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

In this paper, following some brief introductory remarks, I provide a context to this Symposium by presenting a brief autobiographical account explaining how I became involved in curriculum theory and the idea of a knowledge-led curriculum and how I was led to write the paper under discussion. I then make brief comments on each of the six papers individually, concluding with some thoughts about the implications of the collection of papers as a whole for the future of curriculum theory. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This paper analyses the coverage of Indigenous topics in K-12 education in British Columbia (BC) using curriculum documents and course enrolment. It focuses on curriculum documents published between 1995 and 2010 and mandated in public education from 1995 to 2019, and argues that Indigenous topics were marginalized in the curriculum overall. Motivated by decades of work by Indigenous leaders and educators to grapple with non-Indigenous people's prejudices, ignorance, and lack of understanding, the British Columbia Ministry of Education has increasingly recognized the importance of integrating Indigenous topics into core curricula and has offered all students Indigenous Studies course options. However, coverage remained marginalized in the core curriculum and recent curricular revisions have relied increasingly on teachers' voluntary integration of Indigenous topics and meaningful consultation with local Indigenous educators and communities, for which insufficient support and resources are provided by the Education Ministry. The paper explores challenges to the curriculum's ability to combat prejudice, eliminate discrimination and promote tolerance, understanding and good relations among Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in the province. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to move beyond a critique of historically dominant ways of thinking about teaching and learning relationships to offer a conceptualization of relational pedagogy from a theological perspective. It offers commentary on the potential of relational pedagogy for Christian faith-based schools informed by the scholarship of German theologian Karl Rahner and the dialectical child psychotherapy of D. W. (Donald) Winnicott. An argument for a theological-relational pedagogy is outlined, followed by discussion of three features linking Rahner, Winnicott, and relational pedagogy: realizing our human-ness through relationships with others; the role of a dialectical unity between self and other; and the mystery of human subjectivity. The paper concludes by signalling some of the implications for faith-based curriculum and pedagogy arising from our argument, centred on the emergence of a new theology of childhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

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

The intent of this article is to explore the scholarly influence of Philip W. Jackson through examining the spread of his scholarship and the ideas he generated. The research design of this paper is borrowed from a previous study (Ben-Peretz & Craig, 2018) about another distinguished curriculum scholar, Joseph J. Schwab. The work begins with a biography of Philip Jackson and continues with literature reviews on the history of ideas and the use of knowledge in education. This background is followed by a description of the study's research method, 'inquiry into inquiry', and its data sources (Scopus-listed articles, published books/Google citations, invited addresses, transcribed interviews, conference proceedings, invited addresses, etc.) The papers' findings focus on (1) the influence of Jackson's ideas and approaches, (2) Jackson's direct impact through involvement in projects/organizations, and (3) Jackson's impact on the scholarly literature. Discussions of generative scholarship, intergenerational legacy and scholarly influence conclude the article, along with the recommendation that the 'inquiry into inquiry' approach be re-enacted with other noteworthy curriculum figures to more fully understand the influence of ideas and research dissemination in curriculum and instruction/teaching and teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many countries, including Australia, China, the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, have included art subjects in their core curriculum. Using the theory of governmentality as a critical lens to investigate the intricate power–knowledge system in relation to curriculum, arts and pedagogy, this paper makes a comparative document analysis of two contemporary arts curricula for children aged 5–6 years—the Beijing Kindergarten Happiness and Development Curriculum in the arts learning area (upper class in kindergarten), and the Australian Curriculum: The Arts (Foundation level). Curriculum is best understood as a multi-faceted phenomenon and this paper draws from research which categorized curriculum into three phases: the intended (or planned) curriculum, the enacted (or implemented) curriculum and the experienced (the learner experience) curriculum. By focusing on the first phase: the intended curriculum, this paper compares the documents that comprise the planned curriculum from two very different contexts, and thus makes a contribution to cross-cultural understanding of early childhood arts curriculum in ways that may lead to social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trends in curriculum reform recognise the need to develop skills and competencies in addition to specifying what knowledge should be taught and when. However, a balance between skills and knowledge is sometimes difficult to achieve. In this paper which takes mathematics as the focus, we consider reform currently underway in Wales, from the perspective of a 'knowledge approach' and from the perspective of the Successful Futures report which is, we argue, driven more by a skills approach at the heart of which are 'four purposes': developing young people as ambitious, capable learners; enterprising, creative contributors; ethical, informed citizens; and healthy, confident individuals. Our interest is in the contribution that mathematics makes to the four purposes; and contribution that the four purposes make (or do not make) to the development of a school mathematics curriculum. After outlining the background and context, the paper consults literature and experts to consider what mathematics is and how the learning of mathematics can be seen to fulfil the four purposes. The study contributes to understanding the difficulties of re-contextualising school subjects from the academic disciplines and proposes that operating with a curriculum driven by big ideas or overarching statements places higher demands on teacher knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Drawing on Bernstein's concept of recontextualization, this paper explores how mid-level actors interpret and translate curriculum policies in the context of growing concerns about the performance and accountability of education systems. Little is known about the work of recontextualization agents responsible for the professional development, support and control of teachers, uniquely positioned at the interface of policy and practice, and comparative perspectives are even scarcer. Based on empirical research in France and Canada (Quebec), this paper examines the work of pedagogic advisors and inspectors intervening at lower secondary school level. Data are drawn from interviews (n = 24) conducted in three mid-level school authorities. Our comparative analysis brings to the fore specific forms of recontextualization in each education system. In particular it shows important variations in the use of knowledge based on experience and observation and decontextualized knowledge drawing on research and statistical data. Agents also elaborate different discursive strategies projecting contrasting models of teaching. In both contexts, but to varying degrees, the rise of data and 'evidence' is reshaping the missions of mid-level actors, potentially eroding professional discretion and expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a special issue which aims to address the challenges facing the 'deliberative' educational knowledge traditions of educational foundations, curriculum theory and Didaktik as a consequence of the rising tide of empiricism in educational research, the 'what works' agenda in global educational reform and internal fragmentation within the traditions themselves. By examining the potential for the reconfiguration or reconstruction of these traditions, we ask whether it is possible to reinvigorate a 'powerful' educational knowledge that could provide a meaningful basis for educators to conceptualize their practice, and a robust response to policies that seek to narrow educational activity to a focus solely on learning outcomes and technical efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper undertakes an investigation of the ‘life’ of the curriculum concept ofchildren’s interestsin a preschool practice. The concept ofchildren’s interestsplays a vital role in the Swedish preschool curriculum text and in the preschool field. Strongly inspired by Actor-network theory readings, the paper aims at producing accounts making visible the making of the concept ofchildren’s intereststhrough relations among children, carpets, Minecraft figures, boxes, teachers and schedules in a preschool practice. The paper engages in ethnographic materials generated at a Stockholm preschool over a period of 10 months. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Curriculum theorists have acknowledged the relevance of ‘hermeneutics’, or theory of interpretation and understanding, to curriculum studies. In the European ‘Didaktik’ tradition hermeneutics has also been applied to the curriculum work of educators, but such an extension is rarer in the Anglo-American tradition. Educators in the latter tradition are expected to implement rather than actively interpret standardised curriculum. However, working with standardised curriculum is a process rich with hermeneutic significance. In this paper educator work with one form of standardized curriculum, so-called ‘competency-based’ education, is investigated. The touchstone of this investigation is a small study of educator curriculum interpretation practices in the Australian vocational education system, a system that allows educators very little scope to exercise professional autonomy with respect to the content of learning. Wilhelm Dilthey’s seminal hermeneutic theory is used to analyse the interpretative work of these educators. The paper foregrounds the complexity of this hermeneutic practice and challenges the assumption that the interpretation of standardised curriculum is a straightforward process. The argument is made that Australia’s vocational education system underestimates the hermeneutic dimension of educator work and further complicates the process by promulgating a textual form that is hermeneutically ambiguous. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Discussions about the what, the when and the how of teaching and learning in schools deal in German-speaking countries with the term Lehrplan, while English-speaking countries discuss similar topics with the term curriculum. Yet, these two terms are not just exchangeable terms in two different languages, but imply also two different styles of reasoning or two different modes of thinking. By the examples of a Lehrplan designed by Georg Kerschensteiner for the Munich school in 1899 and two different Lehrpläne for the elementary school in the Swiss canton of Zurich, one from 1905, the other just currently being implemented, the paper discusses the question, what is being studied, when the notion of Lehrplan defines the research focus. Against this backdrop the paper askes in a concluding chapter, what can be gained by guiding research by the Anglo-Saxon notion and tradition of curriculum history and if and how comparative research is possible, regarding the tight coupling of language and concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the challenges for teachers in positioning them as independent curriculum makers. History teachers in New Zealand have recently entered uncharted territory with the abandonment of prescribed topics for history and a new-found authority to determine the selection of historical knowledge taught to their senior secondary students. This paper examines the complex nature of the teacher's new role and responsibilities and argues that curriculum achievement objectives and national assessment places significant constraints upon teachers' selections of historical knowledge. There is the potential for substantive historical knowledge to be downplayed in favour of procedural knowledge and the potential for assessment drivers to dominate or distort selection of knowledge for history. Local curriculum making places a heavy burden of responsibility upon teachers with implications for students' access to powerful historical knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary objective of this paper is to discuss the implications of applying Habermas's concept of self-critical appropriation for rethinking the structure of the modernist curriculum, specifically the organization of school subjects and instruction time devoted to each of them. To this end, the paper examines Habermas's differentiation between the three expert cultures of science, morality and art in modernity as well as the role that Habermas envisions for education in modern societies. On the basis of the above differentiation, this paper briefly reviews three national curriculums (England, France, Finland) in order to substantiate the dominant scientific-objectivating orientation underlying the structure of current national curriculums. The review provides the contextual-factual background for rethinking the curriculum. Responding to the challenges facing curriculums in the postmodern era (both theoretical and practical), this paper presents two principles stemming from the application of the concept of self-critical appropriation: balancing the curriculum and the introduction of an integrator-subject for the development and exercise of communicative competences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an exploration of challenges arising in the interplay between a standardised peace education curriculum and a localised post-conflict setting. Drawing on interview data from two Kenyan schools, the paper explores the reception of peace education initiatives implemented in Kenya following the post-election violence of 2007/2008 through the voices of teachers and pupils. The analysis identifies two patterns emerging from the pupils' point of view; firstly an engagement with narratives of conflict addressing what happened during the outbreak of violence, and secondly an awareness of collective narratives of the past, centred on the question of why the conflict broke out. The data identifies a gap between the knowledge and perspectives of the pupils, and the level of engagement by the curricula and teachers in the same issues. Finally, the paper explores some implications of these diverging needs and perspectives in relation to the design and implementation of peace education curricula, particularly in relation to providing sufficient support for the teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In places where Islamic State (ISIS) took hold in Syria and Iraq between 2014 and 2017, its domination was followed by an elaborate educational system. As such, the terrorist organization's 'state program' is a unique case in recent history. Indeed, not only did it overturn the existing education system in Syria and Iraq, resulting in a hiatus in the schooling of children and teens, the organization went a step further by creating its own alternative educational system in its stronghold regions replacing the Syrian and Iraqi formal system. This topical paper presents a case study whose purpose is to produce a description and interpretations through interviews and official document analysis of the way ISIS established its education system. To understand these unique, unprecedented circumstances, we retrace the steps taken by ISIS to institute its education system. Our results show among other things that ISIS acted as a proto-state and attempted to redefine education through the lens of a sectarian vision of Islam. By this study, we hope to shine light on the unique context in which the curriculum was prepared and implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Textbooks are a widely used educational intervention that can affect student achievement, and the marginal cost of choosing a more effective textbook is typically small. However, we know little about how textbooks get from the publisher to the classroom. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the ways mathematics textbook adoption practices vary and predict adoption decisions. We use interviews with district leaders in a stratified random sample of 34 California school districts. We find isomorphic, highly formalized adoption processes in most districts. However, we observe some differences along dimensions of district size, technological interest/infrastructure, and English learner concentration. We recommend states produce and update lists of high-quality materials early and often, and that they use a highly rigorous evaluation process. We also recommend states experiment with encouraging similar districts to partner on textbook evaluation and adoption to respond to district demands for information and capacity building around curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study explored the institutional, programmatic, and classroom literacy curricula of a Canadian offshore school in Macau (school pseudonym: MCS). Undergirded by the conceptual tool of cosmopolitan literacies, this study specifically examined the network effects that influenced the forms of cosmopolitan literacies in MCS's three levels of curriculum. In exploring the English immersion-based programmatic curriculum for MCS, data show a universalistic vision of literacy that foregrounds essentialism and universalism in world and Canadian literature in English. Yet school policy-makers and teachers concerted efforts to adapt the parochial, Canadian programmatic curricula and responded to students' diverse needs and fluid identities in the local/global intersections. Findings also relate English and Mandarin literacy teachers' agency, collaboration, and creativity in enacting cosmopolitan literacy practices in the transnational education classrooms. The paper ends with a reconfiguration of cosmopolitan literacies for curriculum-making, pedagogy, and assessment in the 21st century interconnected schooling contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the questions and approaches of a five-nation cross-cultural study of state-based curriculum-making discussed in this issue ofJCS. The paper reviews the two decade-long interest of many nations in state-based curriculum-making and presents a framework for thinking about state-based curriculum-making as a tool of educational governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper frames the problem underlying the cross-cultural Organizing Curriculum Change (OCC) study of state-based curriculum-making. The paper discusses the increased use by states over the past two decades of the century-old instrument of the state-based curriculum and the tool of the curriculum commission. The paper contrasts the slender English-language writing on these institutions with the extensive German literature, with particular emphasis on the post-1970s German analysis and the revisionist analysis of the 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the interrelations between power, politics, academia and curriculum reform in British Columbia (BC) using social studies curriculum documents as a case study. It describes how curriculum reform occurred and argues that reform was undemocratic as it was largely the product of individuals with power who invited individuals with educational ideologies that were attractive to them to aid them in the revisions. These educational ideologies came from the USA, illustrating the influence of US ideas overseas. The non-democratic nature of the curriculum reform process may partly explain why teachers often resisted the revisions, and why government officials attempted to appear more democratic by increasing teacher participation in the curriculum revision process later in the century. However, curriculum revision remained undemocratic. The paper comments on whether the curriculum revision process in a democracy ought to be democratic or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public and policy discourse about the content of history curricula is frequently contested, but the voice of history teachers is often absent from such debate. Drawing on a large-scale online survey of history teachers in England, this paper explores their responses to major curriculum reforms proposed by the Coalition government in February 2013. In particular, it examines teachers’ responses to government plans to prescribe a list of topics, events and individuals to be taught chronologically that all students would be expected to study. Nearly 550 teachers responded to the survey, and more than two-thirds of them provided additional written comments on the curriculum proposals. This paper examines these comments, with reference to a range of curriculum models. The study reveals a deep antagonism towards the proposals for various reasons, including concerns about the extent and nature of the substantive content proposed and the way in which it should be sequenced. Analysis of these reactions provides an illuminating insight into history teachers’ perspectives. Whilst the rationales that underpin their thinking seem to have connections to a variety of different theoretical models, the analysis suggests that more attention could usefully be devoted to the idea of developing frameworks of reference. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Australia has recently moved from having curricula developed within individual states to national curricula, including in English. This move in Australia has coincided with debate over Michael Young's call for 'bringing knowledge back in'. English has historically been epistemologically unstable with an ever-contestable knowledge base, and this is especially true of literary knowledge. The Australian Curriculum: English was nevertheless framed in early consultation papers as focused primarily on knowledge—a focus reflected in the main organizing elements moving from the 'traditional' language mode organizers 'reading', 'writing',' listening', 'speaking', etc., to the organizers 'Language', 'Literature' and 'Literacy'. Here we investigate the specific uses of the words 'knowledge' and related terms such as 'know' and 'knowing' as one kind of analysis of how knowledge plays out in the Curriculum. We show that as the Curriculum itself developed, the constituent elements of the phrase 'knowledge, understanding and skills' came to align specifically to the constituent elements of the organizers 'Language', 'Literature' and 'Literacy', to the point where the term 'knowledge' came to be attached almost exclusively to 'Language', and then mainly in the Years Foundation—Year 6. This 'Language knowledge' then became continually positioned as underlying the 'skills' of 'Literacy', so that Literature is seen to be almost arbitrary to the fundamental imperatives of the Curriculum—a means through which the cultural intentions of the Curriculum might be serviced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on how relevance has been invoked as a curricular principle, both by students and teachers, in curriculum documents and in curriculum theory, to explore its variously conceived parameters and conditions. By posing the questions ‘relevant to whom?’, ‘relevant to what?’, ‘relevant how?’ and ‘relevant when?’ this paper exposes relevance as both a curricular virtue and a curricular constraint. It draws on an empirical project undertaken in the prevocational curriculum offered in Australia’s recently extended compulsory schooling for students in non-academic pathways. Data vignettes offer windows into two settings to exemplify the different ways relevance can be interpreted, stretched or contested. Using Bernstein’s distinction between vertical and horizontal discourses and knowledge structures, the analysis identifies what is gained and what is lost when relevance, variously defined, serves as a principle for curricular selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Operating within a neoliberal education reform context, performativity and teaching in schools has been a focus of study for a number of years. However, less is known about the effects of performativity on teaching and curriculum in the early childhood (preschool) context. Making a case for the intensification of performativity in Australian early childhood education, this paper reports on findings from a doctoral study and draws on research literature from the past fourteen years to illustrate how performative measures have increasingly affected teaching and curriculum. The way that performativity has intensified is discussed in three chronological phases, performativity emerging, consolidating and normalised. Teacher interview transcripts and curricular related policies were analysed using critical discourse analysis and Ranson’s typology of accountability regimes. Findings reveal that early childhood teachers have different ways of responding to performativity, with the teacher featured in this paper displaying three types of performative accountability: anxiety, confidence, and disregard. An implication arising from this paper’s findings illustrates how the effects of performativity on teaching and curriculum can be complex, contradictory and at times, unintended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

President Donald Trump has promised an expansion of voucher programs for private schools in the United States. Private Christian schools are likely beneficiaries of such an expansion, but little research has been conducted about the curricula they use or their suitability for public funds. This article describes and critiques the depiction of race in Accelerated Christian Education, a curriculum used in some voucher-funded schools in the United States, as well as in private schools in 140 countries. It employs content analysis and qualitative documentary analysis of the curriculum workbooks, and builds on Christian Smith and Michael Emerson’s theoretical framework of white evangelicals’ ‘cultural toolkit’ to explain the ideas about race in the curriculum. The paper finds that in addition to some overt racism, the system promulgates a worldview which does not have the capacity to recognize or oppose systemic injustice. It is argued that such a curriculum is not a suitable recipient of federal funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the teacher perceived applicability of historical topics for interpretational history teaching and the criteria teachers use to evaluate this applicability. For this study, 15 expert history teachers in the Netherlands striving for interpretational history teaching were purposefully selected. Teachers were asked to mention historical topics using a ranking task technique to rank topics in order of applicability and to elaborate on how the topics were ranked. The results showed a large variation in perceived applicability among topics, both within and between teachers. Eight different topicapplicability criteria were discerned in the teachers' elaborations: (1) topic knowledge; (2) topic affinity; (3) topic constructedness; (4) topic deconstructability; (5) topic abstractedness; (6) topic sensitivity; (7) topic materials; and (8) topic inclusion in the history curriculum. We found that teachers tended to judge topics as applicable for interpretational history teaching partly depending on the degree of 'canonised interpretativity' in lesson materials and the curriculum, and to the degree to which they belonged to 'cold' (morally neutral) or 'hot' (morally sensitive) history. A theoretical implication of the findings is that interpretational history teaching is topic-dependent. Teachers can be supported to teach history as interpretation by structured pedagogies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the lived curriculum from the vantage of the students in a case study of a Sino-Canada transnational education programme in China. The programme consisted of subject area curricula transplanted from Ontario, Canada, and taught in English, as well as subject area curricula from Mainland China that was taught in Mandarin. The study’s methodology capitalized on nine student participants’ creation of multimodal texts that were designed to articulate their identities and experiences within the programme. The paper reflects on the affordances and constraints of multimodal data collection and analysis with the goal of illuminating the participating students’ literacy learning opportunities and identity options as they experienced them in the programme. Key findings include that students experienced the curriculum and the programme in sometimes contradictory ways. The programme seemed to allow students to interact with imagined global others and the curricular learning opportunities seemed to expand students’ literacy and identity options. SCS’s Canadian/Chinese literacy curriculum, however, seemed to be bifurcated along linguistic and cultural lines and did not seem to promote syncretic literacy practices where students were encouraged to create new forms of meaning making. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Teaching, the core technology of schooling, is an essential consideration in investigations of education systems and school organizations. Taking teaching seriously as an explanatory variable in research on education systems and organizations necessitates moving beyond treating it as a unitary practice, so as to take account of the school subjects implicated in the work. Building on and extending earlier work, in this paper we examine subject matter differences in how one education system (Local Educational Agency) and its elementary schools organize for instruction in the core elementary school subjects. Specifically, this paper explores how education leaders and teachers in one local American school district interact with one another with respect to advice and information about teaching and learning in literacy, mathematics and science. We examine similarities and differences in school staff members’ advice and information networks and consider how these differences relate to the formal organizational infrastructure intended to support instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1970, Joseph Schwab published the first of four papers that argued for a turn to the idea of the Practical in curriculum research and practice. In this paper, I revisit Schwab’s original paper and explore the extent to which his case for the Practical is still relevant today. I first look at the past of the deliberative tradition in which Schwab’s argument is located. I argue that a more precise engagement with the work of Aristotle – particularly the distinction between making/production and doing, and between knowledge of the eternal and of the variable – can strengthen Schwab’s case and allow for a better understanding of the kind of knowledge and judgement needed in education. In relation to the present, I highlight three ways in which the current context has changed from when Schwab published his paper. These concern the strongly diminished space for teachers’ professional judgement; the rise of a call for evidence-based education; and the shift in curriculum studies away from practical questions. To (re)connect the field of curriculum studies and research with questions about the ‘doing’ of curriculum is, in my view, where a deliberative approach such as the one articulated by Schwab remains highly relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper begins by identifying what it sees as the current crisis in curriculum theory. Following a brief history of the field, it argues that recent developments have led to it losing its object––what is taught and learned in school––and its distinctive role in the educational sciences. Arising from this brief account of the origins and nature of this ‘crisis’, the paper argues that curriculum theory must begin not from the learner but from the learner’s entitlement to knowledge. It then develops a framework for approaching the curriculum based on this assumption which is illustrated by an example of how the Head Teacher of a large secondary school in England used these ideas. Finally, it examines three widely held criticisms of the knowledge-based approach developed here and the issues that they raise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of actively engaging in mathematics discourse in order to learn mathematics is well recognized. In this paper, I use Basil Bernstein's concepts of pedagogic discourse to document and analyse academic learning time of students in Years 8 and 9 at a suburban lower secondary school: in particular, for what proportion of class time students reported being academically engaged, their explanations for this engagement and how they felt about the discourse. It was found that many students had disengaged from mathematical endeavour as a result of the failure of the instructional discourse either to engage students or to serve the purpose of developing discipline-specific content knowledge. The reasons for this relate to the overemphasis on mundane mathematics resulting in some students lacking the cognitive tools to engage with the concepts and having neither the intrinsic nor instrumental motivation to persist with secondary school esoteric mathematics. The implications for mathematics curriculum development are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]