Science Curriculum In The Elementary School "A": The Status Quo，problems And Solutions

The rapid development in science and technology put new requirements for every citizen’s scientific literacy.Currently,the State Council of China vigorously encourages “National action scheme of scientific literacy for all Chinese citizens”,so that the education in scientific literacy becomes more and more urgent,and has to start with children.The aim of science curriculum in elementary schools is to establish pupils’ scientific literacy,which is an important component of the National action.Although pupils may get science knowledge and improve their scientific literacy from daily life experiences,but the effects are very limited.Consequently,it is critical to educate pupils in scientific literacy with science curriculum in elementary schools.Although progresses have been achieved since the implementation of “ the State Council’s decision of the elementary education reform and development” in 2001,there are some unsatisfied aspects in elementary science education.For example,the implementation results of elementary school “A” science curriculum have not fulfilled the requirement of curriculum standards.Therefore,my study focuses on the problems and solutions of current situation in implementation of elementary school science curriculum,through which I hope to make up for the limitations in this field.On Feb 6th,2017,another draft was introduced,i.e,the science curriculum standards for compulsory primary schooleducation(basic teaching 2 [2017] no.2),resuming the teaching of science course from grade one in primary school,thus,students raning from grade 1 to 6 will have science lessons;As to the nature of the course,the name of “enlightenment course” is changed to "basic course","practical course" and "comprehensive course",with the importance of science curriculum in primary school officially clarified.In this study,I aim to clarify problems in current science education in primary schools,find approaches to solve those problems,investigate typical and practical solutions,and provide references to ensure healthy and effective implementation of science curriculum in elementary schools.This article contains four parts.In the first part,I analyzed necessity and significance in reality of the research,and establish the approaches and methods.In the second part,I investigated a typical case of the science education in elementary school “A” in the city of Chenzhou,Hunan province,usingdata mining,questionnaire and interview approaches in order to obtain sufficient and authentic first-hand material.The investigation focuses on four aspects: status of science curriculum in elementary school education,how teachers perform teaching activities,development and application of teaching resources from inside and outside,and mechanism of lesson evaluation.The third part deals with four problems based on the statistic analysis of investigation results: weakening status and maginalization of science education,focusing on “fake investigation” without thinking in science lessons,relatively poor teaching resources in science,and singleness in the lesson evaluation mechanism.Through analysis on this specific case,I extended my study to summarize general problems in elementary science education,in order to provide more targeted references for solving these problems.The fourth part clearly concluded the strategies to optimize science teaching in elementary schools: application of internalized education concept,improvement in teachers’ quality,recruitment of more qualified teachers,development of curriculum resources based on regional conditions,amendment in lesson evaluation system,and improvement in efficiency of implementation.