The Psy-Security-Curriculum ensemble: British Values curriculum policy in English schools

ABSTRACT

Framed as being in response to terrorist attacks and concerns about religious bias in some English schools, ‘British Values’ (BV) curriculum policy forms part of the British Government’s Counter-Terrorism and Security Act, 2015. This includes a Duty on teachers in England to actively promote British Values to deter students from radicalisation. This paper, first, traces the history of Britishness in the curriculum to reveal a prevalence of nationalistic, colonial values. Next, an ensemble of recent policies and speeches focusing on British Values is analysed, using a psycho-political approach informed by anti-colonial scholarship. Finally, we interrogate two key critiques of the British Values curriculum discourse: the universality of British Values globally, and concerns over the securitisation of education. Findings indicate that the constitution of white British supremacist subjectivities operate through curriculum as a defence mechanism against perceived threats to white privilege, by normalising a racialised state-controlled social order. The focus is on ‘British’ values, but the analytic framework and findings have wider global significance.     

Lesbian and gay teachers and sex/uality education policy enactment in schools

ABSTRACT

This paper examines lesbian and gay teachers’ identities and experiences in schools in the context of school policies relating to homophobia and to sex and sexuality education. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 12 lesbian and gay teachers working in English and Welsh schools, and using the concept of ‘policy enactment’, I analyse the ways in which school policies around homo/bi/transphobic bullying and sex/uality education and their enactment are perceived by lesbian and gay teachers. The article examines teachers’ personal experiences in relation to sexuality in school, and then broadens out into related issues for pupils and a discussion of the varied approaches to sex and relationships education in the schools. I argue that the enactment of these policies is not straightforward, and that they could be better supported by a more inclusive and comprehensive sexuality education curriculum.     

Developing an instrument for assessing students’ concepts of the nature of technology

Background: In Bangladesh, a common science curriculum caters for all students at the junior secondary level. Since this curriculum is for all students, its aims are both to build a strong foundation in science while still providing students with the opportunities to use science in everyday life – an aim consistent with the notion of scientific literacy.

Purpose: This paper reports Bangladeshi science teachers’ perspectives and practices in regard to the promotion of scientific literacy.

Sample: Six science teachers representing a range of geographical locations, school types with different class sizes, lengths of teaching experience and educational qualifications.

Design and method: This study employed a case study approach. The six teachers and their associated science classes (including students) were considered as six cases. Data were gathered through observing the teachers’ science lessons, interviewing them twice – once before and once after the lesson observation, and interviewing their students in focus groups.

Results: This study reveals that participating teachers held a range of perspectives on scientific literacy, including some naïve perspectives. In addition, their perspectives were often not seen to be realised in the classroom as for teachers the emphasis of learning science was more traditional in nature. Many of their teaching practices promoted a culture of academic science that resulted in students’ difficulty in finding connections between the science they study in school and their everyday lives. This research also identified the tension which teachers encountered between their religious values and science values while they were teaching science in a culture with a religious tradition.

Conclusions: The professional development practice for science teachers in Bangladesh with its emphasis on developing science content knowledge may limit the scope for promoting the concepts of scientific literacy. Opportunities for developing pedagogic knowledge is also limited and consequently impacts on teachers’ ability to develop the concepts of scientific literacy and learn how to teach for its promotion.     

Value Education Processes for an Environmental Education Program

ABSTRACT:

Researchers and practitioners in environmental education have widely recognized the importance of facilitating the growth of positive environmental values among learners. Environmental Values Education (EVE) is included in environmental education programs, whether it is consciously planned or is an implicit part of the learner's experience. There are, however, many constraints to developing a well-planned EVE program and integrating this into the general curriculum; foremost among these is the need for teacher training in the theory and methods of EVE. Coursework and practical training for teachers is needed in several areas. When choosing appropriate strategies for teaching environmental ethics, each teacher will need to become familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, his or her own capabilities and need for further theoretical and practical training and the needs of learners and the nature of the situation at hand. Each learner's level of moral development is an especially important factor to consider when choosing and conducting EVE strategies. It is important for teachers to become familiar with school and community attitudes concerning values education, in order to implement a strong program in environmental values education while working within the existing realities of school policies and community expectations.     

Curriculum Leadership and Management in Secondary Schools: A Hong Kong case study

Relatively little is known about how and by whom curriculum leadership and management occur inside secondary schools, especially in Asian contexts. This article aims to analyse curriculum decision-making in two academically effective secondary schools in Hong Kong. It employs qualitative methods to capture the contributions made by various school personnel, and in particular the principals, to curriculum leadership and management. Data for the two schools show that whilst neither of the principals plays a significant role in curriculum monitoring and innovation, the vice-principal (male), the senior teachers and teachers in one school were perceived to place more emphasis on curriculum monitoring and innovation than their counterparts in the other school. Whilst teachers in both schools shared high expectations for students' academic achievement, one subtle difference between them related to the pursuit of academic excellence. In one school, students did not exert much pressure on their teachers whereas in the other school, teachers felt they had to fulfil students' demands for good lesson preparation and take account of students' opinions of their teaching.     

Preparing early childhood teachers for real-time and postdisaster classrooms: invisible capes and specialized planning

ABSTRACT

This essay addresses two types of disasters that can affect early childhood classrooms, which deserve more attention during teacher preparation. The first includes such natural phenomena as earthquakes and hurricanes, as well man-made events, such as fires and, incredibly, school shootings. They are almost always unexpected and happen in real time. Without question, they requires teachers’ immediate, direct, and complete commitment. The second type is a disaster that has passed, but requires a focused and specialized curriculum when children return to school. The critically important role of early childhood teachers as “first responders” or “helpers” during and after disaster is discussed, along with best practices related to a “pedagogy of meaning” during these times.     

Knowledge acquisition in Biochemistry,Physiology and Anatomy within the context of problem-based learning

Abstract

The study sought to examine the current Zimbabwean school system; establish the extent to which it is conducive to students making decisions about the selection of subjects they learn at school; to examine the nature of children's rights and the extent to which these rights are practiced in schools and in the prevailing socio-economic and political milieu. A stratified random sample of 100 pupils, 24 teachers and five school heads was used in this study. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected using a questionnaire, an interview schedule and observing both pupils and teachers. The study found that teachers and pupils seemed to be aware of pupils’ rights to participate in deciding the subjects they studied; and most teachers and school heads felt it was more of their duty to decide for pupils because of their immaturity. Therefore, determining the school curriculum content should involve school heads, teachers and pupils instead of choices being made and the content dictated to pupils.     

Does high-quality professional development make a difference? Evidence from TIMSS

Abstract

While professional development has been emphasised in many countries, few comparative studies have examined the degree of teachers’ participation in professional development and its effect on teachers. Using the TIMSS 2007 data, this study analyses to what extent teachers participated in professional development in 50 TIMSS countries and examines the relationship among high-quality teachers’ professional development, teachers’ beliefs, attitudes and job satisfaction. The study found that the extent to which teachers have participated in professional developmental activities was surprisingly low. In particular, teachers in 47 countries have rarely participated in active learning. The study also found that high-quality teacher professional development was significantly associated with greater job satisfaction, higher expectations for student performance and more positive attitudes in teachers concerning their implementing the school’s curriculum. Policy implications for professional development are discussed.     

Building strong reading muscles: ableist language in a teacher’s talk about reading

ABSTRACT

Elementary school teachers are expected to teach reading ‘inclusively’ to children with diverse learning needs. Yet, teachers face challenges in enacting inclusive practices that socially support children while academically engaging and challenging them. The purpose of this study was to examine the opportunities for engagement with reading produced through a teacher’s talk in one ‘inclusive’ fourth grade classroom’. The setting for the study was a pre-K-5 public school located in a high-poverty neighbourhood of a northeast city of the United States. This study combined ethnographic methods and D/discourse analysis to explore classroom talk about reading through a sociocultural lens. Findings indicated that the teacher’s talk, which was largely shaped by dominant cultural Discourses circulating through policy, curriculum and the school environment, sometimes promoted an ableist ideology through its focus on each individual’s independent development of ‘strength’ as a reader. Moments when ableist language about reading dominated during the Reading Workshop seemed to limit the possibilities for students’ participation in reading and ideas of what counted as successful reading. The findings suggest the need to engage K-12 students, teachers, and teacher candidates in critical conversations about issues related to reading and learning such as strength, struggle, purposes for reading, and assessment.     

El profesor como práctico reflexivo en una cultura de colaboración

The aim was the reconstruction of a school curriculum in reflective teaching situations within a co‐operative culture. Two working assumptions were considered: (a) teacher development was based on teacher thinking and (b) school organisation followed a co‐operative culture paradigm. The process features were: (a) university team consisted of external advisers; (b) school curriculum and classroom instruction were reviewed by school teachers; (c) case study as a research approach; (d) ethnographic techniques to collect data; (e) data analysis by a computer program; (f) teachers’ reflective cycle to reconstruct practice; and (g) teachers’ portfolios: narrative vignettes, etc. Findings showed: (a) a collaborative process school‐university; (b) teachers’ thinking and attitudinal change; (c) mobilisation of teachers’ talents and values to work together: (i) teacher dyads to reflect on teaching; (ii) advisers’ writing narrative vignettes; (Hi) collegial coaching; and (iv) curriculum materials designed by teachers. Two conclusions can be accepted: (a) teachers’ pedagogical practical knowledge showed diversity of their implicit theories to design action; and (b) teachers’ grounded theory confirmed that the educational action was based on a co‐operative and reflective culture.     

School‐based restructuring and curriculum change: teachers’ and students’ contrasting perspectives

Abstract

This article is set within the context of a school‐based change initiative, where we studied a number of teachers and students in order to understand the ways in which they understood and experienced the complexities of the change process, and to add their voices to the ongoing discussions around restructuring and school‐based change. We found that although there were some commonalties between how teachers and students experienced the changes being implemented, there were also some profound differences between the curriculum as planned by teachers and the curriculum as experienced by students. For the teachers, the themes of caring for students’ lives, recasting themselves as classroom practitioners and of working as collaborative colleagues were identified; for students, the themes were those of getting used to the place, and of re‐establishing their preferred way of working in this new setting. In our discussion and analysis of these themes we look at the implications for future school‐based change initiatives, and at some of the complexities and difficulties which present themselves as schools take on increased authority and responsibility for self‐management and for the creation of improved learning environments for students and teachers. We suggest that future change efforts should give more importance to the perspectives of teachers and students, and to the interactive and programmatic exchanges of teachers and students. We suggest also that changed school structures should originate in a focus on the improvement of teaching and learning, and on the facilitation of teachers’ and students’ collaborative efforts to create a curriculum for the classroom and a learning community which is both enabling and transformative for both.     

Measuring ‘progress’: performativity as both driver and constraint in school innovation

Abstract

In this paper, we describe one secondary school’s radical attempt to rethink the shape and purpose of education for its pupils, and its subsequent return to more traditional methods in the face of pressures of performativity and accountability. Framing our analysis within activity theory and its emphasis on contradiction as a driver for change, we describe the school’s move towards a thematic curriculum and ‘personalised learning’ as a process of productive tensions which enabled the development of new approaches to education. While these innovations were considered to be of major benefit to both teachers and pupils, a fundamental contradiction between the focus on individual development underpinning the new approach and the demands of accountability in a persistent culture of performativity proved to be insurmountable. We argue that this particular contradiction highlights the dominance of measurability in judgements of school success and individual progress, with consequences for the pupils’ longer term education futures.     

Implementing the National Curriculum at Key Stage 2

Abstract

Since 1989, the Portuguese education system has undergone curricular reform which has introduced deep structural changes to the subject of physical education (PE). PE has become a compulsory and examinable subject within the ‘core curriculum’ of all school years (1 st to 12th grade). National curricular plans for basic and secondary education have also been introduced. This paper provides a view of the political options which have underpinned the present curricular project of PE in Portugal and compares practices in that country with those in Belgium. The analysis first describes the ‘curriculum as text’ before focusing attention on the ‘curriculum as action’. The analysis explores the nature of teachers’, pupils’ and parents’ beliefs, values and attitudes that together mediate the curriculum as text, help define contexts of PE, and influence public and political attitudes towards the subject. The paper points to the importance of both researchers and teachers for the development of effective teaching and learning in PE.     

Knowledge outside the box – sustainable development education in Swedish schools

Background: Sustainable development, as an area of knowledge, appears in several different places in the curriculum and does not fit neatly within the scope of traditional subject areas. In many countries, including Sweden, it has long been upheld as an important tool for increasing understanding of, and dealing with, environmental problems. It is not clear, however, what role education can actually have in the making of a more sustainable future. Even though there are several potential ways for sustainable development to be involved in education, the concept raises many questions when transferred to the school context.

Purpose: This paper investigates how teachers deal with the difficulty of defining and approaching sustainable development as an area of knowledge in Swedish schools.

Sample: This article is based on semi-structured interviews with 40 teachers, 13 of whom were lower secondary school teachers (pupil age 12–15) and 27 were upper secondary school teachers (pupil age 15–18). The study involves teachers in all subjects where sustainable development is a goal in the syllabus. The study is also based on participant observation in one upper secondary class. A total of 17 different schools were involved, from a wide range of locations in Sweden.

Design and methods: The paper builds on qualitative data and the analysis of transcribed interviews and group interviews with teachers in Swedish lower and upper secondary schools. Group interviews, involving three or more people, were conducted on eight occasions. The pupils at an upper secondary school were also observed while they were working on a course called ‘policy and sustainable development’. Data were transcribed and analysed thematically.

Findings: The analysis suggests that, according to the teachers’ experiences, the demands of equivalence and measurability in school have increased and that this affects how sustainable development is approached in teaching and learning. Three main categories of knowledge were identified. The study also presents two representations that model how teachers may approach knowledge about sustainable development – metaphorically termed ‘the Accountant’ and ‘the Adventurer’ – and their different effects on knowledge.

Conclusions: There is a tendency for complex knowledge areas such as sustainable development, which do not fit seamlessly into traditional curriculum subjects, to become oversimplified when translated into teaching situations. According to the representations that we described metaphorically, the teacher, as an accountant, is characterised by ‘knowledge instrumentalism’, which means that teachers administer knowledge and the pupils consume it. In this transactional model, the accountant is also very dependent on external governance and control. Alternatively, the teacher, as an adventurer, is characterised by authority, knowledge and self-control. In this model, knowledge sometimes grows in an unpredictable way in the meeting between people who share common experiences. For adventurers, sustainable development is a matter of commitment and awareness, and it involves an explicit stance. The metaphors can be placed on a continuum which describes how teachers manage the demands of the school system in relation to the knowledge area of sustainable development.     

Disrupting colonial discourses in the geography curriculum during the introduction of British Values policy in schools

The main purpose of this article is to expose and disrupt discourses dominating global development in an English school geography textbook chapter. The study was prompted by a teacher’s encounter with cultural difference in a geography lesson in South Korea. I investigate the issues raised through the lens of a new curriculum policy in English schools called ‘Promoting Fundamental British Values’ which forms part of England’s education-securitisation agenda, a topic of international attention. Following contextualization across research fields and in recent curriculum and assessment policy reform, I bring together theoretical perspectives from curriculum studies and Continental philosophy that do not usually speak to each other, to construct a new analytical approach. I identify three key themes, each informed by colonial logic: ‘development’, ‘numerical indicators’ and ‘learning to divide the world’. The inquiry appears to expose a tension between the knowledge of the textbook chapter and the purported aims of the British Values curriculum policy, but further investigation reveals the two to be connected through common colonial values. The findings are relevant to teachers, publishers, textbook authors, policy-makers and curriculum researchers. I recommend a refreshed curriculum agenda with the politics of knowledge and ethical global relations at its centre.     

Teachers’ democratic assignment: a critical discourse analysis of teacher education policies in Ireland and Sweden

ABSTRACT

The needs of a globalized economy are rapidly changing what is legitimated as school knowledge and values, and calling up new understandings of teachers’ role in stimulating democratic spaces. We have termed this Teachers’ Democratic Assignment. We examine changing notions of teachers’ democratic assignment in Ireland and Sweden using a Critical Discourse Analysis. We tested our hypothesis that teachers’ democratic assignment has changed in unprecedented ways using an analysis of policy documents in teacher education. Our findings reported a substantive converging paradigm shift from a predominantly progressive (reconstructivist) curriculum discourse where democracy was seen as inextricably linked to everyday practice in the early years of this century, to a more essentialist (perennialist) discourse in recent times. The findings will have interest for a wider audience and have implications for the role of democracy in teacher education as well as the question of education as a social responsibility for a vibrant democracy.     

Adaptation in the transition to school: perspectives of parents,preschool and primary school teachers

Background: Transition to school is a highly demanding phase at an intellectual, social and emotional level and is, therefore, an opportunity for growth and development. Despite the greater emphasis given to school transition in Portugal over recent years, namely by means of new educational policies, studies on the adaptation processes involved in the transition to primary school are still scarce.

Purpose: The present qualitative study sets out to contribute to the knowledge on the adaptation process of children to school transition (around age 6) in Portugal, by comparing preschool teachers’, primary school teachers’, and parents’ perceptions about success indicators and relevant factors in the transition to school.

Design and method: In order to collect data, 14 focus group interviews with different participants were conducted, three with preschool teachers (N = 18), three with primary school teachers (N = 13), four with parents conducted before the child’s transition to primary school (N = 14) and four with parents conducted after the child’s transition to primary school (N = 20).

Results: While the preschool and primary school teachers stressed factors of a family nature, such as parental involvement and parental support of children, the parents referred more frequently to the overall running of the school and the characteristics and methodology of the teacher as being relevant to the adaptation process in the first year of primary education.

Conclusions: The findings suggest different factors associated with adaptation to school and also offer clues for designing strategies to facilitate such adaptation. New strategies are needed to facilitate the construction of a robust educational family–school partnership.     

Values in the mathematics classroom

Abstract

Values, moral values and democratic values are attracting the attention of education researchers in general and mathematics education researchers in particular. Little research has studied pre-service teachers’ perceptions of values in the classroom, their perceptions of the relationship between the different variables of values in the classroom, as well as their relationship with the democratic society. The present research attempts to do so. Twenty-two graduate pre-service teachers who participated in ‘New trends in mathematics education’ course discussed how to cultivated values in the mathematics classroom. Moreover, they answered survey questions related to the cultivation of values in this classroom. We used a combination of deductive and inductive content analysis to characterize the pre-service teachers’ texts. The research results indicate that the pre-service teachers perceived values as encouraging students’ activity in the mathematics classroom. In addition, the pre-service teachers perceived values as encouraging specific categories of values needed as skills for the citizen in a democratic society, as creativity, critical thinking and metacognition.     

Family-school partnership in the Spanish education system

Abstract

The benefits of positive, active relationships between families, schools, and the community (not only in the academic outcomes of the children, but also in the family’s and school’s wellbeing) have, up to now, had plenty of supportive evidence. Nevertheless, experience shows that there are many difficulties involved in making participation a reality. Education regulation acknowledges the importance of family participation at school, but neither implementation methods nor the concept of participation are clearly defined. Spanish initial teacher education curriculum programmes include, only in a marginal form, competences and skills that would prepare teachers to become involved in a collaborative relationship with families and the community. This article addresses the training of professionals in education from the perspective of the competences, skills, and knowledge demanded to engage in collaborative work with families and the community. It was conducted through a comparative analysis of the curriculum programmes of Spanish Universities, with a special focus on curriculum content and competences, and on the formal organisation of the initial training of pre-service teachers.