Developing Curriculum Materials on East Asia for Secondary School Students

The Curriculum Research & Development Group (CRDG) is a research unit of the College of Education at the University of Hawai'i. Part of its mission is to develop curriculum materials for students in grades K-12. The social studies section of CRDG has been developing curriculum materials on Asia since the early 1990s. As part of a project entitled Curriculum on Asian and Pacific History, CRDG planned to develop a set of four interrelated but stand-alone books on China, Japan, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. All of these instructional materials were designed to be used as flexibly as possible: to supplement the truncated information in world history texts; to be used as a primary text in an area studies course; and to use in related student activities such as Model United Nations or World Quest. As a result of its work on the China and Japan books, CRDG decided to follow up by developing a text on East Asia. The first step in developing instructional materials, regardless of their subject or format, is to develop a solid organizational framework. This article discusses the process of developing the organizational framework for a thematically based text focused on China, including Hong Kong and Taiwan; Japan; and South and North Korea. (Contains a Bibliography and 7 endnotes.)