ICI Student Cultivation║Two Dissertations of ICIers Were Awarded as “Excellent Dissertation of East China Normal University”

Recently, the Graduate School of East China Normal University officially announced the list of “Excellent Dissertation of East China Normal University in 2020-2021 School Year”. A doctoral dissertation and a master’s dissertation of ICIers were selected.

Excellent Doctoral Dissertation

The Rise and Evolution of Gongfu Curriculum in the Ming Dynasty

Zhang Zhen

Supervisor: Liu Lianghua

ICI

“Conducting small-scaled curriculum and doing in-depth Gongfu” is a well-known saying to curriculum scholars. However, we may pay more attention to “Gongfu”, which is the key discourse of Chinese classical moral education curriculum. In fact, behind the word “Gongfu”, there is a set of curriculum wisdom of moral education with Chinese style. And “doing Gongfu” is the moral education topic stressed by Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism.

Under this background, Zhang’s dissertation sums up the Gongfu discourse in the context of Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist moral education, it can be found that the path, guidance and practice of Gongfu are the three basic dimensions of the curriculum wisdom of Chineses classical moral education derived from the core of Gongfu, corresponding to the concept of modern education in the curriculum, teaching and learning, similar but not the same.

The research found that although the debate on Gongfu curriculum in the 15th and 16th centuries had concrete differences in the three dimensions of Gongfu Path, Gongfu Guidance and Gongfu Practice, but there are two basic educational paradigms: Autonomy Paradigm and Dependence Paradigm. The “debate between knowing and doing” reflects the debate between the Independent Curriculum Paradigm and the Dependent Curriculum Paradigm, and the “debate between Dun and Jian” reflects the debate between the Independent Teaching Paradigm and the Dependent Teaching Paradigm. The debate of “Wu and Xiu” reflects the debate between Independent Learning Paradigm and Dependent Learning Paradigm. Although the debate on education in the Ming Dynasty 500 years ago inevitably had its time limitation, the debate on the Educational Paradigm contained in it between independence and dependence had the quality of curriculum philosophy that transcended the Times, it is helpful to trace back to the curriculum wisdom of classical moral education, and to enlighten the current curriculum and teaching reform.

Excellent Master’s Dissertation

A Design-Based Study of Argumentation in a Middle School Science Classroom in Shanghai

Zhu Minghui

Supervisor: Xiao Sihan

ICI

Zhu’s dissertation mainly explored the argument-oriented teaching in science classrooms in China, she revealed the process and mechanism of interaction between teachers and students in argumentation. This design-based research showed that the argumentative interaction between teachers and students can be classified into two levels: participation style and discourse strategy.

According to the results, this study suggested that teacher showed a lot of wisdom in organizing argumentation, students were more able to open the discourse boundary in argumentation, and the contexts in design teaching provided students with a broad and standardized argumentation space. This study suggested that teachers’ understandings of argumentation should be further deepened, and students’ discourse diversity should be accommodated. Also, teachers should be supported by argumentation curriculum design in the future.