Teachers’ perceptions of the use of an external change agent in school curriculum change

An external change agent (ECA) was recently employed in three Queensland schools to align the school curriculum with the requirements of the state’s high stakes test known as the Queensland Core Skills test (QCS). This paper reports on the teachers’ perceptions of a change process led by an ECA. With the ever-increasing implementation of high stakes testing in Australian schools, teachers are under mounting pressure to produce ‘results’. Therefore, in order to maximise their students’ success in these tests, schools are altering their curricula to incorporate the test requirements. Rather than the traditional method of managing such curriculum change processes internally, there is a growing trend for principals to source external expertise in the form of ECAs. Although some academics, teachers, and much of the relevant literature, would regard such a practice as problematic, this study found that in fact, teachers were quite open to externally led curriculum change, especially if they perceived the leader to be knowledgeable and creditable in this area.     

Exploring the relational efforts making up a curriculum concept—an Actor-network theory analysis of the curriculum concept of children’s interests

This paper undertakes an investigation of the ‘life’ of the curriculum concept of children’s interests in a preschool practice. The concept of children’s interests plays a vital role in the Swedish preschool curriculum text and in the preschool field. Strongly inspired by Actor-network theory readings, the paper aims at producing accounts making visible the making of the concept of children’s interests through relations among children, carpets, Minecraft figures, boxes, teachers and schedules in a preschool practice. The paper engages in ethnographic materials generated at a Stockholm preschool over a period of 10 months.     

Empowerment for individual agency: an analysis of international organizations’ curriculum recommendations

Much recent research stresses the increasing relevance of international organisations (IOs) for national education policymaking. Yet, IOs’ curriculum recommendations have remained largely out of scope, although they provide a forceful example of ‘soft’ governance. Based on a content analysis of 83 documents from 42 inter/-nongovernmental, global and regional organisations involved in international education networks between 1990 and 2015, this paper identifies an expansive field of IOs directing growing attention to such curricular issues as student needs, educational goals and content, as well as issues of teaching and learning. In line with much cross-national curriculum research, analysis provides evidence for the trend towards a global curriculum model stressing empowerment, individual agency and psychosocial development. The article argues that the strong focus on human capabilities and human capital in IOs’ curriculum policies reflects wider cultural transformations in contemporary world society. The article concludes by arguing for an expanded analytical scope of IOs’ educational work and a reconsideration of causal explanations in curriculum theories.     

Conceptualising teachers’ assessment literacies in an era of curriculum and assessment reform

Teacher assessment literacy is a phrase that is often used but rarely defined. Yet understanding teacher assessment literacy is important in an international curriculum and assessment reform context that continues to challenge teachers’ assessment practices. In this article situated examples of classroom assessment literacies are analysed using Bernstein’s (Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research and critique, Taylor and Francis, London, 1996; Br J Sociol Educ 20(2):157–173, 1999) theoretical tools of vertical and horizontal discourses, classification and framing. Drawing on a sociocultural view of learning, the authors define teacher assessment literacies as dynamic social practices which are context dependent and which involve teachers in articulating and negotiating classroom and cultural knowledges with one another and with learners, in the initiation, development and practice of assessment to achieve the learning goals of students. This conceptualisation of assessment literacy aims to make explicit some underpinning theoretical constructs of assessment literacy to inform dialogue and decision making for policy and practice to benefit student learning and achievement.     

A Critique of the curriculum cycle

Introduction Recently, the focus of English of language teaching has changed to a concern with developing discourse skills to enable learners to develop the knowledge and skills to make them engage with whole text, which are ap- propriate to social contex…     

Review and redesign of the curriculum of a Masters programme in telecommunications engineering – Towards an outcome-based approach

This article presents the methodology and results of the curriculum review of the Masters of Science programme in Wireless Communications offered by the Telecommunications Engineering Department at Yarmouk University in Jordan. The review is based on expert opinion collected through questionnaires and meetings about the programme and focuses on two main aspects: the first is relevance of the programme to the needs of local and regional telecommunications industry and the second is comparability to similar programmes in the EU.

Through an extensive analysis of the collected data, a set of recommendations for improvement of the existing curriculum was developed. These recommendations were then used to redesign the curriculum with regard to contents, teaching methodology and assessment.     

Teachers’ adaptations to and orientations towards an adolescent literacy curriculum

This study examines teacher implementation of an adolescent literacy curriculum designed as an intervention for students reading two years below grade level. Specifically, this work focuses on the adaptations made by four experienced teachers in a single school that sustained implementation of this curriculum after the intervention trial had ended. Data were collected through observation and interview. An accounts of teaching practice methodology was used to define each teacher’s orientation towards the curriculum, and then to determine whether this orientation demonstrated assimilation or accommodation to intervention principles. I found that the vast majority of time spent implementing the curriculum included adaptations, and that each teacher’s adaptations were different, and reflected her pre-existing orientation towards literacy teaching. Although one teacher demonstrated assimilation and accommodation to intervention principles, the other three primarily demonstrated assimilation. These findings suggest the importance of understanding teachers’ orientations towards curriculum in order to provide more tailored professional development which may help teachers accommodate to the most critical pedagogical features of a curriculum. This may be especially significant in considering sustained implementation, after research-related supports have been withdrawn.     

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.     

Speech — the heart of the core curriculum

GROUP LEADERSHIP AND DEMOCRATIC ACTION. By Franklin S. Haiman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1951; pp. vii+309. $2.50.

NEW WAYS TO BETTER MEETINGS. By Bert and Frances Strauss. New York: The Viking Press, 1951; pp. 177. $2.95.

DISCUSSION AND DEBATE: TOOLS OF A DEMOCRACY. By Henry L. Ewbank and J. Jeffery Auer. (Second edition). New York: Appleton‐Century‐Crofts, Inc. 1951; pp. x+ 492. $3.50.

COMMUNICATION: THE SOCIAL MATRIX OF PSYCHIATRY. By Jurgen Ruesch and Gregory Bateson. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1951; pp. 314. $4.50.

FÉNELON'S DIALOGUES ON ELOQUENCE. By Wilbur Samuel Howell. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951; pp. 160. $3.00.

THEODORE WELD: CRUSADER FOR FREEDOM. By Benjamin P. Thomas. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1950; PP. 307. $4.25.

THE LETTERS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Selected and edited by Ehing E. Morison; John M. Blum, Associate Editor; John J. Buckley, Copy Editor. Cambridge; Harvard University Press, igsi; 9 volumes; Vols. 1–2, pp. xxix+800; 801–1549. $20.00.

PUBLIC SPEAKING: PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE. By Giles Wilkeson Gray and Waldo W. Braden. New York: Harper &; Brothers, 1951; pp. xiv+581. $4.00.

TEACHING SPEECH IN THE SECONDARY SCHOOL. By Karl Robinson. New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1951; pp. 438. $4.00.

SPEECH: FORMS AND PRINCIPLES. By Andrew Thomas Weaver. (Second Edition). New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1951: pp. 415.$3.50.

HOW TO WRITE A SPEECH. By Edward J. Hegarty. New York: McGraw‐Hill Book Company, 1951; pp. vii+xii+226. $3.50.

THE AMERICAN PRONOUNCING DICTIONARY OF TROUBLESOME WORDS. By Frank O. Colby. New York: Crowell, 1950: pp. 399. $4.50.

A MANUAL OF PRONUNCIATION. By Morriss H. Needleman. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1950; pp. cvii+321. $4.00.

YOUR DEAF CHILD. By Helmer R. Mykle‐bust. Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, Publisher, 1950; pp. 133. $2.50.

LANGUAGE FOR THE PRESCHOOL DEAF CHILD. By Grace Harris Lassman. New York: Grune &; Stratton, Inc., 1950; pp. 263. $5.50.

THE RETURN FROM BABEL. By Gerald M. Spring. New York: Philosophical Library, 1951; pp. ix+179. $3.50.

MORE ABOUT WORDS. By Margaret S. Ernst. Sketches by W. A. Dwiggins. New York: Knopf, 1951; pp. xii+233. $3.00.

WORDS AND THEIR USE. By Stephen Ullman. New York: Philosophical Library, 1951; pp. 108. $2.75.

POETRY AND DRAMA. By T. S. Eliot. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1951; pp. 44. $1.50.

A TREASURY OF THE THEATRE (FROM AESCHYLUS TO TURGENEV). Edited by John Gassner. (Revised Edition for Colleges). New York: The Dryden Press, 1951; pp. xviii+718. $4.50.

HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN THEATRE: Seventeenth Through Nineteenth Century. By B. V. Varneke. Original Translation by Boris Brasol. Revised and Edited by Belle Martin. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1951; pp. xii+459. $6.50.

HISTORY OF SPEECH EDUCATION AT COLUMBIA COLLEGE 1754–1940. By Helen P. Roach. New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1950; pp. 134. $2.35.

TELEVISION AND OUR CHILDREN. By Robert Lewis Shayon. New York: Longmans, Green and Company. 1951; pp. 94. $1.50.

RADIO AND TELEVISION SOUND EFFECTS. By Robert B. Turnbull. New York: Rinehart and Company, Inc., 1951; pp. xv+334. $4.50.

SUCCESSFUL RADIO AND TELEVISION ADVERTISING. By E. F. Seehafer and J. W. Laemmar. New York: McGraw‐Hill Book Company, Inc., 1951; pp. xiii+574. $6.50.

FOUNDATIONS IN BROADCASTING. By Edgar E. Willis. New York: Oxford University Press, 1951; pp. viii+439. $3.25.

TELEVISION PROGRAMMING AND PRODUCTION. By Richard Hubbell. (Second Edition). New York: Rinehart and Co., 1950; pp. xiv+240. $3.50.

PRACTICAL LOGIC. By Monroe C. Beardsley. New York: Prentice‐Hall, Inc., 1950; pp. xxviii +580. $3.75.

THINKING STRAIGHT. By Monroe C. Beards, ley. New York: Prentice‐Hall, Inc., 1950; pp. xxi+278. $2.00.

THINK BEFORE YOU WRITE. By William G. Leary and James Steel Smith. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1951; pp. 490. $2.25.

WE TEACH ENGLISH. By Lou La Brant. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1951; pp. 342. $2.75.

INNOCENTS FROM ABROAD. By Kenneth Harris. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1951; pp. 238. $2.50.

ROBERT'S RULES OF ORDER REVISED. By General Henry M. Robert. (Seventy‐fifth anniversary edition). New York: Scott Foresman and Company, 1951; pp. 326. $2.10.     

Linking curriculum theory and linguistics: the performative use of ‘equivalence’ as an educational policy concept

The linguistic turn has helped to create new methods within social and educational theory. This study draws attention to the constitutive force of political language and the performative dynamics of one essentially contested concept—equivalence—in Swedish educational policy at both the national and the local level. It illustrates the way in which different interpretations of the concept of equivalence produce different truths, the performative concept thereby becoming a way of advocating particular understandings of the purpose of education.     

Teenagers’ web questions compared with a sexuality curriculum: an exploration

Background: Teenagers need information about their changing bodies. Many young people do not receive adequate or accurate puberty/sexuality education from their parents or school, so many teenagers are going online to have their sexuality questions answered.

Purpose: This research examines teenagers’ web questions on sexuality, and an example of the puberty and sexuality education content that some may learn in school. It looks for evidence of heteronormative conceptualisations of gender and sexuality, using a theoretical framework based on the Four Discourses of Sexuality Education.

Sample: This includes the web questions (n = 200) of an evenly gendered sample of 13–15‐year-old students (n = 180) from four English-speaking nations, namely UK, USA, Canada and Australia, selected from a reputable puberty/sexuality education site, and, for comparison, an example of an age-representative public school Health and Physical Education (HPE) puberty/sexuality education curriculum.

Method: A gendered and narrative-thematic Content Analysis was undertaken, using the Four Discourses theoretical framework, on the students’ sexuality web questions, and also on the school HPE curriculum.

Results: The discourse of Victimisation was evident in nearly half of all students’ web questions, and over a third of the HPE curriculum. The discourse of Individual Morality was present in a quarter of both students’ questions and the curriculum, while the discourse of Desire was evidenced in a fifth of students’ questions and almost a third of curriculum content. Somewhat surprisingly, the discourse of Violence was present in 9% of exclusively female students’ web questions, and in 12% of the curriculum.

Conclusion: It is recommended that the sampled HPE curriculum, and similar curricula in these sampled students’ countries, need explicitly to address gender differences in students’ metacognition and conceptualisations of puberty and sexuality. This may enable students to embrace their entitlement to sexual subjectivity, in education and across the lifespan, thus helping to ensure students’ healthy, positive and purposeful life outcomes.     

Upgraded curriculum? An analysis of knowledge boundaries in teaching under the Swedish subject-based curriculum*

This article offers a contribution to the current debate about knowledge and the curriculum, especially initiated by social realist writers. The enacted Swedish subject-based curriculum for compulsory schooling is examined and is also used as a significant case with the aim of discussing practical implications of social realist claims regarding knowledge and the curriculum. Video-recorded lessons from grade six in six different Swedish schools, in combination with teacher interviews, are explored within the scope of a curriculum theory framework with the purpose of illuminating dominant patterns of knowledge boundaries and knowledge conceptions. The study shows how the Swedish subject-based curriculum frames teaching in a direction where a disciplinary knowledge conception with fixed knowledge boundaries predominates over other knowledge forms. The subject-based curriculum also appears to produce an ‘overloading’ of content, which implies that pupils’ questions and experiences are avoided and dismissed in the teaching practice.     

Modelling pre-service teachers’ perceived usefulness of an ICT-based student-centred learning (SCL) curriculum: a Singapore study

The purpose of this study is to examine the factors that influence pre-service teachers’ perceived usefulness of an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) course that was conducted using the student-centred learning (SCL) approach. In this study, perceived usefulness was used as the dependent variable and perceived competence, course delivery, facilitating conditions and learning environment as independent variables. The results of this study showed that perceived competence and course delivery have direct effects on pre-service teachers’ perceived usefulness of the course, while learning environment and facilitating conditions affect perceived usefulness indirectly. Overall, the results support the hypothesis that the four selected variables in this study affect perceived usefulness and that the resulting model is an adequate fit to the observed relationships among the factors that influenced pre-service teachers’ perceived usefulness of an ICT course.     

A self‐study of a national curriculum maker in physical education: challenges to curriculum change

This paper captures a national curriculum maker’s experiences of revising the physical education curriculum in South Korea. A self‐study was conducted in order to make known the chairperson’s experiences concerning the various obstacles encountered in revising the national curriculum and to offer previously unseen insights afforded by the curriculum maker’s personal reflections. This study specifically offers a detailed analysis of four challenges the national curriculum maker encountered: (1) personal obstacles encountered as a young female chairperson, (2) environmental obstacles encountered as a marginally positioned chairperson, (3) professional obstacles faced as an innovative chairperson, and (4) institutionalized obstacles related to being named the official chairperson. In this self‐study conducted in the narrative inquiry tradition, several important findings emerge about the nature of curriculum making and how curriculum making transpires at a national level.     

Exercising a bounded autonomy: novice and experienced teachers’ adaptations to curriculum materials in an age of accountability

This study explores teachers’ first enactments of a set of theory-based curriculum materials designed to support academic language instruction. Specifically, this multiple case study looks at how six middle school English teachers in three US schools adapted the materials; each case includes a pair of teachers, one novice and one more experienced. All schools were located in the same district where a school performance measurement system was being used to publicly rank schools’ academic performance and growth. Multiple measures were used to look for evidence of adaptations and why teachers made adaptations. We found that all teachers adapted the curriculum, most often in response to either perceived student needs or district reform pressures. In two cases, patterns of adaptation differed by teacher experience; experienced teachers appeared better able to adapt curriculum materials to meet instructional goals. This pattern did not hold up at the third school, where teachers faced greater reform pressures. Taken together, these findings suggest that researchers should pay more attention to the role of school and district policy on teachers’ enactments of theory-based reforms. We conclude with guidance to researchers, instructional leaders and others interested in the potential of theory-based curricula as a lever for improving classroom instruction.     

Teaching ‘community engagement’ in engineering education for international development: Integration of an interdisciplinary social work curriculum

This article reviews the literature on challenges faced by engineering faculty in educating their students on community-engaged, sustainable technical solutions in developing countries. We review a number of approaches to increasing teaching modules on social and community components of international development education, from adding capstone courses and educational track seminars to integrating content from other disciplines, particularly the social sciences. After summarising recent pedagogical strategies to increase content on community-focused development, we present a case study of how one engineering programme incorporates social work students and faculty to infuse strategies for community engagement in designing and implementing student-led global engineering development projects. We outline how this interdisciplinary pedagogical approach teaches students from the two disciplines to work together in addressing power balances, economic and social issues and overall sustainability of international development projects.     

Teachers’ curriculum agency in teaching a standards-based curriculum

Abstract

In 2011, Sweden introduced explicit standards for the curriculum used in compulsory schooling through the implementation of ‘knowledge requirements’ that align content, abilities and assessment criteria. This article explores and analyses social science teachers’ curriculum agency through a theoretical framework comprised of ‘teacher agency’ and Bernstein’s concepts of ‘pedagogic device’, ‘hierarchical knowledge structure’ and ‘horizontal knowledge structure’. Teachers’ curriculum agency, in recontextualisation of the curriculum, is described and understood through three different ‘spaces’: a collective space, an individual space and an interactive space in the classroom. The curriculum and time are important for the possibilities of agency – the teachers state that the new knowledge requirements compel them to include and assess a lot of content in each ‘curriculum task’. It is possible to identify a recontextualisation process of ‘borrowing’ and combining content from curriculum tasks across the different subjects. This process is explained by the horizontal knowledge structure and ‘weak grammar’ of the social sciences. Abilities, on the other hand, stand out as elements of a hierarchical knowledge structure in which a discursive space is opened for knowledge to transcend contexts and provides opportunities for meaning-making. The space gives teachers room for action and for integrating disciplinary content.     

The role of difference in the creation of work‐responsive curriculum units

Academic curriculum and curricular units that are responsive to work necessarily involve the interaction of knowledge from two different communities. In this paper a number of cases of responsive curriculum are analysed in order to answer the following questions: Can general differences between work and academic knowledge be ascribed to the nature of the relevant knowledge fields? Were some fields of academic knowledge more amenable to interaction and hybridisation with work than others? We find that difference does indeed play a part in hybridisation. Where difference is too large or too small, hybridisation may be less successful than where difference is optimal. But other contingencies also come into play that involve the actions of actors in pushing difference in a particular direction.