Search

A variety of assessment tools have been proposed to evaluate the sociology curriculum. This article analyses the validity of assessment tools and their impact on the quality of assessment. An alternative to formal tests is the use of a bachelor's paper as the assessment tool. Here the author proposes that such a paper is an appropriate means of assessment for the individual sociology student and for the program as a whole. The bachelor's paper is simply the student's attempt to use the theoretical and methodological tools of his or her discipline to address a substantively important topic. This can help in realizing the areas of the curriculum that need reforms. The bachelor's paper has several advantages as an assessment tool. First, if critical thinking and the ability to conduct and combine library and empirical research are goals of the program, a cumulative research experience is sensible. The second advantage of the bachelor's paper as assessment is that greater depth of theoretical knowledge can be encouraged in a paper than in most test formats.

This paper reports on the member survey conducted in 2018, to understand member interests and concerns, and what they want from the Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations (AFMLTA), as the umbrella languages teachers association of which their state or territory association is a member. Analysis of member feedback confirms the desire for national perspectives from the AFMLTA, and reveals that national representation and advocacy, national projects, nationallybased professional learning, and national/international conferences are the key provisions members seek. Members want to communicate through social media, notably Facebook, and to hear from the AFMLTA through News in Brief (NIB) online newsletter and via the website. Members value the academic journal Babel, with very high levels of readership, and they want it in both digital and paper formats. Articles on languages teaching and learning, and innovative teaching research are the most sought after content in Babel. Members look to their state/territory associations more for local context professional learning, and to language specific assocations for professional learning about the language they teach. Website links to presentations and face-to-face professional learning in the school holidays are the most preferred professional learning formats and times, and would most like AFMLTA to focus on languages education research, CLIL/immersion/bilingualism, resources for intercultural learning, and the Australian Curriculum: Languages for professional learning. Issues of most interest at the school level are learner attitude and motivation, and programming, assessing and reporting on learning. The top three concerns about languages teaching and learning more generally are adequate teaching time, government support for primary programs, and declining enrolments. The AFMLTA, through its mission of providing vision, leadership, representation, advocacy and support for quality teaching and learning of languages (AFMLTA, 2019), and through its four focus areas of member services, governance and operations, leadership and representation, and research and professional practice, appears to be targeting resources and energy into the areas most sought after by members. The AFMLTA is well positioned to address challenges that might arise, and to respond to target areas of the new national declaration of goals for schooling, in which languages remains a key curriculum content area (Education Council, 2019). There are opportunities for curriculum renewal on the horizon, nationally, and for some statesnotably NSW following a comprehensive review which points to languages as a common entitlement for all students. There is a commitment by the Australian Government to develop a national plan and strategy for languages education, which is a welcome initiative, and long overdue, to guide this critical learning area. Commitment to ongoing consultation, surveys, and focus groups, and regular evaluation of languages teacher needs, should ensure the AFMLTA has the agility to respond effectively to these evolving demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors conducted a performance-based assessment of information literacy to determine if students in a first-year experience course were finding relevant sources, using evidence from sources effectively, and attributing sources correctly. A modified AAC&U VALUE rubric was applied to 154 student research papers collected in fall 2015 and fall 2016. Study results indicate that students in the sample were able to find relevant and appropriate sources for their research papers; however, they were not using evidence to effectively support an argument or attributing sources correctly. The authors discuss changes to the library instruction curriculum informed by the assessment results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the reform and development, after decades of changes in the times, China's basic education reform has been promoted several times, and the degree of information technology in the campus will become one of the important factors for parents to choose this school or not. From digital projectors since 2003 to multimedia-assisted English teaching nowadays, it is evident that online English teaching has become an important part of today's English online resources, but most of the English online resources nowadays are developed by professional research institutions, which leads to a situation where online English curriculum resources are not closely connected to the actual English teaching mode, and more importantly, there is a lack of online English course resources and they are outdated. In the new curriculum reform requirements, the development and utilization of English online resources are clearly pointed out, which shows the importance of developing and utilizing English online course resources and the need to develop in the direction of innovation and modernity, and the need to consider combining the development and utilization of English online course resources with modern technological progress, not only at the theoretical level but also at the practical level. English is a comprehensive and practical language that needs to be used and reinforced by users in order for them to be able to communicate and express their thoughts in English. In this paper, we adopt a fuzzy neural network approach and a gradient descent algorithm to address the shortcomings of current English online course resource development and utilization, and adopt an averaging process for weight updates, and then realize the control of the number of fuzzy rules by adding pooling operations. The experimental results show that this paper can effectively develop English online resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's Wear Design is an important part of the fashion design course. As a special category in design, children's wear plays a significant role in the growth and future of children. This paper starts by analyzing the status quo and the problems to be solved in the course of Children’s Wear Design, and then explores innovative teaching methods, teaching philosophies, and teaching objectives of the curriculum reform from three dimensions of teaching content, teaching structure, and teaching assessment. Thus, the analysis explores the new framework, new resources, and new perspectives of this course based on students’ individuality and design subjectivity, and then puts forward the implementation methods and optimization strategies for curriculum reform practices. The aim of the paper is to provide an effective framework reference for the teaching reform and practice of design courses, and also an inspiration for the future practice and teaching reforms of fashion design courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the continuous reform of the education curriculum, the focus of the curriculum is to provide personal and social needs-related knowledge. In the teaching process for this type of knowledge, the cultivation of students' higher-order thinking has aroused widespread concern in the education field. In this paper, CiteSpace and HistCite bibliometric methods are utilized to analyse the higher-order thinking literature in the core collection of Web of Science. Through an analysis of the number of articles, the research topic words and the countries from which the papers were sent, the overall characteristics of international higher-order thinking research are summarized. The primary finding of this research is that the field of higher-order thinking is on the rise. Secondary findings are the focus of higher-order thinking research, which can be divided into four aspects: higher-order thinking ability, instruction of higher-order thinking, the curriculum and sections of higher-order thinking, and higher-order thinking learning. In short, this research helps researchers understand the development of higher-order thinking, provides a theoretical foundation and an entry point for research directions, and not only provides meaningful and valuable references for follow-up related research but also promotes the development of higher-order thinking practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Item banking involves tests being constructed by selecting from a bank of pre-written questions. There are various examples of multiple-choice tests where item banking is used, but few examples involving other question types. This research explored the use of banking with structured questions. Three question writers were asked to construct examination papers using a bank of structured physics questions and were interviewed. Factors considered when constructing examinations included the topic and skills to be assessed, the intended difficulty level of questions, and task type (e.g., definition, explanation, calculation, graph use). Participants' strategies varied with one spending time viewing a range of questions, the second using information about the questions to narrow down which to view, and the third relying mostly on information about the questions. Several issues arose such as challenges around achieving the necessary total mark and potential wastage of questions if the topics in a syllabus change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, the South African higher education (HE) sector has highlighted the usefulness of a locally relevant curriculum that incorporates culture. There is also some research calling for the integration of culture and an emphasis on the Africanized curriculum. However, these related concepts (culture and Africanization) have yet to be sufficiently applied in the HE curriculum as part of the HE transformation drive. The present paper aims to present a review of the literature regarding the role of culture on curriculum transformation and the Africanization of academic material in the context of the HE sectors in South Africa. The primary research method for this study is the review of the selected research findings containing issues related to culture and its role in curriculum transformation. The findings of this review reveal that the concepts of culture, and more specifically the Africanization of the localized curriculum (in the HE sectors), are not yet adequately understood, even though progress has been made over the last two decades. The inheritance of colonial Eurocentric views is believed to be hindering this progress. Higher education can in this regard play a significant role in achieving the goal of a locally relevant curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many U.S. school districts now rely on instructional coaching to promote reform. Yet facets of coaching policy remain vague, and there is considerable variation in the structures and practices of coaching. We use longitudinal, qualitative data to analyze changes in instructional coaching, as a capacity building policy instrument, in one mid-sized urban-emergent school district from 2014 to 2019. Applying concepts of organizational learning theory, this paper documents how district leaders designed and implemented three distinct forms of coaching. We argue coaching shifted from a tool for teacher support, to a resource for school improvement, and lastly to a lever for boosting coherence. Further, we demonstrate how particular problems and leaders triggered different degrees of organizational learning on–and changes to–coaching. In sum, the paper explains how a district alters the definitions and structures of instructional coaching. By illuminating how educational leaders tinker with capacity building instruments, this paper contributes to the instructional reform literature and advances the field's understanding of the evolution of capacity-building instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many universities have implemented initiatives to drive instructional change, yet their success has often been limited due to a lack of recognition of academia as a complex dynamic system. This paper explores how the interconnected and dynamic nature of academic systems influences faculty motivation to adopt instructional innovations, such as project-based learning (PBL) and small group collaborations (SGCs). We present a Conceptual Systems Dynamics Model (CSDM) that illustrates these interconnections, demonstrating how systemic factors create feedback loops that either reinforce or hinder faculty motivation, as well as other related factors. These loops, represented as Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs), were derived from literature reviews and qualitative data obtained from interviews and focus groups involving 17 faculty and administrators within an Engineering Department at a research university in South America. The paper identifies thirteen CLDs, comprising seven reinforcing dynamics that positively influence faculty motivation and six balancing dynamics that exert negative pressure. Using empirical evidence and analysis, we describe how the systemic factors influence faculty motivation, and how shifts in motivation reciprocally impact these interconnected factors. By elucidating the complex dynamics at play, this research contributes to a deeper understanding of how to promote sustainable instructional change within academic institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on the process of designing and implementing an update to the Introduction to Information Technology course at Bentley University, a business university in New England. Driven by a university-wide curriculum reform initiative and following best practices from digital literacy frameworks and IS model curricula, the new CS 100 course, entitled Solving Business Problems with Information Technology, shifted emphasis from a personal computing context to exploring small business applications of technology. Students networked with university alumni at “Topics in Tech” presentations, where they learned about career options as information technology professionals. The authors describe the pilot courses that led to proposing a new CS 100 course and reflect its challenges and successes. Challenges included meeting the university’s goal of transfer friendliness, scaling from a few pilots to multiple sections, consistency of course delivery, and evaluating assessment. Successes include placing course topics in a business context, introducing current technologies, and providing opportunities for students to learn about career opportunities and experiences from university alumni. The paper also describes how CS 100 aligns with the university’s student learning goals for the new curriculum. These include developing future-focused skills, encouraging curiosity and critical analysis, communicating and collaborating in different settings, and demonstrating understanding of issues related to ethical use of technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interrogates the opportunities and challenges of a borderless curriculum as the alternative to reimagine a better future premised on initial teacher education. The paper comes against the background that curriculum projects remain nationalised, depriving learners and educators of an opportunity to learn from the best educational practices outside their borders. The paper is located in posthumanism, where a borderless curriculum through technology can be positioned to respond positively to human tragedies such as war, systematic racism, human trafficking and conflict. Borderless curriculum involves unlearning in order to learn by harvesting best practices across borders to reimagine a comprehensive initial teacher education that addresses the lived realities of the learners globally. The paper argues that the posthuman era provides a platform for nations to share knowledge in the virtual and blended space to deconstruct prejudices while evoking living and working together across curriculum and spaces to improve initial teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1994, there have been numerous curricular changes in South Africa's education system, which have had an impact on the topics covered, taught, and examined in the country's further education and training (FET) phase. The aim of this paper is to assess how changing the curriculum has affected how much environmental content is covered in the subject Economics. The documents used by South African Economics teachers were analysed utilizing a qualitative research methodology and an interpretive paradigm. Realist Social Theory by Margaret Archer served as the theoretical basis for the study data analysis and interpretation. The only technique employed to evaluate the effectiveness of policy texts and test questions was document analysis. The findings show that the variable coverage of environmental impact topics in the examinations may have a negative effect on the way teachers address the topics in Economics. The study also finds that the shifts of the curriculum from RNCS to CAPS improved coverage of environmental content in Economics. This resulted in an emergence of structural and cultural morphogenesis in the teaching of environmental content in Economics from teachers. The study also reveals that environmental content in Economics was better covered after the curriculum changed from RNCS to CAPS. This led to the formation of structural and cultural morphogenesis in the teaching of environmental content in Economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contends that psychoanalytic theory, a neglected component of social work education, has much to offer in explaining social policy, cultural diversity, and human behavior. It serves to introduce four papers presented at the Presidential Symposium of the December 2001 meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association and provides a framework supporting the integration of psychoanalytic theory as essential curriculum content for successful social work practice in the 21st century.This position is supported by evidence illustrating how other professions have incorporated psychoanalytic theory in explaining dynamics of social change and human behavior, such as violence. The authors challenge social work educators to expand their vision of psychoanalytic theory and to institute curriculum modifications supporting its relevance and inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this paper is to explore and provide an alternative theoretical viewpoint, informed by empirical studies, of the curriculum policy enactment process which spans across different curriculum policy spaces by drawing on figurational sociology. This paper constructs this alternative figurational viewpoint of the policy enactment process by drawing on curriculum policy and policy enactment literature. This viewpoint highlights how a curriculum policy can be (re‐)interpreted, (re‐)translated and (re‐)enacted by multiple, interconnected and interdependent (face‐to‐face and non‐face‐to‐face, recognised and unrecognised, past and present) relationships. We argue the need for agonistic dialogue between the stakeholders of the educational community and how his could lead to these stakeholders working together across curriculum policy spaces (e.g., curriculum development, teacher education, professional development) and on different aspects of 'doing' policy work. We encourage ourselves, and colleagues, to advocate for, support and provide evidence on the centrality of construction and enactment of curriculum policy in effective curriculum change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managing the curriculum change process is challenging at best. This paper identifies a framework for faculty groups to approach curriculum change and the effects of changes on student learning outcome assessment performance. A traditional model for curriculum change is reviewed and compared to a Student Learning Driven Model for Curriculum Change. The effects of implementing this new model are outlined and discussed. This model provides a pathway to discover that in the curriculum change process, if curriculum change can improve student learning outcome assessment performance, even small effects are impressive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Educational Thought / Revue de la Pensée Educative is the property of University of Calgary, Faculty of Education and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose: This study attempts to identify the drivers for change in Public Relations education and what assumptions are made about professional practice. The authors suggest signature pedagogy has the potential to deepen our understanding of the teaching and learning of Public Relations and what this means as the Public Relations curriculum adapts. The paper has theoretical and practical value. It forefronts the concept of signature pedagogy as a fresh way to look at Public Relations teaching and learning that can be developed. Design/methodology/approach: This paper aims to explore the historical and contemporary context of teaching Public Relations within a university setting, how it has evolved and the assumptions that underpin it both nationally and internationally. Using a mixed methods approach, the paper investigates how the curriculum has changed since 2000, how it interacts with industry and how it reflects educational historical and contemporary frameworks. It also explores the assumptions on which Public Relations education was and is based and whether signature pedagogy is evidenced. Findings: This study concludes that, from a signature pedagogy perspective, many current Public Relations curricula emphasise surface structures of learning. Deep structures, focusing on critical engagement and conceptual approaches to problem solving, are more variable, disconnected and contested. The data indicate the existence of an Anglo-American, skills-based approach to Public Relations knowledge, alongside international nuances around multi-culturalism. From a practical viewpoint, the paper contributes to how Public Relations programmes can be designed, taught and adapted in the future. Originality/value: The paper evidences fully unique, primary research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK's Quality Assurance Association for Higher Education (QAA) recommend that all undergraduate courses at UK universities include in their curricula elements of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion; Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Education; and Education for Sustainable Development. This paper examines the detail of the QAA's recommendations and finds that they are significantly influenced by critical pedagogy. While the potential benefits of the QAA's recommendations are readily apparent, the paper identifies a number of potential risks, including opportunity costs for students, dumbing down and political bias. Alongside this theoretical analysis, this paper presents a case study which examines in detail the course materials of a cross‐curricular module piloted at King's College London called the ‘King's First Year: Gateway to King's’ which covered essentially the same themes. It appears that many of the risks identified with the QAA's approach would have been realised had this module been introduced as a compulsory module for all undergraduates at King's College London as was originally planned. As student take‐up was low, it was abandoned after the pilot, and so ultimately the risks were not realised. When introducing significant curriculum changes such as those proposed by the QAA, it is important to be certain that the benefits outweigh the risks. For this reason, a case study of an unsuccessful educational intervention is valuable and may correct for the possibility of publication bias in the literature if institutions choose not to publicise their less successful projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from a campus climate survey conducted at an Australian university. Unprecedented compositional diversity now exists in higher education, with students enrolled from different religious, socio-economic, geographic, and cultural backgrounds. Despite this diversity, little research has been conducted into the ways that different student groups experience university, including marginalised and 'hidden' groups such as LGBTIQA+ students. The survey aimed to uncover the impact of diversity on student experiences, including the extent to which students associated with others from different backgrounds, the extent to which their own views and beliefs were challenged, and the extent to which they felt safe on campus. Findings suggest a need for more targeted research, particularly into the experiences of marginalised groups, and for reform of both institutional policy and curriculum. Further, we found that students are frequently thinking about identity, diversity, and bias, and their own voices need to be elevated within institutional strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Curriculum change is relatively frequent in health professional education. Formal, planned curriculum review must be conducted periodically to incorporate new knowledge and skills, changing teaching and learning methods or changing roles and expectations of graduates. Unplanned curriculum evolution arguably happens continually, usually taking the form of "minor" changes that in combination over time may produce a substantially different programme. However, reviewing assessment practices is less likely to be a major consideration during curriculum change, overlooking the potential for unintended consequences for learning. This includes potentially undermining or negating the impact of even well-designed and important curriculum changes. Changes to any component of the curriculum "ecosystem "- graduate outcomes, content, delivery or assessment of learning – should trigger an automatic review of the whole ecosystem to maintain constructive alignment. Consideration of potential impact on assessment is essential to support curriculum change. Powerful contextual drivers of a curriculum include national examinations and programme accreditation, so each assessment programme sits within its own external context. Internal drivers are also important, such as adoption of new learning technologies and learning preferences of students and faculty. Achieving optimal and sustainable outcomes from a curriculum review requires strong governance and support, stakeholder engagement, curriculum and assessment expertise and internal quality assurance processes. This consensus paper provides guidance on managing assessment during curriculum change, building on evidence and the contributions of previous consensus papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study demonstrates how a team of librarians sustained authentic assessment across multiple studies in order to inform changes to an information literacy curriculum. It demonstrates the cyclical and action-based nature of assessment, including closing one loop only to reopen another and begin the assessment process again, emphasizing the importance of sustainability and making changes that increase student learning. Researchers analyzed 79 English composition papers for evidence of information literacy skills, expanding upon a previous study which established information literacy skill benchmarks. Findings from the previous study led to the development of new library instruction lessons, which targeted skills students struggled with - mainly topic refinement and information synthesis. To measure the impact of the modifications, the authors used two rubrics as well as a citation analysis to identify shifts in student learning. Findings indicate that the new lessons contribute to student improvements in synthesis, topic refinement, and source variety. This study illustrates the importance of engaging in an ongoing cycle of assessment and continually making improvements to instruction practices while implementing evidencebased decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

INTRODUCTION: The cultivation of vocational literacy of higher vocational computer students is related to the employment prospects of graduates and has a significant impact on the computer talent market. The success or failure of curriculum reform will directly impact the effect of cultivating professionalism in higher vocational computer majors. OBJECTIVES: This paper introduces the source and function of the C4.5 model, establishes model evaluation indexes to assess the application effect of the C4.5 model; the number of iterations and prediction accuracy are important indexes of the model's functioning and puts forward five measures suggestions for the reform of vocational literacy course of higher vocational computer majors. METHODS: C4.5 model is applied to reform vocational literacy courses for higher vocational computer majors, and the effect of practical implementation is evaluated using a questionnaire. RESULTS: By applying the C4.5 model to reform the vocational literacy course for senior computer majors, the graduates' vocational literacy has been significantly improved. CONCLUSION: The research contributes to the realization of the goal of cultivating higher vocational computer talents and provides the market with computer talents with outstanding professionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robotics education is important in training children's thinking, practical, and innovation abilities. It is significant to stimulate children's interest in learning and improve their learning quality. The existing research has not paid attention to the application of robotics education in children. It is necessary to stimulate children's interest in learning. This paper will take senior kindergarten students as the research object. It analyzes the application of the Vector Space Model (VSM) in robotics course development. The research and development of children's robotics courses incorporating Artificial Intelligence technology are based on the survey results of robotics courses offered by 38 kindergartens in Baoji City. An automatic document classification system based on VSM is designed to assist in compiling robotics teaching textbooks. Finally, the system performance is tested. The results show that about 24% of kindergartens offer robotics courses, and 76% do not. Besides, 70.14% of teachers support the establishment of children's robotics courses. The classification effect of the VSM system is better than that of Chinese documents. This system performs better than the automatic document classification system based on Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency. Its classification accuracy, recall, and F1 value are all above 85%. The development of the robotics course provides a better teaching environment for teaching young children about AI and robots. The robotics education discussed in this paper is a hot spot in the current curriculum reform and is of great significance to the development and innovation in early childhood education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Valuing care and self-care in higher education requires a conscious pause and rethinking of how we are together as educators and students. The pandemic caused various complexities, including changes in curriculum delivery, deadlines, and assessment modes, leading to feelings of overwhelm, anxiety, and change fatigue, which contributed to the emergence of panicgogy. This paper argues for the need to disrupt this way of being and experiencing the pandemic through valuing humanity and repositioning self-care and care by and for academics to inform their pedagogy. Presented is the narrative and the design story behind Pedagogy of Belonging (PoB), a systems informed framework that prioritizes relationships and humanizes teaching by placing students and educators at the center of curriculum and pedagogical decisions. PoB provides a pedagogical framework for progression throughout the teaching cycle. The paper suggests that PoB is a conscious pause, a contemplative practice that interrupts panicgogy, collective exhaustion, and disconnect in higher education. PoB repositions holistic education at the heart of what educators do, facilitating interconnectedness and encouraging a rethinking of care and self-care in higher education through the domain of belonging underpinned by relationships, engagement, and communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This policy study examines how policymakers and policy experts in Norway made us of research and studies - produced in Norway, in the Nordic countries and outside the Nordic region - to explain the 2020 incremental school reform. In total, 2 White Papers, 12 Green Papers and 3438 texts, cited in the White and Green Papers, were used as data for the text-based social network analysis. The three major findings were the following: First, the policymakers and experts make excessive use of references (on average, 246 references per White or Green Paper). The publications they cite are highly specialized and issue centred with little overlap between the various papers. Second, the policy references for the 2020 reform were mainly domestic. Approximately 70% of the referenced texts were published in Norway. Finally, the social network analysis enabled the authors to identify five texts that were influential and that bridged curriculum with quality monitoring reform topics. The authors suggest that more attention should be paid to an analysis of incremental reforms such as the 2020 reform in Norway. They identify a few of the blind spots that the more commonly used focus on fundamental reforms tends to produce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on an article published within the issue which explores the gap between how marketing research is taught in business schools in Great Britain and how the practitioner world of market research is evolving. Topics covered include the challenge of re-aligning the academic and practitioner communities in marketing research, and the need to change in the curriculum as well as a new name for the sector that reflects the trend from surveys to big data.

The paper is in line with the author's preoccupations for substantiating some theoretical aspects without which the practical activity in the educational field cannot reach real qualitative odds. This time, the approached concepts represent the milestones of the journey from the desire (planed educational process) to the realization (the real results of the educational process). In the first part, a definition of fundamental concepts related to planning/organization and monitoring on different levels of the educational system and process (the strategy with its different connotations, tactics, strategic plan, and implementation) is attempted. The role and importance of the strategic level in the educational reform and curriculum reform are briefly presented in the second part. The relationship between the strategic plan, the tactical/operational one, and the actual implementation is dealt with in the third part, with the emphasis of some considerations with the nuances of conclusions of long-lasting observations on the educational reality. The importance of knowing these theoretical aspects, so that practice does not pay a bitter price for not genuinely focusing on what it declares as a priority, is highlighted in the paper. In a world where the statements seem to be more important than the reality this kind of approach is seen as a necessity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With ever-increasing focus from policymakers on the potential of vocational education to provide skills for livelihoods and sustainability in the rural economy, this study set out to investigate attempts at curriculum reform by agricultural technical and vocational education and training providers in the context of the dual crisis – 'climate and economic' – in Zimbabwe. The question addressed is: How should the agricultural vocational education and training curriculum respond to the climate and economic crisis to ensure sustainability? The paper highlights enablers and barriers to curriculum responsiveness. Moll's model of curriculum responsiveness provided analytical lenses for the study. Data collection was through semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews, document analysis and observations, and analysed thematically. The study revealed that the climate crisis in Zimbabwe has affected both government and non-government vocational training centres in several ways. However, the curriculum was 'one-size fits all', focused on the needs of a formal labour market. Such a labour market has been decimated by the economic crisis and climate break down. Hence, providers of agricultural vocational education in rural areas ought to consider re-engineering the curriculum to be more responsive to a range of drivers, including climate change, especially within the rural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This note explores the intricate dynamics of Türkiye’s legal and political evolution, scrutinising the delicate interplay between Shari’ah and the state. Traversing historical landscapes, it unfolds from the Ottoman legacy rooted in Islamic law to the transformative secular reforms shaping the secular identity of the Turkish Republic. The rise of political Islam, notably under the Justice and Development Party (AKP), influences constitutional changes and judicial dynamics. Societal complexities, marked by urban-rural disparities, come to the fore through case studies examining contentious issues like the Hagia Sophia conversion and evolution in schools i.e. adapting the curriculum to reflect changes in the cultural and historical narrative. Uncertainties surrounding the balance between secularism and Islamic influences become paramount considerations, with implications extending globally. The paper contends that Türkiye’s choices at recent legal and political changes in Türkiye will not only determine its domestic trajectory but will reverberate across the broader canvas of international relations, positioning the nation at the forefront of the 21st century geopolitical discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Curriculum change and the ready access to school level appropriate statistical software has seen the focus of statistical practice for novice statisticians move from primarily constructing graphs and calculating statistics to describing and reasoning from distributions. Many multi-faceted concepts and statistical ideas underpin distributions, which students find difficult to navigate and cognitively coordinate. Limited research, however, exists on how to enhance students' communication when describing distributions. This paper explores the actions of a teacher as she supported 14–15-year-old students to develop notions of distribution and to describe distributions. The findings indicated that the teacher, through knowing, modelling, and listening, supported the development of student statistical language and communication. Students, through engaging in specifically designed instructional activities to engineer learning around the concept of distribution, seem to be able to transition from using their own language to using statistical language to describe distributions that communicated the concepts and features that were identified in the distribution description framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the openings for educational change enabled by framing inequality through the concept of rights, considering how variations of this framing have emerged historically and in current debates. Taking as our starting point the 1970 publication Rights and Inequality in Australian Education, we suggest that it is important to pay attention to the ways in which rights gain force within social action and through demands made by differently constituted publics. In the 1960s and 1970s, a right to educational equality garnered greater recognition, prompting moves towards needs-based funding and curriculum diversification, led by the Commonwealth Schools Commission. These moves were responsive to social movements that helped to shape new publics. In a second and more politically conservative moment, rights and inequality were increasingly separated in policies influenced by neoliberalism. We argue that the strategies currently adopted by Indigenous scholar-activists are promoting a return to a rights-based perspective, which is distinctive in casting inequality as ontological and epistemic violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article announces that the journal "Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice" is looking for proposals on topics related to moderation practice and teacher judgments including online moderation, dependable teacher judgment, and curriculum reform and achievement standards.

For a long time, due to the influence of curriculum orientation and examination-oriented education, the learning of music appreciation courses has not been paid much attention. This makes the teaching method in music appreciation teaching single, the classroom effect cannot reach the expected learning goal, and the classroom teaching efficiency becomes low, which urgently needs a new learning method to deal with these problems. Focusing on the digital education background of the new curriculum reform, this paper investigates the teaching nature, teaching methods, teaching design and evaluation, classroom construction, and student ability development of music appreciation. In this paper, the Kalman filter algorithm is used, and the optimal transformation order determined in advance is used to suppress the noise in music and improve the sound quality of music appreciation. If the order of the full-band signal model is selected as 10, and the number of sub-bands is selected as 4, then the order of the sub-band signal model should be at least greater than or equal to 2. In the music appreciation teaching test based on the Kalman filter, it was found that 35.6% of the students believed that the music appreciation course based on the Kalman filter could completely improve the learning efficiency, and 49% of students believe that the teaching of music appreciation class based on the Kalman filter can improve a large part of the learning efficiency. Overall, 85.5% of the students believed that the music appreciation class based on the Kalman filter is of great help in improving the learning efficiency, and the Kalman filter denoising method proposed in this paper has an obvious effect, which is a new attempt to promote the digital development of music appreciation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper addresses the challenges of access and quality in secondary education in Balochistan, Pakistan. The study employs a mixed-methods approach, gathering data from 36 head teachers and 300 secondary school teachers. The study identifies various barriers to education access, including limited infrastructure, insufficient funding, low teacher qualifications, gender disparities, and socio-cultural influences. Additionally, it highlights obstacles to educational quality such as unqualified teachers, outdated curriculum, inadequate teaching materials, and a weak monitoring system. The paper proposes effective solutions to address these issues, such as infrastructure development, increased budget allocation, teacher professional development, promotion of girls' education, curriculum reforms, provision of teaching aids, and improved monitoring and evaluation. Successful implementation necessitates community engagement, stakeholder collaboration, and awareness campaigns. The study establishes a significant association (p-value = 0.025 < 0.05) between access to quality education and student performance, emphasizing the importance of addressing these concerns. This research contributes to enhancing access and improving the quality of secondary education in Balochistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the new era background, the multi-cultures of various countries in the world are spreading and infiltrating each other, and the art education at this stage is in the stage of innovation and development. It is necessary to improve the teaching content and teaching methods of schools in an all-round way, deepen the research of education curriculum reform, especially to combine these new technologies with art classroom teaching to achieve the transformation of humanity. Today, with the great development trend of visual media, it has gradually entered the era of reading and map reading, which is a period of information flow and communication. The basic function of image is to transfer and convey image information. Therefore, in art teaching, it and graphics are complementary. In order to fully carry out art teaching, this paper applies the image recognition technology of machine vision feature parameters to art teaching and effect simulation. Machine vision technology analyzes the required resolution and color scale from digital imaging and uses preprocessed images and features to lock the images in the machine vision system, obtain the texture and proportion of art images according to the area, width and proportion of objects and complete classification and recognition. The whole image production process is more efficient, and finally can produce high-resolution art images. The results show that, due to the application of image recognition technology of machine vision feature parameters in art teaching and effect simulation, it has achieved good performance results. It has maximized the image recognition methods of students, thus cultivating students' artistic perception through artistic literacy, and promoting the balanced development of students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's development is inseparable from the reform of education, so ECE is very important in the development of Chinese society. Based on this reason, this paper introduces the three reform waves of communist Chinese society under the influence of western culture. Because the professional level of kindergarten teachers does not match the concepts and requirements of the three preschool curriculum reforms in Chinese society, this paper analyzes the solutions based on this problem and holds that the leadership of kindergarten teachers should be vigorously developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major reform of the Mathematics curriculum was published in England in 2016, implemented in 2017 and examined in 2019. In Bulgaria, the analogous reform was published in 2018, will be implemented in 2020 and examined in 2022. This paper takes the framework developed by Budgell and Kunchev (2019) and seeks to interpret the new curricula in terms of the Students, the State and the Curriculum with an introduction to Assessment. In terms of the Curriculum, the paper examines, at the highest level, General and Specific Objectives; followed by Overarching Themes; then the Topics covered and finally the Detailed Content Statements for each topic. The paper concludes that the real differences between the teaching of Mathematics in England and Bulgaria lie not in the Mathematics itself but in the overall curriculum and assessment frameworks within which Mathematics is taught. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In India, a curriculum reform inspired by critical perspectives has sought to transform primary mathematics teaching and learning. It is aimed at strengthening socio-cultural-political connections between school mathematics and students' life experiences, thereby challenging traditional textbook culture. At the same time, this initiative has retained the textbook as a vehicle of reform while seeking to subvert many of its established conventions. Guided by Remillard's idea of modes of engagement, this paper analyses the innovative Math-Magic textbooks associated with the Indian National Curriculum Framework. It investigates how these textbooks represent and communicate the framework ideas, focusing on key curricular elements and on the teacher as reader. Analysing the 'voice' and 'structure' of the textbooks as well as the 'contexts' used, it is revealed that they use a radically unique voice to introduce school mathematics while also attempting to use authentic and socially relevant contexts within their tasks. However, they have limited structural support to communicate these ideas clearly to the teacher-reader. The paper has implications for studying reformed textbooks in primary school mathematics in the Global South, where they remain the main teaching resource for teachers. Further, by focusing on 'context', the notion of modes of engagement within textbooks is extended through socio-cultural perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the four dimensions of PCK, this paper investigates the professional development of rural PE teachers in Huaiji County by using the research methods of literature, questionnaire, interview and mathematical statistics. Based on PCK related theories, this paper analyzes the current situation of professional development of rural PE teachers in Huaiji County, explores the problems existing in the process of professional development, and provides an optimal path for the professional development of rural PE teachers, so as to improve the teaching ability and classroom quality of rural PE teachers, and promote the further development of rural PE education under the background of new curriculum reform. Through the research, it is found that the shortcomings of rural PE teachers are: lack of situational knowledge; lack of understanding of the course content; not flexible use of teaching representation; low ability to identify the differences of students' learning styles; lack of understanding of social environment, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]