children-centered thought in Europe and America. Some were still sentimentally attached to the traditional academy of classical self-learning and tried to reform the modern school education system. Moreover, in the Communist Party Revolution Base, self-study was viewed as the supreme principle of teaching methodology, and self-study enjoyed the characteristic of being highly practical.The third period, from the founding of the People’s Republic of China to starting of the Great Revolution on Education, was characterized by silence of the self-study ideology. Along with the founding of New China, and the national ideology changed. Under the influence of the educational thought of Kaiipob, an educationalist of the Soviet Union, teachers became the leading role in the teaching process and students’ self-study was questioned and criticized. The schooling self-study thoughts of the reform on classroom teaching system during the Republic of China got criticized and abandoned. That is why this period is called the Silence Period of self-study ideology.Next is the active period from the year the Great Revolution of Education started to the year the Cultural Revolution began.The critique about the "fewer, slower, poorer and costlier" phenomenon in teaching was carried out in China with the impact of the Great Revolution of Education. Particularly, in the middle of1960s, Chairman Mao gave several talks concerning self-study, which promoted people’s awareness of the importance of self-study. Advocating students’invigorating study in their own initiatives became the main theme of that period.The fifth period covered the whole Cultural Revolution, and was regarded as the distortion period of the self-study. In this period, the education revolution was deeply influenced by the self-study thought advocated by Chairman Mao.A popular saying now is "to study on our own". Schooling self-study was distorted into the self-study practice, separating from school education and teachers’ guidance. Under this kind of thoughts, the role of the students was magnified to the utmost, the role of teachers was not acknowledged, and the schooling education system was almost on the verge of withering away.Then came the prosperous period, respectively marked by the ending of the Cultural Revolution and the advocating of the Quality Education idea. The ending of the Cultural Revolution reestablished the teacher’s leading role in the teaching activities. After the Reform and Opening-up, with the influence of various new education thoughts, especially the Lifelong Education theory, great attention had been paid to the students’ self-study ability. In response to the call of reform, many valuable self-study of changing class teaching models were put forward nationwide based on practice.Transition is the prominent characteristic of the seventh period in the1990s. In pace with the coming up of the Quality Education idea and the subjectivity education thought in1990s, students’role in education has been increasingly put to a high prominence. Knowledge-oriented self-study idea in the1980s began to change into whole person’s overall development-oriented self-study.Adjustment of the self-study ideology finds its way in the last period when the New Course Reform was put into effect to the present. The New Course Reform Self-study was marked with self-study because it takes the alteration of students’ learning model as its core. There emerged a lot of teaching reform models with self-study as its characteristics. However, because the schooling self-study is too extreme in theory and inaccurate in actual application practice, little attention is paid to the teachers’leading role in teaching practice, even there is a tendency of "being absolute independent" in classroom teaching, which triggers academic contention.Based on the analysis of the evolution course of the ideological history of schooling self-study in China during the past100years, this dissertation concludes that this course takes on a process of spiral progress. It was also a process of competition game between "teaching" and "learning", reflecting the turn of teaching-centered education system to the learning-centered education system. It is held in the present study that the emphasis of teaching over learning is the source of the evolution course of the ideological history of schooling self-study in China during the past100years. The shift of knowledge outlook has been an important factor. This dissertation holds that three respective relationships between self-study and knowledge outlook, teachers’ leaning and education institutionalization should be taken into account in advocating schooling education. It is the appropriate practice to develop scientific knowledge outlook, uphold effective teaching guidance and build up learning schools, propose to inherit the tradition, establish the schooling self-study outlook of "Learning by heart everywhere and all the time". In actual practice, it is advisable to distinguish the two levels of self-study, moderate the self-study degrees, reform class teaching models, exercise small class teaching, promote the transformation of learning materials from being teacher-oriented to student-oriented, emphasize the influence of informatization on self-study at school and deal with the relationship between students’burden and self-study dialectically. |
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