The Comparative Study On The Curriculum Of Social Studies In Canadian And Chinese Elementary Schools

Since social studies was born in America in the early 20th century, various countries in the world regard it as the important way for citizen education. Especially during the global age, integrating the features of social studies can improve the development of individual of socialization and civic literacy, for this reason, each country pays great attention to this "special study" during the new curriculum reform. After the reform and opening-up policy, socialist market economy of our country is developing rapidly, in order to deal with this social rapid development and new requirements for individual citizens that put forwarded by modernization, our country started to rebuild the comprehensive social studies once missing in 1980s, and integrated and reorganized it in the basic education reform at the turn of the century, set comprehensive morality and life, moral and social studies historically, which built up new system of primary social studies of our country. Although the primary social studies promotes social development based on students morality which as the core, it shows a unique comprehensive thought of curriculum, which obtains obvious education effect, this curriculum has only developed for more than 20 years, which in the initial stage of development, there is always confusion and deficiencies during the construction. Therefore, we must make deeper discussion on this new curriculum, and draw on successful experience of developed countries to provide thoughts and reference for the primary social studies of our country.Canada is a typical multi-cultural society among various western countries, while facing with multiple heterogeneous society, Canada government chooses education as the important means to solve the problem. During more than half century’s practice, Canada is social stability and economic development, its citizen education plays a key role in structuring national identity, developing citizen attainment and participating national construction positively. The citizen education in school system is implemented through a series of social studies. Therefore, successful social studies practice of Canada can provide a certain thought for the improvement of social studies in our country. And for the development of China and Canada’s social studies, both countries come from development reference. During the evolution process, there are differences of development logic, this course may take historical mission for cultivating qualified citizens, which is to say the course development is with same goal by different ways; both countries consider social studies as a comprehensive curriculum integrated reference knowledge and skills of various humanities for citizen education, curriculum recognition is coincident. Thus, this article is considered both countries has relativity in social studies, although in the aspect of education content, and the pursuit of qualified personnel are somewhat different, however to cultivate conformed social citizens as the final target is common; compare the social studies with the same nature, which can further deepen the understanding of primary social studies in our country, summarizing deficiency in the development of primary social studies is above all, refer to the experience of the construction of Canada primary social studies, to form the future development thought of social studies in our country, promotes primary social studies to complete its-historical mission.As a course, its elements include curriculum goal, curriculum content, curriculum implementation and other aspects, for social studies in both countries are synthesizing type, teacher is the key for curriculum implementation, therefore, this paper selects curriculum objectives, curriculum content, curriculum teaching, the teachers training these four dimensions to make comparison of primary social studies in China and Canada based on combing historical evolution of the two primary social studies. On the basis of making text analysis on primary social studies of both countries at national level, compare similarities and differences of both countries by literature research and observational studies, and make deep thoughts to put forward further advice for primary social studies in our country.Comparing the targets and contents of primary school social studies of Canada to those of China, there are differences between the similarities of the two countries. Generally, the two countries start from their own values, and put emphasis on education of citizen quality; they propose target requirements which meet the demand of their own social developments in accordance with their own histories and national conditions; they put forward the target requirements of ability cultivation and development from their own education and teaching realities and emphasize on integrating and diversifying course content structure. However, China’s political system, ecological culture and education system differ from those of Canada, these differences directly reflect on the goal of social studies and specific course content. Primary social studies in our country emphasizes the the first place of emotional attitude values goal and moral education, content also focuses on the value orientation and moral significance of knowledge, generally embodies social development which take morality as the core. While the target requirements and content composition of Canadian primary social studies are emphasized as the knowledge and skills that a qualified citizen should acquire. Its cognition and skill requirements occupy more proportion in the course system, and moral education is mainly permeated in disclosing the relationship between knowledge and human life, develop the acknowledge of citizen identity on the basis of understanding, and realize national acknowledge from social participation process. In contrast, goal of citizen education in our country is more narrow, even if the course organization mode emphasizes individual standard. Therefore, in the future of primary social studies construction, we should start from the "perfect man" civic literacy, set three-dimensional object in reasonable balance horizontally, set clear analysis target to ensure the maneuverability of target implementation vertically, under the guidance of course goal, complete course content choice, build a diversified integrative curriculum structure.The differences between targets and contents of primary school social studies of Canada and those of China also lead to the difference in their main teaching modes of social studies. The teaching and learning of the social studies of neither countries admit there’s only a mode or depend on single teaching method, cramming, passive and so on, while in comparison, our country is still showing a certain degree of dependence to the traditional teaching mode, also remain authority of teachers to a large extent; Canada pays more attention on zetetic and reflective teaching mode, pay more attention to highlight the subjectivity of children in teaching. Therefore, it also reflects the differences of teaching mode function of social studies in both countries. The teaching mode in our country places emphasis on "knowledge accumulation" and "Intelligence quotient training", which advocates the teaching system; the teaching mode in Canada places emphasis on "creative activity" and "ability cultivation". The point of this paper is, the attention social studies paid is on "Human", not others. On the basis of this acknowledge, we should start with coordinating and unifying of knowledge and skills, process and methods, emotional attitude and values, based on "two objects", to construct open teaching mode of social studies.Then, it is the difference on the teaching idea between the two countries, and this, in another hand, also reflects the differences of the two countries in social class teacher training. With the development of social studies in recent years, in the mainstream of the teaching pattern of society, the teacher transfers from purely teaching knowledge to guider, supporter and cooperator, using flexible teaching organization form, also cultivating students’ independence, autonomy and creativity. Therefore, this puts forward more requirements on the professional literacy of social studies teacher. The development of social course calls for the more specialized teachers.Profession of teacher is the same goal for teacher cultivation of both countries in social studies. Based on this point, Social studies teachers training have some similarities in the development idea, training target, and teacher education curriculum settings of two countries. Our county adhere to the idea of professional and pluralistic knowledge structure, try to train excellent teachers with professional spirit and professional quality; Canada is also based on the idea of the mult-iculture and standardization to build training knowledge literacy integration of professional teachers. It is easy to find that, "professional" runs throughout the process of teacher cultivation of social studies. However, due to one-side emphasis on each core professional knowledge, it’s hard for our teacher to form wide, diverse knowledge structure; in practice training, there are deficiencies in communication between Training units and internship units, and weak supervision. These problems restrict the construction of team of primary social studies teacher in a certain degree. Therefore, on the basis of maintaining advantages of training social studies teacher for our country, refer to the experience of cultivation of Canada social studies teachers to realize higher standard of teacher profession in our country, which is one of the top tasks facing in the social studies construction and development process.In era of globalization, social studies as important carrier to cultivate qualified citizen, citizens of the world’s. While social studies has become the key point of education reform gradually, learning and refer to developed western countries is no time to delay, this is also the starting point of this paper. Through the comparison of the above dimensions of primary social studies of both countries, this paper hopes to deepen the acknowledgment of social studies as an important carrier to cultivate qualified citizens and global citizens, and find deficiency in primary social studies of our country, then provide a reference for the construction and development of China’s social studies...