A study of school-based curriculum development in Mainland China : from a cultural perspective /

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Student Theses

2017

Zeng, Xiu Zhen

Hong Kong : The Education University of Hong Kong

Thesis

In recent years, the strengthening of decentralization in education has been identified in Mainland China, based on the release of official documents and policies for schools with specific, relevant instructions for school-based curriculum development (SBCD). However, the researcher considers that understanding the curriculum as content instead of experience in Mainland China has confined the implementation of SBCD. Thus, because the Chinese characteristics of SBCD are more likely to be understood as a School-based Curriculum (SBC), few empirical studies on SBCD in Mainland China have been accordingly conducted. This study explored SBCD in the Chinese context from both the macro and micro perspectives by considering curriculum as experience.In this study, four case schools were selected in recognition of the effect of collaborative school culture on school practices and improvements and on the basis of the school culture determined from the School Culture Survey (SCS) questionnaire. The SCS questionnaire was confirmed as a reliable and valid instrument in the local context with small-(backward and forward translation and modification of wording) and large-scale pilots (Exploratory Factor Analysis) by two factors −Collaborative Leadership (CL) and Collaborative Partnership (CP). The questionnaire was then distributed to 800 school teachers in 23 primary schools in a district. As a result, four case schools were identified by analyzing the qualitative data collected from 657 recipients using one-way ANOVA and an independent t-test. To comprehensively explore the four case schools from both macro and micro perspectives with (1) directions of change of the entire school curriculum (i.e., curriculum content, assessment, and administration, as well as learning processes), (2) forms (i.e., developmental scale, theme, design, time, developers, and activity type), and (3) developmental processes (i.e., goal setting, design and mechanism, implementation, and evaluation and revision) of a school-based curriculum (SBC) within each case school, qualitative data were collected through government/school documents and by interviewing 24 school leaders/ class teachers (7, 6, 5, and 6 interviewees from Schools A, B, C, and D, respectively).The study results indicate that SBCD varies in a similar collaborative school culture (high collaborative school culture of both high CL and CP) as a new, valid, and reliable SBC instrument is developed in the Chinese context. Additionally, the Westernized SBCD is identified in such a centralized and high collaborative culture, and the case schools tended to cut loose from the SBCD confinement (which focuses on an SBC) and to implement the Westernized SBCD for all school improvements. Curriculum change forces, such as evolving curriculum strategies and the factors affecting SBCD are identified and discussed in a Chinese context. This research also contributes to the set of empirical studies on SBCD in Mainland China.The findings of this study indicate that various conceptions of the curriculum lead to different SBCD orientations; thus, it is suggested that an effective implementation of SBCD should be grounded on the framework of the curriculum as experience. Moreover, the conceptual framework of this study - to explore the school curriculum with both macro and micro perspectives - could be recommended as the conceptual framework for the thorough SBCD explorations of studies in other areas, especially in Asia where curriculum is generally regarded as content.However, the similarities and differences of SBCD among the schools cannot be explained by the cultural factor; thus, it is considered that the limited sampling (sampling in the same cultural pattern) which less cultural impact (CL & CP) limits this study. Therefore, changing selection strategies for case schools in future studies is suggested to reveal increased SBCD differentiations among schools

LG51.H43 Dr 2017eb Zengxz

https://educoll.lib.eduhk.hk/records/Q6PZ4Vku