Social development of 21st century and reform of China’s elementary education

The Chinese society of the 21^st century is at a critical period of transformation. The emergence of globalization and informationalization are the most striking changes of the current Chinese society. The profound change in the social transformation and its penetrating influence on people’s lives has revealed the disadvantages of the present education. For 10 years, the “New Elementary Education”, based on the background of Chinese society, and the demand for school education reform clearly puts forward the necessity of education reform in the period of social transformation, in other words, education should achieve its transformational development. This paper presents a deep research of globalization and informationalization, which are the background of Chinese social transformation. On this basis, the paper examines the implication of ‘school transformational reform” of the present-day Chinese elementary education, and finally proposes some steps for achieving “school transformational reform”. __________ Translated from Journal of the Chinese Society of Education, 2005 (1) It is very grateful for Bao Tongmei and Chen Jiagang who translated this article from Chinese into English.