Explorations of Chinese Moral Education Curriculum and Textbooks

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 theyouth 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.

Foreword.- Introduction.- Part I. Moral Curriculum Based on Children Life: New Ideas and Directions.- Chapter 1. “Back to life”: The new transformation of moral curriculum in China.- Chapter 2. New directions in the moral education curriculum.- Part II: Exploring a Way to Make Textbook Close to Children.- Chapter 3. Narrative ethics and life events: An attempt to break the dilemma of textbook compilation .- Chapter 4. Connected to children: An exploration to organize children experiences in textbook.- Chapter 5. Imitating children’s life: How a moral education textbook becomes life-oriented.- Part III: Textbook, Teaching, and Teacher:  Centred on moral learning.- Chapter 6. Compiling moral education textbook centred on moral learning.- Chapter 7. Teaching led by textbook: Direct moral instruction centred on moral learning.- Chapter 8. Teacher as moral learner:  Reconstruction of moral teacher’s identity.- Part IV: Moral and Legal Curriculum Construction from the Perspective of Integrated Curriculum.- Chapter 9. Legal education in moral curriculum in China.- Chapter 10. Integration of moral education and legal education and its limits.- Chapter 11. Children-based education of Chinese traditional culture and moral education.