Between Ideal And Reality:Global Competence Oriented Curriculum Inquiry

Globalization and informatization have brought about a complex and diverse society and an era of technological intelligence.The curriculum needs to rethink what is worth teaching and what is worth learning for future life.Besides,the order and framework of global development have been changing due to the current phenomena of de-globalization and our country's pursuit of human destiny community.With these significant and rapid changes,international understanding and global competence of citizens must be cultivated and strengthened.As a powerful competence in the 21 st century,global competence is the capacity and action orientation to examine local,global and intercultural issues,to respect the global cultures,to engage in interactions with people from global contexts.This research's core issue is how the global competence-oriented curriculum is constructed in our country.This research uses content analysis,interviews,and interaction analysis.Based on the theoretical framework of Goodlad's curriculum level framework,four main aspects are inquired in this research with the perspectives of curriculum policy and sociology of curriculum knowledge.After the localization of the theoretical framework of global competence,this research has formed a two-dimensional framework of global competence themes and goals.With the tool of NVivo 12,this research has performed global competence index coding(rater reliability R=0.853)and content analysis on 70 education policy texts,presenting the changes and development of the policy ideas and discourses concerning the global competence in the “ideal curriculum” since the reform and opening up.Similarly,this research conducts global competence index coding and content analysis on 41 curriculum standard texts of various subjects in the compulsory education and high school stages.Moreover,combined with the interviews of experts who formulated the curriculum standards,the content selection and plan implementation for consolidating global competence in the “formal curriculum” is presented.Then,through interviews with local education administrators,school principals,and teachers in the two eastern regions of our country,field surveys,and classroom video interactive analysis,the planning and implementation of practicing global competence in the “practical curriculum” in the school-classroom context,is presented.Finally,combining the exploration of the previous three issues,considering the development of curriculum reform and the interviews with curriculum actors,the characteristics of our country's global competence-oriented curriculum being constructed between ideal and reality,is summarized.The study found:1.Cultivating both localized and globalized global competence is the goal of our country's curriculum reform.Since the reform and opening up,with the changes in the ways and extent of our country's participation in globalization,the educational goal of cultivating global competence has been called up.In recent 40 years,the meaning of “global competence” has both its continuity and emphasis in different eras.On the one hand,it emphasizes responding to local traditions and demands;on the other,it addresses the global awareness of facing the world and building human destiny community.2.“Curriculum education” is a critical way to shape global competence.To fulfill global competence development goals,the curriculum functions in terms of path design,content carrier,and interaction mechanism.The curriculum standards construct global competence-oriented goals from the three-dimensional teaching goals and subject key competencies.In terms of content selection,the curriculum standards emphasize the value of subject curriculum knowledge as“powerful knowledge” in cultivating global competence.Schools will also develop school-based curriculum that suit the reality.Besides,school culture as the hidden curriculum,is also a potential resource that helps to shape students' global competence.In the classroom interaction,through the multiple interactions of teachers,students and situations,the curriculum affects the meaning construction and value formation of students' global competence.3.The global competence-oriented curriculum is constructed in multiple dimensions of paradox between ideal and reality.The first is the paradox between curriculum policy ideals and implementation reality,including the symbolism and operability of global competence curriculum policies,the “decontextualizing” in policy formulation and the “recontextualizing” in policy implementation,and the authority of policy as a discourse with its practicality.The second is the interaction between the local-wise and global-wise curriculum cultural orientations,which is manifested in the complementarity of local and shared values,the mutual support of national positions and global consciousness,and the mutual appreciation between self-culture and other cultures.The third is the balance between knowledge orientation and competence orientation in curriculum development,specifically the coordination of knowledge education and competence education,subject courses and activity courses,teacher-centered teaching and student-centered learning.