Wenping Zhao

School of Vocational Education, Tianjin University of Technology and Education, Tianjin

Abstract

Since the beginning of the new century, the curriculum reform in the secondary vocational schools in China has achieved the following accomplishments: the deepening and breakthrough on essence of curriculum, paying more attention to the construction of the curriculum standards, establishing a comprehensive employment-oriented vocational ability curriculum objectives, taking working process as the logic of curriculum content organization, forming a diversified curriculum development model, formulating policies to promote quality of curriculum. However, there are still some problems to be solved: urgent attention needed by the intrinsic value of curriculum objective, course content lagging behind production technology, curriculum structure system to be constantly optimized, unprepared teachers in curium implementation, enterprises’ participation in curriculum to be deeply developed, and insufficient attention being paid to curriculum evaluation. The trends of the secondary vocational education curriculum reform are: to formulate curriculum standards contacting national vocation standards, to adhered to the integral moral of the curium objective, to build a complete system of curriculum, to optimize the curriculum implementation conditions, to highlight the professional course characteristics through school-based curriculum development, and to improve the curriculum quality appraisal mechanism.

Key words: secondary vocation education; curriculum reform; curriculum nature; curriculum structure; curriculum quality

Since the beginning of new century, the curriculum reform of the secondary vocational schools in China has also been in process in the big context of promoting the national vocational education reform constantly. Currently, there are a series of issues of the epoch challenging the curriculum of the secondary vocational schools in China such as the adjustment and promotion of industrial structure, the transition from a big country to a strong country in manufacturing industry, and the construction of the modern vocational education system. At the critical period in history, it is necessary to comprehensively comb the achievements and challenges of the curriculum of the secondary vocational schools in China since the beginning of new century, which can navigate for the curriculum reform of the secondary vocational schools in China.

1  Achievements of the Curriculum Reform of the Secondary Vocational Education

1.1  Deepening and Breakthrough of the Essence of Curriculum

The view of curriculum essence is the basic logic of all curriculum reform activities. The understanding for the essence of vocational education curriculum is gradually enriched and deepened in practice. A scholar has pointed out, “At present, the vocational education curriculum of our country is in the midst of an important transformational stage of curriculum model—from the conventional discipline-based curriculum pattern to the current task-oriented curriculum (project curriculum) pattern ”.Substantially, this reflects the change and transformation of the curriculum essence outlook in the secondary vocational education. It is increasingly deep and multivariate on understanding the curriculum essence of the secondary vocational school nowadays. In other words, the cognition of curriculum essence is changing from the traditional curriculum view such as emphasizing the theory and knowledge, underestimating practice and skills to the new curriculum view such as stressing on competency-based, work-in-progress, and practice-oriented. The cognition also reached beyond the past curriculum essence view of single subject (academic) system. Besides, the key feature of the cognition is that the curriculum in the secondary vocational schools is described as the working-process of an occupation, highlighting the practical attributes and the ability to complete a task or work. In the field of curriculum practice, it attaches great importance to the intimate link among curriculum, industry, enterprise, and work. Moreover, the curriculum is organized according to the working logic and implemented by the principle of the workflow, integrating the latest technology into the curriculum. These fully manifest the deepening and breakthrough of the view of curriculum essence.

1.2  The Construction of Curriculum Standards Being Valued and Established Gradually

In recent years, people gradually realized the significance of the construction and implementation of curriculum standards in curriculum reform of the secondary vocational schools. “The Action Plan of Reform and Innovation of the Secondary Vocational Education (2010–2012)” stipulates explicitly developing the professional syllabus of the core curriculum and five hundred professional curriculum standards (syllabus) on the basis of the new professional teaching-guided program, which takes the national industry rejuvenation, strategic emerging industry, modern agriculture, modern service industry and national characteristic industry as its serving target. By 2008, the Ministry of Education had organized experts in all areas and developed eighty- two professional teaching-guided plans for the key majors and syllabus for four moral education subjects, twenty-three types of basic courses, and the public basic courses of the engineering class, which jointly services technical secondary schools, vocational high schools and adult technical secondary schools, integrating the resources of secondary vocational education effectively. So far, nearly fifty professional curriculum standards have been developed in shanghai, and the curriculums of basic courses such as Chinese, mathematics, moral education, sports and health have been developed in Dalian. Additionally, Henan province has developed the professional curriculum standard of automobile application and maintenance of the secondary vocational school which was led by the provincial industrial school of science and technology with the organization arrangement of Henan provincial department of education, which provides an important basis for the teaching reform of the automobile major within Henan province, the promotion of teaching quality of automobile major, and the cultivation of the professionals of the automobile major. The general office of the Ministry of Education announced the first batch curriculum standards “The Professional Instruction Standards of the Secondary Vocational School (trial)”in May, 2014, which involves ninety-five professional instruction standards of fourteen majors as the basic documents for developing the professional teaching, pinpointing the training objectives and education specification, standardizing the teaching management, strengthening the specialty construction, and developing teaching and learning resources. With the formulation and enforcement of the document, it will facilitate the curriculum reform of the secondary vocational school.

1.3  Establishing Comprehensive Employment-Oriented Vocational Ability Curriculum Objectives

“Employment-Oriented” has become the foothold and starting point of curriculum objectives of the secondary vocational schools. It aims to develop the comprehensive professional ability and form the capability structure integrating professional ability, methodology ability, and social ability according to an overall consideration for the need of students, society and occupation. At the same time, the curriculum should also cultivate professional, theoretical knowledge and operating skills, especially emphasize on the literacy cultivation required by the professional ethics, cooperation spirit, team spirit, environmental consciousness, healthy psychology and courteous behavior, etc. For instance, among the provincial curriculum reform, Zhejiang Province put forward the proposition to speed up building the new curriculum model of the secondary vocational schools—“public courses+ core courses+ teaching programs” in 2008. The proposition establishes the cultivation of core skills as the main aim of curriculum reform, the development of core curriculum as the main body of the construction of textbooks, and the teaching project design as the key reforming approach of curriculum reform. The public curriculums focus on fundamentality, applicability, expansibility, serving for subsequent teaching of the professional curriculum and students’ lifelong development. The core curriculums center on cultivating the practical ability and operating ability. In principle, about five kinds of core skills and five to eight core courses are set for each major. The teaching projects strive for the service of connecting professional teaching and working tasks. Seventy to one hundred“teaching programs” are designed for each major respectively. The new curriculum model highlights the employability of students.

1.4  Taking Working Process as the Logic of Curriculum Content Organization

Should the selection of curriculum contents in secondary vocational education be based on discipline system or working process? Should the organization of curriculum contents in secondary vocational education be based on text-centered logic or action-centered logic? At present, the selection and organization of curriculum contexts in secondary vocational education is shifting from a discipline system to a practice-dominated system which takes actual production practice as logic and actual working process as reference. Besides, they are assuming a new tendency that determine and analyze curriculum contents in secondary vocational education from multi-perspective such as work knowledge, working process, technical knowledge, vocational standards, vocational knowledge and industries and enterprises. Typically, the adapting from German learning field curriculum extracts working tasks from production process or position in enterprises and transforms them into teaching contents with learning value and forms oriented by working process. For example, content reform of literacy curriculum emphasizes on employment- orientated serving professional curriculums. The reform includes the transformation of Chinese to Cooking Chinese in cuisine specialty of some secondary vocational education and Chinese to Applied Chinese after adding new professional elements in some vocational education schools. Moreover, the curriculum structure changed from being syllogistic to being diverse such as broad-base flexible-module curriculum structure, learning field curriculum structure and ladder curriculum structure. For instance, some secondary vocation education schools constructed a curriculum system of “public basic courses+ professional core courses+ expand courses + substituted post exercitation”, which set typical occupational activities as professional core curriculum, designs curriculum system according to working process in enterprises and integrates theoretical courses with practical courses with the guide of working task.

1.5  Forming a Diversified Curriculum Development Model

On one hand, the advanced foreign theory of curriculum development will continue to be introduced such as the introduction of curriculum development model of systematic working process from Germany. One the other hand, the indigenous curriculum development model should be gradually explored such as the exploration of project curriculum model. Some researchers put forward that A variety of modularized curriculum development models have formed in China, such as learning theory-oriented curriculum development model, comprehensive ability-oriented curriculum development model, working process oriented curriculum development model, practice-oriented curriculum development model and working task curriculum development model 2. These curriculum models try to break through the three-part structure (basic courses, professional theory courses and professional practice courses) and emphasize on integration of theory and practice, fusion of work and study and combination of action and academics, and form a diversified curriculum models. There are some common characteristics of these curriculum models which include professional position ability-based cultivating objectives and assessment standards, ability-centered guiding ideology and application of curriculum development approach such as DACUM and others in varying degrees.

1.6  Formulating Policies to Promote the Curriculum Quality

Both central and local governments have formulated relevant curriculum policies to promote the curriculum reform and ensure the curriculum quality. In 2002, the National Vo-cational Education Conference and the document named Decisions of State Council to Pro-mote the Reform and Development of Vocational Education Vigorously clearly put forward that “reforms of curriculums and textbooks should be pushed forward actively, and curricu-lums and textbooks with vocational education characteristics which reflects new knowledge and new technology and new methodologies should be developed and compiled”. In 2010, Innovation Action Plans of Secondary Vocational Education Reform（2010–2012）issued by Ministry of Education clearly put forward again “to push on the curriculum reform, and curriculums in secondary vocational education ought to aim for the improvement of students’ comprehensive vocational ability and service for lifelong development, adjoin the practical working process at post, link up with professional standards, update curriculum contents, adjust curriculum structure, innovate teaching ways, build the curriculum system meeting the need of economic and social development, and promote students’ overall development.”

2  Challenges for Secondary Vocational Curriculum Reform

Vocational curriculum reform achieved a lot, but still faces some urgent problems.

2.1  The Intrinsic Value of the Curriculum Objectives Required to be Focused on

Since the beginning of new century, China has vigorously carried out industrial restructuring and upgrading—promoting the industrial transformations from labor-intensive to technology-intensive, from low-end products to high-end products. These changes will inevitably bring new jobs, new employment direction, and also put forward new demands on workers — enterprise’s work type is changing from single type to compound type, the boundary between mental labor and physical labor is becoming increasingly blurred. Therefore, the need for a large number of high-quality skilled talents and competitive graduates with the ability to adapt to job changes is becoming increasingly urgent. This shows an urgent need to focus on the intrinsic value of vocational curriculum objectives. Although it is a breakthrough to focus on the value of professional practice instead of knowledge, it still belongs to the external value of the curriculum. Further attention is needed to the intrinsic value, such as the occupation emotion, professional spirit, professional attitude, and professional cultural connotation. The phenomenon “be able to operate, but not willing to cooperate” and “be skilful, but not self-cultivated” is actually the appeal for the intrinsic value of curriculum development. At present, the important issues in secondary vocational curriculum are how to arouse the curiosity of students, how to develop personal wisdom and creativity and how to enable students to improve their own personality and realize the value of life during their careers? This is essentially a summon for the curriculum model of intrinsic value of the development of personality.

2.2  Curriculum Content Lagging Behind Technology

According to my investigate and survey in vocational schools, there are still some problems in curriculum content, especially, failing to update to adapt to the rapid development of science and technology and social development, though many schools use state-compiled textbook, and some new contents have also been added in the process of teaching. It is suggested from the companies that curriculum content in school lags behind technology and knowledge in practice, and curriculum content can not timely catch up with the changes in the new technologies, new processes, new equipment, new standards, and new norms; the skills learned can not meet the market demand. Many graduates complain that what they have learned in school is difficult to be applied in society, and technology, process learned in school lag behind enterprise production. Teaching materials lag in updating expertise because it forms a long cycle from the preparation, publication to the use. So, how to update teaching materials is a normergic question.

2.3  The Curriculum Structure System still Needs to be Optimized

The relationship between the various categories of courses in vocational school needs to be optimized the system. First, whether the whole structure of the curriculum can meet the needs of talent cultivation, which is essentially the relationship between curriculum structure and the targets of talent cultivation. Second, basic courses are not related to professional courses, and students lack interest in basic courses. Third, how to achieve the organic integration of theoretical courses and practical courses is a question.Fourth, how to achieve the integration of campus courses and off-campus practice is also a question. Fifth, what is the way to achieve the balance between plane development and dynamic development? That is how to build the curriculum system according to students’ cognitive rules and the typical tasks appropriate for development stage. In short, vocational curriculum system faces the following challenges: How to meet the needs of employment, further education and professional growth? How to integrate basic courses, moral courses, vocational basic courses, vocational skills, professional development, and other qualities? How to integrate discipline curriculum, skills training curriculum, project curriculum, and comprehensive curriculum?

2.4  Inadequate Preparations of Teachers in Curriculum Implementation

Although the curriculum concept is very advanced, and curriculum development is growing vigorously, the effect of curriculum implementation is beyond satisfaction. The problems are as following: the curriculum implementation is in a single approach; the amount of practice and experiment is small; theory, teaching method and explanation are valued while practice, learning method and training are despised; teaching methods is single, rigid, and lack of novelty; the practical ability of students is not properly trained because of the neglecting of practice as characteristics of vocational education. These problems are closely related to inadequate preparations of teachers in curriculum implementation. The author has investigated and found that technical process properties are to be integrated into vocational curriculum implementation capacity.3For example, vocational teacher attach attention to comprehensive vocational ability development of students in curriculum implementation, but do not understand the qualifications of new technology; the curriculum content is not properly updated with the production; new teaching methods are experimented, but not used adeptly. It is an urgent problem to enhance the curriculum implementation capacity of vocational teachers, because curriculum reform will not be successful without the deep involvement of teacher.

2.5  Enterprises’ Participation in Curriculum Reform Required to be Deepened

Currently, we have realized the importance of enterprises’ participation in curriculum development, and the mechanism is to be formed in some places; teaching materials adapt to new industries are researched and developed, so are newer and extend supplementary teaching-aided materials. However, the vast majority of industries and enterprises’ enthusiasm to participate in curriculum development is not high. Even some companies involved in vocational curriculum development, and owned the advanced technical information, but it is difficult to transform the need of enterprises into specific courses abiding the law of learning because of the lack of theory and skill of curriculum development. Therefore, on the one hand, enterprises are not satisfied with the adaptability of school curriculum; on the other hand enterprises have no effective measures to develop new curriculum, which is an embarrassment. This decrease the enthusiasm of enterprises’ participation in vocational curriculum development, and it is difficult for them to cooperate deeply in curriculum development. For enterprises, how to participate in curriculum development is a major problem.

2.6  Insufficient Attention to Evaluation of the Quality of Curriculum

There is a phenomenon in the vocational curriculum, i.e. emphasizing on curriculum development and lighting curriculum quality evaluation. As some scholars have criticized“Vocational schools are engaged in the development of the new courses, but lack overall consideration or plan of the assessment and arrangements of these courses. The whole curriculum development process lacks overall reflection.” Curriculum evaluation is not only for student learning evaluation, but in reality people tend to narrowing curriculum evaluation as student evaluation. Curriculum evaluation is a diagnosis of the course itself. How to properly evaluate the development of the curriculum? Who will diagnose the curriculum? Do enterprises satisfy with the course? Curriculum quality evaluation criteria are not yet formed. These problems have not been paid full attention. “How to diagnose curriculum design and implementation issues at any time to ensure the smooth progress of the reform of vocational education curriculum is currently an important topic of vocational education.”

3  The Trend of Secondary Vocational Education Curriculum Reform 3.1  Developing Curriculum Standards According to National Professional Standards

Curriculum standard construction will become a long-term work of the secondary vocational school curriculum reform. In order to meet the needs of the job, we need to develop the curriculum standards that are relative to the national vocational standards. Courses on vocational core skills and courses on professionals belong to the country’s dominated courses, whose standards should be developed by the central government. For those professional curriculum with industry characteristics, regional characteristics and the school characteristics, their curriculum standards can be formulated by the industry, local government and school according to the requirements of posts, talents, professional qualification, etc. Adequate consideration should be given to the particularity of secondary vocational school curriculum and the difference between secondary vocational curriculum standard, the general education curriculum standard, and higher vocational curriculum standard, to construct curriculum standards in line with the characteristics of secondary vocational school. The subjects of the development of curriculum standards should be diversified, not only teachers and educational administrative departments should join in it, but industry personnel, technicians of enterprises, students and curriculum experts should be involved.

3.2  Objectives of Secondary Vocational School Curriculum — The Whole Personality

The whole personality includes knowledge, skills, attitudes and other literacy in the whole career. As some researchers argued “The current orientation of secondary vocational education curriculum target should be to cultivate and improve students’ vocational literacy, promote student full personality. The vocational literacy refers to the sum of a person’ special occupation literacy and general literacy, including professional knowledge, professional ability, vocational adjustment, career development and occupational emotions, attitudes, values, and other aspects of quality and literacy, which penetrates the internal and external perception of people behavior covering human knowledge, emotion, sense in the whole psychological structure.” As for capacity, it should be based on a variety of capacities in sound personality. Vocational education takes a technical or vocational post’s (post groups’) professional capacity for its purpose, so the development of curriculum objectives should be based on the appropriate level of capacity of national professional standards. It requires accurate positioning to certain positions and theoretical knowledge to implement targeted training of personnel. The development of vocational education curriculum goals should also take into account students’ ability to learn, to adapt society and to start business , and entrepreneurship skills, emotions, attitudes and values. We should make full use of social resources and human resources of industries and enterprises, and actively promote school-enterprise cooperation. Industry experts and technical personnel of enterprises should be deeply involved in the process of personnel training. They should give specific guidance for industry business research, job task analysis, professional competence, curriculum program development, curriculum standards and project development of teaching materials and curriculum implementation and evaluation.

3.3  Building a Complete Curriculum structure

To establish “professional-competence-targeted” vocational curriculum structure system, take professional competence as the basis, and integrate knowledge, skills, emotions, attitudes and other elements of the practitioners organically to form a complete, three-dimensional curriculum architecture is the job to be finished. Therefore, based on the need for a comprehensive vocational ability, we need both emphasize the development of professional core competencies, but also focus on training key capabilities. Course content should be directed to the integration direction. First, the integration of theory and practice. We need to develop comprehensive training programs covering basic knowledge, individual skills and post-production skills. Second, the formation of a modular, flexible curriculum system to adapt to the changing needs on the technical specifications of skilled personnel. Third, humanities education throughout the vocational curriculum, such as the trend to build course architecture according to the stage of professional development.For example, the curriculum framework of Vehicle Use and Maintenance in Guangzhou Advanced Technical School is: career awareness phase courses (mainly for public infrastructure programs and professional foundation courses), professional development Phase curriculum (mainly professional core curriculum), and professional practice stage courses (mainly for the expansion of programs and internships).

3.4  Optimizing the Curriculum Implementation Conditions

How to implement the developed curriculum effectively is about the topic of Curriculum implementation. Curriculum implementation conditions includes teacher training, training base, cultural atmosphere. To enhance teachers’ capacity to implement the curriculum, not only require teachers to have a higher level of professional theoretical knowledge, but also a strong practical ability and wealth of practical knowledge and vocational skills. Therefore, plans are required to send teachers to participate in practical training to understand the career trends and the latest production technology. Teaching place will transform from traditional single function academic classroom to the multi-functional integrated production of teaching base, which combines theoretical teaching, group discussions, and practical operation. Also we need to supply the relevant equipment and teaching resources, such as business-related information, technical support library, simulation software and other resources.

3.5  Highlighting the Professional Course through School-based Curriculum Development

Some courses lags behind the current new trends. Basic courses has little relation with professional learning. Different schools’ professional courses are identical, which does not reflect the university’s location and characteristics. How to make the professional courses serve local social and economic development in rural areas and Ethnic Areas is a problem. These are the problems of the vocational school curriculum must face and resolve. According to research, the Author summarized the following four strategies of the vocational school-based curriculum development. First, the cultural strategy. Culture based curriculum development is the starting point. Such as the car culture and automotive specialty-based curriculum development, national culture and national technology-based curriculum design and development, specializing in marine culture and marine-based curriculum development. A vocational school in Shaoxing relys on local culture tourism explored the culture of Lu Xun. Second, the advantage strategy. It focuses on the discovery and use of the advantages of resources to develop school-based curriculum. Advantages such as famous teachers, masters, skills competition winners. Third, career strategy. Relying on professional standards, vocational schools develop school-based curriculum with new dynamic in a career as a breakthrough. Some schools develop curriculum to meet the demand for occupational needs. Fourth, the service strategy. Cultural foundation courses serve for professional courses to enhance the adaptability and cultural foundation courses.

3.6  Forming the Proper Curriculum Quality Appraisal Mechanism

How to guarantee the quality of vocational courses and how to access the curriculum is answered by the quality of curriculum evaluation mechanisms. Perfect quality standard system of vocational education curriculum development plays a crucial role. Australia formed the curriculum standards, curriculum design, certification and registration standards, curriculum standards for implementation of vocational education programs.Quality Standard System forms a sound quality for the course evaluation mechanisms. The following questions are to be clarified. First, who evaluate. Not only schools but also businesses and employer should join in the evaluation of vocational courses. Course Quality Evaluation may be organized by the industry. For example, in the German “dual system” students’ graduate qualifications are recognized by the German Industry Association. Second, how to evaluate. There is an urgent need to develop vocational curriculum quality evaluation criteria. Experience abroad is rationality of curriculum is measured by the industry standard, which differs from the Professional Teaching Standards. Third, what to evaluate. The content of vocational curriculum quality evaluation should be complete. It not only includes evaluation on students’ learning, but also evaluation of the course objectives, curriculum content, curriculum implementation, and curriculum effectiveness.

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