Research UK Government-led Civic Education Period

As an educational issue that closely tied with current society, citizenship education is receiving more and more attention. China is in a crucial period of modern constructing and social transformation, thus more and more Chinese have realized the importance of citizenship education to a modern state. However, citizenship education in china owns a weak foundation; and still not forms a sound citizenship education curriculum system yet. Thus, it is necessary for the construction of our country’s citizenship education system to study other countries’mature theories and practical experience.Affected by the concept of liberalism, citizenship education in England has always in a leisure state, lacking a centralized management of the government. Not until the80th of twenty century a series of social and moral issues appeared when the government realized the importance of citizenship education. After the coming out Education Act in1988, citizenship education became one of the five cross-curriculum themes and it marked that citizenship education entered national agenda. In1977, the Labor Party won the election, and put citizenship education in a more important position. In1998, citizenship education research group which organized by the government released its final repot—Crick Report. This report explained the necessity and importance of citizenship education, put forward the aims, key teaching outcomes of citizenship education in schools and constructed its detailed content system and implement, which provided a feasible approach for the implementation of citizenship education in schools in2002. After citizenship education gaining its statutory position in curriculum, the government continued to follow its implementation and carried through reforms in terms of the existing problems. Curriculum Review:Diversity and Citizenship in2007is a reform report under such circumstances. This report put forward a forth strand on the foundation of the three core content of citizenship education which carried out in Crick Report. This forth strands of citizenship and diversity education aims at promoting the formation of a more harmony British society through the teaching of diversity and common British values. In the meantime, the review in2007put forward the practical approach to implement citizenship and diversity education.By reviewing the developing process of citizenship education under the leadership of British government, we can find that citizenship education in England presents the following features:the transfer of management body from social organizations to central government; curriculum system changing from scattered to complete; the combination of school education and participation learning; attaching importance to social capital. In the meantime, several problems revealed in the process of citizenship education development in England:how to exhibit value education; how to coordinate polices of different organizations; how to solve the problems of social equality and discrimination and so on. By absorbing in its advantages and summarizing its disadvantages, we can gain some favorable references to our citizenship education.