Restricting Factors And Solutions To Achieve The New Curriculum Concept

In order to cultivate more talents that are full of practical and innovative ability to adapt to thesocial development, improve the overall quality of the people, enhance international competition ability,the Ministry of education initiated the eighth curriculum reform in basic education. The core concept of thenew curriculum reform is “the development of each student”, and it means the reflections of the traditionalview "course is a subject" and establishes a new curriculum concept "curriculum is a concept ofexperience". On the aspect of the course target, this kind of new concept goes out of the orientation ofknowledge and pays attention to the development of the student as a " whole person "; on the aspect of thecontent of the book, it breaks down the fetters of the knowledge and builds up a kind of curriculum contentwhich is of great life meaning; in the process of teaching, it breaks through the traditional teaching traditionand creates a kind of teaching atmosphere in which both teachers and students can achieve theirdevelopment at the same time; in the method of studying this concept make the students get rid of thesituation of being enslaved by the knowledge and returns students the legal status in knowledge learning; asthe part of teacher’s role, it shifts the role from the simple identity of knowledge imparting to students’learning promoters, curriculum developers and researchers; on the aspect of the campus culture, itestablishes a new type of campus on which the students are full of personalities instead of the reality ofpersonality absence. It is a revolution to carry out the new curriculum in China’s primary and secondaryeducation, and whether it can come into a success or not depends on the reach from the curriculum idea tothe action. Although the new curriculum reform has made certain achievements, but we can see from thecurrent situation that a lot of real environment factors, including the class size, the restricted conditions ofthe carrying out of the new curriculum and the limited hours of research study still restrict theimplementation of new curriculum. Especially to the biology, which subject has a strong scientific andexperimental and contacts more with social development and real life, they are more evident.The class teaching generated，conforming to the industrial economy’s demand of the universaleducation. Because of its high efficiency, large-size and other advantages, it became the most basic patternfor teaching and learning adopted by most countries in the world. However, the size of class affects the development of students in many ways, including the impact on teaching environment, effectiveimplementation of inquiry learning, students’ equal opportunities and their achievements. The new centuryneeds innovative personalized talents with life-long learning abilities and skills of adapting to variouschallenges. To this end, from the beginning of the1960s, the world began to make policies to reduce thesize of class. However, the size of class is too large in our country. The new curriculum calls for thecooperative learning and concerns the development of every student with full respect for individualdifferences, besides, the new curriculum teaches students according to their aptitude and enable students tobe talents with different levels. While in the large-scale classes, it is difficult for teachers to carry outexploratory activities effectively. In addition，because of a variety of factors teachers can not beconcerned about the characteristics of each student or even carry out differentiated teaching. Biologicalspeaking, the new curriculum emphasizes exploring experimental and basic accomplishment of sciencedevelopment, but in the large class, the teachers can not implement the new curriculum effectively.Therefore we have to increase the investment in education, create more schools and classes, and bring inmore qualified teachers. We are also supposed to fully practice the new curriculum ideas by reducing thesize of class and the student-teacher ratio, increase teachers’ attention for each student..The insufficiency of teachers’ abilities, lack of course resources and poor support of societyconstrain the effective implementation of the new curriculum. First of all, various schools in the face of thenew curriculum have many problems on the insufficiency of teachers’ abilities, including the incapabilityof using multimedia and other modern education technologies, the low mutual adaptability to the newtextbooks, the lack of course consciousness, and the incapability on the exploitation of course resources.Especially in rural areas, the overall quality of teachers are uneven, which restricts the implementation ofthe new curriculum greatly. To biology, because the creature as insignificant used to the past the minorcourse to view (especially in the junior middle school stage), teachers’ number and scientific literacy arehard to reach the demands of the new curriculum. In order to wrestle with the problems, we shouldstrengthen the training of in-service teachers and improve the educating of students trained to be teachers.Training the in-service teachers is the internal demand of the new curriculum of teachers. However, atpresent, there are problems of rigidity in training models and no specific aims in the training of teachers inour country. We should adopt the method of discussion and deliberation. As for the specific training, to enhance practical guidance, we should discuss more about the factual teaching problems according to theteachers’ interests and demands, as well as their different areas, subjects, teaching years and levels ofqualifications. To educate the students trained to be teachers better, the normal colleges and universitiesshould reform the educational system and curriculum subject set to strengthen the adaptability to the newcurriculum. Students in normal colleges and universities should study the relevant content of the newcurriculum systematically, have a deep understanding of the new curriculum concept, strengthen thetraining of various theories and enhance the contact to the first-line basic education to meet therequirements for teachers in the new curriculum. Secondly, lack of course resources is always a barrier onthe implementation of the new curriculum, especially in rural areas, where this problem is much moreserious. To biology, it needs a great number of pictures and image date, laboratory equipment and real lifeexceptions etc. But due to a long–term biased, many school even basic instruments are not complete,letalone the curriculum resources. Face the shortage of resources, we should not only increase education inputthrough raising money by a variety of channels to construct conditional course resources, but alsostrengthen the teachers and pay more attention to discovery of material course resources. In the meanwhile,the transition mechanism between the outside and inside school resources must be established. Make fulluse of the inside school resources and use the outside school course resources secondarily. In addition,construct parent education teaching resources storehouse and pay attention to the exploitation of the parentswho are important course resources. The whole society’s concern and support for the new curriculumreform ensure the continual deepening of the new curriculum reform. Especially the biology, as a naturaldiscipline, both teaching and learning needs community to provide help and support. However, feedbackfrom all aspects show the new curriculum reform doesn’t win the enough support from the society. Peoplein society have low concern about the new curriculum. Therefore, we should strengthen the publicity,arouse public support and take part in the new curriculum reform. The strength of the communities whereschools lie and parents should not be neglected.The teaching materials are excessive, and students can’t adapt to the inquiry learning, besidesteachers lack the capacity. The above reasons lead a contradiction of the limitations of classes and theopenness of inquiry. Especially to the biology, which is an experimental discipline, the contradictions havemore outstanding performance, which results in a lot of problems. To deal with this problem, we can adopt several measures. For example, we can train students’exploring literacy, improve teachers’ ability, andenhance the interaction of teachers and teaching materials. Besides, we should make a good preparationbefore inquiry. We must control the elements well, decompose the task in time, and strengthen the guidanceof inquiry. What’s more, we can reduce the students’ degrees of freedom or extend the inquiry to extracurricular, in order to control the time of inquiry and ensure the effectiveness of inquiry. In addition, we canalso try to adjust the teaching hours to seek a breakthrough in this contradiction.