A Tributary Analysis And Its Enlightenments Of The Developmnet Of Modern Curricular Knowledge View

Is curriculum knowledge or vice versa? The question has long hindered educational theorists from furthering their steps? In fact, the answer to this question implies that there is a fundamental dividing line between the view of modern curricular knowledge and that of pre-modern one. The view that "curriculum is knowledge" is lack of reflection and the teaching and learning contents guided by it display blindness. Because of this, curricular knowledge was used as a tool to "educate people" in China's feudal dynasties and the Middle Ages of the west. The other view that "knowledge is curriculum" emerged in the Renaissance Period, represented by "encyclopedic" curricular view that expresses people's eagerness for progress after breaking away from religious control. The two both belong to pre-modern curricular category. Modern curricular knowledge view followed modern education, with Dewey's pragmatism as their beginning. It doesn't believe in the lightness of curriculum as knowledge, nor does it blindly adhere to the truthfulness of knowledge as curriculum. On the contrary, it tries to rebuild a mansion of curricular knowledge view in a narrow space between curriculum and knowledge. Whether it is modern knowledge view or post-modern ones, they all hope to discover a view of curricular knowledge rooted in "curricular knowledge" itself rather than in common knowledge so as to attain a new balance between "curriculum" and "knowledge".This thesis holds that: the development of modern curriculum view is a process of unity of opposites between "curriculum" and "knowledge". Opposite knowledge has gone through the medium of value struggle before entering into curriculum. Curriculum is not the mirror of knowledge. Unity means to integrate the "educational" function of knowledge with "knowing" function of knowledge through the platform of common functional construction so that knowledge can be smoothly put into education. Modern education history is full of the integration of opposites. Whole reflecting the process: from pragmatism to essentialism, from essentialism to structuralism, from structuralism to post-modernism, we can see that each sect is imbued with struggles and confrontation of ideas on curricular knowledge which constantly push it forward. On thesurface, this is a retrogression process in which the concepts of curricular knowledge vary. Truth becomes oblivion, and depth is disappearing. From empirical curricular knowledge view, to essentialismistic curricular knowledge view, from structural curricular knowledge view to post-modern curricular knowledge view featured by experience, culture and power, curricular knowledge is driven out of the harbor of "truth" little by little, and develops into a new view characteristic of "meaning construction", "understanding and generation" and "civism and dialogue". What's the reason behind this change? It is the strong conflicts between science and humanities, the double demands for social democracy and individual. It is these potential contradictions that give rise to the unique model of evolution in curricular knowledge view: with socially and individually constructed knowledge as contents, with value struggles and function inquiry of knowledge as crux, thus a picture is set up, in which curricular knowledge, learner and democratic society harmonize, reciprocate and advance together. The progress of curricular knowledge view doesn't mean the increase of "truth", but the expanse of man's power, the growth of doubts about the nature of curricular knowledge. The study of the "four schools"(namely pragmatism, essentialism, structuralism and post-modernism, the following is the same) focus is on the dimensions like the rules of historical development of curricular knowledge views, the views on the nature of curricular knowledge, the function and value views of curricular knowledge as well as the learning views of curricular knowledge. This is because views on the nature of curricular knowledge are the principal parts in the function of formation of real shapes of curricular...