The problem of low attainment in mathematics has been an increasingly prominent feature of the policy discourse in England over the last 60 years; however, evidence from comparative studies indicates that little progress has been made in finding a solution. In this paper, we analyse the changing policy discourse of low attainment in mathematics…

This paper explores Indonesian secondary school teachers' conceptions of assessment in the context of assessment reform. Teachers working at different school level were interviewed both individually and in groups and their responses were analysed using the content analysis approach. Detailed examination of teachers' assessment propositions…

Internationally, there is a clear turn towards inquiry as a core approach to learning secondary school geography. This research critically compares how inquiry learning is expressed and justified in six jurisdictions (Australia, China, England, Hong Kong, Singapore, USA). Through content analysis of national curriculum documents, we found that…

This paper makes a significant contribution to contemporary debates over the direction curriculum reforms should take. It challenges claims that progressive pedagogies can exclude disadvantaged learners from gaining access to powerful knowledge and argues that greater attention needs to be given to learner agency and subject didactics. It reports…

This study explores the form of curriculum documents and its implications for the enacted curriculum. In this study, the narrative voices that appear in the Scottish Broad General Education phase and the Swedish Compulsory phase of the curriculum are scrutinized in relation to the most likely reader of these documents--the teacher. The study…

Textbooks are artifacts. They are made, used, interpreted, and understood in a wide range of ways. In this sense, regardless of its theoretical assumptions, textbook analysis is an evolving and pioneering task as textbooks bring about manifold knowledge, relationships, and emotions. When exploring the texts, images, and functions in and beyond the…

Whether a broad undergraduate curriculum prepares students well for academic and professional specialization is a much-debated question. This discussion is particularly relevant in the context of European liberal arts bachelor's programmes, which recently re-emerged as an exception to the continental norm of specialized undergraduate curricula.…

Due to fast and unpredictable developments, professional education is challenged with being responsive, which demands a rethinking of conventional curriculum development approaches. Yet, literature on curriculum development falls short in terms of recognising how to react rapidly and adequately to these new developments. This study focuses on…

Personal values influence goals and motivate actions. The case study reported in this paper explored whether an understanding of values would provide a useful framework to guide the co-creation of the undergraduate cognitive psychology curriculum at a UK University. A design team composed of staff and students ran two co-creation workshops to…

This article reports on the findings of an investigation into the tensions perceived by students aged 14-15 studying Ancient History in England, between their interest in the ancient world itself and the status of Ancient History as a curriculum subject. We use Young's distinction between Powerful Knowledge and Knowledge of the Powerful as a…

There is a paucity of research around Differentiated Instruction (DI) in Australian senior secondary education even though this approach has been shown to have the potential to cater for diverse learning needs in inclusive classrooms in other school contexts. Investigating how DI is understood and implemented by teachers in a senior secondary…

The COVID-19 pandemic has made abundantly clear how far our school systems are from being crisis-ready. The lockdowns seen across many parts of the world left schools and teachers scrambling to provide parents with whatever teaching materials they could find to enable some semblance of distance learning to take place. Despite heroic efforts, the…

Variability in education systems is a given. Variability has at once positive and negative implications for the main goal of education which is accelerating learning across diverse contexts and for all learners. In this article, we explain and employ a tight-loose framing to understand the scope for variability within an education system. A…

This paper makes a theoretical contribution to the discussion of powerful knowledge in education. The major claim is that curriculum integration can structure knowledge for a coherent curriculum and thus, support the idea of powerful knowledge. The mainstream understanding of curriculum integration promotes it as a pedagogical arrangement and…

This paper documents the design, implementation and evaluation of a content-based language teaching (CBLT) curriculum for an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programme at a Japanese university. The aim of the programme is to prepare students for study abroad in Anglophone universities in a two-year time frame. This curriculum redesign project…