Research on the construction strategy of “integration of large, medium and small” in the ideology course in the context of the new era
Data publikacji: 19 mar 2025
Otrzymano: 23 paź 2024
Przyjęty: 28 sty 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/amns-2025-0384
Słowa kluczowe
© 2025 Hongxia Shao, published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Civic and political science is a key course for the implementation of the fundamental task of establishing moral education, and it has an irreplaceable role in the formation of a correct worldview, lifestyle and values, and in consolidating the beliefs of Marxism, socialism and communism, as well as strengthening the confidence in the system, road, theories, and culture [1–2]. By promoting the integrated construction of large, medium and small Civics courses and building a “big Civics” pattern, it can promote the connotative development of Civics courses.
From a philosophical point of view, integration has rich philosophical connotations. It emphasizes the importance of grasping the relationship between the system and the elements as well as the elements based on the wholeness, and requires that the organic components of the “body” should be subordinate to and serve the whole, and that the elements of the system should be coordinated and cooperated with each other, so as to bring into play the functional effect of the whole [3–6]. The integration of ideology and politics courses in universities and primary and secondary schools requires that all organic components of the “body” should obey and serve the whole [7]. In order to realize the common goal of the whole, the curriculum, teaching materials, content, teachers, course management and teaching methods of each section of universities, schools and elementary school should be integrated [8–9]. In the past few years, the integration of Civics and Political Science courses in universities, middle schools and elementary school has significantly improved its effectiveness in macro aspects such as curriculum system and teaching materials development [10–11]. Then, at the micro level, how to explore the articulation, progression, and enhancement of each academic section in terms of integration of course teaching content and integration of teaching methods, as well as the adaptation to the physical and mental characteristics of students in each academic section, is an important theoretical and practical topic facing at present [12–13].
Eryong, X. et al. discussed the ultimate goal of “moral education” in ideological and political courses, and showed that in terms of policy, the construction of a whole-staff education system, a whole-process education system, a values-oriented quality education system, and an evaluation system based on moral education are the policy requirements for achieving the goal of “moral education” [14]. Wen, B. et al. analyzed the concept of “three comprehensive” education into the construction of ideological and political education system, and believed that the ideological and political content should be selected and the ideological and political elements should be excavated in students’ daily life, and the integration path of ideological and political courses should be designed to build a comprehensive ideological and political education system and achieve the ultimate goal of “moral education” [15]. Xue-Jian, W. A. N. G. et al. believe that the mechanism of collaborative innovation in civic and political education is a macroscopic manifestation of adapting to the needs of human development, while the effective coordination of educational concepts and principles and the in-depth fusion of educational methods and modes are the microscopic reflections of the mechanism of collaborative innovation in civic and political education [16]. Zheng, X. analyzed the necessity and importance of building a “big ideology and politics” working system, and put forward the construction strategy of a big system of ideological and political education from six aspects: education system, teachers’ strength, curriculum system, teaching resources, practice methods and assessment and evaluation [17]. Liu, X. pointed out that the “big ideology and politics course” is an important direction for the reform of the ideology and politics education system in the new era, and in the design of the ideology and politics course, it is necessary to adhere to the construction policy of building the integration of universities, middle schools and elementary school, and to strengthen the practical teaching, so as to improve the relevance and integrality of the design of the ideology and politics course [18]. Yang, J. shows that there are more obstacles to the integration of university, middle school and elementary school civic and political courses in the new era in terms of system, teachers and content, for the system problem emphasizes the enhancement of the organizational mechanism to ensure that the problem of teachers emphasizes the deepening of teacher exchanges and cooperation, and for the problem of content emphasizes the emphasis on the articulation of the content of teaching in various school segments, in order to gradually promote the process of the integration of the civic and political education of university, middle school and elementary school construction [19].
This paper designs a survey questionnaire to take some Civics teachers of elementary school, secondary schools and universities in a certain region as the survey object to discuss the achievements and problems in the process of integration construction of Civics classes, and to gain an in-depth understanding of the current teaching and learning situation of Civics integration construction. In addition, based on the students’ subjective perspective, variables such as perceived value, content quality, teaching method, social influence, and teacher quality are selected, and high and low willingness to accept Civics and Political Science classes are taken as the outcome variables, respectively, and the qualitative comparative analysis method is used to carry out the necessity analysis and the combined path analysis, so as to clarify the influencing factors of the students’ willingness to accept the Civics and Political Science classes. Based on the results of this analysis, we will discuss the construction strategy of “integrating large, medium and small” Civics courses in the context of the new era.
In order to understand the current situation of the “integration of large, medium and small schools” in the teaching of Civics, questionnaires were sent to Civics teachers in a number of schools to summarize the results achieved and the problems that existed.
In order to comprehensively understand the teaching status of “integration of large, medium and small schools” of ideological and political teachers, some ideological and political teachers in primary schools, middle schools and universities in a certain place were selected as the survey objects. The questionnaire was designed by consulting literature and materials related to the integration of ideological and political courses. In this survey, a total of 475 teacher questionnaires were distributed, and 418 questionnaires were finally valid. With an effective recovery rate of 88%, indicating good validity and reliability. The questionnaire options are multiple-choice questions based on a five-point scale. The options on the five-point scale include “E is very disagreeable/satisfied”, “D is more disagreeable/satisfied”, “C is generally compliant/satisfied”, “B is more compliant/satisfied”, and “A is very compliant/satisfied”, and they are assigned numeric values of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, respectively.
The integration of Civics courses cannot be built without the support of teachers, analyzing the overall satisfaction of Civics teachers with the quality of Civics courses “integration of large, medium and small”, the results of the overall satisfaction of Civics teachers are shown in Figure 1. In response to the question “How satisfied are you with the quality of the ‘integration of large, medium and small’ Civics courses in your school?”, the number of teachers who expressed satisfaction was as follows. The percentage of those who said they were satisfied was 46.66%, 48.80% answered “average”, and 4.54% said they were dissatisfied. Analyzing the data, we can determine that the overall satisfaction with the quality of integrating large, medium, and small groups in the Civics course is the highest in the proportion of average. Therefore, the construction of Civics courses that integrate large, medium, and small groups still needs to be optimized.
The overall satisfaction of the ideological and political teachers
Teachers’ attitudes toward integrated teaching directly affect the effectiveness of the integrated construction of Civics and Political Science courses. Teachers’ attitudes toward the integration of Civics and Political Science courses are analyzed in four dimensions: necessity of implementation, degree of acceptance, convergence of subject knowledge, and participation in related activities. Figure 2 shows teachers’ attitudes towards integrated teaching. The attitudes of civics teachers towards the dimensions focused mainly on D Comparatively Conformable and C Generally Conformable, with the percentage of D Comparatively Conformable responses ranging from 38% to 50%. It shows that most teachers believe that it is necessary to implement integrated teaching in Civics and Political Science courses, have a positive attitude towards the development of integrated teaching, pay more attention to the articulation of the teaching content of the same topic in Civics and Political Science courses, and have participated in Civics and Political Science course integrated teaching related activities.
The attitude of teachers to the integration of teaching
Civics teachers who integrate teaching simultaneously should also note that the current integration of Civics class teaching still has many shortcomings. Analyzing the actual situation of Civics teachers in the degree of understanding of the integration of Civics courses, document study, textbook study, understanding of student differences, articulation of teaching objectives, teaching methodology undertaking and assessment articulation, the results of the survey on the teaching of Civics courses are shown in Figure 3. The proportion of interviewed teachers answering C generally conforms and D relatively conforms in each question item is 35%~45% and 18%~35% respectively, with the highest proportion of both, followed by B relatively does not conform (10%~20%). It shows that teachers of Civics have a general understanding of integrated teaching, theoretical learning needs to be strengthened, although they support integrated teaching and understand the importance of integrated teaching, some teachers, however, do not take the initiative to study the curriculum standards and teaching materials due to the influence of various factors in the actual teaching and do not pay enough attention to the articulation of the teaching objectives, the teaching method and the assessment method in the teaching process.
The study results of the teaching of ideological and political courses
The results of the survey on the teaching methods of ideological and political courses are shown in Figure 4. In view of the main teaching methods used in ideological and political classroom teaching, 81.58% of the ideological and political teachers chose the “traditional lecture teaching method”, 80.38% of the ideological and political teachers chose the “problem-based inquiry teaching method”, 66.75% of the ideological and political teachers chose the “practical teaching method”, and 76.08% of the ideological and political teachers chose “group discussion and cooperative learning”.
The results of the teaching method of ideological and political class
The evaluation method has a direct impact on students’ learning and interest, and teachers should design appropriate evaluation methods and standards to accommodate the different requirements of ideological and political teaching. The evaluation method adopted by the teachers of ideological and political courses is shown in Figure 5. In terms of evaluation methods, 84.21%, 86.84% and 74.88% of the teachers evaluated students mainly by “test scores”, “usual performance” and “completion of homework after class”, and only 15.79% of teachers evaluated students by self-evaluation or other evaluation. This shows that teacher evaluations concentrate on student achievement and neglect other aspects of student evaluation and other school levels.
The method of evaluation by ideological and political teachers
On the basis of understanding the construction of “integration of large, medium and small schools” in ideological and political courses from the perspective of teachers, this chapter uses dynamic qualitative comparative analysis methods to discover the influencing factors of students’ willingness to accept ideological and political courses, so as to provide a reference for proposing the construction strategy of “integration of large, medium and small schools” in ideological and political courses.
In traditional research on influencing factors, scholars often use quantitative analysis methods such as regression and structural equations, but these methods focus more on the “net effect” of a single factor, studying the impact of a single condition variable on the outcome variable. In reality, social phenomena are often the result of a combination of factors, and it is difficult for a single influencing factor to explain the existence of a particular outcome. Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is a method of comparing sample cases to find the universal affiliation that exists between sets, so as to infer and analyze the causes of sample occurrences as well as the interactions between factors.
Traditional QCA is a research method for cross-sectional analysis. Analyzing the distribution of consistency and coverage over time in a case can provide sufficient and necessary causal conditions. But when viewing data and results purely cross-sectionally, some causal conditions may still be hidden. Therefore, dynamic qualitative comparative analysis was developed to address the issue of stability in research development. Longitudinal studies were introduced to analyze the stability of consistency and coverage across samples and over time, taking into account the time factor.
Traditional QCA utilizes set-theoretic consistency to assess the extent to which a condition constitutes a subset of another condition’s relationship, calculated as in (1):
Due to the introduction of time, there are three different types of consistency, i.e., aggregated consistency, intergroup consistency, and intragroup consistency.
Aggregate consistency is calculated for all consistencies in the panel data and is calculated as in (2):
It is also possible to measure the consistency of the samples over time, whether they remain unchanged over time or change over time, i.e., within-group consistency. Thus, within-group consistency is a measure of the longitudinal consistency over time of an aggregated subset of each sample in the panel. In other words, intragroup consistency is a measure of the consistency over time of the aggregate subset of relationships for each particular case in the sample, calculated as in (4):
Thus, in panel data, there are all T different between-group consistencies, N different within-group consistencies, and one aggregated consistency. By looking at intergroup consistency and intragroup consistency, one can observe changes over time and across samples, but whether the changes are stable or not needs a criterion to be measured. So the stability of intergroup consistency and intragroup consistency is measured by introducing the Euclidean distance, i.e., intergroup consistency distance, intragroup consistency distance, which is calculated as in (5) and (6):
When the intergroup consistency distance is equal to the intragroup consistency distance and equal to zero, it means that the data is a balanced panel data in which there is no time or sample effect. When the intergroup consistency distance is greater than the intragroup consistency distance, this implies that time effects outweigh cross-sectional effects, and conversely, cross-sectional effects outweigh time effects. Since the intergroup consistency distance and intragroup consistency distance are sensitive to the period of the panel and the number of individuals, it is proposed to adjust the consistency distance, which is calculated as in (7) and (8):
When the adjustment consistency distance is less than 0.1, it is considered to be free of time and cross-sectional effects. When the adjusted consistency distance is greater than 0.1, a high inter-adjusted consistency distance indicates that there is a significant time effect, and a high intra-adjusted consistency distance indicates that the samples are not homogeneous, with some clusters of samples being consistently consistent over time, while other clusters of samples are significantly inconsistent. Therefore, compared to traditional QCA, dynamic QCA can more clearly observe the degree of change in the samples over time and sample dimensions, making the analysis path more representative and stable.
QCA can be divided into fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (qsQCA), clear set qualitative comparative analysis (csQCA), and multi-set value qualitative comparative analysis depending on the type of variables. qsQCA is mainly a fuzzy set algorithm for subordination calculation, which assigns the conditional variable to any number between 0 and 1. This study analyzes the influencing factors of students’ acceptance willingness in Civics courses using the FSQCA method.
Based on the acceptance theory, students’ willingness to accept Civics courses is influenced by five aspects: acceptance subject, acceptance object, acceptance medium, acceptance environment, and conductor. Combining the analysis of acceptance theory and adopting the opinions of several scholars and experts, the influencing factors of the willingness to accept Civics courses are summarized into five aspects, namely, perceived value, content quality, teaching method, social influence, and teacher quality, which are taken as the cause variables for the qualitative comparative analysis, and students’ willingness to accept the Civics courses is taken as the outcome variable. On this basis, a questionnaire was prepared to determine the influencing factors that influence students’ willingness to accept Civic and Political Science courses.
This study mainly uses the form of questionnaire distribution, selects undergraduates in a university as the survey object, through field interviews and questionnaire collection, a total of 250 questionnaires are distributed, majoring in business administration, tourism management, international trade, finance, primary education, geography, etc., the integrity and consistency of the recovered questionnaires are checked, and a total of 229 valid questionnaires are obtained after eliminating invalid questionnaires.
In this paper, dynamic qualitative comparative analysis is used, and the transformation of variables into fuzzy set affiliation requires the presetting of three anchor points: fully affiliated, intermediate, and fully unaffiliated, and the transformed variables should take values between [0, 1]. Considering that the variables were measured using a 5-point Likert scale, 5, 3, and 1 were selected as anchor points, and the data were transformed using the calibration function in the fs QCA3.0 software to obtain the truth table, and then univariate necessity analysis and combined path analysis were performed.
According to the research conventions of fs QCA, univariate necessity analysis was performed first. If the necessary consistency of a cause variable is greater than 0.9, the factor is necessary for the outcome variable. The results of univariate necessity analysis are shown in Table 1 when the outcome variables are students’ high willingness to accept the Civics course and students’ low willingness to accept the Civics course, respectively. When the outcome variable was that students were willing to accept ideological and political courses, the necessary consistency of “content quality” and “teaching method” was greater than 0.9, which constituted the necessary conditions for students’ willingness to accept ideological and political courses, which could explain about 81.5% and 82.1% of the questionnaires, respectively, with a high degree of explanation. When the outcome variable was students’ low willingness to take Civics classes, the consistency scores for individual variables did not exceed 0.9, indicating that there was no certain condition that was necessary for students’ unwillingness to take Civics classes.
The necessity analysis of a single variable
| Variables | High acceptance | Low acceptance | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Consistency | Coverage | Consistency | Coverage | |
| Perceived value | 0.782 | 0.799 | 0.686 | 0.659 |
| ~Perceived value | 0.635 | 0.663 | 0.452 | 0.544 |
| Content quality | 0.943 | 0.815 | 0.713 | 0.772 |
| ~Content quality | 0.514 | 0.754 | 0.743 | 0.616 |
| Teaching mode | 0.937 | 0.821 | 0.678 | 0.684 |
| ~Teaching mode | 0.886 | 0.774 | 0.502 | 0.559 |
| Social impact | 0.756 | 0.682 | 0.749 | 0.541 |
| ~Social impact | 0.825 | 0.697 | 0.602 | 0.816 |
| Teacher quality | 0.806 | 0.796 | 0.801 | 0.685 |
| ~Teacher quality | 0.489 | 0.597 | 0.503 | 0.597 |
In qualitative comparative analysis, three solutions can be obtained by calculation: complex solutions, intermediate solutions, and parsimonious solutions. Among them, the complex solution is poorly generalized, the parsimonious solution is too simple, and the intermediate solution, which is between the complex solution and the simple solution, has a better revelation and generalization of conclusions, and has been adopted by most researchers, and the intermediate solution is also used in this study for path analysis. In accordance with the convention of setting the coincidence threshold at 0.8, students’ high willingness to accept the Civics course and students’ low willingness to accept the Civics course were respectively taken as the outcome variables, and the results of the combined path of the willingness to accept the Civics course are shown in Table 2, with • representing the existence of the core condition, ○ representing the absence of the core condition, ♦ representing the existence of the auxiliary condition, ◊ representing the absence of the auxiliary condition, and “blank” represents that the condition can either appear or not appear.
The combination path result of the thought political class
| Conditional variable | High acceptance | Low acceptance | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| H1 | H2 | H3 | NH1 | |
| Perceived value | ○ | • | ◊ | ○ |
| Content quality | • | • | • | • |
| Teaching mode | • | • | ◊ | |
| Social impact | ◊ | ○ | ♦ | • |
| Teacher quality | • | • | • | |
| Consistency | 0.836 | 0.877 | 0.862 | 0.828 |
| Coverage | 0.519 | 0.801 | 0.771 | 0.667 |
| Unique coverage | 0.162 | 0.403 | 0.358 | 0.505 |
| Solution consistency | 0.826 | 0.818 | ||
| Solution coverage | 0.917 | 0.635 | ||
There are three combination paths with “students’ high willingness to accept Civics and Political Science classes” as the outcome variable, with a total coverage of 91.7%, indicating that the combination of the three conditions has relatively high explanatory power for the results. There is only one combined path with “low willingness of students to accept Civics and Politics courses” as the outcome variable, with a coverage rate of 63.5%, which has comparable explanatory power.
Comparative analysis of the paths reveals that both Path H1 and Path H2 consider the quality of the content and the way of teaching to be important influences on the high willingness to accept Civic and Political Science courses, and have higher explanatory power (higher coverage) when the perceived value is higher. Both Path H1 and Path H3 consider content quality and teacher quality to be important influences on high willingness to accept Civic and Political Science classes, and both are core conditions of the combined path. The core conditions of all three paths include content quality, indicating that the factor of content quality has the greatest influence on students’ willingness to accept, while the mode of delivery and teacher quality are also important factors influencing students’ willingness to accept.
Civic and political science class accompanies the whole process of young people’s growth and development, and is a cross-section organic whole, running through the whole process of education in primary, secondary and tertiary schools. Combined with the analysis of the factors influencing the willingness to accept the Civic and Political Science Class, the construction strategy of “integration of large, medium and small schools” is proposed. The construction strategy for the “integration of large, medium and small schools” is shown in Figure 6, which includes the following five dimensions.
The construction strategy of the integration of ideological and political courses
In the process of teaching Civics and Political Science, teachers need to fully carry out research, have a more comprehensive understanding of students, and fully explore the intrinsic value and potential of students. In the specific teaching process of Civics and Political Science, when teachers explain similar or the same knowledge of Civics and Political Science, they should make an orderly correlation between the knowledge in the textbook, promote the exchange between basic education and higher education, so as to make clear the direction of the construction of Civics and Political Science “integration of large, medium and small”. After completing the comprehensive analysis of the content of the textbook, teachers also need to carry out a detailed survey of the students’ situation to analyze the situation of the students as a whole, so as to carry out a more targeted teaching of Civics and Political Science.
First, integrate teaching resources. When integrating teaching resources, teachers should follow the principle of mutual articulation and integration, i.e., combining the Civics teaching materials with social resources.
Second, carry out research on learning conditions. Teachers should fully understand the students’ thinking condition and learning condition, and then integrate the content of the Civics and Political Science course, so as to ensure the relevance of the course content and lay the foundation for the development of Civics and Political Science teaching activities.
Thirdly, expand the channel of resource integration. Civic and political teachers need to actively communicate and cooperate with colleges and universities to combine high-quality educational resources with those of compulsory education, so as to guarantee the comprehensiveness and hierarchy of course content. At the same time, actively create a platform for the construction of “large, medium and small integration” of Civics courses, so that teachers of Civics courses at different stages can maintain good communication on the platform and realize common research and education, thus better exerting the nurturing effect of the construction of “large, medium and small integration” of Civics courses.
Civics teachers need to explore the content of the new standard in depth, under the guidance of which they will continue to explore and innovate teaching methods of interest to students, so as to ensure the effectiveness of the construction of “large, medium and small integration” of the Civics class.
First, topic-based teaching methods. The Civics class emphasizes the combination of Civics content and current events in society, which is the only way to effectively deepen students’ knowledge of Civics. The issue-based teaching method can effectively improve students’ ability to discriminate. Teachers will take the controversial hotspots and current events in the society as the issues, and guide the students to discuss the issues and make rational judgments, through which the students can learn the knowledge of Civic and Political Science in a more active way and improve the sense of public participation.
Second, a case-based teaching method. Introducing cases related to students’ lives and studies can enhance students’ interest in learning, stimulate students’ thinking about Civics, and cultivate students’ civic literacy.
Third, a practice-guided teaching method. For example, in major holidays, we carry out online and offline patriotic education activities, knowledge lectures, or lead students to red education bases for experience, so that students can have better contact with the society, which not only promotes the connection between practical and theoretical courses, but also realizes the integration of the contents of “large, medium and small” civic and political courses.
Improving the construction of the teaching staff is also an important measure in the process of carrying out the construction of “large, medium and small integration” of ideological and political courses. Ideological and political teachers should establish the concept of lifelong learning, and work with ideological and political teachers at all stages to do a good job in the reform of ideological and political teaching and the construction of teachers’ ethics and style, so as to better carry out ideological and political teaching in large, middle and primary schools, and provide students with exemplary examples, so as to improve the quality of the construction of “integration of large, medium and small schools” in ideological and political courses.
Teachers of Civics and Political Science should innovate the teaching evaluation mechanism from multiple directions: first, enrich the teaching evaluation methods. When carrying out the teaching of Civics and Political Science courses, they should focus on both verbal encouragement of students and motivation of students from actual actions. Second, strengthen the incentives for Civics teachers. Schools should take the Civics and Political Science teacher team as an important person in the selection of the school’s cadre, so that Civics and Political Science teachers can maintain their motivation and passion for a long time, and the schools should also actively give encouragement and support to Civics and Political Science teachers.
The integration of Civics and Politics courses in universities, middle schools, and elementary schools is an important guarantee for the systematic construction of ideological and political theory courses. In this paper, we use a questionnaire survey to investigate and study the Civics teachers in schools and universities in a particular place, and analyze the effectiveness and problems of current Civics integration teaching. Then, using the qualitative comparative analysis method, it explores the influencing factors of students’ willingness to accept the Civics course, and then puts forward the strategy for the construction of Civics course “integration of large, medium and small schools”.
The highest percentage of general satisfaction (48.80%) is attributed to the satisfaction of Civics teachers with the integrated construction of Civics courses. At present, there are still problems such as teachers’ theoretical learning needs to be strengthened, insufficient teaching preparation, weak articulation of teaching objectives, integration of teaching methods needs to be improved, and assessment methods are separated across segments, etc. More than 80% of teachers still use traditional lecture and inquiry teaching methods, and more than 74% still use traditional assessment methods.
Three combination paths of high willingness to accept Civics and Political Science courses and one combination path of low willingness to accept Civics and Political Science courses were obtained through the analysis, which had 91.7% and 63.5% explanatory power respectively. The combined configurations of different influencing factors have a certain degree of equivalence on the influence of students’ acceptance of the Civics and Political Science course, which fully indicates that there are diversified paths to enhance students’ willingness to accept the Civics and Political Science course. The key factors affecting students’ willingness to accept Civic and Political Science courses include the quality of the content, the mode of delivery, and the quality of the teachers.
The integrated construction strategy of comprehensively analyzing the content of teaching materials, focusing on the integration of course content, optimizing the teaching form of the ideology and politics course, improving the assumption of the teaching team and innovating the teaching evaluation mechanism is thus proposed to enhance the coupling degree of the articulation of teaching and learning in each section of the course, so as to make the “integration of large, medium and small schools” in the new era of the ideology and politics course achieve the fusion of comprehensive education and ideological and political education.