A Study On Values Education In General Education Curricula At American Colleges And Universities

With the ever-intensifying of intercommunication,blending and confrontation between Chinese and foreign ideologies,cultures and values,the pluralistic,diverse,and changing trend in the ideological field of our country is increasing day by day.Values leading and education of the younger generation are facing new historical opportunities and challenges.School,as an important position and channel of youth's values education,is also facing a series of new propositions with the characteristics of the times: how to organically combine youth values cultivation with teaching activities to enhance the effectiveness of values education,how to transmit social dominating values to improve the scientificalness of values education,how to improve the curricula form to improve the systematicness of values education,are all major issues that need to be solved urgently in school's values education in our country.Colleges and universities are an important field for youth's values education.They shoulder the important mission of helping and guiding college students to form correct values,improve the cognitive level of positive values,and establish evaluation criteria of it.It is undoubtedly of great significance for colleges and universities doing a good job in youth's values education to consolidate the guiding position of Marxism in the ideological field of colleges and universities and the ideological basis of the unity and struggle of the younger generation.As President Xi Jinping said,“We stress more on promoting the socialist core values,inheriting and carrying forward the excellent and traditional culture of the Chinese nation,and expanding the spirit of China.But we do not exclude learning from the world's excellent cultural achievements.” To do a good job of youth's values education in colleges and universities in the new era,we need to constantly expand the international horizon under the premise of adhering to China's position and problem orientation.In order to serve our youth's values education better,we should critically learn from and absorb the useful experiences of foreign countries.As a multi-cultural,multi-ethnic and multi-religious immigrant country,the United States has formed many beneficial practices in the youth's values education in colleges and universities in recent years.Its important feature is to carry out youth's values leading and education relying on the general education curricula widely offered by colleges and universities,and to form a “three-in-one” values education system with goals,contents & method,and assessment.From the perspective of Marxist philosophy of values,this dissertation aims to provide reference for China's youth's values education by clarifying the core characteristics,internal law and trend of values education in colleges and universities through some in-depth study of basic theoretical issues and systematical analysis of its goals,contents & methods,and assessment.Based on the above ideas,this dissertation is divided into three parts and five chapters.The whole dissertation is divided into three parts.The specific contents are as follows:Chapter ? constitutes the first part.It studies on the basic theoretical issues,focusing on preconditional scientific interpretation and discrimination of the important basic theoretical issues,including the essence of values education and its typical model in USA,the history and reality of general education curricula in American colleges and universities,and the relationship between general education curricula and values education in American colleges and universities.In the aspect of values education,the emphasis is on defining the essence of values education and introducing five typical models of values education in American schools: values clarification model,theory of moral development,social action model,consideration model and new character education model.In the aspect of general education curricula,the emphasis is on understanding its historical context and realistic status by analyzing its historical evolution,connotation,main types and basic characteristics;and then explore the relationship between general education curricula and values education in American colleges and universities.Chapter ?,?,? constitute the second part.It studies on main contents and system construction,focusing on a comprehensive study of three important levels such as goals,contents & methods,and assessment.Chapter II is emphasizing its goal system,including the goals covered in policy norms,organization standards and school practice.In terms of policy norms,it studies on the overall design and basic requirements of values and values education in the aspects of publicity,universality and maintaining the social community by sorting out and analyzing the general laws and regulations,education-related laws and regulations,and general education programmatic documents in the United States;in terms of organization standards,it studies on the revealing of the federal government's and universities' connecting working mechanism by listing three social organizations which play a middle-level role in the construction of values education's objectives;in terms of school practice,it studies on the overall statements on general education curricula of values education's objectives of some representative universities.On this basis,we should comprehensively understand the sub-objectives of values education in general education curricula at the disciplinary level in order to construct a complete three-in-one values education's goal system of “state-organization-school” in American colleges and universities.Chapter ? focuses on the contents and methods of values education in general education curricula in American colleges and universities.It includes the content evolution,content composition,main paths and methods of values education.In terms of content evolution,it summarizes four main historical periods of the contents development by sorting out the historical evolution of the contents of values education in general education curricula.The four periods are the period of disseminating western classical values,the period of creating common cultural values,the period of consolidating social mainstream values and the period of dealing with conflicts of global values;in terms of content composition,it studies the content framework by focusing on the core issue of values orientation of the contents in general education curricula,with political values as the main body,moral values as the support,cultural values as the basis and scientific values as the supplement;in terms of education path,it analyses the “three-in-one” practice model constituted by “maintaining values spirits by knowledge of humanity,social science and natural science” “ promoting the ability of values judgment by rational analysis,effective expression,and critical thinking” “leading the values orientation by combining social problems with curriculum themes”;in terms of method model,it analyzes the “multi-dimensional complementary” practice model consisting of dialogue,cooperation,situation by illustrating the education ideas and specific teaching methods of Socratic Method,Cooperative Learning Method,and Reacting to the Past Pedagogy.Chapter ? focuses on the assessment strategies of values education in general education curricula in American colleges and universities.It mainly includes the assessment institution,content,tools and feedback of values education.In terms of assessment institution,it mainly summarizes the external assessment and internal self-assessment institutions of values education in general education curricula;in terms of assessment content,it focuses on the analysis of assessment contents and indicators,establishes the assessment system of students' learning outcomes,and introduces a classical investigation of education effect and quality assessment;in terms of assessment tools,it analyses the stable method system and multipurpose “toolbox”.The method systems includes includes quantitative statistics and qualitative analysis,direct and indirect assessment,internal and external assessment.The “toolbox” mainly takes standardized examination and assessment scale as the first place;in terms of assessment feedback,it focuses on the feedback content,feedback path and feedback function of values education in general education curricula in American universities.Chapter ? constitutes the third part.It studies on the characteristics and enlightenment of values education in general education curricula in American colleges and universities.It includes three aspects: basic characteristics,problems and trends,comparison and enlightenment.By systematically studying the goal system,content & method and assessment strategy,this dissertation explores the basic characteristics of values education on national identity,social integration,moral cultivation and ability improvement,and then summarizes the problems and development trends it faces.Based on the specific national conditions of our country,it aims to absorb and draw lessons from American beneficial experiences,which would provide good ideas for constructing practice path of cultivating core values among college students in China.