Curriculum materials and knowledge about curricular purposes and structures are valuable tools that teachers often draw upon to organize instruction and facilitate student learning. Careful analysis of teachers' curriculum implementation and the decision-making that undergirds their curriculum use is critical for fully understanding…

This paper explores the relevance and significance of the Practical in Schwab's the "Practical 1" paper in relation to the reconstruction of pedagogics as an educational discipline in China. It begins with employing Schwab's 'medical" framework--in terms of "symptoms," "diagnosis" and…

In this retrospective essay reviewing the implications of Joseph Schwab's essay, "The practical: A language for education" (2013 [1970]), 40+?years after its first publication, I identify two "practicals". The first is a comprehensive "Practical 1.1" embracing ends, subject matter, problem source and methods.…

In this article, we investigate the relationship between different learning methods and the formation of European identity among adolescents. The analysis is based on the European module of the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (2009), with 70,502 respondents in 21 European member states. The results show that offering…

The primary objective of this paper is to suggest a mechanism by which current trends in public education, in particular the rise of externally defined numerical metrics of achievement to define school success, operate to shape school policy, curriculum and practice. Here, we argue that the modern school's focus on the cognitive dimension of…

The field of curriculum by inveterate, unexamined, and mistaken reliance on theory has led to incoherence of curriculum and failure and discontinuity in actual schooling because theoretical constructions are ill-fitted and inappropriate to problems of actual teaching and learning. There are three major incompetencies of theory: failure of scope,…

This article considers the politics of adoption of a testing regime in South Africa. While the broad features of this regime are similar to those in developed countries, there are features specific to the South African context. These emerge from a combination of external and internal pressures. External pressures derive from international testing…

The paper focuses on the promise of equity that underlies centralized evaluation policies and its relation to difference, or in other words to the singularity of the subject. I defend that without taking the issue of difference into consideration, there is no education, and that the unique subject is what is aspired by education. The analyses rely…

This paper begins by identifying what it sees as the current crisis in curriculum theory. Following a brief history of the field, it argues that recent developments have led to it losing its object--what is taught and learned in school--and its distinctive role in the educational sciences. Arising from this brief account of the origins and nature…

Worldwide, the interest of policy-makers in participating in studies from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), such as Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) has been growing rapidly over the past two decades. These studies offer the opportunity to relate the teaching and…

Most Americans and many residents of other democratic countries hold public schools to the social and political goal of preparing children to be good citizens. This goal is being challenged by some new forms of schooling promoted through popular education reform movements, especially in the US. This article reveals potentially insurmountable…

In this historical study, the author traces the evolution of Dewey's vision for a democratic curriculum. Prior to 1916, Dewey was a linear historicist, meaning that he conceptualized culture as moving linearly through three distinct stages--savagery, barbarianism, civilization--that corresponded with stages of child development. Dewey's suggested…

This paper addresses the question: What is the value of an educational excursion for first year students enrolled in a 4 year pre-service professional teacher education degree at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa? The excursion is an integral part of a first year module that focuses on the personal and professional development of…

In this paper I discuss some aspects of recent scholarship on rhetoric and the curriculum, making a distinction between approaches that use insight from rhetoric to analyse formal and informal curricula and approaches that develop programmatic suggestions for the conduct of education. In the paper I deploy an educational perspective which I…

The aim of the special strand on "Revisiting the rhetorical curriculum" is to explore the educational potential of a new rhetorical perspective, specifically in relation to different traditions within educational and rhetorical studies. This implies that we do not only look at education "in" rhetoric, but that we position education also "as" a…