Showing papers in "Journal of Curriculum Studies in 2007"
TL;DR: This article argued that our present environmental predicament not only provides an exciting opportunity to re-focus education on the issue of our relationship to nature, but positively requires the exploration of this issue for its long term resolution.
Abstract: Much official environmental education policy in the UK and elsewhere makes scant reference to nature as such, and the issue of our underlying attitude towards it is rarely addressed. For the most part such policy is preoccupied with the issue of meeting ‘sustainably’ what are taken to be present and future human needs. This paper considers a range of issues posed by this anthropocentric approach and will explore the view that environmental education -- indeed any education -- worthy of the name needs to bring a range of searching questions concerning nature to the attention of learners, and to encourage them to develop their own on-going responses to them. It is argued that our present environmental predicament not only provides an exciting opportunity to re-focus education on the issue of our relationship to nature, but positively requires the exploration of this issue for its long term resolution. Extensive implications for the curriculum and the culture of the school are raised.
143 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a technique for the analysis of classroom observation and student performance data that is rooted in sociological theory is presented. But the focus is on how the structuring of social relations relates to the structural of knowledge, and what the implications of this are in terms of how children of different social class positions are socialized into school ways of knowing.
Abstract: It has long been clear that the school reproduces social class differences. However, how this happens remains something of a black box. I set out to contribute to our understanding of schooling processes and the reproduction of inequality by focusing on pedagogy. I elaborate a technique for the analysis of classroom observation and student performance data that is rooted in sociological theory. The purpose is to develop an analytic framework capable of capturing a wide variation in pedagogic practice, and show the implications of this variation for student learning. The focus is on how the structuring of social relations relates to the structuring of knowledge, and what the implications of this are in terms of how children of different social‐class positions are socialized into school ways of knowing, or the ‘school code’. I address the equity debate in mathematics education and schooling more generally, by showing how inequalities are reproduced through pedagogy. The focus here relates to broader debates...
114 citations
TL;DR: This article argued that the subject matter of a secondary school science subject instead of its parent academic discipline lies at the heart of secondary-school science teachers' specialized subject-matter knowledge, and argued that knowledge of such subject matter entails knowing five intersecting dimensions: the logical, the psychological, the pedagogical, the epistemological, and the sociocultural.
Abstract: This paper examines the fundamental yet largely neglected distinction between school subjects and academic disciplines in the discourse on teachers’ specialized subject‐matter knowledge. It analyses and critiques the curricular positions embedded in that discourse in the light of five possible relationships between school subjects and academic disciplines. Invoking Dewey’s logical‐psychological distinction and research findings, the paper argues that the subject matter of a secondary‐school science subject instead of the subject matter of its parent academic discipline lies at the heart of secondary‐school science teachers’ specialized subject‐matter knowledge. Knowing such subject matter entails knowing five intersecting dimensions: the logical, the psychological, the pedagogical, the epistemological, and the sociocultural. Implications are drawn concerning theorizing about what secondary‐school science teachers need to know about the subject matter they are expected to teach, subject‐matter preparation ...
90 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the national division of history teaching in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the war and post-war period, and discuss the strength and influence of hetero-stereotypes of history textbooks and their consequences for reconciliation and reconstruction of a multicultural society.
Abstract: This study examines the national division of history teaching in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the war and post‐war period. The process of division of schooling into three curricula (Bosnian Serb, Bosnian Croat, and Bosniak) is presented. Representations of other national groups are central in 8th‐grade history textbooks used by the three national communities. ‘The others’, the members of other national groups of the country, are typically presented through enemy images. This study discusses the strength and influence of hetero‐stereotypes of history textbooks and their consequences for reconciliation and reconstruction of a multi‐cultural society.
87 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine and analyse how science teachers in one rural school responded to the demands of the outcomes-based curriculum and propose a zone of feasible innovation, a hypothetical construct which suggests that innovation should not exceed current practice by too large a gap between existing practice and demands of innovation.
Abstract: Starting in 1997, a sophisticated, outcomes‐based curriculum was to be implemented in South African schools. This study examines and analyses how science teachers in one rural school responded to the demands of this new curriculum. I consider the capacity of the school and the extent to which outside support and pressure was provided. The levels of implementation are analysed in terms of a proposed ‘zone of feasible innovation’, a hypothetical construct which suggests that innovation should not exceed current practice by too large a gap between existing practice and the demands of the innovation.
86 citations
TL;DR: This article explore the emergence of science and scientific method as political constructs in the 19th century and argue that the associated rhetoric continues to have significant consequences for contemporary school science education, allowing science to be promoted as a coherent curriculum component and fosters an untenable but enduring notion of a unifying scientific method that ignores important philosophical, conceptual, and methodological differences between the basic scientific disciplines.
Abstract: I explore the emergence of science and scientific method as political constructs in the 19th century and argue that the associated rhetoric continues to have significant consequences for contemporary school science education. It allows science to be promoted as a coherent curriculum component and fosters an untenable but enduring notion of a unifying scientific method that ignores important philosophical, conceptual, and methodological differences between the basic scientific disciplines. It also fails to reflect the profound shifts that have taken place in the scale and nature of science since the end of the Second World War. As a result, school science faces a number of challenges that have not received the scholarly attention that they deserve.
79 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that research-led understanding and explication of special pedagogies need to integrate teacher knowledge about learning processes and about the nature of disability, curriculum, and pedagogic strategy.
Abstract: How specialized is the teaching of the group of learners with disabilities and difficulties? This is one of the most basic and perplexing questions in the education of this group. This is a highly significant question in the context of current education policy and practice. There has been a growing awareness of the need for universalizing curricula; however there have been few attempts to clarify the nature, rationale, and evidence‐base for particular modifications. We summarize the findings that have emerged from two successive strands of critique focused on our opening question. We argue that research‐led understanding and explication of ‘special’ pedagogies need to integrate teacher knowledge about learning processes and about the nature of disability, curriculum, and pedagogic strategy.
72 citations
TL;DR: The authors explore immigrant students' experience of schooling focusing on Yang Yang and his family and present insights into immigrant Chinese educational experience in Canada and bring forward a narrative-inquiry framework for the study of student experience.
Abstract: We explore immigrant students' experience of schooling focusing on Yang Yang and his family. We present insights into immigrant Chinese educational experience in Canada and bring forward a narrative‐inquiry framework for the study of student experience. We find that—contrary to some of the expectations of Chinese immigrants—family relations, student learning, and school policies are complicated, with families finding it difficult to translate Chinese educational values in the Canadian context and their children facing serious learning and social difficulties.
69 citations
TL;DR: This article explored the ways in which students' experiences of a culturally-sensitive curriculum may contribute to their developing sense of ethnic identity and found that balancing affiliation to their home cultures while at the same time abiding by expectations of their teachers and peers in their school context could be difficult.
Abstract: This study examines ways in which students’ experiences of a culturally‐sensitive curriculum may contribute to their developing sense of ethnic identity. It uses a narrative‐inquiry approach to explore students’ experiences of the interaction of culture and curriculum in a Canadian inner‐city, middle‐school context. It considers ways in which the curriculum may be interpreted as the intersection of the students’ home and school cultures. Teachers, administrators, and other members of the school community made efforts to be accepting of the diverse ethnic, linguistic, and religious backgrounds that students brought to the school. However, examination of students’ experiences of school curriculum events and activities revealed ways in which balancing affiliation to their home cultures while at the same time abiding by expectations of their teachers and peers in their school context could be difficult. The stories highlight ways in which curriculum activities and events may contribute to shaping the ethnic i...
62 citations
TL;DR: The authors proposes a dialectical notion of scientific literacy, which makes thematic its nature as a situated, distributed, collective, emergent, indeterminate, and contingent process, and articulates the idea that knowing a (scientific) language is indistinguishable from knowing one's way around the world.
Abstract: Received conceptualizations of scientific literacy are grounded in (1) the notions of ‘knowledge’, ‘concepts’, and ‘skills’ that science students have to ‘acquire’, ‘appropriate’, or ‘construct’ or (2) the notion of ‘practices’ to which they have to be ‘enculturated’ so that they become part of a ‘community of practice’. All such notions articulate scientific literacy in a static form, which does not correspond to the dynamic nature of the literacies that can be observed in society. This study proposes a dialectical notion of scientific literacy, which makes thematic its nature as a situated, distributed, collective, emergent, indeterminate, and contingent process. It articulates the idea that knowing a (scientific) language is indistinguishable from knowing one's way around the world. As a consequence, the goal of science education can no longer be to make individual students exhibit particular forms of knowledge but to provide them with contexts in which it is more important to deal with, select, and ne...
57 citations
TL;DR: This article examined the diverse nature of multiculturalism and proposed a model that takes a pluralistic perspective on diversity by locating multiculturalism within the imaginings of the nation, using the concept of narratives with its ideological bases to invite dialogue among various multiculturalisms and examine the processes by which particular multicultural narratives emerge within their socio-political and historical locations.
Abstract: This paper examines the diverse nature of multiculturalism. Although there is no lack of literature on multiculturalism, it is dominated by a Western paradigm and perspectives. This paper offers a model that takes a pluralistic perspective on diversity by locating multiculturalism within the imaginings of the nation. This model uses the concept of narratives with its ideological bases to invite dialogue among various multiculturalisms and to examine the processes by which particular multicultural narratives emerge within their socio‐political and historical locations. The Canadian and Singaporean multicultural narratives are explored to tease out some of the nuances of this model.
TL;DR: In this article, a review of historical and contemporary approaches to hermeneutics and aesthetics is presented to offer a reconceptualized vision of the interpretive process for curriculum studies.
Abstract: This study reviews six traditional approaches to hermeneutics and presents a dialogic understanding of hermeneutics. It concludes with specific applications of hermeneutics to curriculum development practices in schools with a focus on inter‐subjectivity. While 20th‐century access to post‐structural notions of subjectivity through aesthetic experience began to engender a language of possibility rather than a language of certitude for hermeneutic inquiry in curriculum studies, it nevertheless did not fully account for interpretation as a productive and collaborative act in the inter‐subjective sense of being for the other. This study explores the dialogic emergence of this language of possibility through a review of historical and contemporary approaches to hermeneutics, and subsequently proposes an alternative understanding of hermeneutics and aesthetics to offer a reconceptualized vision of the interpretive process for curriculum studies.
TL;DR: This paper conducted an interview study of 45 English and 10 Hungarian teachers of mathematics, focusing on the teachers' professional life histories and asked them to answer questions related to their personal life history.
Abstract: This paper reports an interview study of 45 English and 10 Hungarian teachers of mathematics. The semi‐structured interviews focused on the teachers’ professional life‐histories and invited them to...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe an approach to learning and teaching that is structured as a project-based context-driven inquiry, which is positioned at the interface between knowledge generation and use, and grounded in a generic notion of responsibility for the future of bodily life.
Abstract: This study describes an approach to learning and teaching that is structured as a project‐based context‐driven inquiry. The approach is positioned at the interface between knowledge‐generation and use, and grounded in a generic notion of responsibility for the future of bodily life. The intention is to move the debate beyond the exhausted language of rigid oppositions between the academic and vocational, the universal and contextual. The purpose is to identify and nurture a personal portfolio of competencies responding to the contemporary material condition of humanity. It is expressed in terms of the student's learning power, a manifold of new assessment criteria and methodological steps constitutive of what a student could achieve having progressed through a given course. This is an approach in which competencies are outcomes supported rather than led by subject knowledge. The course structure combines traditional instruction with innovative project and assessment components and also provides an opportu...
TL;DR: The authors evaluate the extent to which the implementation and assessment of the new citizenship curriculum in England treats learners as citizens or subjects by evaluating whether the interests of state or citizen predominate.
Abstract: This paper evaluates the extent to which the implementation and assessment of the new citizenship curriculum in England treats learners as citizens or subjects by evaluating whether the interests of state or citizen predominate. Philosophical, contextual, and practical perspectives on citizenship education are drawn upon to evaluate mechanisms which mediate state power in young citizens’ lives. Current methods of delivering and assessing the citizenship curriculum in schools are challenged and the ideology underpinning citizenship education, as conceptualized in official discourse, is questioned. The view is advanced that citizenship cannot be reduced to what learners know (the informed citizen) or do (the active citizen) as it cannot be divorced from who they are. This paper focuses on citizenship education in the context of English liberal democracy but has a wide application as it addresses issues relevant to the state education of citizens elsewhere.
TL;DR: This article revisited the Tyler Rationale revisited Journal of Curriculum Studies: Vol 27, No 1, pp 81-88 (1995) and This article revisited J.
Abstract: (1995) The Tyler Rationale revisited Journal of Curriculum Studies: Vol 27, No 1, pp 81-88
TL;DR: The authors argue that digital presentation tools (along with other items of information and communication technology) can be utilized to facilitate conversational dialogue between students, their instructor, and their peers without much additional knowledge or effort.
Abstract: PowerPoint, the widely‐used slide‐show software package, is finding increasing currency in lecture halls and classrooms as the preferred method of communicating and presenting information. But, as Adams [Adams, C. (2006) PowerPoint, habits of mind, and classroom culture. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 38(4), 389–411] attempts to show, users may not appreciate that PowerPoint invites and seduces educators to reshape knowledge in particular ways to the detriment of analytical thinking and interpretive understanding. Using Adams’ material as a stimulus, we argue that digital presentation tools (along with other items of information and communication technology) can be utilized to facilitate conversational dialogue between students, their instructor, and their peers without much additional knowledge or effort. The key that unlocks the affordances of PowerPoint is ‘informed use’. This concept is explained and illustrated with an example that shows technology being used in a particular context to achieve a part...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors draw on the findings from an international programme of research that has demonstrated the need for multigrade teachers in many developing countries to be given more support in adapting monograded curricula to the needs of their multi-branch classes.
Abstract: This paper draws on the findings from an international programme of research that has demonstrated the need for multigrade teachers in many developing countries to be given more support in adapting monograded curricula to the needs of their multigrade classes. It describes four empirical models of multigrade practice and examines the models of curriculum construction and child learning that inform them. It then presents an original five-step process that can be used by curriculum planners to adapt monograded curricula, taking account of the different empirical models of multigrade practice. Finally, it outlines a strategy for implementing such a process by providing further support to strengthen curriculum units and improve teacher education that may enable the experimental work that has been started to take root and have real impact on the ability of their countries to reach the Millennium Development Goals for Education by 2015.
TL;DR: The authors report the language and literacy learning opportunities, and the conditions necessary to bring them about, in the art component of an innovative intergenerational program, focusing on the children in the programme (median age 4), their interaction with adult participants and facilitators, and how they used various sign systems to communicate meaning.
Abstract: This naturalistic study reports the language and literacy‐learning opportunities, and the conditions necessary to bring them about, in the art component of an innovative intergenerational programme. The focus is on the children in the programme (median age 4), their interaction with adult participants (median age 85) and facilitators, and the ways in which they used various sign systems to communicate meaning. There were many semiotic opportunities within the art programme, and these opportunities were enhanced by the intergenerational factor.
TL;DR: The position de la didactique allemande trouve son origine dans les travaux de W. Ratke et J. Comenius au debut du XVII e siecle.
Abstract: La didactique allemande trouve son origine dans les travaux de W. Ratke et J.A. Comenius au debut du XVII e siecle. Depuis, au cours des siecles, la position de la didactique a change. L'A. etudie ses evolutions
TL;DR: In this article, the concept of constructive curriculum alignment, globalization, and quality assurance are discussed. And the concepts which receive particular attention are "constructive" curriculum alignments, globalization and quality-assistency.
Abstract: The democratization of South Africa has necessitated a transformation of the education system. The current transformational landscape of higher education in South Africa requires that basic curriculum concepts, and principles be rediscovered and, rethought with a view to ensuring that future educational practice is based on sound, and proven curriculum thinking. Basic curriculum principles are reconsidered in the light of emerging educational needs. The concepts which receive particular attention are ‘constructive’ curriculum alignment, globalization, and quality assurance. The criteria for programme development, implementation, and review should motivate, embrace, and reward a spirit of individual creative thinking, and innovation in students in the higher education sector.
TL;DR: The authors explored the role of students and teachers in the creation of distributed leadership practices to build and sustain improved learning environments and highlighted the centrality of successful interactions among participants and the extent to which co-respect and co-responsibility for goals occur.
Abstract: Although the transformation of relevant curriculum experiences for youth from impoverished backgrounds in large urban high schools in the US offers many leadership challenges for faculty, few studies have focused on the roles of students and teachers in the creation of distributed leadership practices to build and sustain improved learning environments. Through ethnography, this paper explores the leadership dynamics in one academy within a large urban high school whose students are mostly African‐American. Students in some classes had opportunities to participate in cogenerative dialogues and, in so doing, learned how to interact successfully with others, including their teachers and peers, and build collective agreements for future classroom roles and shared responsibility for their enactment. The study highlights the centrality of successful interactions among participants and the extent to which co‐respect and co‐responsibility for goals occur. Initially, a lack of trust within the community undermine...
TL;DR: The authors surveyed 500 Jordanian elementary teachers about their involvement in a programme of curriculum change and their desire to participate and found that the reform has raised the qualifications of teachers and increased male teacher numbers but has neither raised overall standards nor improved truancy rates.
Abstract: The gap between the educational achievements of the comparatively wealthy and those living in poverty is widening world‐wide, with the associated threat to social cohesion. Twenty‐five years of curriculum reform has largely failed in its objective of providing quality, basic education for all. Arguing that successful innovation requires the participation of willing teachers, and associating this idea with the claim that schools are important for social cohesion, this study surveyed 500 Jordanian elementary teachers about their involvement in a programme of curriculum change and their desire to participate. Twelve key informants were interviewed. The reform has raised the qualifications of teachers and increased male teacher numbers but has neither raised overall standards nor improved truancy rates. Tight central control has failed to engage teachers’ allegiance to the changes. Officials blamed failures on schools; head teachers blamed parents, and teachers criticized a policy that left them mediating a c...
TL;DR: This article analyzed four history curricula published since the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, and discussed the social context which defined the values they were supposed to promote, finding the correct balance between national (Jewish) and Israeli history.
Abstract: Jewish history is unique in the sense that it expands over a vast period of time and takes place in almost all places in the world. This creates a major potential for historical debates. The state of Israel, which views itself as the high‐point of Jewish national identity, has inherited these debates but attempted to find a way between them by creating a unified history curriculum for its state educational system. This attempt has failed, and on‐going ‘history wars’ between various interpretations of Jewish and Israeli history sometimes turn into fierce political battles between the political left and right, between secular and orthodox, and between sectors of different cultural origins. This study describes and analyses the four history curricula published since the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, and discusses the social context which defined the values they were supposed to promote. The fundamental issue for history curricula writers was finding the correct balance between national (Jewish) ...
TL;DR: In this paper, a descriptive theory that seeks to grasp the complexity of the school as a state and societal institution as well as single schools as organizations is presented. But the authors focus on the scope of action for single schools and focus only on the more and less extended latitude for conducting professionally oriented school development work.
Abstract: This study outlines a descriptive theory that seeks to grasp the complexity of the school as a state and societal institution as well as single schools as organizations. A significant characteristic of this complexity is the ambiguity of the missions and goals—the outer boundaries—of the school‐institution. The more institutional ambiguity that characterizes these outer boundaries, the more extended is the available scope of action for single schools. To focus on the scope of action for single schools gives attention to the more and less extended latitude for conducting professionally‐oriented school‐development work.
TL;DR: In this paper, a teacher is not only aided, enmeshed, and constrained by the designs of its software script, but also surrendered to the language, imagery, framing, at-handedness, sensuality, and mediation of its symbolism and materiality.
Abstract: As teachers become more informed about the affordances of information and communication technologies and take up the new tools in their classrooms, these same technologies are always already informing and reshaping their perceptions and actions in the world. In seizing hold of PowerPoint, a teacher is not only aided, enmeshed, and constrained by the designs of its software script, the teacher is also surrendered to the language, imagery, framing, at‐handedness, sensuality, and mediation of its symbolism and materiality. We should not underestimate how new media and educational technologies affect the concrete, subjective, and pre‐reflective dimensions of teachers’ and students’ lifeworlds.
TL;DR: The authors argue that mathematics is not neutral because it leaves out aspects of reality as it represents and simulates that reality and because it alters conceptions of what constitutes the social world, and that mathematics education is seen as a neutral tool that has a social dimension only because it can be used to solve social problems.
Abstract: Mathematics educators often fail to see that their subject has social and ethical dimensions. If anything, mathematics is seen as a neutral tool that has a social dimension only because it can be used to solve social problems. This study critically examines this idea by arguing that, although school mathematics is indeed a technology, technology is never ethically neutral. Mathematics technology is not neutral because it leaves out aspects of reality as it represents and simulates that reality and because it alters conceptions of what constitutes the social world. Ethical non‐neutrality arises in mathematics education as quantitative problem‐solving becomes paradigmatic for all problem‐solving, pushing students toward a pattern of moral deliberation that parallels utilitarianism. This study discusses an activity intended to teach quantitative problem‐solving while at the same time reflecting on its potential effects and limits.
TL;DR: The authors argue for the need to collect data on the interaction of imaginative processes and moral and ethical qualities of narrative and argue that the moral impact of the encounter came about through a specific interaction between the narrative world offered by a speaker and the existing imaginative repertoire of a listener.
Abstract: This study argues for the need to collect data on the interaction of imaginative processes and moral and ethical qualities of narrative. It locates the curricular context of experiential narratives and provides a narrative illustration of key terms from a moral theory. It reports on research in which experiential narratives were told to grades 7–10 students and describes student reactions to three speakers’ narrative accounts. For the students the encounter seemed to be an experience in imaginative resourcefulness within moral and ethical territory. Prior experiences were called up and likely modified. The moral impact of the encounter came about through a specific interaction between the narrative world offered by a speaker and the existing imaginative repertoire of a listener.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyse official curricular texts, including guidelines and examination papers, for representations of "self and the environment" and find that the environment is represented as fragmented when it is the curricular focus and is only "whole" if it is background context; human-environment relations are dualized; and the value of "environment" lies dominantly in its use by humans.
Abstract: Scottish official curricular texts, including guidelines and examination papers, are analysed for representations of ‘self and the environment’. The environment is represented as fragmented when it is the curricular focus and is only ‘whole’ when it is background context; ‘human–environment relations’ are dualized; and the value of ‘environment’ lies dominantly in its use by humans (although there is a much less clear possibility that it might have inherent value). These representations lend themselves to the kinds of dominant and abusive relationships with environment that the same official curricular text hopes to counter. The assumed need for publicly shared understandings may drive this representation, through processes in which students understand environment by its ‘parts’, by generalized models of relationship, as being shallowly causal and progressively ‘other’, and not as contingent, local, or privately experienced. The desire for such a public world‐view may in turn be driven by historical effor...