This paper focuses on a specific example of an all-too-rare phenomenon in education studies: the successful resistance by ordinary classroom teachers of policy change at the macro-level. Focusing on the withdrawal of the 2013 Draft National Curriculum for History in England, it considers the views of six teachers who were personally involved in…

Modern historical research challenges religious education by undermining the arguments in favour of the existence of a supreme power who is responsible for patterns of reality. This article explores how the new generation of history textbooks of Religious Zionism, one of Israel's ideologically most influential populations, cope with this dilemma.…

In research on teacher professional development and school reform attention for the role of teacher agency has been growing significantly during the last decade. The objective of this study is to create a model with the potential to view professional development and school reform from a teacher agency perspective at multiple levels. The model of…

This study examines teacher knowledge used to teach civic-perspective-taking in elementary settings. To do so, the researcher analyzes teacher knowledge-in-use through the ways three teachers adapted a curriculum focused on civic perspective-taking through observation of teachers' enactments of each lesson. Findings indicate that teachers used…

High school academic departments remain under-examined yet powerful entities in American high schools. High status department leaders create and sustain narratives around teaching and learning, disciplinary-specific best practices, and the overall efficacy and effectiveness of any number of school improvement policies and initiatives promoted by…

This article compares and re-examines citizenship education (CE) teaching and learning in Hong Kong (HK) and Guangzhou (GZ), China. It questions two stereotypical perceptions--that China schools indoctrinate students, and that CE lessons in HK are more open than those in mainland China. Data are drawn from some 30 lesson observations, 1,200…

Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP) has become a driving force for change in North America and New Zealand and is gaining some recognition in Indigenous education in Australia. But as a model of learning and teaching, it cannot be imported unproblematically into Australian schools, wherein the past Indigenous students have had limited success.…

China's 2017 'classroom revolution' call intends to "transform" current teacher-centered pedagogies with brand-new philosophies and technologies. As a new entry point for classroom research, I problematize a naturalized (mis)belief--" teacher-centered (Confucian) didactic pedagogies are not conducive to critical thinking…

This paper provides a Deweyian analysis of "Australia's Ethical Understanding General Capability" curriculum documents, which outline a promising moral education curriculum for students aged 4-17 years. The moral development of students has long been identified as a key aim of schooling. However, schools seldom have time for dedicated…

Although most teachers adapt curriculum, we know little about teachers' rationales for modifying materials, how these rationales align with actual modifications, nor whether any patterns exist in the modifications that teachers make. This is especially the case in history/social studies, where research on curriculum is scant and research on…

This research explored the extent to which secondary school history teachers in England willingly engaged with a series of concurrent curriculum reforms, and the factors that shaped their level of agency in the process. The curriculum has been the target of sustained reform by many governments, and accountability measures are frequently used to…

This empirical study uses content and frequency analysis to investigate how the Big History Project (BHP) online curriculum represents different racial and cultural groups within its units fusing science and history. The prevalence of a Western Civilizations perspective in curricula offers a challenging irony: that world history could be…

In England, two concurrent but largely disconnected discourses have emerged whose representatives have promulgated initiatives relevant to students' extended historical writing: genre theorists and the history teachers' 'extended writing movement'. Despite certain goals held in common, the two discourses have tended to talk past one another…

Our study is framed according to a transformational-sociocritical approach to an education for sustainable development (ESD) that, in particular, considers landscapes as learning contexts of potential use for fostering engagement in the areas of environmental protection and sustainable development. In keeping with this perspective, we surveyed…

In the early 1960s, researchers began to conduct content analyses of core reading programmes/basal readers. Although these researchers often adopted a critical perspective, and examined the ideological underpinnings of the texts, they failed to make an explicit connection between ideologies and reader access to the text. The study described here…