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This scoping literature review was undertaken by the Science and Engineering Education Research and Innovation Hub at The University of Manchester to enhance the understanding of how teachers can be supported to plan for progression in engineering education in primary and secondary schools in England. The aim of this literature review is to provide insight into Learning Progressions (LPs) published globally for primary and secondary school level. In setting out the context and parameters for the study the paper identifies and compares definitions for LPs. It synthesises emergent themes from 25 academic papers. Four main findings were deducted from the data papers. Firstly, UK curricular were not discussed. Secondly, within the dataset near parity between science and engineering-focused papers was revealed. Thirdly, of the data papers reviewed nearly the same number used pre-existing definitions of LPs to those that did not offer any definition or description of LP. Furthermore, around half this number created their own, or used a generalised description of LPs. Finally, the data papers highlighted a lack of common definition for engineering education LPs, unlike science LPs. None of the data papers provided an LP specific to engineering education aligned to the National Curriculum (NC) in England. Four recommendations emerge: i) engineering education should be recognised as a distinct subject within the NC for England; ii) more academic research and curriculum development is required within the field of engineering education LP specifically aligned with the NC in England; iii) industry and education would benefit from further collaboration to ensure that their respective needs and positions are adequately met through schools; iv) teacher professional development and resources need focused auditing and investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although medical school typically lasts 4 years, little attention has been devoted to the structure of the educational experience that takes place during the final year of medical school.Summary: In this perspectives paper, we outline goals for the 4th year of medical school to facilitate a transition from undergraduate to graduate medical education. We provide recommendations for capstone courses, subinternship rotations, and specialty-specific schedules, and we conclude with recommendations to medical students and medical schools for how to use the recommendations contained in this document.Conclusions: We provide an overview of general competencies and specialty specific recommendations to serve as a foundation for medical schools to develop robust 4th-year curricula and for medical students to plan their 4th-year schedules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article lists studies and papers rated highly by AMEE MedEdPublish, an open access online journal, covering topics such as curriculum development, feedback in medical education, and sociology in British medical education curricula.

After generations of codifying curriculum, the Reconceptualization turned away from codified curriculum to better understand curriculum. Just as before the Reconceptualization, problematic curricula continue to proliferate creating a troubling inheritance. This paper turns to one such troubling inheritance, the problematic curriculum of Hirsch et al. (2002). Recognizing the field's limited influence in large-scale curriculum development, this paper considers what it might mean to "accept (some) educational responsibility" for a troubling inheritance. Drawing on the concept of the anarchive, both that which is left out of archives and the surplus value of archives, this paper develops an approach to anarchival assemblage art with problematic curricula. While the field's relationship with schools provides a source of simmering conflict within the field, this paper argues for an experimental approach to the troubling inheritance of problematic curricula, reactivating it in new events to find out what else it might do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses research on the implementation of an educational workshop on writing of reflection papers as part of the required curriculum for Internal Medicine clerkship. It discusses findings on the increase in the level of deeper critical reflection skills among third year medical students compared to those of students who did not participate in the workshop.

Following the increasing impacts on the value of Western play-based pedagogy, early childhood (EC) teachers in China face developmental challenges related to understanding and implementing play-based mathematical education. The purpose of this paper is to explore Chinese EC teachers' perspectives on play-based mathematics teaching. In this qualitative study, semi-structured interviews and lesson plans are collected from six EC teachers in a Chinese kindergarten. Hedegaard's model is applied to frame analysis for capturing EC teachers' views and practices from a holistic perspective. The findings show that all six EC teachers valued play as a pedagogical tool for teaching mathematics, while their pedagogical decisions in applying play to children's mathematics are determined by the various demands from society, parents and children. The multiple demands from different perspectives result in challenges for teachers in designing collective play. This study revealed that only when play activity caters to the possibility of satisfying those demands can teachers pedagogically implement play for children's mathematical learning. The insights emerging from this study might address the pragmatic challenges that teachers face by enhancing teachers' professional development to support the advance of culturally sensitive play-based mathematics teaching in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the work of a particular document in issuing educational values. The document is the report Embedding Values and Attitudes in Curriculum: Shaping a Better Future, launched in 2021 and published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Inspired by a practice-oriented method of document analysis and the concepts of modifying work and contexting, we show how the issue of values is modified and transformed through the text. We illustrate how different data is used in the transformation with examples from the Nordic countries. Our analysis revealed five modifications that transformed the issue of values from a global societal issue embedded in international and national regulations to an issue defined by the OECD's Learning Compass and its nine competencies. The report gives prominence to the individual learner and competencies needed to navigate towards a future of well-being. Hence, the issue of values is reduced to universal competencies, and the report can manoeuvrer its argument to avoid issuing values as something controversial. Finally, we argue that the ways in which values are issued implies a curriculum design that is not compatible with the traditional curriculum format based on didaktik and Nordic ambitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing emphasis on inclusive education over the last decade has placed renewed focus on curriculum and the extent to which standard or different curricula should be enacted for learners with special educational needs. This paper explores the enactment process for a state-mandated, standard curriculum in Irish special schools. A two-phase, explanatory sequential mixed-methods approach to data-gathering was adopted. Phase 1 incorporated a questionnaire distributed to the principal of every special school in the Republic of Ireland (n = 133). Phase 2 consisted of a multi-site embedded case study with three special schools for children with varying levels of general learning disability. The findings illustrate how special education teachers modify the curriculum to make it more accessible for all learners and showcase the pertinence of curriculum design frameworks for framing those illustrations. The paper concludes by demonstrating the potential of a modified curriculum design framework for ensuring that learners with the most complex needs have better opportunities to access a curriculum with degrees of commonality to their peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

Since the colonial era, Latin American universities have been subjected to narratives about what it means to be a university. Drawing on the concept of coloniality, this paper examines curricular and teaching practices in higher education that aim to decolonise Latin American universities, a particular topic that has been under-investigated. By means of a systematic literature review and a thematic analysis, 40 papers authored by at least one scholar affiliated to a Latin American university were examined. The analysis identified three levels of educational practices (macro, meso and micro) that revolve around the principle of intercultural indigenous education. Further, six essential criteria (cultural, epistemological, relational, ecological, economic, political) in decolonising university education are proposed. The paper concludes by offering insights about decolonising curricula and teaching practices in universities and the ways in which decolonial educational initiatives based on critical border thinking and socialisation of power might transform Latin American universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes inspiration from the Indigenous Fijian practice of 'curui' – weaving or patching together – as a metaphor to explore connections between climate justice, gender equality, and education in Fijian policies and practices. The paper argues that neither gender equality nor education can be 'silver bullets' for the huge challenges that the climate crisis raises, particularly for small island developing states (SIDS) such as Fiji that exist at the sharp end of the crisis. The paper contributes close analysis of Fijian national climate change policies and development plans from 2010, identifying the ways in which these policies frame and discuss the connections between climate, gender, and education, and asking whether these policies acknowledge traditional ecological knowledges, and the extent to which they are aligned with notions of justice. It argues that connected approaches to education, centred in Indigenous knowledges and ontologies, have thus far been insufficiently included in Fiji's policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy classifies and shapes people/subjects in particular kinds of ways. Focusing on the context of Health and Physical Education (HPE), this paper analyses policy documents from Australia, the United States of America (USA) and Wales. We pay particular attention to how learners are represented within and across the three policy documents, and we apply Bacchi's 'What's the Problem Represented to be?' approach to guide the analysis. For us, problematization is a fruitful and positive process that enables educators to engage with a critical dialogue regarding the policies they are expected to enact. Our analysis highlighted that common across the policies were overlapping discourses of idealism, neoliberalism, healthism, and individualism, which serve to reinforce deficit language and a focus on what learners 'lack'. The problem of 'learner as lacking' is represented within the policies via at least three subject positions: 'the sedentary learner', 'the un-educated learner' and 'the naïve learner'. The findings suggest that the three policies were producing an ideal and perhaps impossible learner (subject) whilst at the same time representing the learner as a problem that the policy could 'fix'. This paper is important because it: (i) demonstrates how certain discourses and voices are amplified and silenced within curriculum policy documents and policy work more broadly; (ii) makes educational and health politics visible; and (iii) creates space for the profession to develop greater critical consciousness related to policy. In terms of future directions, we urge curriculum policy writers and other stakeholders to carefully consider how learners are categorised, represented and governed in and through policy. If curriculum policies, by their very nature, need to produce problems – in this case, the (im)possible subject - we invite educators to engage in critical conversations regarding the policies they are expected to enact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is difficult to identify direct causal relationships between school-based professional learning initiatives and changes in the participating teachers' competencies or their students' learning outcomes. This paper contributes a novel approach to examining the impact of such school-based professional learning by integrating the constructs of complex systems and agentic practice into how the processes in curriculum re-design contribute to professional learning outcomes. The paper first presents an integrated multilayered conceptual framework that combines perspectives on complex systems and agentic practices. Next, it outlines the main levels and aspects of the complex system that need to be considered when examining school-based professional learning initiatives. Then, using a case from a multi-school professional development initiative illustrates how this framework was applied to examine the impact of a professional learning initiative focused on a collaborative science curriculum redesign to support English Language Learners (ELLs). Analysing the agentic practices that emerged within and across different complex system levels provides a comprehensive insight into how the system, constraints or amplifies particular practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education has often acted as a social microcosm that reflects the growing levels of religious and cultural diversity in Australia, with educators facing the daily task of responding pedagogically and interculturally to the challenges this evolving context brings. This paper engages critically with intercultural initiatives and policies and their role in fostering inclusivity and cross-cultural understanding in education practice across Australia. It explores the discourses, policies, and curricula developments that attempt to address growing levels of diversity both within and beyond educational settings. The paper argues that policy statements and educational policies alone are not sufficient to ensure broader uptake of an intercultural pedagogic ethos. Rather, such initiatives need to be augmented by broader institutional leadership, adequate resourcing, and context-sensitive enabling strategies. This argument is corroborated by current evidence indicating that principled approaches to introducing intercultural perspectives in education require certain conditions before they can disrupt long-standing racist attitudes and exclusionary discourse. The implementation of systematic and transformative intercultural approaches in schools can create more inclusive pedagogic practices and respectful intercultural relations that transcend the boundaries of the schoolyard and extend into broader society. Targeted, long-term intercultural understanding trainings can also engender more constructive discourse within and beyond schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nurse role on an Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) team requires a specialized set of skills in psychiatric community-based care. While the ACT model has existed for fifty years, no nationally recognized standard curriculum to train ACT nurses has been developed. The ACT Nursing Project described in this paper aimed to create a competency-based on-board training program using the Developing a Curriculum (DACUM) method. Eight ACT nurses from three states served as the expert panel to create a DACUM chart detailing the full set of nine duties and 127 tasks required of ACT nurses. To verify the DACUM results, 57 ACT nurses from four states completed a survey and confirmed that 80% of the tasks identified by the expert panel were also performed by the validation sample of ACT nurses. This paper describes how the DACUM duties and tasks provided the framework to develop onboard training curriculum for ACT program nurses. The next step is to pilot the onboard training curriculum to newly hired ACT nurses to ensure they are equipped to meet the complex needs of people living with serious mental illness, and to increase their competency, job satisfaction and decrease the high annual turnover rate among ACT nurses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was declared a pandemic in March 2020. This rapid systematic review synthesised published reports of medical educational developments in response to the pandemic, considering descriptions of interventions, evaluation data and lessons learned. The authors systematically searched four online databases and hand searched MedEdPublish up to 24 May 2020. Two authors independently screened titles, abstracts and full texts, performed data extraction and assessed risk of bias for included articles. Discrepancies were resolved by a third author. A descriptive synthesis and outcomes were reported. Forty-nine articles were included. The majority were from North America, Asia and Europe. Sixteen studies described Kirkpatrick's outcomes, with one study describing levels 1–3. A few papers were of exceptional quality, though the risk of bias framework generally revealed capricious reporting of underpinning theory, resources, setting, educational methods, and content. Key developments were pivoting educational delivery from classroom-based learning to virtual spaces, replacing clinical placement based learning with alternate approaches, and supporting direct patient contact with mitigated risk. Training for treating patients with COVID-19, service reconfiguration, assessment, well-being, faculty development, and admissions were all addressed, with the latter categories receiving the least attention. This review highlights several areas of educational response in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and identifies a few articles of exceptional quality that can serve as models for future developments and educational reporting. There was often a lack of practical detail to support the educational community in enactment of novel interventions, as well as limited evaluation data. However, the range of options deployed offers much guidance for the medical education community moving forward and there was an indication that outcome data and greater detail will be reported in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phenomenon: An increasing number of refugees in recent years has led to changes in healthcare delivery. Historically, health care providers did not receive systematic and longitudinal training in refugee health. There is increasing interest among educators in developing educational opportunities for medical students to gain more training on how to care for this population. The aim of this scoping review was to identify and analyze existing literature on educational content and methods of delivery in Undergraduate Medical Education (UME) curricula related to refugees. Approach: The authors conducted a scoping review. Our search was conducted in seven electronic bibliographic databases. The search strategy was restricted to English language and scholarly articles. Three members of the research team tabulated and summarized extracted data. A qualitative thematic analysis was conducted to present findings. Findings: Of the 717 publications found, 24 met our inclusion criteria. The articles included in this review were published between 2003 and 2019. Thirteen (57.6%) were descriptive papers, three (11.5%) qualitative, four (15.3%) quantitative, and one (3.8%) mixed methods. Other publications included one commentary, one letter to the editor, and one review paper. Three main descriptive themes were identified: (1) Content related to refugees' curriculum, (2) Teaching strategies, and (3) Learning outcomes. Insights: Studies included in our review suggest that delivering refugee health curricula to medical students improve self-perception of cross-cultural knowledge, communication, and physical exam skills that are necessary to deliver proper healthcare. Medical schools should focus on developing a longitudinal and standardized approach to teaching refugee health through the use of interactive and diverse learning methods while engaging with the community to ensure a better provision of health care for vulnerable populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suellen Shay's work on higher education curricula foregrounds the importance of professional curricula which face inwards to disciplines and outwards to practice. This paper builds on her framing of professional curricula, distinctive in the differentiated knowledge base and the social relations which legitimate them. I extend Shay's work deeper into the internal governance structures underpinning curriculum decisions in engineering. Two dimensions of governance are explored: central control from the Faculty of Engineering over its departments; and the authority of individuals in department-level curriculum and accreditation roles over their colleagues. The empirical focus is on curricula reform towards 'graduate attributes' in engineering education, through a comparative study of eight universities in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Singapore, and Australia. The findings show that research-intensive universities are shielded from the full implications of accreditation requirements, while teaching-intensive universities are more likely to invest in developing the governance processes and systems demanded by professional bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many low- and middle-income countries, there seems to be a mismatch between graduate skills and healthcare industry requirements due to variability in curricula. With the current increased global demand for competent health profession graduates, harmonizing competency-based curricula (CBC) is necessary to address this mismatch. This paper describes how three health professions training universities in Tanzania and their two long-standing United States partners embarked on developing harmonized CBC for undergraduate medicine and nursing degrees. The main goal of the activity was to develop templates to harmonize curricula that would support graduates to acquire mandatory national Graduate Minimum Essential Competencies (GMEC) irrespective of the institution of their training. The paper describes the processes of engaging multiple institutions, the professions of medicine and nursing and various stakeholders to develop mandatory curricula generic competencies, creating milestones for assessing competencies, training faculty at each of the three partnering institutions in curriculum delivery and assessments, resulting in the adoption of the curricula by the University leadership at each institution. Ultimately the Tanzania Commission for Universities (TCU) a regulatory body required all schools of medicine and nursing in the country to adopt the curricula, thus creating a harmonized national standard for teaching medicine and nursing beginning October 2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses papers in the issue on topics including impact of curriculum choice on the social aspects of education in Great Britain, choice of subject and assessment method in Northern Ireland and Wales, and effect of education on labor market.

Many empirical studies about STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) curriculum present problems for students to solve. This paper draws upon the data collected from the enactment of an integrated STEM curriculum to discuss problems as constitutive of problem spaces where four Grade 5 Singapore students engage with the materialities and relationships to generate solutions from these spaces. The study seeks to address the nature of the problem spaces in STEM inquiry. Derived from the emergent coding of 12 hours of lesson videos, the findings illuminated that problem spaces emerged from familiar and dissimilar contexts in the curriculum. These problem spaces embodied epistemic infrastructures and epistemic emotions within which students exercised agency to collaborate productively and learn. Implications for STEM curriculum making that foregrounded epistemic considerations, rather than outcome-based learning, were discussed. This paper helps to further the field of curriculum studies in STEM education by contributing to the theorization of STEM curriculum by applying a process lens to deepen understanding of problems as problem spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Curriculum has become a core element of universities' competitive positioning, internationally and nationally. This paper presents a longitudinal analysis of policy processes and outcomes associated with 'radical' university curriculum reforms that resulted in divergence from institutions' own historical patterns and national conventions and traditions. The empirical investigations draw on a policy trajectory conceptual framework and focus on how two research-intensive Australian universities navigated global–local policy flows throughout their curriculum transformations. Findings revealed that each reform project manifested proactive policy learning and, ultimately, agency, as global and national influences were articulated into local contexts, with the effect of 'breaking the mould' of relatively standardised university curriculum provision in Australia. At the same time, the analyses revealed a similar pattern of intensified bureaucratisation of curriculum governance within the two universities, as well as the compromising of initial reform objectives in key curriculum areas such as interdisciplinarity, internationalisation and so-called twenty-first-century skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to demonstrate empathy is identified as a key social work attribute by the professional regulator and other professional bodies as well as in government guidance and the relevant QAA Subject Benchmark Statement. Empathy is strongly linked to the ability to learn from experience and, as such, has relevance beyond social work to higher education in general. This paper will focus on how a phenomenological approach to theorising empathy might provide a framework for the development of the social work curriculum. I argue that representational accounts of interpersonal understanding offer a conception of empathy that is both limited and hubristic. From a representational perspective, empathy involves making informed guesses about the experiences of other people, often described using the overused metaphor of 'walking in their shoes' (Lathrop & Parish 1895). In contrast, an enactivist understanding of interpersonal relations, based on a phenomenological approach, provides a more hopeful and socially just basis for social work practice. It also has clear implications for teaching approaches and curriculum design in social work education including a focus on the student- teacher relationship, embodied practice, and more effective use of simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent evaluation paper of the London General Practitioner Trainer Course by Knight et al questions the importance of educational theory in preparing GPs to become trainers and asks 'how much educational theory do GP trainers need to know in order to train effectively?' This paper places the authors' question under consideration, arguing that before the relationship between the theory and practice of education can be considered, the nature of 'educational practice' needs examination. There then follows a discussion of the work of Della Fish which presents two conceptualisations of educational practice in the context of postgraduate medical education in order to shed light on the different inferences contrasting epistemological and ontological conceptions can have, and the implications for curricula. This discussion is illustrated by offering the reader connections to papers in the field as evidence. At the heart of the paper is a conclusion that curriculum development and enquiry need to be sensitive to epistemological and ontological positionality as well as experiences and perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This paper presents a counter-narrative to the long-held belief that Physical Education (PE) is impermeable to change. Transforming and enacting curriculum is incredibly challenging and sometimes impossible but if teachers have particular resources available to them over time, this makes 'radical reform more, rather than less likely' [Kirk, D. 2009. Physical Education Futures. London: Routledge]. Purpose: This paper addresses the on-going and pervasive issue of sustainable curriculum transformation and enactment in PE. More specifically, the purpose of this research is to examine the source, nature and purpose of resources that made curriculum transformation and enactment possible in one school. Data collection and analysis: As part of an exemplary case study, 7 Secondary PE teachers and one Principal from an Australian Secondary school engaged in the process of curriculum transformation and enactment. Data consisted of semi-structured individuals (3) and paired interviews (6) and field notes. We drew upon the notion of 'contextual dimensions' and 'activity layers' to support the analysis. Findings suggest that the teachers were supported by resources that spanned different contextual dimensions (situated, material, external contexts and professional culture) and layers of activity. The most valued resources identified by the teachers were (i) structural and networked support; (ii) sustained leadership; (iii) a clear vision for PE in their school; (iv) professional learning; (v) time. Conclusion: The findings suggest that while changes in policy do not necessarily prompt change in practice, particular kinds of policy are necessary if the change is to be viewed as possible and worthwhile by teachers. In this study, a layered policy landscape acted as a catalyst for the teachers to reimagine what PE could look like in their school. Moving from vision to action, it was the interplay of resources across the contextual dimensions and activity layers that the teachers drew on to support curriculum transformation and enactment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online activities have spiked due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including language learning activities. As the world is aging, this affects senior citizens too. Yet, few studies have been conducted studying online (language) learning in this age-group. Moreover, no concrete pointers exist on how to go about such an online language learning course. This paper examines what should be considered when designing and implementing online language learning courses for seniors. To that end we present data from 73 senior language learners from two independent language learning contexts: the Netherlands and Scotland. The data were collected between May 2020 and August 2021. Data includes spoken and written samples from lessons, focus groups, interviews and questionnaires. Given the qualitative nature of the data and the aim of identifying patterns of meaning across the respective datasets, a reflexive thematic analysis (TA) approach was adopted. We employed an inductive approach to coding, using both semantic (explicit or overt) and latent (implicit, underlying) coding frameworks, in order to inform two overarching themes: "Navigating the digital highway" and "Camera ready for new friends." We discuss these themes and their sub-themes and arrive at concrete recommendations for the third-age language learning classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a qualitative study of teachers, teacher educators and educational policy makers, this paper examines how political history is framed within national history curricula at primary level and practised within classrooms in Northern Ireland (NI) and the Republic of Ireland (ROI). Within the ROI, educational policy and practice appears underpinned by belief in children's capacities to engage with complex ideas, against a relatively benign view of political history and within a tradition of teaching political history at primary level. In NI, political history is perceived primarily as contested and, despite challenge from teachers, policy level concerns cite the complexity of political history as necessitating the postponement of issues until second-level. The paper highlights the commitment of curriculum policy makers and educators, north and south, to further progressive history education and argues for curriculum, teacher education and ongoing consideration of children's capacities to support these endeavours. [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]

This paper outlines the development of a comparative research framework in subject didactics and applies this in the process of analysing the transformations from academic disciplines across different school subjects. The theoretical framework builds on the concepts of 'powerful knowledge' and 'transformation' and 'epistemic quality' within which transformation processes from the classroom to the societal level are considered as 'trajectories of powerful knowledge and epistemic quality'. The framework is used to analyse the findings from recent empirical studies across school subjects that have been reported on in publications arising from the Knowledge and Quality across School Subjects and Teacher Education (KOSS) network.1 The paper then focuses on analysing the transformations from disciplines across school subjects, given that the first boundary in defining powerful knowledge concerns knowledge that is specialized in both how it is produced and transmitted. To analyse this boundary, the findings from the empirical studies are grouped into broad subject categories. These are then compared with the corresponding disciplines by using the widely cited Biglan classification scheme of academic disciplines in higher education. Finally, we consider the implications for curriculum planning and teacher education policy and reflect on the concept of subject-specific educational content knowledge (SSECK). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the correlation between technology and the changing labor landscape has been the subject of much research, there are growing concerns regarding the rise of automation and its impact on the job market. Research focus has been on jobs that are most likely to be affected by automation in the era of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR). Very little, if any research has examined universities' readiness to meet the current and future 4IR curriculum demand needs, and their capabilities to produce graduates or skill sets that support the current and future labor market and technology changes. This insight paper explores South African universities' 4IR readiness against the backdrop of general industry 4IR adoption. An interpretive interview with three leading 4IR education training and industrial automation company directors offers insight into industry 4IR adoption in Africa, as seen against the available skills sets and/or labor force readiness. This paper has implications for curriculum redesign and planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In 2003, the World Federation for Medical Education (WFME) published the Trilogy of Global Standards for Quality Improvement of Medical Education, covering all three phases of education in medicine. The intention was to provide an instrument to be used by medical schools and responsible authorities in quality assurance and improvement of medical education. The standards were revised in 2015. Results: This paper reviews 29 published articles dealing with the practical use and analysis of the standards. 21 papers deal with basic medical education, six with postgraduate medical education and two with CPD. Conclusion: It is concluded that using the WFME standards can be a profitable endeavor with documented impact. Standards should be used as intended, i.e. as a template modified with local specifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper theorises empirical findings from a school in the north of England in order to contribute to theoretical understandings of racial microaggressions, particularly micro-assaults. In so doing, the paper argues that during the teaching of Black History, micro-assaults were articulated as racist humour and stereotyping, to increase tolerance for disparaging Black people and for justifying their unequal treatment. White teachers and their students were complicit in engaging in anti-Black racist humour and stereotyping, but from a Critical Race perspective, the paper argues that Black students' participation is best understood as a coping mechanism for reducing Racial Battle Fatigue (RBF) as a consequence of Mundane Extreme Environmental Stress (MEES). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparative analysis of two language policies developed in the 2000s by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). The two language policies analyzed in this paper are the 'Action Plan to Cultivate Japanese with English Abilities' and 'JSL [Japanese as a Second Language] Curriculum in School Education,' developed within the same temporal and spatial frame at the turn of the millennium in Japan. Focusing on lexical labeling in language and population management, it is argued that these two policies have dealt with mutually exclusive groups of the student population, for whom different kinds of bilingualism and Japanese language are imagined. Cumulatively, these two policies represent an unequal access to bilingualism in the Japanese context, combined with the Japanese dualism that indexes national and other speaker-hood through the distinction between kokugo- and nihongo-Japanese education, which has been a key mechanism in the creation of national boundaries in modern Japan. Through this analysis, this paper identifies the particularities of the Japanese case, as well as situating it in the global trend of unequal management of bilingualism. Abbreviations: MEXT: Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan [Monbu kagaku sho]; CNL: Council of National Language [Kokugo shingi kai]; CCA: Council of Cultural Affairs [Bunka shingi kai]; CJGTC: Commission on Japan's Goals in the Twenty-First Century [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates an Environmental Education programme where the barriers and opportunities for professional development, access to specialist resources, provision through technology and partnership are considered within the context of Wales and the demands of a new curriculum. The findings reflect on the first three years of an education programme that uses a Theory of Change framework to plan for learning with 9–11 year olds in Wales, UK. Drawing on qualitative individual and group interviews with teachers and pupils across six schools, the successes and challenges of this framework are presented. I suggest that combining a Theory of Change framework with a Capability Approach—focussing on values and agency—offers a more useful planning tool for curriculums developing strategies where teacher agency is encouraged—compared to using one approach alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With some of the propositions from the literature on 'policy enactments' as a backdrop, this paper addresses the circulation of a research policy innovation and its effects on the knowledge territory of an unlikely profession. Specifically, I show how the Research Excellence Frameworks' impact policy in the UK was an object first managed by policymakers but later released as an object of concern for professional academics, including philosophers. I follow 'impact' through texts, events and testimonies about its doings with a special interest in its creation, its polemical encounter with philosophers, its management and issues about its definition and the assessment criteria used and experienced by philosophers. I conclude with some remarks on the effects that the circulation and writing of impact case studies had on producing a social valorisation and attachment to impact, even amongst philosophers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers' feedback literacy is a focus of increasing attention in higher education. It may be framed through intentional design decisions, inter-relational aspects of engagement and pragmatic considerations of enacted curricula. Thus, teachers' feedback literacy is connected to both the enacted curriculum and students' relationship to feedback. How these connections take shape in particular approaches to the curriculum, affecting students' roles in feedback and evaluation is not as well-understood. This paper presents findings from an intervention aimed at developing students' peer feedback and self-evaluation skills in an undergraduate business course. Peer feedback and self-evaluation are increasingly common modes of engaging students as active participants in feedback and evaluation processes. It is therefore worthwhile to understand the ways in which these processes affect and link teacher and student feedback literacy. Data was analysed from a 14-week course aimed at developing students' competencies in self-evaluation, peer feedback and teamwork. Results are presented and discussed according to three major areas: how teacher's feedback on student engagement with feedback served as affective 'meta' scaffolding, the trajectory of students' growth in feedback literate self-evaluation, and the relationship of feedback literacy to trajectory of growth in teamwork competencies. The paper concludes with suggestions for further, crossdisciplinarity research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of the public good of higher education is closely related to the political, social and educational cultures in which higher education is embedded. It varies across contexts. However, widely used notions of the 'public' aspects of higher education, including the concepts of economic public goods and private goods, conventionally assume Anglo-American state/society/university assemblages. Anglo-American (and more generally, Western) discourses and terms are dominant in scholarship on public policy and higher education. This creates obstacles and lacunae in comparative studies, and employing solely Anglo-American notions can be especially problematic in non-Anglo-American contexts. This paper attempts to move beyond the conventional approach by conducting a lexical-based comparison of the Chinese and Anglo-American approaches to the public aspects of higher education. It identifies and explores key concepts of the public good of higher education in both the Chinese and English languages, establishing similarities and differences. The comparison contributes to a more balanced understanding of the public roles of higher education, illuminates new aspects of 'public', and may facilitate mutual understanding between scholars and between the Chinese and Anglo-American higher education systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the importance of Internationalisation at Home, access and support mechanisms which are provided and co-created by students and university departments to encourage sanctuary scholarship. The paper gives particular attention to activities that encourage meaningful interaction with local communities and widen international participation of marginalised groups, such as students from the global south and asylum seeker communities. The paper presents two case studies. The first case study focuses on a student-led project developed by the students and staff of Canterbury Christ Church University. The second case study projects students' voices from the global south and refugee communities at The University of Kent and University College London (UCL). The experiences of these students highlight the importance of welcoming and supporting students from marginalised backgrounds. They also demonstrate the need for both curriculum-based and co-curricular activity and student services which provided tailored support and encouragement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a framework for reflective writing specifically for academic purpose, offering a new contribution to the already established literature on reflection. Reflection is a notion that is fundamental to the development of emotional intelligence in our nurses and healthcare practitioners, with nursing curriculums designed to assess our students' ability to reflect. However, due to the use of the current reflective cycles and frameworks already positioned in the literature as structures for reflective writing for academic purpose, our students are finding reflective writing for academic purpose challenging. This paper therefore presents a discourse of the pedagogical practices of teaching reflection that offers amendments required to support a more naturalised embedding of reflection within the health curriculum, in particular the way in which we use reflection and reflective writing as a mode of assessment. The discussion advises on how best to support our nursing and allied health students, offering an alternative perspective on the role reflection plays in the curriculum. Most importantly, this paper presents a new unique framework for reflective writing for academic purpose: 'Experience, Deconstruction, Implementation' (EDI), which will support students in engaging more appropriately with reflection while naturalising the development of critical, analytical thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects an effort to consider the history of Albanian education within the context of the country's history. In it, the origin and evolution of Albanian education are described in connection with the country's social and political standing. It is divided into sections, each corresponding to a major historical period in the formation of the Albanian state and intertwined with major reforms in education: education during the Albanian National Renaissance (1830s–1912); education after the Declaration of Independence (1912–1928); education under King Zog (1930s); the 1946 education reform; the 1960s reform, which involved reorganising the system of education for long-term success; and education after the decline of communism in the 1990s and beyond. The paper chronicles how the dawn of the educational system, its organisation and its curriculum were designed to prepare "period-specific" citizens. It is concluded that the roots of the Albanian national education system took hold during the Albanian Renaissance as a necessity of national survival and that the system's development through time is intertwined with the country's constitutional standing, echoing the secret workings of national life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To uncover and analyze conceptualizations of cross-institutional collaboration in engineering education, a systematic review study was conducted, identifying commonalities in frameworks, assessments and evaluations, and challenges across prior studies. 74 papers were reviewed, revealing study descriptors, theoretically applied frameworks, outcomes of assessments and evaluations, and common challenges. The findings indicate that the concept of cross-institutional collaboration in engineering education is region-specific, with papers most frequently originating from the US. The outcomes identified also highlight the difficulty in establishing clarity among outcomes based on assessments and evaluations, since the majority of the reviewed papers do not include empirical data gathered outside the collaborative activities. The structural and personal challenges and barriers found underline the need for more efforts to ensure successful collaboration with and across engineering education. Finally, designing, delivering, and sustaining collaboration require further attention from decision-makers in engineering education to address and facilitate collaboration between academic staff and students across institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lesson study, a popular method of professional development in which instructors collaborate to critique and improve a lesson, can be used for curriculum development. This paper describes an implementation of lesson study that went through two iterations across different, related, contexts: an undergraduate mathematics content course for secondary preservice teachers and a professional development session with practicing middle and secondary teachers. We describe the ways in which the lesson study process helped us develop curriculum for advanced undergraduate courses for future teachers and provide our insights into the benefits and challenges of this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of 'knowledge' is central to education, particularly when it comes to the school curriculum. This paper makes the case for engaging in conceptual analysis, and in particularly conceptual engineering, in educational studies. Conceptual engineering emphasises analysing concepts with their purposes in mind. To illustrate the importance of this sort of conceptual analysis in education, I track the educational impact of three concepts of knowledge: (1) the traditional philosophical concept of knowledge as justified, true belief; (2) Michael Young's concept of 'knowledge of the powerful'; and (3) Young's concept of 'powerful knowledge'. I argue that knowledge as justified, true belief is too abstracted from educational purposes to provide much guidance for curriculum planning. Young's 'knowledge of the powerful' prioritises the social role that knowledge can play over its value to individual students. Finally, 'powerful knowledge' is too unclear to provide appropriate guidance to policy makers and practitioners. By examining the interactions between these concepts of knowledge and historical policy and practice in education, I conclude that the focus of conceptual engineering on clarity about the purposes of education is central to good conceptual analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Angrist and Pischke (2017) call for a pedagogical paradigm shift by pointing out that econometrics courses often do not align with modern empirical approaches employed by economists. This article's authors propose a modern capstone experience, designed to address these concerns by integrating econometrics into the traditional capstone approach. They couple a full econometrics course with a traditional capstone course by weaving a cohesive econometrics-heavy research paper through the two courses. They feel this approach addresses the lack of econometrics skills among economics majors while simultaneously making some necessary improvements to undergraduate econometrics content. They hope this article will be a valuable resource for programs changing course requirements or revamping their curriculum to better fit the increasing demand for data analysis skills in the job market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an ethnographic account of how Golden Harvest International School in Bengaluru branded itself as both 'International' and 'Indian', by elaborating discursive practices within the school. Drawing upon scholarship that has sought to delineate the ways in which globally hyper-mobile Indians construct a distinctive cultural identity, the paper shows how a fusion of national and international allowed the school to cater to a particular set of elite parents, who were globally hyper-mobile even as they sought to be 'appropriately Indian'. The paper pays attention to how cultural practices and resources in the school operated within a forward caste-Hindu ethos that was presented as 'Indian', while also responsibilising teachers, students, and even parents to ensure the school acquired and retained globally valued credentials such as accreditation for the Middle Years Program of the International Baccalaureate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few years, the civics curriculum for Israeli high-schools has become the centre of a heated political debate. Following this debate, in May 2016 a revised official textbook was introduced. This paper draws on an in-depth analysis of the revised official textbook, comparing it to the previous official textbook published in 2000. The analysis focuses on the discursive changes that took place regarding the ways in which the revised textbook conceptualises Israeli citizenship. A particular focus is placed on how the revised version of the official textbook often prioritises the ethno-national model of the nation state over and above the commitment to democratic values, including minority rights. The main argument of this paper is that these changes are a reflection of the penetration of a neo-Zionist discourse into the civics curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel process perspective on educational equality policies by examining the relationship between gender equality discourses and gender binary inequalities in the deliberative design process of the Finnish Basic Education Core Curriculum 2014. The analysis applies Nancy Fraser's theory of three-dimensional justice to feedback comments (n = 73) and the equality statements included in the draft and final core curricula. The study demonstrates how gender equality discourses affirm or transform gender binary inequalities and how they changed statements between curriculum versions. The findings show that transforming gender binarism was possibly a challenge to promoting equality in the curriculum design process: No discourse alone was able to transform binarism, and only discourses affirming binarism changed the final curriculum. This paper argues that a combination of redistributive and recognitive equality discourses can contribute to the transformation of gender binarism to make it a core element of educational equality discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The GeoCapabilities project asks how powerful geographical knowledge can be brought into a curriculum to enhance students' capabilities to be free to make choices for a life they value. This paper reports on the GeoCapabilities phase 3 project which explored the social justice dimension of GeoCapabilities by working with teachers and students in challenging schools. The capabilities lens, made practical through tools for curriculum making and evaluation, shows how geographical knowledge (of migration in this case) can enhance a person's capabilities to make real choices about how to live. It also shows that the affective dimension is strongly connected to geographical knowledge including feelings, moral standpoints and values. The inequalities, injustices, fears and hopes raised when students engage with migration geography, open a space for thinking about problems, causes and alternative futures, inviting a critical lens to how political economy shapes the world. The literature and the project of GeoCapabilities have focussed on powerful disciplinary knowledge. Whilst geographical knowledge is a crucial component, I argue that an exclusive attention to disciplinary knowledge may be misleading and the concept of geographical capabilities should broaden to attend to how knowledge across disciplines, feelings, attitudes and values operate together for futures-oriented capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Republic of Ireland there has been substantial investment in Early Years provision. The number of different types of settings for pre-school children and the associated research has grown significantly. This paper contributes to existing knowledge by reporting the findings of a qualitative participatory study carried out in the Republic of Ireland and involving a comparative analysis of the views of 90 pre-school children from three different types of setting. Within a conceptual framework that acknowledges the impact of neo-liberalism, the paper argues that despite the growing diversity of settings, provision is underpinned by three main dominant discourses, namely schoolification, risk avoidance and quality assurance. The influence of these on the lived experiences of young children is then explored focusing in particular on how, and in what ways, children exercise their agentic capacity. It is argued that young children's opportunities to exercise their social agency is at times constrained because of the influence of the combined discourses, which creates a sense of fear in staff (fear of parental complaint, fear of losing job, status and setting registration). Implications for provision and practice are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employability development has become a central concern of higher education, with many students attending university to enhance their employability and career development. Universities offer a range of curricular, co-curricular and extracurricular employability-building activities, including work-integrated learning, mentoring and career counselling. However, participation in these activities, barriers to engagement and their impact on employability are unclear. This paper examines student engagement in diverse employability-building activities, barriers impeding participation and their perspectives on how activities develop aspects of employability. The methodological approach encompassed an online survey of recent bachelor graduates (n = 324) from two Australian universities and focus groups to further explore participants' experiences (n = 11). Findings showed relatively low participation rates in most activities, with the greatest engagement in external paid employment and work-related activities (e.g., internship). These activities were also perceived as the most useful for developing a sense of professional self, networks and securing work. Barriers to participation included work/study commitments, financial/health pressures and lack of confidence and awareness, somewhat varying by graduates' background characteristics. Benefits from activities varied by their type, along with students' personal characteristics. Findings highlight the importance of embedding employability-building activities in the curriculum and signal potential ways to increase engagement in diverse cohorts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]