A growing need for utilizing school-based HIV/AIDS interventions the world over has been acknowledged as the most cost-effective means for arresting the spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic among the vulnerable youth. However, the question on how teachers as educational change agents and cognitive sense-makers of HIV/AIDS curricula situated in a…

This report describes how teachers support ninth-grade students who are doing scientific investigations in Natural Sciences in South African schools. This is of interest as allowing students to participate in inquiry-based investigations is a significant shift from traditional practices. It presents a new challenge to teachers as it signals an…

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 narrative inquiry traces a beginning teacher's unfolding career over a six-year period in a diverse middle school in the fourth largest city in the USA. The work revolves around two conceptualizations: "stories to live by" and "stories to leave by." How these identity-related phenomena surface and play out in an…

In response to an essay by Prof Wu Zongjie that was published in the "Journal of Curriculum Studies" [43(5), (2011), 569-590], I argue that, despite dramatic changes that have taken place in the language of Chinese academic discourse and pedagogy, evidence derived from the fields of psychology and the history of Chinese educational…

This study examined the changing content of history textbooks in Northern Ireland, drawing on a sample of 15 textbooks published from 1968 to 2010. Findings from the content and narrative analysis indicated that following the introduction of the Northern Ireland Curriculum in 1991, history textbooks shifted from a narrative to source-driven…

This study aims to develop a model for comparing different forms of teacher autonomy in various national contexts and at different times. Understanding and explaining local differences and global similarities in the teaching profession in a globalized world require conceptions that contribute to further theorization of comparative and…

This is a response to the commentaries on my essay, "Interpretation, autonomy, and transformation". However, the response is reoriented to further interpretation of Chinese pedagogic discourse in the late-19th century, which is often blamed for hampering China's educational advance. Instead of considering Classical Confucian…

This article uses curriculum-making frameworks to analyse and reconstruct the Chinese curriculum-making model and unpack the dynamics, complexity and constraints of China's curriculum reform since the early 1990s. It argues that curriculum reform is China's main human capital development strategy for coping with the challenges of the…

Around the world, increasing numbers of students receive after-school private supplementary tutoring. Such tutoring may be provided through informal channels or by companies, and it may be received one-to-one, in small groups or in large classes. The tutoring is commonly called shadow education since its content mimics that of regular schooling.…

Globally, national curriculum policies are up for renegotiation. These negotiations are shaped by international and national top-down accountability regimes, and an increasing turn towards curriculum centralization and standardization. The new Australian Curriculum (AC) is no exception. The AC is an important educational policy event, one in which…

For the past few years, the Republic of Cyprus has been pursuing a major educational reform across all levels of mandatory education, focusing especially on curriculum change, for the implementation of which in-service teachers have undergone a series of professional development seminars. Individual and focus group interviews with in-service…

This article demonstrates how changes in the language of Swedish education policy have opened up a new social perception of education, in which space has been created for new actors, models and solutions in terms of managing activities in schools. Specifically, it seeks to illustrate how various "promotion" and "prevention…

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…

The paper outlines the reception of Schwab's essay "The practical: A language for curriculum" in German-speaking countries in the 1970s and 1980s. The story is a good demonstration of the ways in which different circumstances and phases of development determine transatlantic exchanges and the influence of concepts in the field of…