The Competence Of Teachers:Research On The Curriculum In Higher Teachers’ Education Of Modern China(1902-1949)

Higher normal schools offer advanced teacher-training courses,including the basic common curriculum,major course of study and education-related subjects,aimed at providing students with a well-rounded education in terms of knowledge,professional quality and teaching skills.As the most crucial factor that can directly determine the quality of teacher training during education at higher normal schools,what kind of advanced teacher-training courses to devise and offer has become one of the greatest concerns in the education community.Modern China’s advanced teacher-training courses date back to the late Qing Dynasty and got developed in the Republic of China era.From the end of the 19^th century to the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949,the courses have gone through four development stages:（1）infancy themed with“learning to be a teacher”;（2）initial development advocating that“teachers must have the required knowledge and skills”;（3）debate over the topic“whether a knowledgeable person is a good teacher”and reform;and（4）twists and turns in the resurgence of the idea of“being scholarly teachers”.Throughout the development,people have gained an increasingly deeper and more thorough understanding of the advanced teacher-training courses alongside the changes in domestic and international environment and the advances of education at higher normal schools.As a result,the course settings saw constant improvements.Ideologically,the courses gradually shifted focus to helping teachers-to-be develop a wholesome personality with an increasingly richer content;the structure of subjects changed from emphasis upon learning of Chinese and western knowledge in the general sense to dependence on the insights of educators and then to equal attention to versatility and specialization;the role and nature of pedagogy changed from being deemed“a must for normal school students only”to being regarded as a complex science and then stressing on the academic study of education.At the institutional level,the regulations on the advanced teacher-training courses were firstly made part of the higher normal schools’educational system,which was followed by the development of course standards and detailed specification on subject settings;the purpose of devising and offering the courses changed from the idea that“Chinese learning should be followed as the essence,and western learning as the practical application”to“democracy and republicanism”and then to“the Three People’s Principles-Nationalism,Democracy and the People’s Livelihood”;as for the curriculum settings,pure teacher-training courses were gradually replaced by a suite of courses highlighting the teacher-training intention and also taking the academic attainment into consideration.The role and status of education-related subjects evolved from only compulsory public courses for the students to specialized subjects and then to the specialized and academic.People’s desire to and pursuit of training high-quality teachers suitable for the needs of society have guided the entire development process of the advanced teacher-training courses in modern China.The development process also reflects the changes in the social requirements for secondary school teacher training and the deepening of people’s understanding of the nature of teachers as a profession and the special characteristics of teacher training.In chronological order,this paper reorganizes and probes deeply into the historical background,ideological characteristics and institutional building,among others,in each development stage of the advanced teacher-training courses in modern China in a multi-pronged approach,including literature research,historical analysis,comparative study and case study,focusing on the issue“what knowledge,capability and quality an eligible secondary school teacher should possess”which is central to devising and offering such courses.It attempts to describe the birth,development and evolvement of the advanced teacher-training courses in modern China,in a bid to uncover the internal laws and characteristics of its development and thereby offer some valuable experiences and inspirations for the reform and development of the country’s current advanced teacher-training courses.