Historical thinking is a construct approached by different disciplines with a recent proliferation in research interest compared to thinking in other domains. Leading exponents do not agree on its definition and include the two main traditions: Anglo-American and German, and various groups or research centres throughout the Western world.…

The overarching aim of this article is to exemplify and analyse how some algebraic aspects of equations can be theoretically explored and reflected upon by young students in collaboration with their teacher. The article is based upon an empirical example from a case study in a grade 1 in a primary school. The chosen lesson is framed by the…

A number of educational reform attempts, chief among which are pedagogy by objectives, competency-based approach, and pedagogy of integration, have been made to establish pedagogical reform in Moroccan public primary school. However, results have not been up to par. Failure of school reform has been largely rationalized in terms of technical…

Drawing on a sociocultural perspective, this article analyses a Cambodian student-centred policy named Effective Teaching and Learning (ETL) to explore how this policy is practiced, or constructed through the negotiation among policy actors. Tensions I found in the policy between radical orientation toward the transformation of knowledge and its…

This study recentres the sociocultural in culturally transforming pedagogic settings whilst foregrounding culturally responsive teaching (CRT). Through a protracted anthropological excavation, teachers' experiences in a culturally diverse integrated high school were explored and interpreted vis-à-vis tenets and precepts of CRT. Findings from…

This paper offers a cultural assets model for supporting school effectiveness that moves beyond the deficit and difference approaches of the twentieth century. The model incorporates the capacity to identify contemporary cultural assets, and support cultural continuity, cultural diversity and cultural resilience during change. Undertaking…

Driven by the impetus for the school system as a whole to actualize deep twenty-first century learning, innovation diffusion has become increasingly an important vehicle for isolated pockets of successes to proliferate beyond the locale of the individual schools to form connected clusters of improvement at a greater scale. This paper articulates…

As a special educator whose research is in teacher education, Leah Wasburn-Moses did not recognize the field of special education described in Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Curt Dudley-Marling's article titled "Diversity in Teacher Education and Special Education: The Issues that Divide," published in the latest issue of "Journal of Teacher…

The PISA survey influences educational policies through an international competitive process which is not wholly rationally-oriented. Firstly, PISA league tables act normatively upon the definition of formal educational aims while the survey tests cannot evaluate the educational systems' relative strengths with regards to such aims. We argue that…

This article interconnects three debates to show what this might imply for the "redemocratisation" of UK society and for pedagogical reform. One debate concerns deliberative types of democratic reform, arguing in favour of a "creative agnosticism" towards the two philosophical frameworks which dominate this literature. This…

Educators are increasingly aware of the importance of sustainability and the need to educate for sustainable change within higher education. This article addresses the growing need to focus on how teaching and learning can be re-oriented towards sustainability, and more specifically how educators can effectively address increasingly well-known…

Rural and remote Papua and West Papua are among the most important regions for Indonesia to achieve the second MDG on primary education with equity. Both provinces have gross, net enrolment and literacy rates which barely touch the national averages. Given the distinct political, socio-cultural, and geographical aspects of Papua and West Papua…

Sociocultural theory is increasingly popular as a paradigm for research in education. A recent member in this family of theories is introduced--cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT)--that shows much promise to complement and invigorate the field of educational change, a large, multi-faceted, and persistent problematic. In particular,…

Breaking with past conceptions of change as a pendulum swing based upon dichotomies, this paper offers a model which depicts change as sequential, emergent, and transformational. Patterns of change identified in the fields of technology and science are also identified in the field of education, and a three stage paradigm depicting transformational…

Comparative education scholarship on legitimation and educational knowledge has shifted from natural scientific definitions of knowledge to more socially critical conceptions, and encompasses both the specific processes whereby educational knowledge becomes legitimate and the dialectical relationship between legitimation of knowledge in…