Relevant, challenging, integrative and exploratory curriculum design: Perspectives from theory and practice for middle level schooling in Australia

Integrative curriculum design promises much for middle level teachers who wish to develop classroom programmes that will encourage early adolescents to actively engage in their learning (Beane 1990, 1997). Beane’s model is highly responsive to the educational and developmental needs of young people. In contrast, multidisciplinary curriculum design (Jacobs 1989) may result in significant but largely unrecognised drawbacks when it is implemented in the middle grades.     

The SEN Code of Practice: Is it User-Friendly?

The 1997 Green Paper (DfEE, 1997) refers to a new 'Code of Practice' to 'be in place by the year 2002'. The present Code contains both principles and procedures, which LEAs and schools are expected to apply, and against which agencies will measure their performance. Yet how user-friendly are they? In this article, a shortened version of a paper prepared as part of a National Research Project, Tony Bowers and David Wilkinson (from the School of Education, The University of Cambridge) consider evidence from past writings and research.     

A Disabling Curriculum for Some?

There has been no recent research into the curriculum as a whole for pupils with physical disabilities. This small-scale survey was carried out by Tony Lonton and Asifa Farooqui, who looked at curriculum composition in relation to the National Curriculum. Tony Lonton was until recently in charge of the M.Ed. (special education) course at Manchester University, and Asifa Farooqui, a former student on the course, is now on the staff of the National Institute for Special Education, Pakistan.     

Statistical analysis of top performers in sport with emphasis on the relevance of outliers

This paper presents the findings of statistical analysis of the top career performances by men in a range of well-known sports. The analytical techniques applied are commonly used in engineering hydrology for the analysis of extreme rainfalls, floods and droughts. Initially, the raw data sets were assumed to be normally distributed but because the data sets were often highly skewed, the results from logarithmically transformed data sets were preferred in most instances. For each activity analyzed in each sport studied the main results were the Z-score and performance ratio of the rank 1 performer. These parameters are both dimensionless, and hence it was possible to use these parameters to directly compare the rank 1 performers in each of the sports studied. While for most data sets the very top performances were of similar standing from a statistical viewpoint there were several notable exceptions, which appeared to be classical statistical outliers. These suspected outliers were the performances of Don Bradman, an Australian cricketer; Jack Nicklaus, an American golfer; David Campese, an Australian rugby union player; and Wayne Gretzky, a Canadian and American ice hockey player. Longevity, as a top sportsman, was an important factor in the great performances of Nicklaus and Campese and, to a lesser degree, Gretzky. However, longevity was not an important factor in Bradman's career. Hence it was concluded that Bradman's performances were more extraordinary than any other sportsman and that it can be strongly argued that he, was the greatest ever sportsman.