The purposes of this study were to discuss the learning stages in previous elementary and junior high school curriculum standard/guidelines and the related research studies, as well as to propose the learning stages for updating 1-9 Joint Curriculum Guidelines in the near future. Data collecting methods include literature reviews, sypoisums participating, interviews, focus groups, and questionnaires.
The results are as follows:
1. From the theories of child development, previous and current curriculum standards/guidelines, learning levels/key stages of foreign countries, growing stages of the character school, to the recent research findings, the stages are included and the meaning behind them are discussed.
2. The committees of 1-9 Joint Curriculum Guidelines claim that learning stages are not theory-based but follow the stages in previous curriculum standards. The scholars of each learning area design its individual learning stages.
3. Along with the 2008 curriculum guidelines, the learning stages of each learning area have the same period except the area of “Health and Physical Education”.
4. The editors of textbooks suggest to maintain the learning stage in its original condition in 7-9 grades and to regulate it in 1-6 grades in accordance with the characteristics of each learning area.
5. The experts and teachers of different learning area propose that learning stages should meet with students’ age, social-cultural background. They also point out that the difficulties of competence indicators in each learning stage should be rediscussed. Math and English should be taught in competence-based small groups.
6. The majority of elementary and junior high school teachers suggest that their teaching would not be influenced by learning stages, so there is no need to change. Based on the results, this study proposes suggestions to update the learning stages for the future curriculum guidelines.
