Recent public discussions of curriculum and pedagogy that have accompanied the English National Curriculum review have been structured around clichéd dichotomies that generate more heat than light and that, as Robin Alexander has argued, reduce complex educational debates to oppositional and incompatible slogans. This paper begins by exploring the…

The article analyses how the intentions of early provision in Norwegian schools have been expressed in the education policy reforms in Norway from the 1970s to the present day. The first area deals with the intentions that most explicitly cover early provision; prevention, early detection and intervention. The second area of analysis relates to…

A recent trend in developed countries' school curricula has been the transition from disciplinary to generic forms of knowledge, resulting in an emphasis on interdisciplinary organisation and more active forms of learning. Subject specialists are increasingly expected to demonstrate how their subject interconnects and equips pupils with key…

The concept of readability has had a variable history, moving from a position where it was considered as a very important topic for those responsible for producing texts and matching those texts to the abilities and needs of learners, to its current declining visibility in the education literature. Some important work has been coming from the USA…

This article begins with the perspective that teacher education programmes are cultural institutions and are thus compelled to respond to the societal push for teachers to be conversant in so-called twenty-first-century skills, grounded primarily in the ability to use digital technologies for pedagogical purposes. The results of an attempt to…

This article attempts to map the business and economics curriculum and explain some of the reasons for it being as it is; and to examine the number of students choosing to study the subjects and the "perceived relative value" of studying economics and business studies. In 1988 a National Curriculum was introduced for all 5-16-year-olds in state…

The rationale for the study is to enhance our understanding of how young people learn and engage with vocational subjects within the lower secondary years of compulsory education. The concept of pre-vocational education has recently emerged to describe the initial transitional phase of preparing young people for employment in specific occupational…

This article extends currently reported theory and practice in the use of learning goals or targets with students in secondary and further education. Goal-setting and action-planning constructs are employed in personal development plans (PDPs) and personal learning plans (PLPs) and are advocated as practice within the English national policy…

This article reports data from a larger study investigating the changing patterns of entry for GCSE geography over the last 20 years, but focuses on the period 2003-7. Entries for geography GCSE have fallen since 1996 but the patterns vary with attainment, type of school and geographical location. It is shown that government policy has both a…

This article draws on some ideas from the sociology of knowledge to examine the UK Coalition government's approach to the 14-19 curriculum. Following a brief outline of a theoretical model, the article contrasts the ideas about the curriculum of the new Secretary of State, Michael Gove, with those they seek to replace. Following a brief discussion…

This article reports on selected findings from a doctoral study which investigated how teachers in an 11-16 secondary school in the UK consulted pupils about teaching and learning in their classrooms. It presents the views of pupils on the consultation practices and responses of their teachers. While interest in consulting pupils has increased…

This article reports the findings and draws lessons from a major twenty-year longitudinal study of computer use in economics and business studies teaching in UK secondary schools. Over the period, the level and pattern of computer use within subject lessons has changed substantially. In particular, there has been a progressive shift away from…

This article gives a description of three analyses concerning the construct learning to learn and the assessment of cross-curricular skills. First, the correspondence between learning to learn and cross-curricular skills is examined by means of a theoretical content analysis. Second, the nature of cross-curricular skills is studied through a…

This article analyses the relationships between the perspectives of stakeholders involved in the development of the 1998 New South Wales Stages 4-5 history syllabus. It examined four key issues that emerged in the debates about history education during the review and found that stakeholders' views diverged significantly on three of these issues.…

This article is based on the authors' reflections on observations and interviews with students and staff involved in a debate competition in London secondary schools. Taking the data we collected as our starting point, we seek to draw on research from a range of perspectives, including political education, political philosophy and debate as a…