This study focuses on the school-work connection from the perspective of curriculum design. The aim was to uncover considerations underpinning the design of learning environments in vocational education. The research took place in the Netherlands. A focus group methodology was chosen to elicit designers' considerations, which generally remain…

This study presents an inquiry into the relevance of Bildung for students in (pre-) vocational education. While Bildung has seen a remarkable revival in international educational theory, its relevance for educational practice(s) remains under-investigated, particularly in vocational education. This paper presents the insights offered by a…

Curriculum implementation often falls short because of a lack of cultural understanding by curriculum developers and aid organizations. This paper describes a single-case study of a professional development programme for polytechnic Heads of Department in Ghana, which aimed at identifying how curriculum development activities were sensitive to…

The aim of this explorative study was to develop and test a pedagogy aimed at promoting students' ability to perform historical contextualization. Teaching historical contextualization was conceptualized in terms of four pedagogical design principles: (1) making students aware of the consequences of a present-oriented perspective when examining…

This paper studies the teacher perceived applicability of historical topics for interpretational history teaching and the criteria teachers use to evaluate this applicability. For this study, 15 expert history teachers in the Netherlands striving for interpretational history teaching were purposefully selected. Teachers were asked to mention…

The aim of this international study was to generate recommendations for curriculum improvement in family-school partnerships (FSP) by examining teacher candidates' understandings, attitudes and experiences. A survey of 1144 candidates in their first or final year of preparation at three universities, one each in Belgium, the Netherlands and the…

The present study seeks to develop a pedagogy aimed at fostering a student's ability to reason causally about history. The Model of Domain Learning was used as a framework to align domain-specific content with pedagogical principles. Developing causal historical reasoning was conceptualized as a multidimensional process, in which knowledge of…

In large-scale educational reforms, many actors play their roles. The diversity of contributions and lack of harmonization prove to be frequently found to cause educational reform failures. Many explanations for these failures focus on differences between the actors and on differences in their contributions to the reform process. In this article,…

A team of secondary school language teachers and a teacher trainer developed a new method for Dutch writing instruction. The principles underlying the method were derived from insights regarding activating instruction and self-directed student learning. The development entailed two phases. In the first phase, the exploration of actual problems in…

If the purpose of an educational system is to guide pupils towards achieving independence, then certain conditions about the design and conduct of that system must be met. In this paper, those conditions are formulated from a socio-cultural perspective on learning and development. This paper examines the extent to which those conditions were…

Competence-based education is becoming increasingly popular. Competencies are used more and more as the starting point for designing curricula and instructional methods, especially in vocational education and training, to realize authentic and self-steering study programmes. Despite its popularity in both research and educational settings, there…

The paper analyses and compares developments in history teaching in Germany, England, and the Netherlands in the 19th and 20th centuries. The development of history teaching in the three countries shows striking similarities. National politics have always used history education for purposes which did not necessarily tally with distanced critical…

Outlines the program "Language Arts in the Primary School" which was developed by the National Institute for Curriculum Development in the Netherlands. Focuses on three areas of that project: (1) the school and its language education; (2) the projects research activities; and (3) the school's curriculum. (BR)

This paper reports a study on teachers' domain-specific beliefs about the chemistry curriculum for upper-secondary education in The Netherlands. Teachers' beliefs were investigated using a questionnaire focused on the goals of the chemistry curriculum. The design of the questionnaire was based on three curriculum emphases: "fundamental…

Defines the concept of pluralistic education and discusses its goals. Interviews a number of teachers to investigate their conceptions of education and their response to the idea of pluralistic education. Reports that teachers share an affinity with certain aspects of pluralistic education but differ in a number of fundamental ways. (DSK)