A Comparative Study On History And Society Curriculum Standard Between Standard 1 And Standard 2

With the exploration of the reform of integrating the curriculum, Chinese Educational Ministry has offered a course titled History and Society in the new century curriculum reform, which is an integrated curriculum of social science reflecting directly the education objective of individual socialization in the Junior Middle School. The offering of the course is instrumental for the students in contacting the society, knowing it and participating in it as well as improving their comprehensive ability and the ability of social practice in particular. The Educational Ministry has formulated two kinds of curriculum standards containing the course History and Society. The Shanghai Education Press and People's Education Press have compiled two sets of textbooks on History and Society which have gone public all over the country.According to the abovementioned points, the paper has adopted two kinds of curriculum standards on History and Society as the basis of the comparative study. First it states the course features, the elementary notions, and the design mode of curriculum standards and so on. Then, it makes a comparison between the general objective of the two standards. Finally, it compares and analyses the teaching proposals, assessing proposals, the development and utilization of the curricular resources and proposals for compiling the textbooks. Based on the predecessors' study, it makes a systematic comparison and exploration of the two curriculum standards from different perspectives hoping to provide some insightful ideas for the future curriculum reform of the elementary education.The paper can be divided into four parts:Part I at first it analyses the background of curriculum standard on History and Society. It summarizes the domestic development of integrated curriculum of social science, based on the present development of that all over the world and comes up with the two curriculum standards on History and Society. Meanwhile it makes a literary review of the predecessors and comments on the domestic study of the two curriculum standards. Lastly the main aim and blueprint of the paper is made clear.Part II the emphasis is put on the comparison of the course features, the elementary notions, and the design mode of curriculum standard.Part III the comparison is made between the two criterions in terms of the general objective and the standard of the content. It is clear to find that the substance of the two standards is identical, though there exist differences in expressing the general objective of the curriculum. Part IV the comparisons and analysis are made on teaching proposals, assessing proposals, the development and utilization of the curricular resources and proposals for compiling textbooks.In the last part of the paper, it summarizes the differences and similarities of the two curriculum standards and it also poses several noteworthy problems on the following reform of historical textbooks. The differences between Standard One and Standard Two lie in the teaching thought, and yet Standard Two outshines Standard One in terms of the degree of integrating and difficulty.