Are Students Satisfied with the Current School-Based Curriculum of Chinese Traditional Culture? - A Survey of 120 Elementary and Middle Schools in China

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Mary Man

The school-based curriculum is a key approach to teaching Chinese traditional culture in schools, making student satisfaction with current programs an important issue. A survey of students across 120 elementary and middle schools in China found overall satisfaction is generally average, while many students rate curriculum quality as still low. Satisfaction appears in multiple forms (passive, compromise, excellent, fall, and autonomous), and the findings point to problems in course positioning, insufficient content selection, and single indoctrination methods. The study recommends creating an active learning atmosphere, reshaping content to fit the times’ values, strengthening discipline-based resource and teacher support, and improving focus on implementation experience.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages17

Reading Time43 min

AccessFree to download

Background

Concept and significance of school-based traditional culture curriculum

Study Design and Findings

Student satisfaction levels across 120 schools

Main satisfaction patterns

Problems in Current Curriculum

Positioning, content screening, and implementation methods

Recommendations

Learning atmosphere, curriculum content reshaping, teacher/resource support, and experience focus

Are Students Satisfied with the Current SchoolBased Curriculum of Chinese Traditional Culture? A Survey of 120 Elementary and Middle Schools in China Yiran Ding, Lijie Lv Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, Jilin, China | Abstract. The school-based curriculum is one of the crucial ways of Chinese traditional culture education. Therefore, it is essential to discuss the current elementary and middle school students ’ satisfaction with the traditional cultural school-based curriculum. A survey of the curriculum satisfaction of 120 elementary and middle schools in China with a traditional cultural school-based curriculum found that students ’ satisfaction with these curriculums is generally average. However, students believed that the quality of the curriculum is still low. Its main manifestations were passive satisfaction, compromise satisfaction, excellent satisfaction, fall satisfaction, and autonomous satisfaction. This highlighted the problems of some traditional cultural school-based curriculums like the positioning is based on subjective guesswork, the content has not been effectively screened, and the implementation method is a single indoctrination. Based on this, we suggest that: (i) create an all-round atmosphere for students to learn traditional culture actively; (ii) reshape the traditional culture in the curriculum according to the value ofthe times;(iii) guarantee the cultural resources and professional teachers of curriculum implementation with discipline construction, and (iv) focus on the experience of the implementation process.
Best Evid Chin Edu 2020; 6(2):863-879.
Doi: [10.15354/bece.20.ar079](10.15354/bece.20.ar079). | | --- | | How to Cite: Ding, Y. & Lv, L. (2020). Are students satisfied with the current schoolbased curriculum of Chinese traditional culture? A survey of 120 elementary and middle schools in China. Best Evidence in Chinese Education, 6(2):863-879. | Keywords: Chinese Traditional Culture; School-Based Curriculum; Curriculum Satisfaction; Curriculum Implementation; Cluster Analysis About the Authors: Yiran Ding, Doctorate Candidate, Department of Education, Northeast Normal University, Changchun 130024, Jilin, [China. Email: dyr123333@hotmail.com](China. Email: dyr123333@hotmail.com). Correspondence to: Lijie Lv, Professor, Director, Department of Education, Northeast Normal University, Chang chun 130024, Jilin, China. Email: [lvlj@nenu.edu.cn](lvlj@nenu.edu.cn). Funding: This work was supported by the Beijing Normal University China Basic Education Quality Monitoring Collaborative Innovation Center Major Achievement Cultivation Project: "Research on the Inheritance of Chinese Traditional Culture in School Curriculum and Improvement Strategies" (Project No.: 2019-03-021-BZPK01). Conflict of Interests: None. © 2020 Insights Publisher. All rights reserved. Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Crea tive Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ([http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by](http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by)nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed by the Insights Publisher. Background CHINESE traditional culture is a kind of objects and values that the Chinese nation has continuously inherited and developed based on diverse regional cus toms, unique languages, literature and art, and profound philosophical thinking in its thousands-year history (Zhang et al., 2017) . It is broad, profound, and diverse. It has the essence in line with the development of the times and social progress and has dross. The ideological culture that transcends time and space and has current value is called Chinese traditional culture. Its content structure is multi-dimensional, in which values, psychological characteristics, and emotional thoughts constitute the core of national id

FAQs

How was student satisfaction measured in the study?

The study used a survey assessing curriculum satisfaction among students from 120 elementary and middle schools in China that offer a traditional culture school-based curriculum.

What did the survey find about overall satisfaction and curriculum quality?

Students’ satisfaction was generally average, but they believed the quality of the curriculum remains low.

What key problems in current traditional culture school-based curricula were highlighted?

The results indicate issues such as course positioning based on subjective guesswork, content not being effectively screened, and implementation relying on a single indoctrination approach.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Mary Man