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https://doi.org/10.62836/jissh.v3i4.0036
Ji, Y., & Tan, B. P. (2026). Changes in the Junior Secondary Political Curriculum and Textbook Policy in China from 1978 to 2012. Journal of Integrated Social Sciences and Humanities, 3(4), 0036. https://doi.org/10.62836/jissh.v3i4.0036
Volume 3, Issue 4, 2026

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

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.

junior secondary education political curriculum textbook policy documentary analysis moral and citizenship education China

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Supporting Agencies

  1. Funding: This research received no external funding.