It is commonly understood that policy makers make curriculum policy and teachers implement it. Some teachers, however, have been in on the ground floor of curriculum policy development. Driven by events in their life histories and teaching contexts, these teachers develop and teach original course material in their own classrooms. Over time they…

This document-based historical study looks back at the early years of the social foundations of education program that originated at Teachers College, Columbia University, in the 1930s-1940s, and focuses on the sociopolitical, intellectual, and educational currents that helped bring it about. Drawing on archival materials and published monographs…

Constructively critical and inclusive dialogue about conflictual issues is one necessary ingredient of both democratic citizenship and peacebuilding learning. However, in North American classrooms populated by heterogeneous and non-affluent students, pedagogies involving discussion of conflicts are rarely fully implemented, sustained, or inclusive…

This article discusses the ongoing effects of colonialism on Aboriginal peoples in Canada and how these might be revealed and disrupted through particular curricular initiatives, informed by understandings of critical peacebuilding education. One such initiative, treaty education, has the potential to disturb dominant national narratives in…

This article reports the development of integrated arts curriculum in two Hong Kong secondary schools over a 9-year period. Initial findings display a range of individual responses to educational change that are both non-predictable and non-linear. Chaos theory is used to explain these varied responses in terms of bifurcations. The findings of…

A major goal of this study was to inquire into and gain an understanding of teachers' emotional responses to cultural differences by investigating how teachers handle stories with intercultural themes. The broader goal was to inquire into teachers' emotional lives that though not necessarily visible to them, nonetheless affect what they perceive…

To date, literacy educators receive little instruction and, indeed, little research exists on facilitating critical discussions about sexuality in classrooms. Addressing these issues with students, however, grows increasingly urgent, particularly in light of critical media literacy efforts and progressive literacy pedagogies that incorporate…

This study presents an analysis of the consequences for students when performance assessment and differentiation practices are combined, as part of attempts to increase minimum standards within upper-secondary schooling. Recent standards-based curriculum reform in Australia demonstrates how a focus on minimum levels of achievement can limit the…

Basic reading comprehension and summary tend to be the focus in social studies and history classrooms, if reading and writing are included at all. But such a focus inhibits a conception of history as an interpretive discipline grounded in evidence that is analyzed, not simply accepted. Understanding the past is impossible without such historical…

How do democratic practices relate to social justice in our classrooms? What risks to social justice might democratic classroom discussions pose? In this article, I respond to these questions by drawing upon educational scholarship and data from a qualitative study in four U.S. secondary classrooms on the meanings and implications of teaching for…

As reading continues to become governed by a spatial "logic of the image" rather than strictly a temporal or linear logic of written language (Kress, 2003), and readers increasingly engage with a range of Internet-based texts, a host of challenges ensue for educators and students alike. One of the most vexing of these challenges deals with…

While the mainline eugenics movement in early 20th century was closely associated with racism and the European Holocaust and was present in biology textbooks in the early 20th century, the following article finds that a transformed eugenics could be found the U.S. science curriculum by mid-century. The following article analyzes the content of 73…