School-based Curriculum Development In Western Countries From A Cultural Perspective

School-based curriculum development, which is in accordance with the tendency of the reform of international curriculum management system, is the term introduced into China as curriculum management system by Chinese curriculum scholars from Western educational documents. Systems are culture specific; Chinese school-based curriculum development can push the curriculum reform forward only by means of establishing both concept culture and system culture related. However, most Chinese scholars in this domain mainly focus on the theoretical study on the face value and the practice of skills in practice; it is still difficult to put the school-based curriculum development into practice, and the reform is far from satisfactory. This thus urges us to define connotation of school-based curriculum from the perspective of system culture in which it comes into being and develops. School-based curriculum appeared earliest in the West and became popular again in 1970s. Based on this, the thesis analyzes the historical and cultural background of school-based curriculum development, its regularity and problems that it faces by means of cultural philosophy and illustrates its cultural connotation from perspective of philosophy, sociology and culture with the hope to give some insight to Chinese school-based curriculum development theoretical study and practice. The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One, as an introduction, illustrates the significance of the thesis, contemporary study methods and some concepts related. Chapter Two analyzes the historical and cultural background of school-based curriculum development, which appeared against the evaluation of New curriculum movement of curriculum. In 1950s and 1960s, the scientific ration was paid great attention in Western education, school-based curriculum development was executed in "technological model"by government and promoted up to down, which led to the failure of "New curriculum movement". This was the direct reason of the rise of school-based curriculum development. With the birth of Humanistic philosophy and development of educational democratization, the development of Theory of Humanistic Curriculum, Theory of Practical Curriculum and Theory of Critical Curriculum provided the theoretical base for the "rooted model"in curriculum development. Since 1980s when giving power to school to develop curriculum was regarded as a strategy, school-based curriculum development has come to be prosperous with the development of education reconstruction movement. The regularity and problems of Western school-based curriculum development are stated in Chapter Three. Firstly, the fact that countries such as Britain and America either improved teaching curriculum of "unified academic standard course"or pursued "diversified practical standard course"showed that curriculum development aims to find a balance between power-centered and power-given, singularity and diversity and generality and individual, which are the requirement of educational pursuing efficiency and realizing equality. Therefore, the integration of school-based curriculum development and country-based curriculum development is necessary. Secondly, as for the choice of curriculum development, curriculum development mechanism system of multiple levels will be needed. While establishing curriculum development guiding mechanism under different curriculum traditions and educational systems, people should further pay attention to the functions of cultural tradition and social involvement. Lastly, the relationship of curriculum development to teachers'role, the problems that there are in school-based specialization of teachers and norms confined to system cultures are presented. Chapter Four explains the cultural school-based curriculum development from two aspects: one is to illustrate that school-based curriculum push curriculum culture to philosophy from perspective of "yu"culture of school-based curriculum development on sociology level such as knowledge and power, where curriculum culture is a scientific culture, mass culture and multi-culture; the other is to explore the cultural connotation of school-based curriculum from perspective of school-based curriculum development "de"culture and regards school-based curriculum...