Curriculum-Based Ideological and Political Education: Research Focuses and Evolution

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Introduction
The implementation of curriculum-based ideological and political education in China has mainly relied on some certain courses for a long time. The backward educational concepts, boring course content, single teaching mode, and limited class hours have no longer meet the needs of talent cultivation at present. Through in-depth researches on the higher education in China, many scholars have found that the distortion and lack of values are the biggest problems that need to be solved urgently in Chinese higher education (Qiu et al., 2016). In December 2016, the National Conference on Curriculum-based Ideological and Political Education solved the disconnection between teaching and education in higher education and started ideological and political courses nationwide. With the promotion of ideological and political curriculum, the research on teaching reform of higher education has gradually become a hotspot in the new era. However, what are current focuses and frontiers of curriculum-based ideological and political education? What is the development trend in the future? Based on these problems, the author conducts a panoramic observation and analysis of the papers on curriculum-based ideological and political education so as to realize the current situations and deficiencies in this field and then to predict the trend in the future.

Research Focuses
Keywords are the essence of literatures because they are high-frequency words extracted from papers reflecting themes (Zong et al., 2011). Co-word analysis can be used to find the "hot" topics and research trends of a certain research field (Leung et al., 2017). Moreover, the index of Centrality is used to indicate the "power" of nodes in the network (Freeman, 1978). Table 1 is a list of keywords whose betweenness centrality scores are higher than zero.
As key terms in curriculum-based ideological and political education, these high-frequency keywords represent hotspots and directions in this field. The nodes of high betweenness centrality (i.e. score of betweenness centrality≥0.1) are important research turning points (Li & Chen, 2016). According to the centrality and frequency of keywords, top five are greater than 0.1, including "curriculum-based ideological and political education", "college ideological and political courses", "college ideological education", "ideological and political theory courses" and "morality education". Thus, it can be preliminarily judged that ideological and political theory and college ideological and political courses are of great significance in curriculum-based ideological and political education.  Vol. 15, No. 5;2022 which also lays the foundation for the construction of curriculum ideological and political concepts. Based on the following explorations, other keywords such as "collaborative education mechanism", "same-direction advance", "ideological and political teachers" and "implicit education" have been highlighted in those two clusters. They are also the beginning of this hotspot to carry out researches on the construction of the ideological and political concept.
Hotspot 2: Research on values of curriculum-based ideological and political education Research on values of curriculum-based ideological and political education and the first hotspot are almost developed at the same time. The research on values equals to its significance, which provides a theoretical basis of curriculum-based ideological and political construction. Only by clarifying the value can scholars point out the direction and aims for its construction. On the basis of literature surveys, current research on curriculum-based ideological and political education mainly focuses on the national and college levels. In addition, discussing the value of curriculum-based ideological and political education from the national level can be classified as an extension of the research on its connotation. It is also the definition of its conceptual extension. Similarly, the keyword clustering of national-level research appears in cluster 2 of the density map, such as "value guidance", "Marxism" and "new era", reflecting the value of curriculum ideological and political construction at the macro level. They are the demand for ideological and political education and the reinforcement of national education in the new era (H. Wang & B. Wang, 2018). The discussion on value at the college level is mainly from the fundamental tasks of higher education. The main high-frequency keywords involve "morality education", "talent cultivation", "education", "new engineering", "colleges", "college students", and "ideological and political education". Among them, the centrality of morality education is greater than 0.1, indicating that this keyword is a turning point as curriculum-based ideological and political education is not only the requirement for the national development strategy, but also a fundamental problem and a task of education (X. Wang, 2019). As a result, curriculum-based ideological and political construction is based on the fundamental educational task of "morality education", which also determines the role of this keyword as an important turning point. The college-level research in the density map is reflected in cluster 1 and cluster 4. As the most important research topic, cluster 1 has the most co-occurrence keywords, so the color is the deepest to show the high popularity. From the college level, the value of curriculum-based ideological and political education mainly focuses on the direction of education, talent cultivation, quality of education, ideological and political education, reforms of classroom teaching and so on. It is worth noting that there are two types of majors in two clusters, namely PE and foreign language. Although the co-occurrence frequency is not high, they are prominent among other majors, indicating that they are ahead of others in curriculum-based ideological and political education. Almost each college or university has the course of college PE. The biggest advantage of this type of compulsory course is that it has a wide range of students coupled with a flexible teaching mode, which is often the first choice for college teaching reforms. From the national level, the teaching reform of PE incorporating ideological and political elements is in line with the country's policy of further improvements in the comprehensive development and training system of moral, intellectual, physical, aesthetic and labor. As for foreign language education, the integration of ideology and politics has its special significance in terms of foreign language talent cultivation and course contents. The mission of Chinese foreign language education in the new era is to cultivate talents who can write "a brand-new world history". As foreign language involves both Chinese and Western cultures and the differences in values and outlook on life (Z. Wang, 2021), it is necessary to face Western ideology directly and carry out the appropriate guidance in which the brand-new curriculum-based ideological and political education has played an important role. Therefore, the value and significance of the ideological and political construction of foreign language majors are highlighted as well. Meanwhile, from those clusters, "foreign language major" is located in cluster 4 with "colleges" and "curriculum-based ideological and political education" as representative labels, to demonstrate the research focuses on the ideological and political education of foreign language students.

Hotspot 3: Exploration in paths of curriculum-based ideological and political education
Since June 2020, the Ministry of Education has issued policies to lead the curriculum -based ideological and political education into a stage of comprehensive practice. As a result, relevant research has also quickly focused on the exploration in paths of curriculum-based ideological and political education. From curriculum system to classroom teaching model, from college students to teachers, from teaching implementation to evaluation system, all purposes are to explore a suitable curriculum-based ideological and political path for a certain subject. Some scholars also pay attention to the research on differences in the process of curriculum-based ideological and political education and put forward suggestions based on different disciplines, different nature of universities and different levels of teaching objects (H. Wang & B. Wang, 2018). From the frequency and betweenness centrality centrality of keywords list in Table 1, the co-occurrence frequency of keywords, including "realization path", ies.ccsenet.org Vol. 15, No. 5;2022 32 "ideological and political education", and "professional curriculum system", are lower than those high-frequency keywords in hotspot 1 and 2 due to the late appearance, but they are still one of the hotspots in this field. Whether these keywords are hot frontiers for the future research can be further verified through the subsequent timezone map and the analysis of mutation word. According to the density map, the exploration of curriculum-based ideological and political education mainly focuses on three clusters (#3, #6 and #7), of which cluster 7 is the most popular, but the number of co-occurring keywords is the least. It can be preliminarily judged that this research topic is relatively new but has great potential. Cluster 3, as a bridge, connects cluster 7 and cluster 6 in terms of position. These three clusters are interrelated research directions under the same topic. Judging from the co-occurrence keywords of them, cluster 3 and cluster 7 mainly study the strategy of curriculum-based ideological and political education in the new era, and the construction of teaching staff in the same direction, including how to reform traditional ideological and political courses so as to implement the tasks of ideological and political work in the new era. It is worth noting that the keyword "postgraduate" also appeared in cluster 3, indicating that the moral education of postgraduates has been paid attention and that they also have to attend ideological and political courses. Due to differences of training plan in curriculum system, teaching object and training method, the question that the curriculum-based ideological and political education of postgraduates can be copied from the undergraduates' need a further discussion. The exploration of curriculum-based ideological and political construction for postgraduates is expected to become an emerging hotspot in the next few years. Cluster 6 is the landing research of all hotspots which takes the classroom as the main channel of curriculum-based ideological and political education as the starting point with the use of the case study method. It has put forward some practical teaching modes and methods through empirical research such as flipped classroom, and has started from multiple levels of students, teachers and colleges in order to reconstruct or optimize the curriculum system, to promote the curriculum-based ideological and political construction, and to realize the fundamental task of moral education.
Looking at three hotspots formed by the above 7 clusters, three themes have improved the research from the macro-level curriculum-based ideological and political concepts (connotation and value) to the micro-level exploration so as to realize a comprehensive and systematic research in this field. In other words, the research in this field has been initially shaped. However, in which directions will further development be made in the future? Or what new research hotspot will emerge? Then, its future development trend and frontier hotspots will be discussed through theme evolution and the analysis of mutation word.

Analysis of Research Frontiers
The timezone view of keyword co-occurrence in Figure 2 was generated with the help of CiteSpace so as to clearly show the evolution path and future trend of curriculum-based ideological and political research with the change of time. Then through detecting and analyzing mutation words, a list of 6 top citation bursts (Table 2) clearly demonstrates time and intensity.
On the whole, the direction in curriculum-based ideological and political education is based on the research of ideological and political courses and their educators in 2014. On the basis of them, some hotspots such as courses of ideological and political concepts, college ideological and political education, ideological and political construction, moral education, three-wide education, and collaborative education have been discussed. Therefore, the research on curriculum-based ideological and political education actually emerged in 2017, and then with the depth of research, new hotspots such as ideological and political elements, talent cultivation, college PE, and socialist core values have evolved accordingly.
Specifically, it can be found that the diachronic evolution of the ideological and political research topics of college courses has obvious stages from Figure 2. It can be roughly divided into three stages whose starting years of each stage are 2014, 2017, and 2019.
The first stage (2014-2016) mainly stayed at the level of theories whose themes were concentrated in 2014 when the reform of curriculum-based ideological and political education has been discussed, and the ideological and political curriculum and curriculum-based ideological and political education concepts have been clarified. It can be regarded as a preparation. In 2015, the research topics were relatively scattered, and more keywords appeared with a lower frequency. Due to the low frequency of keywords, there was a blank period in 2016, and no relatively concentrated research was formed in this year. According to the detection and analysis results of citation bursts in Table 2, keywords emerging in this period were "college ideological and political theory courses" and "excellent courses", but due to the low frequency of words, they were only prominent in 2014 and appeared to be no further development. Therefore, it is no longer a research hotspot of the second stage.
In the second stage (2017)(2018), the ideological and political construction and theoretical research were highlighted. At this stage, there were the four most emerging keywords all of which reflect the theoretical content ies.ccsenet.
in line wi curriculum political ed In the thir result, key researches research at carry out r "PE", "te "curriculum thought on teaching p research o more and education.
Note. All t all showed  Vol. 15, No. 5;2022 research has revealed the hotspots and development trends of it in the past eight years. The study finds that the curriculum-based ideological and political education in China is currently in the growth period with the increased amount of literature. It is worth noting that the interdisciplinary literature has increased rapidly, especially foreign languages and PE, as an attempt to carry out interdisciplinary research. According to the seven visual clusters, it can be concluded that hotspots focus on the definition of its connotation, construction value, and the exploration of practical paths. On the whole, the diachronic evolution of research themes has obviously shown several stages from the initial hotspots to hundreds of topics. Keywords, such as "ideological and political elements", "talent cultivation", "college PE" and "socialist core values", are the current research frontiers fully reflecting the maturity of curriculum-based ideological and political education. It has basically completed basic theoretical research and will have a promising practice potential in the future. Under the guidance of higher education policies, researches will be separated into several major groups and institutions based on different hotspots and disciplines in the future, and the path will expand to practice with the guidance of theories. As a result, future multidisciplinary research can obtain more practical research results so as to complete the transformation from "micro ideological and political education" to "macro ideological and political education". The ideological and political elements will to integrated into courses to combine moral education with general education, thus to achieve the fundamental goal of morality education and to promote the maximization of research in higher education.