The aim of this paper is to challenge the physical and conceptual boundaries of educational places and spaces with the use of metaphor: the story of Professor Kirke's magic wardrobe in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," the first book in The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis (1950). By explicating and theorising the concerns that…

This article reflects on the epistemological steamrolling that the 2021 Ofsted Curriculum Research Review (OCRR) accomplishes: in part, by the positioning of the problem and solution through highly selective cherry-picking (omitting key causal factors); in part, through the discursive move of acknowledging complexity before offering simple and…

Current landscapes of curriculum discourse and educational practice are examined by focusing on co-evolutions of metaphors for knowledge, learning and teaching across four prominent 'frames'--namely, Standardized Education, Authentic Education, Democratic Citizenship Education and Systemic Sustainability Education. It is argued that these frames…

This article presents a microanalysis of how a group of primary school teachers deals with research evidence in their work. Based on analysis of a group of Norwegian teachers' interactions over issues of educational research and research-based knowledge, we find that teachers' representations of educational research particularly center on the…

Originally published as a special issue of Educational Studies, this volume demonstrates the ways in which sound considerations can significantly contribute to educational foundations. Regardless of their origin or interpretation, sounds are theoretically and practically foundational to educational experiences. As the means through which…

Bridging home literacy practices and school has been a key theme for many New Literacy Studies researchers, yet there is no clear consensus on the impact of multiple or new literacies in K-12 classrooms. American classrooms remain book-centric. Multiple literacies represent a fundamental paradigm shift in the ways we understand and enact literacy…

Recent education reform in China reflects the global trend of education policy borrowing from Anglophone countries such as the USA. The reform in China essentially advocates shifting from knowledge reproduction and didacticism to knowledge construction by students through a learner-centredness approach. Aware of the trend of borrowing policy from…

This article defines the concepts related to symbolic and sign representations, cognition and learning in the early years. The first study experiment of teaching 33 preschool children (19 boys and 14 girls; M = 68, 5 months) the notion of rainbow phenomenon proved the equal effectiveness of the use of both sign and symbolic tools. The second study…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the ways in which charter school leaders influence the understanding and conception of accountability policy and how that understanding translates into practice. In particular, this paper draws from sense-making theory and research on charter school leaders to identify their pre-existing…

Research indicates that the use of metaphors to organize and frame questions concerning the teaching/learning process can be an effective tool. More problematic, however, has been the use of metaphor in framing policy questions, especially those metaphors employed to frame national education reform ideas. This article explores several research…

This paper draws upon research evidence obtained as metaphors from biographical narrative interviews of Mandarin teachers of English working in China, which has illustrated the problems of teachers adapting to change in Chinese schools. The research has attempted to explore teachers' professional adaptation under strenuous challenges, that is, the…

Combining two metaphors we argue that apart from official educational policy, there exists a "palimpsest" of cumulatively added prior policies sedimented in teachers' pedagogy, in addition to quasi-official "phantom" policies formed at the local level. We argue that these affect teachers' practices and beliefs in ways that may…

Guided by theories of institutions, organizations, and sense-making, this manuscript examines how public, charter, and Catholic school staff in a large urban area organize for instruction and respond to educational change. To build theory about institutional processes of "organizing" from participants' perspectives, data included a…

Australia is a federation of six states and two territories. Each state and territory has its own legislature, which may not be of the same political persuasion as the Commonwealth (Federal) Government. Under the Australian Constitution primary control of school education is with the State and Territory Governments, with the Australian…

In an era of reductionist approaches to teaching and assessment, this dissertation returns to the fundamental question: "What is the value of writing, particularly poetry writing, in our society today?" The poet's central task, to abstract reality through symbols, requires profound cognitive and emotional work (Vendler, 2004; Steele,…