Research On Current Situation Of The Nursery Curriculum For 2-3-year-old Children In X City

The National Medium-and Long-Term Plan for Education Reform and Development(2010-2020),which was officially released on July 29,2010,clearly puts emphasis on the education of 0-3-year-old children.The nursery class is an important part both for the 0-3-year-old child care institutions and for the 0-3-year-old child education.The nursery curriculum is the core of the nursery education,and the key to guarantee the quality of the nursery education.However,the current research on nursery curriculum in China mainly comes from the experience of the practical teachers,which lacks systematic research and in-depth discussion.Therefore,starting from the current nursery curriculum situation for 2-3-year-old children and investigating the source,goals,contents,implementation and evaluation of the nursery curriculum systematically are of great significance.In this research,randomized sampling method was used.Three first-class public kindergartens,three first-class private kindergartens,and three local early education institutions in Zhejiang Province were selected randomly.And among them nine nursery classes were chosen as subjects.The researcher self-edited the "Interview Outline of the Nursery Teacher's Curriculum concept" and conducted semi-structured interviews with the main teachers of nine nursery classes.Using the inductive method from grounded theory to analyze the interview materials was helpful to understand the current situation of teachers' curriculum concepts.The researcher self-edited "Observation Record Form of Daily Life in Nursery Class",and conducted aone-week observation on nine nursery classes from four aspects including daily activities,sports,learning activities,games and collected materials of curriculum,so as to understand the current situation from the curriculum source,goals,contents,implementation and evaluation.The research results are divided into two parts.On the one hand,from the perspective of the nursery teachers' concepts: the curriculum is a teaching plan;the curriculum comes from the textbooks;the curriculum goals should arm at developing children' emotions;the organization form of the curriculum contents is theme activities;the main way of curriculum implementation is games;and the method of curriculum evaluation is observation.On the other hand,from the perspective of practice:(1)the source of the nursery curriculum is mainly from the textbooks approved by the education department;(2)the goals of the nursery curriculum arm at developing the physical and mental health of children,and forms the general goals,unit goals,and specific educational activity goals,but the links between the various goals are not closely related;(3)the nursery curriculum contents are organized in the form of subjects and involve five major areas,but the integration between the contents is not enough,the appropriateness principle and logic principle of the contents selection are insufficient,and more featured content is "water cooler moment";(4)the implementation of nursery curriculum includes daily activities,sports,learning activities and games,in which daily activities and games are the main ways,but there is no smooth transition between daily activities,no sufficient time for sports,excessive time of learning activities,improper time allocation of games etc;(5)the evaluation of nursery curriculum emphasizes the children' development process,which is conducted from the evaluators' observation,without forming a scientific evaluation program.Based on the research results,the researcher focuses on the discussion and analyzing of the following three aspects,that is,the differences between nursery curriculum of the kindergartens and the early education institutions,the conflicts between the teachers' curriculum concepts and curriculum practices,and the problems of the nursery curriculum.A summary of the current nursery curriculum situation andeducational recommendations are given at last.