The Establishment of the 2018 Physical Education Curriculum Guidelines in Taiwan: A Multiple Streams Analysis

Authors: Hung-Ju Chiu

Abstract:

Since the 12-Year Basic Education Reform in Taiwan was decided in 2011, relevant preparatory research and curriculum guidelines revised work had begun. To bridge the interpretation gap between the new curriculum guidelines and educators, this research applied the multiple streams framework and conducted semi-structured interviews with policymakers to analyse the policy-making process of Taiwan’s 2018 physical education curriculum guidelines, synthesising a better understanding of policy background for educators. Results found that the agenda-setting of the 2018 Health and Physical Education Domain Curriculum Guidelines (HPEDCG) revised work originated from Taiwan’s changed social contexts and national mood on requiring education reform. Through the semi-structured interviews with the policymaker, the policy window—2014 General Guidelines is defined, and it was mainly researched and established by scholars in the policy community, making it a decided agenda-setting. Subsequently, other policy communities, including scholars and expert teachers in the PE area, formulated the 2018 HPEDCG, a sub-policy of the 2014 General Guidelines. In this context, the policy stream is dominant in impacting the policy output when the relationship between the policy window and policy output is subordination policy because the problem and political factors overlap between the agenda-setting and the policy output. In addition, the influence of the interest groups is relatively implicit in the 2018 PE curriculum guidelines decision-making, especially since student representatives were overwhelmed in the curriculum guidelines ‘review’ position. Therefore, this research suggests further exploration of policy implementation to investigate its interplay on policy-making processes and attempt to extend the MSF application to the broad policy process.

Keywords: curriculum guidelines, multiple streams framework, physical education, agenda-setting, policy-making