A Comparative Research On Chinese And American Elementary School Science Standards

The 21 st century brings us not only the rapid expansion of information and the speedy development of science and technology, but also brings us new opportunities and challenges. The country depends on the development of science and technology, and the improvement of science and technology must trace back to education. Therefore, improving the scientific literacy is essential when facing the new requirements. With the gradual penetration of scientific literacy into basic education, curriculum reform has become an urgent task. However, the elementary school science education in our country is still in a developing stage. In order to make the primary school science curriculum has a qualitative leap, we can learn some mature education experience from western countries.This study selects the Full-time Compulsory Education Science Curriculum Standards of China(Grade 3-6) and the Next Generation Scientific Standards of United States as the research object and mainly uses the comparative method to compare the two standards. The comparative analysis contents are education philosophy, educational objectives, framework and the concrete content. Summing up the similarities and the difference in all the aspects between the two countries is the last procedure. Hope it can bring certain reference to the theoretical educators and improve the effectiveness of primary school science education.The research is mainly divided into three parts: the first, introduction to the elementary school science curriculum standards of China and the United States. This part makes a concise introduction to the curriculum standards of the two countries, including the basic structure, the main contents of the curriculum and the implementation; the second, the analysis and comparison of the specific content of the curriculum standards. This part makes vertical and horizontal comparative analysis of the Sino-US curriculum standards from curriculum goals, concept, framework, subject content, the main structure and evaluation to identify the similarities and differences; the third, the enlightenment. The last part is based on the comparison between the two countries, from which we can conclude some useful suggestions for our elementary school science education so as to carry out the basic education reform.