New Curriculum Of High School Elective Course Modules Practice Research

The emergence of the elective courses in middle schools can date back to100years ago. To offer elective courses in middle schools is such an inevitable trend of the development of secondary curriculum domestic and overseas that many countries take it as an important way to implement the curriculum reforms. Since2003, secondary schools in Mainland China have begun to carry out a round of new curriculum reforms with the implementation of The New Curriculum Scheme for Normal High Schools (experimental) and the experimental new course standards for15courses, which was drafted and published by the Chinese Ministry of Education. Of them, the adoption of elective courses becomes a new feature and highlight. High school Chinese course, as the most productive course to be reformed, featured with its elective modules. However, its implementation is still limited in classrooms. From a front-line Chinese teacher’s point of view, this dissertation discussed to what extend the elective modules are promoted in classrooms with a pilot experiment.This dissertation is structured as follows:The first part is a literature review of the recent research on elective modules as well as their promotion and implementation home and abroad. The advanced experience of elective courses in the developed countries provides a good resource for us to learn.In the second part, I conduct a pilot study on the high school Chinese elective modules at different levels in different areas in Chongqing. Through the questionnaire survey and interview with teachers, the problems existing in objectives, textbook selecting, timing, modular instruction, elective system and evaluating system are identified and analyzed.A tentative concept for the implementation of high school Chinese elective courses is outlined in the third part on the basis of The New Curriculum Scheme for Normal High Schools (experimental) and The New Chinese Curriculum for Normal High Schools (experimental) and the advanced experience of the elective course on native language in Japan and European countries.In the fourth part, I took the school I work for as an example of case, where I have conducted a pilot study on the implementation of Chinese elective modules. I have preliminarily established an implementation model for elective courses that combines a multi-track parallel system and cross-link system, an organization model which requires both the centralization of the teachers and the independent choice of the students, a content model including organismic integration and optimization, a teaching model combining the subject analysis and comprehensive inquiry, and an evaluation model integrating the formative and summative evaluation.The last part includes a summary of the theoretical, methodological issues and the findings of this research, together with a discussion on the implication of the results. Suggestions are given critically and constructively from the angle of educating ideology, resource integration, curriculum guiding, faculty group and evaluation system. Perspectives for further research are outlined at the end of this dissertation.