Journal of Integrated Social Sciences and Humanities

Changes in the Junior Secondary Political Curriculum and Textbook Policy in China from 1978 to 2012

Yanli Ji — 2026-10-08

This article examines changes in mainland China’s junior secondary political curriculum and textbook policy between 1978 and 2012 through a qualitative analysis of selected policy documents, institutional histories, and academic literature. It compares educational purposes, curriculum organization, textbook governance, and prescribed approaches to learning. Four policy periods organize the discussion: reconstruction from 1978 to 1984, curricular adjustment from 1985 to 1991, compulsory education curriculum consolidation from 1992 to 1998, and quality-oriented reform from 1999 to 2012. The analysis identifies continuing political and moral purposes alongside changes in how curriculum authorities connected these purposes to adolescent development and social life. It also qualifies two assumptions about this history: attention to learners was already explicit in 1985, and a national curriculum framework in the 1990s coexisted with the development of multiple approved textbook series. Later reforms therefore represented a reconfiguration of established concerns rather than an entirely new departure. The findings concern policy intentions and textbook governance; they do not establish uniform changes in classroom practice or student outcomes. The article contributes a historically differentiated account of continuity and reform in political education.

Reframing Legong Keraton in Contemporary Scholarship: History, Embodiment, and Heritage Transformation

Liu Yang — 2026-10-08

This article examines how selected English-language scholarship explains continuity and change in Legong Keraton. It brings historical debates about origins into dialogue with research on embodied learning, tourism, and cultural heritage. The central argument is that continuity requires analysis at three connected levels: the retention of artistic forms, the reproduction of performance competence, and the authority to define valued practice. The disagreement over Legong’s chronology shows that a shared name or courtly association does not establish an unchanged choreographic object. Studies of bodily knowledge and performance learning explain why recognizable forms depend on situated processes of acquisition and evaluation. Research on tourism and preservation, in turn, demonstrates that international visibility and institutional support must be assessed in relation to the practices they sustain. On this basis, the article interprets heritage transformation as a selective reorganization of relationships among repertoire, learning, and recognition. Its contribution is an analytical framework for comparing these relationships without assuming either inevitable cultural loss or assured resilience. The discussion is a selective narrative review; its propositions guide further historical and ethnographic inquiry rather than establish the present condition of every Legong tradition.