Author(s)

Hairong Ling ¹, Chunze Song ²

Affiliation(s)

¹ School of Marxism, Communication University of China Nanjing, Nanjing, 211172, China
² School of Culture and Communication, Guangdong University of Business and Technology, Zhaoqing, 526020, China

Corresponding Author

Chunze Song

ABSTRACT

With the deepening of the New Gaokao (National College Entrance Examination) Reform, which grants students greater autonomy in course selection and college application, career education has become an urgent priority in general senior high schools (GSHS) in the Chinese mainland. This study systematically reviews and internationally compares research on GSHS career education curricula in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, and China (including the mainland, Taiwan, and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region), using a four-element curriculum framework comprising objectives, content, implementation, and evaluation. The findings reveal that: (1) although countries converge on self-understanding, exploration of the world of work, and career planning competence as core objectives, with lifelong learning and self-directed development as a common foundation, the mainland lacks an institutionalized and refined objective system; (2) curriculum content exhibits both temporal extension and spatial openness, oscillates between a "career-focused" and a "whole-person" perspective, and remains weakly structured as comprehensive practical knowledge; (3) implementation is diverse in form yet convergent in pattern, suffering from insufficient integration across lesson types and educational resources; and (4) while Anglophone and East Asian systems have developed institutionalized benchmarks and continuous evaluation tools, evaluation studies in the mainland are scarce and predominantly short-term, with longitudinal evidence largely absent. Building on these findings, the paper argues for a paradigmatic shift from static person-environment fit to Career Construction Theory, and proposes recommendations for an integrated curriculum scheme and an evidence-based evaluation system, so as to inform both theory and practice of GSHS career education.

KEYWORDS

General Senior High School; Career Education; Career Curriculum; International Comparison

CITE THIS PAPER

Hairong Ling, Chunze Song. Career Education Curriculum in General Senior High Schools: An International Comparative Review Through the Lens of the Four Curriculum Elements. Curriculum and Teaching Methodology (2026). Vol. 9, No. 5, 94-102. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/curtm.2026.090512.

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