The Theory Of The Elementary School Curriculum Leadership And Promotion Of The Effectiveness Of The School-based Research

Curriculum reform is a systematic project which involves numerous complicatedfactors. Course leadership is a key factor that determines whether this systematic projectcan be successful or not. And it is the school-based research that offers solutions to theproblems of all kinds during the curriculum reform.This paper, based on the interpretation of several concepts, firstly investigates thecourse leadership and the school-based research in the primary schools in Gusu District,which lead to the findings that schools can fully understand the importance of courseleadership and implement the national curriculum in a resolved manner, and that thedevelopment of school-based curriculum begins to win initial success with theschool-based research being promoted in the schools normally. During the investigation,many problems are also exposed concerning the course leadership and the school-basedresearch, including: the principal and his/her team have vague or even wrongunderstanding of the curriculum and the course leader, resulting in the absence ofleadership in the course; there is no strong execution of the course leadership due to thelack of a well-built curriculum leading team in the school; and the pragmaticality of theschool-based research is not satisfactory enough. Then this paper tries to make a furtheranalysis of the causes of these problems.Faced with the problems and challenges, this paper discusses ways to improve thecourse leadership and the practicality of the school-based research, as well as how theschool-based research can promote the course leadership and bring about a smoothimplementation of the curriculum reform. The proposed strategies include: the principaland teachers must change their ideas and roles to fully understand course leadership, soas to work as a whole to ensure the promising future in curriculum reform and schooldevelopment; an overall plan and a systematic structure should be figured out toenhance course planning; the principal and teachers’ professionalism as well as theirprofessional skills must be strengthened, which is the only way to provide courseteaching with proper guidance; the school must make reasonable plans and expand available resources to improve the capability to develop the school-based curriculum;and difficult problems must be targeted and solved, and the practicality of theschool-based research must be improved in order to change the current separationbetween teaching and research, and to promote the course leadership through theplatform of school-based research.This paper is based on the status quo of schools in Gusu District. Although it hasaccomplished a preliminary study on the course leadership and the school-basedresearch with some strategies and suggestions proposed, there are still many problemsin both theory and practice that require further studies. Especially, the ideas in this paperneed to be perfected in practice. This paper is written in the hope of arousing theresearch interest and enthusiasm of the earnest science researchers in education as wellas principals of primary schools in this topic.