A Post-Modern Perspective On Curriculum And Chinese Education

The post-modernism perspective on curriculum is an education theory born in the background of post -modernism, which is represented by the theory of William E Doll, an American expert on curriculum research. In his A Post-modernism Perspective on Curriculum, he explains and defines the basic theories of his course view, that is, the Fore R Theory of richness, recursion, relation, rigor and characteristics of constructiveness, dialogue, and spontaneity. The new perspective will exert a certain influence on our ongoing reform on elementary education. In particular, its inspiration for Chinese teaching and reform demonstrates in four aspects. The perspective on curriculum of traditional Chinese teaching is "knowledge-oriented and course-oriented" while the post-modernism perspective on curriculum puts a stress on that curriculum is running instead of track, in which the interaction between participants is important. With regard to Chinese teaching, the perspective in discussion is characterized by students' experience and practice; teaching objective is not only planned in advance but developed during teaching process. Teaching program and syllabus should be wrote in an unspecific, tolerant, and somewhat indefinite manner which forms a frame tolerating automatic and spontaneous development and activities. Thus the objective of Chinese teaching is not simply pre-decided but a combination of planning and automatic development. Teachers' authority will be challenged as teachers equally being a chief of students. Yet it will not weaken and diminish the positive role of a teacher because teacher is still in control of thesituation in class. A dialogue-type relationship will be set up in the course of teaching. The relationship should be equal, interactive, situational, original, and planned. A clarify explanation of a text is necessary, however, metaphor, description, definition are also in need, with dialogues indispensable in understanding of a text. By opening dialogues a new way of teaching Chinese reading will be formed. In addition, whether standardized or not or diversified or not depends on a specific text. In a word, it should create a free and tolerant climate.