Various recent politically driven policy interventions have outlined the increased importance of school physical education programmes as a contributor towards realising active lifelong learning targets. This paper explains the origins of the new policy emphasis and describes some of the opportunities which now exist for reviewing many curriculum…

International studies on the knowledge of mathematics at the generalist-class teaching level have indicated that Slovene students are quite skilled at computations, but have difficulties solving mathematical problems. This finding stimulated us to create a problem-based instruction model. We wanted to find out whether the students in the…

This article describes and analyzes a program of work in elementary mathematics teacher education at the University of Michigan that has, for a decade, been a site for the development of approaches to preparing beginning K-8 mathematics teachers that are both aimed at practice and centered in content. Among the products of this work are video…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss the potential and the challenges of successful integration of ePortfolios and graduate attributes into the curriculum. Design/methodology/approach: An argument is presented about the positioning of ePortfolios, and their links to graduate attributes, that draws upon the experiences of working with…

Purpose: School connectedness, or a sense of belonging to the school environment, is an established protective factor for child and adolescent health, education, and social well-being. While a comprehensive, whole-school approach that addresses the school organisational environment is increasingly endorsed as an effective approach to promote…

The recent creation of Web 2.0 applications dramatically alters the ways in which universities recruit and educate students. Technology insiders usually attribute the phrase "Web 2.0" to Tim O'Reilly, author and publisher of the ubiquitous O'Reilly series of technology books (http://oreilly.com). Although there is no shortage of definitions of Web…

This paper considers influences on the contemporary school curriculum in England. It does so mainly through a critical analysis of one significant critique of the curriculum made by the think tank Civitas in their collection of essays asserting the "corruption" of the curriculum, published in 2007. The paper places the Civitas position…

Recent curriculum reform promotes core competencies such as desired "content knowledge" and "communication" for meaningful learning in biology. Understanding in biology is demonstrated when pupils can apply acquired knowledge to new tasks. This process requires the transfer of knowledge and the subordinate process of translation across external…

America's sense of community is broken down; its sense of connectedness and the collective is "collapsing." That these senses ever existed is a matter for considerable debate. But, as the new millennium gains momentum and neoliberalism seeks expansion, the author argues that a focus on rekindling these concepts of community,…

Since the introduction of the action research into China in the 1980s, especially since the start of the twenty-first century, Chinese education researchers have been trying to localize it in relation to the backdrop of the national curriculum reform in basic education. This article presents three cases in which educators aimed for a conscious…

In curriculum evaluation and development, the views of students are important--but often overlooked. We report findings from a small innovative project involving 60 male (M) and female (F) students in two successive age groups: UK National Curriculum Year Groups (NCYG) 8 and 9 (aged 12-13 years and 13-14 years, respectively). The project was…

The authors describe a teaching strategy that can support the development and learning of all children in inclusive learning environments. They give an overview of peer-mediated intervention and share useful information on how classroom teachers can use this tool to promote learning, particularly in the areas of social and communication…

This article discusses a curriculum resource database project for housing and consumer economics educators. This database, along with message boards, an event calendar, and discipline-related articles, is available at www.GetYourFACtS.com (Sweaney, Manley, Valente, & Black, 2002). Given the overwhelming volume of information available on the…

With the aging and diversifying of the elder population in the United States, there is a pressing need for an organized and effective curriculum in cultural competence. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) requires that the curriculum for Geriatric Medicine Fellowship training include cultural competency training.…

Initial teacher training for post-compulsory education in England is currently undergoing profound change in terms of central direction of curricula and the provision of financial support for trainees. Within a discourse of the "professionalisation" of teaching in the sector, unprecedented control of the detailed structure and content of…