In this article, I explore my own classroom practices as a teacher of a university course on curriculum in order to investigate the potential emancipatory significance of a Rancièrean conversation-oriented curriculum. To provide a lived account of how emancipatory education with the premise of equality can be embraced, albeit not without…

In this article, I examine two focal students of L2 French whose curiosity and embodied learning inspired me to rethink my teaching about personal gender expression and grammatical gender and to develop curricular innovations that would open up pathways for self-expression in the L2 French classroom.

Over the past decade, abroad range of policymakers, corporations, educators, and scholars in the United States have catapulted computer science (CS) education from the sidelines to the center of K-12 public education discourse. While calls for CS education are often framed in terms of national and economic competitiveness, there is a growing…

Aside from mentioning possible issues of hidden identities and curriculum development relating to anorexia, little research has been done exploring how discourses of eating disorders and images of the body have been mediated by teachers and learners in the English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classroom. Drawing upon an ethnographic EAP classroom…

As the conditions for students' prospects of acquiring knowledge in school often are thought of as something that must be improved in the political rhetoric, it is also urgent, as Michael F. D. Young has argued, to ask what kind of knowledge should be the basis of the curriculum and to recognize the question of knowledge as central to the…

In this article we argue for the necessity of far-reaching change in school curricula and pedagogy. More particularly, we argue that developing students' understanding and engagement in the disciplines which make up the school curriculum requires an unearthing of the philosophical issues underlying science, mathematics, the arts, geography,…

This paper addresses the current resurgence of interest in classroom talk and its place in pedagogy; in particular the role of teachers in shaping students' learning through the design of classroom interactivity. The importance of teacher agency with respect to pedagogic design is highlighted in recent studies of pedagogy in the UK (Alexander,…

This paper explores the impact of a specially designed programme of communicative strategies on English second language (ESL) development in a scaffolded case study that set out to promote teacher-guided, constructive learner talk in the outcomes-based education arts and culture classroom. The programme was implemented in a multilingual secondary…

This paper reports on a formative evaluation study of 10 practitioner research projects linked together under the title "Better Communication Skills as a Means of Reducing the Barriers to Learning", which aimed to identify conditions through which practitioner research could help teachers to improve the quality of pupils' classroom talk.…

There is evidence that alienation from science is linked to the dominant discourse practices of science classrooms (cf. Lemke, J. L. (1990). Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values. Norwood, NJ: Ablex). Yet, in secondary science education it is particularly hard to find evidence of curriculum reform that includes explicit changes in…

Teachers are encouraged to participate personally in the curriculum development process by drawing on experience and consulting with colleagues in creating curricula specifically for their classes. The underlying concept and one practical strategy are outlined. Dialectic processes of curriculum development are viewed as conducive to spontaneous…

Two types of feedback are examined, and their use in controlling the processes of instructional development and improvement are discussed. Closed-loop feedback, the most direct, uses immediate feedback about a process or product to make immediate adjustments in it. Open-loop feedback, in which input cannot be changed immediately, uses feedback to…

This study was conducted to identify problems teachers face in using English as the language of instruction in the early grades of Zambian primary school, and to investigate the difficulties young pupils meet because of learning through English rather than through their mother tongue. The first chapter sets forth the historical background of the…

For more than 250 years, Americans have shared a vision of a democracy in which all citizens understand, appreciate, and engage actively in civic and political life. In recent decades, however, increasing numbers of Americans have disengaged from civic and political institutions such as voluntary associations, religious congregations,…

The problems encountered in implementing an intensive summer course in English for specific purposes, designed to prepare students for graduate study in urban planning, urban design, and architecture, are discussed by the course's language and content specialists. Positive course results included development of useful classroom communication…