| Abstract The New Basic Education, which was initiated in September 1994, has undergone a five-year Exploratory Research (from September 1994 to May 1999) and a five-year developmental Research (from September 1999 to May 2004). Thus in the last ten years we have accomplished the relatively complete research procedure, including the presentation of the problems, the formation of the results and then the diffusion, application, perfection and development of the research. So far, we have preliminarily finished the exploration of the transformation of the contemporary schooling, educational theories and research approaches in China. The author, who lives in a transforming society and who, with her professional research, responds actively to the transformation of society in education, presents in this paper a retrospect of her subjective state, such as the thinking, devising, action and understanding in the New Basic Education Research, accounting for the origin of the New Basic Education Research, which includes not only the theory accumulation of the basic educational theory, methodology of educational research and meta-research educational disciplines in the past ten years, but also the experience of the on-the–spot research in the past three years as well as a profound reflection on the nature of the social transformation at the end of the 20th century in China. In the exploratory stage, the New Basic Education Research, a reconstructive research on educational theory and practice, regards the reconstruction of educational objective as its theory starting point, viewing the schools providing nine-year compulsory education as the total unit for the practical research, and chooses the schooling in classrooms, the instruction reform and the school management as the items of the internal experiment and reform of the schools. As for the essential question of methodology, the research lies in how to deal with the relations between theoretical research and practical research and the relation between the theoretical researchers and the practical researchers. In the developmental stage of the research, the author has enhanced the reconstruction research of theory and practice, and heightened her awareness of the exploration of the transformation of the contemporary Chinese educational research itself and meanwhile the value of life has become her own and consistent value orientation in her new academic life and she takes the “Researching Reform Practice” as the carrier of the combination of theory and practice and her new research approach. During this course, the author has acquired the ability of generating theory from practice, the spirit of practice and the experience of formulating new theories, and hence sets up her objective of her professional continuous development —— to do her utmost to establish the Life & Practical Education School of Thought. |
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