The curriculum work of teachers is understood and conceptualised in different ways. A prevalent view is that teachers are an integral part of a system of transmission and their work with curriculum essentially a technical exercise. Some form of this view seems to be assumed by policymakers, parents and at least some teachers. However, when this…

Due to negative classroom experiences, lack of resources and access, the fear of the unknown, and at times a disconnect, students are often fearful of literacy learning (reading, writing)--and in some cases outright bored. This piece highlights a variation of Childs' "C.O.U.N.T." acronym, which addresses ways in which teachers can infuse…

The standardised and instrumental view of teaching overshadows the unintentional spontaneous, unpredictable aspects of teaching captured by the notion of "pedagogical tact." Pedagogical tact is grounded in teacher-pupil relations involving trust and care. This article illustrates how pedagogical tact can be used as an analytical tool in…

Recent scholarship in 4E Cognition posits what dancers intuitively know so well--that our conceptual maps and communicative strategies emerge directly from and in fluid relationship with our own bodily habitation of our world. This article offers a pedagogical strategy aimed to bridge the ontological divide between dancing and writing through the…

Considering the political environments of Australia and the United States, the authors discuss the disconnect between policy and the practical needs of educators for creativity in the classroom.

The core aim of physical education initial teacher training in England is to prepare associate teachers to become creative, inspiring, and highly skilled practitioners who will contribute to the teaching and development of the subject. School-based mentors play a critical role in this process, and an appreciation of their impact has raised the…

This paper explores aspects of Creative Music in Education [CMinED] practices through a political philosophy perspective based on Jacques Rancière's approach to the notion of democracy. The paper begins with three cautionary tales about the difficult encounter between democracy and music education. This sets the stage for introducing a Rancièrian…

Rollo Walter Brown was an American author and lecturer. He graduated from Ohio Northern University in 1903, and received a master's degree from Harvard University in 1905. He taught English at several institutions, including Wabash College and Carleton College. One of his nonfiction works is "The Creative Spirit--An Inquiry Into American…

In this paper, we use the lens of embodied language cognition and intersemiosis to argue for the importance of developing creative approaches to language work in classroom settings and we cite as an example some activities from a workshop that was developed for modern foreign languages (MFL) trainee teachers in London…

This article demonstrates how Bourdieu's field theory can be used to systematise ethnographic insights, establishing and validating connections between the micro-level of participants' experiences and macro-level contexts, whilst complementing and facilitating the reflexivity that has long been part of ethnographic traditions. Combining an…

Reflective Practice has been dominated for the last 25 years by an experiential school as typified by Kolb (1984. "Experiential Learning." Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall). This paper suggests that there are significant problems with an approach to considering futures that is based on 'knowledge' of the past, identification of ongoing…

L. S. Vygotsky's contributions to social research shifted paradigms by constructing now-foundational theories of teaching, learning, language, and their educational interactions. This article contextualizes a nearly forgotten, century-old research corpus, "The Fundamentals of Defectology." Drawing on "Defectology," two…

Students who are labelled as low attaining in mathematics are often seen as a homogeneous group and as such can be assigned learning attributes by others that observe their identity work in the classroom. Rachel Helme argues that by giving attention to an otherwise marginalised voice, it may be possible to challenge the discourse of deficiency,…

Catholic schools and colleges are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain and sharpen their distinctiveness in a climate of secularism, indifference to religion and the shortage of practising Catholics. This article argues that one method of bolstering Catholic schools' mission integrity is to highlight one important feature of its identity…

In this article, I trace lines of materialist pedagogies in the history of women workers' education following feminist interpretations of Spinoza's assemblage of joyful affects. More particularly, I focus on the notions of "laetitia" [joy], "gaudium" [gladness] and "hilaritas" [cheerfulness] as entanglements of joy…