A Study On Students' Perceived Curriculum Experience

With the emergence and development of the paradigm of curriculum understanding,Experience comes to be the core of Curriculum. In this research, (students ') personal experience is both the starting point and the regressing point through the exploration.With Students 'Perceived Curriculum Experience as the research topic, this research takes the survey study of "the quality characteristics of students ' developmental curriculum experience" in a middle school in Wuhan city as an example while adopting the approach of Mix Methods Phenomenological Research (MMPR) design to conduct the exploration of students' developmental curriculum experience and its core characteristics and finally proposes some relevant practical enlightenment and recommendations based on the overall orientation of the whole thesis.Besides the part of Introduction, the thesis structurally consists of three main parts:In Introduction, the thesis begins with the discussions of the significance of conducting exploration of students 'personal experience in the domains of curriculum and some problems concerning students'school experience gaining in education practice, like the alienation of gained experience. Based on the literature review, it presents the research approach, methods and the research questions. And the research significance and values are also discussed in this part.Part ? : Elaboration of the content that constructs the research framework. In this part, the concepts about perception, curriculum experience, and perceived curriculum experience are firstly illustrated and it proposes that curriculum experience is the comprehensive experience mainly containing learning experience, life experience and self-experience and it also illustrates that research on students ' perceived curriculum experience is equivalent to exploring the facts of students' curriculum experiences from the perspectives of their feels and experience. Then the core qualities of developmental curriculum experience (DCE) are discussed and according to some certain theoretical points of view, it is proposed that the core qualities mainly contains four aspects of Richness, Meaningfulness, Interactivity and Aesthetics. The last two sessions under discussion in this part are about the theoretical foundations and the design and approach of the research.Part ?: Introduction of the survey study of "the quality characteristics of students'developmental curriculum experience" in a Wuhan' s middle school and the research findings are also discussed. The survey study mainly consists two sessions of the quantitative Research (?) and the qualitative phenomenological Research (?):In the Research (?), based on the four core qualities of DCE, the researcher develops a questionnaire with four main dimensions of Perceived Richness, Perceived Meaningfulness, Perceived Interactivity and Perceived Aesthetics which is used as the main tool in R( I) in which 518 pieces of valid questionnaire are collected. Analysis of the data gathered shows that the level of the qualities of DCE among the participants is generally high and the further Correlation Analysis shows that there are significant correlations (p<0.01) among all the four dimensions with participants ' Education Recognition, Future Confidence and Perceived Future Help while Gender and Performance Level are found no influence on them.In the Research (?),adopting phenomenological attitude,the researcher conducts a pedagogical phenomenological analysis on the 108 pieces of narratives of the experience of "educational meanings" gathered from the participants. As a result of phenomenologically thematic analysis,the essence of student's educational meanings included: (1)voices from emotional beings with the subthemes of a)teacher-student and b)schoolmates; (2)wisdom in life with the subthemes of a)knowledge in life and b)wisdom in humanity; (3)engaged with class (content); (4)improvement with the subthemes of a)quality and b)change; and (5)self-direction. Reflecting through the findings from phenomenological inquiry and the educational narratives collected from students, the researcher examines and develops the proposed theoretical framework of core quality characteristics of DCE. It is argued that the framework basically reflects the characteristics of students' perceived educational experience while the quality characteristics of Freedom should be added.Part ?: Discussions about the research conclusions and some relevant practical enlightenments. This part mainly presents a brief conclusion of the thesis and the study findings. Moreover, the limitations and future prospects of the research are also stated and it is explained that the current research is an explorative research to some extent which makes its most significance lies on its reasonable reference for some relevant future studies. Finally it is proposed some practical enlightenments and recommendations from the current exploration.