American Social Studies Curriculum In The Context Of Standardized Testing:Dilemmas And Solutions

Since the 1980 s,driven by the American standardization movement,standardized tests have been widely used in American schools in order to test the teaching quality of various subjects in American schools and whether students’ mastery of knowledge meets the standard requirements.In the 21 st century,promoted by the educational accountability system,standardized tests of national and state levels in the United States are characterized by diverse types of tests,wide coverage of subjects and high frequency of use.The birth of standardized tests has changed the disadvantages of the traditional educational evaluation methods,such as strong subjectivity and the non-uniqueness evaluation standard.But in recent years,the improper use of standardized tests has brought a series of problems to school education,which has brought troubles to American schools’ curriculum and teaching.Under the background of the wave of standardized testing sweeping the global education,this paper takes the American social studies curriculum as the research object,the literature research method and the comparative method are mainly used,sorting out and analyzing the difficulties faced by the American social studies curriculum under the background of standardized testing,as well as various feasible paths proposed by the United States to explore solutions systematically.Through comparison,this paper finds that the humanities and social sciences in Chinese primary and secondary schools,especially the moral education curriculum,are facing similar dilemmas with the social studies curriculum in the United States.Therefore,the experience of the construction of social studies curriculum in the United States has important enlightenment value for China.This paper firstly gives an overview of the basic situation of American social studies curriculum under the background of standardized testing.It specifically defines the concept of standardized tests and its development stages in the United States.This paper briefly introduces the nature,purpose,course content and course design of American social studies curriculum.In addition,this paper also points out the inevitability of the popularization and implementation of the standardized tests of the social studies curriculum in the United States,and introduces the implementation of the standardized tests of social studies at the national and state levels in the United States.Through systematic research,this paper analyzes and elaborates the dilemmas of American social studies curriculum from three aspects:marginalization of curriculum status,fragmentation of curriculum content and superficial evaluation of curriculum,and then explores the causes behind these dilemmas.On this basis,this paper deeply studies the practice of social studies curriculum in the United States to solve the problems caused by the background of standardized testing,and systematically sorts out and refine the current choice of social studies curriculum in the United States,specifically including standardized education accountability and evaluation;improving the professional degree of social studies teachers;improving the content integrity of social studies curriculum;perfecting the evaluation of social studies in a multi-pronged way.Finally,through the introduction of the development of standardized testing of humanities and social sciences in primary and secondary schools in China,this paper points out that the humanities and social sciences in China are similar to the American social studies in terms of curriculum nature,content and curriculum design,and the two countries also face similar dilemmas in the context of standardized testing.Therefore,we can draw inspirations from the experience of the United States as follows: establishing the correct views of education quality evaluation of humanities and social sciences;developing scientific and flexible curriculum standards of humanities and social sciences;strengthening the humanities and social sciences teachers’ professionalization;establishing a more perfect evaluation system for humanities and social sciences.After the study,the author believes that this study is not perfect,and there is still a lot of room to explore the topic of the development of American social studies curriculum under the background of standardized testing.On the one hand,from the perspective of the theoretical research,the topics involved in this paper,such as curriculum integration and teachers’ professional development,can be studied in a more in-depth and detailed way.On the other hand,including this thesis,most of the existing related researches at home and abroad,mainly focused on the theoretical exploration level,in the future,on the basis of constantly enrichment of the theoretical researches,the research visions can also be gradually turned to a practical level.For example,combining with the current situation of education in China,we can put forward practical guidance and suggestions on curriculum design,textbook compilation,teaching strategies and teaching methods of humanities and social science,including moral education curriculum.