Research indicates an uneasy fit between curriculum frameworks and practice. In this paper, we explore the more subtle practices of context, providing insights into why teachers plan the way they do. Specifically, we examine the Australian early childhood education and care curriculum framework and local practices by analysing teacher planning…

Science teachers struggle to implement and sustain new curricular ideas from professional development (PD) experiences. These PD opportunities are crucial for enacting real-world changes to teaching practice and address pressing global challenges, such as the teaching and learning of socioscientific topics nested in school communities.…

One of the intellectual threads to which Suellen Shay contributed was describing the curriculum structure of professional and vocational education. This work was part of the Bernsteinian call for a return to knowledge in the curriculum. But education for vocations and professions, termed 'regions', remains a vexing problem. Turning to LCT…

Background: Spatial thinking skills are strongly correlated with achievement in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields and emerging research suggests that interventions aimed at building students' skills will likely yield measurable impacts on learning across K-12 settings. The importance of spatial thinking in science has…

This article explores three current, influential English language teaching (ELT) curriculum approaches to the teaching of English in public-sector schools at the primary and secondary level and how the theory of each approach translates into curriculum practice. These approaches are communicative language teaching (CLT), genre-based pedagogy, and…

Preparing teachers to work effectively within increasingly diverse contexts is a key goal of teacher education programs. This study analyses the extent to which a semester unit within a teacher education course provided pre-service teachers with the understanding and practices required to teach in low socio-economic status (SES) contexts. The…

This enlightening handbook offers current, international perspectives on the conditions in communities, contemporary practices in schooling, relevant research on teaching and learning, and implications for the future of education. It contains diverse conceptual frameworks for analyzing existing issues in education, including but not limited to…

Considered socially, musical values are always relative in practice to the uses and purposes of observers, thus accounting for the variety of meanings and values different people--even experts--derive from the same musical occasion, or the different meanings and values the same person experiences on different occasions. Music education is a…

A view of situated instructional development (ID) is presented which incorporates a constructivist, situated view of learning and expertise, while at the same time viewing the ID process itself in situated terms. The purposes of this paper are to offer several reflections about the relationship between design and implementation of learning…

Trying to implement interdisciplinary geoscience curriculum materials in geography and science education we asked how they fit into teachers' existing practices, their needs for support and strategies to plan instruction. The focus of our case study has been the identification of the goals teachers pursue with the materials, of strategies for…

Purpose: This viewpoint paper aims to assess a curriculum response within a specific vocational sector, hospitality, driven by the recent surge in intra EU labour migration and the ensuing increase in workplace cultural diversity. Design/methodology/approach: The paper identifies an appropriate curriculum response by assessing the industry…

The book consists of 46 chapters by numerous authors, divided into six parts. Part 1, "The Moving Target: Instructional Development from a Philosophical Vantage Point," addresses the questions: To what extent is instructional design in fact a valid and thriving area? and To what extent and in what quarters is it considered to be a dying or…

Adult educators create a curriculum whenever they explicitly or implicitly select some objects of knowledge over others, or choose a particular way to handle knowledge in their pedagogy. When the interests reflected in a curriculum are left unexamined, the role of knowledge as a phenomenon of power is not addressed and inequitable social…

In post-apartheid South Africa, a lack of adequate resources and political expertise obstructed implementation of a new outcomes-based curriculum. A policy review committee subsequently made sweeping recommendations for implementation. The experience highlights the need to determine the role of education and what schools can realistically…

The Teacher-Centered Systemic Reform model (TCSR) recognizes teaching context, teacher characteristics, teacher thinking, and their interactions as influential factors in attempts to implement classroom reform. Using the TCSR model, teachers' personal practical theories, and conceptual change as a framework, the authors of this article studied…