A recent national curriculum guide for upper secondary schools in my home country, Iceland, requires secondary schools to work towards equality and five other overarching aims. This requirement raises questions about to what extent secondary schools have to change their curricula in order to approach these aims or work towards them in an adequate…

For generations, schools have aimed to introduce students to a broad range of topics through curriculum that ensure that they will at least have some acquaintance with most areas of human knowledge by the time they graduate. Yet such broad knowledge can't help but be somewhat superficial--and, as Kieran Egan argues, it omits a crucial aspect of…

In this paper we explore the philosophy, pedagogy and implementation of the third year course sequence in the M.A. in Educational Technology program at Michigan State University. We discuss how "little-r" revolutions in teaching and learning, i.e., technology facilitated revolutions specific to individual classrooms and contexts, are…

This contribution aims at informing readers about a current education and training design approach which is based on theory building and practical experience. It is about the development of comprehensive competence-based education, which is different from earlier attempts to develop competence-based education. In many education development…

The paper is in four parts. Part 1 considers the justification for including design and technology in the school curriculum. Part 2 suggests the content for the subject at Key Stage 3. Part 3 describes some of the ways the subject might be taught. Part 4 considers ways in which the curriculum can be devised so that it is irresistible and…

10 Great Curricula is a collection of stories written by educators who have come to understand curricula differently as a result of their engagement with a graduate course and its instructor. The book represents the best of what can be found in teaching and learning, in general, and in the quest for meaningful ways to understand curricula in…

Arguing that education, as being practiced today is generally fearful of spirituality, and that real education ought to cultivate inner lives in an integrated way; this paper put forwards a way for integrating spirituality to everyday life of schools in secular societies. It explores the meaning of spirituality, spiritual intelligence, and…

This essay explores the nature of the curriculum content of liberal studies--a core school subject in the new senior secondary curriculum in Hong Kong--with reference to the curriculum-making processes entailed in the formation of that subject. The central thesis is that a school subject is introduced to schools and classrooms as a distinct…

Education "is" changing, as is knowledge more generally, to a significant degree energised by what has been described as the digital revolution. This has been widely discussed with references to notions such as globalisation, the New Media Age, open access, and the Network Society. Something definitely to be considered is what this could…

When environmental education manifests itself in schools, it is usually a simple matter of the insertion of an environment-related activity into the science, or perhaps social studies, curriculum. However, if one finds a teacher who has "the ethic," the entire school might be "green." The fact that this ethic is spreading…

Opinion surrounding Western Australia's provision of compulsory education via an outcomes-based education (OBE) paradigm is severely divided. At the centre of debate is an attempt by authorities to extend OBE into the final years of secondary schooling, Years 11 and 12. In this paper an examination is made of OBE as a curriculum paradigm.…

This paper provides insights into teaching and learning based on the analysis of an accredited professional development program, entitled the Postgraduate Certificate in Third Level Learning and Teaching, aimed at lecturing staff/faculty in Irish higher education. The program has its theoretical basis in the Kolb Experiential Learning Cycle (Kolb,…

This article reports on a self-study that focuses on encouraging a group of undergraduate students to be active learners by promoting their critical engagement with what they are learning. The descriptions and explanations in the self-study give account of the contradictions and challenges encountered in my attempts to reconcile between students'…

This paper approaches the concept of curriculum design from a philosophical perspective, arguing that the concept of "design" in curriculum is fundamentally misleading. The paper begins with a series of comments questioning the assumption that curriculum design involves a set of discrete skills or procedures in which one may attain expertise, like…

Describes philosophy of Paulo Freire as foundation for an existential/humanistic curriculum and explores practical and theoretical implications of this curriculum for second language teaching. Expands curriculum design principles into sample second language curriculum design principles. (Author/BK)