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South African teachers experience challenges with the implementation of the national school curriculum -- the "Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement" (CAPS). In this regard, teachers may not feel empowered to effectively deal with the demands of the current educational policy. Concerns have been expressed about learners' poor performance in schools and the school infrastructure coupled with educational capacity emerged to be a possible contributing factor. In the study reported on here we focused on the challenges experienced by South African life sciences teachers in the implementation of CAPS caused by limited resources. The context of the study was secondary schools in 1 sub-district in the Northwest province that offered life sciences (LS) in Grades 10 to 12. A qualitative research approach was followed and 10 teachers from rural public schools who taught LS in Grades 10 to 12 during the period of this study were purposefully selected. For data generation, we used audio recordings from individual and focus-group interviews. The findings indicate that teachers' needs in terms of resources to effectively implement CAPS are often not catered for. It is recommended that adequate teaching and learning resources for effective implementation of CAPS should be provided. The Department of Education's prioritisation of teachers' needs will engender effective curriculum implementation.

The current National Curriculum 2012 for English (VI- X) in Bangladesh incorporates both listening and speaking skills for its English education. Textbooks have also been designed in accordance with the policy which is set by the National Curriculum and Textbook Broad (NCTB). The English textbook, titled "English for Today" (EfT), was designed in alignment with the current National Curriculum for English (VI-X) for students in grades 6 through 10. The target of the EfT is to achieve students' competency in integrated four skills of English language: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. However, although the listening module is now in policy and classroom practice, it is not assessed in school or in public exams at the secondary level (Kabir, 2020). This study explores the perceptions of policy and practice of listening in secondary English education in Bangladesh. This study may be significant as little research has been done in Bangladesh on listening skill and its significance for language competence, let alone on the teaching of listening in connection to language learning. This qualitative study is based on in-depth interview data collected in 2019. The interviews included pertinent participants of policymakers and secondary English teachers. The findings indicated that there was a disconnect in curriculum, classroom practice and assessment in secondary English education.

The declining interest in science learning, along with students' perception that science is irrelevant to their daily lives, has been identified as a significant issue. This research aimed to help students connect abstract scientific concepts with their personal and everyday experiences. To achieve this, the research utilized the metaphysical principles implied by scientific concepts, a component of Kuhn's paradigm. To replace the abstract term 'metaphysical meanings', the term 'Meaning of Life implied by Scientific Concepts' (MLS) was introduced to make these metaphysical principles more accessible and comprehensible for students. Using MLS, activity sheets were developed and implemented with 57 lower-secondary students. The results showed that students could effectively identify real-life examples of the presented MLS, the number of students who successfully generated MLS increased with additional class sessions, and the content of the MLS expressed by the students was thoughtful and meaningful. Post-activity interviews indicated that students found this approach interesting and helpful for understanding concepts, and teachers were impressed by the quality of the students' work, expressing a desire to implement this approach in their classes. It is concluded that using MLS to connect abstract scientific concepts with students' everyday lives is both feasible and applicable in school science.

This study aimed to examine the implementation of STEM education in the university-based STEM centers in Ethiopia. To this end, a descriptive survey research method was employed, and data was collected from 11 coordinators of the STEM centers and 54 STEM educators through questionnaire, interview and observation. Data was analyzed by using both quantitative and narrative techniques. Results of the study uncover that there were variations among the STEM training centers in implementing the program, partly due to absence of a national scheme; irregular and uneven implementation of STEM initiative; inadequate support system; absence of regular monitoring and evaluation; absence of collaborations and commitments of key stakeholders, and the limitations of separate STEM disciplines taught in different classes. Recommendations, hence, call for developing a STEM national curriculum with implementation strategies, strengthening regular monitoring and evaluation of the implementation process, allocation of adequate resources and facilities, broadening of STEM pedagogy ecosystem, fostering collaborations and commitments of stakeholders who are key to the success of STEM initiative, strengthening preparation of STEM educators and teachers, integrating the STEM disciplines in K-12 education programs to stimulate students' passion and interest in science and technology from the earliest level of exposure.

This paper seeks to contextualize the profound impact of neoliberal policies on the teaching profession. Employing an intrinsic case study design, this investigation delves into the intricate dynamics experienced by educators in five different Basic High Schools (BHSs) located in Ankara, Türkiye. A comprehensive understanding was gained through semi-structured interviews with 21 teachers and three school counselors at BHSs, supplemented by observations of various processes at the research sites. The qualitative data were content analyzed by coding meaningful segments, generating initial themes related to teachers' classroom and school practices and their engagement with the curriculum, as well as their perceptions of working conditions. After consulting two professors for feedback, the final coding identified two main themes: 'teacher responsibilities' and 'teachers' working conditions.' The study uncovers that the core of teacher responsibilities revolved around preparing students for university entrance examinations, emphasizing the cultivation of test-taking skills. Despite this primary objective, BHS teachers had to implement the national formal curricula, resulting in extended working hours and responsibility overload. Paradoxically, these educators find themselves in a predicament of being inadequately compensated and grappling with issues related to employment rights. In essence, the convergence of extensive workload, insufficient remuneration, and problems regarding employee rights cause the deskilling of teachers and hinders BHS teachers' ability to fulfill their vital roles as transformative and reflective educators. [This article includes an extended summary in Turkish.]

Background: Many studies have been done in the past to compare country-specific curricula to international standards. However, there is an apparent lack of literature that focusses on evaluating the alignment of country-specific early grade mathematics curriculum to the Global Proficiency Framework (GPF) for mathematics. Aim: This study aims to investigate how the domains of the national early grade mathematics curriculum and the Bachelor of Education curriculum for pre-service early grade teachers in the Colleges of Education (CoE) in Ghana align with the GPF for mathematics. Setting: The study was conducted in Ghana using the national early grade and Colleges of Education (CoE) curricula. Method: Document analysis was employed to compare the list of domains in the GPF to the lists of domains in the Ghanaian national early grade mathematics curriculum and the Bachelor of Education curriculum. Results: The results showed an alignment in the list of domains in GPF and the two curricula. The Bachelor of Education curriculum included theories of early-grade numeracy development which was absent in the GPF. The indicators in the two curricula were found to have exceeded the global minimum proficiency levels in the GPF. Conclusion: The results showed an alignment between the GPF and the two curricula signifies that the mathematics curriculum used for teaching early grade learners in Ghana meets international standards and can help learners compete on a global scale in mathematics learning. Contribution: The study provided valuable insights for policy-makers to consider while making decisions about curriculum standards and teacher training programmes. This is a significant step towards enhancing the quality of early grade mathematics education in Ghana.

Curriculum mapping is a comparability method that facilitates comparisons of content within multiple settings (usually multiple jurisdictions or specifications) and enables claims to be made about those curriculums/jurisdictions. Although curriculum maps have been published, there is little academic literature about the process of constructing and using them. Our study extends the literature by considering the different types of comparisons that can be made from curriculum maps: content coverage, placement, depth, and breadth. We also consider how these comparisons are affected by structural differences in the curricula or using a subset of the content. We use our mapping of mathematics in the US Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the national curriculum in England to explore this. The CCSS for mathematical practice are common to all grades; we mapped these standards against the content for individual years in the national curriculum. The CCSS for mathematical content are set out by grade; we mapped a subset of this content to the national curriculum. Our mapping shows that it is possible to map curricula and make meaningful comparisons despite structural differences and content limitations. However, this affected the types of comparisons that we could carry out and the claims that we could make.

Background: A separate, apartheid system of schooling in South Africa entrenched European racialised ideologies of white supremacy that left a legacy of social, economic, and educational inequalities. The 1995 White Paper for Education, the 1996 South African Schools Act, and the Revised National Curriculum Statement outlined steps for equalising education. However, inequalities within the schooling system remain. Aim: The study aimed to understand how principals experience the lasting effects of apartheidera segregationist policies in primary schools and to document principals' solutions. Setting: A meeting of principals who work at primary schools in the Western Cape province. Methods: Researchers purposively sampled four principals from the primary schools represented at the meeting, conducted semi-structured interviews with the principals chosen, and adopted an interpretive approach to analyse findings. Results: This study finds from principals' perspectives that neighbourhood gang violence, and highly unequal funding for schools in different neighbourhoods adversely impact primary school children's education and principals' abilities to lead as a result of context, overcrowding and inequality. Principals note that when parent-led programmes such as the Walking Bus produce a positive effect, the government tends to undercut parents' efforts to work with principals to secure and equalise young children's schooling. Conclusion: Giving greater governance power to parents and principals may help to equalise the extremes of inequalities in primary schools remaining from Nationalist Party policies of the pre-1994 apartheid era. Contribution: This study contributes to primary school principals' ideas for improving primary schoolchildren's education.

This qualitative study aimed to examine the perceptions of students participating in hybrid overseas courses through Zoom application and in-house face to face abroad regarding the development of language skills, digital literacies, cultural adaptation, confidence, and motivation. 96 students engaging in such courses were selected from a pool of 300 individuals using multiple-stage random sampling, with the effect and size of this selection process calculated using G*Power. The researcher utilized semi-structured interview questions, segmented into five distinct components, to delve into participants' perceptions. These interview items were theoretically crafted by the researcher to align with the context of Thai students. Before conducting the interviews, three experts in language education and educational technology evaluated the interview items using the Index of Item Objective Congruence (IOC). Subsequently, the researcher transcribed the interview recordings, facilitating the conversion of raw data into coherent, aggregated units (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996). This transcribed data underwent a coding process and was subsequently organized into overarching themes. The findings unveiled that the participants perceived their engagement in the hybrid courses as significantly beneficial. They considered these programs instrumental in fostering language development, enhancing digital literacy, facilitating adaptation to diverse cultures, and cultivating increased confidence and motivation.

Geology is a subject of low interest for many pupils and teachers. The present study aims at examining the organizational conditions for geology education using the model of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, drawing from the national curricula. The study discusses the possible reasons for the unpopularity of the field worldwide and proposes general recommendations that would contribute to increasing interest in geoscience. The main drawbacks of geology education seem to be the large volume of required knowledge, its thematic structure, and a lack of links to real life. The Czech curriculum is vaguely and theoretically defined, placing demand on pupils, especially in the area of memorizing given information and practically pays no attention to recommended teaching methods. In contrast, the Slovak curriculum better reflects current trends. In general, it is necessary to implement continuous educational support for geology teachers and restructure the geology syllabus so that individual sub-fields are interlinked. Moreover, the learning outcome definition should include action-based education, fieldwork, experimenting, and similar elements.

Energy literacy has become acritical issue in recent years. The purpose of this study was to examine the contributions of epistemological beliefs to energy literacy in lower-secondary school students in Turkey. Data were collected via self-report questionnaires from 656 lower-secondary school students in the Aegean Region of Turkey. To address the research questions, Pearson correlation and multiple regression were implemented. Descriptive results revealed that students had a low energy literacy mean score in the knowledge dimension whereas they had moderate mean scores in the behavioral and affective dimensions. Multiple regression results yielded statistically significant contributions of epistemological beliefs to energy literacy. Analysis revealed that the reasoning dimension positively predicted the energy literacy in the knowledge dimension whereas the authority and accuracy dimension did negatively. The results of this study suggest that advancing students' epistemological beliefs can be a way to increase students' energy literacy levels.

This research aimed to: 1) investigate the components and indicators of school administration under the Office of the Basic Education Commission of Thailand according to the King's Philosophy; 2) examine the current state, desired state, and the needs of school administration under the Office of the Basic Education Commission of Thailand according to the King's Philosophy. The research is divided into 2 phrases. Phase 1: examine the components and indicators of the school administration under the Office of the Basic Education Commission of Thailand according to the King's Philosophy, targeting a qualified group of 9 experts selected through purposive sampling. This selection is based on the appropriateness assessment using the components and indicators evaluation form. Phase 2: examine the current state, desired state, and the needs of school administration under the Office of the Basic Education Commission of Thailand according to the King's Philosophy. The sample group comprises 320 school administrators selected through multi-stage random sampling and applying the table of Krejcie and Morgan. The data were collected through semi-structured interview form and questionnaire with a 5-level Likert scale. Average, standard deviation, Priority Needs Index (PNI[subscript modified]) and content analysis were used to analyze the data. The findings of the study revealed the following: 1. There are 4 components and 30 indicators of school administration under the Office of the Basic Education Commission of Thailand according to the King's Philosophy categorized as follows: 1) academic administration with 10 indicators, 2) financial administration with 5 indicators, 3) personnel administration with 4 indicators, and 4) general administration with 11 indicators. Overall, the proficiency level is rated as the highest. 2. The current state is rated as the moderate level, and the desired state is at the highest level. When assessing the needs of school administration under the Office of the Basic Education Commission of Thailand according to the King's Philosophy, it is found that the component with the highest need is general administration. This is followed by personnel administration, financial administration, and academic administration, with the lowest index of essential needs respectively.

Foreign language was recently added to Japan's national primary school curriculum. Phoneme-Grapheme Recognition (PGR) skills are a critical step in both L1 and L2 development. Due to its simplistic approach and the lack of new investment in teacher training, research regarding the impact on PGR skills are important. This study tested the relative differences and growth of primary school students' (grades 3, 4, 5, 6) PGR skills across two semesters. Semester-1 (July) and Semester-3 (March) students (n = 256, female n = 130) completed the same PGR test during regular class time. ANOVA and follow-up pairwise tests assessed achievement differences between grades and across the two-semester gap. Difference testing between grades indicated substantial (R[superscript 2] = 0.32 & 0.19) and statistically significant (p < 0.001) differences at both time points. Pairwise follow-up tests pointed to two steps in statistically different ability (grades 3-4/5-6). Longitudinal tests suggested that the current Japanese national elementary school curriculum supports phoneme-grapheme skill development; However, the twostep ability grouping indicated that the current national curriculum is not sufficiently detailed and/or rigorous to ensure annual student improvement in PGR skills.

This article presents the results of an interpretive case study of three lecturers teaching English at a South African University. The purpose of the study was to explore the lecturers' strategies to decolonize the curriculum succinctly. Purposive, with convenient sampling, identified the three most available lecturers. An emailed reflective activity, one-on-one semi-structured interviews, and document analysis were consulted for data generation. Inductive and deductive processes were used to ensure guided analysis of the generated data. The article argues that universities are not doing enough to help lecturers to have relevant strategies to decolonize the curriculum, particularly the English curriculum. This study revealed that the University environment allowed the lecturers to be left without any option other than the frequent use of verbal and habitual strategies in decolonizing the curriculum. Yet, they would prefer the option of using written strategies. As a result, the study copiously recommends that English lecturers use all three levels of strategies (written, verbal and habitual) to decolonize the university curriculum.

The National Curriculum is a document written by the Department for Education and contains the statutory requirements all teachers in maintained schools in England must follow. This research study will examine the path primary teachers in England, those who teach 5 to 11 year olds, navigate to meet the requirements of the National Curriculum and encourage the skills of historical enquiry all whilst providing a creative and engaging environment for their young learners. To do this, semi-structured interviews with established primary school teachers, including some history subject leads, were employed to generate a rich description of the strategies they used to successfully navigate this tightrope. Findings show that the teachers involved in this study used a variety of creative strategies including drama, enrichment activities and examination of historical evidence to provide learning experiences of high epistemic quality. This will be used to provide a bank of ideas and strategies for primary ECTs entering the profession and enhance their professional development.

The incorporation of Computer Science teaching in educational systems has increased in recent years. Given international interest, Chile has promoted projects to promote the development of students' digital skills. Focusing on this new educational context, this research reports the results regarding the identification of computational concepts and practices that can be articulated with the contents and skills of the curriculum. of Chilean mathematics. for first grade of primary school based on the use of the Bee-Bot robot. For this, the study followed a qualitative approach, developing a case study of the Chilean study program with the content analysis technique and using, as analysis categories, computational concepts and practices from the field of educational computing. In total, 30 learning objectives of the study program were analyzed. The results indicate that, although there is little articulation between computational concepts and first grade content proposed in the curriculum, there is greater articulation between computational practices and mathematical skills suggested in the Chilean curriculum. It is concluded that Computational Thinking can be developed from the earliest school levels using the Bee-Bot robot (or similar), and this is demonstrated by the structure of the Chilean primary mathematics curricular program.

The development of Global Citizenship Education (GCE) in China has spurred some transitions in cultural education related to English curriculum development. Notwithstanding researchers have discussed cultural education in the field of English language teaching, there is still a dearth of study in Chinese academia about the diachronic analysis of cultural education with reference to GCE in the National English Curriculum Standards (NECS). To fill the gap, a qualitative study was conducted to examine the extent to which Chinese NECS considers the impact of GCE with regard to cultural education, and how cultural education has transitioned between two NECS during the past decade through qualitative content analysis of themes including orientation of cultural education, Chinese cultural education, global cultural education, transcultural education, and cultural education of English-speaking countries. The findings reveal that critical GCE has not been sufficiently taken into account in NECS, while some transitions associated with inclusivity and diversity were identified regarding cultural education in the new curriculum, which could provide implications for English curriculum development and teachers' practices towards more flexible, dynamic and fluid transcultural communications.

Multimodal texts are an integral part of children's lives. Rapid advancements in media and mobile technologies have increasingly expanded children's capability to view, share, design, and produce multimodal texts. However, Australia's updated English curriculum falls short of offering teachers a metalanguage to help children understand the complex ways linguistic, visual, audio, gestural, and spatial modes work together to convey meaning. This article reports qualitative research on teachers talking about multimodal texts within their pedagogy and literacy practice. Data were generated through semi-structured interviews with eight early years and primary Australian teachers. Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is the analytic framework utilised in the research. From teachers' talk, findings show that if children are to be effective multimodal text users, analysts, designers, and creators, the curriculum should not privilege particular modes and their associated metalanguage but provide teachers with a metalanguage for all modes of meaning-making.

Despite the divisions within Northern Ireland's education system along religious and academic lines, it has managed to maintain relative stability, or at least a functional inertia, over the past four decades. The full potential, however, of this system and in particular, the Northern Ireland Curriculum (NIC), has yet to be realised. This paper presents a comprehensive exploration of the intricate interplay between the NIC and Initial Teacher Education (ITE), bringing to the fore the footprint of Lawrence Stenhouse. It critically examines the salient features of the NIC, particularly its alignment with Stenhouse's pedagogical tenets, and its subsequent ramifications on ITE, for both its content and pedagogical strategies. The ambitions are, however, not without their challenges. The overarching shadow of an exam-centric system stymies the NIC's full realisation, presenting a dichotomy between curriculum goals and pragmatic educational realities. The absence of a coherent Teacher Professional Learning framework also inhibited curriculum development. The Learning Leaders strategy, although yet to be implemented due to the collapse of the Northern Ireland Assembly and consequently lack of financial support, has the potential to pick up the baton of reform and help teachers and school leaders move closer to implementing the NIC in the way it was intended. The paper concludes by identifying the probable, possible, plausible and preferred ways forward for NI's education system.

Ever since the 1970s, politicised debates have raged over the teaching of history, dubbed the 'history wars'. These debates continue to impact primary and secondary teachers' choices of history curriculum foci to this day. This research aimed to discover history teachers' understanding of how to develop diversity within their history curricula and to discuss the possible pitfalls of their decision making. We set out to answer the following questions: (1) How do history teachers and subject leads understand the concept of diversification within the history curriculum? (2) How are schools approaching the diversification of their history curriculum? We carried out this project collaboratively with 10 history teachers and subject leads from four primary and three secondary schools in Kent, South-East England. As a result, we have developed a model of 'school diversification' and make several recommendations to support the development and teaching of increasingly diverse history lessons, within the confines of the current National Curriculum. This project adds to the literature by privileging the voice of teachers within classrooms and including collaboration between teachers of all phases within history education in English schools to support the development of diversity within their practice.

To what degree is explicit care/work policy taught in family courses in Canada's leading research-intensive universities? We analyze family courses in sociology departments and in political studies and women's/gender studies programs in Canada's 15 R1 universities to make a contribution to the scholarship of teaching and learning. This national scan marks a methodological innovation from curriculum studies that generally adopt a single-program or single-site focus. From a Canadian universe of 74 family courses, we identify 15 whose formal course calendar description explicitly addresses care/work family policy (measures to reconcile caring for young children with employment, through early learning and childcare, parental leaves, and child benefits). Sociology predominates among courses where family policy is taught, yet care/work policy content is not common. Given growing concerns about the care crisis and the care deficit in Canada, the low profile of care/work family policy content in family courses is significant. This study sheds light on the value of national postsecondary education curricular reviews and suggests that family curriculum renewal is warranted.

In the spring of 2022, we (a teacher-educator from the USA and a Kachin graduate research assistant) interviewed 14 participants from Myanmar who were engaging in an unprecedented educational re-imagining during the Spring Revolution following the 2021 military coup that gripped the county. Three preliminary findings of our study focus on creativity in crisis in higher education, which we categorized as actors, actions, and procedures, or who, what, and how. 'Who' refers to actors and their creativity in forming new alliances among inter-ethnic and inter-generational educators and activists to remake education. 'What' refers to creativity in content in addressing inequity and 'fake history' in the national curriculum. 'How' addresses creativity in the delivery of education in the midst of extreme challenges and opposition. This look into the way crises can lead to creativity in education, with a focus on higher education, presents a unique opportunity to witness how grassroots actors in Myanmar are seeking to transform higher education in a 'radical bureaucratic overhaul,' as one participant put it, making it more inclusive, critical, and just.

The Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration Goal two argues for young Australians 'to understand their responsibilities as global citizens'. In these precarious times, children and youth require (and are demanding) education on how to address the myriad of convergent global challenges that is the focus of global citizenship education (GCE); however, perceived ambiguity is recognised as a barrier to greater GCE uptake. To support teacher uptake of global citizenship education, we searched for and mapped open-access GCE materials to create a systematic, research-based resource catalogue for teachers and students. We employed a scoping study to examine each resource's alignments with Australian Curricula and global GCE frameworks and identified the areas where there is insufficient resourcing. Results showed that most resources were targeted to primary and secondary school students. More materials are needed for early childhood education as well as materials that engage learners of all ages to en/act on their understanding of what global citizenship entails.

National-level educational administrators constantly face the question of how to ensure that the basic education system successfully meets complex local, national, international, and global challenges, and what is the best way to initiate and drive systemic changes in education amid such complexity and to create value for society. Studies have shown that participative approaches to reform leadership are beneficial; however, in practice, participative incentives are randomly used in national reform contexts. In this article, we present a Finnish case of national participative leadership regarding the Finnish Core Curriculum Reform of 2014 (hereafter FCCR2014). We interviewed key leaders in the FCCR2014 process (n = 23) and analyzed the data from social, personal, interpersonal, and organizational viewpoints with this question in mind: How did administrators responsible for leading the reform develop and lead the participative FCCR2014 process? Sub questions were: (1) What were their goals in developing and leading the reform, and (2) how did they succeed in developing and leading the reform in line with their goals--what was effective and what was not? The results show how participative leadership in a national curriculum reform calls for top leaders to include stakeholders, build and support strong and open collaboration processes, take the risk of losing some of their control, reject strict dichotomizations between strategy formulation and implementation, and consider change leadership a responsible act of giving stakeholders a fair chance to participate in the decision-making that affects their lives. Key aspects to participative leadership included building participation, not quasi-participation; building coherence in complexity--together; and fitting change to the education system with responsible leadership.

The integrated status of Social Studies in the Norwegian "Curriculum for Knowledge Promotion in Primary and Secondary Education and Training 2020" reflects an international educational trend pertaining to a movement from knowledge and traditional disciplinary thinking to generic skills, competence and boundary crossing. This article addresses the changed organisation of geography as a subject within Social Studies in the national curriculum framework. Through a thematic analysis of how geographical knowledge is classified and represented in the curriculum, this article discusses opportunities and limitations in the curriculum when it comes to developing students' powerful geographical knowledge. The analysis shows that geographical knowledge is organised in an attempt to reduce content boundaries. Found across the curriculum, geographical knowledge includes geographical scale, geographic conditions and human-nature interconnections. However, geographical knowledge is represented through an understanding of space as absolute and fixed rather than relational and dynamic, as well as through a technical and mainly individual understanding of scale. We conclude that boundary crossing related to sustainability and citizenship as interdisciplinary topics opens opportunities for powerful geographical knowledge, although this potential is limited by the weak classification of geography in the curriculum for Social Studies.

Digital technology has long been ubiquitous in many communities within Australia and internationally, thereby requiring suitable digital proficiencies. While a majority of Australian children experience digital literacies as part of their everyday lives, limitations in access disadvantage others. In educational settings, there is a clear need for teachers to incorporate the digital literacies of learners while also working towards addressing inequities by providing rich literacy experiences that bring together print and digital forms of texts. Well-established understandings about the importance of literacy development early in a child's life support teachers of the first years of school to teach essential digital literacies. In Australian schools, teachers are mandated by a range of documents, including the Australian Curriculum, that provide content for teachers to teach. Situated within a frame of New Literacies theories, this paper reports findings from analyses of the ways these mandated documents may support teachers in the first years of school to design learning experiences that respond to learners' needs in producing digital texts. We then determine implications for teachers' responsiveness to these documents. With the recent release of the Australian Curriculum version 9.0, we argue for the pedagogical knowledge that teachers require to implement digital text production experiences within the mandates of the curriculum and, consequently, the professional learning they need for realising the potential of all children's digital capabilities in their classrooms.

Inquiry-based project learning is an internationally recognised pedagogical approach where children work collaboratively to research and discover the answers to their questions through discussion, representation, and evaluation. This paper explores the findings from Phase One of a qualitative study examining how this approach has been interpreted in early childhood settings in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The findings from an online questionnaire sent to all settings registered on the New Zealand national data base revealed that the international discourse surrounding this approach has been a key influence in this context. There was, however, also evidence that more localised approaches that value indigenous knowledges, in alignment with the national early childhood curriculum, Te Whariki ("Te Whariki. He whariki matauranga mo nga mokopuna o Aotearoa: Early childhood curriculum." Ministry of Education. https://www.education.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Early-Childhood/Te-Whariki-Early-Childhood-Curriculum-ENG-Web.pdf) have been developed. Whilst participants identified pedagogical and practical challenges of undertaking inquiry-based approaches, the educational value of this approach for children was also strongly championed.

This study explored how secondary school EFL teachers engaged in professional learning opportunities when they participated in the development of ELT materials. While increasing research has examined language teaching materials and teacher learning, the two research fields have remained largely disconnected, hindering the potential of materials writing for professional learning. With eight teachers as focal participants, the data included in-depth interviews, written reflections, and official documents. Findings showed that the EFL teachers took advantage of materials writing for their professional learning in the areas of policy, theory, and practice. Their engagement with the national curriculum standards, language, and language learning theories, together with local classroom realities in relation to teaching materials, reciprocally interacted with their professional learning. Based on the findings, we recommend that professional development programs include materials writing by localizing the content, clarifying its objectives, teaming teachers with researchers, and creating feedback loops.

The purpose of the study reported on here was to investigate the role of partnerships in helping in-service teachers overcome the difficulties associated with performing practical work prescribed in the Life Sciences Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS), an educational policy intended to transform the South African school curriculum in the wake of the apartheid years. CAPS is the latest of a plethora of educational policies that have been introduced in post-apartheid South Africa. However, teachers have lamented the lack of skills and resources necessary for its effective implementation. With this study we investigated how partnership between schools and 1 university in South Africa helped teachers to acquire practical skills and techniques related to CAPS implementation. A qualitative research approach with purposeful sampling was used. Data were collected through focus-group interviews, document analysis and observations that entailed observing teachers performing the experiments prior to the training. Teachers from 22 secondary schools participated in this research. Collected data were analysed using Creswell's method of coding. Findings of this study indicate that partnership with the University helped equip teachers with the necessary skills and knowledge to perform science experiments, ultimately resulting in improved learner performance. Partnerships between schools and institutions of higher learning to enhance policy implementation are, therefore, recommended.

As global concerns about climate change deepen, Australian sustainability curriculum plays an increasingly significant role in the way students relate to concepts of home, belonging, and the future. Such futures are imagined in a local context shaped both by ongoing colonial processes and the continued presence of First Peoples, in which invader-settler futurity is the dominant force. As such, a global emphasis on Education for Sustainability raises questions of what types of relationships to place and country are produced through policy and curriculum, and what the implications are for students' investments in the future of place and unceded Country. As a white invader/settler writing from the Country of the Kulin Nations (Melbourne, Australia), in this paper I offer an analysis of UN Education for Sustainability Declarations from the past five decades, alongside Australian national curriculum documents and its translation into state-level curriculum. In doing so, I reveal the ways that sustainability policy and curriculum works to collapse place and Country into the concept of 'environmental resource', largely oriented towards the future of the nation. I argue that in the global policy context, resources are framed to deliver equal distribution "across" nation states, functioning to obscure the operation of patriarchal white sovereignty "within" states such as Australia. I further identify that the ways this problem of resource management is deployed as a virtuous state policy through local curriculum, which functions to solidify invader-settler use of disembodied Indigenous knowledges, to secure futurity.

Situated in the education reform launched by the Egyptian Ministry of Education (MOE), which called for a socially-foreign shift away from memorization-based mathematics instruction, this paper explores the role of school-based teacher professional networks in implementing reform. Adopting the Goodson Change Model as a theoretical framework, we map out the power play between external agency (national society), internal agency (teacher professional networks) and the personal agency of individual teachers. Using an embedded case study model and a dataset consisting of the recordings of two full-day focus group discussions with teacher professional networks at two national schools, we contrast the two cases from the perspective of teacher group tensions and power dynamics in relation to the reform implementation. In one case, the teacher professional network (internal agency) was dominantly embracing the change, thus empowering the local teacher (personal agency) and enforcing its dogma on its stationed national society (external agency). In the other case, the teacher as a personal agent was solely attempting to break through both layers of internal and external agency. Our findings cast light on the role of teacher professional networks in curricular reform contexts, particularly within a collective cultural setup such as Egypt. Implications for the role of teacher professional networks in the diffusion of reform initiatives are discussed in light of the findings.

National curriculum standards for different countries mean some International Baccalaureate (IB) schools must often balance IB and national standards. Literature on how schools find this balance is limited. Using a qualitative case study design, we examined the perspectives of teachers of English in a Chinese IB school that recently employed a two-model system to address government mandates while still adhering to IB policies. A two-model system occurs when the two curricula are taught separately rather than in an integrated way. Our findings describe teachers' understanding of a two-model system, identify challenges for teachers in its implementation, and suggest improvements. Results are confined to a single context of an English department in China and cannot therefore be generalized. Our findings reveal an overall theme of separateness identifying structural and conceptual factors affecting the relationship between the two models. The article discusses new ideas for curriculum structures that might inform school decisions for similar IB schools and schools with integrated curricula.

To establish good maritime governance, the Indonesian government must pay attention to maritime security aspects in every maritime policy and integrate maritime security education into the national education curriculum. However, implementing the World Maritime Axis concept, the Indonesian government still needs to consider the maritime security perspective as a top priority. The ultimate goal of good maritime governance development should include the strength of the Navy as the most important supporting element and the implementation of maritime security training and education for Indonesian maritime society. This study aims to analyze the efforts of the Joko Widodo (Jokowi) administration in addressing maritime security issues through the implemented maritime security training and education programs. The research method used is qualitative descriptive by using secondary data from a literature review and interpretation found in previous journal articles, with data collection techniques through literature study. The study results indicate that addressing maritime security issues requires hard and soft efforts from the government, including implementing maritime security training and education programs for Indonesian maritime society and integrating maritime security education into the national education curriculum.

The implementation of the education process is currently a new challenge for all the education community due to the recovery phase after the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this research is to describe the implementation of an Merdeka Curriculum at the school level as an effort to improve the quality of education after the COVID-19 pandemic. The type of research used is in the form of qualitative research. Research data in the form of written data sourced from various scientific works that are relevant and trustworthy. The data obtained were then analyzed descriptively and described systematically. Based on this, it is known that the Merdeka Curriculum has good characteristics and is very supportive as a form of efforts by all parties to restore the quality of education, especially after going through a long pandemic period. This is also supported by the conditions of learning in schools, most of which experience the same problem, namely the occurrence of learning loss conditions among students. [The publication year (2022) shown on the PDF is incorrect. The correct publication year is 2023.]

This research aims to explore elementary school teachers' perceptions of implementing an independent curriculum during the COVID-19 pandemic imposed by the Indonesian government as alternative learning to address the problem of learning loss. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with 38 teachers in primary schools across 13 different regions in Indonesia. Data analysis using thematic qualitative quasi-analysis. The analysis found four main themes: urgency, challenges, support and teaching strategies in implementing an independent curriculum. The research concludes that the success of the curriculum will be determined mainly by technological readiness, support and collaboration from all stakeholders, both central and local governments, educational quality assurance institutions, universities, schools, teachers, parents and the community. This research contributes to solve the problems faced by the Indonesian government due to the impact of online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic which results in low literacy.

This qualitative study looked at Wilhelm Schmid's concept of the Art of Living (AoL) in relation to the current New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) and Te Whariki. The methodology included a brief content analysis of both Te Whariki and the NZC in relation to relevant knowledge areas and skills for the development of an AoL, as well as interviews of three participants to provide empirical data. From the participant data, four key themes emerged: support from parents; need for practical aspects within the curriculum(s); post-secondary school guidance; and positive working experiences. The overall findings suggest that Te Whariki places a large emphasis on the relationships between kaiako, whanau and tamariki, relating to theme one. It was also found that the NZC could provide more opportunities for practical life skills to be included in the curriculum, as well as providing clearer instruction on how to implement effective careers education and other knowledge areas and thinking skills relevant for students to develop their own art of living.

This case study reports how three high-school teachers from two state schools in Colombia enacted the National English Suggested Curriculum by the Ministry of Education. The teachers' trajectories of action were analyzed through semi-structured interviews, teachers' narratives, and lesson observations. Using the ecological model of agency as a framework, we situated teachers' steps within projective, iterational, and practical evaluative dimensions of agency. In this paper, we provide additional dimensions of teacher agency, which can help to expand theoretical and empirical knowledge in the field. Findings show that teachers cope with the changes derived from policy differently. The analysis presented in this paper can inform the creation and promotion of future curriculum policies in similar contexts.

In 2017, a new core curriculum was implemented in Norwegian primary and secondary education, replacing the core curriculum from 1997. While the concept of "danning" is present in both curricula, its meaning and use seem to change. The concept of "danning" has a played a significant role in Norwegian society and educational history. Danning has been linked to the establishment of Norwegian democracy, in which education plays an important role. Since the 19th century, the meaning of the concept has been subject to change, corresponding to historical changes, yet the word itself continues to be part of the Norwegian educational rhetoric and national curriculum. This means that conversations about "danning" may not be fruitful because the participants attach different meanings to the same concept. Thus, a study of how "danning" has been used and how it is used today is warranted. Through an analysis of two Norwegian curricula, from 1997 and 2017, we find changes in the perception of "danning" and in its role as an educational concept in Norwegian education. We argue that "danning" goes from being understood as a result-oriented, social and democratic concept in 1997 to being seen as an individualistic process in pursuit of certain personal characteristics, without its former social component, in 2017. This indicates a fragmentation of "danning."

The revision of Te Whariki, the New Zealand Early Childhood Curriculum Framework, in 2017 offered a unique opportunity to gain understanding of the ways teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand think about and enact curriculum in their daily practice. As researchers we were intrigued as to the ways teachers conceptualised the role of curriculum in practice and whether the revised curriculum would generate changes in curriculum implementation. We undertook a research project to capture data about teachers' engagement with, and use of, the curriculum framework, as well as their beliefs about curriculum in the context of early childhood education (ECE). Data collection was designed to focus on two points in time: in 2017 prior to the launch of the revision, with plans to repeat collection after several years with the revised curriculum in effect. Findings reported here draw on interviews conducted with teachers working with Te Whariki (Ministry of Education, 1996) before the revised framework was released. The findings revealed a range of understandings about the meaning of curriculum and the role of curriculum in guiding teachers' enacted practice. Implications for supporting ongoing efforts of enactment and implementation of ECE curriculum are discussed.

Purpose: This article presents the place and the role of Sociology teaching in the current Brazilian context, marked by the rise of extreme right ideologies and practices, more specifically by its ultraliberal economic bias and moral conservatism. Design/methodology/approach: Organized in three parts, it outlines, respectively, the macro political and curricular scenario, and some of its unfolding in school practices. The main effort is to reflect on the ways in which school Sociology has been--ambiguously--understood and instrumentalized in the Brazilian context. The reflections are based, besides the literature review, on the analysis of the conjuncture and political-institutional directions, on curriculum documents and on reports of teaching experiences collected during the year 2022. Findings: We verified that the extreme right advance in the public space is due to the articulation of two factors: 1) scenario of political and economic crisis; 2) structural aspects that guarantee, in the moral field, the predominance of conservatism and, in the economic field, the prevalence of ultraliberalism. With regard to education, the extreme right has had an impact in the definition of legislation that regulates the education system and on boosting surveillance and persecution in relation to teachers who distance themselves from their political ideology. Research limitations/implications: We believe that, despite having brought some data that allow us to glimpse a certain ambiguity with regard to the teaching of sociology, which can occur either in the sense of criticizing the status quo, or in the sense of reaffirming it, we believe that a more systematic research on this is still needed.

This study on the Estonian lower secondary (7-9th grade) science curricula, is seen as an important framework for educators preparing students as tomorrow's citizens able to reflect on sustainable energy development. As the curriculum is taken to be the major document allowing insights into Estonian educational standards, this study identifies components within the intended lower secondary science curricula for subjects of biology, chemistry, earth science, physics, and interdisciplinary science. Using document analysis, verbs associated with career-related learning outcomes are detected, allowing the relatedness of the energy conceptualizations and determination of their cognitive level utilizing SOLO (Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes) taxonomy. A team of coders identify a total of 782 learning outcomes across three learning domains: psychomotor (176), affective (32), cognitive (574) at unistructural (33), multistructural (225), relational (276), and extended abstract (40) levels. The majority of energy concept learning outcomes (274) are identified in the source (form) and transfer (transform) categories. Very few career-related learning outcomes are detected with the science education relevance dimensions (individual, societal, career). The suitability of the findings is discussed. The current analyzing method can be applied to other educational disciplines for raising awareness of disciplinary crosscutting concepts.

This article reports a local study of the presence of history as a subject in the kindergartens of Kristiansand, a municipality in southern Norway. There is no syllabus for history in the national curriculum; nevertheless, the research sought to find historical content in the kindergartens. The research method was informed by a precept of history didactics, namely that history is everywhere. Using this observation, tentative categories for content likely to feature history were formulated, and then searched for in the individual yearly plans of the kindergartens. This was supplemented by interviews. It is concluded that, in accordance with the national curriculum, history in the kindergartens is a local affair. It emerges especially through local history, visits to museums, and projects with historical features. This research was not designed to determine whether learning outcomes in history are achieved, nor to consider kindergartens outside Kristiansand. However, it references a corpus of literature on history in Norwegian kindergartens, and interacts with it. The conclusion about the presence of the subject is the same as was found for another city, Trondheim, in research by others. For international readers, the article also argues that in principle it is possible for young children to learn history orally and informally.

As we move further into the digital age, the acquisition of digital literacy (DL) and computational thinking (CT) skills is emerging internationally as an essential goal for students in contemporary school curricula. As the world becomes more uncertain and volatile due to impacts of artificial intelligence (AI), international unrest, climate change, global economic instability and unforeseen catastrophes such as the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, it is necessary to review, revise and refine school education curricula and policies. The issue of what is essential for students to learn, and how they learn it, is of growing importance to international organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and is emerging as a significant driver for educational reform across the globe. The growing prominence of CT and DL skills across many industry sectors has prompted recent changes to international assessment frameworks such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). This paper will briefly discuss specific examples of alternative approaches to addressing CT in national curricula for the compulsory years of schooling and explain how CT has been adopted as a driver for mathematics curriculum change in Australia.

The design and technology curriculum in England has gone through various policy changes since its introduction in the Education Reform Act of 1988. The 2014 policy revised the content to make it slimmer and outlining the essential core knowledge for Key Stage 1 to 3. Schools need to consider wider aspects of design and technology not included in the National Curriculum which they would like to teach as part of their own school curriculum (DATA n.d.). Previous research into D&T explored the challenges of adapting established ways of working and the issues involved in sub-cultural retreat by teachers. This research paper sets out to understand how teachers coped with the 2014 curriculum change and the factors influencing teachers' capacity to implement assessment changes that impacted the need to teach more broadly. The larger investigation followed a qualitative methodology and collected interview data during the first round of teaching the new upper-secondary examination courses in English secondary schools. An interpretive approach to the analysis suggests two ways the teachers conceptualised the change as "coming off the circus of specialist rotations" and "teaching inside a specialism". Challenges for the teachers included the issue of specialist knowledge, traditions of curriculum organisation, opportunities to share expertise, and attitudes towards the policy shift. Teaching outside a specialism is a way to think about supporting pre-service and in-service teachers with the current policy change and ways to modernise the subject in school.

Curriculum reform is a significant approach to prepare schools to be effective in meeting contemporary societal needs and imperatives. Several countries around the world, therefore, engage in curriculum reform to enable schools to prepare children with the knowledge, skills, and competencies needed in the present and future society, but implementing change following a curriculum reform is often complex. In our study, we sought to understand how teachers respond to curriculum implementation following the introduction of the national pre-tertiary education curriculum framework (NPECF) in Ghana. We employed a concurrent, nested, mixed-design strategy (embedded design) using a sample of 352 randomly selected basic school teachers from six regions in Ghana. Data from surveys and interviews reveal that teachers consider the NPECF as relevant for Ghanaian educational fortunes; however, a myriad of classroom challenges come with the implementation process. We concluded that these challenges could affect the realization of the relevance of the NPECF if schools and teachers are not well resourced. We call the attention of duty bearers to the need to provide the necessary resources for the seamless implementation of the NPECF in Ghana. For policy adjustment, we recommended and proposed improvisation as an approach for teachers to utilize and exert autonomy and independence in the design and delivery of classroom instruction to sustain the NPECF in primary schools. Again, our study calls for coordination and collaboration among parents, civic society, and individuals across political divides to remain united to provide a solid foundation for education in Ghana.