Decision Making in the Mathematics Curricula among the Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan
As in many other places, the mathematics curricula in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan underwent reform at the turn of the millennium, addressing the various political, social, and educational needs of these regions. These reforms were not smoo
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Abstract As in many other places, the mathematics curricula in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan underwent reform at the turn of the millennium, addressing the various political, social, and educational needs of these regions. These reforms were not smooth and resulted in many heated debates and, recently, attempts have made to adjust the mathematics curricula in response to these debates. The initiation of change, strong reactions, and adjustments by the policy makers can be better understood by looking into the decision-making system and process of curriculum development in these three educational systems. In this chapter, we shall look at decision making in the mathematics curriculum among the three educational systems from three different perspectives: how curriculum decisions are
H.P. Tam (B) · Y.-J. Lu Graduate Institute of Science Education, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan e-mail: [email protected] Y.-J. Lu e-mail: [email protected] N.-Y. Wong · C.-C. Lam Department of Curriculum and Instruction, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong N.-Y. Wong e-mail: [email protected] C.-C. Lam e-mail: [email protected] Y. Ma · L. Lu Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Faculty of Education, Northeast Normal University of China, Changchung, China Y. Ma e-mail: [email protected] L. Lu e-mail: [email protected] Y. Li, G. Lappan (eds.), Mathematics Curriculum in School Education, Advances in Mathematics Education, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-7560-2_6, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
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made in these regions; what issues they aim to tackle; and why the implementation of curriculum changes has been problematic. The historical development of the mathematics curricula in these three regions will first be portrayed. Building on this background, the general curriculum decision-making mechanism in these three regions will be delineated and implementation problems discussed. At the end of the chapter, the authors will attempt to draw lessons one can learn from these historical accounts. Keywords Mathematics curriculum · Curriculum reform · Curriculum decision making · Curriculum implementation · Education in Chinese regions
How a Curriculum Is Developed and then Implemented in the Classroom The Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan have all followed a center–periphery curriculum development system (Association for Curriculum and Instruction of Taiwan 2000; Ma 2008; Morris 1996; Morris and Adamson 2010) for a long time. Though the situation varies across systems, the school curriculum is developed by an agency in the government and then disseminated to schools for implementation at the classroom level; or a special committee is commissioned to be responsible for developing the curriculum that must then be approved before it can be made official. Under this center–periphery system, the official curriculum development agency is given the responsibility of designing a curriculum for a large number of schools. Among the three educational system
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