On The Value Orientation Of Contents Of Social Studies

With the advance of China's latest basic education curriculum reform, Social Studies, a brand-new course, are presently being implemented in all elementary and secondary schools. This is a comprehensive course with materials drawn from children's social living, and the aim which is to promote children's moral character and sociability development. It's the foundation of further understanding of the social studies to research the curriculum content. Textbook, which embodies the curriculum content directly, is not only the carrier of knowledge and skills, but also the carrier of social norms and values . This course show students the contents loaded with certain value orientation in the form of objectivity and neutralism. Therefore, based on the textbooks, this research chooses Moral Character and Society (Grade 3-6, totally 8 books), the compulsory education curriculum criteria experimental textbook which is published by Beijing Normal University Press as the analysis sample and sort out and analyze the implicit value orientation with the view of endeavoring to make the following questions clear: what value orientations do these textbooks embody? How to embody ? Whether these value orientations and their presentation patterns meet the requirements of social and students'development? According to this train of research thought, this paper consists of several aspects as following: Firstly, according to the definition of the core concepts such as value, value orientation, textbook are given, to do the theoretical analysis of the value orientation of curriculum content. Secondly, based on the discussion about the intrinsic characteristic of textbook, this paper illuminates that textbook is the contract of the social culture,the substance carrier of social mainstream value and effective tool for social control. In the demand of this research, an analyzing framework is built for analyzing the value orientation. Then, based on the concrete textbook, value orientation reflected from the knowledge is sorted out and calculated, which are belong to several knowledge fields such as life, history, geography, economy and legal system. Lastly, value orientation is summarized and reflected based on what has been analyzed above. Summary: The textbook conforms to international society's moral standards and our country's traditional culture basically; The textbook loading the value orientation which is approved by the country and society; The knowledge of the textbook presents the orientation of social standard; The content presents the historical characteristics, but should be renewed; The textbook presents certain tendency of"urbanization"and"adulation".Reflection: values the life, sets up the idea of peace and justice, initiating the returns of the humane spirit ; realizes the"Human Based"value orientation, encouraging the education to return to the life world, presents the human's initiative; Coordinates the relationship of the population, the resources and the environment , and sets up the concept of sustainable development ; Initiates new viewpoints on knowledge for the purpose of learner's development; Initiates the multicultural education, and realizes the harmonious coexistence of human's culture.