Organizing and Reconstructing Children’s Experiences: Compiling National Civic Textbooks in China

• Published in: ECNU Review of Education Vol. 5; no. 4; pp. 683 - 701
• Main Authors: Gao, Desheng, Zhang, Yue
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.12.2022; 华东师范大学; Sage Publications Ltd; SAGE Publishing
• Subjects: Adolescents; Civics; Core curriculum; Design; Educational Change; Ethical Instruction; Experience; Foreign Countries; Knowledge; Moral education; Morality; Outcomes of Education; Society; Textbook Preparation; Textbooks; Values; China; textbook preparation; Children’s experience; China; Morality and Law; moral education; Children's experience
• ISSN: 2096-5311; 2632-1742; 2632-1742
• DOI: 10.1177/2096531121990510

Purpose: The key to successful textbook compilation lies in incorporating children’s experiences and facilitating their growth. This study examines the process of textbook compilation. Design/Approach/Methods: This study criticizes the traditional compiling approach of excessive lecturing and reasoning. It further elaborates the theoretical and institutional background for the traditional approach. Involving retrospective narratives, researchers reflect on how new textbook compilation tends to connect with children’s experience. Findings: Researchers have explored several approaches to organizing and reconstructing children’s experiences in preparing textbooks, including using “an experience” to awaken children’s experiences, using the expression of experience to reconstruct children’s experience, and transforming children’s “experience” (jing yan, 经验) into lived experiences (ti yan, 体验). Another approach involves facilitating the connection and interaction between children’s experiences and those of others in order to bridge personal experience and sociocultural values. However, this can only be achieved by ensuring that textbooks reflect and are part of children’s lives. The successful incorporation of children’s experiences into textbook compilation lays the foundation for children to identify with textbooks and internalize textbook values. Originality/Value: Bridging the gap between children’s experience and textbooks constitutes the primary theoretical and practical issue in textbook compilation and education.