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

This paper presents findings on physical education (PE) trainees' and teachers' attempts to design and implement authentic curricular experiences, within the constraints of a neoliberalist context. It involved adopting a principle‐based approach to promoting active lifestyles designed to align PE trainees' and teachers' health‐related philosophies and pedagogies. The promoting active lifestyles (PAL) project was framed by social cognitive theory and the social ecological model and adopted a qualitative explanatory case study approach. Participants were secondary school PE trainees and teachers involved in a University‐based Initial Teacher Education partnership in the East Midlands in England. The 32 participants were involved in professional development which included co‐constructing and implementing PAL principles in the schools in which they were employed or undertaking their placement. All participants viewed the PAL principles positively and were able to implement at least some of them. Participants experienced unanticipated benefits beyond increased physical activity such as improved pupil behaviour. Many participants described transformative and enduring changes to their health‐related philosophies and pedagogies. This low cost, flexible principle‐based approach to pedagogical change addresses calls for evidence‐based PE‐for‐health pedagogies and the development of possibilities that acknowledge the complexity of supporting physical educators to become more effective promoters of physical activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines comparatively the curricula of six Physics MSc degrees from three countries (England, Portugal and Denmark) in the European policy context driven by the Bologna Process, which advocates degree comparability and student-centred learning. Degree programme descriptions were analysed and interviews were conducted with students and lecturers from the selected degrees, exploring their teaching and learning practices and experiences. Findings reveal predominantly country-based differences in degree curriculum regarding students’ freedom to decide their learning path. Curricular flexibility and student input appear high in the English and Danish degrees and low in the Portuguese ones, despite attempts – so far little feasible in practice – to empower students to tailor learning to their interests. In drawing attention to the force of national pedagogic traditions in shaping curricula, the paper has implications for the degree comparability and student mobility advocated by recent European higher education reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper provides a detailed account of the Queensland education system's engagement with reforming curriculum, pedagogies and assessment. In so doing, it responds to the University College London's Institute of Education report on ‘high-performing’ jurisdictions, of which Queensland, Australia, was identified as one. In this report, nine issues and choices in relation to ‘instructional systems’ confronting a new education minister (or secretary) are considered. This paper details the strengths of the Queensland education system in relation to curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, whilst acknowledging that particular aspects of the global and national Australian contexts, alongside internal Queensland politics, can inhibit the ongoing work of the very processes that led to Queensland being identified in the Institute of Education report as a ‘high-performing jurisdiction’. We conclude by arguing that minsters of education need to take a longer view of educational reform than is currently the case and that quick fixes determined by electoral policy cycles need to be avoided. Learning about and from one's own system as well as from others requires a depth of analysis and time that is often not conducive to such policy cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: Inclusive STEM high schools (ISHSs) can be viewed as opportunity structures for students underrepresented in STEM. By opportunity structures, we mean an education that provides not only access to high quality STEM curriculum and instruction or “opportunity to learn,” but also the capacity to create learning environments where students can build STEM social capital and the dispositions, knowledge, skills, and networks to be successful in STEM college majors and careers. This is a cross‐case analysis of case studies that describe the design and implementation of eight “exemplar” ISHSs. Beginning with 10 hypothesized critical components, we found evidence for all 10, but present in unique patterns of prominence, depending on the school context. Further inductive analysis located an additional four emergent critical components that complete the picture of how these successful ISHSs were able to achieve their goals. Importantly, across schools, four components stood out as foundational: a flexible and autonomous administrative structure; a college‐preparatory, STEM‐focused curriculum for all; well‐prepared STEM teachers and professionalized teaching staffs; and supports for students in underrepresented groups. Although many of the critical components found in the ISHSs are also found in the school reform literature, these schools also had characteristics unique to STEM education. This paper is important in understanding STEM high schools as opportunity structures and as a school reform alternative that can help solve equity and social mobility gaps in STEM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we estimate returns to schooling for young men and women in Turkey using the exogenous and substantial variation in schooling across birth cohorts brought about by the 1997 reform of compulsory schooling within a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. We estimate that the return from an extra year of schooling is about 7-8% for women and an imprecisely estimated 2-2.5% for men. The low level of the estimates for men contrasts starkly with those estimated for other developing countries. We identify several reasons why returns to schooling are low for men and why they are higher for women in our context. In particular, the policy alters the schooling distributions of men and women differently, thus the average causal effect puts a higher weight on the causal effect of schooling at higher grade levels for women than for men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new standards for K-12 science education suggest that student learning should be more integrated and should focus on crosscutting concepts and core ideas from the areas of physical science, life science, Earth/space science, and engineering/technology. This paper describes large-scale, urban elementary-focused science, technology, engineering, and mathematics ( STEM) collaboration between a large urban school district, various STEM-focused community stakeholders, and a research-focused private university. The collaboration includes the development of an integrated STEM curriculum for grade K-5 with accompanying teacher professional development. This mixed-methodology study describes findings from focus group interviews and a survey of teachers from Title I elementary schools. Findings suggest the importance of the following critical features of professional development: (a) coherence, (b) content focus, (c) active learning, (d) collective participation, and (e) duration to the success of large-scale STEM urban elementary school reform [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Martin Luther is primarily known as a pastor and theologian of the 16th century Reformation. However, he was also a pedagogue passionate about educational reforms that united the spiritual life with the daily lived life. Believing that education served the purpose of equipping students for a life in service of one's neighbor, Luther took a practical and spiritual approach to critically engage content and even left space for teachers to differentiate based on their students' needs. This article provides a close look at the pedagogy and curriculum Luther outlines in the introduction to his Small Catechism and seeks to provide a creative adaptation to the contemporary theological/religious classroom. In the hopes that Luther's method can be of help in a variety of settings and spiritual traditions, the primary teaching method is driven by inquiry and the catechetical question "what is this?" [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Wales is undergoing a major programme of educational reform, including the development of a new curriculum and transformation of the system for supporting learners with additional learning needs (ALN). This article reports on a research project investigating how these two elements are being brought together, drawing on interviews with policy leads and school‐based practitioners. Findings indicate that the new curriculum is perceived as broader, more focused on the quality of teaching and more relevant to all learners. Tensions were apparent, however, in the core belief systems of interviewees. For those with a school‐based and/or curriculum‐focused role, what is in the best interests of specific learners is a core belief that subsumes the idea of inclusivity and necessitates the continuation of arrangements for ALN in their current form. It is argued that clearer articulation of teachers as agents of change is required if educational transformation is to be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Kenya's 1985 education reform implemented curriculum changes to prepare children for the job market and changed the instructional language from English to local ethnic languages during the first three years of primary education. This article examines the reform's impact on (i) level of education completed, (ii) income level, and (iii) preference for national versus ethnic interests. Methods: Using survey data collected from randomly selected Kenyan citizens in Nairobi, this article uses a regression discontinuity (RD) design comparing the first cohort exposed to the reform to those who were not. Results: The education and income levels of those beginning their education under the reform were higher. The reform did not influence preference for national or ethnic interests. Conclusions: The reform partially increased children's job market preparation but was unsuccessful in addressing unemployment. Teaching children in local languages exhibited no negative effects on ethnic as opposed to national interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been suggested that curriculum coherence is crucial in successful educational reform. However, empirical research on the topic is still scarce. This study explores how the stakeholders involved in curriculum development at the district level perceived curriculum coherence. Survey data (n = 550) were analysed using structural equation modelling. A confirmatory factor analysis showed that curriculum coherence consists of three complementary components: consistency of the intended direction; an integrative approach to teaching and learning; and alignment between objectives, content and assessments. Moreover, the results showed that curriculum coherence contributes to the expected impact of the reform on the school level development. The study adds to the research on curriculum reform by showing that curriculum coherence is a central determinant of the reform taking root at the school level, and by introducing a scale for measuring perceptions of curriculum coherence within the context of large-scale national curriculum reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses the intended and enacted curricula that are produced when metacognition is included as an element within standards-based reforms for schooling. Reformers of the senior-secondary curriculum for South Australia (SA) and the Northern Territory (NT) hoped to improve the academic outcomes of all students, and especially those from low-SES and Indigenous backgrounds, by creating a curriculum that required year-10 students to reflect on their capacities. Reflection on learning in the literacy domain was a particular emphasis during the reforms. A constructionist epistemology and case-study methodology informed the approach taken in the study. Data collection and analysis involved accessing and analysing the intended curriculum, as well as the curriculum planning documentation designed by four teachers in one NT high school. The results indicate that learning opportunities to reflect on literacy capacities will not be created when the intended curriculum provides teachers, who are not literacy specialists, with little guidance about practices associated with metacognition and literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Large investments are made in curriculum materials with the goal of supporting science education reform. However, relatively little evidence is available about what features of curriculum materials really matter to impact student and teacher learning. To address this need, the current study examined curriculum features associated with student and teacher outcomes. We reviewed sample curriculum materials and documentation reporting on the instructional outcomes of 51 research‐based K–12 science curriculum materials. Our findings reveal that teacher supports, rather than student supports, had positive impacts on both student and teacher outcomes. Specifically, positive student outcomes were associated with curriculum materials with a larger scope and with materials that provide teachers with information about students’ ideas and recommended instructional strategies. Positive teacher outcomes were associated with the presence of information about targeted standards and recommended instructional strategies. Relatively fewer studies reported on teacher outcomes, and evidence about other dimensions of curriculum materials impact (e.g., spread, sustainability) was difficult to find. Overall, these results reveal the broad importance of embedding teacher supports and ensuring sufficient scope of content across coordinated curriculum units to support the development of conceptual understanding over time. Implications for the design of new curriculum materials and further research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the different ways in which teachers relate their situational agency and professional assignment to the national curriculum content and curriculum dilemmas. It builds theoretically on transactional realism and empirically on analyses of interviews with teachers, exploring the nature of teacher agency during the enactment of a new Swedish curriculum reform. To uphold a dual perspective of teachers' relation to the curriculum as both collectively and individually experienced and as both an ideal and realistic--practical relation, we term the future as 'projective experiences', the presence as 'practical-evaluative experiences' and the past 'iterational experiences' in relation to agency. Especially, we are interested in the 'what' in the curriculum -- what the teachers find intriguing, important or impossible and what affects how they relate to the curriculum as part of the multidimensional structures influencing their agency. This approach reveals that the crucial issue of teacher agency is related to the policy discourse on knowledge and equity as standards and the uniformity of assessment and its pedagogical consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter provides an example of how one university's institutional research office played an active role in using data from institutional studies to guide the university toward courses ripe for change, faculty toward successful teaching strategies, students toward successful learning behaviors, and the university toward assessing the impact of the changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments in Australia claim that standards-based reforms to schooling will result in greater use of assessment for and as learning. This study analyses the assessment practices that evolved within the planned curricula for senior secondary schooling in the Northern Territory of Australia during standards-based reforms. Case-study methodology was used, with each of the six teachers participating forming one case. The data collected and analysed included the texts created by the six participating teachers from a range of subject areas as they planned to enact the new curriculum. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with each of the six teachers. The findings indicate that the inclusion of subject-based performance standards in the curriculum for senior schooling did not result in teachers planning a curriculum that included assessment practices for actively engaging students in learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Japanese education system especially relevant to the school curriculum, which might support Japanese high performance in the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), mainly through Japanese policy documents. The Japanese education systems have been constructed by the local context of society and politics, and it is hard to analyse the reasons why Japan has seen better results in the previous PISA assessments than other OECD countries. However, the 2008–2009 revision of the Course of Study (the national curriculum in Japan) shows that the Japanese government was really concerned about the decline of Japan's ranking in the previous PISA assessments and revised the Course of Study in response to children's skills which the PISA aimed to measure (key competencies). The Japanese government has placed importance on the cultivation of human resources which are necessary to compete within the international community, and the PISA has had a large effect on the direction of Japanese education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Division of Graduate Medical Sciences at the Boston University School of Medicine houses numerous dynamic graduate programs. Doctoral students began their studies with laboratory rotations and classroom training in a variety of fundamental disciplines. Importantly, with 15 unique pathways of admission to these doctoral programs, there were also 15 unique curricula. Departments and programs offered courses independently, and students participated in curricula that were overlapping combinations of these courses. This system created curricula that were not coordinated and that had redundant course content as well as content gaps. A partnership of key stakeholders began a curriculum reform process to completely restructure doctoral education at the Boston University School of Medicine. The key pedagogical goals, objectives, and elements designed into the new curriculum through this reform process created a curriculum designed to foster the interdisciplinary thinking that students are ultimately asked to utilize in their research endeavors. We implemented comprehensive student and peer evaluation of the new Foundations in Biomedical Sciences integrated curriculum to assess the new curriculum. Furthermore, we detail how this process served as a gateway toward creating a more fully integrated graduate experience, under the umbrella of the Program in Biomedical Sciences. © 2015 by The International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 43(2):126-132, 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the education development and reform in the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Topics discussed include reliance on foreign education models, systems and curricula from countries such as Singapore, Finland, Great Britain and the U.S., challenges in creating a culture of innovation in the education sector and issues concerning hierarchical structures of educational institutions and systems in the reform agenda.