Climate change education in the humanities classroom: a case study of the Lowell school curriculum pilot

Abstract

Climate change as an instructional topic in K-12 schools is most frequently taught in the science classroom. However, it is a human issue requiring social as well as technological and scientific solutions. This study analyzes and evaluates a climate change curriculum implemented via an integrated social studies and language arts framework in a middle school classroom. The curriculum reflects collaboration between a private school, a climate education non-profit, and a government agency (NOAA). Following the first year of implementation, student surveys, teacher interviews, and classroom observations comprise the primary tools of data collection and evaluation. Based off these data, students demonstrate high levels of climate literacy, improvements in reading comprehension, and overall engagement with the topic. Teachers report successes and challenges of teaching the curriculum, and administrators offer opportunities for scaling and implementing the curriculum in other schools and contexts (including public schools). Findings from this study are relevant to climate change curriculum developers, researchers, and educators seeking to incorporate an interdisciplinary, socio-scientific approach to climate change education in their work.     

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.     

Pre-vocational education in the curriculum: the case of Norwegian lower secondary education

This article investigates the composition of the Norwegian lower secondary school curriculum with a special emphasis on pre-vocational education from a contemporary perspective. The data consist of four official national curricula enacted from the 1970s until the present. Despite differences between the curricula, the main structure of school subjects has remained stable over time. Norwegian lower secondary school curricula mainly include academic subjects, even though pre-vocational education is, to varying degrees, present in all curricula, especially amongst elective subjects. This consolidated position of academic subjects results in a consistency in the composition of the curriculum. Curriculum change is most likely to happen amongst electives and is related to changes in policy making and societal changes. Pre-vocational education is mainly included in the first and current curriculum contrary to the second and third curriculum. These findings indicate that the international policy agenda and its emphasis on the relevance of education through stressing the linkage between education and the world of work only has a minor impact on Norwegian curricula. Further, the allocation of teaching hours shows that the status of pre-vocational subjects is low compared to that of academic subjects. International policies emphasizing basic skills strengthen the academic subjects even further.     

Textbooks of doubt: using systemic functional analysis to explore the framing of climate change in middle-school science textbooks

Middle school students are learning about climate change in large part through textbooks used in their classes. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how the language employed in these materials frames this topic. To this end, we used systemic functional analysis to study the language of the chapters related to climate change in four sixth grade science textbooks adopted in the state of California. The linguistic variables investigated were: types of nominal groups; processes; circumstances; and the modality system. Our findings showed that these textbooks framed climate change as uncertain in the scientific community – both about whether it is occurring as well as about its human-causation. The implications for science education are discussed in relation to how the current political and public discourses of climate change, rather than the scientific discourse, is influencing how textbooks discuss this topic.     

Contesting education policy in the public sphere: media debates over policies for the Queensland school curriculum

This paper investigates the work of media discourses on education policy in public debates over the Queensland school curriculum. It draws on theories of discourse, theories that have recently influenced the field of policy sociology, to outline a conceptualization of policy and media texts as discourses in the public sphere. In so doing, it notes the significant contribution such public discourses on education make to the policy process. The paper employs critical discourse analysis to investigate the discursive constructions of curriculum during one particular policy initiative. The analysis focuses on newspaper debates over the inclusion of a subject called Health and Physical Education (HPE) in the Queensland secondary school curriculum. The paper shows how educational policy issues were discursively constituted and contested through the construction of public discourses on education policy. In particular, it demonstrates how such public discourses worked to construct authoritative voices on educational policy. The paper concludes with a call to teachers and policymakers to seek opportunities to construct an authoritative public voice on issues of education policy.     

Teacher educators' digital competence

This position paper focuses on how the new national curriculum for school and the new general plan for teacher education in Norway change the underlying premises for teaching and learning in today's teacher education. This has become particularly pressing as a result of the new educational reform ‘Knowledge Promotion’ in schools, whereby digital competence is now the fifth basic competence in all subjects at all levels, as well as in the new teacher education curriculum in Norway. Against this background, the aim of this position paper is to elaborate on how a digital competence model can function on a micro level to fulfil the intentions from the national and institutional policy level. The research question considered by this paper is whether (and if so, how) a digital competence model for TEs can function as a model on an individual level.     

气候变化教育:联合国行动框架及其启示

气候变化对人类生活和自然环境产生了重大影响,气候变化教育已经被纳入联合国可持续发展战略的重要组成部分.在《联合国气候变化框架公约》指导下,联合国各组织部门发布了一系列纲领性文件,从教育政策制定、教育目标设定、课程设计实施、教师能力提升和学校环境建设等方面阐明了气候变化教育的发展路径,在世界范围内开展了卓有成效的教育实践.气候变化教育能够培养学生跨学科的综合性问题解决能力、批判性思维能力和社会责任意识等核心素养,应该关注气候变化的课程开发、教学研究和教师培训.     

Global–local dynamics of curriculum policy development: a case-study from Singapore

Non-government education is often a highly emotive and frequently irrational area of educational debate, especially when it centres on the degree of government funding and support. Frequently people take fortified positions, being either for or against it, often on political grounds and often without taking into account the cultural contexts and complexities involved. The purpose of this article is to look beyond these confines. It is based on a research project focusing on ‘whole’ curriculum policy at the individual school level in non-government schools in a variety of English-speaking countries in the developed world. The article is in three parts. The first part outlines the conceptual framework employed to guide our research project on curriculum policy. The second part presents a case-study of Chinese High School (CHS) in Singapore. This is an exemplar of the type of case-study of curriculum policy in non-government schools being undertaken as part of our research. Also, it is an interesting case in its own right; while the school has developed a global orientation to its curriculum policy and has incorporated ‘the global’ into ‘the local’ extremely rapidly, this curriculum transition has not been without its tensions and costs. The third part of the article offers a discussion of the ‘bigger picture’ implications of the findings.     

A tale of two countries: comparing civic education in the Philippines and Singapore

This article provides a comparative analysis of citizenship education in the Philippines and Singapore. Through an analysis of historical contexts, citizenship education policy and curriculum, it examines Makabayan in the Philippines and National Education in Singapore. It identifies particular policy and curriculum trajectories as responses to national and global imperatives to demonstrate how countries are redefining the kinds of knowledge, skills and values deemed necessary for national citizenship in global contexts. This comparative case study illustrates some of the tensions and contradictions facing citizenship education in new global contexts and highlights the different ways countries try to manage these tensions through citizenship education policies and curricula. Findings point to different factors that shape and constrain the implementation of citizenship education programmes in both countries.     

School Leadership in the 21st Century: Leading in the Age of Reform

In an effort to increase student readiness for college and career, many States have adopted new academic standards encouraged by education reform advocates. These standards are commonly referred to as the Common Core Standards. Schools from States that have adopted the Common Core Standards have been compelled to significantly restructure their existing curriculum and adjust how they teach that curriculum. These requirements can be particularly onerous for rural schools. Neoliberalism is the underlying political philosophy undergirding these changes in the current school reform movement and is similar to the political philosophy that drove the changes in agricultural policies in the mid 20th century. Neoliberal political and economic philosophy as it correlates to education policy is buttressed by three values: (1) education fosters economic growth; (2) education policy modeled on efficiency and business practices; (3) high stakes testing to measure what a student has learned. These values have created an educational policy structure that attempts to quantify student learning, teacher effectiveness and school district value. By understanding the similarities between agricultural policies in the mid 20th century and current education policies, rural schools and communities will be able to change the narrative surrounding the education of their children.     

Analysing meritocratic (in)equality in Singapore: ideology,curriculum and reproduction

In this article I first discuss how in Singapore the concept of meritocracy captures both elitist and egalitarian aspirations, and the ways in which its education policies have for a long time vacillated between these conflicting dimensions. I then argue that critical studies of meritocracy need to go beyond an understanding of the term as an inherently unstable concept instantiated problematically in policy and practice. Rather, as I develop the argument further, the dynamics of meritocracy needs to be appreciated as an ideology that is negotiated by dominant social groups as these seek to legitimize particular distributions of social resources. Such dominant ideologies, however, are not only produced in the education system; they are also reproduced through it, often in far more complex ways. To see how these ideologies and their tensions animate the very mechanism that sits at the centre of the reproduction of (in)equality, viz. the curriculum, the rest of the article provides an account of how one particular subject area is differently taught in an elite and a mainstream school.     

The Pacific region

Population education in the Pacific region is summarized in terms of awareness and commitment, curriculum and instructional materials development, integration into the school curricula, training programs, and evaluation research. Several population education issues of current concern relate to the increase in chronic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension that are associated with life styles and diet, and the rising incidence of AIDS and teenage pregnancy. In the Pacific region, many countries have advanced population programs and policies, while some still do not even have a population policy. The issue of balancing population and resources is a topic that has not been sufficiently addressed in resource-poor countries. There is wide variance in awareness and commitment to population education in the Pacific region. Commitment and continuous support are crucial to population education projects. Lack of support is sometimes due to changing government personnel and lack of awareness of policy makers. Population education is not the same as family planning or sex education, and traditionally is spread through seminars and workshops by part time project personnel unconnected to the entire educational apparatus. Presently, only 8 population projects are functioning in the region, with 2-3 in the planning stages. Materials development in the Pacific region has been devoted to the secondary school level, yet awareness is increasing that sexuality, family health, and the environment should be introduced at the primary level. A popular strategy is to integrate population issues into the existing curriculum, such as in Fiji, the Marshall Islands, and Kiribati, which also have teacher training curriculum. In most countries sex education is still a controversial topic, and materials are developed by teacher committees working after school rather in a curriculum development unit. AIDS has pushed this topic into the public sector. A chart is provided for each country and curriculum with population education and the level of schooling for formal and informal education. Training programs tend to be orientation workshops, materials development workshops, or teacher training workshops. Evaluation research in population education has been weak, due to an emphasis on program implementation, curriculum development, and limited resources and expertise.     

How do teachers interpret and transform entrepreneurship education?

During the last decade, entrepreneurship education has become a central curricular topic in many locations in the world. In Sweden, entrepreneurship education was implemented in the curriculum for the first time in 2011, as something that should be included in all upper secondary school programmes. In this article, we focus on one of these programmes, the handicraft programme, investigating how entrepreneurship education is formulated in the latest curriculum and how teachers understand and transform such content in their teaching. Drawing on Bernstein’s concepts of classification and framing, we illustrate how entrepreneurship education in the Swedish curriculum has a ‘dual definition’, representing very different framing and classification, but still clearly belongs in a ‘market relevance’ discourse. This is expressed through the way in which the concept is transformed by teachers in their teaching. We also find that entrepreneurship education has low legitimacy among teachers, particularly when it is classified weakly. The weak framing and classification, taken together with the low legitimacy among teachers, are likely to lead to very different transformations of entrepreneurship education in different educational contexts. In the long run, this could have a negative effect on the equivalence of teaching at upper secondary school.     

新加坡21世纪普通高中教育改革

从1997年开始,新加坡开始了面向21世纪的基础教育改革,其中普通高中教育改革的主要内容是改革课程结构、改革升学考试制度、推出高才教育整合计划、注重教师专业发展等。这次改革体现了精英主义教育思想,遵循渐进主义的改革思路,实践了双语教育政策,并表现出重视核心素质的培养和提高课程的灵活性等特点。     

Curriculum debate and policy change

This article investigates the underlying themes and principles that inform curriculum debate and how they are articulated in current school policy discussions. This topic is approached with the help of a case study covering the debate on which subjects should be mandatory for students at the upper secondary school curriculum in Sweden. The focus is on the arguments for and against the inclusion of History among these core subjects. The aim is to order and structure this debate and to link the arguments found to basic underlying principles. Why was History considered important or unimportant? What arguments are found about the best way to teach History? This study employs a 4-fold distinction which distinguishes between perennialism, essentialism, progressivism, and reconstructivism as four schools of thought, each outlining its own particular view on what kind of knowledge is important and how such knowledge should be taught. One major finding is that two of the schools—progressivism and essentialism—completely dominate the debates under study. There existed a major fault line between those who emphasized the instrumental value of History as a tool for fostering good citizens, and those who considered History part of essential general knowledge about society.     

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.     

国际视野下小学数学核心素养的价值取向与内涵

小学数学核心素养体系的建构是当前基础教育阶段重要的教育研究议题。采用NVivo 12.0编码统计分析,通过对美国、英国、澳大利亚、日本、新加坡现行的小学数学课程目标组成要素及内涵进行比较,从课程价值取向、内涵等维度析出小学数学核心素养的类别以及内涵的层级结构。研究发现,认知过程取向、人本主义取向、社会重建主义取向是建构小学数学核心素养框架和指标的根本价值取向;并结合专家意见,初步建构五项小学数学核心素养组成要素及其内涵。     

论形势与政策教育的内容定位与方法选择

本文主要分析了形势与政策教育要获得持续发展,一方面必须从学科建设高度抓好课程教学目标及内容定位,把形势与政策教育从“形势与政策课”上升为“形势与政策学”,协调好形势与政策课自身体系完整性与思想政治教育其它课程体系之间的关系,避免各年级形势政策教育内容一刀切现象;另一方面要注重形势与政策教育方法和形式的选择,基础理论系统讲授与热点问题专题讲授相结合,“请进来”和“走出去”的形式也要结合。     

Participation,progression and value added: business and economics for 14–19-year-olds in England

This article attempts to map the business and economics curriculum and explain some of the reasons for it being as it is; and to examine the number of students choosing to study the subjects and the ‘perceived relative value’ of studying economics and business studies. In 1988 a National Curriculum was introduced for all 5–16-year-olds in state schools in England but curiously neither business studies nor economics were mandatory subjects. In England, government education policy has influenced the development of the business and economics school curriculum in four main ways: first, in defining a core curriculum; second, in changes in school type; third, in the treatment of the academic/vocational divide; and, finally, in the development of a qualifications framework. With a new government elected, changes in education policy will therefore have an impact on the study of these subjects. We argue that while business and economics are very popular options for study by 14–19-year-olds, this area of the English curriculum needs further strengthening, and that all students should have the opportunity to study business and economics in some form to develop their own economic wellbeing and to better understand the world in which they live.     

Curriculum Development and New Information Technology

ABSTRACT

Many reports of achievements in developments in new information technology in schools lament the, as yet, unfulfilled hopes that they will radically change education. Those involved in new information technology sometimes seem to imagine that the problems of change that they face are somehow unique and have not been faced by others who have set out to change the curriculum.[l] I shall argue that the view of curriculum change employed by many policy makers and by some of those charged with implementing policy is inadequate.[2] While some acknowledge the need to change attitudes and practices in schools, national programmes have often failed even to include teacher training elements, and few have addressed the school as a focus of change, although the classroom has been addressed. My argument is that a better awareness of the common issues of curriculum change may make individual changes such as envisaged by the advocates of new information technology more effective, or at least less painful! Further I urge for a focus on the school, rather than individual classrooms, for both support and research efforts.

In a previous paper I traced the development of technology education in general (McCormick, 1991), this being a curriculum area that has some overlap with information technology. There are parallels to be drawn with this case of development, indeed there is direct overlap, and I will seek to illustrate this. In arguing for a more sophisticated view of curriculum change I will not be suggesting easy policy or programme changes, nor seeking to explain the lack of impact of new information technology, rather I hope to encourage (as I said above) an emphasis on the school and new directions for research. To facilitate my argument I start with a consideration of curriculum change in general, as it relates to national education systems, then consider the case of curriculum change in technology education, and then give an overview of development strategies in the new information technologies.[3] I then apply the evidence from these three sections to the fourth when I deal with curriculum change in the new information technologies, and end the paper by considering the implications for curriculum development in the new information technologies.