This article highlights some of the key issues in current discussions around curriculum, such as values education, inclusive education, competency-based approaches, soft and hard skills, and scientific and digital culture. It starts with the assumption that quality education for all is necessary to achieve social justice, and it looks at curricula…

This paper describes the effect that assistive technologies, such as paper, printing, protractors, logarithm tables, computers, and the Internet, have on pedagogy. It reports the results of experiments with self-organising systems in primary education and develops the concept of a self-organised learning environment (SOLE). It then describes how…

United Nations development goals have consistently placed a high priority on the quality of education--and of learning. This has led to substantive increases in international development assistance to education, and also to broader attention, worldwide, to the importance of children's learning. Yet, such goals are mainly normative: they tend…

This article considers lessons learnt through involvement in several assessment projects. Early experience, in university work and in school examinations, led to an opportunity to help establish a novel system of assessment for an innovative school curriculum. Different lessons were then learnt from work on a national survey of school…

This article addresses the core competences, attitudes and knowledge that the authors believe will promote transformative learning in the 21st century and should, therefore, feature in curriculum design. It first defines the purpose of curriculum, stressing the need for a coherent worldwide understanding of what is meant and intended by…

The 2006 UNESCO conference "Building Creative Competencies for the 21st Century" had international participants and a global reach. The Director-General's proclamation that "Creativity is our hope" captured the essence of the proceedings and participants saw the focus on creativity as offering solutions to global problems.…

It is often assumed that the advent of digital technologies requires fundamental change to the curriculum and to the teaching and learning approaches used in schools around the world to educate this generation of "digital natives" or the "net generation". This article analyses the concepts of 21st-century skills and critical…

This study explored how students' precollege racial environments shaped their diversity experiences in college, and it tested whether diverse college experiences interrupt the cyclical effects of precollege segregation. Using longitudinal survey data collected at nine public universities, the study concluded that students' precollege racial…

This study examines the influence of a conceptually valid mentoring experience on community college students' persistence decisions. Participants were selected from a random sample of core courses offered in the fall of 2006 at a community college in the south-central area of the United States (n = 320). Results of the structural equation modeling…

Combining the interdisciplinary studies (primarily humanities) literature with the content analysis of 129 successful National Science Foundation proposals written predominantly by science and engineering faculty members, the authors identify five categories of learning outcomes for interdisciplinary graduate education: disciplinary grounding,…

As higher education seeks to become more socially responsive, the public agenda is one form that has taken root in explicating the relation of higher education to society. In this paper, we critically analyze two different instantiations of the public agenda for higher education, placing them against the backdrop of what Michael Apple (2006a)…

Every year about 65,000 undocumented students graduate from U.S. high schools. A major obstacle to their attending college is not being eligible for in-state tuition. Today, nine states permit it while four prohibit it. Even if the federal DREAM Act passes, state policy decisions will continue to strongly shape college opportunities for…

This study regressed undergraduate grades on background traits, pre-college variables, and measures of sociocultural capital for nationally representative samples of African American and Latino male undergraduates using data from the NCES's National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS:88/00). Results suggest that African American and Latino males…

Relying on data from 37,122 first-year students and 42,285 seniors who participated in the 2006 administration of the National Survey of Student Engagement, this study illustrates how student interactions across difference positively affect student perceptions of the campus environment. The magnitude of the effect of these interactions varies…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the co-curricular experiences, course-taking behaviors, and educational practices that influence the moral reasoning development of 1,469 first-year students at 19 American colleges and universities. Results showed that contexts and practices that encourage students to engage divergent perspectives when…