Main trends of reorienting and modernizing school curriculum and textbook in the globalization and digital age

Many educators will probably agree that the concept of ‘curriculum’ in its widest sense refers to the following six elements:a) the aims and outcomes of teaching different subjects and syllabuses – in the modernising era this may be linked with national economic and social aspirations, and competitive national educational outcomes;b) the knowledge, skills and attitudes specified in subject curriculum documents;c) the methods and pedagogies used to teach the required knowledge and skills;d) the teaching and learning resources developed by the educational system, educational publishers and teachers and schools themselves;e) the assessment of the knowledge and skills learning to be achieved; andf) the evaluation of the curriculum by national stakeholders – these stakeholders include the schools, teachers and educational system as well as the wider social and political community.Educators, as distinct from community and political stakeholders, usually understand that these aspects of the ‘curriculum’ are usually completely interlocked and interlinked – and that each aspect influences each other to a great extent. The moment one curriculum element is altered – then changes have to be made in all the rest. This interlocking can be understood more completely by looking exploring the way that different curriculum approaches and their underpinning theories of learning conceptualise classroom teaching and learning materials (Walker and Horsley 2006).