Study On Local Course Management Of Basic Education

After the 8th National Basic Education Course Reform in 2001, one of the most significant changes is the reform of course management system which pinpoints the three-level management system of the basic education course, i.e. the course management of three national, local and school levels is carried out. How to understand the status and influence of the local course management and how to effectively carry out local course management have become important problems of current basic education course reform practice and research. Beginning with rethinking the history of course management and based on analysis of the several historical stages of course management reform, this article further expounds the concept of local course management and its status and influence, puts forward general patterns that local course management shall follow, systematically induces dominant factors that affect local course management and effective measures that have local course management implemented well.I. Rethinking the history of course management The reform of basic education course management in our country generally experienced three historical stages. The 1st stage was a period from 1950s to 1980s when unified management by the central government is carried out, in which the nation highly unified the course management, i.e. unified teaching plan, unified syllabus and unified text books throughout the country; the 2nd stage was a period from earlier 1980s to 2001 when local course management power was gradually added, in which the nation began to advocate one-outline multi-textbooks, allowing the local government to develop new textbook, primarily putting forward the assumption of three-level course management and beginning to try it out; the 3rd stage is a period from 2001 when three-level course management was officially carried, whose symbol was Basic Education Course Reform Outline (Tentative) issued by the Education Department. From historical rethinking, we see that course management is basically divided into two extremes, i.e. centralism and local decentralization. The representative of centralism is our country and the representative of local decentralization is the United States. Each of them has both merits and demerits. Centralism is suited to specific historical stage with uniform standards, which maintains educational equality and guarantees basic educational quality. It is easy to manage but fails to adjust to development and changes of times. Too much centralization goes against development of students' personalities and doesn't fully consider requirements of national conditions and quality education. However, local decentralization relatively has merits and demerits. Therefore, on the basis of summing up basic experience of course reform since the establishment of PRC and using foreign course reform ideas for reference, our country put forward the basic system of course management----three-level course management system. II. Meanings and Characteristics of Local Course ManagementCourse management is operational measures taken for courses, including course management agency, managerial system, managerial power, course standard and textbook system, etc. Course management is an important responsibility that educational administrative offices and schools of each level must take. Its basic highlights include: the management subject is some offices or their people; the management form is planning, instruction, decision-making, supervision and coordination; the management object is course objective, course compiling and revision, course implementation and course assessment. The management aims at scientific implementation and construction of courses. From here we see that local course management is a process of planning, instruction, decision-making, supervision and coordination by supervisors of local educational administrative offices on the course objective, course compiling and revision, course implementation, course assessment. Its basic characteristics include: management locality, pertinence, mode...