Curriculum Reform In The Perspective Of Educational Convention

Educational convention is an important issue in the field of curriculum reform research. We can perceive that education conventions may impact the participation of teachers in the process of curriculum reform. However, little attention has been paid to the phenomenon for a long time.Firstly, definition, characteristics, development process and change rules of educational convention are discussed based on views of sociology, economics, folklore and so on. The educational convention develops in an education community through the interaction of external stimulation, educational situation and individual efforts. And it is a stable custom system of living, thinking and acting that obeyed by most members. Educational convention has characteristics of irrationality, complexity, nationality and regionality, double historic, implicit and so on. The formation of educational convention is a dynamic process from individual custom to community convention and then to individual temperament. During the process of curriculum reform, the change rules of educational convention mostly exists as: l)not all of the educational convention shifts during the reform of the curriculum system ;2) the substantial educational convention often resists the implement of the new curriculum system; and 3)the shift is inevitable between the new and the old educational conventions.Secondly, the impacts of educational convention on curriculum reform are discussed. On the one hand, educational convention canguarantee, guide, explain, forecast constraint, and expand the curriculum reform. On the other hand, educational convention impact the curriculum reform by changing the types of curriculum development, the establishment of curriculum target, the selection of curriculum culture, the constitutes of curriculum structure and the restriction of curriculum implement.Thirdly, this paper describes nine aspects of educational conventions phenomena embodied in China. They include :l)the tradition of pursuing innovation and change;2) adoration for collective ration in education brief;3)society-based and utilitarianism-oriented education values; 4) control orientation in space time and disciplinary of education environment; 5)absolutely authorities of teachers in teacher-and-student relationship; 6) the teaching contents based on the text-book and syllabus; 7) predetermine course in teaching; 8) the education evaluation mainly based on personnel selection system; and 9)centralization pattern in curriculum management.Finally, some suggestions are proposed about how to deal with the relationship between educational conventions and curriculum reform. The author suggests that the nature of curriculum reform is a process of change of educational conventions to some extent. Thus, curriculum reform should consider the context of the whole social culture, and concern existing favorable and positive educational conventions. What's more, we should try to change the existing educational conventions when they block the development of curriculum reform.