This paper aims to analyse the concepts of scientific literacy and agency in two official documents of the Chilean science curriculum. We used Fairclough's three dimensional model as critical lenses, based on critical discourse analysis, where every discursive event can be analysed: (1) as a text; (2) as a discursive practice; and (3) as a social…

This paper presents findings on physical education (PE) trainees' and teachers' attempts to design and implement authentic curricular experiences, within the constraints of a neoliberalist context. It involved adopting a principle-based approach to promoting active lifestyles designed to align PE trainees' and teachers' health-related philosophies…

Debate about the curriculum of secondary schools has centred on two competing claims. One is the aspiration to provide a broad, liberal curriculum to all students as a route into common citizenship. The other is that a curriculum of this kind, far from being potentially universal, is intrinsically merely the culture of dominant social groups, is…

This paper explores the rationales underpinning the introduction of Computer Science (CS) into school curricula and examines the ways in which educational systems have responded to these growing calls. In outlining the possible ways that educational systems can respond to this demand, the paper makes use of a conceptual framework through which the…

There is debate internationally about the production of curriculum texts and the epistemologies underpinning the knowledge legitimated in national curricula. National History curricula in particular are a source of contention bounded by calls for coherent and unifying national narratives that are inclusive and reflect the complexity of the…

There is a growing agreement among the academic community, in schools and among researchers, concerning the advantages of formative assessment and the limitations of large-scale assessment. In this paper, the school-based assessment reform of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) popularly known in India as continuous and comprehensive…

The US school system is dominated by heteronormativity in the formal curriculum that gives preference to binary conceptions of sexuality. School leaders play a role in supporting or disrupting school policies facilitating or inhibiting curricular inclusion of queer content in course materials and an instructional pedagogy that promotes an…

The Maltese National Minimum Curriculum published in 1999 sought to strengthen bilingualism by reinforcing the practice of teaching and assessing some subjects in English and others in Maltese. It also pointed out that code-switching should only be used in cases of severe pedagogical difficulties. As a new National Curriculum Framework was being…

Senior secondary physical education courses for certification continue to attract increasing student enrolments amidst international concerns for the state and status of physical education in schools. Curricula analysis of senior secondary physical education has typically focussed on courses in local contexts. This review aims to contribute to the…

In 2010, a comprehensive secondary school in the south of England implemented a whole-school approach to "learning to learn" (L2L). Drawing on a range of evidence-based practices, a team of teachers worked collaboratively to design and deliver a taught L2L curriculum to all students throughout Key Stage 3. In total, the first cohort of…

This paper reports on research conducted as part of the International Instructional System Study that explored five subject areas across nine jurisdictions in six high-performing countries. The Study's overall aim was to understand what, if anything, there is in common in the curricula and assessment arrangements among the high-performing…

Evidence from an ethnographic study of three secondary school geography departments in England is drawn on to describe aspects of the relationships between examination boards and school subjects. This paper focuses on one department, in "Town Comprehensive", and the argument is illustrated through a discussion of observed lessons with a…

VISOLE (Virtual Interactive Student-Oriented Environment) is a teacher-facilitated pedagogical approach to integrating constructivist online game-based learning into formal curriculum teaching in school education. This paper reports a case study on the implementation of VISOLE in secondary Geography education. We compared the pedagogical…

Recent public discussions of curriculum and pedagogy that have accompanied the English National Curriculum review have been structured around clichéd dichotomies that generate more heat than light and that, as Robin Alexander has argued, reduce complex educational debates to oppositional and incompatible slogans. This paper begins by exploring the…

The article analyses how the intentions of early provision in Norwegian schools have been expressed in the education policy reforms in Norway from the 1970s to the present day. The first area deals with the intentions that most explicitly cover early provision; prevention, early detection and intervention. The second area of analysis relates to…