The 2022 English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education in China denote an important shift toward developing "intercultural awareness" as a core competency. However, the pragmatic implementation of "cross-cultural consciousness" in elementary English education remains fraught with pedagogical and structural tensions. Drawing upon Vygotsky’s Cultural-historical Theory, this paper assesses the current framework’s ability to move beyond a binary of "source culture" versus "target culture."
From a Vygotskian perspective, language is a psychological tool that mediates higher mental functions through social interaction. This study argues that the 2022 Standards risk reducing cultural learning to the acquisition of static knowledge rather than a dynamic process of social mediation. While the Standards emphasize "cultural confidence" through integrating Chinese traditional elements, they unintentionally create a "cultural vacuum" in the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). In this space, the child’s lived experience (the "everyday concept") and the curriculum's rigid cultural categories (the "scientific concept") often fail to achieve a dialectical synthesis. Three primary problems are analyzed: Instrumentalization of Culture, Imbalance in International Representation, and Mediation Deficit.
The paper concludes that for cross-cultural consciousness to take root, the curriculum must move from a content-based approach to a process-oriented mediation model, treating cultural differences as tools for intellectual development rather than fixed boundaries.

Authors:
Cheng Hsu, Jiangsu Normal University, China
Xuan Zhang, Jiangsu Normal University, China
Yanjun‌ Jiang, Jiangsu Normal University, China

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Posted by James Alexander Gordon

Last updated: 2023-02-23 23:45:00

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