REFORMING THE INTERNATIONAL TRADE PRACTICE CURRICULUM THROUGH INDUSTRY- EDUCATION INTEGRATION: A KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Industry-education integration has led to various organizational forms at the institutional level. At the curriculum level, however, it is still common to see combination without integration and integration without deepening. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the intermediate mechanism through which macro-policy ideas of industry-education integration translate into micro-curriculum practice, using the course “International Trade Practice” as a case study. The evolutionary analysis of knowledge production modes is employed as the research method, enabling the identification of three pedagogical forms: “disciplinary knowledge transmission”, “task-oriented learning”, and “industry-education integration ecosystem”. The study reveals a misalignment between the logic of knowledge construction within the course and the actual demands of foreign trade work. Textbooks provide systematic knowledge detached from specific contexts, whereas professional practice requires knowledge that is task-oriented and closely tied to real-world conditions. Three clusters of problems can be identified in the reform of the course: first, the selection of knowledge is still based on disciplinary logic; second, organizational barriers between universities and enterprises have not yet been removed; third, there exist dual constraints related to the assessment system and teacher professional development. These problems together impede the transition of the course toward an industry-education integration ecosystem. The contribution of this paper lies in two aspects. First, it proposes the concept of “knowledge-level intermediary” to explain how industry-education integration is implemented in teaching practice. Second, it develops a three-component analytical framework to trace the evolution of the course from traditional instruction to an industry-education integration ecosystem. To overcome the identified problems, it is necessary to rethink the initial logical foundations of knowledge construction in the course, drawing on the principles of industrial relevance, dynamism, and systematicity; to establish an organizational mechanism for industry-education integration, serving as a “knowledge-level intermediary”; and to reshape the forms of instructional implementation based on real foreign trade tasks. The proposed three-component reform model can be adapted for other professional disciplines in higher education.