A Study Of Practical Curriculum Theory

Human beings are the becoming of education and curriculum is the core of education.From this point,human beings are also the becoming of curriculum.In the school environment,the growth and development of the teachers and students result from curriculum which has close relation with the teachers and students' happiness and future.In order to raise qualified products,well-developed curriculum is needed.All malpractices should be eliminated so that problems in raising qualified products can be overcome.Qualified curriculum is important so as to prepare the students with happy life.Teachers are the owners instead of the slaves of the curriculum which shows the caring of the teachers.The Human-oriented concept should be not only the final goal of the curriculum theory but also the starting-point and the destination of the curriculum research.The theory of practical curriculum is just the human-oriented curriculum.The human beings' growth and development is coming into being in the practical activity.The integration of truth,virtue and beauty is the highest ideal degree which is not only the basic requirement but also the product of the practice.The human-oriented curriculum theory should take practice as its base and also regard truth,virtue and beauty as its value orientation.This kind of curriculum philosophy is just the theory of practical curriculum.The object of this study is curriculum philosophy which is also the basic problem of the curriculum's philosophy.The basic spirit of practical curriculum theory is taking practice as its basement,taking human-oriented concept and integrating truth,virtue and beauty,which is also the basis of argument to reflect the problems existing in the Chinese curriculum and to construct new curriculum philosophy.In this study,the philosophical basement of curriculum is not the philosophy on the general sense but Marxism philosophy.After the 80th in the 20 century,new form has evolved from Marxism philosophy in China.It is the necessary requirement of making curriculum philosophy advance with the times to take the practical philosophy as the curriculum's philosophical basement.The combination of practical philosophy and curriculum theory is just the practical theory of curriculum.Practical curriculum has existed long before in the curriculum theory.It is often regarded as the opposite to the theoretical curriculum and regarded as some kind of curriculum type and structure.From this point of view,practical theory is something about the concrete problems in curriculum instead of the one about the theoretical basement.The difference seems to lie in the "theory" to take practical curriculum as the philosophical basement of curriculum.In fact,it was the difference that shows the spirit of curriculum philosophy of the practical curriculum.It points out that it is the theory about philosophy in the field of curriculum.The contents of this study include four parts which are practical curriculum's ontology,epistemology,axiology and aesthetics.The value orientation of truth,virtue and beauty lies in the philosophic basis of the above "four theories".The main contents of practical curriculum will be shown in front of people by opening up the "four theories".As for the routine of the study,the first step is to reflect the philosophical basement of curriculum from the times' characteristics so as to find out the basis of argument and put out the point of taking practical curriculum as the philosophical basement of curriculum.The second step is to disclose the abundant contents of curriculum and philosophy from four angles:ontology,epistemology,axiology and aesthetics and simultaneously prove that practical curriculum is just the philosophical basement of curriculum according to the logic that truth,virtue and beauty are improved progressively and unified mutually.The final step is to verify the idea of practical curriculum according to the author's t experiment of school-based curriculum reform to show its value.The main contents of the study are the followings:The dissertation consists of five parts.First part,introduction,deals with such problems as what is practical curriculum,its theoretical basement and essence of practice viewpoint and so on.The difficulty lies in new definition of the well-known conceptions such as practice and practical curriculum so as to add the spirit and characteristics of the times to it.The second part,ontology of practical curriculum,deals with such a problem as what is curriculum from essence theory and foundationalism.From some aspects such as methodology analysis and philosophic basis of curriculum,it attempts to explain the reason why it is important to disclose the essence of curriculum from the dimension of the integration of truth,virtue and beauty:As a result,foundation is prepared for epistemology,axiology and aesthetics of curriculum.The third part is about epistemology of practical curriculum.Its structure is divided into five parts which are essentialism,epistemology,process theory,dynamics of recognition development and river theory of recognition.It aims at disclosing the special performance of the relation between practice and cognition,explaining how curriculum develops in the conflict of practice and cognition and how we know and grasp the problems of curriculum in practice.In one word,it deals with how to understand problems in curriculum and find out the methods of seeking truth.The fourth part is axiology of practical curriculum.It studies the meaning of the curriculum world based on practical axiology.It solves problems about how to seek virtue and explains about essence,characteristics,orientation and evaluation of curriculum.The fifth part is bout aesthetics of practical Curriculum.It is to grasp the curriculum world in the way of aesthetics.The purpose is to tell how to seek beauty in curriculum and attempts to found out the solid basis of aesthetics in curriculum.And also aims at disclosing the value and meaning of curriculum aesthetics in the process of studying, and teaching beauty.The study is carried out in the author's working unit.In this way,it is easier to combine the study and practice,to find out and put forward problems in work,to sum up and accumulate experience in study,and to test the hypothesis and curriculum construction.The process and output are recorded in appendix.The curriculum experiment has involved the whole college,got obvious effect and produced good influence in such a college as the same kind of ours.Great efforts have made to do the experiment and work on dissertation.School-centered curriculum experiment is also the characteristics of this study.The main meaning of this study lies in the following:Firstly,it aims at enriching the philosophical basement of curriculum.This study takes not only epistemology but also ontology,axiology and aesthetics as the philosophical basement of curriculum,breaks out the traditional philosophical form used in the teaching materials and choosing practical philosophy,bases curriculum philosophy on the basement of integration of truth,virtue and beauty.Secondly,it attempts to find out new methodology of curriculum study.That is,to use practical thinking in the research of the curriculum history,essence and problems. This kind of thinking way tries to show the following:first of all,practical curriculum is a kind of theory which is about the human-cultivating.It is a human-oriented curriculum viewpoint,serving for students,for teachers,and human-centered;the second,it is a kind of curriculum theory which shows the integration of truth,virtue and beauty.Its orientation is to build harmonious curriculum,by seeking truth,virtue and beauty.Although its studying object is curriculum philosophy which focuses on theory of curriculum field and can not be used directly in the curriculum practice,it also has some practical meaning.The first,it can strengthen the basement of curriculum because practical curriculum discloses the integration of truth,virtue and beauty as well as the relation between curriculum and philosophy.Therefore,it is useful for curriculum to grow and develop.In addition,it is helpful to improve or change people's ideas about curriculum.For example,ontology of curriculum theory tries to show that although specific object in curriculum theory has existed for several hundred years,essence of curriculum is sung like a symphony because of differences of the times and thinking ways.It is also helpful for people to grasp the varieties of curriculum forms in practice and the conflicts of all kinds of schools.In brief,practical meanings of methodology are rich in epistemology,axiology and aesthetics.