Using Revised Bloom's Taxonomy (RBT), this study has examined the intellectual demands of the Senior High School Chemistry Curriculum (SHSCC) in China from a socio-historical perspective. Document analysis was adopted as a research method to analyze knowledge types and cognitive processes, the two dimensions of the cognitive learning objectives in the three curriculum documents of the SHSCC officially released in 1996, 2003, and 2018 respectively. The changing tendencies of the two dimensions have been found over the past two decades. As for knowledge types, Factual knowledge has increased, whilst Conceptual knowledge has decreased and Procedural knowledge has dramatically increased, and Meta-cognitive knowledge has appeared recently although in a low ratio. With regard to cognitive processes, the lower levels have been decreased, while the higher levels have been increased. Moreover, explanations have been provided for the association between the orientations of the chemistry curriculum and the extents of intellectual demands embodied in the cognitive learning objectives in these versions of the SHSCC. From these findings, it is concluded that the SHSCC in China has become increasingly demanding during the period under study and the newly emergent SHSCC is more challenging than its predecessors. The implications of this study for curriculum researchers, curriculum developers and chemistry teachers are discussed in the last part of this paper.
This paper investigated the change of the Junior Secondary School Chemistry Curriculum (JSSCC) in the P. R. China over the period from 1978 to 2001. Document analysis was employed as the research method and data were collected from various versions of teaching syllabi, textbooks, and teachers' reference books published during this period. The changes of the purposes and content of the JSSCC were traced in the view of scientific literacy, which incorporates both subject matter and companion meanings in the light of the concept of Fcurriculum emphases._ It was found that subject matter had been increasingly enlarged in its breadth but its requirements gradually decreased while companion meanings at different levels of this curriculum had been increasingly added from 1978 to 2001. On the basis of these findings it was concluded that the JSSCC had experienced a transition from being more elite to more future citizenry oriented during the period under study. Two implications of this study for science curriculum research were discussed.
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.
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