In this paper, I explore the role of knowledge in the curriculum through a discussion of John Dewey's transactional theory of knowing. I do so against the background of recent calls to bring knowledge back into the discussion about the curriculum in which pragmatism has been depicted as a problematic form of relativism that should have no…

The General Certificate of Education (GCE) A* grade was first awarded to students in 2010. It was introduced to assist higher education institutions in differentiating between the highest performing students and to promote and reward greater stretch and challenge. This paper, based on a synthesis of key policy documents, an analysis of…

This article reports the findings of research on school culture in post-totalitarian society in the Czech Republic. The research explored restructuralisation and reculturalisation in the Czech school education system through analysis of school culture in one school located in a midsized town in the central part of the country. In-depth…

The authors' experiences of observing teaching and learning in schools have led them to become concerned at the dominant paradigm of a "pedagogy of poverty" at the expense of a "pedagogy of plenty". Bernstein's theory of power and control of education knowledge is overtly practised in classrooms globally. This is evidenced in the narrowing of the…

This research was prompted by the developing political discourse proposing the teaching of Britishness and British values in the context of the United Kingdom. This discourse will be reviewed in the first part of the article, in the context of previous work which has sought to assess how Britishness and related concepts might be promoted through…

Within Scotland's new curriculum, a "Curriculum for Excellence", physical education (PE) has been relocated from "Expressive Arts" to "Health and Wellbeing". The repositioning of PE could result in a shift in the way PE is conceptualised. In order to understand this shift, we conducted in-depth, one-to-one interviews with 10 participants who…

This article looks at the evolution of the social studies curricula in Pakistan, which are of critical importance in shaping the outlook of many young Pakistanis, who are affected by this polarised discourse. The author argues that this trend of polarisation springing from dynamics of education also effectively contributes to a widening social…

This article examines how interest groups in Hong Kong have politicised national history, an unpopular school subject, for their own political ends and allied themselves with the PRC against the SAR government and its policy of not making it a single, independent, compulsory core subject in the school curriculum. The article argues that this has…

This article analyses and discusses the development of the principles of adapted teaching and inclusive education in the three most recent Norwegian national curricula, seen in light of curriculum potential as an overarching perspective. This potential highlights teachers' opportunities for choosing and adapting their teaching content. The area of…

This study is interested in understanding the configurations of knowledge underpinning three examples of curriculum policy texts in the specific case of the school subject of geography. The three policy texts are the 1991 Geography National Curriculum (GNC), the "Opening minds" curriculum and the GNC 2007. I start with the proposal that each…

New devolutionary powers for education have been enthusiastically seized on by politicians and policy-makers alike to promote a more integrated and holistic form of education in Scotland. This period of curriculum renewal offers the prospect of increased levels of outdoor education; however, to date there is a lack of a clearly agreed rationale…

This paper responds to the articles in the recent special edition of The Curriculum Journal (Volume 20, Number 3). The special edition discusses an "archaeological" approach to student enquiry, with associated ideas of personalisation, competency development, and building learning power. We argue that the papers both raise and omit complex issues…

In this second article on the theory of "ground rules for talk" I extend a debate between myself and Professor Neil Mercer over the introduction of "ground rules" into classrooms. I critique ground rules through the use of sociological theory and argue that advocates of the ground rules perspective need to recognise the ideological nature of their…

This article will focus on an event in the educational history of Wales in the 1980s which still impacts both on school practice and on thinking about concepts of Welsh identity. That event was the creation of the History Committee for Wales which was charged with devising a history curriculum for Welsh schools in the wake of the 1988 Education…

The middle of the 1990s saw the creation of a French-German-Swiss history textbook supported by the European Commission. Disseminated to school instructors in the Upper Rhine, it received generally positive reviews, but ended up on the dusty shelves of school libraries. This result was due to several factors, which are analysed in this article.…