This paper examines what can be learnt from "new rhetoric" (focusing on the work of the American rhetorician Kenneth Burke [1897-1993]) about (national) identity and discusses how nationalism can be taught from such a rhetorical perspective. Despite the "deconstruction" of nation(alism) as a grand narrative, there is a new tendency towards…

This paper examines the nature and socio-political functions of Hong Kong's "Chinese history curriculum" during colonialism and since decolonization and argues that these functions have resulted in a curriculum characterized by rote-learning and geared towards social control. Students are initiated into the traditional, orthodox view of Chinese…

The author's initial argument concludes that parents should refrain from inculcating norms and dispositions suitable for peacetime when ruthless enemies seek to kill or imprison their children. Drawing on recent interpreters of Kant, this paper argues that teaching children to deceive pursuers is consistent with Kantian arguments against lying.…

This paper highlights the active role played by various pedagogic agents in contesting the state educational reforms for madrasahs in Singapore. Drawing upon Basil Bernstein's pedagogic device, the paper identifies tensions and challenges that arise from the attempts by the state to implement curriculum reforms. The paper contends that the stakes…

This study examines how pre-service teachers experience being disciplined by their training and trainers, and how that discipline is reproduced in their relationships with students. Using Foucauldian and Bourdieuian frameworks to explore pre-service teachers' disciplinary experiences in a US teacher-education programme, this study explores how…

This paper investigates the relationship between schooling and conflict in Pakistan using an identity-construction lens. Drawing on data from curriculum documents, student responses to classroom activities, and single-sex student focus groups, it explores how students in four state primary schools in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP),…

Drawing on data from 1740 pupil questionnaires and 160 pupils in focus-group interviews, the study aimed to gain insight into British pupils' ideas about why they study history at school. The paper considers the implications of these ideas for history teachers and teacher educators. The data suggest that many pupils have very vague ideas about the…

Human beings ought to use critical reflection to define and decide their courses of action. This paper examines the use of attention-seeker questions in the framework of critical pedagogy purposely to study the way some Ugandan teachers are constrained in their practice by their lack of participation in developing the school curriculum. This…

Teaching for conceptual understanding has been heralded as an effective approach within many curriculum frameworks internationally in an age of rapid and constant change around what counts as "knowledge". Drawing from research and experience within the social studies curriculum, this paper reflects on some of the largely unstated and unexplored…

This study discusses the representation of (the) literacy (myth) in popular movies and a teaching and research project on cinematic literacy narratives. It attempts to reveal the existence of a powerful 'Pygmalion template' in contemporary movie culture. Focusing on a discourse or culture clash 'Pygmalion movies' simultaneously contribute to the…

The curricula teachers teach are intimately bound with who they are. The literature on multicultural and anti-oppressive education does not adequately examine teachers' emotions in this type of teaching and learning. What are the emotional subtexts that accompany classroom celebrations of diversity? What may help teachers engage in more courageous…

The consolidation of reconceptualism as a distinctive tradition in curriculum inquiry is commonly understood to go hand-in-hand with the decline and even eclipse of an explicit political orientation in such work. This paper offers an alternative argument, focusing on a re-assessment of what has been called the representation problem, and exploring…

The year 2007 saw a discrete yet significant development in the sphere of "international education" in England: a doubling in number of state-funded schools offering the International Primary Curriculum. This curriculum had been developed in 2000 for the Shell Company Group of Schools. It first emerged in England in 2003; two years later it had…

As the conditions for students' prospects of acquiring knowledge in school often are thought of as something that must be improved in the political rhetoric, it is also urgent, as Michael F. D. Young has argued, to ask what kind of knowledge should be the basis of the curriculum and to recognize the question of knowledge as central to the…

The critiques of rap artists and other participants in hip-hop culture provide data for teachers and researchers to investigate the attitudes of US urban youth towards schooling. This study explores the complex relationships between hip-hop and science education by examining how rap lyrics project beliefs about schooling, the relevance of existing…