The ‘nature of science’ in the school curriculum: the great survivor

This paper explores the ways in which the ‘nature of science’ (NoS) has been interpreted, accommodated and justified within school curricula since science was first schooled in the mid-nineteenth century. It explores how different interpretations of ‘the NoS’ have been invoked by those seeking to reform school science education in response to wider political, economic or social concerns such as the demand to ‘humanise’ school science teaching, to increase the supply of qualified scientists or to promote scientific literacy. It offers some comments upon the implications of these interpretations for current attempts to promote the ‘NoS’ in school science education. The focus of attention is England and, to a lesser extent, the USA but the issues raised are of contemporary relevance to many other parts of the world.     

Investigating the curriculum through assessment practice in higher education: the value of a ‘learning cultures’ approach

It is widely acknowledged that the curriculum and knowledge in higher education (HE) are especially visible through (and often constructed by) assessment practices. If this is the case, it matters greatly what perspectives and theoretical tools are brought to bear on the task of understanding these practices. Having briefly set out three perspectives on assessment in HE (the technical, humanist and interactionist), this paper introduces a ‘learning cultures’ perspective, drawing upon the work of Bourdieu, developed as part of a recent research project on English Further Education. The application of this perspective in HE is introduced through a vignette outlining a recent assessment episode and notes on how it may be explored. The paper argues that whilst some contemporary work on HE assessment incorporates elements of a cultural perspective, there are potential practical benefits to a more thoroughgoing adoption of a ‘learning cultures’ approach.     

Private education expenditure in a ‘free education’ country: The case of Greece

This paper uses data from the 1988 Family Expenditure Survey to estimate and analyze the private expenditure on education in Greece. Such expenditure amounts to 111,624 million drs per year or 2.1% of total household expenditure. The aggregate expenditure of households is roughly half of what the state is spending on education. The dominant type of expenditure is for foreign languages and private crammer schools (frontisteria). There are sharp differences in private expenditure on education depending on the location of the household (spending in Athens is two-and-a-half times that of small towns and villages), the household's total expenditure, as well as the occupation and educational level of the head of the household. The findings are discussed in the context of the equity and efficiency of current education provision and financing policies.     

Exploring teachers’ and students’ conceptions of learning in two further education colleges

The Learning to Learn in Further Education Research Project (L2L) is coordinated by the Campaign for Learning and run by researchers at Newcastle and Glasgow Universities. The project involves teachers at two further education (FE) colleges, Lewisham and Northumberland, using practitioner enquiry methodologies to explore and share what works in learning and teaching in their context.

This article uses data collected as part of the larger project to explore how the combination of societal, political and economic forces that have shaped provision in this sector impact on students’ and teachers’ views of learning when compared with the compulsory sector. The authors sought to establish whether factors such as an ethos of performativity and instrumentalisation of the curriculum were indeed at play in shaping understandings of teaching and learning, and what it means to learn in an FE context.

Telephone interviews with 16 teachers provided evidence that such pressures were impacting on teaching despite the ambitions of the teachers that their practice be responsive to student need rather than curricular imperatives. Involvement with the university and the L2L project was seen by many as a way of countering perceived constraints on their freedom to exercise professional judgement. Face-to-face mediated interviews with 64 learners drawn from a number of qualification routes revealed a simplistic model for learning based around listening and the practising of skills. The authors discuss the extent to which students appear to understand this as building the necessary foundations for later, more sophisticated learning rather than as requirements of their courses per se.     

The curriculum as a site of counter politics: theorising the ‘domain of the sayable’

Whilst there has been increasing focus on the impact of neoliberal education policy on the curriculum covered in schools, as well as on teacher and student subjectivities, less research has been done on the possibility, or otherwise, for teachers to challenge curriculum constraints. Arguing that these curriculum constraints are not simply imposed by an external censor, this article takes up Judith Butler’s concept of the ‘domain of the sayable’ to theorise what it is possible to imagine teaching in the primary school classroom in the first place. I draw on two different ethnographic data episodes to explore the parameters of the domain of the sayable in the space of the classroom in which I taught, mapping the silences and sudden swerving away from topics that seem to be straying close to what is impossible to say or hear. This process offers new insight into how we might conceptualise teacher resistance and counter politics within the current educational policy milieu in the United Kingdom.     

Decentring the ‘places’ of citizens in national curriculum: the Australian history curriculum

There is debate internationally about the production of curriculum texts and the epistemologies underpinning the knowledge legitimated in national curricula. National History curricula in particular are a source of contention bounded by calls for coherent and unifying national narratives that are inclusive and reflect the complexity of the discipline and historical consciousness of the nation to which they are bound. This paper uses critical spatial theory to highlight the ‘spaces’ and ‘places’ of the Australian Curriculum History (years 7–10) which organise and disorganise representations of identities in and out of the centre of the national narrative. Interrogating the impact of these representations within purported inclusive and cohesive national narratives draws attention to the notions of belonging presented to Australian citizens. We argue that resistance to normative national narratives and colonial legacies presented with place-based identities can reinhabit the curriculum. This reinhabiting and decentring seeks to engage History students with alternative perspectives and articulations to the national narrative, and foster meaningful connections to place and citizenship. Finally, critical place-based education approaches invite an embodied local/global citizen through local and marginalised knowledges.     

‘The fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom’: A defence of religious education in county schools

ABSTRACT

It is argued here that understanding John Dewey's thought as that of a prodigal liberal or a fellow traveller does not capture the complexity of his work. It is also important to recognise the portion of his work that is historie morale. In the very best sense it is epic, encapsulating the hopes and dreams of a history of the American people in the early 1900s. It is a work that simultaneously pursues modernity and the past – for the sake of coping with the present. It also calls attention to an unnoticed element in his work ‘inexperience’.     

Reflections from a tarnished mirror: an application of Alvesson and Sköldberg's ‘reflexive interpretation’ to a study of curriculum design in higher education

It is now widely understood that reflexivity constitutes a vital element of good qualitative research. However, reflexive accounts often draw on a single theoretical framework, thus privileging and legitimizing a particular interpretation of empirical data. This paper focuses on Alvesson and Sköldberg's ‘reflexive interpretation’, which arises from the interplay between the perspectives of grounded theory, hermeneutics, critical theory and postmodernism. The positioning of the researcher in such a multi-paradigmatic relationship to the empirical data offers the potential for deeper meaning. By applying Alvesson and Sköldberg's approach to a case study of curriculum design, I explore issues of teaching reflection to postgraduate students. Problematizing the case study data at the level of hermeneutics provides insights into the temporality, complexity and symbolic meaning disclosed through the interpretive act. Whilst critical theory locates the findings within the political-ideological context, the postmodern perspective questions my power and authority as a teacher-researcher of reflection.     

Seeing the ‘new’ in light of the ‘old’: evolving interpretations of a new national English curriculum

This 2‐year longitudinal study explores the process by which three populations of practitioners (mentors, co‐ordinators, and teachers) interpreted a national curriculum involving a change in policies for teaching English as a foreign language. The analysis revealed that the process of managing the changes brought about by the new curriculum yielded ‘dialogues of practice’ between ‘old’ and ‘new’. These dialogues engaged mentors, co‐ordinators, and teachers alike in mediating between new understandings and old ones. It addresses the ways in which they made sense of the terminology of the new curriculum in light of the old curriculum, negotiated between new pedagogical content knowledge and ingrained conceptions of subject‐matter teaching, adapted old understandings of testing to new conceptions of performance‐assessment processes, and mediated between their need to preserve a sense of professional competence while feeling destabilized as ‘novices’ as they confronted innovative curricular practices. Participants' strategic need to ‘survive’ the changes resulted in the development of networks to support professional exchange and assist teachers in managing their way through the uncertainty of curricular change.     

Exploring the role of ‘brokers’ in developing a localised curriculum

ABSTRACT

There is a move in some countries, including England, towards less curriculum control by government. This stands in contrast to a national curriculum which may be universally applied in all schools within a state/country. National curricula tend to use either content-based (subject mastery) or process (skills)-based models. More localised curricula have the potential to be more issue- and problem-centred using local resources and people as part of their building blocks. However, marketisation and globalisation typified by Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) ‘effect’ on national policies have discouraged teachers' creativity and curriculum innovation and negated teacher agency. Unfortunately, schools and community partners can find it hard to work together because of logistical, communication and cultural impediments, which gives significance to the role of curriculum brokers who can bridge these divides. This paper offers a case study of two brokers in order to describe, understand and conceptualise their role in curriculum development. The wider implications for curriculum development are outlined.     

‘Teacher talk’: the problems,perspectives and possibilities of developing a comprehensive sexual health education curriculum for Australian Muslim students

This paper reports on a study that examines how a group of teachers at a Victorian Islamic College deliberated on how to develop an appropriate sexual health education curriculum for their Muslim students. Teachers found themselves challenged by the current restrictive curriculum structures, policies and practices at their school. They also found themselves struggling with embedded student cultural understandings and traditions of sexual health that contradict Islamic teachings as stated in the Qur'an and Hadith. In contemplating the possibilities of a sexual health curriculum from an Islamic perspective, teachers desired to confront longstanding political issues and hegemonic structures at their school to enable the search for a solution to a curriculum problem and construct the conditions necessary for its sustainability.     

‘Teaching excellence’ in higher education: a comparative study of English and Australian academics’ perspectives

ABSTRACT

In the current higher education (HE) environment, indicators of ‘teaching excellence’ (TE) are increasingly under the spotlight. The literature offers a wide range of models and perspectives, but also highlights the need for greater (comparative) scrutiny of the perceptions of those at the centre – staff teaching across the disciplines in different countries. This article aims to contribute to ongoing debates by investigating and comparing the views of 120 academic staff teaching in one of two countries – England and Australia – in an attempt to deepen our appreciation of their definitions and understandings. The findings from this two-stage enquiry using online questionnaires and interviews indicate broad commonalities in the ways in which academics define TE, centred on facilitative, interactive pedagogy related to individual professional aspirations; they also reveal widely shared reservations about the term’s legitimacy and institutional/marketised (ab)use. As such, the findings offer policy-makers and institutions useful insights at a time when TE definitions and metrics are growing global pre-occupations.

Abbreviations: teaching excellence (TE); higher education (HE)     

Inquiry-based learning in higher education: administrators’ perspectives on integrating inquiry pedagogy into the curriculum

Inquiry-based learning is one approach to improving the quality of undergraduate education by moving toward more student-directed, interactive methods of learning while focusing on learning how to learn. This paper deals with a missing component in the inquiry-related literature—the extra-pedagogical challenges of introducing and maintaining inquiry-based learning in the curriculum. Based in the collective experience of McMaster University, a mid-size Canadian university that has been a pioneer in inquiry pedagogy, the paper describes the challenges administrators faced in supporting the introduction of inquiry-based learning as components of traditional courses, as inquiry-based courses, and as inquiry-based degree programs. Derived from interviews, the paper presents a series of strategies and lessons for introducing and maintaining inquiry pedagogy in the curriculum. These lessons will be broadly useful to administrators, curriculum designers and faculty developers and should be widely applicable to institutes of higher education.     

The ‘spirit of education’ in Indonesian Pesantren

This paper employs Foucauldian theory to consider Islamic boarding school experiences in Indonesia. For some pupils ‘the spirit of education’ – a dimension of pleasure – comes to be highly valued, creating a lifelong passion for the pursuit of knowledge. Two school principals (both pesantren [Islamic boarding school] graduates themselves) articulated strong commitment to the ‘spirit of education’. Yet their respective boarding schools were very poor, not only by western standards but compared with Indonesian public schools, and conditions were austere. The embodiment of pesantren discourse as high academic achievement is illustrated by the example of Khadija – a young female pesantren graduate now studying at doctoral level in the United Kingdom. Explaining the embodied production of the ‘spirit of education’ demands looking at charismatic pedagogy, strict rules, austere conditions and sparse provision of learning resources as regimes of truth and power–knowledge relations that inhere in pesantren as lived experiences of pupils.     

The dynamics of ‘market-making’ in higher education

Abstract

This paper examines what to some is a well-worked furrow; the processes and outcomes involved in what is typically referred to as ‘marketization’ in the higher education sector. We do this through a case study of Newton University, where we reveal a rapid proliferation of market exchanges involving the administrative division of the university with the wider world. Our account of this process of ‘market making’ is developed in two (dialectically related) moves. First, we identify a range of market exchanges that have emerged in the context of wider ideological and political changes in the governance of higher education to make it a more globally competitive producer of knowledge, and a services sector. Second, we explore the ways in which making markets involve a considerable amount of microwork, such as the deployment of a range of framings, and socio-technical tools. Taken together, these market-making processes are recalibrating and remaking the structures, social relations and subjectivities, within and beyond the university and in turn reconstituting the university and the higher education sector.     

The changing status of higher education in the ‘moronic inferno’

Getting a good and relevant education is difficult enough to achieve within a context where social and economic needs are constantly unsettled by political policy. The public funding of the education sector has become a contested arena irrespective of a government’s ideology. Recent graduates from various disciplines from Town Planning to Philosophy report in university destination surveys that they have only found employment in areas unrelated to their academic training – for instance, in supermarkets, restaurants and other low-level service industries. How has it happened that the universalisation of mass higher education has contributed to a disconnect between the individual’s social aspirations and their economic status? What happened to the tacit promise that an extended period of intellectual development would prepare the individual for a life of valuable social contribution and financial security? Part of the answer lies in the success of higher education itself. Its popularity has changed its transformative capacity and allowed operational efficiencies to overrule academic quality. The university, ideally seen as a repository of intellectual intuition, has been remade into yet another modern corporation concerned with the bottom line and financial security. Why has it been necessary to remake the university in the image of the department store, supermarket or bank, and how has it been achieved without more critique?