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The history of subjects is often told analysing notions of knowledge in historical reforms, policies, curricula, and textbooks. In this article, we analyse student papers from 1968, focusing on their responses to the topic 'Social distinctions and prejudices in Denmark'. The students present a number of concepts and categories of social differences and prejudices, depict a contemporary problem, refer to theoretical or categorical frameworks, provide a historical account, state bold claims and/or present conceptual definitions. Then, by giving different examples from their everyday life and by establishing some form of line or structure in their writings, they form an argument or narrative. They do this by using—we assume—information from their textbooks, from what have been discussed in teaching, in the public debate, and in the students' homes. The student papers not only passively reflect but are part of the ongoing constitution of the subjects and subject matter, during a period of tremendous educational change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amid debates about CRT in education, this paper critically analyses laws that have reportedly sought to expand ‘education on racism, bias, the contributions of specific racial or ethnic groups to U.S. history, or related topics’ with the hypothesis that there would be little evidence of anti-racist ideology in policies pertaining to curriculum. The research design thus leans on King and Chandler’s (2016) distinction between non-racist and antiracist stances, as well as Andreotti et al’.s (2015) social cartography that maps out ‘soft-reform’ and ‘radical reform’ spaces, to achieve a latent content analysis of 14 pieces of legislation across 13 states since 2020 to identify and analyse the ideological characteristics of these pieces of legislation. Only four of the 14 documents from four different states contain a significant anti-racist ideological leaning; the others express a liberal multicultural ideological position that celebrates difference and recognizes contributions, but does not examine systemic racism. Thus, among states that are legislating more ethnic studies, the vast majority do not legislate anti-racist positions. This paper concludes that there is little evidence of anti-racist ideas being legislated into primary and secondary education in the United States, and that most curricular reforms toe a non-critical ideological line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an exploratory study of the personal and systematic influences over the curriculum decision-making process of teachers of students with severe or profound and multiple learning difficulties in Australia. The way in which these influences impact teacher perceptions of the mandated curriculum and its day-to-day operationalization are discussed. The paper draws from both a national survey (n = 46) and in-depth case studies (n = 5) of teachers who work in government-funded specialist educational settings. Findings show that teachers have prominent levels of emotionality, a drive for creativity and dedication to inclusive practice, but ultimately work within a context perceived through conflict and dilemma. Previous related decision-making models are used to compare results, with some distinct differences emerging. Findings indicate that rather than enabling inclusion, standardized curriculums create an environment of professional (self)exclusion and reduce access to professional support. Increases in responsibility burden and negative emotional effects are explored. Although teachers view access to standardized curriculum programs as vital to educational inclusion and the enhancement of their professional expertise, the utilization of the current offering in Australia is makeshift at best and fraught with internal conflict. The implications of these findings are discussed, and future recommendations for research are prioritized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to describe an alternative understanding of Bildung-centred Didaktik through an examination of Wilhelm von Humboldt's conception and practice of educational reform—Bildungsreform, 1809–1810—in which the concept of science (Wissenschaft) was regarded as the fundamental goal and principle for curricular and didactic structure. Willbergh's call to revise Bildung with more emphasis on the pedagogical concepts is congruent with Deng's challenge to overcome the 'moribund' state of the contemporary Anglo-American curriculum studies. Re-examination of the classical figure, Wilhelm von Humboldt, who is quoted and referred to in almost every paper about Didaktik and Bildung theory in the context of curriculum research, but never examined in detail, provides a fruitful reframing of Bildung to the didactical principle. This paper utilizes unpublished archived material in which Humboldt argued for the roles and relationship between Wissenschaft and education for Bildung process as relational development with self and world. Humboldt argued that the purpose of school education is to encourage students to deepen their view on the world, resulting in both intellectual and moral development towards self-determination that consists of five categories: language, mathematics, science, arts and gymnastics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine key change vectors shaping the undergraduate curriculum in the third decade of the twenty-first century. The paper begins by outlining selected definitions, foundational theories and conceptual frameworks underpinning this analysis of the undergraduate curriculum and its influences. Three key external forces shaping the undergraduate curriculum are examined: universalization; national policy and legislative frameworks; and the influence of technology as disruptor and enabler. While some of these socio-political, economic and geopolitical forces are longstanding and familiar, a number of influential factors that have gained prominence in the last 10 years, including the disruptive influence of technology, new approaches to curriculum design in the form of micro-credentialing, and changing expectations of the undergraduate curriculum. The paper calls for a conceptually robust, long-term approach to examining the various factors shaping the undergraduate curriculum, with a particular focus on macro-level factors external to an institution. The paper concludes by considering policy and practical implications of these forces for the future shape and purpose of undergraduate curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the question of what role the historical discipline might play in informing the selection of substantive knowledge for school history curricula. In the process, it seeks to clarify the usefulness and limitations of Young's social realist theory of powerful knowledge in the case of school history. The paper proposes that assessing the potential of the historical discipline for informing substantive knowledge selection in school history requires a more thorough account of the historical discipline's horizontal knowledge structure. Having attempted such an account, it is argued that while the historical discipline offers no consensus on exactly what substantive knowledge to teach, it does offer resources for tackling political and ethical questions inherent in substantive knowledge selection in school history. This is exemplified through the case of environmental history. The paper concludes that realizing the potential of the historical discipline to contribute to questions of substantive knowledge selection in school history requires that history educators move beyond theorizing the distinction between vertical and horizontal discourses, central to Young's theory of powerful knowledge, and, drawing on Bernstein, consider the historical discipline's particular horizontal knowledge structure and its dialogic, often critical, entanglement with horizontal discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some might fear that the local flavours of education will evaporate when encountering the hegemony of global, cognitive standards of the knowledge economy. This paper, however, shows that the evolution of curriculum can emerge in surprising directions, creating hybrid forms of education. We will investigate forms of meaning that emerge in Norwegian curriculum in the timespan 1988-2020, and show how systems theory can contribute to studying curriculum changes in a temporal perspective. The empirical case for investigation, is a diverse range of material, documenting curriculum changes in the mentioned period. Concepts from the late Luhmann's 'theory of distinctions' will thus be used to give meaning to the emergence of school reforms in Norway. The paper shows that Norwegian policy makers use increasingly complex deparadoxification strategies to deal with an uncertain future, conceptualized as externalization, oscillation, asymmetrisation, and internalization (re-entry). This is most pertinently demonstrated in the latest Norwegian reform LK20, in which a new, hybrid, 'temporal' construct of education, called "new-old-curriculum" or 'competence-Bildung' emerges. We thus contribute to the field of curriculum studies by observing how changing observations of the past and future fuel and legitimize the evolution of new reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends the theory of powerful knowledge to school economics by articulating the nature of powerful disciplinary knowledge in the subject. In order to develop a framework for conceptualizing powerful knowledge in economics, the literature that identifies powerful knowledge in other school subjects is first explored. Then, follows an examination of the implications to the specific case of school economics regarding economic concepts and forms of economics knowledge that might be regarded as powerful according to Young's definition of powerful knowledge. I then proceed to develop a conceptual framework that identifies powerful disciplinary knowledge in the subject. This paper instigates the discussion about what constitutes powerful knowledge in school economics that enables epistemic access for young people that fosters their human development and flourishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents an inquiry into the relevance of Bildung for students in (pre-) vocational education. While Bildung has seen a remarkable revival in international educational theory, its relevance for educational practice(s) remains under-investigated, particularly in vocational education. This paper presents the insights offered by a multi-method curriculum study, conducted as part of a larger project in which (pre)vocational teachers in the Netherlands experimented with their own role as a model of and for their students' Bildung. Building on a thematic analysis of teacher observations, teacher interviews and student focus groups, we explore how six teachers enacted and perceived their modelling role, and how their students experienced it. While all teachers modelled elements of what they found important for their students' Bildung, the teachers actually perceived as models of Bildung by their students were those who shared their own experiences and stories with students, and who related to them on a personal level by offering them support, trust and inspiration to pave their own paths in life. Based on our findings, we suggest implications for broadening common understandings of Bildung and modelling, as well as practical implications for teachers, teacher education and policy to foster vocational students' Bildung. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the IB-PYP curriculum and teachers' roles within IB-PYP. The Turkish national curriculum was used to contextualize the paper, and these two curricula have been presented comparatively. The comparison encompasses their respective scoping aims, models of curricular control, distinctive teacher roles, and assessment practices. Moreover, the study incorporates insights and viewpoints from PYP teachers who also had worked for long years in public schools following the national curricula, revealing their roles in the PYP system. Drawing from interviews with PYP teachers, this case study elucidates the contrasting approaches to establishing product-process control models within these educational frameworks, as seen through the lens of teacher roles. The analysis serves to enhance comprehension of the rationale behind the PYP programme and is anticipated to offer novel perspectives on the national curriculum. The findings from the study underscore notable disparities between the two curricula in terms of their scoping objectives, patterns of curriculum control, assessment methodologies, and teacher roles. Through the accounts and viewpoints of the interviewed teachers, it was deduced that the IB-PYP curriculum within the Didaktik perspective can serve as an inspiration for future Turkish national curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Michael Young’s work has had a significant influence over UK education in recent years, both at a school and policy level, although, as Young’s contribution to this symposium notes, it has often been prone to misinterpretation. In this response, it will be argued that the work Young describes in his paper can be understood as part of a broader attempt to address three very real problems faced by teachers in their day to day practice: the problems of expertise, accessibility and motivation. Where the development of Young’s thinking since the 1970s is often characterized as a ‘turn’, the continuity between his earlier and later work will be highlighted. In the latter part of the response, Young’s use of the word ‘specialized’ will be analysed in order to highlight some of the conceptual confusion that remains around the process of specialization. It will be argued that the clearing up of such confusion is of crucial importance if Young’s vision of all students having access to specialized knowledge is to be realized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Finland, the vocational education and training (VET) qualifications lead into work. Also, active citizenship is one of its aims, and qualification enables application to tertiary study. In terms of these aims, literacies are central. In the context of competency-based VET, we analyse how a curriculum of literacy is realized during literacy lessons. The theoretical background lies on sociocultural understanding of literacies as social practices, and this article discusses the school subject of literacy representing theoretical knowledge in competency-based education. Methodologically, the paper draws from feminist ethnography, and the analysis focuses on examining language use in recurring classroom events. We analyse ethnographic data from the literacy lessons for the car mechanics and building construction programmes (2018–2020). These are programmes with an overrepresentation of male and working-class-based youth. The analysis highlights that during the lessons, the value of literacy manifested as market-oriented and work-relevant 'usefulness', and the literacy curriculum was realized as delimited to labour contexts and topics. There was an imperative of motivation for conducting literacy schoolwork which draws on stereotyped notions of students who are seen as not interested in literacy but in longing to labour. Based on this analysis, the literacy curriculum was realized as 'literacy for labour'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to posit a possible reason why non-Indigenous educators are seen to be 'cautious' in their pedagogic engagement with First Nations perspectives in curriculum, why interventions and programmess around reconciliation and truth-telling have limited traction in affecting change in school culture, and why the Australian education system is constructed to be, and remains, largely hostile to First Nations Peoples and perspectives. Despite several decades of studies exploring these phenomena and concerted efforts to 'fix the problem', there has been a systemic failure to shift discourses and practice beyond the completely absent, tokenistic, or superficial inclusion of First Nations narratives in Australian education. We argue that power-knowledge relations of settler-colonial discourses are fundamentally at play and that by examining how disciplinarity and settler-colonial frameworks of knowledge control operate in education, we conceptualize a possible reason to the pedagogical challenges faced in the decision-making and integration of First Nations narratives in curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite decades of research to the contrary, public discourse continues to insist on the direct power of curriculum to shape student learning, rather than acknowledge the complex and situated ways that teachers and curricular materials interact to shape enacted instruction. In this paper, we use a model of curriculum enactment to illustrate the complex factors influencing this interaction between teachers and curriculum. We examine how two teachers enact two different lessons on racial history and ask whether and how this interaction led to opening or closing of opportunities for interpretation. Our analysis led us to generate three types of historical interpretations that were potentially available for discussion across these two lessons: (a) textual interpretations centred on how a particular text should be understood; (b) political interpretations centred on how history should be remembered in the present; (c) structural interpretations centred on causal explanations for racism. The results of this study suggest that developing teacher knowledge for facilitating discourse about racial history will need to be steeped in enactment and contextualized in teachers' broader identities and experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers in the US are increasingly required to use scripted curricula. Such instructional materials often reflect the overwhelming whiteness of the publishing industry through a lack of representation of authors and protagonists outside of white, middle-class normative characters. Implementation of such curricula stands in direct contrast to studies finding that culturally relevant pedagogy and curricula benefit students across racial and ethnic groups. This paper describes a qualitative analysis of the scripted Wit and Wisdom English Language Arts curriculum for grades K-8 guided by the research question: How might the curriculum reproduce a white supremacist master script? Following a quantitative analysis of racial representation across all core and supplementary texts in the curriculum, the research team used guiding questions grounded in a critical discourse and anti-racist teaching framework to qualitatively analyse teacher-facing materials at each grade level. The findings of this study indicate that whiteness is centred at every level of the curriculum in text selection and thematic grouping of texts, as well as through discursive moves in teacher-facing materials (e.g. essential questions for learning modules). Based on the findings, the research team suggests mechanisms for individual and collective efforts to resist whiteness-centred curricula at the system, school, and classroom level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the author uses an AsianCrit analysis of US Department of War Educational Manual No. 42, Our Chinese Ally (EM42), a document of military curriculum from WWII. Their argues that EM42 demonstrates both a state-sanctioned [re]racialization of Chinese and Chinese Americans through simultaneous technologies of Sinophobia and Sinocentrism. Their analysis of EM42 has implications for the construction of Asian Americans as a 'model minority' in the United States, and highlights EM42's contemporary reverberations on the construction of Asian American identity, as well as how nation-states challenged stereotypes of Chinese people without decentring whiteness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increase in nationalist tendencies around the world after 2001 signifies changes in the concept of citizenship as reflected in the discourses of the parties coming to power. How does this translate into changes in education? In this article, I analyse the case of Poland. The research is focused on finding an answer to the following question: How does the postulate present in the programme discourse of the ruling, conservative party, of strengthening the national identity, translate into the changes in the school core curricula (CCs)? The applied method of analysis is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The approach by Ruth Wodak and Martin Reisigl was adopted. The application of discursive strategies in learning outcomes relating to national identity, social equality, and diversity in the old and in the new CCs, was investigated. The analyses demonstrated a significant discursive strengthening of the national identity on the one hand, and application of mitigation/exclusion strategies in relation to issues of social equality and diversity on the other. The analyses presented in this paper contribute to the discussion on the relationship between curriculum studies and educational politics by showing the influence of the dominant ideology of contemporary politics on the concept of citizenship in the national CCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the extent to which there has been a shift towards disciplinary knowledge in recently developed curriculum documents in New Zealand and evaluates whether a new 'Understand, Know, Do' structure for the curriculum has the potential to facilitate coherent design of teaching programmes and 'deep learning'. Using a social realist lens, Bernsteinian theories on knowledge structures and recontextualization, and the principles of a Curriculum Design Coherence Model, the analysis identifies instances of both conceptual coherence and epistemic confusion which raises questions about the underlying principles upon which the curriculum documents are being developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Young and Muller's 'powerful knowledge' requires a more extensive conceptualization of the relation between knowledge and practice. However, rather than focus on the 'practice turn' in social theory as Carlgren has suggested, it is argued that what Rouse terms a 'normative practice' can help explicate the specialized activities that make powerful knowledge possible. The idea of normative practice provides a basis for the systematic revisability and specialized communities that are said to underpin powerful knowledge, while also illuminating how teachers recontextualise knowledge and reconciling the role of experience with other types of knowledge in a curriculum. Normative practice provides a basis for specialized and 'knowledgeable' purposeful practice which suggests that knowledge is never 'for its own sake', but always in pursuit of something 'at stake', although that which is at stake is always prospective. Furthermore, it is only through generating inclusive and participative forms of (normative) knowledgeable practice that communities can acquire the characteristics that enable knowledge to become meaningful and accessible to all in society without retreating into elitism and obsolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of international neoliberal and neoconservative trends, the status of the arts has been devalued in secondary school curricula. This paper examines why the arts are not considered core educational knowledge in pedagogic discourse arising from the New Right policy agenda. In a case study analysis of Swedish educational policy debates, curriculum codes and their underlying principles of recontextualization are weighed as they bear on the arts. Discursive positionings and socio-political networking between political standpoints and stakeholders have been analysed based on official Swedish documents associated with the legislative process of curriculum revision. Our findings show how justifications of arts education clash with coding orientations arising from a strong classification between what is presumed to be valuable and non-valuable knowledge, which in turn is due to an underlying principle of visibility. While advocates argue that artistic practices promote transversal competences and have intangible benefits, this same argument unwittingly strengthens the non-autonomous status of the arts. The illegitimacy of the arts also stems from the belief that they are only marginally related to visible market values. Taken together, the arts are not considered core knowledge because of their perceived relative unimportance for higher academic learning or vocational competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) exploring the nature, causes and epistemic effects of knowledge recontextualization in the 'official' Key Stage Five History curriculum in England. "Recontextualization" refers to inevitable changes that occur to knowledge as it is 'pedagogized', due to the value-laden practices and contexts which enact and shape curriculum-making. Five accredited examination specifications and three 'generative' policy documents were analysed using Fairclough's methods and interpreted through a Bernsteinian theoretic lens. Five problematic forms of knowledge recontextualization will be discussed: canonization; commodification; de-diversification; knowledge made static; and epistemic inconsistency. The application of CDA to everyday 'official' curriculum artefacts illuminates the role of micro-level 'language-in use' in bringing particular constructions of subject knowledge into being. It is suggested that not all these recontextualizations were intentional, nor fully explainable through macro and meso structural factors. Some had been enacted 'by accident' in the contingencies of fragmented and negotiated local practice. Epistemic and discursive 'literacies' are suggested as key to engendering agentic practice within the official curriculum-making community, as well as enabling teachers to select and pedagogically mediate specifications in line with local epistemic aims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies a current example of curriculum reform to investigate mechanisms driving the push for international comparative assessment of social and emotional skills in contemporary education. Using a combination of bibliometric and content analysis the article identifies key sources in the recent Norwegian curriculum reform. The article considers how understanding and measurability of social and emotional skills is negotiated in policy documents and the cited knowledge base. Nine international sources are identified in the policy documents underlying the reform. Arguments from these sources are compared with arguments in policy documents to demonstrate overlap and potential misalignment. The final curriculum is found to be in non-alignment with the knowledge base that supports of a broad understanding of social and emotional skills and the measurement of such skills in schools. Drawing on critical realism the authors argue that Norwegian policymakers have rejected the global push for comparative assessment. They have drawn a red line to prevent social and emotional skills from becoming part of students' subject competence and to protect students from standardized assessment of such skills in schools. This position represents a strong case against measurability that may influence ongoing debates on quantification and comparisons in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching and learning are grounded on age-appropriate, credible curricular resources, which can be formal (i.e. textbooks) and informal (i.e. trade-books). As Charles Darwin's ideas galvanized biology and racism, this study examined his historical representation within trade-books (e.g. biography, narrative non-fiction, expository, etc.), textbooks (student editions, teacher editions, etc.), and curricular supplements (teacher-facing assessments and lessons; student-facing tests and tasks) published in United States. Through content analysis, I contrasted historians' understandings of Darwin with history-based trade-books' (n = 111) and biology-oriented texts' (n = 132) depictions of Darwin. Misrepresentations abounded. History-based books concealed Darwin's colonialist past and disregarded—or repeated without qualification and context—the racist ideas within his writing. Biology-based texts largely omitted problematic aspects of Darwin's past. These 20th- and 21st-century history trade-books and science texts mirrored the patterns of 19th-century American social studies textbooks' Lost Cause logic and 20th-century science American textbooks' anti-evolution casuistry. Reviewed texts obscured the racist ideas within Darwin's words, actions, and inactions, through both omission and commission. Concerns are raised about who determines how historical and scientific content are included, detailed, and omitted within curricular resources published in different countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herein, we consider how we might support teacher candidates to meet the learning needs of an increasingly diverse student population, in part by encouraging candidates to draw from their own experiences to inform their developing teacher knowledge about multicultural education. We conducted a school-based, long-term narrative inquiry to explore complexities of multicultural teacher knowledge. We document ways in which two practicing teachers, William and Janine, drew from their experiences of diversity in their teaching, and schooling, to build their body of multicultural teacher knowledge that, in turn, informed their work with their students. We recognize the importance of acknowledging teacher candidates' experiences in shaping their developing teacher knowledge, and argue for including it deliberately as essential to teacher education curriculum. Considering the potential of a professional knowledge community developed early in a teaching career—beginning in preservice programs—is a logical implication. We argue that a pragmatic intellectual space may provide such a framework for teacher preparation programs for exploring developing multicultural teacher knowledge. In this way, teacher candidates' experiences are constructed and reconstructed through inquiry with theoretical foundations that may offer explanations for complex, interconnected influences shaping school systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most salient financial literacy frameworks and curricula mainly focus on teaching and learning of simple money management. However, the financial demands placed on individuals today include much more complicated matters, such as buying a home and saving for retirement. Furthermore, financial literacy gives rise to normative questions such as what responsibility should be placed on individuals. In educational terms, this creates an alignment problem where the hopes and expectations placed in financial literacy as mass-education is not met by desirable results. This article uses previous results and the construct of powerful knowledge to discuss how financial literacy education in upper secondary school can benefit from an incorporation into social studies, which is an existing school subject in many educational systems. Findings include that teachers can utilize their existing teaching competence to also teach financial literacy. However, to accomplish results, both curricula and syllabi must guide teachers to abandon the focus on money management to instead focus on teaching students concerning the financial, economic and political issues that affect personal finances, yet at the same time can be affected by democratic decisions. Implications for financial literacy teaching and learning are discussed using the concept Powerful Financial Literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study seeks to explore how the belonging and participation, as well as its related concepts, are framed in the national curriculum guidelines of the Netherlands, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. We employed a scoping study with concept-mapping methodology. The results reveal macro level principles related to human rights and values, multiliteracy and language, policy measures and ideologies. Meso level principles stressed that education is supposed to guarantee a child's overall development and skills acquisition, participation involvement in the activities related to a child's environment and cultural heritage. The micro level principles were indicative of the need for inclusive and accessible physical and social environments, along with teaching methods which foster positive attitudes about diversity and teachers' expertise levels to address diversity. We also found the importance of designing opportunities that encourage socializing, building relationships, and belongingness. Additionally, the results show how frequently the chosen key concepts are represented in the guidelines. Based on our study we can conclude that curriculum guidelines do not provide sufficent frameworks for promoting children's belonging and participation. Further exploration on those concepts is needed, along with increased scholarly attention within the spheres of ECEC and compulsory education practice to enable inclusion for all children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative studies on science curricula provide insights into educational standards worldwide. Accordingly, in this study, we analysed the intended curricula of mathematics and science subjects of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland and Slovenia by comparing their lower secondary (ISCED 2) National Curriculum Documents on mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, geography and geology from the perspective of learning outcomes. By document analysis, we extracted obligatory learning outcomes from the national curricula, assessing their level of detail and structure. A team of seven coders also measured cognitive demands of the learning outcomes using the revised Bloom's taxonomy. Our results showed considerable differences in the number of learning outcomes across countries and in the structure of these outcomes across subjects, even within national documents. Cognitive demands determined by learning outcomes were similar across the countries, but metacognitive knowledge and cognitive processes of higher level (Evaluate and Create) were mostly overlooked. We also found a lack of learning outcomes explicitly requiring the use of ICT, experimental or field work or data analysis. Although these requirements are usually formulated in general sections of curriculum documents, we recommend explicitly incorporating them into these documents as individual learning outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do curricular texts address children's existential questions and how are such questions to be met in school? This is the crucial question of this study. It consists of a comparative content analysis of Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish national curricula for religious education, in use in 2019. To provide a background to this content analysis the varying and shifting ways in which Swedish curricula from 1969 up to 2011 expressed 'livsfrågor' and educational responses to them have been studied. As a new theme 'livsfrågor', meaning existential questions, was introduced in 1969 in the Swedish curriculum for compulsory school. A comparison of the Scandinavian curricula of today shows that the Danish one most explicitly addresses the importance of children's existential questions; the Norwegian subtly emphasizes a dialogue with school children; while the Swedish syllabus links existential questions to worldviews, general systems of thought, and not to addressing students' own questions. In the characterization of the curricula, two curricular codes, a proclamatory and a dialogical, as suggested by Hartman , and the three purposes of education by Biesta (qualification, socialisation, and subjectification) have been used. Although it studies students' existential questions in religious education, this study contributes towards general didactical discussions on the role of children's questions and possible educational responses to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay builds on the notion of 'racialized affects' in conjunction with recent educational theorizing of Sylvia Wynter's work on 'the human' to consider how these insights might extend conceptualizations on the 'coloniality of the affects' in curriculum and pedagogy. Specifically, the analysis shows how bringing into conversation Wynter's account on the overrepresentation of Western (White) Man with recent theorizations of 'racialized affects' and the 'coloniality of the affects' can make a significant contribution to unsettling affective norms and practices of contemporary schooling in societies shaped by ongoing White supremacy. The essay examines how White European bourgeois theories of affect are implicated in both colonization and racialization, thus naming and disrupting racialization can enable the use of affect theory in education to become more attentive to plural affective perspectives and histories ('minor feelings') and to support more just and equitable schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous work has not yet comparatively studied which forms of peace education (PE) have been adopted in national laws. Through content analysis of policy documents, we seek to find out why the Colombian Congress established PE as mandatory content across all educational levels in 2014 in a postwar phase, while the German Standing Conference of Ministers of Education rejected attempts to implement PE since the Cold War. Whereas the German school curriculum has maintained a strong disciplinary structure that leads to the rejection of the local version of PE developed in the Federal Republic of Germany, either as military indoctrination or critical pedagogy, Colombia's curriculum based on classical education is now influenced by educational standards and citizenship education—both influences from the United States. Therefore, it was easier for Colombian policymakers and educators to mutate the local fusion of citizenship competences into a psychological version of PE to solve national conflicts at the expense of promoting moral, historical, and political thinking in connection with traditional school subjects. We conclude by reflecting on how socio-political context and didactic traditions matter in explaining why some educational discourses are rejected or mutate with previous institutionalized educational rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the notion of risk aversion, this study explores the decisions teachers make when constructing a curriculum. Adopting a qualitative, grounded approach, this study used semi-structured interviews with nine history teachers to examine the decisions they were making during a period of considerable curriculum change in England. Five key categories were identified, which were then defined as risk averse or high risk. The findings show that teachers largely adopt a low-risk approach when constructing a curriculum. In particular choice of content, pedagogical and assessment approaches are affected. Also, changes to the curriculum in high stakes examination courses have a major distorting impact on the curriculum choices for the phase of schooling prior to the examination course. This study would suggest that teachers generally aim to maximize examination outcomes through adopting a low-risk approach to curriculum change. However, according to the literature, these low-risk approaches appear unlikely to improve examination outcomes, whilst at the same time narrowing students' experience of the curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on the differential impact of a curriculum intervention on students' understanding and practice of virtue. The research is germane given Ofsted's new requirement that its inspectors should assess how the curriculum in all schools in England and Wales supports students' character development. Results are reported here for a total of 1226 eleven- and twelve-year-olds assessed at the beginning and end of their first secondary school term: 822 children in nine program schools, where students experienced the Narnian Virtues character education English curriculum, and 404 children in eight control schools that did not experience the intervention (2 lessons per week over 12 weeks). Mean scores for knowledge and understanding of virtues (wisdom, love, integrity, fortitude, self-control and justice) in the experimental group showed a significant increase from pre- to post-test, which was not the case for the control group. Although scores pre- to post-test for the experimental group declined on a number of (self-assessed) character measures, this decline was not as pronounced as it was for the control group. That children's understanding of character improved rapidly in the experimental group is important, as knowledge of virtue generally precedes behavioural application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]