Comparative Study Of The Sino-us Geography Curriculum Standards

As the one of the results of China's geography education reform, Geography Standards has been published. The Standards make great improvement based on the historical experience. However, the Standards need to be updated since they are in the experimental stage. America has established a set of advanced geography education systems on goals, instruction, implementation since 1990s, American experiences may give some enlightenments to the improvement of China' s geography standards for high school. Based on the documents, charts and data, the paper expounds the evolution and historical role of Sino-US Geography Syllabus from the point of historical process, thus pointing out that the necessity of the drafting of national geography standards for both countries so as to cope with the new challenges. After comprehensive comparison between the two Standards, some differences are found as follows: Firstly, on the nature of the geography curriculum, China places emphasis on the integration of human and physical geography while America attaches importance to the formation of spatial thinking. Secondly, the content of China's Standards shows a hierarchic structure with a gradually deepening knowledge compared with that of the spiral ascending under the same themes. Thirdly, America applies multi-means and index to the assessment of geography standards while China seems a little monotonous. So, the drafting of geography standards should absorb experience not only in a vertical point, but also in an horizontal dimension. Finally, some issues on the content, development, implementation and assessment for geography curriculum have been further discussed in hopes of some valuable references can be contributed to the reform of the geography curriculum.