Research On Civics Curriculum Standard In American Primary And Secondary Schools

School is an important venue and way for civic education, which shoulders the task to spread mainstream values and cultivate qualified citizens. Civic education curriculum is the core carrier of civic education in schools, which offers coherent and systematic specialized guidance to adolescent students, thus it’s a direct and effective channel to spread civic knowledge and cultivate civic skills. Primary and secondary civic education in America is mainly realized through social studies, which relies on four core disciplines-civics, history, geography and economy, integrating humanistic and social science knowledge, thus it’s a set of inter-disciplinary and comprehensive learning system. Civics plays an important role to help citizens to identify basic value and principle of constitutional democracy in America as well as participate in political life responsibly, so it’s very important in social studies.Civics curriculum standards in America is an instructive stipulation to define curriculum nature, objective, content and teaching of civics, which describes stipulations about students’ performance, behavior and personal development ought to be obtained at different grades in civics field, as well as reflects expectation and hope of mainstream society to ideal citizens. Thus the currirulum is an important basis to study essential features and value orientation of civic education in American schools. As a relatively stable and normative text, the research of civics curriculum standards can effectively avoid uncertainty caused by education decentralization system and diversified course teaching, deepen the understanding of civics, one of the core curricula in American primary and secondary education, essentially master mainstream ideology spread by course, reveal legality source of civic education objective and enhance understanding about activity routines of civic education.Firstly, guided by dialectical materialism and historical materialism, the thesis adopts the methods of historical analysis, discourse analysis, theoretical analysis, hermeneutics, observation experience and comparative analysis to elaborate the historical inevitability and importance of civics curriculum standards, which sets evolution of civics in the history of American civic education curriculum as basis and history as context. Secondly, the thesis makes deconstruction and comparison between national and federal contents of civics curriculum standards, analyzes the uniformity and difference, and concludes political thought and value advocated by political system and power, namely the expectation of "ideal citizen" by mainstream society. Thirdly, through analysis about various factors during application process of curriculum standards, the thesis argues the influence of civics curriculum standards on course teaching and teaching quality assessment. Fourthly, the thesis critically reflects on enlightenment and reference of this research for ideological and political education course practice in China.Based on this thought, the thesis is divided into seven chapters and the specific contents are concluded as follows.Chapter one is introduction. Firstly, the reason, objective and significance of research on American civics curriculum standards are elaborated. Secondly, based on research demands, research status at home and abroad is reviewed, mainly from the curriculum development, basic theory, curriculum structure, curriculum practice and curriculum standards of civic education. And then the current research progress, features and shortcomings are concluded. Thirdly, the concepts of social studies, civics, curriculum standards, political culture and political socialization are defined, then the research thought, research method and innovation point of the thesis are confirmed based on that.Chapter two reviews historical development of civics in American primary and secondary school, which is developed from two clues, namely history and status change of civics course. By setting time as order, the first clue selects four most influencing time nodes of civics course development and narrates evolution process of civics curriculum from rise, difficulty to development. Before secondary education reform in the beginning of20th century, civics existed as study module such as "citizen science" and "civil government" rather than curriculum. In1916, The Social Studies in Secondary Education broke this situation and civics was identified as a formal course in primary and middle school. However, two World Wars made civics course in trouble and the failure of New Social Studies Activity in the middle of20th century made the course value in question. In1980s, the report "A Nation at Risk:The Imperative for Educational Reform" comprehensively rethinked national education and triggered education foundation activity. American federal government intervened school education and civics course began brand new change, then civics curriculum standards appeared. In the beginning of21st century, No Child Left behind Act brought new opportunity to curriculum development, which laid legal foundation for current civics course. Based on historical development of civics course, the second clue analyzes the changing process and its’ reasons of civics course status, from civic education module affiliated to history curriculum to independent course in social studies system, and from non-core course in social studies to a core course. The changes of core content and historical status of civics curriculum under different historical backgrounds reflect that civics course is an inheritance way of political culture and the curriculum cultivates citizens according to demands of mainstream political ideology as the starting point.Chapter Three reviews the legal and theoretical origins of National Standard for Civics and Government. In America, state government owns jurisdiction of primary and secondary school. The civics curriculum standard at national level derives from national intervention on education, which is the demand of national social and economic development as well as an inevitable result of course reform in basic education field, obtaining strong support of national policy and social education institutions. Due to different understandings on US federal constitution at different times, the administration authority of curriculum in primary and secondary school transits from full management by state government to national intervention. As per legal origin, formation basis of the national standard can be analyzed mainly from three aspects, U.S. federal constitution and its amendment, education regulations and case law. There are abundant thoughts and theories about civic education in America. In order to understand education objectives and core contents of curriculum standard, theoretical origin analyzes classical philosophical thoughts in Europe, citizenship theory and political socialization theory that have great influence on civics curriculum contents, all of which are rooted in special political soil. In the early years of the new nation, European traditions continued its influences on America civic education, then were combined with local education, thus localization development of education theory is as important as reference. Reviewing the issuing background, legal and theoretical origins of curriculum standard is beneficial for understanding legality and regularity origin of curriculum standard as well as education objective of civics.Chapter Four analyzes the core contents of civics curriculum standard in America. Based on introduction about main framework of curriculum standard and three basic constitutions contents, namely civic knowledge, civic skill and civic character, this chapter takes Antconc as a tool, adopts category searching, Kwic Sort in context and critical discourse analysis to analyze curriculum standards. Analysis scope involves nouns expressing civic knowledge requirements, verbs related to civic skills and modal verbs related to constitutor’s intention. Through data processing and discourse analysis, core contents of civics curriculum standard can be concluded to four parts:knowledge related to government and nation, knowledge related to constitution and constitutionalism, knowledge related to citizen as well as knowledge related to value, principle, belief and moral character. Finally, the thesis summarizes characteristics of curriculum standard from four aspects:system design, structural layout, content framework and ideology. Reviewing core contents of curriculum standard is beneficial for understanding requirement on adolescent civic education by American political system and political power as well as helpful to discriminate intrinsic requirement of core contents and ideology orientation hidden in discourse.Chapter Five analyzes civics curriculum standard in states of America. Civics curriculum standard not only puts forward instructive framework to learning content, but offers basis to formulate curriculum standard in state level. At macro level, this chapter introduces basic situation of curriculum standard such as main content, presentation way and features in50states and District of Columbia. At micro level, the chapter selects two curriculum standards as cases-civics, citizenship and citizen government in "Learning Standard about Social Sciences" of New York and civics in "History-Social Science Framework" of California, which specifically analyze core contents of state curriculum standard, concludes difference and consistency in content of civics curriculum standard. Through comparison between national and federal curriculum standard as well as curriculum standard in various states, it has been found that civics curriculum standard is formed under the guidance of content framework in National Standard for Civics and Government and based on specific regulations about curriculum standard in each state. Despite of diverse forms and large amount of curriculum standards, it has inherent uniformity in essence, which unifies in political thought and political value advocated by mainstream society in America.Chapter Six analyzes the application of civics curriculum standard, involving national standard, federal standard, textbook, discipline evaluation framework, teacher training and civic education institutions. Civics curriculum standards are researched, formulated, adopted or recognized by education department, which are publicly issuing documents used to guide civics course teaching within certain scope. It makes teaching objective and framework explicit, and offers basis for performance comparison of students and course evaluation. The function realization of curriculum standard needs subsidiary carriers such as textbook, performance evaluation framework, teachers and civic education institutions. Textbook is the specific and alive curriculum standard, and it deconstruct course framework to lucid learning units; curriculum evaluation system can reflect learning result of students and it is the feedback index of course teaching; teachers are the "spokesmen" of curriculum standard, and they are communication bridge between curriculum standard and students; civic education institutions are social resources and they have important functions in researching, developing and modifying curriculum standard, teacher trainings and students’ interaction, etc.Chapter Seven discusses enlightenment of civics curriculum standard in America on ideological and political education in Chinese schools. Based on basic situation of relevant curriculum standard of ideological and political education at elementary and secondary education stage in China, this chapter reflects on enlightenment and reference of civics curriculum standard in America on ideological and political education in China. It proposes that in order to optimize the function of civic education course, it’s necessary to be established in the actuality of social politics and economic development, follow objective development law and national demand, construct systematic curriculum combined civic knowledge, civic skill and civic character in primary school, middle school and high school, enhance cultivation of social civic education resources, perfect curriculum assesement system and attract extensive attention from all sectors of society, which is also a striving direction of curriculum reform in primary and secondary schools in China.