Reflecting critically on the critical disposition within Internationalisation of the Curriculum (IoC): the developmental journey of a curriculum design team

ABSTRACT

Internationalisation of curriculum (IoC) practices promote students developing knowledge of other cultures, attitudes, values and ethics. This conceptual article argues that embedding critical reflection in the IoC program – through integrating insights from both IoC thinkers and critical reflection literature – may allow educators and students to not only gain understanding and/or competency in other cultures but better address questions of privilege, power and colonisation and thereby interrogate their own normative cultural understandings. Borrowing from debates within IoC pedagogy, as well as from Ahmed’s work on critical reflection, this article also argues that cross/intercultural understanding should be understood (and taught) not as a competency but a disposition towards thinking, analysing and understanding the world which is based on critiquing the ‘self’ and its relationship with the ‘other’.     

A comparative study of GCE and international curricula in Singapore and Australia

This paper is a comparative analysis of global citizenship education (GCE) in two primary schools, an international school in Singapore and an independent school in Australia, focusing on the implementation of GCE practices through the adoption of international education models - the International Primary Curriculum (IPC) and the International Baccalaureate Programme (IB) respectively, to create hybrid curricula. The research findings indicate that the curriculum and resources, school culture, school leaders’ and teachers’ values, as well as the utilisation of human and financial resources all influence how the schools engage with GCE in their quest towards internationalisation. A key overarching finding of the research relates to the tensions between critical democratic and educational domains and neo-liberal market rationales, which had significantly affected the schools’ decisions in curricula and GCE enactment within both schools. Despite their commitment to GCE ideals, both schools were equally mindful about being distinctive and remaining competitive within their educational markets.     

Governing schooling through ‘what works’: the OECD’s PISA for Schools

This paper explores Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for Schools, a local variant of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD’s) influential PISA that not only assesses an individual school’s performance in reading, mathematics and science against international schooling systems, but also promotes 17 identical examples of ‘best practice’ from ‘world class’ schooling systems (e.g. Shanghai-China, Singapore). Informed by 33 semi-structured interviews with actors across the PISA for Schools policy cycle, and supplemented by the analysis of relevant documents, the paper provides an account of how these concrete examples of best practice are represented in the report received by participating schools. Drawing upon thinking around processes of commensuration and the notion of ‘governing by examples’, the paper argues that PISA for Schools discursively positions participating schools as somehow being commensurable with successful schooling systems, eliding any sense that certain cultural and historical factors – or ‘out of school’ factors – are inexorably linked to student performance. Beyond encouraging the problematic school-level borrowing of policies and practices from contextually distinct schooling systems, I argue that this positions the OECD as both the global expert on education policy and now, with PISA for Schools, the local expert on ‘what works’.     

Global and National Imaginings: Deparochialising the IBDP English A1 Curriculum

In this paper, I argue for the deparochialising of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) English A1 curriculum where teachers as curriculum-makers would critically assess text choice and where students have the opportunities to make critical readings and engage in conversations about issues raised by the text. Through the case study of the implementation of one English A1 curriculum in a Singapore school, I demonstrate the possibilities for a cosmopolitan literature curriculum that is attentive to both the global and the local.     

Diversifying Schools and Leveraging School Improvement: a Comparative Analysis of The English Radical,and Singapore Conservative,Specialist Schools' Policies

ABSTRACT

Within the context of fierce global economic competition, school diversification and specialist schools have been seen by governments as cornerstones of education policy to engineer school improvement in both England and Singapore for more than a decade. In both systems, the policy has manifested in different school types, school names and sometimes buildings – in England, specialist status schools, academies and most recently free schools; and in Singapore, specialist schools and niche schools. Diversification is promoted by each school emphasising distinctiveness in its curriculum – often with implications for its funding and degree of autonomy – which differentiate it from others. There is normally the intention to scale-up curricular innovations school-wide. The paper addresses three aims in respect to both countries: first, it profiles the evolution of specialist schools' policies in both states in relation to school improvement and secondly, social justice; thirdly, it undertakes a comparative policy analysis in order to draw conclusions as to how the relationship between central government and schools has re-configured in both countries – arguing that the policy in England is radical, that in Singapore, conservative.     

Humanising Writing centre Practice: Peer tutor Reflections at a University of Technology

Abstract

Traditionally, universities of technology (UoTs) have focussed on education to prepare students for the workplace. The Durban University of Technology (DUT) is currently undergoing a pedagogical transformation with the inclusion of a general education curriculum that aims to prepare students for an increasingly complex globalised work environment. This critical paradigm shift in curriculum design foregrounds new ways of teaching, thinking and learning based broadly on humanistic principles. Writing centres in universities are positioned to sustain a teaching and learning environment in which students grow as critical citizens. This article reports on research that explored – through the thematic analysis of tutor reflections – how a humanising pedagogy underpins a responsive writing centre practice within the changing South African context. Thematic analysis of the tutors’ reflections revealed their self-awareness of the significance of communities of practice in their work. These communities of practice could be seen to cultivate a humanising pedagogy within writing centre work, which might contribute to the aesthetic, socio-political and cultural environments in which students live and work.     

Developing ‘reflective’ development practitioners through an action-learning curriculum: problems and challenges in a South African context

Abstract

The paper begins by looking at the ‘context of practice’: the programmes of the SRCD are briefly described and even more briefly the dominant (global) socio-economic trends as they impact on ours and other tertiary institutions. Because it is important in order to make sense of the programme we then attempt to provide a detailed profile of our students.

The central questions with which we grapple, viz., the problems encountered in the curriculum activities designed to enable students to gain competence in ‘soft’ systems thinking and learning to learn, are dealt with in the sections ‘The Programme’, ‘The Results’ and ‘Bad practice, bad theory, or both’. In the first of these we give a very brief overview of Kolb's learning theory and Checkland's SSM and then show how the two can be (theoretically) integrated — Checkland's learning system is embedded in Kolb's learning cycle (LC). In the next section we report on an evaluation of the programme from the student's perspective. And then, finally, we discuss the shortcomings of Kolb's theory in our context as well as our use of Checkland's SSM. Our critique of Kolb is central to the entire endeavour, because his theory of experiential learning provides the theoretical underpinning of our curriculum development endeavour.

In the final section we make some suggestions for a way forward based on our critique.     

A ‘globalised’ curriculum – international comparative practices and the preschool child as a site of economic optimisation

Globalisation is often referred to as being external to education – a state of affairs presenting the modern curriculum with numerous challenges. In this article, ‘globalisation’ is examined as something that is internal to curriculum and analysed as a problematisation in a Foucaultian sense, that is, as a complex of attentions, worries and ways of reasoning, producing curricular variables. The analysis is made through an example of early childhood curriculum in Danish preschool, and the way the curricular variable of the preschool child comes into being through ‘globalisation’ as a problematisation, carried forth by comparative practices such as Programme for International Student Assessment. It thus explores some of the systems of reason that educational comparative practices carry through time, focusing on the ways in which configurations are reproduced and transformed, forming the preschool child as a site of economic optimisation.     

Why do Chinese postgraduates struggle with critical thinking? Some clues from the higher education curriculum in China

There has been a good deal of research into the problems Chinese postgraduate students studying in English-speaking universities face with regard to critical thinking. This project is an attempt to tackle this issue from a new perspective. It aims to explore how a unique aspect of the university curriculum in China – the so-called ‘four treasures’ (four compulsory modules of political thought taken by all Chinese undergraduate students: ‘The Fundamentals of Marxism’; ‘Maoism and Chinese Characteristic Socialism’; ‘The Outline of Modern Chinese History’; and ‘Moral Thoughts, Legal and Civic Education’) – influence Chinese students in terms of their political and cultural values. It will trace the emergence of this programme and offer a content analysis of the curriculum. The study also uses focus groups to investigate how the Chinese postgraduate students regard their undergraduate courses in China. This article will argue that the higher education curriculum in China, which is heavily regulated by the state, has become one of the main obstacles preventing Chinese undergraduate students from developing independent and critical thinking, particularly in the arts, humanities and social sciences.     

Shadow education in Singapore: A Deweyan perspective

Abstract

This study focuses on the phenomenon of private supplementary tutoring, otherwise known as ‘shadow education’, which has proliferated around the world. By casting the spotlight on one particular shadow education institution (SEI) in Singapore and viewing it through the lens of Dewey’s educational philosophy, the study aimed to illuminate the inner workings of a SEI to shed light on its ability to thrive in a competitive educational landscape. Data were drawn from lesson observations, interviews with various stakeholders and the SEI website. Viewed through Dewey’s philosophical thinking about the connections between the child and curriculum and school and society, the data shows an institution outwardly guided by a progressivist mission to develop learners as a whole, providing opportunities for broadening their minds and preparing them for their future workplace. However, evidence also suggests that there is a fundamental focus on high-stakes examination preparation in its pedagogic practices and curricular content. This tension reflects the wider socio-economic culture in Singapore that is entrenched within a utilitarian and pragmatic paradigm while aspiring towards more humanistic and holistic educational goals.     

Integrating philosophy into English curriculum: The development of thinking and language competence

Abstract

This article reports the results of a study that assesses the effectiveness of a Philosophy in Schools (PIS) program in developing English as a Second Language (ESL) students’ thinking skills and English competence in Hong Kong. In the study, training and support were provided for two English teachers to enable them to teach PIS to their Secondary 4 ESL students during English lessons. The students were found to be capable of reasoning and arguing about philosophical problems arising from various stimuli prepared by their teachers according to the English curriculum. Also, PIS was found to play an important role in promoting the students’ critical and creative thinking and enhance the development of their English language proficiency to a significant extent. The findings of this study suggest that integrating philosophy into the English curriculum can promote critical thinking, creative thinking, and English language proficiency in ESL students.     

PISA and high-performing education systems: explaining Singapore’s education success

Singapore’s remarkable performance in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has placed it among the world’s high-performing education systems (HPES). In the literature on HPES, its ‘secret formula’ for education success is explained in terms of teacher quality, school leadership, system characteristics and educational reform. This article offers an alternative explanation for the education success of Singapore and, in so doing, questions the basic assertions of the HPES literature and, in particularly, the use of PISA results as the prime indicator of the educational performance of a school system. The explanation is informed by a historical perspective on the development of the Singapore education system and based upon a body of empirical findings on the nature of pedagogical practice in classrooms, both of which are vital for understanding the educational performance of Singapore’s education system. The article concludes by addressing the implications of this analysis for educational policy borrowing.     

Singapore’s educational policy through the prism of student voice: recasting students as co-agents of educational change and ‘disrupting’ the status quo?

This paper examines the implementation of Singapore’s landmark policy, ‘Thinking Schools, learning Nation’ (TSLN), in developing ‘thinking students’ through the prism of student voice. In the context of twenty-first century education and the growing importance of student voice in education, this paper argues that the time might be right to ‘disrupt’ Singapore’s education status quo and incorporate meaningful student voice in education policies. Instead of perceiving students as mere subjects of educational policy enactment, and seeing policy as something that is done to them, it should be reconceptualised as something which is done with them; importantly, students should be recast as key co-agents of educational change, consistent with TSLN’s reconceptualization of learners as ‘thinking students’. Basing its arguments on findings from a qualitative case study of students’ perceptions and schooling experiences of critical thinking in TSLN, this paper considers the case for the inclusion of significant student voice in Singapore’s educational policy reforms. It fills gaps in research on student voices in Singapore’s educational reforms and TSLN’s research from students’ perspective. The paper suggests that the inclusion of student voice in educational reform might be the next landmark step in ‘disrupting’ its educational landscape after the ‘big bang’ of TSLN.     

Curriculum as open-ended inquiry in higher education

Abstract

Throughout the world, education curriculum are determined and guided by knowledge perceived as being critical for the advancement of humanity. Often such progress is indicated and determined by curriculum shaped by the ways of knowing of the dominant cultural group or languages that have achieved hegemonic status in such communities, in the process marginalizing any ‘indigenous’ ways of knowing as embedded in the language of other cultures. Sometimes such curriculum have little or no connection with contemporary reality. In this article I therefore argue that inclusive curricular knowledge types are critical in education in order to enable all people, individually and collectively, to progress without being inhibited by the hegemony of so-called ‘scientific’ knowledge. I also argue that knowledge as embedded in a language is power, and should therefore be connected to reality. Using critical social theory, I propose an alternative, inclusive treatment of knowledge types in education curriculum – open-ended inquiry – in order to level the learning field for all learners, and, in so doing, to adequately prepare tomorrow's world citizenry.     

Evidence-based decision making or a tunnel vision effect? TIMSS,problem definition and policy change in Israeli mathematics education

ABSTRACT

This study examines the influence of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 1999 results on mathematics education policy in Israel. Analyzing various documents, the study shows how these results transformed policymakers’ discourse regarding mathematics education. In order to achieve improvement in Israel’s ranking, the middle school mathematics curriculum was aligned with the TIMSS test. Following this change, the scores of Israeli students rose considerably in TIMSS 2011. Parallel results from Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Israeli internal standardized tests, however, do not show comparable improvement in mathematics achievement. High school matriculation data for the same period of time show a decline in the percentage of students who took the most advanced mathematics courses. Furthermore, none of these data sources show any noticeable reduction in social inequality in mathematics achievement. On the basis of theoretical insights from political science, it is argued that international tests influence the way educational problems are framed and defined. Thus, instead of enriching educational decision-making processes, these tests can create a tunnel vision effect that restricts policymakers’ attention to ‘problems’ and ‘solutions’ defined by the tests themselves.     

Justice-sensitive education: the implications of transitional justice mechanisms for teaching and learning

ABSTRACT

This article introduces the notion of ‘justice-sensitive education’ – derived from the ideals and practices of transitional justice (TJ) in countries emerging from conflict. It describes three mechanisms for this: structural reforms (relating to inequity and division); curriculum change (the treatment of history, human rights and citizenship) and institutional culture (critical thinking and democratic, participatory pedagogy). A case study of Sri Lanka provides fresh illustrations of actual or potential work in these three areas. There appear five challenges to a justice-sensitive education: the wider context of schooling; willingness of educators to confront the past; barriers to introducing the critical thinking required for new norms and values to take root; programming and planning; and difficulties in measuring the impact of TJ measures in education. Yet however imperfect, TJ mechanisms indicate a society that wants to learn from past mistakes and show that some form of justice is possible in the future.     

Towards decolonial praxis: reconfiguring the human and the curriculum

ABSTRACT

This theoretical inquiry applies threads of Sylvia Wynter’s intellectual project to scholarship in curriculum studies to consider how Wynter’s insights might urge new potential in educational theorising and practice. The central concern driving Wynter’s intellectual project is that our present understanding about what it means to be human is entrenched in epistemological legacies of colonialism that preserve a Western bourgeois genre of Man. This essay begins by detailing Sylvia Wynter’s rigorous and innovative intellectual project that reworks the category of the human. We argue that contemporary curriculum is based upon this Western genre of the human and explore the limits of multicultural curricula. Synthesising Wynter’s interrelated lines of thought – how the notion of being hybridly human calls forth a conceptualisation of humanness as a collective act – we argue that her revised category of the human is a necessary means to radically reimagine and decolonise curriculum.     

Something old,something new,something borrowed,and something Froebel? The development of origami in early childhood education in Japan

ABSTRACT

This study examines how origami has been implemented, practised, and developed in the early childhood education of Japan over the past 140 years. Historically speaking, paper-folding has been part of Japanese symbolic art, craft culture, and religious ceremonial artefacts since paper and paper-folding techniques were first imported from China during the seventh century. By the eighteenth century, paper-folding provided a form of mass entertainment in Japanese society. During the 1870s, paper-folding was dramatically transformed into a pedagogical tool within Japanese kindergartens after Friedrich Froebel’s (1782–1852) kindergarten system and its curriculum was transferred to Japan from the West. “Papier-Falten” (paper-folding) comprised an element of Froebel’s Occupations – which was a series of handiwork activities – in his kindergarten curriculum, whereby various folding techniques and models were derived from European traditional paper-folding and introduced into a Japanese kindergarten curriculum that was associated with the concept of Froebel’s kindergarten. Particularly seen in early childhood education in Japan, what we now call origami developed as a new form of paper-folding. This gradually emerged through the marriage of Western (German) and Eastern (Japanese) paper-folding cultures. The study highlights the benefits and uniqueness of cultural transmission and transformation when developing origami in early childhood education in Japan.     

All against all competition: the incorporation of the International Baccalaureate in public high schools in Canada

ABSTRACT

Since the 1980s, education in Canada has been through a process that led to school choice, targeting the improvement of students’ performance through school competition. These policies fostering an education quasi-market became an ideal framework for the expansion of IB schools. Since the Diploma Programme of the International Baccalaureate (IBDP) offers a differentiated international curriculum and is perceived as a program that contributes to students’ achievements, it has been increasingly adopted in school districts and schools. This paper explores the marketing strategies developed in schools and districts in response to school competition by tracing the incorporation of the IBDP in high schools in different districts in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. Based on interviews with school staff, district officials and IB local association representatives, this study analyzes schools’ marketing decisions from a consumer and producer orientation taking into account the macro environment (federal government) and micro-environment (provincial government and districts). Rather than fostering efficiency and improving students’ achievement as intended, marketization policies resulted in an increased focus on the recruitment of high achieving students, which led to a competition between schools, between districts and between other programs in the districts or in other words –an ‘all against all’ competition.     

Life skills for ‘real life’: How critical thinking is contextualised across vocational programmes

Background: This article presents an analysis of how critical thinking is contextualised in everyday teaching in three vocational education and training (VET) programmes: Vehicle and transport, Restaurant and management, and Health and social care.

Purpose: The main question addressed is: What knowledge discourses permeate different VET-contexts, and hence what kinds of opportunities for critical thinking do they offer students?

Method: The qualitative analysis draws on data from a four-year ethnographic project exploring learning processes that can be characterised as civic education in Swedish vocational education. The analysis presented here used data collected during 85 days of observations of teaching in six VET classes, interviews with 81 students and 10 teachers, and collected teaching material. To explore why some contextualisations provided more opportunities and encouragement for critical thinking than others, we applied Bernsteinian concepts of ‘horizontal and vertical knowledge discourses’ and ‘discursive gaps’.

Findings and conclusions: Overall, teaching that was observed focused primarily on ‘doing’. However, in all three programmes, the analysis identified that there were also situations that touched upon critical thinking. Three major themes were identified: critical thinking related to ‘Personal experiences’, ‘The other(s)’ and ‘Wider perspectives’. It appeared that the frequency and nature of such situations varied with the knowledge discourses permeating the programme. Furthermore, we discuss the manifestations of critical thinking in relation to the wider context of what Bernstein refers to as pedagogic rights; individual enhancement, social inclusion and development of the competence and confidence to participate in political processes.