This study reveals the views of future teachers from Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian-Arab communities regarding the desired school history curricula. We applied a quantitative and qualitative survey to a sample of 528 students studying in teachers' preparation programmes in three higher education institutions: one research university with a…

This article provides a historical interpretation of one of the defining features of modern schooling: grades. As a central element of schools, grades--their origins, uses and evolution--provide a window into the tensions at the heart of building a national public school system in the United States. We argue that grades began as an intimate…

This commentary on Wu Zongjie's article "Interpretation, autonomy and transformation: Chinese pedagogic discourse in a cross-cultural perspective" begins by suggesting the usefulness of Wu's polar opposite depiction of Confucian and modern pedagogy as ideal types for comparative exploration. It goes on to suggest that the term…

Juxtaposing the concepts of screen memory, counter-transference and the holding environment within psychoanalytic theory, this essay explores the author's emotional experience, who begins the exploration by asking several questions. What happens to a teacher's emotional world and her consciousness in the process of trying to shift…

This research analyses preservice teachers' knowledge of fractions. Fractions are notoriously difficult for students to learn and for teachers to teach. Previous studies suggest that student learning of fractions may be limited by teacher understanding of fractions. If so, teacher education has a key role in solving the problem. We first…

With the persistent criticism of teacher education as a backdrop, this article explores the common perception that teacher education is too theoretical. This article takes the view that the student teachers' assumptions regarding the concept of theory affect how they engage with theory during initial teacher education. Using a qualitative…

The economic, social, cultural, technological and labour changes experienced by Spanish universities in the last 40?years have had their impact on the professional lives of the university teachers. Our methodological decision to study, through the construction of life histories, how scholars cope with social and institutional changes in their…

The "Practical 1" paper combines Schwab's abiding concern, for the nature and quality of educational experience with another abiding concern, for how we think about what we do. The Practical 1 is the first of a set of four "practical" essays. These in turn are the product of his thinking about college education and his…

In this paper, I develop a critique of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)-based lifelong learning policy discourse with a particular focus on "key competencies" (KCs) and its equity implications for school curricular policies. First, I review the discussion of KCs in the writings by the OECD-affiliated…

Teacher action research seeks to bring together action, reflection, theory, and practice; and it is acknowledged as a way to value and honour teachers' practical knowledge. The purpose of this article is to conceptualize teacher action research as "Bildung," applying Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics as a theoretical…

This research project focuses on teacher education in a field-based methods course. We were interested in understanding what "could be" when we worked with pre-service teachers in a high school physical education class to assist them in the process of learning to listen and respond to their students in ways that might better facilitate…

Curriculum implementation often falls short because of a lack of cultural understanding by curriculum developers and aid organizations. This paper describes a single-case study of a professional development programme for polytechnic Heads of Department in Ghana, which aimed at identifying how curriculum development activities were sensitive to…

The US is suffering from a school syndrome, which arises from Americans' insistence on having things both ways through the magical medium of education. Society wants schools to express the highest ideals as a society and the greatest aspirations as individuals, but only as long as they remain ineffective in actually realizing them, since one does…

Taking into account the merits of anticipatory reflection, instructional planning is perceived as an important process in the professionalization of teachers. When implementing a complex instructional strategy such as collaborative learning (CL), a thorough preparation becomes even more important. The purpose of the present study was to…

This paper draws on the experiences of two graduate level curriculum theory classes taught at different teacher education institutions in the US. Teacher educators and curriculum theorists invest in creating reflexive spaces for teachers to explore the complex terrain of lived curriculum. Narrative inquiry is chronicled as acting as an important…