







































 

 

 

 

 

Are Students Satisfied with the Current School-

Based 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 Chi-

nese 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 tradi-
tional 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 satisfac-

tion, 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 indoctri-

nation. Based on this, we suggest that: (i) create an all-round atmos-

phere for students to learn traditional culture actively; (ii) reshape the 
traditional culture in the curriculum according to the value of the times; 

(iii) guarantee the cultural resources and professional teachers of cur-

riculum 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. 

How to Cite: Ding, Y. & Lv, L. (2020). Are students satisfied with the current school-

based 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



Ding & Lv. Students’ Satisfaction with the School-Based Curriculum of Chinese Traditional Culture. 

Vol.6, No.2, 2020 864 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

About the Authors: Yiran Ding, Doctorate Candidate, Department of Education, Northeast Normal University, 

Changchun 130024, Jilin, 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. 

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-

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. 



Ding & Lv. Students’ Satisfaction with the School-Based Curriculum of Chinese Traditional Culture. 

Vol.6, No. 2, 2020 865 

Background 

HINESE 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 na-

tional identity and cohesion (Zhao, 2002). Therefore, Chinese traditional culture is fer-

tile cultural soil for the people’s survival and development and the Chinese nation’s 

spiritual backbone. For this reason, in March 2014, the “Guiding Outline for Improving 

Chinese Traditional Culture Education” (hereinafter referred to as the “The Outline”) 

issued by the Ministry of Education of China not only carried out a top-level design on 

how to promote Chinese traditional culture education in schools but also required vari-

ous Schools increase the proportion of traditional culture in the school-based curriculum. 

Therefore, it is of great significance to examine the effectiveness of the current elemen-

tary and middle school’s traditional cultural school-based curriculum. 

The traditional culture school-based curriculum discussed in this study is a cur-

riculum with Chinese traditional culture as the main content, independently established 

and continuously implemented by elementary and middle schools (Lv & Ding, 2019). 

There are many kinds of school-based curriculums of this kind, which include not only 

the operational content in human life, such as chess, calligraphy and painting, opera, 

martial arts, and tea art but also conceptual content with a high degree of abstraction, 

such as local history and culture, ancient classical books, etc. The school-based curricu-

lum should be based on the humanistic environment, geographical resources, historical 

accumulation of the school, the place where it belongs, and then developed by the level 

of differentiation, and students’ needs.  

In other words, the traditional culture-related school-based curriculum is a 

school-based activity that elementary and middle schools gradually develop based on 

local cultural resources. It helps students transform their own experience into emotional 

attachment and cultural awareness of their hometown. Since “The Outline” was issued, 

many scholars have researched traditional culture-related school-based curriculum. The 

research content mainly focuses on the following three aspects: First, the experience 

combing and improvement strategies of a particular type of traditional cultural school-

based curriculum construction, such as the school-based curriculum of intangible cul-

tural heritage (Zheng, 2017), the school-based curriculum of Chinese classics (Gao & 

Lei 2016); Second, explore how school-based curriculum construction can inherit re-

gional culture (Li et al.,2015); Third, explore the value and significance of traditional 

culture-related school-based curriculum construction, such as shaping school cultural 

traditions (Tian & Wang, 2018) and generating students cultural consciousness (Zheng, 

2014). 

C 



Ding & Lv. Students’ Satisfaction with the School-Based Curriculum of Chinese Traditional Culture. 

Vol.6, No. 2, 2020 866 

In short, the current research on traditional culture-related school-based curric-

ulum presents two significant characteristics: first, as far as the research subject is con-

cerned, it is mostly seen in the research on curriculum objectives, content, and imple-

mentation, and lacks research on curriculum evaluation; second, in terms of the research 

methods, most research focuses on case studies and discussions and lacks in-depth 

quantitative research. More importantly, there are very few studies on the effectiveness 

of China’s current traditional culture-related school-based curriculum construction. 

If you want to explore the effectiveness of traditional culture-related school-

based curriculum construction, you must first clarify these curriculums’ evaluation sub-

jects. The construction of the school-based curriculum relies on the school’s own cul-

ture, and its purpose is to realize the characteristics of the school, the professionaliza-

tion of teachers, and the diversified development of students (Liu, 2016). These three all 

point to the independent and diversified development of students. Students are the logi-

cal starting point for constructing the school-based curriculum and the final destination 

of its construction. Therefore, the subject of school-based curriculum evaluation should 

be students. The student-based curriculum evaluation emphasizes allowing students to 

make independent judgments on the value of the courses they learn and then express 

their attitudes, interests, and needs (Xue, 2003). It can neither be limited to measuring 

the students’ experience gained in course learning, nor can it take the students’ feed-

back on the teacher’s teaching quality as the only means. There has been a sharp in-

crease in student satisfaction assessments regarding courses as service products in re-

cent years. This evaluation realizes the student-based evaluation concept since the eval-

uation’s content includes students’ curriculum expectations, quality feedback, and value 

perception. As far as the actual teaching situation is concerned, if the quality of the stu-

dents’ experience in the school-based curriculum is higher than their expectations, they 

will have a higher degree of satisfaction, which may generate curriculum loyalty to con-

tinue to pay attention and learn. On the contrary, students will give up choosing the 

course, which will cause a deviation in the understanding of the course content. In other 

words, the student’s curriculum satisfaction affects the continued existence and imple-

mentation of the school-based curriculum. 

Therefore, this study takes students as the main body of evaluation to examine 

whether students are satisfied with the current traditional culture-related school-based 

curriculum. Specifically, the researchers described whether students are satisfied with 

the current traditional culture-related school-based curriculum through group clustering 

of satisfaction, and explored the problems behind the status quo with the specific an-

swers of the student questionnaire and interviews with teachers and students, to put 

forward suggestions for improving the quality of the traditional culture-related school-

based curriculum. 

Methodology 

Theoretical Source 



Ding & Lv. Students’ Satisfaction with the School-Based Curriculum of Chinese Traditional Culture. 

Vol.6, No. 2, 2020 867 

The theoretical model developed for the Student Course Satisfaction Scale is derived 

from the Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) model in foreign business administration. 

This model is based on the theory of perception and expectation difference proposed by 

American scholar Oliver in the 1980s. The theory believes that when the customer is 

perceived service quality or product quality is higher than their expectations, the cus-

tomer will be satisfied with the service or product, and vice versa (Oliver, 1980). 

Through the long-term revision of many studies in economics and psychology, CSI can 

judge economic output quality in a particular area. Many countries or regions have also 

established CSI models with their characteristics (Liu et al., 2003). In education, the 

CSI model includes four essential observation variables: student expectations, perceived 

quality, value perception, and student satisfaction. At present, this theoretical model has 

been applied to education, especially in the field of course evaluation, such as online 

course evaluation (Wang et al., 2014) and the current status of high school students’ 

course satisfaction (Yin, 2004). As mentioned above, as the logical starting point and 

final destination of school-based curriculum construction, students have a say in their 

own learning experience and feelings and the quality level that the school-based curric-

ulum provides to themselves. Therefore, researchers expect to reflect the quality status 

of the traditional culture-related school-based curriculum to a certain extent based on 

students’ curriculum satisfaction. 

Scale Development and Testing 

Aiming at the four basic dimensions of student expectations, perceived quality, value 

perception, and course satisfaction included in the CSI model, the researchers have 

drawn up their subordinate dimensions: student expectations include students’ expecta-

tions of teaching content and methods; perceived quality includes students’ teaching 

content Perception and method; perception of value is the learning gain of students; 

course satisfaction is the overall satisfaction of students with the course. We have com-

piled related test questions based on the above dimensions and combined them with the 

traditional culture-related school-based curriculum characteristics. To ensure the large-

scale evaluation test’s accuracy, we conducted a trial test on the developed question-

naire. The test subjects were a middle school and an elementary school in Changchun 

City. The total number of test students was 110 and 101 valid questionnaires were re-

turned, and the effective questionnaire recovery rate was 91.82%. We calculated the 

alpha function of the test data and found that the reliability of the scale was high, with a 

reliability coefficient (Cronbach’s Alpha) of 0.928; and using the fa function of the R 

language psych program to calculate the KMO value of the questionnaire was 0.802, 

which proved this questionnaire is suitable for factor analysis. Then the principal com-

ponent analysis of the R language was used for the principal component analysis, the 

factor screening was performed with the threshold value of the characteristic root great-

er than one into seven standard factors, and the total interpretation of the factor rotation 

questionnaire using the maximum variance method (Varimax) was 69.83%. Based on 

the above exploratory factors analysis, we revised the test questions with multiple loads, 

inconsistent with the factor structure, and improper presentation, and obtained the for-



Ding & Lv. Students’ Satisfaction with the School-Based Curriculum of Chinese Traditional Culture. 

Vol.6, No. 2, 2020 868 

mal traditional culture-related school-based curriculum student satisfaction measure-

ment scale. 

Sample Survey 

This survey used a stratified sampling design. Considering the differences in the types 

and quantities of traditional culture-related school-based curriculums opened in various 

provinces in China, we conducted a sample survey of 120 elementary and middle 

school. According to the overall number of schools announced by the Ministry of Edu-

cation of China in 2017, the sampling ratio of elementary, middle, and high schools in 

this study was roughly 5:3:2. During the actual investigation process, the curriculum 

plans of 120 sample schools were analyzed. We found that 107 schools had a school-

based curriculum, 92 of which had a traditional culture-related school-based curriculum. 

After that, this study used paper questionnaires for students who had studied the tradi-

tional culture-related school-based curriculum in 92 schools, and a total of 12,230 satis-

faction questionnaires were collected (elementary school was 6,874, middle school was 

5,356). When inputting data, excluding the missing values in the questionnaire respons-

es and the inadvertent questionnaires, a total of 10,744 valid questionnaires were ob-

tained, including 6,071 from elementary school and 4,673 from middle school. The ef-

fective response rate of the questionnaire was 87.85%. 

Reliability and Validity Test 

We use R language to carry out reliability tests, exploratory factor analysis, and struc-

tural equation modeling of the scale. Calculated by the alpha function, the overall 

Cronbach’s Alpha of the questionnaire is 0.901, and α coefficients of each dimension 

were: 0.806, 0.734, 0.903, 0.814, all greater than 0.7. Exploratory factor analysis was 

conducted with the R language psych program, and it was found that the chi-square val-

ue of the Bartlett sphere test of the questionnaire was 60443.06 (P < 0.001), and the 

KMO value was 0.945 (P < 0.001). This showed that the result of factor analysis was 

good enough and suitable for factor analysis. Then, the principal component analysis of 

the R language was used for the principal component analysis, the factor screening was 

performed with the threshold value of the characteristic root greater than one as the four 

standard factors, and the maximum variance method (Varimax) was used for factor ro-

tation to obtain the total interpretation of the questionnaire as 84.51%. Finally, referring 

to the existing university curriculum satisfaction construction model, using the R lan-

guage nested semPlot program, and fitting the curriculum satisfaction model to output 

in RAM (reticular action model) format (as shown in Figure 1) (Chen, 2018). The fit-

ting parameters were: X2/df = 2.374 < 3, CFI = 0.946 > 0.9, NNFI = 0.913 > 0.9 and 

RMSEA = 0.047 < 0.06. Therefore, the scale has a high degree of goodness of fit to the 

constructed model, that is, the students’ satisfaction with the traditional culture-related 

school-based curriculum scale constructed in this study has good structural validity. 

Group Clustering and Problem Description 



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Vol.6, No. 2, 2020 869 

 

Figure 1. Structural Equation Model of Student Satisfaction with Chinese Tra-

ditional Culture School-Based Courses. 

 

 

 

 

Cluster analysis is often used to classify features of similar groups, but SPSS clustering 

is usually disturbed by data noise, and it cannot visualize the features of each group, and 

cannot be used for calculations with large amounts of data. Therefore, we imported the 

above data into the server and used the average algorithm of the pheatmap package in R 

language to perform Cluster analysis and drew the heat map (Kolde, 2019). The image 

uses branched branches to represent the clustering of groups, and the color depth of the 

image expresses the level of a specific dimension score. Based on the scores presented 

in different course satisfaction dimensions, we carried out an in-depth description and 

typed refinement of different groups. After the group clustering situation was divided, 

we interviewed some teachers and students for some test questions, aiming to reveal the 

problems behind the satisfaction group’s current satisfaction group of the traditional 

culture-related school-based curriculum.  

Results and Analysis 

The Status Quo of Student Satisfaction with the School-Based 

Curriculum 



Ding & Lv. Students’ Satisfaction with the School-Based Curriculum of Chinese Traditional Culture. 

Vol.6, No. 2, 2020 870 

 

 

Figure 2. Group Clustering of Satisfaction with Chinese Traditional Culture 

School-Based Courses of Elementary and Middle School Students. 

 

 

 

 

Students were satisfied with the current traditional culture-related school-based curricu-

lum (mean value is 7.27). Specifically, current students often had high expectations for 

such a school-based curriculum. The average student expectation was 7.59, and 70.44% 

of students expressed their willingness to choose traditional culture courses to continue. 

However, students had a low degree of perception of teachers’ teaching quality in these 

courses, with an average of only 5.88 points. More than 65% of students believed that 

teachers’ teaching methods were not satisfactory and could not meet their learning 

needs. Even so, students still maintained a high learning gain (i.e., value perception), 

and overall satisfaction was high. To explain this phenomenon more comprehensively, 

we divided it into five categories based on the characteristics of clustering groups: pas-

sive satisfaction, compromise satisfaction, excellent satisfaction, gap satisfaction, and 

autonomous satisfaction, etc. (as shown in Figure 2). 

The proportion of “passive satisfied” students was relatively low, accounting 

for only 10.39% of the entire group. This kind of students had low expectations for the 

traditional culture-related school-based curriculum. However, because the teachers 

carefully pre-set the teaching activities, they still perceived a higher curriculum quality 



Ding & Lv. Students’ Satisfaction with the School-Based Curriculum of Chinese Traditional Culture. 

Vol.6, No. 2, 2020 871 

and achieved a better value perception and curriculum satisfaction degree. The course 

satisfaction state of this type of student was that the quality of the courses they felt was 

much higher than their expectations, and they had reached the surprise state described 

by the American marketing scientist Valarie (Zeithaml et al., 1988). As shown in the 

structural equation model in Figure 1, the achievement of this type of state was most 

directly affected by the perceived quality (the direct effect is 0.38), and value perception 

also played a part of the intermediary role in it, thereby generating a dual process of 

course satisfaction. The four dimensions of “compromise satisfaction” all performed 

somewhat. Figure 2 shows that since this type of student’s expectations were equal to 

perceived quality, they were not satisfied with the traditional culture-related school-

based curriculum. Students of this type were not very interested in traditional culture 

and had reached a compromise evaluation of such courses with a perfunctory attitude. 

Therefore, “compromise satisfied” students often showed a low balance of traditional 

culture-related school-based curriculum. 

“Excellent satisfied” students accounted for about 20%. This type of student 

had a higher perceived quality of the course, and because the perceived quality was 

higher than their course expectations, they had reached a state of surprise. Specifically, 

these students had strong desires and longings for Chinese traditional culture, and the 

school-based curriculum had also met their expectations. Therefore, these students were 

satisfied in all aspects. Although the “gap satisfaction” students accounted for about 

20%, this type of student’s course satisfaction status was precisely the opposite of the 

“excellent satisfaction” students. The students with “gap-type satisfaction” did not feel 

the higher course quality when the course expectations were high, which led to Vala-

rie’s loss state (Zeithaml et al., 1988). In other words, students’ expectations for learn-

ing traditional culture had not been met, and the tremendous gap between expectations 

and gains had led to lower student satisfaction. In reality, most of these students had 

much perceptual knowledge of traditional culture and understood traditional culture 

only from the surface. 

Besides, there was another type of students, accounting for about 25.6%, and 

they were “autonomous satisfaction.” Although these students showed high expecta-

tions and low perceptions, they had a high level of course satisfaction. This seems to be 

different from the “satisfaction = perception-expectation” described in CSI’s basic theo-

ry. Such students started the course with high expectations. Although they did not feel 

good course quality, their strong interest in learning prompted them to conduct explora-

tory learning autonomously based on some materials or even limited keywords, thus 

achieving better learning gains and higher satisfaction. Therefore, this type of students 

mainly played a role through the path that students expect to directly affect course satis-

faction in the structural equation model (the direct effect is 0.69). This phenomenon was 

also similar to the results obtained from previous studies on flipped classrooms in uni-

versities based on the CSI model (Zhai et al., 2015). 

In sum, the current students’ satisfaction with the traditional culture-related 

school-based curriculum was diverse, and overall satisfaction was not high. Elementary 

and middle school students had high expectations for the traditional culture-related 



Ding & Lv. Students’ Satisfaction with the School-Based Curriculum of Chinese Traditional Culture. 

Vol.6, No. 2, 2020 872 

school-based curriculum. However, the quality of the curriculum they felt was low, and 

students’ satisfaction patterns were basically in line with “satisfaction = perception- 

expectation” except for the autonomous satisfaction.” On the one hand, it showed that 

students’ satisfaction with the traditional culture-related school-based curriculum was in 

line with the CSI theoretical model. On the other hand, it reminded us that while keep-

ing students’ expectations of this type of curriculum, we should work hard to resolve 

the problem that students felt that the curriculum’s quality was low, thereby enhancing 

the overall construction of the courses. 

Disclosure of the Problems of Student Satisfaction with the 

School-Based Curriculum 

(i) Curriculum Positioning Is Based on Subjective Guesswork. 

In the interview, we found that some teachers who participated in the development and 

implementation of the traditional culture-related school-based curriculum took it for 

granted that “children who eat McDonald’s and drink Coke lack feelings for Chinese 

traditional culture” and believed that they were at a loss for traditional culture and never 

care about it. The current test evaluation system does not directly involve the traditional 

culture-related curriculum content, which leads to perfunctory and one-way indoctrina-

tion by teachers in curriculum development and teaching. Whether students are willing 

to accept traditional culture has become a prerequisite for establishing a traditional cul-

ture-related school-based curriculum. In terms of this survey, the proportion of “ auton-

omous satisfaction “ students was high, and about one-third of the students chose to 

place traditional culture at the top of other school-based curriculums, which showed that 

Chinese traditional culture still has a significant influence on students with particular 

attraction. Besides, students’ responses to the cultural preference context test also 

proved this point. The survey question is: Mr. Li needs to bring a gift to foreign friends 

if he wants to go abroad. The following are some suggestions from students. Please sort 

the following options according to your preferences. Options include a set of chess, 

Tieguanyin tea, four masterpieces hardcover edition, Fabre’s “Insects” hardcover edi-

tion, a Chinese knot, and a Bordeaux red wine gift box. Approximately 75.86% of stu-

dents chose to put gifts representing Chinese traditional culture first. As a result, the 

artifacts representing Chinese traditional culture were still the cultural symbols that to-

day’s children are willing to touch, understand, and display. This also showed that the 

current students’ lifestyles, thinking concepts, and value systems were under Chinese 

traditional culture. Therefore, the cultural cognition and judgment of elementary and 

middle school students cannot be based on the teachers themselves’ subjective assump-

tions, nor can they mistakenly assume that students do not know and are unwilling to 

accept traditional culture as the condition of curriculum development and implementa-

tion. 

 

(ii) The Course Content Has Not Been Effectively Filtered. 



Ding & Lv. Students’ Satisfaction with the School-Based Curriculum of Chinese Traditional Culture. 

Vol.6, No. 2, 2020 873 

The researcher visited some of the research schools dominated by “gap-type satisfied” 

students and found that in such schools, nearly 90% of the traditional culture courses 

were part-timed by teachers of Chinese language, arts, or music. Most of them thought 

it was necessary to use a school-based curriculum to carry out traditional cultural educa-

tion, and they were willing to practice it. Through a detailed analysis of student inter-

views and school curriculum plans, we found that some schools require 3rd-grade stu-

dents to recite the “Di Zi Gui,” “Three Character Classics (San Zi Jing),” “Thousand 

Characters (Qian Zi Wen),” “The Great Learning (Da Xue),” “The Doctrine of the 

Mean (Zhong Yong)” and “Mencius.” Some proposed to attach importance to “the doc-

trine of the golden mean in classical culture, impartial and all-around integration into 

the classroom”; some schools organized students to bow to Confucius before the high 

school entrance examination. The champion was on the bridge, Streamers and other 

activities. 

Many schools directly use the content of traditional culture as a school-based 

curriculum without screening, selecting, and processing. Students show varying degrees 

of dislike for the content of the school-based curriculum. The school-based curriculum 

content has not been effectively screened, which had become a significant factor affect-

ing student curriculum satisfaction. As mentioned above, the essence and dross coexist 

in Chinese traditional culture. As a cultural selection process, curriculum design will 

shape students’ understanding of traditional culture, and traditional culture will also be 

inherited and continued through school education, mostly curriculum. Besides, the 

school curriculum should be a process of understanding, selecting, and restructuring 

traditional culture, that is, the curriculum is a cultural transformation. Chinese tradition-

al culture has differentiated textual expressions, artifacts, and regional customs. There-

fore, the school-based curriculum need not pursue the unity of the national curriculum. 

It should use regional resources, consider students’ living environment, and play its 

unique and agile role in educating people. The traditional culture-related school-based 

curriculum should be the “rebirth” of the cultural structure that maintains personal val-

ues, rather than the “inheritance” of one-way flow. The content of this kind of school-

based curriculum should not fully cover Chinese traditional culture but should be a rea-

sonable choice based on discussions between teachers and students. 

 

(iii) The Implementation of the Course Is A Single Indoctrination. 

Nearly half of the students in the cluster showed “gap satisfaction” and “autonomous 

satisfaction.” These two types of students had low perceived quality of the traditional 

culture-related school-based curriculum. After a detailed analysis of the two types of 

student questionnaires, we found that 83.24% of the students thought the course’s 

teaching methods were unsatisfactory. In implementing the traditional culture-related 

school-based curriculum, only 1% of students have been to communities, memorials, 

folklore museums, museums, and Confucian temples. Most teachers still only teach, 

preach ideas and instill values on the campus. The single instillation of the curriculum 

makes the traditional culture-related school-based curriculum only being a form, and it 

does not provide an opportunity for “revisiting these stories and connecting them with 



Ding & Lv. Students’ Satisfaction with the School-Based Curriculum of Chinese Traditional Culture. 

Vol.6, No. 2, 2020 874 

the present” with “extended scenes” and “sacred memory spaces” (Qiu, 2017). This 

problem directly leads to the low quality of students’ perception of the curriculum, but 

it is also difficult for students to form a deep memory and deep identification with Chi-

nese traditional culture. Traditional cultural content has been systematically presented 

in national curricula, especially in Chinese language, history, ethics and law, music, 

sports, and fine arts. If the school-based curriculum is only understood as the supple-

ment and expansion of the national curriculum content, the majestic and rich Chinese 

traditional culture will make the curriculum capacity unconstrained. Therefore, the 

school-based curriculum’s traditional cultural content does not care about the increase 

in the amount of knowledge and information but uses synthesis, experience, and opera-

tion to make students feel and practice culture. It provides students with an environment 

to comprehend culture by integrating existing information and knowledge and practic-

ing the expectation and curiosity of culture. Therefore, the implementation of the tradi-

tional culture-related school-based curriculum is not merely to “instill” information, 

“propaganda” values, and “implant” traditional cultural knowledge, but should allow 

students to discover the beauty in familiar cultural elements. 

Conclusion and Suggestion 

According to the above survey, we found that students’ overall satisfaction with the 

current traditional culture-related school-based curriculum is not high, and their percep-

tion of the curriculum’s quality is still insufficient. Besides, students mainly present five 

forms of passive satisfaction, compromise satisfaction, excellent satisfaction, gap satis-

faction, and autonomous satisfaction. After a detailed analysis, we found that due to the 

traditional culture-related school-based curriculum: the curriculum positioning is based 

on subjective guesswork, the curriculum content has not been effectively screened, and 

the curriculum implementation method is singly instilled. This leads to the lack of stu-

dents’ perception of the courses’ quality in the development and implementation of 

such courses. Then, we made the following suggestions for the construction of tradi-

tional culture-related school-based curriculum: 

Create an All-Round Atmosphere for Students to Learn Chinese 

Traditional Culture Actively 

From the survey results, it is found that students have many expectations for the tradi-

tional culture-related school-based curriculum, and because of this, some students have 

reached a state of “autonomous satisfaction.” This shows that it is essential for students 

to maintain their expectations for such courses. The influence of culture on people is 

gradual and invisible, so it is critical to actively create a good atmosphere for students 

to learn Chinese traditional culture. In the current era of information explosion, people’s 

feelings and cognition of many things are not derived from personal experience, but 

from the mass media. The mass media has many functions or values, such as environ-

mental monitoring, social coordination, and cultural inheritance (Raswell, 2013). There-



Ding & Lv. Students’ Satisfaction with the School-Based Curriculum of Chinese Traditional Culture. 

Vol.6, No. 2, 2020 875 

fore, in different media, we should actively create an overall atmosphere for students to 

learn Chinese traditional culture. 

First, whether it is traditional paper media, Internet media, or all kinds of cur-

rent mobile new media, news, public service advertisements, TV, or movies related to 

Chinese traditional culture should be broadcast promptly. The second is to actively con-

struct a trinity Chinese traditional culture propaganda mechanism of “school-family-

community” so that students can feel the discussion and recognition of Chinese tradi-

tional culture symbols by the elders, peers, and their relatives in different fields. Third, 

the school should help students get immersed in Chinese traditional culture’s learning 

atmosphere through various forms such as campus bulletin and teacher-student etiquette. 

Finally, based on the high frequency of publicity, the field’s diversity, and the appropri-

ate form, an atmosphere of active learning for students is created to maintain their ex-

pectations for the traditional culture-related school-based curriculum. 

Adapt to the Value of the Times and Reshape the Traditional 

Culture in the School-Based Curriculum 

Given the problem that the content of some traditional culture-related school-based cur-

riculum has not been effectively screened, we need to clarify that not all concepts and 

spirits in Chinese traditional culture are worth inheriting. The primary prerequisite for 

the inheritance and promotion of Chinese traditional culture should be to judge it care-

fully. Because the traditional culture-related school-based curriculum has “reproduction” 

in cultural transmission, we must be cautious about the curriculum’s cultural choices. 

Traditional culture is neither a propaganda tool nor a management ruler. The spiritual 

core it conveys should be desirable, something young people are proud of and willing to 

pass on. Therefore, the curriculum content of traditional culture needs to be reviewed, 

screened, and even reformed, and the values in line with the development of the times 

and national characteristics are integrated into the curriculum. Therefore, the traditional 

culture in the school-based curriculum needs to be reshaped according to the values of 

the times. The inheritance and promotion of Chinese traditional culture require the val-

ue of the times of “being benevolence, emphasizing the people, keeping honesty, up-

holding justice, advocating harmony, and seeking great unity” (Xi, 2014). This is a 

modern interpretation of the consensus concept of Chinese traditional culture. It high-

lights the use of “do not impose on others what you do not desire” to treat people or 

things around you; Governing the world with the concept of “treat other people as you 

would yourself” can realize the traditional Chinese concept of a society of “all things 

grow together without harming each other, and roads are parallel and not contradictory” 

(Ding & Lv, 2019). To realize the adaptation to the value of the times and reshape the 

school-based curriculum’s traditional culture requires the following two points. First of 

all, the traditional culture-related school-based curriculum is being developed, and the 

content of traditional culture should be reviewed and selected based on the values of the 

times. Secondly, in teaching, teachers should also pay attention to the comparative ex-

amination of different cultures, integrate and condense the values behind the cultures, 



Ding & Lv. Students’ Satisfaction with the School-Based Curriculum of Chinese Traditional Culture. 

Vol.6, No. 2, 2020 876 

and help students realize the values of the times in the traditional culture-related school-

based curriculum give students the correct value guidance. 

To Ensure the Cultural Resources and Professional Teachers 

for Curriculum Implementation by Subject Construction 

Whether the positioning of the traditional culture-related school-based curriculum is 

based on subjective guesswork or the curriculum content has not been effectively 

screened, it shows that the current school education system, curriculum managers, and 

implementers themselves have a weak Chinese traditional culture accumulation. In fact, 

in the current relatively westernized discipline organization and knowledge system, it is 

already difficult for us to find the “words” and practical “methods” of moral develop-

ment in China’s early discipline teaching. Chinese traditional culture has become a 

small part of subject research and teaching because of its complex system. 

Although the “Chinese studies boom” from the end of the last century to the 

beginning of this century brought Chinese traditional culture back to the public eye, the 

“studies of the quintessence of the country” and “studies of the national heritage” that 

rejected Western culture encountered difficulties in interpretation and implementation 

of the inheritance of Chinese traditional culture (Jing, 2010). Therefore, many scholars 

call for establishing Chinese traditional culture disciplines in universities or research 

institutes to strengthen their academic research and teacher training, thereby promoting 

their discipline construction (Guo, 2017). Similarly, it is also imperative to guarantee 

the cultural resources and professional teachers of curriculum implementation with dis-

cipline construction in terms of future development. On the one hand, discipline con-

struction must guarantee the cultural resources needed for curriculum implementation. 

Relevant scholars should collect, sort, and compile regional cultural resources, and in-

terpret the core connotations in the related cultural resources, to facilitate the search and 

use of course developers or implementers. On the other hand, cultivating traditional 

culture teaching through the discipline construction of traditional culture will break the 

dilemma that most frontline teachers are part-timers. 

Pay Attention to the Experience of the Implementation Process 

of School-Based Curriculum 

The survey found that part of the current implementation of the traditional culture-

related school-based curriculum is a single indoctrination, which has resulted in stu-

dents not having an indeed embodied experience and deep recognition of Chinese tradi-

tional culture. If the teaching method is far from the students’ lifestyle, habits, and in-

terests, the course content’s deep meaning is usually challenging to understand by the 

students. If students do not have the cognitive premise of their own experience, it is 

even more challenging to produce emotional acceptance and value recognition. This 

shows that the implementation of traditional culture-related school-based curriculum 

does not lie in the expansion of information and instillation of ideas, but the course im-

plementation process’s experience. On the one hand, teachers should avoid simple in-



Ding & Lv. Students’ Satisfaction with the School-Based Curriculum of Chinese Traditional Culture. 

Vol.6, No. 2, 2020 877 

doctrination and rigid teaching in classroom teaching. Promote students’ meaningful 

learning with concrete experience, life-like examples, and contextual interaction. This 

requires teachers to combine students’ needs and interests, use multimedia teaching, 

project-based learning, and other teaching methods in the classroom so that students can 

happily recognize, accept and share the cultural connotation of their acquisition. On the 

other hand, in the course of implementation, students are allowed to enter the traditional 

cultural off-campus environment to study. Activities such as visits to related traditional 

cultural bases outside the campus and related professional experience provide students 

with opportunities for on-site experience, role-playing and hands-on practice, and pro-

vide unique conditions for students to deeply experience the value of traditional culture. 

In addition, teachers can also invite some intangible cultural heritage inheritors and mu-

seum interpreters to the school for technical demonstrations and cultural presentations 

to enhance students’ understanding and recognition of traditional Chinese culture. 

 Only in this way can the implementation’s experience the traditional cultural 

school-based curriculum be enhanced in the reform of classroom teaching, the expan-

sion of the field outside the school, and the introduction of external resources. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Ding & Lv. Students’ Satisfaction with the School-Based Curriculum of Chinese Traditional Culture. 

Vol.6, No. 2, 2020 879 

Received: 08 September 2020 

Revised: 23 September 2020 

Accepted: 14 October 2020 

 

 

The Chinese version of this article has been published in Journal of Educational Science of Hunan 

Normal University, 2020(3):102-108. The English version has been authorized for being publication 

in BECE by the author(s) and the Chinese journal. 

丁奕然, 吕立杰. (2020). 学生满意当下的传统文化类校本课程吗? 基于全国百所中小学的调查研
究. 湖南师范大学教育科学学报. 2020(3):102-108. 

 


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