Explorations of Chinese Moral Education Curriculum and Textbooks: Children’s Life and Moral Learning

This book shares with English readers Chinese theoretical and practical explorations of moral education curriculum for primary schools within the basic education curriculum reform project since 2001.The book expounds this moral education curriculum reform and focuses on three main ideas: The curriculum’s aim is to enrich children’s experiences and reflect their own lives; the curriculum’s content is originated from children’s lives; the curriculum’s structure is developed from children’s learning approach in their morality and social study. In this book, light is also shed on how to construct moral education textbooks, direct moral instruction, and moral teacher identity in the perspective of moral learning; how to knit law education and Chinese traditional culture education in moral curriculum.
This is the first comprehensive book focusing on Chinese moral education curriculum reform. It will appeal to researchers, research students, and writersof moral education textbooks. It is also suitable for teacher training programs to help future teachers learn about moral education curriculum and help them effectively design and organize it for children’s morality study.

Desheng Gao is a distinguished professor of the ＂Zijiang Scholars Program＂ at East China Normal University. He is the former director of the Research Institute of Moral Education at Nanjing Normal University. He is currently a member of the Moral Education Subject Group of the National Office for Education Science Planning, and the vice director of the Moral Education Academic Committee of the Chinese Education Society. He has published over 100 articles and eight books on moral education and moral education curricula. He is known as a preeminent expert on moral education curricula, helped formulate the National Course Standard for moral education in China. He also led the development of three sets of moral education textbooks--specifically the Morality and Law textbooks--for the Ministry of Education in China due for national distribution and use in Fall 2019.
Le Zhang is the associate professor of the Institute of Moral Education, Nanjing Normal University. He is the youth academic backbones (Young and Middle-aged Outstanding Talents Program, 2018) and an outstanding young scholar (Qinglan Program, 2016) of Nanjing Normal University. In recent years, he focused on the spiritual crisis of modern people and the moral education curriculum in elementary school. He has published one monograph, Moral Education in Risk Society, and over 50 articles on moral education and moral education curriculum. He has been also involved in compiling two sets of moral education textbooks for elementary school and for junior high school, Morality and Law and Ideology and Moral Character.
Yan Tang is the lecturer of the Institute of Moral Education, Nanjing Normal University. Her research interests focus on basic moral education theory, moral education curriculum, and the exploration of moral education textbooks. She has published over 10 articles on moral education theory, moral education curriculum, the compiling approach of moral education textbook, and so on. She took part in compiling one set of moral education textbooks, Morality and Law, which are used by all the elementary schools in mainland of China. She has systematically enquired into how to compile moral education textbooks for children’s moral growth and has published the research in Chinese--Connected to Children：the research of elementary moral education textbooks Morality and Law.