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 Ding & Lv. Students’ Satisfaction with the School-Based Curriculum of Chinese Traditional Culture. 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. Reference Chen, X.F. (2018). 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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. Article-LijieLv-BECE_title_16Nov2020 Article-LijieLv-BECE_Maintext16Nov2020