Study On The Value-orientation In Fundamental Education Polices In Contemporary China

Fundamental education, the solid foundation for the comprehensive nationwideeducational system, involves various policy-makings with the top priority, the highestsensitivity as well as the most powerful public influence. Policies in education are by allmeans a series of political measures and political behaviors with respect to education. Thevalue-orientation, being the core in policy-making process, is the very start as well as the finalpursuit of the making and the implementation of those polices. The research on thevalue-orientation of the polices in fundamental education in contemporary China, by utilizingthe methodology in relations to Politics, History and Ecology, aims to study the disciplines ofour national polices in fundamental education, to construct a mode of analysis from theperspective of policy-Ecology, to further analyze the genesis and the mechanism in theformation of the value-orientation in fundamental education, and thus to provide thepolicy-makers and implementers with a more practical reference in theory.The development of the fundamental education in contemporary China can be dividedinto two historical periods with eight phases attached, respectively thepre-Reform-and-Opening-up period and the post-Reform-and-Opening-up one with three andfive phases sub-attached to each. History has witnessed symbolic periods in fundamentaleducation where certain values embedded have been clearly demonstrated. In the case of thesynthesis on the descriptive expressions of the value-orientation in contemporary Chineseeducation, five genres of value-orientation including the politics-orientated values, theeconomics-orientated values, the social-orientated values, the culture-based values and theeducation-oriented values help to construct the entire value system where the politics onedominates whereas the educational one paves. Values and value-orientation vary from timeand time during which one works as the dominant value while others, the auxiliary. Accordingto previous studies, in the pre-Reform-and-Opening-up period, i.e. from the year of1949tothat of1978, all the three phases attached targeted the political value as the dominator; theyear of1978to1999after the Reform-and-Opening-up, the combination of the economic andthe political ones;1999to2020, the education-based and social-based values are emergingand will continue to take the charge.Based on the analysis of the genesis and mechanism in the formation of the educationalvalue-orientation in contemporary China, this research comes to a conclusion that thepolicy-making and implementation is a systematic process with multi-lateral factors underthe correlative influences in one way or another. The concept of Policy Ecosystem offundamental education, under this circumstance, is established. With reference to the naturalecosystem mode, the Policy Ecosystem is applied in the analysis on the policy-making andthe following implementation process, as well as in the study on the genesis and themechanism that contribute to those. As a matter of fact, different ingredients or factors withthe individual policy value-orientation, during the entire process, tend to compete and thusbalance each other, with the assistance of the competition mechanism, the selection mechanism and the balance mechanism and eventually, transform themselves into a outcomewith one dominant value and several auxiliary asides.With the research going deeper in the value philosophy of humans, the value-orientationon the policies in the fundamental education tend to demonstrate five models whichrespectively exhibit a value of certain level but meanwhile maintain the correlation andco-development. To be more specific, the education-based value reflects the value of theeducation on life evolution, serving as the meta-value; the economic one, as an instrumentalvalue, transforms the social productivity of human being; the political, social and culturalvalues, under the category of consuming values, illustrate the value of the realization insocial-life values. The correlation among all values is the essence based on which the policyecosystem operates and balances itself.Taking a retrospective view of the evolutionary process in the value-orientation on thepolicies concerning the fundamental education in contemporary China, it has well proved thatthe more stable and mature the policy ecosystem is, the more likely the trend of thevalue-orientation regarding fundamental education will return to honor the essence of theeducation process, to respect the meta-value in education, and ultimately, to reconstruct adominantly education-orientated policy-making system. This research is designed to serve thispurpose by constructing the policy-ecosystem analysis mode as the theoretical reference andsupport for the policy-making and implementation process in fundamental education incontemporary China.