Content analysis of the extent of global learning concepts present in China’s National English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education

Global awareness and interconnection 

• Global perspectives

NECS states that English is an important communication tool for international exchanges and cooperation, and one of the carriers for spreading the achievements of human civilization. It plays an important role in China’s going to the world, the world’s understanding of China, and building a CSFM (MOE, 2022b, p. 1). This represents the expectations and requirements of the MOE for Chinese students to understand and participate in the world through English. In using English to participate in global exchanges and cooperation, NECS encourages students to establish an international perspective (MOE, 2022b, pp. 5, 8, 47) and form an international understanding consciousness (MOE, 2022b, p. 70).

NECS emphasises the concept of CSFM (MOE, 2022b, pp. 1, 5, 8). This focuses on the cultivation of students’ international perspectives (MOE, 2022b, pp. 1, 5, 8, 70, 81). CSFM is the vision for a better world proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping (Khan et al., 2021). NECS states that English plays an important role in helping Chinese students participate in the process of building CSFM. Students need to be able to have a preliminary understanding of the concept of CSFM and the common values of all mankind (MOE, 2022b, p. 8) and have an awareness of CSFM (MOE, 2022b, p. 5).

• Global issues

NECS requires students to pay attention to social hot issues and international affairs (MOE, 2022b, p. 17), closely connect with real life, reflect the characteristics of the times, and reflect new social developments and new scientific and technological achievements (MOE, 2022b, p. 2). In addition, NECS advocates that EFL should include the following three themes: people and self; people and society; and people and nature. Among them, within the topic of people and nature, NECS wants students to explore the Earth and the Universe (MOE, 2022b, p. 16) through EFL. Students need to form the concepts of loving and respecting nature, and living in harmony with nature (MOE, 2022b, p. 16) through EFL, as well as pay attention to environmental protection and natural disaster prevention. These all reflect NECS’ concern for today’s global issues.

Clearly, NECS views EFL as a tool to support China’s participation in global affairs, reflecting the hallmarks of neoliberalism. Within the theoretical framework of this article, NECS’ focus on global perspectives and global issues suggests a soft global learning orientation. This orientation contributes to China’s international image, but NECS’ focus on the nature of EFL courses and the three key themes of learning rarely address structural inequalities and power relations in global affairs.

Cultural diversity and collaboration 

• Diversity

The concept of human diversity is rarely mentioned in NECS. However, NECS includes a discussion on cultural diversity.

Chinese culture and corresponding values are particularly important to NECS. NECS advocates that the cultural awareness goal of the curriculum should deepen the understanding and identification of Chinese culture (MOE, 2022b, p. 5) to strengthen Chinese students’ cultural confidence (MOE, 2022b, p. 5).

NECS refers to the cultures of countries other than China collectively as human culture, a concept that includes human cultural knowledge and human cultural achievements. On the one hand, NECS emphasises learning about the excellent cultures of different countries. This refers to the study of representative figures and cultures of major countries in the world (MOE, 2022b, p. 15). NECS also requires students to study people who have made outstanding contributions and/or portray representative cultural backgrounds and behaviours around the world. On the other hand, NECS calls for EFL courses to focus on different types of diverse knowledge and achievements, including knowledge of material culture, such as food, clothing, architecture, transportation, related inventions and creations, among others (MOE, 2022b, p. 23), as well as knowledge of intangible culture, such as philosophy, science, history, language, literature, art, education, as well as values, moral cultivation, aesthetic taste, labour consciousness, social regulations and customs, among others (MOE, 2022b, p. 23).

Regarding cultures other than Chinese, NECS is more focused on knowledge-level learning requirements. Corresponding learning behaviours include knowing, understanding and describing, such as describing pictures and familiar specific things related to Chinese and foreign cultures (MOE, 2022b, p. 8) and knowing the etiquette of people in different cultural backgrounds (MOE, 2022b, p. 8).

Cross-cultural education 

NECS calls for the development of cross-cultural communication etiquette and aims at getting along well with others (MOE, 2022b, p. 8). NECS describes EFL courses from the perspectives of cross-cultural knowledge, cross-cultural competence, and cross-cultural cognition and awareness. For cross-cultural knowledge, NECS requires students to master English’s unique expression in interpersonal communication (MOE, 2022b, p. 8) and to be able to choose appropriate communication strategies (MOE, 2022b, p. 8). For cross-cultural competence, NECS recommends that EFL courses help students develop cross-cultural communication and communication abilities (MOE, 2022b, pp. 1, 5, 8, 70), which include comparative analysis of Chinese and non-Chinese cultures (MOE, 2022b, p. 47), the ability to respect and tolerate different cultures, and the ability to analyse, compare, and judge cultural differences and similarities (MOE, 2022b, p. 81). If students make mistakes during cross-cultural communication, they should be able to make appropriate corrections (MOE, 2022b, p. 8). At the same time, students should also be able to deal with anxiety (MOE, 2022b, p. 8) when facing unfamiliar cultures. Regarding cross-cultural awareness, NECS emphasises that EFL courses can help students develop awareness of cross-cultural communication (MOE, 2022b, pp. 1, 70). Therefore, students need to be interested and confident in cross-cultural communication and exchange, recognise its importance and be able to participate in cross-cultural communication with an open mind (MOE, 2022b, p. 8).

• Cooperation

NECS emphasises the importance of English as a communication tool for international communication and cooperation (MOE, 2022b, p. 1), noting that it plays an important role in promoting China to the world and [helping] the world to understand China (MOE, 2022b, p. 1). However, NECS does not further describe how students should participate in global communication and cooperation through EFL.

For students’ learning activities, cooperation has always been emphasised by Chinese curriculum standards, along with autonomy and inquiry. The cooperative learning proposed by NECS has three components: learning participants, subjects and learning content. For learning participants, cooperative learning not only requires students to cooperate and help each other (MOE, 2022b, p. 6), but also requires them to learn and communicate with each other (MOE, 2022b, p. 72), so as to complete learning tasks together (MOE, 2022b, pp. 80–1). For cooperative learning at the subject level, NECS encourages interdisciplinary exchanges between different disciplines and calls for improving students’ ability to use interdisciplinary knowledge to creatively solve problems (MOE, 2022b, p. 41). Finally, looking at cooperative learning from the perspective of learning content, NECS advocates using real problems to carry out project-based learning (MOE, 2022b, p. 41).

This section reveals NECS’ emphasis on the importance of multiculturalism and cross-culturalism and its call for cooperation among people, which reflects its aspiration to build a harmonious and inclusive human society. NECS’ emphasis on fostering respect for diverse cultures is an aspect of its soft philosophy of global learning. This shows NECS’ focus on harmony and reciprocity, yet also reveals its neglect of global power relations and structural challenges.

Individual action-oriented responsibility 

Based on the descriptions of taking action in global learning by Gibson et al. (2008), Bourn (2014) and Landorf and Doscher (2023), this article found that the description of action in NECS is vague. The reason why the researchers still retained the coding of these action-related contents in NECS is that NECS does mention many actions that require students to use English to participate in communication, interaction and social practice. However, whether these actions are connected to the global context is debatable. The researchers are unable to assess the extent to which these actions advocated by NECS are related to the global context.

This article argues that from a global learning perspective, NECS, at least in its textual form, does not involve any description of guiding students to use English to participate in global actions. NECS suggests that students use what they have learned to solve real-life problems (MOE, 2022b, p. 3). Students also need to be able to improve their learning ability after learning English, actively participate in language practice activities (MOE, 2022b, p. 6), learn to explore independently, cooperate and help each other (MOE, 2022b, p. 6) and be able to learn to reflect and evaluate learning progress and adjust learning approaches (MOE, 2022b, p. 6). Regarding learning ability, NECS has set up a cooperation and exploration category. For example, students in Grades 7–9 can actively think and actively explore in the learning process, discover and try to use various strategies to solve language problems, and actively carry out extensive application (MOE, 2022b, p. 11).

Although NECS mentions student-led initiatives, these actions are at the individual or local level, not global. This suggests a lack of NECS commitment to fostering a sense of global responsibility in students. This emphasis on action over transformation is similar to the soft approach to global learning.

Critical consciousness and structural thinking 

NECS pays attention to the improvement of students’ thinking quality. After participating in English courses, NECS wants students to be able to develop thinking in language learning, and promote language learning in the development of thinking; initially observe and understand the world and things from multiple perspectives, and express their views in a reasonable and organised manner; gradually develop logical thinking, dialectical thinking and innovative thinking, so that thinking reflects a certain degree of agility, flexibility, creativity, criticality and profundity (MOE, 2022b, p. 6).

Students’ thinking quality needs to include looking at things dialectically from different angles (MOE, 2022b, p. 9) and being able to look at things and analyse problems from multiple angles and dialectically (MOE, 2022b, p. 9). Within the quality of thinking category, NECS has Included a category of criticism and innovation. For example, students in Grades 7–9 should reasonably question the content or views of the text; be able to think independently based on different information, evaluate the content of the text and the author’s views, and explain their reasons (MOE, 2022b, p. 10).

We found that NECS mentions the criticality of thinking, but does not use the term critical thinking. Moreover, NECS’ discussion of thinking revolves around discourse/text and does not involve any guidance in using English as a language tool to participate in critical learning or solve global issues. Compared with the development of critical thinking, NECS seems to pay more attention to the formation of students’ dialectical thinking. Although NECS mentions observing and understanding the world from multiple perspectives (MOE, 2022b, p. 6), it does not provide further explanation on the nature of critical thinking.

Even though NECS implicitly contains expectations for critical thinking, from the perspective of critical global learning it lacks guidance on the development of students’ critical thinking. This may affect the implementation of critical thinking in EFL courses and affect students’ critical thinking and actions with regard to global issues.

Social justice and collective agency 

• Values

NECS states that students can learn to look at the world objectively and rationally (MOE, 2022b, p. 1), form correct worldviews, outlooks on life and values (MOE, 2022b, pp. 1, 47) and correct attitudes and value judgements (MOE, 2022b, p. 3) through EFL. NECS emphasises the improvement of students’ civilised literacy and social responsibility (MOE, 2022b, p. 5) with regard to cultural awareness and requires students to form healthy and positive aesthetic tastes and correct values (MOE, 2022b, p. 5). NECS advocates that students make correct value judgements on things and promotes thinking quality (MOE, 2022b, p. 5). In the evaluation of students, NECS suggests that EFL courses need to focus on the assessment of students’ values, cultural awareness, and thinking process (MOE, 2022b, p. 59). Although NECS repeatedly emphasises helping students form a ‘correct’ worldview, outlook on life and values, it does not further explain the meaning of worldview.

In NECS, the formation of values is more inclined to guide students to have more qualified Chinese values, rather than the values of global citizens. NECS emphasises the education of students’ sense of identity with China. English textbooks need to strictly control ideology within the text (MOE, 2022b, p. 73) and English teachers need to take the implementation of moral education as the fundamental task of English teaching (MOE, 2022b, p. 47). NECS advocates that EFL courses should not only cultivate students’ feelings of home and country (MOE, 2022b, pp. 1, 5, 81) and form a sense of national identity (MOE, 2022b, pp. 9, 80), but also help students feel proud of Chinese culture (MOE, 2022b, p. 9), thereby strengthening their cultural confidence (MOE, 2022b, pp. 1, 5, 9, 81) and forming a sense of identity with Chinese culture (MOE, 2022b, p. 47). Therefore, NECS recommends that textbooks need to introduce advanced socialist culture, revolutionary culture and excellent traditional Chinese culture in an appropriate way, and actively infiltrate patriotism education, revolutionary tradition education, traditional Chinese virtue education, and democracy and legal education (MOE, 2022b, p. 70).

NECS attaches great importance to the cultivation of students’ values, especially their love for and sense of national identity. However, from the perspective of critical global learning, NECS has neglected to pay attention to students’ thinking about global value systems and the practice of critical exploration of global diverse values in EFL courses.

Social equity and justice 

NECS states that EFL courses need to guide students to acquire cross-cultural cognition, attitudes and behavioural choices (MOE, 2022b, p. 5), so as to help students cultivate character, improve civilisation literacy and social responsibility (MOE, 2022b, p. 5). This requires students to understand the outstanding achievements of civilisation in different countries (MOE, 2022b, p. 5). Taking the cultural awareness goal of students in Grades 7–9 as an example, NECS argues that the EFL curriculum helps students understand the humanistic spirit contained in the short texts they have learned (MOE, 2022b, p. 9), feel the traditional virtues of Chinese and foreign social life such as honesty and friendliness (MOE, 2022b, p. 9) and be able to care for others, respect others, and have a sense of social responsibility (MOE, 2022b, p. 9). It can be seen that NECS pays attention to social responsibility, humanistic spirit and traditional virtues in cultural learning, especially cross-cultural learning. These may cover the social equity and justice advocated by global learning. For example, NECS suggests that in terms of cultural knowledge, EFL courses should guide students to learn the basic etiquette and ways of dealing with people in major countries around the world, reflecting the inheritance of culture and mutual respect between people (MOE, 2022b, p. 24). This mutual respect may be related to social equity. Teachers also need to insist on facing all students and fully respecting every student (MOE, 2022b, p. 47). NECS also mentions the core socialist values (MOE, 2022b, p. 69), which also include freedom, equality, justice and the rule of law as social value orientations. In addition, NECS suggests that the compilation of EFL textbooks should include all students and should take into account urban–rural differences, regional differences, and individual differences among students (MOE, 2022b, p. 70). This reflects NECS’ consideration of equity and justice. However, NECS does not directly use terms such as equity, justice, social equity and social justice. Even in all the topics listed in the course content of NECS in the three categories of people and self, people and society, and people and nature, no relevant content can be found. NECS does not mention the requirements and guidance of social equity and justice related to global issues.

From the perspective of critical global learning on structural inequality, NECS conveys a concern for social equity and justice, but lacks clear requirements and systematic explanations. This results in advocacy for social equity and justice, lacking educational guidance on addressing global structural inequality, remaining at the level of morality and values.