This essay draws from a study conducted as part of graduate thesis work at George Mason University. The thesis examined the purpose of human rights education and critical media literacy, and the international inducements to include these subjects in the national education systems of United Nations (UN) member states. It compared the United States…

This article attempts to do three things: the first is an exploration of the ways in which Islam is presented in an essentialist way (with a focus on religious education (RE) in England and Wales), leading to stereotypes and unsubstantiated generalisations that are then embedded in resources and agreed syllabi, secondly, it provides a critique of…

Most teacher education institutions in India have charted out programmes well in tune with the syllabus prescribed by the University to which they are affiliated. But some institutions have tended to tread a different path. These are institutions which are over fifty years old and have set a tradition of its own. A closer study of older teacher…

A key concept in contemporary Catholic educational discourse makes a distinction between religious education and catechesis. This distinction is based on the assumptions of faith commitment on the part of catechesis and the focus on cognitive outcomes on the part of religious education. Many official documents on Canadian Catholic school…

This article reports on a teacher-talk training course for Japanese primary school teachers, who are preparing to teach "communicative English" for the first time. The article argues that teacher-talk training is important for communicative classes with young students because most of the input and interaction is by default teacher…

Religious Education (RE) is an entitlement for all pupils in state-funded schools in England and Wales. The parental right of withdrawal is rarely invoked. Given the multi-faith nature of British society, inter-faith RE is normative in most (non-religious) Community Schools, and is a significant feature of many Faith Schools. Although RE is…

This article presents the process of recent curricular revision and material development in English at the national level in India in a limited way. Teachers' needs and wants, their participation in the development of materials, the dilemmas of teachers and their implications for classroom transactions are discussed from the experiences of one of…

Considers opinions of teaching anthropologists in Britain as to whether fieldwork for undergraduates should be encouraged; describes courses in which fieldwork currently has a place; and provides an example of a course developed at the University of Kent, Canterbury (United Kingdom), that required fieldwork. (Author/LRW)

In the view of a continuing education unit in a rural health education center in Australia, competency-based training emphasizes what a person can actually do as a result of training. Professional continuing education courses are being developed using accredited guidelines from the national Vocational Education Training Assessment Board. (SK)

This paper presents new principles and basic approaches for the curricula of engineering degree courses. The accentuated evolution of engineering, the fast technological transformations and, still, the impact provoked by government regulations in the field of education in Brazil have called attention to these issues. Following these changes, it…

This article looks at the implications of the Culture Syllabus of the National Core French Study for Canadian French teachers. It also examines some of the suggestions made regarding how culture should be taught. (JL)

The fragility of English for Special Purposes (ESP) is examined in the context of a particular British ESP course, European Business Administration. Issues include the characteristic ESP time pressure, the treatment of "hard" terminology in English for Academic Purposes (EAP), the nonlinguistic subject matter of EAP courses, and the use…

The past two decades has witnessed the mushrooming of Islamic schools in Europe, the United States and South Africa. Initially, these schools were concerned essentially with providing an Islamic ethos for learners. More recently, however, they have begun to focus on the process of Islamization. The Islamization project was initiated in the United…

History as a school subject in Hong Kong is often assumed to have been a vehicle for "colonialist" indoctrination under the British, and for "nationalist" indoctrination under the post-retrocession Chinese regime. This chapter challenges such assumptions by examining the ways in which history syllabuses have (or have not) dealt…

During the Fall term, 2001, the author taught a new course intended to develop a diversity of close reading skills among his students. An integral component of the course involved the exploration of memory and history. As the fate of the syllabus would have it, right after the September attacks he taught Sarah Farmer's "Martyred Village:…