Editor’s Note

Guidelines of Curriculum Reform for Basic Education (Trial) issued in 2001 marks the beginning of curriculum reform of Chinese basic education in the 21^st century. To commemorate this important historical event, Global Education established a special column entitled “The Two Decades of Curriculum Reform”. In order to better meet the strategic needs of our nation, and provide better educational impetus for realizing national rejuvenation and promoting the development of each student. Experts comprehensively sorted out and explored the theoretical progress, practical experience and future challenges of China’s basic education curriculum reform in the past two decades. They also conducted discussion on the topics of curriculum policy, curriculum standards, curriculum theory, teaching material research, teaching design, school-based research, school-based curriculum development, comprehensive practical activity curriculum, cases of school curriculum development, etc.

Great Transformation, National Rejuvenation, and New Curriculum: Twenty Years’ Curriculum Reform in Historical Perspective

Prof. Zhou Yong

The Institute of Curriculum and Instruction, ECNU

Abstract: In the early period of modern China’s history, Li Hongzhang, Liang Qichao, and Cai Yuanpei successively became the leader of the curriculum reform movements, who left later generations two examples of inventing new curriculum to meet the demands of the national rejuvenation. At the beginning of the 21st century, basic education witnessed the rise of curriculum experts becoming the designer of curriculum reform. Based on the concerns of national rejuvenation and student development, curriculum experts have written a new chapter in the history of curriculum within the past twenty years. The curriculum reform is characterized as inserting two mechanisms of new curriculum development and teaching into the old examination-oriented school system.

Keywords: grand historical perspective; great transformation; national rejuvenation; new curriculum