Secondary Social Education in the Peoples Republic of China: A Quantitative Study of Classroom Environments in the Guangdong Province

Abstract

This article reports the results of the first phase of a research project on social education in the People's Republic of China. This phase of the project replicated a quantitative research design used for looking at the environment of social education classrooms and related student attitudes toward social studies. The study involved 38 secondary history classrooms selected from 12 schools in the Guangdong Province. The data presented in the results produce a picture of a “typical” classroom environment, and this description is compared to findings using the same instruments in secondary social studies classrooms in the United States. The findings suggest that while there may be considerable cultural, economic, and political differences between the two educational systems, there are common elements in the teaching of social studies that appear to transcend those differences and produce comparable results.