Research On Curriculum Of Teacher Education In Modern China

Teacher education aims to train teachers, and the quality of teachers is directly related to the education level of the whole nation. Therefore, teacher education plays a decisive role in the education system. Teacher education involves many aspects and teacher education curriculum is one of the most important issues, because teacher education is ultimately achieved through it. Curriculum is the carrier of knowledge and skills and also a guide to morality. Teacher education trains qualified teacher through the implementation of the curriculum. However, how should the curriculum be set? Why should these curriculums be set? How can it be taught? How can students’performance be evaluated? The answers to these specific questions have essential meanings to improving teacher education, and thus to improve the overall level of basic education and the quality of the nation.Teacher education in Modern China began in Nanyang Public Normal College created in1897, while systematic teacher education curriculum can date back to "the School Charter Proved by Emperor" in1904by the Qing Dynasty. By1949, when New China was founded, during the nearly five decades, teacher education curriculum along with the ideological emancipation of modern China as well as the introduction of the concept of democracy and science, completed the evolution from embryo to the forming. Despite the twists and turns, continuous development and improvement in the mass, has made remarkable progress, cultivating a large number of outstanding teachers, which made important contributions to the development of modern Chinese science and culture and the improvement of the quality of people. In retrospect, to explore the characteristics, rules, lessons of development of modern teacher education curriculum and the inspiration to contemporary teacher education has become the focus of the thesis.In this thesis, the research is based on historical documents related to teacher education curriculum in Modern China, including laws and regulations, curriculum standards, teacher textbooks, education monographs and articles of modern scholars, and so on. From the perspective of modern pedagogy curriculum, the writer excavates the meaning and significance of these historical data, categorizes modern teacher education according to five elements of curriculum, namely, curriculum objectives, curriculum structure, curriculum content, curriculum implementation and curriculum evaluation. Draw useful lessons and inspiration to contemporary teacher education finally. This paper is divided into eight chapters, and the main contents of each chapter are as follows:The first chapter is introduction. This chapter elaborates the theoretical and practical significances of the research, defines the scope of the research and some key words. Based on the review of previous research on this topic, this chapter sets up a guideline of the whole research and the research methods.Chapter Two divides the development and evolution of Modern teacher education curriculum into four stages based on teacher education system and curriculum, that is, embryonic stage, preliminary stage, tortuous stage and resuscitation stage. Further, it sorts out the teacher education system, the curriculum of Higher Normal Colleges and Secondary Teacher School in each period.Chapter Three studies the development and making process of teacher education curriculum objectives in Modern China. The primary task of teacher education curriculum objectives is training teachers to meet the needs of national and social demands. However, it experienced evolution from the "nation-centered" to "nation-society-person" when it comes to taking other aspects into account. After studying the making process of teacher education curriculum objectives in each period, it discovers and reveals the following rules in this chapter:the selection of makers from dictatorship to democracy, making purposes satisfy quality and quantity, target sources and data collection from Copinism to "examining social demand", value orientation from "social standard" to "society-knowledge-person", form orientation leans to both general objective and behavioral objective, the specific requirements of the curriculum objectives emphasize cognitive domain.Chapter Four concerns the curriculum structure of teacher education in Modern China. The curriculum structure of teacher education in late Qing and early Republican China was even directly copied from Japan. With the "Renxu Educational System" was promulgated in1922, teacher education was weakened, curriculum structure also changed a lot. After the establishment of the Nanjing National Government, the state promulgated a series of laws, regulations, and curriculum standards related to teacher education, thus curriculum structure was adjusted several times and improved. During this evolution process, the course structure had the following characteristics:the political changes follow the country’s political and ideological changes. It was not only in accordance with the requirements of national unity, but also left some space to different places with different economic and educational levels. The total number of classes was more onerous. From the point of view ratio between the various courses, elective courses from scratch, and improved gradually; public basic courses were valued highly consistently; teacher education programs and academic curriculum was in constant reform and development; special education courses and special subject courses increasingly in progress.Chapter Five researches on the curriculum content of teacher education in Modern China. Because it has been summarized in curriculum standards of each period and also reflected in normal textbooks written in reference to curriculum standards in more detail, this chapter not only analyzes the normal curriculum standards in each period, but also in-depth research on the development of normal textbook in Modern China. Consequently, it has found that curriculum content of teacher education in Modern China and the evolution of Modertn Chinese Thought has intimate relationship, which profoundly reflects the country’s political ideology, patriotic ideas, the process of emancipation and Livelihood atmosphere in different periods. On the other hand, normal textbooks in Modern China have outstanding academic features, including paying great attention to combination of theory and practice, noting to learning from the world, and allowing sufficient space for teachers and students to play freely.Chapter Six focuses on curriculum implementation of teacher education in Modern China. At embryonic stage, it puts particular stress on academic knowledge, and gradually begins to pay attention to teacher professional skills training in the following development, takes cultivating professional spirit of education as one of core of it on the premise of knowledge and skills at last. Moreover, from the pursuit of training teacher rapidly to the increasing emphasis on the teacher quality and, ultimately, putting forward specific demands to the specialty besides quantity and quality. Nearly half a century of development, the curriculum implement of teacher education in Modern China gets characteristics as follows, emphasis on education internship programs, focusing on pedagogy and coordination of various disciplines, increasingly diverse teaching aids and emphasis on such qualities as music education, physical education and art.Chapter Seven discusses the rules and characteristics of curriculum evaluation. During the nearly five decades of development, curriculum evaluation perspective of teacher education is becoming more diverse, to evaluate both the efficiency and the process, with the extension of evaluation time, the expansion of evaluation contents and diversification of evaluation forms. It is obvious that curriculum evaluation of teacher education in Modern China gone through a development route from "single-sided" to "rich and varied".The last chapter of this paper is Chapter Eight bases on the understanding about above rules of evolution and development and characteristics, combined with China’s development status of teacher education, with comments on current status of various elements of curriculum for contemporary teacher education, it proposes that the curriculum of teacher education in Modern China has many enlightenment for the course construction of today’s teacher education at aspects of the development of cumculum objectives, the determination of curriculum structure, the established of curriculum content, the promotion of curriculum implementation and the norms of curriculum evaluation.