The principles of many international language teacher education programmes are grounded in a relatively homogenous set of "Western" cultural values, even though their participants come from a wide range of different cultural backgrounds. This paper addresses some of the issues surrounding the role of culture in language teacher education and…

This article elucidates criteria which might be helpful in evaluating praxis-related research. The authors explore both sides of the research and development (R & D) project. They examine different ways of understanding contributions to knowledge through research but more especially exploring ideas about contributions to changing praxis. Changing…

This historical paper is an introduction to curriculum thinking in Japan. It discusses contested value frameworks that have exercised professional educators in the light of two "Western" interventions: (1) the modernization initiatives of the Meiji government of the nineteenth century; and (2) the policies that followed Japan's defeat in the…

Curriculum and policy documents in many states and countries around the world, but more specifically in Queensland, Australia, are underpinned by an emancipatory agenda, in particular the principles of social justice. Educators are called upon to achieve this through a pedagogy which is immersed in the language of critical theory. This article…

As educators endeavor to engage an increasingly diverse student population, the curricular inclusion of elements of popular culture has been found to represent a particularly meaningful and successful approach. Research has consistently documented how utilizing issues of interest to students enhances affective links to the classroom and engenders…

In this article the author discusses what he considers to be an ultrastructure of Michel Foucault's "pedagogisation" of sex, which is the expanding normative imagination of bodies and sexualities as and in curricula. Here the author proposes an inclusive reading of "curriculum" that departs from the specific scholastic definition, one that…

How do we understand our own cultural histories and how do these understandings impact on our senses of self? This paper addresses the case of Pacific islander migration into New Zealand. It is based on a study fuelled by a group of Pacific island teachers exploring their own experiences of becoming teachers in New Zealand schools. The paper…

This paper focuses on the historical review of neo-liberalism in Korean education with relevance to human rights education and teachers movement. In transition to post-colonial society, Korea confronts polarization of education. From the first stage just after the independence from Japanese Colonization in 1945 to the fifth present stage, Korean…

Drawing on the poststructuralist notions of the body and affect by Gilles Deleuze, the author will show that bodies and affects in the classroom may be redefined as intensities and energies that "produce" new affective and embodied "connections". What he suggests is that reconceiving teaching and learning as a plane for the production of intense…

This paper examines the metaphors of assessment for learning in order to reveal the hidden agenda of beliefs which language cloaks. It is argued that the power of metaphor in discourse can both create and impede new realities. This hidden agenda is further exacerbated because of two metaphoric frameworks in the English language: the conduit…

This paper examines the politics and values of the secondary school curriculum in Greece and attempts to find out the influences of cultural tradition and centralized control on curriculum development. In particular, it studies the decision-making process and the politics of educational control, employing some theoretical elements from centralist…

This article analyses change of time use and time allocation in three schools participating in a Swedish five-year national experiment in which State regulation of teaching time was weakened. Participating schools could freely decide how to use and distribute teaching time. The experiment was launched at a late stage in a 25-year decentralisation…

This article traces the evolution of critical pedagogy and its central tenets, and how these have moved through language teaching into the realm of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and are manifest in current debates in the field. Tracing these debates opens the discussion to the applicability of critical pedagogy to EAP and consideration of…

There is now much awareness of the symbiotic relationship between workplace learning, the organisation of work, level of employee involvement, organisational performance, and the broader economic, regulatory, and social context within which organisations have to operate. This article argues that we have to identify and take serious account of the…

Computer-mediated conferencing has been adopted, particularly for purposes of online course provision, as a method that can deliver community. Widespread interest in a communities-of-practice approach within both informal and formal learning has strengthened perceptions of the value of creating a community online. A case study of asynchronous…