Curriculum reform with a school-based approach: intellectual,structural and cultural challenges

Curriculum reform with a school-based approach is often assumed to offer schools and teachers autonomy at the site level, thus enabling them to develop a school-based curriculum and pedagogies to better fit the needs of students. Over the past decade, school-based curriculum development in Hong Kong has encountered issues that deserve worldwide attention and discussion. By reviewing the experiences of two schools in Hong Kong and drawing on international evidence, this study identifies key challenges and difficulties in school-based curriculum reform in three areas. Intellectually, there is a lack of a strong and broad shared knowledge base for curriculum development. As a result, most school-based curriculum initiatives have been piecemeal, fragmented and shallow. Structurally, many teachers have wasted time ‘re-inventing the wheel’ when developing school-based curricula. This effort has left them without sufficient time and energy to be effective in teaching. Culturally, reliance on school management to steer school-based reforms has prevented the development of a new culture in which teachers have the autonomy to make changes in their daily practices. Without cultural changes, curriculum reforms are not sustainable or effective. This study proposes a cooperative platform that integrates the strengths of central intelligence and school-based initiatives to maximise support for curriculum development at the teacher, school-site and system levels.     

Stories From Intercultural Education in Serbia: Teacher Leadership and Parent Participation

This article explores the potential of teacher leadership as a strategy to promote intercultural education by empowering parents and members of ethnic minority groups to participate in the life of the school. It links the idea of participation for social justice with the goals of intercultural education within the context of the APREME (Advancing Participation and Representation of Ethnic Minority Groups in Education) project, which is located within a wider program of research, development, and advocacy designed to promote inclusion and social cohesion in the western Balkans. The outcomes of this action-based stage of the program are presented in the form of vignettes that portray teachers’ projects designed to enable parents and community members to participate more fully in the life of the school. Conclusions are drawn about the relationship between teacher leadership and a transformative approach to the intercultural education.     

Exploring the eye‐movement patterns as Chinese children read texts: a developmental perspective

This study was to investigate Chinese children's eye patterns while reading different text genres from a developmental perspective. Eye movements were recorded while children in the second through sixth grades read two expository texts and two narrative texts. Across passages, overall word frequency was not significantly different between the two genres. Results showed that all children had longer fixation durations for low‐frequency words. They also had longer fixation durations on content words. These results indicate that children adopted a word‐based processing strategy like skilled readers do. However, only older children's rereading times were affected by genre. Overall, eye‐movement patterns of older children reported in this study are in accordance with those of skilled Chinese readers, but younger children are more likely to be responsive to word characteristics than text level when reading a Chinese text.     

Children exposed to child maltreatment and intimate partner violence: a study of co-occurrence among Hong Kong Chinese families

Objective

This study assessed the co-occurrence of child maltreatment and intimate partner violence (IPV) and examined the association between them.

Method

The cross-sectional study recruited a population-based sample of 1,094 children aged 12-17 years in Hong Kong. Structured questionnaires were used to collect data from the children. The prevalence of occurrence of child abuse and neglect by parents and exposure to IPV in both the past year and lifetime was examined, and their correlates were assessed using univariate and multivariate logistic regression.

Results

The results show that 26% and 14.6% of child participants had been exposed to IPV physical assault, and 44.4% and 22.6% had been subjected to a parent's corporal punishment or to physical maltreatment from a parent in their lifetime and the year preceding the study, respectively. Among those families characterized by IPV, 54.4% and 46.5% were involved in child physical maltreatment over the child's lifetime and in the preceding year, respectively.

Conclusions

Multivariate logistic regression analyses revealed that children exposed to IPV were at higher risk of being victims of neglect, corporal punishment, and physical maltreatment or severe physical maltreatment by their parents than children who were not exposed to IPV, even when child and parent demographic factors were controlled for.

Practical implications

The higher risk of child physical maltreatment associated with IPV highlights the need for an integrated assessment to screen for the presence of multiple forms of family violence within the family, and for intervention to assess effective responses to both IPV and child maltreatment by child protective service workers and domestic violence agencies.     

Didactic strategies in early science teaching

The purpose of the article is to show the results of empirical research on the prevailing teaching strategies for teaching contents of the subject environmental studies (specifically when dealing with natural content) in the first triennium of the nine‐year primary school in the Republic of Slovenia. The information was obtained through a survey of 141 teachers from 60 randomly selected primary schools in the Republic of Slovenia. We found that teachers use different teaching strategies as students gain knowledge through experience, participation in education, they express their opinion, views, solve simple problems and explore. Such notice shall then direct the transmissions to the transaction and transformation, which was an important objective of the reform of the subject.     

Making citizens,being European? European symbolism in Slovenian citizenship education textbooks

Citizenship education has been an important part of the European Union’s (EU) agenda to integrate a European dimension into schools’ curricula. The usage of European symbolism in citizenship education curriculum material has been an especially important (yet understudied) means not only to promote a distinct European identity and increase knowledge on EU-related topics, but also to regulate (young) EU citizens and population. The paper analyses the content related to the EU and European dimension in citizenship education textbooks and workbooks at the lower-secondary school level in Slovenia. It demonstrates that, through diverse symbolic displays, which are understood as a specific governmental technique, the idea of a European community as a site of opportunities is promoted while students are stimulated to understand themselves as subjects who must be active and responsible EU citizens. Moreover, European symbolism is employed to nurture and promote Slovenian identity as being purely European and, as such, distinct from earlier Balkan-situated, Yugoslav and socialist forms of identity and belonging.     

Developing teachers’ subject didactic competence through problem posing

Problem posing (not only in lesson planning but also directly in teaching whenever needed) is one of the attributes of a teacher’s subject didactic competence. In this paper, problem posing in teacher education is understood as an educational and a diagnostic tool. The results of the study were gained in pre-service primary school teacher education. Students were asked to pose problems containing some given data (namely fractions). The subsequent analysis of the problems posed by the students revealed shortcomings in their conceptual understanding of fractions. Classroom-based joint reflection became the means of reeducation.     

Dimensions of Market Demand Associated with Taekwondo Schools in North America: Development of a Scale

Since the introduction of martial arts in the United States, the sport of Taekwondo (TKD) has rapidly grown and developed. Although the elevated interest in this sport has increased the magnitude of the TKD market, no systematic studies have been conducted to investigate the market demand variables associated with TKD schools in North America. To a great extent, lack of study has been due to the unavailability of a viable measure. The purpose of this study was to identify the dimensions of market demand for TKD schools and develop the Scale of Market Demand Associated with Taekwondo School (SMD-TKD). Research participants (N = 205) were TKD school members who were 18 years and older from 22 TKD schools in major cities of Florida. A factor analysis using principal component extraction and varimax rotation produced six factors with 51 items returned (i.e., Personal Benefits, School Operation, Instruction Quality, Program Offering, Locker Room, and Cultural Learning). Multiples regression analysis revealed that all market demand factors, except for Program Offering and Cultural Learning, were positively (p < .05) predictive of TKD consumption, suggesting that the SMD-TKD is useful for marketing studies on TKD consumers.