| To further deepen the reform of teaching PE majors, strengthen curriculum development, improve the quality of teaching and train better PE educators who are able to meet the requirements of qualities education in China's institutions of higher learning, the Ministry of Education issued Guidelines for the Development of Key Curricula for College PE Majors in 1994.As one of the key curricula for the college PE majors, gymnastics should be directed to focus on the newly set curriculum requirements and decide on its teaching contents with "Giving Priority to Health, Respecting the Basic Human Needs and Development" as its ideology, training multi-talented graduates with high comprehensive qualities for the new century as its aim and the fully demonstration of the features of the aims of education in normal universities as its objective so as to follow the modern trends in higher education, strive to adapt itself to the needs and requirements of the times and society and finally cultivate graduates with multiple talents and comprehensive competence.For time being, the teaching of gymnastics for PE majors in China's institutions of higher learning bears many shortcomings and thus cannot duly satisfy the needs in elementary education as well as those in the implementation of the health project for the whole nation. With the employments of such research methods as literature review, expert interviews, questionnaires, statistical analysis and logical analysis, the present paper attempts to conduct investigations into the teaching of gymnastics to PE majors in China's institutions of higher learning, aiming to uncover the shortcomings existent in the teaching of gymnastics to PE majors and provide for corresponding references and suggestions for further reforms in teaching. The conclusions drawn from the investigations are:1 The major gymnastics teachers' orientation towards gymnastics teaching objective is in accord with the overall objective of the gymnastics curriculum. Students' identification level towards gymnastics teaching objective is slightly below teachers'.2 The main characteristics of recent gymnastics teachers are experienced, have high practical ability, high sports level, high level of referee, high diploma and senior level professional title. The majority of gymnastics teaching force is young male teachers and they formed the reasonable structure.3 The contents of gymnastics teaching can not meet the social needs, because the teaching content focuses on the technique. The proportion of practical and light instrument of gymnastics is low; what's more, gymnastics development of body building isn't enough. The majority of students are interested in gymnastics, besides they have good motivation and physique. Students are more in favor of practical gymnastics than teachers.4 The credit hour of gymnastics vary from school to school and its average hour is too low to fulfill the ideal credit hour of 144 hours. The shortage of credit hour for gymnastics teaching can not fulfill the needs of teaching, so all the teachers think that the classes are needed to be increased. The contradiction between credit hour and practical teaching need is the bottleneck of fulfilling the gymnastics teaching objective.5. Explanation, demonstration and training are used mostly by the teachers in teaching; explore inquiry, cooperative learning and group work are also frequently used by the teachers. The using of teaching method is constrained by the characteristics and classes of gymnastics disciplines. Teachers put more emphasis on cultivating student's teaching competence6. The method of teaching evaluation is not perfect and the content is not comprehensive enough, so it is difficult to promote the students' integrated abilities. The deficient of Teaching facilities, the lack use of modern teaching methods and the excess number of the students are the other problems.7. Basically, students hold a positive evaluation towards teacher's teaching competence, attitude, approach and the evaluation method, but the teacher's teaching belief, ability, attitude and method are still needed to be improved.
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