ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews in some depth the historical trajectories by which first didactics and then curriculum studies were introduced and localised in mainland China. Like their colleagues in general didactics, researchers in subject didactics (including chemistry didactics, physics didactics, biology didactics, mathematics didactics, and Chinese language didactics) in mainland China since the 1980s have to an extent misread and misunderstood subject didactics and curriculum studies. In 1997, a group of curriculum researchers networked and went on to establish the National Association of Curriculum Studies, also within the Chinese Society of Education, claiming independent identity of curriculum studies as a sub-discipline of educational sciences in mainland China. The development of the new discipline of Curriculum and Didactics in mainland China is of course rooted in reforms of teaching, learning, and schooling. Another aspect importantly requiring study is the need to build a Chinese culture of education, with the new and blended discipline of Curriculum and Didactics as an integral part.
