摘 要

随着经济和科学技术的飞速发展，社会对人才的需求越来越多样化，人的全面和谐发展已成为高校的主要任务。现在国家提倡建设“双一流”大学（建设世界一流大学和一流学科），对于高校的教育质量和人才培养要求更高。但就目前情况而言，需要实施通识教育与专业教育相结合的策略，不仅可以使学生掌握专业知识，而且还可以提高他们的人文素质。加强学科与学科之间的联系，有利于给学科注入新的生命力。通识教育和专业教育是高等教育的重要组成部分。两者的整合是专业教育发展的需要，因为专业教育和通识教育中相互补充和相互完善。同时，融合是提高高等教育的需要，因为通识教育的发展离不开专业教育，专业教育也离不开通识教育。

本文运用了文献研究法和历史研究法，了解了我国高校通识教育和专业教育融合的背景。分析存在的问题，以及可能的解决方法，更好的完善高等教育，促进通识教育和专业教育的融合。

关键词：专业教育；通识教育；整合

Abstract

With the rapid development of economy and science and technology, the social demand for talents is becoming more and more diversified, comprehensive and harmonious development of human cultivation has become more the main task of universities. Nowadays, the government proposed the construction of “Double First-rate” University—first-rate university and first-rate disciplines. Because professional education in the college has not fully completed the task, the need to implement general education and its combination with professional education, not only can make the students have a good command of the professional knowledge, but also can improve their culture level. The general education and the professional education are important parts of higher education. The integration is the demand of the development of professional education, because the professional education needs supplement and perfection from general education. At the same time, the integration is the need of general education, because the development of general education is inseparable from the professional education. With the combination of two, it will add new meaning to higher education.

This paper analyses current situation in universities and provides some feasible methods to promote the integration of professional education and general education. Meanwhile, it can also be helpful to improve the quality of higher education.

Key Words: professional education; general education; integration

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 The background of the integration theory 3

2.1 The background of the integration of general education and professional education 3

2.2 Necessity of the integration of general education and professional education 4

3 Elaboration of general education and professional education in China 6

3.1 Problems of the integration 6

3.2 Reasons of the problems 8

4 Strategy of the integration of general education and professional education 10

4.1 Build and promote the idea of general education 10

4.2 Establish scientific curriculum system 11

4.3 Improve teaching quality 12

4.4 Promote cooperation 12

5 Conclusion 14

References 15

Acknowledgements 16

Research on Integration of Professional Education and General Education

1 Introduction

Recent years, universities and colleges in China spared great efforts to develop professional education in order to cultivate talents to help build the country. But drawbacks have become obvious. Many of students under major-only cultivation mode in universities have restrained their mind and ignored their individuality. In this case, the idea of general education has been accepted and promoted in some universities and colleges.

It can seen that the obtained achievements in researching on the integration of general education and professional education from foreign countries, especially in the U.S. This country had studied general education for centuries, and they have a relatively systematic program to implement this mode. General education and professional education are two parts of higher education, and they are inseparable and not in opposition to each other.

Paper on the integration of the two began in Taiwan and Hong Kong in China in the early stage. After 90s, the mainland China proposed “education for all-round development”, research on the integration had been attached much importance. Many researchers have studied on integration: Gu Jianchun (2004) offered evidence in accordance with the purpose and the need of education; Chen Tao (2013) analyzed the difficult situation of implementation of the integration and put forward some solutions. The main problem is the strategy of the integration. They proposed solutions on policy, management, curriculum and teaching resources from macroscopic aspects, which lacked of practicability. This paper focuses on feasible measure to improve the integration.

Professional education bases on one word “major”. The word “major” has three traits: be divided into different category based on the certain standard; depends on the organization and design of courses; every major has its own scientific system. In that case, “Professional Education” has different meaning in a narrow and a broad sense.

In a broad sense, professional education equals to higher education, an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after completion of secondary education. In a narrow sense, professional education refers to special education for cultivating specialized people, which is the preparation for students to accumulate knowledge and experience to work in one field. Our universities have invested a large amount of people, money and materials to improve professional education. On one hand, professional education can serve the society and level up the serving function; on the other hand, it has a scientific and reasonable system for students’ sake, combining practice with theory effectively. So professional education aims on that students are proficient with professional knowledge and skills.

General education was the concept rising in western countries, and there were numerous learners dug deeply in terms of the concept. A famous professor Manli Li has defined it: general education is a non-vocational education, an essential part of tertiary education; it is supposed to cultivate comprehensive people with responsibility to the society; it connects to the attitude, emotion, and it is non-vocational and non-utilitarian.

In a broad sense, general education includes specialized education and non-specialized education, covering all the parts of college study throughout the whole process. General education not only can provide with scientific mind, but also humanistic quality. In a narrow sense, general education means non-specialized education for the comprehensiveness of students. General speaking, it belongs to elemental education to reinforce humanistic quality and it attaches importance to the communication between different major and field.

Integration means the combining of two or more things so that they work together effectively (Longman Dictionary). Integration and differentiation is relative. Integration forms parts to the whole, and differentiation divides the whole into parts. University education is a process of integration and differentiation. The classification of major has become more meticulous and will be more meticulous, which is differentiation. According to personal need and future development, students are able to choose the major and course. Despite that, students should know general and professional knowledge, foundation and application, humanity and science, in order to avoid one-sided development and achieve all-round and harmonious development.

The integration of general education and professional education means: integrate these two types of education to cultivate advanced talents with profound professional knowledge, strong professional skills, broad vision and comprehensive understanding of things with emotion.

2 The background of the integration theory

The demand of higher education varies with the times, so the purpose of higher education is various. Studying on the trend of development of higher education, we follow the trend and make some changes to keep up with time.

2.1 The background of the integration of general education and professional education

The popularity of higher education is the base of the integration of general education and professional education. With the increase of enrollments, it gives rise to the following changes: cultivation mode; educational idea; major construction; and teaching mode.

First, companies and firms have higher demand for employees because of the rapid development of society and economy. To send talents to society is a main purpose of universities and colleges. One-sided cultivation mode which focuses more on professional education cannot satisfy the need of comprehensive labor force. In this case, university should implement cultivation mode of integration of general and professional education. Second, the trend of popularization of higher education sends similar students, over-emphasizes the common development of students and ignores the cultivation of students' personality, while the needs of the society are varied. Therefore, colleges and universities should change their own educational ideas properly, not only pay attention to the study of professional courses, but also cultivate students in various aspects, so as to ensure the quality of personnel training on the basis of the completion of educational tasks. Third, with the increase in the enrollment rate of higher education, the original subject major has not been able to satisfy the students' pursuit of knowledge, especially in the era of modern society. Single subject knowledge cannot solve the complicated problems. It is necessary to sort out and integrate, and attach importance to the relevance of knowledge, while general education meets this requirement. It can effectively improve students with a single professional structure and improve their comprehensive quality and ability in all aspects. Therefore, the trend of popularization of higher education promotes combination of discipline and specialty which needs to combine the general education with specialized education and then to cultivate high level talents with both scientific and humanistic quality. Last, under the influence of the specialized education model, the establishment of the teaching plan and the development of the teaching process have been centered on professional education narrowly, which greatly hindered the development of the students' practice ability and creative thinking to explore new things. The trend of the popularization of higher education became more and more obvious, but teaching mode cannot ensure the teaching quality and will become a barricade on students’ all-round development. In this case, to get rid of the constraints of professional education, university should modify and adjust the original teaching plan, educational purpose, teaching plan and combine theory with practice.

2.2 Necessity of the integration of general education and professional education

Activities carried out by colleges and universities are conducive to students’ own development and university plays a vital role in cultivation. Specialization is the concrete embodiment of social division of labor. Setting up different specialties in colleges and universities is to meet the needs of different sectors of society, to cultivate talents with professional ability and to promote the rapid development of enterprise industry. Thus, specialization is the basic characteristics of higher education. Due to the influence of utilitarianism in colleges and universities, professional education is in the leading position in Chinese universities and colleges for a long time. It pays too much attention to the development of specialties, so that students' knowledge structure is simple, the level of comprehensive ability is relatively low, and the humanistic quality has different degrees. Not all aspects can be developed. This cultivation mode hindered students’ own development, so universities need to add general education into higher education. Specifically, the development of college students themselves mainly includes the development of intelligence, physical strength, emotion, morality and quality. The development of general education in colleges and universities has made up for the lack of professional education, improving the situation of the one-sided development of the students, and guiding them to set up a correct outlook on the world and life, and help them to construct a reasonable knowledge and ability structure.