Implementing The Policy Of School-based Curriculum Development: Case Study

The idea of school-based curriculum development (SBCD) emerges from some developed countries in the west and it is one of the major trends within the field of curriculum innovation in the 1970s and 1980s. Not only developed country but also many developing countries use the decentralization policy to giving individual schools and teachers more autonomy and responsibility in curriculum development.These years decentralization policies in curriculum development were adopted in the Chinese Mainland follow with the building of three-level administrative system. A series of studies and research related to SBCD are noticed by many educational theorists and practitioners in China.Hong Kong is the first place to adopt the SBCD policy in China. In the past, curriculum decision-making in Hong Kong had long adopted a highly centralized model and educational policies and curriculum reforms mainly followed a top-down approach. In order to change this situation, Hong Kong government begins to advocate SBCD in primary and secondary school in the late 1980s. Then, a series of curriculum innovations and reforms related to SBCD areintroduced.This thesis made a case study about SBCD policy in Hong Kong in 1990's. It examined the aim, implement process and production of SBCD activities in Hong Kong through analysis of some case. Shows the characteristic of curriculum decision changes in Hong Kong. In the end, it tried to clarify the scandal condition about how it may be undertaken in the Mainland whose circumstance is very different from others.Therefore, SBCD in the Mainland of our country had taken hard exploring in policy and practice. It requires appropriate organizational and administrative changes in both educational system and individual schools to push school-based curriculum development forward.