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This paper critically examines the application of research into cognitive neuroscience to educational contexts. It first considers recent warnings from within the neuroscientific community itself about the limitations of current neuroscientific knowledge and the urgent need to dispel popular 'neuromyths' which have become accepted in many classrooms. It also criticises the use of over-simplified neuroscience to add scientific credibility to curricular reform, as has been the case in the rationale behind the recent implementation of the Northern Ireland Revised Curriculum. The paper then draws on the philosophy of Wittgenstein to highlight a further conceptual confusion which often surrounds the application of neuroscience to education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes a recent review of Library and Information Management courses offered by the School of Information Studies at Charles Sturt University, and the resulting program of curriculum renewal and expansion. This program aimed to address concerns over the long-term sustainability of the courses and respond to an increasingly converging professional landscape. The courses were redesigned in a way that allowed them to maintain their relevance to the School's established librarianship market, while at the same time develop a significant application to other information fields. This was achieved by essentially turning the curriculum on its head. Instead of a library focussed core with electives in other information areas, the new curriculum offers core subjects that cover the information-people-technology nexus in generic fashion and provides a foundation for a wide range of specialisations. This transformation represents what could be described as a move from a traditional Library and Information Studies (LIS) approach to a broader Information Studies (IS) orientation, accommodating advanced areas of study in specific fields, including Librarianship (L). The paper goes on to discuss key issues concerning the implementation of the course redesigns, and the results of their implementation to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent policy in England has suggested that educational outcomes will be raised if schools specialise in particular subjects. In contrast, calls for the reform of 16-19 education have suggested that these outcomes will be improved if students become less specialised in their studies. At present, there is a limited evidence base from which to judge these arguments. In particular, we do not know the extent to which students' achievements in 16-19 education are higher when they choose subjects which play to their perceived strengths. We also do not know whether students are more likely to choose to study subjects taught by more effective departments. That is, outcomes may be affected by the relative strengths of students or departments in circumstances where there is freedom to choose. In this paper we provide evidence of the existence and strength of these relationships. This evidence suggests that reducing the scope within schools for specialisation or competition will reduce average student attainment and these effects ought to be taken into account when evaluating alternative curriculum policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the ‘progressive’ influence of the English Plowden Report and Scottish Primary Memorandum on British primary curricula from the 1960s onwards, secondary education has generally continued to follow a more traditional subject-centred route and post-war educational theorists have not generally been favourably inclined to other than subject-based modes of curriculum planning and organisation. However, in the light of current curriculum reviews on both sides of the Scottish border – calling for more educationally meaningful curricula – the perennial issue of how school knowledge might best be ordered for the coherent educational experience of pupils seems worth revisiting. To this end, this paper examines some of the influential post-war philosophical arguments against integrated and interdisciplinary approaches to the curricular organisation of knowledge, concluding that they are not as compelling as they might formerly have seemed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Department for Education and Skills currently shows a high regard for the potential of technology transforming the British education system. Government White papers demonstrate e‐learning‐based unification strategies that reinforce the message that introducing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) will raise standards in schools. This paper examines the effect of these developments on teachers and pupils, and questions the government’s motivation for change. The introduction of ICT has not been complemented by increased levels of effective professional development for teaching staff in the pedagogy of ICT across the curriculum and may have merely served to reinforce the generational digital divide. In attempting to enchant the pupils, the government may have alienated the teachers. This paper suggests that the Department for Education and Skills should place more emphasis on developing strategies and providing funding for solutions to gaps in the professional development of teachers in their pedagogical understanding of ICT across the curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the evolution of the educational system in Great Britain. Duration of curriculum in comprehensive schools; Implementation of the 1944 Education Act; Debate over parental choice of schools, standards and the structure and content of the curriculum.

The purpose of this study was to use Fink's (2003) taxonomy of significant learning to redesign courses and assess student learning. Significant improvements were found across the semester for students in the six courses, but there were differences in which taxa showed improvement in each course. The meta-analysis showed significant, positive changes across disciplines in the areas of foundational knowledge, application, human dimension, and learning how to learn. This study provides support for Fink's taxonomy in which significant learning can be achieved through course redesign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper presents the findings from a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded study designed to develop a national profile of accredited and unaccredited NASPAA programs with health specialty tracks, one of the most rapidly increasing practice domains. The results will be used to establish baseline data for the comparison of health specialty tracks, to provide a knowledge base for the creation of standards and guidelines, and to yield insights into program directors' observations on the initiation of an additional accreditation process. We used a typology with six classifications to examine all facets of these programs through data collected from a cross-sectional study consisting of a written survey, a telephone interview, and a syllabi review. We found 50 percent of NASPAA programs with health specialty tracks to be geographically concentrated but positioned within a variety of institutional locations. Program size as measured by the number of students enrolled, curriculum structure, and the number of faculty varied. Health management and policy specialty tracks continue to increase, and respondents believe this track adds value to the mission of their institutions. Telephone interview responses indicated a slight preference for an additional accreditation of health specialty tracks. However, the shared responsibility for specialty track offerings found in some programs, the variety of institutional settings, and the variation in program size, structure, and resources indicate the need for flexible, adaptable standards and guidelines that are compatible with the unique features of this specialty track. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines educational standards in the U.S. on the basis of three books. The three books "One Size Fits Few: The Folly of Educational Standards," "National Standards in American Education: A Citizen's Guide" and "The Way We Were? The Myths and Realities of America's Student Achievement" which appeared at different points during the last decade, provide perspectives on the key issues about the need for standards and the creation of standards and accountability systems. Exploring common themes from the three books provides insight into the context for standard-based reforms.

The article examines the relationship between the society and the school curriculum citing the sifting process that allocates and distributes curricula with assessment systems of differing significance. Apparently, intervention in education may be manifested in two teaching situations namely, in relation to the physical environment and in relation to some form of social, economic, political and cultural practice. Locality then is used to demonstrate, illustrate and facilitate the exposition of a decontextualized meaning within the context of a school subject.

The article presents the author's views regarding the U.S. national ranking of Samford University, the largest privately supported institution in Birmingham, Alabama. It states that the University ranked 27th in the top 30 of "National Universities" according to a report released by "Forbes" magazine. It notes that the rankings of the universities in the U.S. were developed by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP) and were released for the first time in 2008. It explores the unreliability of the ranking made by CCAP as it has created disparity with the ranking in the "U.S. News and World Report." The standards, courses, student performances, and the quality of teaching in the university are also featured.

This article traces part of the history of neoconservatism in the United States and analyses its impact on contemporary schooling. It examines the political evolution of a fraction of old leftists whose disenchantment with the possibilities of radical transformation led them to become new rightists. Whether attacking the countercultural left or the welfare state in the 1960s, or critical multiculturalism more recently, neoconservatives have embraced anti-utopianism as the only corrective for the assumed naivete of leftist cultural and economic desires. Concerns for the 'restoration' of cultural and national order are evident in reforms endorsed by this segment, including educational standards and a core curriculum that mediate against the progressive monopoly presumed to exist in schools. Rather than allowing more radical desires to be disciplined by such reforms, it is imperative to reclaim the freedom dreams embedded in past democratic movements and to learn from the grassroots efforts of communities working to create real utopias in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work students create should help them develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed in the adult world. In this article, the authors identify adult roles essential for young people to develop and outline ways teachers can use curriculum standards to create assignments and assessments that prepare youths for those adult roles in society. They also provide guidelines for scoring these assessments and a sample rubric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because no distinction is made in the Council on Social Work Education's educational standards about the frequency, intensity, or pervasiveness of the various forms of oppression, social work education affirms what may be called the equality-of-op pressions paradigm. This article contends that, although the equality-of-oppressions paradigm is a valuable perspective, its ascendancy in social work education may be placing the coverage of people-of-color content at risk of being diminished. This article examines two implications of the equality-of-oppressions paradigm for people-of-color content: (1) the expanded definition of diversity and (2) racism's persistence in social work education. The article also offers a model of differential vulnerability to help prioritize the various forms of oppression important to social work education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors examined a model of instruction for English-language learners (ELLs) who were learning academic English while they tried to meet content standards required by the nation's education reform movement. In previous work (J. Echevarria, M. E. Vogt, & D. Short, 2000), the authors developed and validated a model of instruction (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol; SIOP model) for ELLs. In this study, the authors tested the model for its effects on student achievement. Findings revealed that students whose teachers implemented the SIOP model performed slightly better than did a comparison group on an expository essay writing task, which closely approximated academic assignments that ELLs must perform in standards-based classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on finding resources for course design and teaching, with emphasis on works that have appeared in the past 10 years in the United States. It also highlights important new print and Web-based material with an emphasis on the past five years. The Web site of the Association for Integrative Studies has materials that may be down-loaded, including sample course syllabi, a directory of doctoral programs, guidelines for accreditation in interdisciplinary general education, interdisciplinary writing assessment profiles. William Newell's 1998 interdisciplinarity reprints "classic" essays on the nature of interdisciplinary studies include a guide to syllabus preparation and a synthesis of the reprinted essays organized around seven categories of questions about interdisciplinary study and integration.

The article examines the iatrogenic consequences of standards-based education in the U.S. Despite its pandemic acceptance, the standards-based solution has some negative side effects which include the following: propagation of a fixed curriculum; de-emphasis on individualization; subversion of the teacher; focus on measurable outcomes; and development of an expensive, expansive bureaucracy unrelated to instruction. For parents, standards offer an indication of the average achievement level of students in a particular school. For teachers who do not know their subject matter and have little instructional competence, standards offer a place to start.

Would it not be a great satisfaction to the king to know at a designated moment every year the number of his subjects, in total and by region, with all the resources, wealth & poverty of each place: [the number] of his nobility and ecclesiastics of all kinds, of men of the robe, of Catholics and of those of the other religion, all separated according to the place of their residence? ... [Would it not be a useful and necessary pleasure for him to be able, in his own office, to review in an hour's time the present and the past condition of a great realm of which he is the head, and be able himself to know with certitude in what consists his grandeur, his wealth, and his strengths? (Marquis de Vauban, proposing an annual census to Louis XIV in 1686, cited in Scott, 1998. p. 11). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deals with the concerns and recommendations of the National Commission on Excellence in Education regarding curriculum, assessment and textbooks in the U.S. Examination of state-level changes in curricular requirements; Associated changes in student course-taking patterns in mathematics and science; Support of parents and teachers for educational standards and testing.

A new system of schools' inspection, under the `Office for Standards in Education' (OFSTED), was set up in 1992. Nominally independent, it was appointed within the flame of the general restructuring of public institutions and of tile government's marketization and managerialization of the education system in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As the operations of OFSTED bear directly on inspectors and teachers, it provides good opportunities to study the effects on them of restructuring and how they cope with the powers of the state. The values behind the new reforms contrast sharply with the prevailing child-centred discourse preferred by primary school teachers. Inspectors, in the actual execution of inspections, represented themselves as moderating their approach in a kind of humanistic manage which apparently goes some way to meeting the teachers' position. However, this is not how the inspections were experienced by the teachers. They were conscious of a deep and damaging value clash in the areas of knowledge, pedagogy, assessment and culture. Their lives, selves and work became colonized by the OFSTED process. At the more traumatic moments, they flit deprofessionalized. Like the inspectors, however, they devised their own coping strategies, involving both distancing and engagement, staging performances and various other strategical measures. Both inspectors and teachers avail themselves of a range of discourses in negotiating personal ways through structural constraints. However, their solutions are boundaried in their own life worlds rather than meeting across them in common purpose. They are personal, rather than structural, solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a critical analysis of the contradiction in the accreditation process of Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) programs. While the standards mandate that undergraduate social work education must prepare students for beginning generalist practice, they concurrently mandate that the results of systematic outcome evaluations must inform program planning and curriculum design. During the last quarter century, baccalaureate social work education has struggled to become a respected partner with graduate social work education. BSW programs have succeeded in earning this respect, to a great degree, through a responsible integration of practice experience into educational philosophy. Much of this improved curriculum development owes to the refinement and sophistication of the accreditation process, particularly as that process relates to generalist practice. This contradiction raises the issue of the relative priority of standards and the reality of social work practice in the marketplace.

Focuses on the proposed unification of the regulation for post-primary schools in Great Britain. Foundation subjects of the national curriculum; Improvement in the educational standards; Professional life of teaching.

Focused on efforts aimed at harmonizing two national educational curriculums in Great Britain. Overview concerning Stalin's curriculum; Ten foundation subjects under Baker's curriculum; Role of political control in harmonizing both curricula.

The article examines the failure of the attempts in British colonial education to adapt western education concepts to Black African conditions. The attempts were based on the suggestions of Jesse Jones as a result of the Phelps-Stokes commission in the United States. Key reasons for the failure of these concepts include: the fact that the primary school teachers were overtaxed by the exacting requirements of the adaptation strategy; the fact that the teachers were neither trained nor provided support by other community institutions; and the fact that the work-oriented and environment-oriented reformed curricula required a degree of creativity, flexibility and adaptability which made the teachers feel insecure.

The article presents analysis of the comparative study of secondary education systems which indicates that such systems have been structured by societies in a state of inadequate awareness. Focus is made on centralization, the curriculum, and organizational structures. It is observed that secondary educational systems still attempt to regulate the number of candidates applying for a relatively few university positions. They also try to avoid the production of too many dissatisfied and disappointed students who are unable to get the prestigious jobs that they have expected.

The author reflects upon the use of high stake standardized tests in U.S. schools. The author comments that this obsession with higher standards will weaken the efforts to achieve high quality learning and teaching in public schools and stresses that more appropriate steps, like smaller classes, should be adopted. The author analyzes the use of standardized tests and reflects that they demand more standardized curriculum and their harmful impact on children.

The article reports on the proposed creation of an international university entrance examination. A resolution was passed in 1963 at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization General Conference, asking the International Schools Association (ISA) to conduct an investigation on the coordination of academic standards and curricula in international schools. An international curriculum was developed in History, to determine if such an examination was a necessity. It was decided that a separate organization was to be established. The International Schools Examination Syndicate (ISES) was created, which received grant from the Twentieth Century Fund. The ISA continued its work on the development of primary school curricula, leaving the secondary schools to ISES.