Re-think about EC Curriculum Reform in China

 

 　　　　　　　　　　　　　Abstract

The open-door policy of the Chinese government in the 1980s encouraged educators to break away from some traditional concepts and practices, and to embrace the educational ideas of the Western theorists, such as Dewey, Montessori, Bronfenbrenner, Bruner, especially Piaget. These ideas carried the spirit of the progressive education movements in the U.S. and Europe. Early childhood educators were no long satisfied with the exiting stagnant education system that continued for 30 years and began to a wide-spread curriculum reform. Almost 20 years passed and Chinese EC curriculum had tremendous changes.

Nowadays, we begin to think about what is good EC curriculum in China. Actually there is no such a thing we can call universally “good” early childhood education that are suitable to all countries, all circumstances. When we re-consider the concept of early childhood curriculum, we have to consider the context, the background, especially Chinese traditional culture.

There are great differences among different countries and even among the districts within one country. The cultures, economic situations, political systems, educational policies, and people’s values vary dramatically, and the races, religions, languages are multiple. Cultural differences should not be ignored but they should be carefully taken into account. Early childhood education should not only includes cross-cultural aspects, but also be sensitive to gender issues, age, social class, style of learning, physical characteristics, and ethnic backgrounds, etc.

Asian people are more group-oriented, or social unit-oriented as opposed to individual-oriented. In a group-oriented society, what will happen if we emphasis too much on the individualized early childhood education idea? How can we preserve the advantages of our own culture when we learn from other cultures? What kind EC curriculum we should develop? These are the questions we need to re-think about. My presentation will focus on these issues in details.