Article Cite This: J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
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Reconstructing a School Chemistry Curriculum in the Era of Core Competencies: A Case from China Bing Wei*
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Faculty of Education, University of Macau, E33, Avenida da Universidade, Taipa, Macau, China ABSTRACT: In China, the latest version of the Senior High School Chemistry Curriculum (SHSCC) has been developed in response to social changes. This paper provides an account of the process and the product of the official document of this curriculum, The Chemistry Curriculum Standards of Senior High School, with the purpose of exploring the way that this new chemistry curriculum has been reconstructed in the era of core competencies. A rationale has been derived from the literature, suggesting five aspects of curriculum analysis: (1) social context, (2) sources, (3) curriculum goals, (4) structure and content, and (5) teaching objectives. Guided by this rationale, the accounting of the 2018 SHSCC proceeds with the analysis of various types of curriculum documents, which fall into four categories: (1) the 2017 curriculum standards, (2) related national education visions and curriculum policies, (3) illustrations of the new SHSCC provided by the curriculum designers, and (4) discussions concerning science and chemistry curricula within or beyond the chemistry-education community in China. On the basis of the analysis, three issues relevant to science- and chemistry-curriculum development are discussed: (1) the curriculum idea and discourses in the view of core competence, (2) the construction of the subject matter of chemistry, and (3) the globalization and localization of chemistry curricula. KEYWORDS: High School/Introductory Chemistry, Curriculum, Standards National/State
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INTRODUCTION As part of science education, school chemistry plays a critical role in both preparing students for a further training as professional chemists and educating them to become qualified citizenry in the future. The structure and contents of school chemistry curricula have always been constructed and reconstructed to respond to social changes in history.1 During recent decades, many countries have recognized that talents need to be redefined in the time of globalization to gain superiority in international competition, and accordingly, school education needs to be adapted to the newly defined characteristics of the talents. Since the turn of the century, some international organizations and institutions, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)2 and the European Union (EU),3 have established a variety of core-competence frameworks from both theoretical and practical perspectives. The introduction of the conceptual framework of core competencies has had a tremendous impact on the school-curriculum reform of many countries around the world. The existing literature is filled with position papers and review studies on the influence of core, key, and 21st-century competencies on curriculum frameworks,4 but few studies have been done to investigate the embodiment of the notion of core competencies in school science or chemistry curricula. To catch up with the international tendency of the world, the central government of China has taken the notion of core competencies as a focal point in its curriculum reform.5 The ambition of this reform is to raise the quality of education in order for students to meet the challenges of new times, propel curriculum reform into a high-quality development stage, and achieve higher goals by improving the overall quality of education.6 Thus, the notion of core competencies has been used as an impetus to design subject-based school curricula, © XXXX American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
including the Senior High School Chemistry Curriculum (SHSCC) reported in this article. The 2018 SHSCC, marked by the release of The Chemistry Curriculum Standards of Senior High School (called the 2018 curriculum standards for brevity) by the Ministry of Education (MoE) in January 2018,6 has provided a case for us to explore the issue of embodying core competencies in chemistry curricula in a given social context. In this study, I attempted to focus on five aspects of the 2018 SHSCC to uncover the process and product of it. This study will be helpful for chemistry-education researchers, chemistryteacher educators, chemistry-curriculum developers, and school chemistry teachers to understand the way that the subject matter of chemistry has been reconstructed in the era of core competencies.
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RATIONALE Generally, the accounting of the 2018 SHSCC is based on the model of curriculum analysis proposed by Posner.7 In this model, five sets of questions are used to guide the curriculum analysis. In particular, the first two pertain to the present study, which are “curriculum documentation and origins” and “the curriculum proper”. By “curriculum documentation”, Posner refers to the way that the curriculum is documented.7 As far as the 2018 SHSCC is concerned, “curriculum documentation” means what documents related to this curriculum should be selected for analysis. This is inevitably related to the curriculum-development system in China, where the centralized curriculum is adopted with the overall teaching program, various subject-based curriculum standards (or “teaching Received: March 11, 2019 Revised: May 13, 2019
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.9b00211 J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
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syllabi” prior to 2001), and textbooks constituting the “three curriculum documents”.8 The Ministry of Education, the top educational administration, has the highest authority in planning and designing the school curriculum in the country. Once the overall teaching program is finalized, the “curriculum standards” for each subject are detailed, and then textbooks are compiled. For each subject, the national curriculum standards function as the “basis of compiling textbooks, practical teaching, teaching evaluation and examinations” in the teaching and learning of this subject.9 When the subjectbased curriculum standards have been officially released by the MoE, a variety of illustrations and interpretations of it are provided by the designers and circulated by various channels. Moreover, the national subject-based curriculum standards are always aligned with the national educational visions and curriculum policies of the country during a given period, and they are usually grounded on the preparatory work that has been done beforehand to provide foundations for the new curricula. These special situations concerning the curriculum development in China necessitate selecting the following curriculum documents related to the 2018 SHSCC for analysis in this study: (1) the 2018 curriculum standards;6 (2) the national education visions and curriculum policies in recent years;10,11 (3) the illustrations of this new curriculum provided by the curriculum designers;12−18 and (4) the discussions, debates, or suggestions concerning science and chemistry curricula within or beyond the chemistry-education community in China.19−22 In Posner’s model, the term “origins” has two meanings: the situation that resulted in the development of the curriculum and the perspective that represents the curriculum.7 These two questions are relevant to one focus of this study: the process of the 2018 SHSCC. As we know, curriculum change is always influenced and determined by a range of events, which operate at both the macro and micro levels in society. First, school curriculum is closely connected to social context, and therefore, historical, cultural, economic, and political forces in a society are interrelated in forming and shaping school science curricula.23 For school subjects, although it is correct to view them as social, political, and historical constructions, it is difficult to uncover the internal issues involved in the school subjects from a macro view. As a result, it is necessary to take a micro view to analyze the organization and formulation of the individual subject matter.24 To make sense of the change of subject curricula over a period of time, Goodson suggested that “we need to understand how subject groups take up and promote new ideas and opportunities” (p 4).23 As far as a science subject is concerned, there are three groups of people “within the subject”, scientists, science teachers, and science educators.25 In China, science- and chemistry-teacher educators from key normal universities have become a dominant group and play a critical role in chemistry-curriculum development and chemistry-teacher education.26 On the basis of this fact, it is a necessity to probe the sources drawn by the designers to reconstruct the 2018 SHSCC in social context. Thus, “social context” and “sources” constitute two aspects of the 2018 SHSCC in this study. As for the “the curriculum proper”, it mainly refers to the purposes, content, and organization of the curriculum and the assumptions underlying them.7 Obviously, it is relevant to the other focus of this article, the product of the 2018 SHSCC. According to Morris and Adamson,27 the purpose of a curriculum is a broad and vague phrase that can be expressed
as the aims, goals, and objectives at different levels of detail and specificity. Because of the nature of the 2018 SHSCC as a subject-based curriculum, the purposes of this curriculum are divided into two levels for the convenience of analysis: curriculum goals and teaching objectives. Therefore, “curriculum goals”, “structure and content”, and “teaching objectives” constitute three other aspects of the 2018 SHSCC.
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RESULTS On the basis of the rationale explicated above, the analysis of the process and product of the 2018 SHSCC is focused on five aspects: (1) social context, (2) sources, (3) curriculum goals, (4) structure and content, and (5) teaching objectives. Social Context
Influenced by Confucianism, the Chinese community used to be aware that a vast society was managed and ruled by a small group of the elite, but the government of China has recently recognized that the traditional elite-oriented education system should be replaced by a mass-education model to develop the ordinary people’s intelligence.20 Since the late 1990s, the central government of China has adopted a national strategy called Invigorating China through Science and Education.28 This was the political background of initiating quality education in general and chemistry-curriculum reform in particular, which took the notion of “scientific literacy” as the fundamental purpose at the beginning of the new millennium.9 In recent years, the rapidly growing economy in China has triggered great changes in social development and people’s personal lives and prompted the government to take effective strategies to maintain the sustainable development of the country. In 2010, the central government of China established the National Mid- and Long-Term Educational Reform and Development Planning Outline, in which “carrying out indepth research to determine the core content that students in different educational stages should master” and “promoting curriculum reform and strengthening teaching and learning material development” were advocated as two major tasks during the period of 2010−2020 for educational development.10 At the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the notion of lide shuren was advocated as the fundamental mission of education in China.5 The term lide shuren mainly means that the educational enterprise should aim to promote all-around development of young people with a special focus on cultivating their sense of social responsibility, integrity, creative minds, and ability of practice.11 To implement this vision in practice, the opinion on deepening curriculum reform and implementing the fundamental tasks of lide shuren was promulgated by MoE in 2014.11 With regards to value orientation, the vision of lide shuren happened to resemble the notion of core competencies, which is hotly discussed across the world. Commissioned by MoE, a research group led by prominent psychologists proposed a framework for the core competencies, which are considered to be the foundation for Chinese students’ all-around and lifelong development.29 In this framework, the essential characteristics and key abilities that students should acquire and develop are identified within six dimensions; they are (1) the capacity to learn, (2) leading a healthy life, (3) social participation and responsibility, (4) practice and innovation, (5) humanistic literacy, and (6) scientific spirit.29 Among these six dimensions, the sixth dimension, “scientific spirit”, is closely related to the science and chemistry curriculum, providing implications for B
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reconstructing the SHSCC with new curriculum emphases, such as rational thinking and scientific argumentation.
environmental protection, health and nutrition, technological application, and social responsibility.
Sources
As shown in these excerpts, the concepts and notions that are popular in the international community of science and chemistry education, such as “big ideas”, “modeling thinking”, “critical thinking”, and “social value of chemistry”, had drawn the attention of the designers of the new SHSCC.
According to the designers, the genesis of the 2018 curriculum standards mainly came from two sources.13 The first was the criticism on the then existing SHSCC. In the last round of curriculum reform in China, to be aligned with the overall purposes of curriculum reform, the curriculum objectives of all subjects were defined by a general framework, which included three dimensions: scientific knowledge and skills, process and methods, and attitudes and values.9 Within this common framework, the chemistry curriculum was constructed with the notion of scientific literacy with regards to its content and goals.30 As assumed by the designers of the 2018 curriculum standards, the three-dimensional framework could be applied to all school subjects, but it was too broad to reflect the nature of chemistry.13 Instead, the notion of core competencies mentioned above was thought to be helpful in reconstructing the SHSCC by breaking the three-dimensional goal system. In the stage of preparatory work, to search for the intrinsic values and unique merits of chemistry in education, the curriculum designers conducted a lot of library work on the nature of chemistry, using both the Chinese and English literature. On the basis of various discourses on chemistry, they finally adopted the following definitions of chemistry (p 52):14 • Chemistry focuses on the properties and changes of substances; and it is purported to investigate regular patterns of chemical reactions via examining the compositions and structures of substances; • Chemistry is merited with wide applications in society; chemists produce new substances by making use of mutual transformations among substances in order to serve human civilization and social progress; and • Chemical research starts at macro-phenomena and then goes to micro-levels, using chemical symbols to describe properties and changes of substances. The other source of the new SHSCC came from chemistrycurriculum development in other countries around the world. Prior to designing the 2018 curriculum standards, the designers had conducted a comparative project, in which they extensively examined varied kinds of chemistry programs, chemistry- and science-curriculum standards or frameworks imported from foreign countries.13 Unlike in designing previous curriculum standards, for which references were almost all focused on chemistry-curriculum materials imported from English-speaking countries, this time, references were also made to those from non-English-speaking countries, such as Russia, Israel, India, and Japan. The characteristics of chemistry-curriculum development at the senior-high-school stage over the past 10 years were summarized as follows (p 54):14 • The emphases have been put on the big ideas and key concepts of chemistry and the embodiment of the nature of chemistry as well; • The basic methods and modes of chemistry learning and research, and the competencies of chemistry as a subject have been highlighted, such as experimental investigation, micropresentation, trans-disciplinary integration, modeling thinking, dialectical thinking, independent thinking, and critical and innovative thinking; and • Much more concerns have been given to social values of chemistry, such as the impact of chemistry on daily lives,
Curriculum Goals
The SHSCC is defined as an introductory chemistry curriculum for general education (referring to 1−12 grades in the Chinese education system), preceded by the junior-highschool chemistry curriculum, which is offered in the ninth grade (the last year of compulsory education).6 The importance of the SHSCC in general education is argued in the following aspects: (1) to fulfill the fundamental mission of lide shuren, (2) to raise the level of students’ core competencies, and (3) to play an irreplaceable role in disseminating scientific knowledge and cultivating scientific and technological talents with high quality.6 To implement the central mission of lide shuren and implement the curriculum policy of the core competencies, the fundamental purpose of the new SHSCC was defined as cultivating students’ core competencies in the subject of chemistry, which were called the “chemistry core competencies”, throughout the 2018 curriculum standards.6 Moreover, these “chemistry core competencies” serve as essential characteristics and key abilities that students need to acquire to ensure social and personal development.6 The notion of “chemistry core competencies” dates back to an earlier national educational research project led by Beijing Normal University. In this project, “chemistry core competencies” were thought of a comprising nine elements within three categories: understanding (recognizing, connecting, and arguing), application (analyzing, inferring, and designing), and (3) transferring (complex inferences, systematic inquiry, and innovative thinking). On the basis of the preparatory work, curriculum designers became convinced that the chemistry core competencies should reflect these features: (1) the distinctive characteristics of chemistry, (2) the social values of chemistry, and (3) the latest research achievements in chemistry and science teaching and learning.13 In the 2018 SHSCC, the framework of chemistry core competencies is presented in the section of “curriculum goals”, which is composed of five dimensions: (1) macroscopic identification and microscopic analysis, (2) changes and equilibrium, (3) evidence-based reasoning and modeling, (4) scientific inquiry and innovation, and (5) scientific attitude and social responsibility. The meanings of the five dimensions are interpreted as curriculum goals in that section as follows (pp 3−4):6 (1) Macroscopic identification and microscopic analysis To know about the diversity of substances and classify them from different aspects; to understand the composition, structure, property, and change of substances at elemental, atomic and molecular levels, and form the conception of “the property being determined by the structure”; to analyze and solve real problems in both macro and micro perspectives. (2) Changes and equilibrium C
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Figure 1. Structure of the 2018 curriculum standards for chemistry.
To possess safety consciousness, rigorous and realistic attitude toward science and awareness of exploring unknown and advocating truth; to have a deep understanding of chemistry’s great contribution to creating more material and spiritual wealth, as well as meeting people’s growing needs of a good life; to have the consciousness of energy saving, environmental protection and sustainable development, and form a frugal, green and low-carbon lifestyle of oneself; to make correct value judgment about chemistry-related hot social issues, and participate in social practice activities about chemical issues.
To understand that matter is in motion and change, and recognize that certain conditions are needed and some rules should be followed for chemical changes; to recognize that chemical changes feature the formation of new substances and energy transformation; to understand that chemical changes can be regulated with certain limits and rates; to dynamically analyze chemical changes in different perspectives, and apply the principles of chemical reactions in solving real problems. (3) Evidence-based reasoning and modeling To be evidence-minded, and be able to raise hypotheses about the composition, structure and change of substances based on evidence, and then prove or disprove them through analytical reasoning; to establish logical relations among views, conclusions and evidence; to recognize that inherent characteristics and constituent elements of research objects and their interrelation in some ways such as analyzing and reasoning; to establish cognitive model to explain chemical phenomena and reveal the nature and rules underpinning the phenomena.
Structure and Content
In the stage of senior high school (grades 10−12) in China, as in other parts of the world, students’ needs become very diversified; some will be studying in the science stream whereas others will choose to study in the stream of the arts and humanities. Therefore, multiple options for the SHSCC become necessary. In the 2003 SHSCC, there were two types of courses, compulsory courses, including chemistry 1 and chemistry 2, and six selective courses.31 To make more space for students to choose, the new SHSCC is composed of three types of courses: (1) required, (2) optional required, and (3) selective.6 According to the designers, the required courses are for all students to develop basic chemistry core competencies, the optional required courses are for students who need to further develop chemistry core competencies to take the college-admission examination, and the selective courses are for students to take freely with the emphasis on the value of chemistry.6 The components of these courses are different (i.e., the so-called “topics”, “modules”, and “series”). The required courses contain five topics (4 credits): (1) chemical science and experimental inquiry, (2) common inorganic substances and their applications, (3) the structures of substances and chemical reactions, (4) simple organic compounds and their applications, and (5) chemistry and social development. The
(4) Scientific inquiry and innovation To recognize science inquiry as scientific practice to carry out scientific interpretation, discovery, creation and application; to find and raise questions worthy of scientific investigation; to design inquiry schemes, use chemical experiments and investigations to implement inquiry based on questions, hypothesis and objectives; to be good at practice, cooperation, challenge and innovation. (5) Scientific attitude and social responsibility D
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Figure 2. Relationships among content requirements, instructional tips, and performance requirements.
teachers’ easy understanding of what needs to be taught (scope and breadth), whereas “performance requirements” are prescribed to define the depth of the curriculum content. According to Wang and Wei,17 this would be beneficial to fully implement the five dimensions of chemistry core competencies in practice. As mentioned earlier, topics are basic units of curriculum content in the new SHSCC. In the section on curriculum content, each topic is composed of three parts: content requirements, instructional tips, and performance requirements. In the part on content requirements, the topics are divided into several key concepts. For instance, under Topic 3 of the required course Basics of Substance Structure and Chemical Reactions, there are four key concepts: atom structure and the periodic table of chemical elements, chemical bonds, the speed and limitations of chemical reactions, and transformation of chemical reactions and energy. In the part on performance requirements, the desired learning outcomes of each topic are listed. The part on tips for instruction is set between these two types of requirements to help school teachers effectively implement the content requirements and achieve the performance requirements in practice. According to Zheng,18 a key designer of the 2018 curriculum standards, the content requirements are input-oriented requirements, constituting the core competencies of chemistry, and the performance requirements are output-oriented requirements, reflecting the expectations of what students should be able to perform after being exposed to the relevant curriculum content, whereas tips for instruction are suggestions for chemistry teachers, helping them to effectively teach the content requirements and finally attain the performance requirements. The relationships among the content requirements, performance requirements, and tips for instruction are depicted in Figure 2.
optional required courses are composed of three modules, with each module being given 2 credits: (1) principles of chemical reactions, (2) structures and properties of substances, and (3) basics of organic chemistry. Students can select one module (2 credits), two modules (4 credits), or three modules (6 credits). Three series are provided for the selective courses: (1) experimental chemistry, (2) chemistry and society, and (3) chemistry in change. According to the designers’ illustrations, the subject-content knowledge should be exploited to develop students’ chemistry core competencies. For instance, in Topic 3 of the required courses (structures of substances and chemical reactions), the periodic patterns are used to cultivate students’ scientific reasoning and modeling abilities, and the concept of a chemical bond is used to develop students’ competencies of macroscopic identification and microscopic analysis;15 in Module 1 of the optional required courses (principles of chemical reactions), the directions, limitations, rates, and controlling of chemical reactions are emphasized to develop students’ understandings of the fundamentals concepts of “changes” and “equilibrium” in chemistry.16 The structure and content are depicted in Figure 1. Teaching Objectives
Traditionally, the official curriculum in China released by the central government was focused on knowledge points to be taught, and school teachers were responsible for defining teaching content and establishing specific teaching requirements in practice. Accordingly, teachers were treated as active professionals, only provided with guidelines for instruction; they were expected to select the content and construct teaching sequences for their classes. In reality, however, teaching requirements were often steered by high-stakes examinations, such as national (or provincial) collegeadmission examinations, usually called gaokao. More often than not, teaching requirements were overly elevated to cater to the needs of those external examinations, which led to a heavy studying burden for the students.22 In recent decades, influenced by standards-based curriculum reforms,32 the Chinese curriculum system has been intended to follow the American curriculum tradition, in which teachers are requested to teach according to the checklists of students’ expected outcomes prescribed in the curriculum framework or curriculum standards.33 This is the reason that students’ learning outcomes have been gradually emphasized in the chemistry curriculum of China. Specifically, on the basis of the international comparative study on science- and chemistrycurriculum documents, it was learned that “performance standards are descriptions of students’ learning levels... and will finally drive the fundamental change of chemistry education via curriculum evaluation’’ (p 6).19 In the 2018 curriculum standards, both traditional practice that highlights subject-content-knowledge points and outcomes-based practice have been adopted. That is to say, curriculum content is presented in “content requirements” for school chemistry
Summary
In this section, the five aspects of the 2018 SHSCC have been analyzed. For ease of presentation, these five aspects have been accounted separately; however, they are actually interrelated and intertwined and combined in the process and product of the new SHSCC. The interrelationships among the five aspects are illustrated in a double-triangle model with curriculum goals at the center (see Figure 3). As shown in Figure 3, the upper triangle represents the processes, and the lower one represents the products of the new SHSCC. The two triangles, together with the two dotted lines on each side, make up a configuration in which the different functions of the five aspects of the new SHSCC are displayed: the social context and the sources led to the curriculum goals, which embody the notion of the chemistry core competencies, and the curriculum goals led the designers to establish the structure, select the content, and set teaching objectives for the new SHSCC. E
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by the central government of China. This was the reason that the notion of core competencies was unanimously accepted by academics and the government and became the institutional discourse in this round of curriculum reform in China. As a socially constructed notion, the core competencies of the new generation are determined by economic, political, and cultural factors in a given social context. These various kinds of factors have constituted the social background of the framework of core competencies established by the Research Group in China.29 As a kind of institutional discourse, this framework is too general and too broad to play a substantially influential role on subject-based curricula and instruction like the SHSCC reported in this study. However, its function in this round of curriculum reform cannot be underestimated: it is the influential framework that has embodied the national curriculum policy and promoted science and social-science educators to construct the subject-based core competencies. Under this environment, so-called “chemistry core competencies” have been articulated and used as a guideline to construct the new SHSCC. Different from the general framework, which directly reflects the expectations of the contemporary society for the next generation, the conceptualization of subject-based core competencies deals with various internal issues of the subject, such as logical, psychological, pedagogical, epistemological, and sociocultural issues.24 For the case of the SHSCC, the newly constructed curriculum goals, structure and content, and teaching objectives, in view of chemistry core competencies that are presented in the 2018 curriculum standards, have constituted the programmatic discourses of the core competencies. It should be noted that the third level of curriculum discourses, classroom discourses, was not discussed in this article.
Figure 3. Interrelationships among the five aspects.
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DISCUSSION This paper has provided an account of the recently released senior high school chemistry curriculum in China, which claims to be based on the notion of core competencies. The accounting is underpinned by a rationale, focusing on five aspects of the 2018 SHSCC: (1) social context, (2) sources, (3) curriculum goals, (4) structure and content, and (5) teaching objectives. These five aspects and the interrelationships among them display a profile of the process and product of a new chemistry curriculum in the era of core competencies. As a subject-based science curriculum, the 2018 SHSCC is part of the national curriculum reform directly led by the top educational administration in China, the Ministry of Education. As a single case, it should be acknowledged that the findings of this study cannot be generalized beyond the context of this study. However, the results of this study will provide implications for the theories and practices of constructing and reconstructing subject-based curricula in other parts of the world. More significantly, the findings of this study might be transferable to other social contexts, because it has addressed some issues that will occur in other countries, especially developing countries, when designing science and chemistry curricula in the era of core competencies. In the rest of this section, I will discuss these issues in turn.
Construction of the Subject Matter of Chemistry
Subject-matter knowledge has long been considered by many scholars, because it is the subject matter that makes instruction meaningful for students and helps them attain educational objectives. In the field of teacher education, Shulman and his associates conceptualize teachers’ subject-matter knowledge in terms of content knowledge, pedagogical-content knowledge (PCK), and curricular knowledge.35 Later on, Grossman et al. further proposed that content knowledge should encompass four components: content knowledge, substantive knowledge, syntactic knowledge, and beliefs about the subject matter.36 However, the issue of how to define the content knowledge has never been resolved for a given subject. In this sense, the reconstruction of the SHSCC that has occurred in China presents a praxis in dealing with this issue. As mentioned earlier, in China, chemistry-teacher educators from normal universities as an emergent professional group have played an increasingly important role in preservice and in-service chemistry education, curriculum development, and textbook compilation. Some of them have participated in the process of designing the new SHSCC under the coordination of the Ministry of Education. They are familiar with the national education and curriculum policies and have various channels for connecting with chemistry teachers of high schools. More importantly, they are informed in terms of academic scholarship recently advanced in the international community of science education, such as that involving the nature of science, socioscientific issues, science practices, and scientific reasoning. Therefore, those five themes of chemistry core competencies in the 2018 SHSCC can be seen as the newly
Curriculum Idea and Discourses in View of the Core Competencies
To a certain extent, curricula are made by human beings, and the making of curricula operates across different sections, each of which is linked to a distinct kind of curriculum discourse. As noted by Deng,34 there are three “levels” to such discourse: institutional discourse, programmatic discourse, and classroom discourse. Similar to the notion of scientific literacy discussed in Deng’s article, the notion of core competencies is a slogan, signifying the attributes and capacities that need to be cultivated for all students in the age of globalization. Coincidentally, the notion of core competencies is similar to the vision of educational development, lide shuren, advocated F
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issues of globalization and localization in developing and designing school science and chemistry curricula.
defined subject matter of chemistry. Specifically, the two themes “macroscopic identification and microscopic analysis” and “changes and equilibrium”, reflect their own understanding of the nature of chemistry. The other two themes, “evidencebased reasoning and modeling” and “scientific inquiry and innovation” were mainly input from the international community of chemistry education in particular and science education in general. For the last theme, “scientific attitude and social responsibility”, it is a response to the national education mission, lide shuren. As agents of national curriculum policies and teacher educators at universities, chemistry-teacher educators in China have translated the ideas of curriculum reform into classroom practices seamlessly.26 In this study, it was found that the practical knowledge they obtained from teaching practice was reflected in the national curriculum standards. For example, tips for instruction were essentially school chemistry teachers’ practical knowledge that had been obtained from teaching practice. Obviously, this two-way interaction between theory and practice is helpful to avoid the disconnect among policy-makers, educational researchers, and practitioners in the enterprise of chemistry education.
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
*E-mail:
[email protected]. ORCID
Bing Wei: 0000-0002-5591-8025 Notes
The author declares no competing financial interest.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This research is sponsored by a project of the National Social Science Foundation of China entitled The Construction of the Model of Scientific Literacy for Primary and Secondary School Students within Conf ucian Culture and Its Empirical Study (BHA180145).
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REFERENCES
(1) De Vos, W.; Bulte, A. M. W.; Pilot, A. Chemistry Curricula for General Education: Analysis and Elements of A Design. In Chemical education: Towards research-based practice; Gilbert, J. K., Justi, R., de Jong, O., Van Driel, J., Eds.; Kluwer Academic Press: Dordrecht, Netherlands, 2002; pp 101−124. (2) Ananiadou, K.; Claro, M. 21st Century Skills and Competences for New Millennium Learners in OECD Countries; OECD Education Working Papers No. 41; OECD, 2009; DOI: 10.1787/ 218525261154. (3) European Union. Key Competencies for lifelong learning: European reference framework; Office for Official Publications of the European Communities: Luxembourg, 2008. https://publications.europa.eu/ en/publication-detail/-/publication/5719a044-b659-46de-b58b606bc5b084c1. (4) Voogt, J.; Roblin, N. P. A. comparative analysis of international frameworks for 21st century competences: Implications for national curriculum policies. Journal of Curriculum Studies 2012, 44 (3), 299− 321. (5) Yao, J. X.; Guo, Y. Y. Core competencies and scientific literacy: the recent reform of the school science curriculum in China. International Journal of Science Education 2018, 40 (15), 1913−1933. (6) Ministry of Education. The general senior secondary school chemistry curriculum standards (the 2017 version); People’s Education Press: Beijing, 2018 (in Chinese). (7) Posner, J. G. Analyzing the curriculum, 2nd ed.; McGraw-Hill: New York, 2004. (8) Wei, B. Chemistry curriculum reform in China: Policy and practice. In Curriculum reform in China: changes and challenges; Yin, H., Lee, C. J., Eds.; Nova Science Publishers, Inc.: New York, 2012; pp 95−109. (9) Ministry of Education. An outline of curriculum reform of basic education. Xueke Jiaoyu 2001, (7), 1−5. (10) The outline of the national mid- and long-term plan for educational reform and development (2010−2020); Central Committee of the Communist Party of China & State Council, 2010 (in Chinese). (11) Opinions on deepening curriculum reform and implementing the fundamental tasks of lideshuren; Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, 2014 (in Chinese). (12) Fang, Y., Xu, D., Eds.; An illustration of the general senior secondary school chemistry curriculum standards (the 2017 version); Higher Education Press: Beijing, 2018 (in Chinese). (13) Wang, Z. The background of revising the Senior High School Chemistry Curriculum Standards. In An illustration of the general senior secondary school chemistry curriculum standards (the 2017 version); Fang, Y., Xu, D., Eds.; Higher Education Press: Beijing, 2018; pp 1− 35 (in Chinese).
Globalization and Localization of the Chemistry Curriculum
Nowadays, all parts of the global society are so interconnected that chemistry-curriculum development in an individual country is possibly influencing and influenced by that occurring in other countries. Since the late 1970s and especially after joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 and implementing the national policy of One Belt and One Road, which was initiated in 2013, China has gradually become an important member of the global community and therefore inevitably involved in competition and cooperation with other nations across the world. However, in terms of the characteristics of its education system and social and cultural backgrounds, China is distinctive from many other nations, especially Western nations. Therefore, the reconstruction of the SHSCC should take into account the reality, the future development, and the teaching traditions of China. Furthermore, as China is a developing country, science curriculum in general and chemistry curriculum in particular in China has to face the influences from the West. In the last round of school-curriculum reform in China, for instance, the school chemistry curriculum took scientific literacy as the central goal.30,31 In the current curriculum reform, the notion of core competencies has been borrowed from the international community of education2,3,37 and used to construct the new science and chemistry curriculum. Digesting and absorbing these imported terms and ideas necessarily involves the issue of striking a balance between globalization and localization. As Stacey et al.38 indicated, the globalization of science curricula has been driven by a variety of forces. Carter39 further argued that the “current science education improvement discourses are more representative of national responses to global economic restructuring and the imperatives of the supranational institutions than they are of quality research into science teaching and learning” (p 573). Given the complexity of curriculum development, therefore, attention should be drawn to the issue of how to deal with the influences and impacts from developed countries on developing ones so as to produce “authentic, contextually, and affordable (science curriculum)” (p 262).40 In this sense, the new SHSCC has provided a case for developing countries in dealing with the G
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