Professor Smithson from the University of Wisconsin in the United States Visited ICI and Made Two Academic Reports on Huaxia Curriculum Forum

At the invitation of ICI, professor John Smithson, a member of the Center for Education and Research at the university of Wisconsin, and the director of the Survey of Enacted Curriculum(SEC), visited ICI. He made two wonderful academic reports for teachers and students on November 30^th, Dr. Xiao Sihan, the assistant director of ICI, hosted the reports, Prof. Cui Yunhuo, associate professor An Guiqing also attended the reports.

In the morning, Professor Smithson first made a report entitled “Describing Assessment Content Using the SEC Methodology and Its Value for Educators”. In the report, Professor Smithson introduced the history and current situation of SEC project in detail, he also explained the unique methodology of the project and its development. He mentioned that the SEC project’s development has gone through five stages. After introducing the five stages, he explained the SEC survey questionnaire, data collection and analysis principles. What’s more, he introduced the related training practices of SEC project, which aroused great interest of the audience.

In the afternoon, Professor Smithson gave a report entitled "Education in a post-modern society: What will education in the U.S. look like in twenty years". In this report, based on the SEC project data and Prof. Smithson’s extensive experience, he pondered and looked forward to the future direction of American education. He pointed out that cultural diversity and technological developments have posed tremendous challenges to school curriculum and education, and one efficient way to conquer these challenges is “story-based curriculum”, which means melting knowledges, social situation and personal experience into stories, so that students can learn by understanding, promoting and telling these stories.