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In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this co-authored paper grew out of a graduate course on mindfulness and an extended inquiry into what it means to cultivate mindful relationships in curriculum as lived experience. Centring three graduate students' experiential projects, including two projects of interactions with nature and one project of interpersonal interactions, this paper demonstrates the process of practicing mindfulness from students' perspectives as individual inquiry, a process that was filled with curves and frustrations as well as revelations and potentiality. The teacher educator created pedagogical conditions but the students enacted their own curriculum in their lived experience of forming mindful relationships. A further layer of inquiry was conducted in the conversations among the three graduate students and the teacher educator, from which shared meanings of time, self-understanding, gender and making connections across difference emerged. A reconstructed conversation was composed to demonstrate this inquiry process. Curriculum as lived experience, including curriculum as a complicated conversation, is the orientation for this individual and group inquiry. This study shows that curriculum as mindfully lived in relationship is an emergent process of cultivating both deepened self-understanding and relational attunement, sustained through a lived body, lived time and space, and lived connections across difference.

The issue of health plays an important role in the German language sports pedagogical discussion and in German curricula. It is also important here that the idea of 'Bildung'--an educational ideal in the German tradition which is still of paramount importance and which stems from the obligation of enlightenment and is intended to enable mature judgment--is a normative idea for school lessons. In terms of health in physical education, this throws up the question of whether PE for young people should not simply be focused towards a healthy lifestyle, but rather towards understanding what and how a healthy lifestyle could be and reflect on the role they want it to play in their lives in an emancipatory manner. Therefore, this paper examines the way in which health and health education are considered in current curricula in Germany. A hermeneutic oriented qualitative text analysis is carried out. Alongside differences between the states, the analysis shows an overall tendency towards narrowing down health education. The paper finally seeks to critically discuss this narrowing from a pedagogical perspective as an exemplary process which might be observed in a similar way in other countries.

This paper focuses on the schooling practices, curriculum, and educational opportunities available to children in the fishermen's neighbourhoods of the Indonesian archipelago. The study investigates what schooling practices, curriculum, and educational opportunities are thought important for the education of children in fishermen's neighbourhoods of the Indonesian archipelago. The study utilises archival and policy texts, created teaching and learning materials from the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture, and various texts derived from the community-based foundations and non-profit organisations spread out in the Indonesian archipelago related to the education of children in Indonesian fishermen's neighbourhoods. Through an archival investigation of curricula, the study hopes to examine the languages of instrumentality and criticality and how they have shaped the educational practices and experiences in these fishermen's neighbourhood contexts.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including curriculum and teaching, pedagogy, and teacher education.

The article announces winners of Editors' Choice paper prize for Volume 28 of the periodical which include "L. V. Shcherba: a ‘new slant' on modern foreign languages in the school curriculum?" and shortlisted such as "Reconsidering school politics: educational controversies in Sweden."

An editorial is presented on papers on curricular mediation and enactment. Topics include focusing on decolonising science in developing critical thinking and enabling representativeness concerned with developing student engagement and criticality; investment in teacher professional education and further research in exploring pedagogy and outcomes in language education in Northern Ireland.

In this paper, I explore the role of knowledge in the curriculum through a discussion of John Dewey's transactional theory of knowing. I do so against the background of recent calls to bring knowledge back into the discussion about the curriculum in which pragmatism has been depicted as a problematic form of relativism that should have no place in contemporary curriculum theory and practice. I show that rather than being a form of relativism, pragmatism actually moves beyond the modern opposition of objectivism versus relativism. Dewey's transactional theory of knowing moves the question of knowledge from the domain of certainty to the domain of possibility. I show in this paper how Dewey develops this argument and give reasons why this is an important contribution to the ongoing discussion about knowledge and the curriculum.

This paper addresses the question: How do teachers and school leaders respond to high stakes testing of pupils transitioning from primary to secondary school? It explores how a new test, the Level 6 test, operated with regard to primary/secondary school relationships in England. It draws on an analysis of qualitative interviews with teachers and school leaders in 20 primary schools that took part in the test, 40 school leaders that chose not to and 20 secondary-school leaders. Theoretical work on social boundaries is utilised to develop an argument that this test and its results acted as a boundary signifier, crystallising many of the tensions between primary and secondary schools. These tensions included the role of accountability regimes in requiring schools to demonstrate progress; narrowing of the curriculum and teaching to the test; and the extent to which test results can provide a true representation of pupil attainment. We conclude by suggesting the potential of the boundary signifier concept in relation to other tests at the primary/secondary boundary and other key transition points in education, and consider whether such tests can act as an ideal boundary object, serving to help overcome, rather than cement, barriers between schools.

Despite the increased interest in research impact, there is very little empirical evidence that educational research can inform practice directly, and furthermore, a body of literature which suggests that this is, in principle, impossible. This paper reports on a study in which secondary school teachers were given research findings about teaching gifted and talented students, and were supported, over a 12-month period, to incorporate findings into action research projects of their own devising. A theoretical framework from the research literature was used to investigate the process by which knowledge generated from research, was transformed into teachers' pedagogical knowledge, thereby influencing the curriculum, pedagogy and provision for these students. Evidence suggests that teachers transformed propositional knowledge into practical knowledge by developing their conceptual understandings; they transformed abstract, impersonal knowledge into context-specific, personal knowledge by using cases from their previous experiences, and they transformed narrowly focused knowledge into broadly focused knowledge by imaginatively diffusing it into areas beyond those in the original research. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

In January 2012, Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond announced a radical measure that would see every Scottish school student study a Scottish text from a prescribed list. In 2010, Michael Gove announced that "Our literature is the best in the world" and that every pupil should study particular authors. The "cultural heritage" model of English is increasingly dismissed by teachers and students However, it is this "cultural heritage" model which is preserved in the discourse of politicians. This paper explores the role that literary heritage texts play in the discourse of education policy in the context of devolution in twenty-first century Britain and considers the drivers and differences which can be seen in England and Scotland.

Curriculum and its associated assessment are at the heart of educational systems worldwide. In light of perceived national educational stagnation or decline, as well as of performance in international league tables such as Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), countries have embarked on curriculum and assessment reforms. This is particularly true in England, where currently wholesale changes are being introduced throughout the system. The curriculum and qualification system in England privileges that which is tested over any other expression of knowledge, which leads teachers to concentrate on teaching what is assessed, either externally through examination papers or internally through coursework. In the summer of 2012, following curriculum and assessment reforms to General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) qualifications, serious concerns were raised about the marking and awarding processes for GCSE English, culminating in legal action. Using that experience as an example of assessment policy and practice gone awry, this article explores the ramifications of rapid qualifications changes and posits that some of the problems that plagued GCSE English in 2012 could be repeated, albeit in different guises, after revised qualifications are introduced in 2015.

This paper describes an exploration into a reform of the A-level qualification in England in 2008; namely, the introduction of the ‘stretch and challenge’ policy. This policy was initiated by the exams regulator and determined that exam papers should be redesigned to encourage the application of higher order thinking skills, both in the classroom and in examinations. The present study comprised two strands that explored the perceptions of students (n = 39) and teachers (n = 27) regarding the degree to which the incorporation of opportunities for stretch and challenge in the new examination papers had been achieved, and the likely effects on teaching, learning and exam preparation. On the whole, students and teachers welcomed the stretch and challenge policy and there were some indications that changes to the design of question papers could have some positive backwash effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses biographical, historical and comparative perspectives to examine some of the work of Lawrence Stenhouse, widely regarded as one of the leading curriculum theorists of the twentieth century. Although his best‐known work was carried out in England, he had strong Scottish connections and some of the influences on his output can be traced to his higher education in Scotland, his teaching experience in Glasgow and Fife, and his time as Principal Lecturer in Education at Jordanhill College of Education. Particular attention is given to Culture and Education (1967), written during Stenhouse's time in Scotland, and An Introduction to Curriculum Research and Development (1975), the product of his experience as Director of the Humanities Curriculum Project and subsequently as Director of the Centre for Applied Research in Education at the University of East Anglia. Stenhouse's personal intellectual journey is related to policy developments in Scotland and England and, in particular, to the different approaches to curriculum development in the two countries. His early death in 1982 meant that he did not live to see the assault on his creative, teacher‐centred approach to curriculum development mounted by the political right in the 1980s and 1990s, but his ideas were kept alive by members of the team he had built up. The paper ends by summarising the reasons for Stenhouse's continuing importance. It is noted, however, that the many tributes to Stenhouse's achievements in England have not been matched by similar recognition in Scotland. Arguably, his ideas could have enabled Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence reform programme, launched in 2004, to have avoided some of the problems it encountered in the transition from conception to implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of readability has had a variable history, moving from a position where it was considered as a very important topic for those responsible for producing texts and matching those texts to the abilities and needs of learners, to its current declining visibility in the education literature. Some important work has been coming from the USA over the past few years, however, which makes it clear that a closer look at the text dimension of the reader-text interface is somewhat overdue. The issue has been redefined as one of text complexity, and there are some significant implications within it for the teaching and development of reading at all phases of learning. In this paper, we try to review some of these implications and suggest their relevance to the UK situation.

This study is interested in understanding the configurations of knowledge underpinning three examples of curriculum policy texts in the specific case of the school subject of geography. The three policy texts are the 1991 Geography National Curriculum (GNC), the "Opening minds" curriculum and the GNC 2007. I start with the proposal that each selected text promotes a particular type of knowledge, namely: content, competency and concept. I argue that deconstructive reading of three policy texts reveals what are assumed to be legitimate knowledge discourses as well as what is overlooked in each tidy curriculum scheme. I engage the help of the post-structuralist thinker Jacques Derrida in this deconstructive undertaking. The study demonstrates how the 1991 "content" curriculum privileges a western European view of the world; how the 1999 "competency" curriculum overlooks the politics and ethics of knowledge by focusing on an economistic, outcomes-driven technical view of knowledge; and how the "concept" curriculum offers opportunities for deconstructive reading while at the same time indicating an unproblematical commitment to conflated and assumedly neutral approaches to knowledge. Opening up curriculum texts to deconstructive reading shows language as insecure and reveals spaces for the incoming of more just ways of thinking about the world. (Contains 8 notes and 1 table.)

Modern language teaching in England suffers from a number of public misconceptions: the British are "no good at languages", teachers are failing at language teaching and uptake at Key Stage 4 is in terminal decline. This article takes the debate away from these myths with a plea to move beyond the cultural stereotyping of languages teaching. Considering the recent history of language teaching and the current issues, the White Paper that led to the curriculum review is examined as an opportunity to create innovative solutions to the current debates. It argues that the subject needs fewer polarisations and more vision about what a languages education from 5 to at least 16 could bring in terms of developing the linguists we need for the future. This is done through considering the issues for Key Stages 3 and 4, the curriculum content of languages at these stages, the reform of teacher training, and keeping up with other European countries. The article concludes that languages teachers should be encouraged to engage in the debate and become confident in the teaching of their subject through working together, with supporting agencies, on their own subject priorities. (Contains 2 notes, 1 table, and 3 figures.)

The article provides information on "The Curriculum Journal" and its services. It cites that the journal's existence promotes and explores all aspects of curricular development and inquiry. The editors of the journal has invited contributions on all aspects in education from all over the world. Moreover, it provides an address for literary work submissions.

This article examines and critiques recent work that seeks to establish an effective context and environment for talk in the classroom using ground rules. The article argues that in their haste to facilitate ways to enrich the talk opportunities in the classroom, some academics have often failed to take account of a number of key cultural, ideological and political issues that also affect success in school. This article examines some of the dilemmas concerning equality of opportunity that are faced by teachers attempting to implement ground rules for talk. In doing so, I wish to challenge the ahistorical and apolitical approach to learning theory that many writers adopt when recommending teaching methods, and how they fail to see how serious dilemmas over equality and alienation are not being addressed by their suggestions. Lastly, I suggest an alternative approach to the teaching of talk within the curriculum.

Language learning can open up new worlds and deepen understanding of our own. It can foster awareness of other people, other places and cultures, and bring social and educational benefits. Northern Ireland (NI) is an increasingly multilingual region that is emerging from conflict into a welcome, but fragile, peace. It faces unique uncertainties caused by Brexit, as well as the need to develop empathy in face of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Concerns have been expressed also about academic underachievement and mental health amongst its young people. Against such a background, this paper explores the current context in NI relating to languages, and curriculum policy and practice in language education. It argues that young people in NI are poorly served, and that curriculum reform with respect to languages is timely. The paper makes five key recommendations: (1) Reform of curriculum, policy and practice relating to language education in NI; (2) Introduction of statutory language learning in primary schools; (3) Investment in teacher development; (4) Valuing of linguistic diversity and plurality in curriculum policy and practice; and (5) Further practice‐based research to explore pedagogy and outcomes in language education in NI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In BERA's 50th anniversary, this special issue of the Curriculum Journal recognises the debt to the work of Lawrence Stenhouse, former BERA President, and founder of the British Curriculum Forum (BCF), and his influence on teachers' work in researching and developing the curriculum. Papers in this issue address what Stenhouse called the central problem of evidence‐informed practice: ‘the gap between our ideas and our aspirations and our attempts to operationalise them’ (Stenhouse, 1975, 2–3). Stenhouse's legacy for curriculum models and thinking, both within the four home countries and internationally, highlights the methodologies and theoretical perspectives that inform teachers as researchers and how we understand and evaluate such frames of reference. Approaches to involving teachers as researchers examined in this collection resonate with BERA's strategic plan to build on its links with practitioners, set in the context of BCF and its work to support teachers' curriculum research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivation is repeatedly found to be a determining factor for achievement in language acquisition at school. Decades of Self‐determination theory (SDT) research has shown that students exhibit higher levels of engagement and positive learning behaviours when their basic psychological needs of competence, autonomy and relatedness are satisfied, resulting in intrinsic motivation. This paper explores and juxtaposes the motivational potential of the International Baccalaureate curriculum against the revised GCSE modern foreign language (MFL) curriculum through an SDT lens. A curriculum that is autonomy‐supportive rather than autonomy‐suppressive allows more opportunities for both students and teachers psychological needs for motivation to be met. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes a theoretical contribution to the discussion of powerful knowledge in education. The major claim is that curriculum integration can structure knowledge for a coherent curriculum and thus, support the idea of powerful knowledge. The mainstream understanding of curriculum integration promotes it as a pedagogical arrangement and views school subjects as being guilty of fragmenting students' experience. Leaning on empirical evidence, this paper argues that the question of integration cannot be left to teachers and students alone; rather, it is crucial to design a coherent written curriculum that supports the teaching‐studying‐learning process with an appropriately differentiated and integrated structure for school subjects. Alternatives for subject design and knowledge‐based curriculum integration with the potential for developing powerful knowledge are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the concept of agency and teacher agency and engaging with figurational sociology, this paper explores the extent to which teacher agency plays a role in one teacher's enactment of a new school subject (Leaving Certificate Physical Education (LCPE), an examinable subject assessed in a high‐stakes environment) in a period of curriculum change and reform in Irish post‐primary schools. Through a case study design, one teacher was interviewed regularly (19 times) during their 1st year of teaching LCPE. The findings are presented in three teaching episodes. In analysing the three teaching episodes, the process (and fluctuation) of achieving agency is evident. The achievement of agency should not be conceptualised as a product (achieved) but rather, it should be viewed as something that is processual (achieving). We offer a figurational viewpoint of teacher agency through a constructed Figure in the paper. We argue that it is impossible to link the achievement of agency with one element (including the teacher). It is the combination of interdependent relationships (past and present, recognised and unrecognised) in a teacher's figuration, the overarching social processes, and the contextual and structural factors surrounding and within a figuration. The paper provides considerations in how best to support teachers in their process of achieving agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines Indonesia's 2013 national curriculum, implemented in 2019. The most significant change is the mandated use of formative assessment, which we argue is an example of policy borrowing, a trend also seen in many other countries globally. We argue that this policy has been adopted due to global and regional pressure on Indonesia to improve its education system. Alongside this, the 2013 curriculum has a strong emphasis on student attitudes, thereby promoting Indonesian national interests. Taking a holistic approach to our analysis, we follow Priestley et al.'s (2012) conceptual framing of sites of curriculum and draw on a wide range of data including policy texts, existing studies, media texts and teacher voice, to illustrate inconsistencies in the way formative assessment has been interpreted through the policy‐making process. Our analysis also highlights tensions between formative assessment and the Indonesian education system and cultural context. As we exemplify, curriculum making is a complex process involving many stakeholders; teachers are not mere enactors of policy and should not be viewed as the source of the 'problem' when issues occur. Our study will be of interest to others in examining the trend of diffused policy borrowing in non‐western settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper critiques the curriculum construction of historical consciousness within Australian school systems. National and trans‐national discourses about identity, culture, gender, race and class influence the development of historical consciousness in Australian classrooms. During this unprecedented period of shared grief and global trauma, re‐interpreting historical narratives that build children's concepts of social justice, equity and global inclusivity is important epistemological work for the future. This paper uses survey data and interviews from Australian school children and teachers as the COVID‐19 pandemic emerged to examine what are the key narratives about Indigenous stories, resilience, adversity, global migration, and national identity, and how these narratives distort present realities. The analysis considers how historical consciousness is enacted within the current Australian school curriculum with stories from commemoration to contestability. Survey data from students from school years 6–12 is analysed in terms of how personal agency and empathy is formed through historical practices and inquiry in the classroom. This is supported by interviews about teaching practices. This paper reveals how globalized experiences can bridge historic boundaries of racism, prejudice and exclusion and how curriculum frameworks can develop critical historical consciousness for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the rationales underpinning the introduction of Computer Science (CS) into school curricula and examines the ways in which educational systems have responded to these growing calls. In outlining the possible ways that educational systems can respond to this demand, the paper makes use of a conceptual framework through which the various possibilities for the provision of CS in school curricula can be categorised. The paper analyses and discusses possible modes of provision identifying the benefits and drawbacks of different approaches. Through this development, the paper aims to raise wider questions about the long‐term positioning of CS within the curriculum and draws particular attention to the need for greater consideration of provision at lower secondary level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editors discuss issues arising from the implementation of curriculum reform, based on a review of the education system, in Wales.

The paper explores tensions in the articulation of progression in learning across the Humanities disciplines. Informed by our review of research in the Humanities disciplines, international curricula on progression in these areas and reflections from professional activity within the newly defined Humanities 'Area of Learning and Experience' in the new Welsh curriculum, this paper describes how learning progression in Humanities has been conceptualised within the new curriculum and then delineates and critically reviews four challenges that emerged when identifying and describing the progression in learning in the new Humanities curriculum. Tensions include the relationship between disciplines; the balance between knowledge, skills and values; the differences between underlying models of progression in Humanities; and balancing the complexity of learning with practical considerations for a national curriculum. Underpinned by the Integrity Model of Change, this paper makes a contribution, through providing new insights on broad aspects of learning progression in Humanities and highlighting the potential benefits and challenges of taking particular decisions within each of these four tensions. Implications for curriculum planning and future research are offered, including the fundamental role of professional learning in curriculum development and enactment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates over which historical content should be compulsory for study in the school curriculum are a common feature of education systems across the globe. These debates invariably weigh the perceived benefits to social cohesion of a 'common core' of knowledge against the perceived risks to democracy of government-sanctioned 'official knowledge'. Scotland has, perhaps, taken an extreme position on this debate by specifying no mandatory historical content in its social studies curriculum. This paper uses 21 interviews with Scottish history teachers to explore how schools use this curricular autonomy: which historical periods they choose to teach and why. The paper suggests that, without access to theoretical debates about the nature of historical knowledge, schools fall back on instrumental justifications for content selection within the curriculum. The result in many cases is an extremely narrow and fragmented syllabus in which pupil preference, teacher interests and the logistics of timetabling guide content selection. The paper concludes that the formulation of coherent school-level history curricula is dependent on the fostering agency among a theoretically-informed teaching profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National curricula influence, and are influenced by, political agendas. Understanding political enmeshment (both overt and covert) in curriculum development is therefore vital for ensuring transparency and quality in curricula. This paper analyses how the Australian Curriculum is represented in the federal Education Ministers' media releases. Using NVivo, media releases were inductively coded into two broad themes: (a) back to basics, overcrowding and phonics; and (b) Australian ‘truth’: History, democracy and identity. By organising political discourse into the narrative presented below, I argue that the Australian Curriculum is used as a weapon of mass construction. In other words, politicians use curriculum development and renewal to enforce particular subject positions and attack the other side of government. As a result, genuine curriculum renewal is stymied, with each new government claiming that it is correcting the mistakes of the previous government while appearing to make no tangible changes. The implications of this analysis are that greater transparency of political involvement is needed in curriculum materials, greater teacher autonomy is needed to adapt curricula to localised contexts and greater student freedom to contest curricula is needed to ensure robust literacy development and meaningful engagement with subject knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the world, countries have engaged in different iterations of curriculum change, and one of the common denominators of reform is the proposal of more agency for teachers around curriculum making. This is not an easy task for teachers. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the discussion about the effects that international ERASMUS+ mobilities have had on the power of curricular agency of teachers from two European countries. This work is based on an empirical investigation of a qualitative nature which collected the testimonies of four school headmasters, a deputy principal and eleven teachers from Ireland and Portugal, teaching different curriculum matters, who were involved in the ERASMUS+ programme. Our findings evidence a very positive impact on secondary teachers' capacity to self‐organize and achieve agency in relation to curriculum making by adapting their knowledge and skills, learnt through the mobility, to their own culture and context through collaborative communities of practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher evaluation and teachers' professional learning are too often confined to separate areas of research and professional practice. Rather than approach evaluation and enquiry as distinct or irreconcilable, this paper applies the ideas of Stenhouse to explore new possibilities for the reappropriation of mandated appraisal in ways that support teachers' professional growth. Illustrative case studies of laboratory schools in the United States and England are used to examine the interaction of local and lateral forms of professional accountability with external and hierarchical regulatory frameworks. The article reports the design and enactment of change in two schools (a US kindergarten through twelfth grade school and a UK high school) connected through the International Association of Laboratory Schools (IALS) that purposively redesigned appraisal over a three‐year period to build capacity for collaborative curriculum enquiry. Attention is afforded to the space for manoeuvre between advisory and mandatory guidance, and the challenges to relational trust and collective responsibility posed by performance‐based accountability systems. The findings provide new insights into how teacher‐led collaborative enquiry (curricular co‐design) can address the unintended consequences of test‐based accountability and rubrics‐based observation as principal drivers of educational improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of teaching reasoning in schools is widely recognised. Yet this has presented teachers with difficulties, particularly in primary education. Difficulties partially stem from a lack of cohesive theory about reasoning for education and a lack of specificity about it in the English National Curriculum. One route to improved teaching of reasoning is through recognition of the importance and prevalence of discipline‐specific practices. This paper draws on socio‐cultural theory and disciplinary literacy research to argue that some reasoning practices are discipline specific. The theoretical lens of reasoning styles is adopted. A cognitive history approach has been used to create a framework of reasoning styles important in primary English. English represents a curriculum area that is currently poorly understood in terms of its prevalent reasoning practices. This paper, therefore, makes important theoretical and pedagogical contributions to existing research. Examples of student engagement with identified reasoning styles are provided. The framework and accompanying examples will help teachers to support the development of student reasoning, particularly in the subject of English. Developing students' meta‐awareness of patterns of language use is beneficial. Development may also support students to become fuller members of the English academic community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The challenges of naming a bounded disciplinary body of knowledge for the social sciences has made it difficult to define and clearly articulate 'what counts' for disciplinary learning in school curricula. The shift to 'new' generic skills with an associated autonomy of curriculum content choice and learner‐centred approaches has introduced further challenges for the social sciences. In this paper, we consider what transformative disciplinary learning might look like for two core social science subjects in New Zealand—history and social studies. We begin by outlining what we mean by transformative disciplinary learning in history and social studies. Drawing on two in‐depth classroom‐based studies, we then examine the strategies, practices and processes that supported or undermined transformative disciplinary learning in history and social studies. In the absence of prescribed content, both subjects relied strongly on procedural approaches (historical and social enquiry processes) which helped to sustain some coherency and disciplinary learning. However, poor topic choice meant that students often missed out on in‐depth knowledge and/or opportunities for effective and transformative citizenship engagement. We conclude by highlighting the importance of content selection if students are to widen their horizons and experience transformative disciplinary learning in history and social studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agency, understood as the capacity to act independently and to make one's own choices, is considered central to children's development. Thus, education, and hence education curricula, have a role in the development of learner agency. While curriculum development is a key focus for educational theory, research, policy, and classroom practice, the potential implications of curriculum content selections for learner agency remain underexplored. Theoretically, this paper engages with critical realism, explaining how it can provide theoretical foundation for a more comprehensive view of learner agency and, by implication, more balanced curricula. Empirically, the paper draws on the findings from a content analysis of the national curriculum documents of four countries with relatively high scores in international comparative tables, England, Australia, Hong-Kong, and Canada, to develop a new typology of primary curricula. Based on the extent of emphasis placed on knowledge versus skills, values, and attitudes, three types of curricula were identified: knowledge-based, skills-oriented, and learner-centred. Due to its significant theoretical and practical influence globally, we focus on the knowledge-based model and its likely impact on students' agency. We conclude by highlighting the importance of making learner agency a key orientation of the curriculum and suggesting directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an argument for aesthetic knowledge in the arts and more specifically, for an aesthetic model of literature to be central in the curriculum. I argue that there are important distinctions to be made between the everyday experiences unique to us as individuals, and the universality of human experience. In the English Literature curriculum, this important difference is manifested in the status of the text because it is through a triadic engagement between educator, text and pupil that the meanings of experience can be evoked objectively. Through changing cultural and policy contexts in the post-war period, the text has been marginalised in the curriculum. This has contributed to two detrimental effects. The first is that direct personal responses and experience have been overvalued in the English Literature curriculum. The second is that the idea of objective knowledge in literature has been misconstrued as knowledge of its linguistic substratum. Consequently, an important form of aesthetic knowledge is largely absent in Britain's secondary curriculum. The paper is organized into three sections. Section one describes main shifts in the cultural and policy contexts. Section two provides a brief empirical example of how shifts at the macro-level have been re-contextualised within the implied curriculum found in examples of national exams. Section three elucidates the deeper significance of these changes in light of a theoretical discussion of Kantian aesthetics and implications for a social realist approach to knowledge, curriculum and pedagogy derived from Durkheim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education policy development internationally reflect a widespread expansion of learning outcome orientation in policy, curricula and assessment. In this paper, teachers' perceptions about their work are explored, as goals and assessment play a more prominent role driven by the introduction of a learning outcomes‐oriented system. This is investigated through interviews of Norwegian teachers and extensive policy analysis of Norwegian policy documents. The findings indicate that the teachers are finding ways to negotiate and adjust to the language in the policies investigated in this study. Furthermore, the findings show that the teachers have developed their professional language according to the policies. The teachers referred to their self‐made criteria and goal sheets as central tools in explicating what is to be learned. In many ways, the tools for assessment, thus determine the content of education as well as what is valued in the educational system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the introduction of Curriculum for Wales and the restructuring of subjects into Areas of Learning and Experience (AoLE), each AoLE is encouraged to have ‘an identifiable disciplinary and instrumental core’. When considered in combination with the COVID‐19 pandemic and increased technology use within teaching, both the shared creative processes and the potential role of technology are important to conceptualise. This paper provides insight into expressive arts teachers' perceptions of the macro‐level creative processes shared across each subject area through a technology lens. A new tripartite classification provides clarity regarding the macro‐level creative processes (Creative opportunities, Critical responses and Performance/production) and the role of technology to enable equal opportunities and wider accessibility for learners to access, and potentially succeed within, the creative process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers of English as an Additional Language learners in high schools have long navigated the seemingly intransigent deficit thinking about their learners' capacity to engage fully with the intended or required curriculum. These learners are frequently constructed as the problem, as if the curriculum exists in a vacuum. This gives rise to the need to explore how deficit thinking about students, as core actors in the web of curriculum relations, may be challenged through the curriculum work of specialist English language teachers. In this paper, I use critical discourse analysis to explore how the pervasive deficit discourse can be differently construed through language use in two dimensions: power (social hierarchy or low‐high) and solidarity (social distance, close‐far). Three teachers were interviewed, and their lessons were observed to explore how social relations with diverse learners are rendered in the teachers' language. Findings show that by adopting a more nuanced stance towards their learners, many of whom are refugee‐background and have interrupted schooling, the teachers speak back to deficit views, offering alternative ways of positioning diverse learners in relation to required curriculum. Images of curriculum as transmission are disrupted, presenting it rather as complex entanglement with social relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ben‐Peretz's (1975) concept of intended curriculum describes a version of curriculum that 'official' curriculum developers create to provide a detailed guide to what teachers are required to teach in schools. While some curricula are intended to guide learning, others give a more definitive regulation of what must be taught. Either way, they are a product of curriculum developers writing government policy that defines what is considered essential for students to know. The teacher then undertakes the technical task of interpreting these policy texts to discern how they will introduce the content to their students. Once the teacher receives the curriculum text, they begin a translation process. While the curriculum developer has a vision of how teachers will interpret the curriculum, the teacher's translation of the curriculum text is filtered through the teachers' understanding of the subject matter. This notion of 'curriculum potential' represents the culmination of the teacher's subject matter knowledge acquired throughout their education and career which serves as the reference point for curriculum interpretation. This article describes the process of curriculum interpretation used by primary teachers during the implementation of Australian curriculum reform. The study examined the interpretation process from the intended curriculum to the planned curriculum to the enacted curriculum used by the teachers and the influences impacting upon these processes. The analysis of the teachers' interpretations was demonstrated through a process for curriculum mapping developed for this study. This work will present the teachers' pathways to curriculum enactment as a hermeneutic interpretation of curriculum, revealing the teachers' curriculum potential. While frequently descriptions of curriculum potential focuss on subject matter knowledge, analysis of primary teacher curriculum interpretation necessitates a broader definition. The paper concludes that the primary teachers' interpretation process is drawn from a wider curriculum potential that intersects their knowledge of subject matter and knowledge of their students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Culturally Nourishing Schooling (CNS) project is focused on whole‐of‐learning community efforts that aim to improve the educational experiences and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learners. The project supports school‐based professional learning strategies, broad school or system‐level initiatives and deep engagement with local community, including students and their families. One of the professional learning strategies in the project is a 2‐day intensive curriculum‐focused workshop, which ran for the first time in 2021 within urban, regional, and remote school settings across New South Wales, Australia. The first day of the curriculum workshop introduces teachers and local Cultural Mentors to three analytic frameworks that they utilise to appraise curriculum resources available in the public domain. The curriculum resources appraised are all examples of curriculum designed to support educators with embedding an Indigenous knowledges focused National Cross‐Curriculum Priority into their curriculum. On the second day of the workshop, teachers are tasked with appraising and revising a curriculum unit of work that they or colleagues have planned for the upcoming teaching semester. The curriculum workshop culminates with the revised teaching and learning resources being presented to the full group of workshop participants, and subsequently each teacher is asked to write a reflection about the curriculum work that they have engaged in. For this paper, data analysis draws on 'three sensibilities' that invite enacting a form of onto‐epistemic heterogeneity. These sensibilities are multiplicity, horizontality and dialogicality. This analytic undertaking simultaneously explores the entanglements, and grapples with the possibilities, of re‐imagining curriculum and related pedagogical practices that seek to 'delink from the colonial matrices of power'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With global trends focussed on standardisation of curriculum and increased teacher accountability, it has become commonplace for curriculum to be viewed simplistically as a product. While all teachers engage in forms of classroom curriculum‐making, questions remain as to what this looks like within an educational landscape that continues to portray teaching as a purely technical activity. This paper explores two Australian early career primary teachers' experiences of curriculum‐making, drawing attention to the enabling and constraining conditions which shape such experiences. We consider the impact of these enabled and constrained experiences on early career teachers' aspirations and ongoing development as knowledge‐led curriculum‐makers. We contend that such constrained experiences limit opportunities for early career teachers to develop professional identities as knowledge‐led curriculum‐makers and continue to reinforce unhelpful representations of teachers as 'technicians'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Curriculum, as a policy and way of moving through educational experience, is entwined with an ongoing history of invasion in Australia and similar invader‐colonial contexts. As a result of this, the conceptual foundations of curriculum in Australia reproduce colonial epistemologies as normative modes of knowing and consideration. One way of seeing how this is possible and easily reproduced is through a consideration of how renderings and representations of "place" – the complex entanglements of lands, histories, and identit(y/ies) – mediate both how (a) invasion can be normalised as a historical, geographic, and political "placial" reality, and (b) students and teachers might experience education in and of place. Indeed, "place" is a central guiding concept in official curriculum policy just as much as place is an experienced curriculum both within the school and in the broader world. In this respect, this paper looks to unpack how the concept of place is represented in curriculum policy and the attendant assumptions and implicit discourses that this (re)produces about the experiences of people in/of invaded place. Through a look at the coming revision to the Humanities and Social Science's learning area of the Australian Curriculum, I look to how the curriculum as policy frames place as synonymous with invader place epistemically and how this mediates what students can know and themselves feel about the embodied experience of learning about/in/of place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The curriculum work of teachers is understood and conceptualised in different ways. A prevalent view is that teachers are an integral part of a system of transmission and their work with curriculum essentially a technical exercise. Some form of this view seems to be assumed by policymakers, parents and at least some teachers. However, when this same work is considered from the perspective of interpretation theory or 'hermeneutics', a contrasting picture emerges. Rather than positioning teachers as relays of explicit information, interpretation theory alerts us to the complexities and uncertainties inherent in the reading, appreciation and application of texts. On this view, meaning is not stable but transformed through interpretation, and the process itself has no definite end point. Interpretation theory thus undermines major assumptions of the technical‐transmission understanding of curriculum work. In this paper, the potential contribution of this body of theory to illuminating curriculum work is explored. Noting that hermeneutics is a vast area of study, a selection of concepts will be made that demonstrates some of these insights. The exploration will yield both critical and generative contributions to curriculum theory. The way hermeneutics undermines the transmission view of teachers' curriculum work will become clear, and at the same time, the inherent creativity of curriculum interpretation becomes an inescapable feature of teacher expertise that could be celebrated rather than neglected, denied or repressed. A hermeneutic analysis of curriculum work thus has implications for what teachers know and do and for their role in contemporary society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether a broad undergraduate curriculum prepares students well for academic and professional specialization is a much‐debated question. This discussion is particularly relevant in the context of European liberal arts bachelor's programmes, which recently re‐emerged as an exception to the continental norm of specialized undergraduate curricula. While liberal arts proponents contend that the broad foundation of knowledge and generic skills provided by this educational model facilitate specialization rather than hindering it, critics point to the relative lack of disciplinary depth. To investigate this problem, the paper looks at three specialized master's programmes at Maastricht University—in international business, psychology, and neuroscience. It compares the academic performance of two groups of students in these programmes: graduates from University College Maastricht, a liberal arts institution, and their peers with discipline‐focused bachelor's degrees in a matching field. Results from probit and OLS regression models show that there are no major differences between the two groups in terms of dropout rates, GPA, and master's thesis grades. Despite having less subject‐specific knowledge, university college graduates proved to be prepared equally well for specialized master's studies as their counterparts with a matching disciplinary background. These findings suggest that an undergraduate curriculum that offers more breadth and flexibility does not represent an obstacle to further specialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of health plays an important role in the German language sports pedagogical discussion and in German curricula. It is also important here that the idea of 'Bildung'—an educational ideal in the German tradition which is still of paramount importance and which stems from the obligation of enlightenment and is intended to enable mature judgment—is a normative idea for school lessons. In terms of health in physical education, this throws up the question of whether PE for young people should not simply be focused towards a healthy lifestyle, but rather towards understanding what and how a healthy lifestyle could be and reflect on the role they want it to play in their lives in an emancipatory manner. Therefore, this paper examines the way in which health and health education are considered in current curricula in Germany. A hermeneutic oriented qualitative text analysis is carried out. Alongside differences between the states, the analysis shows an overall tendency towards narrowing down health education. The paper finally seeks to critically discuss this narrowing from a pedagogical perspective as an exemplary process which might be observed in a similar way in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the past 40 years, a number of terms have been used in the UK to refer to competency‐based pedagogies that focus on preparing students for everyday 'life' and employment. The evolution of these generic forms of knowledge in official curricula has been accompanied by harsh practical realities when it comes to teaching, assessing and certifying them. These practical realities counterbalance the strong support genericskillism enjoys in policy discourses that centre on employability and universalism in upper‐secondary education. By drawing upon Bernstein's sociological insights and data collected and analysed as part of a study that sought to examine the compulsory integration of Communication and Application of Number into the Welsh Baccalaureate Advanced Diploma (legacy qualification), this paper offers new empirical observations into the persistent peculiarities and challenges of teaching and assessing generic forms of pedagogised knowledge. The discussion takes into consideration practical and policy dimensions that extend beyond individual education sites in Wales and are also relevant to the 2017 review of the new Essential Skills Wales qualifications, ongoing developments following the 2018 review of the Welsh Baccalaureate Skills Challenge Certificate, and the Council of the EU 2018 Recommendation of Key Competences for Lifelong Learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many people from non-dominant backgrounds or believers from various religions want their children to acquire the best modern knowledge and to remain open to their home cultures and beliefs. However, this double aspiration poses complex challenges, and most scholars have either stressed the importance of addressing identity (and diversity) issues, or claimed that the key is to give everyone access to powerful knowledge. Beginning from curriculum studies' alleged crisis and its relation to this dichotomy, this paper suggests that bridging concern for diverse identities and access to powerful knowledge implies devising curricula that allow for issues that are transversal to the disciplines without collapsing the boundaries between them. Since this has been generally difficult to develop, the paper reflects on the kind of curriculum integration that is needed, arriving at the idea of interstitial curriculum or connective tissue amid the disciplines. Subsequently, unique features of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program (IBDP) are presented to exemplify these curricular interstices, and how they help to deal with the epistemological challenges posed by the initially mentioned double aspiration of many families at present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore Spanish curriculum policy related to song in early childhood education. By means of a document analysis, the different state governments' guidelines were reviewed. Song and singing songs are included in the official documents as curriculum content, as a pedagogical tool to approach curriculum content, and as an activity that helps promote personal and social development. In the first case, song is associated with the interpretative, aesthetic or artistic values to be enhanced in the early childhood; in the second case, singing songs is identified as a means to approach foreign language learning and as a way to gain a better understanding of culture; and lastly, as an activity that can help strengthen group cohesion, interpersonal relationships and the sense of belonging to a community. The present study findings suggest that song is taken into account as a valuable educational means in early childhood curriculum. Further study is needed to analyse how singing is approached in teacher education and how it is integrated into teachers' daily practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Curriculum integration is a feature of many new curricula that have emerged in different countries since around the turn of the millennium. It focuses on removing the boundaries between traditional subject specialisms, to enable more holistic and 'joined‐up' learning opportunities. This study draws on the experiences of a group of primary and secondary teachers in Wales, engaged in creating a framework for an integrated curriculum for expressive arts. Whilst the teachers are united in their ambition for establishing a curriculum that gives greater status to the arts, curriculum integration presents significant challenges, notably in how subject knowledge is understood and presented within an integrated curriculum. The teachers take different approaches to curriculum integration, with primary teachers favouring a transdisciplinary approach, with child‐led learning and themes taking precedence, and secondary teachers opting for multidisciplinary approaches, where the themes are organising devices but where subjects take priority. Differing practices suggest differing conceptions of subject knowledge and mastery within an integrated curriculum. Drawing, in particular, on Bernstein's concepts relating to knowledge discourses, this paper suggests that the danger of an integrated curriculum is weakened disciplinary knowledge. Whilst this paper relates to the arts, the messages about curriculum integration might be applied more widely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]