The notion that future performance can be affected by information about previous performance is often expressed in terms of "closing the gap." Feedback has long been recognised as a mechanism through which teaching and learning may be influenced. The current wave of support in the United Kingdom for assessment "for" learning…

Many schools and school systems have been deliberately working towards full implementation of Assessment for Learning for more than a decade, yet success has been elusive. Using a leader's implementation of Assessment for Learning in one school as an illustration, this article examines eight positional leaders' experiences as they…

Singapore has earned accolades as one of the leading education systems in the world, based on its record in international assessments, including TIMMS and PISA. This has contributed to the entrenchment of "assessment" becoming an institutional authority of standards, teaching (performativity) and classroom learning. It is against, and…

Values education in Asian societies is commonly underpinned by an ideology of communitarianism that seeks to promote the needs and interests of "others" over the "self." An example of an Asian country that promotes communitarian values through its values education curriculum is Singapore. By reviewing the moral and citizenship…

This article addresses the need for researchers to move beyond discipline-specific approaches to research and practice and offers an example of how interdisciplinary understandings can increase knowledge in respective disciplines. The specific focus of the article is the shared challenges of broaching controversy in science and social studies…

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…

Mathematics education is rarely out of the policy spotlight in England. Over the last 10 years, considerable attention has been given to improving 14-19 mathematics curriculum pathways. In this paper we consider some of the challenges of enacting curriculum change by drawing upon evidence from our evaluation of the Mathematics Pathways Project…

Despite the belief that schools tend to be resistant to change, it is possible to find secondary schools in the UK which are investing in the design of an innovative curriculum for their Year 7 (11-year-old students). This article focuses on four of these schools and discusses some of the challenges they face in planning and implementing their…

This article focuses on four case study schools that have adopted innovative competence-based curriculum (CBC) projects in Year 7 for a variety of educational and social reasons. The article discusses the issues and challenges posed by the CBC for teachers in the daily life of the classroom. Philosophical ideas about the purpose of education vary…

This introductory article accompanies three further articles forming a case study research project undertaken to describe the experience of four urban secondary schools implementing a competence-based curriculum for students in their first year of secondary education. The nature of such competence-based curricula is discussed in the context of…

The present study investigates English language teaching (ELT) curriculum planning in Iran's Ministry of Education and its implementation by teachers. We studied programme evaluation; needs analysis; the ELT-specific documents; communication channels between planning and practice levels; teacher evaluation and student assessment;…

This article presents a sub-set of findings from a research project describing the experience of four case study schools which have implemented a competence-based curriculum (CBC) for students in their first year of secondary education. Secondary schools are highly departmentalised environments with organisational structures based primarily around…

The new Curricula of Cyprus aspire to deliver a new ethos in teaching and learning that promotes the notion of "the humane and democratic school" and emphasises the right of every child to succeed. In this context, the new Modern Greek language curriculum in Cyprus has been moulded upon the notion of Critical Literacy (CL). CL is neither…

The phrase "curriculum making" has recently been used to describe medium-term planning and teachers' enactment of such planning in the classroom. This narrows the term's initial use from that in the first half of the twentieth century when it was employed inclusively from national programmes to lesson planning. While…

Although breaking down a mathematical problem into smaller parts can often be an effective solution strategy, when the same reductionist approach is applied to mathematics pedagogy the effects are far from beneficial for students. Mathematics pedagogy in UK schools is gaining an increasingly reductionist flavour, as seen in an excessive focus on…