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Connecting to the International Track (II): The New Curriculum Reform in China

The first issue (July–August 2011, vol. 44, no. 4) of this special collection offered macrolevel analyses on the social historical context in which the new curriculum reform took place, as well as the theoretical debates surrounding it. This issue continues the discussion with an emphasis on the implementation of the new curriculum at the school level in urban and rural settings. In the urban setting, the gaps between belief and action and between policy and practice reappear in Li, Wang, and Wong’s study on literacy teaching in Shenzhen kindergartens. The authors suspect that these discrepancies reveal the incompatibility between the imported Western educational ideas and the traditional Chinese values. Alternatively, Fang’s research provides a meticulous description of one school day of a middle school teacher in Shanghai. Fang’s findings echo with Li and colleagues’ research in raising the sensible question: despite the lofty goals of the reform and its international orientation, how has the new curriculum spoken to the existing Chinese culture, internal social conditions, and the current work structure of teachers? The tensions in culture and school practice may be more prominent in rural schools than in urban settings. Rural education in China has long suffered from