The reforms of middle and primary school teaching that have been launched in mainland China over the past thirty years have been manifested in different ways and in different periods of time. The first to appear were localized and scattered teaching reforms oriented toward efficiency, after which commenced explorative teaching experiments in pursuit of scientizing. Then, with the rise of basic education curriculum reform, "three-dimensional targets" became a new focus of attention. recently, the focus has been on teaching reform conducted in accordance with school transformation. In the future, the foundation-laying significance of teaching will be understood from the perspective of lifelong learning and development, and "curriculum research based on teaching" will take up the challenge of curriculum theory development.