Inquiry—Analysis On Curriculum Action—Research

Curriculum research is a key problem in the study of education science, but which lays behind relatively in China for a long time, Generally, the research stresses particularly on theories in curriculum, lack of scientific analysis. Many Curriculum researchers wouldn抰 like to go out to do scientific experiments but enjoy doing philosophical inquiry in thinking way, which leads to the curriculum designed short of practical foundations. Above all, our curriculum梤esearch lack methodological researches and couldn抰 provide methodological guides that could be used for reference by the teachers who want to do the researches. For the more, our curriculum-research (includingcurriculumdevelopmentanddesign) alwaysbedonebycurriculumdevelopment and design) always be done by curriculum scholars and policy-makers, which generally have little relations with the teachers in practice. Curriculum action research is a form of systematical and self梤eflective scientific inquiry that in order to improve curriculum practice by practitioners. It stresses the importance of the practitioners, teachers and students in curriculum research. It not only views practitioners as the contributors of curriculum knowledge, but also views them as producers of knowledge.As a practical, technological and critical梤eflective procedure, the purpose of curriculum action research is to improve practitioners to understand incidents, situations and problems, to resolve the inuediate, pressing curriculum problems they encountered, and to increase the validity of their practices. Curriculum action research contributes to the in~rovement of the problematic situations, as a hermeneutics form or critical inquiry, which concentrates one on understanding curriculum problems. For the above梞entioned important points of curriculum action research, the paper detailedly discusses and analyses the implications, philosophical and historical backgrounds, procedures and approaches of curriculum action research in China. according to our present situation in curriculum research, the purpose above which is to providing experiences and guidance of the methodology for our curriculum research and development. This paper consists of four parts: The first part begins with the definitions of 揳ction research?by many foreign researchers, sets forth the inpl ications, features and functions of curriculum action research, sunwnarizes the meaning of the paper, which is a problem-resolving form, in which, the curriculum梚mplementing teachers based on the needs of solving the specific problems in the practical teaching and curriculum, collaborating with curriculum iii special ists, scholars and teacher groups, developing the problems into research plans or subjects, collecting data with many research梞ethods, researching systematically on critical梤eflective base. Following that, the paper elaborates the four features of curriculum action research: 搕eacher as researcher? collaborating, natural ism and practice, field research and qualitative methodology. By discussing, the paper surrxnarizes the functions of this research form: upgrade the capability of the research梥ubjects, raise the quality of curriculum practice and improve the methodological research of curriculum. The second part traces and analyses the philosophical and historical backgrounds of curriculum action research. In view of the paper, which is education science movement, educational th...