Curricular Level Research Articles

Threshold concepts in the teaching of natural sciences: A systematic review

A systematic review of Threshold Concepts provides a thorough and structured analysis of the existing literature related to these essential and transforming concepts in education. Threshold Concepts represent ideas or knowledge that, once understood, allow the student to access deeper levels of understanding of a discipline. These concepts are crucial, since they act as “doors” that, once “crossed”, lead to a more integrated and coherent vision of a study area. In the review, various academic databases were consulted to identify relevant studies, applying rigorous inclusion and exclusion criteria. Through this process, key patterns, methodologies, and findings were detected, related to the teaching, understanding and application of these concepts. Despite the broad methodological diversity that exists in the field, as well as educational approaches and contexts, Threshold Concepts are not always addressed successfully at the curricular level or in the implementation of teaching methodologies. The limitations of this review have an impact on possible publishing bias and the diversity of research methods. However, the review stresses the need for greater integration of these concepts in education, as well as future research that explores efficient pedagogical strategies to teach them.

Parents’ multilingual storytelling in the school setting: evaluating influence on family language practices

The linguistic choices parents make while communicating with their bi- and multilingual children is fundamental to the development of their children’s linguistic repertoire and multilingual development. The involvement of parents in the implementation of multilingual pedagogies can play a fundamental role in fostering parents’ awareness on topics related to multilingualism. This paper illustrates school-based multilingual storytelling activities conducted by parents in a pre-school in northern Italy. The activity was designed as part of the project L’AltRoparlante (Carbonara & Scibetta, 2020), an Italian network of schools which adopted multilingual pedagogies at curricular level. The findings suggest that involving parents in multilingual pedagogies have a positive influence on family language use as they encourage children’s linguistic diversity awareness and parents’ biliteracy planning. Parents’ involvement in multilingual pedagogy can be a useful tool to build inclusive home-school collaborations and to guide parents in shaping multilingual storytelling activities at home.

Facilitating inclusive and equitable curricular changes: A case study of embedded librarianship in a faculty learning community

This article explores the case study of an embedded librarian in a faculty learning community (FLC) dedicated to inclusive and equitable pedagogy. By embedding in a faculty learning community that focuses on revising a syllabi to be more inclusive and equitable, the libraries are able to affect change at the curricular level and create stronger impact than traditional course embedding. This FLC was designed to provide faculty with resources across multiple support offices which led to continuity and sustainability for the program, furthering student success at the university.

Cultivating a Collectivist Community on a College Campus for Latinx Students

ABSTRACT Do inclusion, diversity, equity, and access (IDEA) courses geared toward Latinx students help create a collectivist community on a college campus? We argue that courses incorporating IDEA initiatives into their curriculum and focusing on Latinx individuals provide students the face, place, and space to create the cultural wealth required for educational success. The academic intervention described in this study focused on supporting the Latinx community and advancing our university’s IDEA values. This qualitative project describes the results of forty-seven participants in ten focus groups within undergraduate courses during the Fall 2019-Spring 2021 semesters. Based on a deductive-inductive hybrid thematic analysis, our results suggest that IDEA courses at the curricular level are essential in cultivating a collectivist community on campus for students to thrive. Evidence from this study can be utilized to inform educational policy and pedagogical considerations within higher education.

Computational Literacy as an Important Element of a Digitized Science Teacher Education—A Systematic Review of Curriculum Patterns in Physics Teacher Education Degrees in Germany

Computational literacy (CL) has become indispensable for teachers and learners as part of 21st-century skills. Therefore, corresponding models for teacher education are being further developed internationally from a scientific perspective. In parallel, content and competencies are being enhanced in the respective subjects at the curricular level of teacher training. In this context, we consider it important to examine the current status of this development. Since, to our knowledge, there are no comparable scientific studies, we have taken Germany as a representative example of the international education system and systematically analyzed the module handbooks of the physics teacher training courses at methodically selected universities. For this analysis, we used three research questions focusing on CL: In which physics content does CL play a role? Which computer science competencies or knowledge can be identified or derived? Are they described implicitly or explicitly? Our results suggest that CL is integrated very differently in terms of quantity and depth of content among the universities we examined. For example, there is often a very strong focus on computer-based data acquisition, but few programs also have specialized courses addressing CL more explicitly or integrate additional computer science competencies. CL is primarily taught in laboratory courses and frequently in subject-didactic courses. Nevertheless, the depictions presented in the purely subject-oriented and basic lectures lack specific computational literacy skills or knowledge. Furthermore, the fact that many programs only offer implicit descriptions of CL skills indicates that the integration of these skills has not progressed very far in practice.

The Next Generation of Pedagogy: Reflections from EdTech Leaders

Technology has changed rapidly in recent years and higher education has struggled to keep up. This article draws upon the expertise of three leaders in the Educational Technology (EdTech) industry to better understand how technology can be infused at the course level and at the curricular level to improve student learning. Best practices in teaching and learning are considered through the filter of EdTech to better understand where faculty can start to implement change. It is also suggested that faculty reconsider their notions of personal development to include not just keeping up with content, but also keeping up with how technology can maximize the student learning experience.

The importance of integration of music education with social sciences in elementary school

TThis study analyzes the importance of cross-subject (cross-curricular) integration of the music education subject with social sciences in elementary school, from the perspective of primary school teachers. This research is important for the teachers of the relevant fields and aims to improve the cross-subject connection practices of music education and social sciences in schools, and it also aims to raise the awareness of the relevant educational institutions at the municipal and state level. The aspect of cross-curricular integration is very important for the development of students’ competencies. These competencies are related to the very goals of the pre-university education system of Kosovo clearly defined in the new Kosovo Curriculum Framework, as the main document in the hierarchy of official education documents in Kosovo. In order to identify the current situation, in this study a qualitative approach was used and by purposeful sampling different teachers have been chosen who work with grades 3, 4 and 5 (in the second curricular level), because this combination offers a diversity of educational units and greater opportunities for ways of integrating music education with social sciences. To address this topic, we collected research data through a semi-structured interview with a total of 15 primary school teachers which highlight the real situation regarding the importance, applicability and the challenges teachers face during the integration of music education with the subjects representing social sciences.

Entrepreneurship education in the era of generative artificial intelligence

Generative artificial intelligence has seen fast paced developments, with it being utilised in numerous contexts, including both entrepreneurship and education. This has led to calls to integrate generative artificial intelligence into entrepreneurship education, to help prepare students to take advantage of future entrepreneurial opportunities. The technology also has the potential to influence pedagogy, teaching practice, and assessment and has raised concerns and questions within education about how educators can train students to use the latest technology to prepare them for the future, whilst managing potential changes to teaching practice. However, given the rapid emergence of the technology, discussion as to the implications for education and particularly entrepreneurship education is limited and there have been calls for further exploration and discussion. This paper addresses these calls by discussing some of the potential implications which generative artificial intelligence brings to entrepreneurship education and the entrepreneurship classroom, at both a macro and curricular level. The advancement of generative artificial intelligence furthers the need for entrepreneurship educators to embrace the technology in a managed way, develop students critical and reflective thinking, and foster the development and assessment of practical and technical entrepreneurial skills, to support student’s effective utilisation of generative artificial intelligence. Educators should also be aware of the potential effects which generative artificial intelligence poses to teaching and assessment.

The effect of the cyclic curricular design of modelling-based instruction with virtual labs

ABSTRACT One issue facing teachers who implement model-based instruction within the school system is the tight curricular schedule. The ‘lesson objective tension’ calls for investigations to address instructional issues such as how to organise modelling-based instruction at the curriculum level which is across multiple units. We investigated the effect of the cyclic curricular design spacing out three modelling-based instruction units with virtual labs over three semesters, each involving 73, 181, and 150 junior high school students, respectively. Results indicate that, overall, the approach of modelling with virtual labs better promoted students’ scientific literacy than the traditional instruction did. Specifically, students with low and moderate school science achievements benefitted more as shown in their scientific literacy scores than did the high achievement students. Furthermore, this study found that receiving one unit of modelling-based instruction may not be sufficient to promote students’ scientific literacy, whereas the cyclic approach that suggests students receive two or more units of modelling-based instruction with virtual labs spaced over consecutive semesters had significant effects on promoting students’ scientific literacy. The results provide insights into when and how modelling-based learning with virtual labs can promote scientific literacy at a curricular level.

Sexual education for university students and the community in a european project: study protocol

BackgroundThe World Health Organisation (WHO) calls on stakeholders to give Higher Education a key educational importance for the future of Europe. Within the content of the training programmes at university, sexuality emerges as a relevant topic in the nursing degree, to promote integral health from a holistic perspective. However, research on the presence of sexuality at the curricular level in Higher Education suggests that it is incomplete and underdeveloped.MethodsThis is a protocol for a long-term, multi-centre, exploratory, descriptive, and cross-sectional study with a quantitative and qualitative approach lasting two years. The research will be carried out in the educational community, including, on the one hand, students, and professors and health professionals of nursing programmes from five universities in different parts of the world (Portugal, Spain, Italy, and the United States), and on the other hand, women, young people, and immigrants from these communities. The study will have several target populations. Firstly, the target is nursing students, with whom the aim is to define their perspective on the sexuality content taught at the university, and their level of knowledge. Secondly university professors and health professionals, with whom we will check their perspective on sexuality in the classroom, as well as their level of knowledge in this field. And finally, we will work with the community (women, young people, and immigrants) to whom we will try to bring sexuality from a useful and enjoyable perspective. In order to measure these variables in the protocol, instruments such as questionnaires and semi-structured interviews will be used. During data collection, ethical principles will be guaranteed and informed consent will be requested from the participants.DiscussionThe results of the research will have a high curricular impact on the educational community, and will last over time, since the tools generated in the project will be included as part of nursing training programmes. In addition, participation in the project will improve health education for health professionals and at the community level on sexuality in both urban and rural populations.

Bridging the Gap Between Researchers and Teachers: A Curricular Perspective

AbstractThis study investigated the researcher–teacher interface issue by exploring second language (L2) teachers’ experiences of being involved in a large instructed second language acquisition empirical study aimed at curricular changes. The study addressed two goals. First, by involving the entire teaching staff at all levels of the multisection language teaching program in the administration of the empirical study, it examined the interface at the individual and the professional level. Second, by involving the teachers in every aspect of the study, it investigated the interface at the curricular level. Participants were 27 L2 teachers of Spanish at a private research university in the United States comprising graduate students of all disciplines and full‐time and adjunct faculty. The interface data were obtained via a survey with questions related to teachers’ academic backgrounds, pedagogical beliefs, experiences with academic journals, beliefs regarding the present study, overall experience, and their involvement in the research project. Two teachers also participated in in‐depth personal reflections. The results showed that the active participation by the teachers raised their level of awareness of the researcher–teacher and research–curriculum interfaces and also increased their overall personal and professional development as informed teachers who employ theoretically driven and empirically supported activities in their lesson plans.

Students’ perceptions of gender mainstreaming implementation in university teaching in Greece

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to explore the status of gender mainstreaming implementation in university teaching in Greek higher education institutions by examining the education students receive regarding gender equality. The Sensitive Assessment of Training for Gender Equality index was used to collect data from 1,194 students from nine Greek public universities over four degrees (Teacher Education, Physical Education, Greek Philology, and Science). The students were purposely selected through an online survey. Participants were between 20 and 53 years old, mostly female (79%) and Greek (98.20%). Findings revealed that formal preparation for gender mainstreaming implementation in university teaching is practically nonexistent. While respondents rated positively the need for incorporating a gender perspective into curricula, recognizing its importance in reducing sexism, developing gender competencies and practicing a gender-sensitive pedagogy, their views differed in the emphasis that should be given to gender training. Science students were less demanding than school teaching, physical education and Greek philology students, as well as male than female students. Additionally, the participants rated institutions’ and educators’ commitment to gender equality as neutral and did not recognize existing gender inequalities. This suggests that gender mainstreaming is poorly considered in Greek higher education at institutional, curricular, and relational level.

COVID-19 and young people in Spain. The emergence of values education as a strategy for civic responsibility

ABSTRACT The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has provoked a series of consequences all over the world, especially in young people. On the other hand, this sector of the population has shown an evident and baffling increased failure to comply with public health measures put in place, which has had a knock-on effect on the number of infections detected. These attitudes have resulted in repeated calls by bodies such as the World Health Organisation to remember the risks of this kind of behaviour for the wider community. In Spain, this scenario has been noteworthy in the 15 to 29 age group, with 20% of individuals becoming infected. In view of this, there is an unarguable need to rethink civic responsibility. This study carries out a review of the educational laws in this country by performing an analysis on how civic responsibility has been addressed at curricular level.

Implementation of a Socially Distanced In-Person Laboratory Experience Across the Chemistry Curriculum during the COVID-19 Pandemic at a Small, Liberal Arts University

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the mass shutdown of universities across the United States in the spring of 2020. As the pandemic progressed, regional regulations resulted in a broad range of teaching modalities for the 2020-2021 academic year. While some regions remained tightly locked down (resulting in online-only instruction), others allowed limited or full campus operations within higher education. Located in Spokane, WA, Whitworth University is a small, liberal arts university which was allowed limited operations under a socially distanced model. While the pandemic resulted in some obvious campus changes (for example, masks were required on campus), more subtle changes were required at the curricular level. Adopting a flex model where students and faculty were allowed the option to participate online only while in-person classes were offered, Whitworth maintained in-person education through the 2020-2021 academic year. This FLEX model presented specific difficulties to laboratory courses due to social distancing restrictions. In this work, we describe five models developed in the Whitworth University Department of Chemistry toward teaching laboratories in a socially distanced manner with reduced room capacity. The primary modes of instruction were (1) a reduction of in-person laboratory time so that only half of the students were working in the laboratory at any given time, (2) an alternating weeks model where students came to the laboratory every other week and performed online laboratory experiences in the off weeks, (3) a split room model where one faculty member oversaw two laboratory spaces containing one-half of the normal number of students, (4) a higher number of smaller lab sections where social distancing could be maintained, and (5) a hybrid technique utilizing several of these concepts dependent upon the learning outcomes of the laboratory procedure each week. Benefits and challenges for each model are described by faculty herein. End-of-semester student course evaluation scores provide a comparison of student perceptions of learning outcomes and experiences in the laboratory in the various models. In addition, grade point averages were compared to prior years. Finally, departmental leadership provides insight on the administrative challenges of implementing these course models. Statistically, the models presented no significant change in student perceptions of learning or grade point averages for most courses regardless of the model when compared to prior offerings of these courses. Overall, the implementation of these protocols allowed students hands-on laboratory experiences with a minimal impact on the curriculum presented. ©

A Transpessoalidade na Escola: novas abordagens subjetivas da Pedagogia do Cinema

Cinema as a universal art provides the construction of the historical, critic, aesthetic and philosophical knowledge. It represents, with the cross-disciplinary aesthetics of teaching, a real possibility of development of the cultural education by allowing us to understand the subjectivity of social life, within a worldview that commonly resonates in the school universe. In this study, it is aimed to understand, in experiential terms, how the pedagogical application of cinema could impact in Youth & Adult Education (EJA), by addressing the experience of a pedagogical intervention carried out with students in the capital of Brazil. Thus, one of the challenges of this project is to mediate a cross-cultural dialogue at curricular level, in compliance with the perspectives of Brazil’s Education Law (LDB, BRAZIL, 2013), in a way that those knowledges already constituted in the curriculum can be conciliated with elements of cultural diversity of these students, by means of cross-disciplinarity of cinema. With the purpose of an education of sensibility towards the construction of more healthy, harmonious and cooperative relations, aiming the personal and collective betterment of a culture of peace, a didactic method based on transpersonal psychology is also implemented.

Submitting, resisting, and getting by: literacy and ideology in a remedial reading program

Our current political moment has raised critical questions surrounding the efficacy of public education to deliver on its promise of social uplift. This ethnographic case study utilizes Louis Althusser’s conception of ideology--which insists that the way to dismantle systemic injustice is first to recognize its imprint on our everyday actions--to examine the material practices of two high school remedial reading classes. Findings indicate the negative impact of an ‘autonomous model’ (Street, 1984) of literacy on students’ own literate activities, as well as their multiple methods of engaging with this literacy ideology. Ultimately, this analysis urges more consideration of the (literacy) ideologies at work in public education today, and suggests that efforts at the curricular level to equalize educational outcomes may be prone to fail if larger ideological questions remain unexplored.

A Critical Survey of Environmental Content in United States Undergraduate Mechanical Engineering Curricula

This survey examines how mechanical engineers are being prepared to be responsible stewards of the environment by offering a multi-channeled look at a diverse collection of twelve US colleges and universities, with connections to the larger global context. This study enumerates the external influences of professional organizations, those responsible for program accreditation (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET)), professional conduct (American Society of Mechanical Engineers), and licensure (National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying, National Society of Professional Engineers). At the curricular level, this study presents current mechanical engineering curricula via core courses (required at most institutions) and non-core courses (required at a minority of institutions or elective courses). The curriculum study identifies fifteen core courses and uses the Open Syllabus Project and online bookstores to identify a representative textbook and classify the environmental content therein. Immediate results show the environment receiving sparse treatment in core course textbooks, institutions having zero environment-focused degree requirements, and a tendency towards offering electives that are narrowly focused on green technologies. Elective offerings mirror ABET’s recent move away from emphasizing the “broad education necessary to understand the impact” of engineering solutions to instead “consider the impact of” engineering solutions in an environmental context. Overall, the environmental education mechanical engineers are receiving is insufficient in amount and lacking in scientific and ethical foundation. Ideally, every mechanical engineering program should include coordinated environmental content throughout the curriculum and require at least one course that teaches both environmental design principles and the importance of environmental stewardship. A novel approach eschews the typical artes mechanicae course structure to teach environmental stewardship in the artes liberales educational tradition, emphasizing multi-dimensional thinking by employing great books style discussions of seminal scientific, ethical, and technological works.

Making the invisible visible: managing tensions around including Traveller culture and history in the curriculum at primary and post-primary levels

The formal recognition of Travellers as a distinct ethnic group by the Irish State in 2017 was arguably a significant step towards redressing the pernicious and endemic institutional racism and marginalisation that Travellers have historically experienced in Ireland. It was announced by the Irish Government in October 2018 that a review of the place of Travellers in existing school curricula would be undertaken, with a view to including Traveller history and culture at primary and post-primary levels. While there are benefits associated with curricular recognition, including its capacity to potentially disrupt the reiterative reproduction of institutional racism at a formal curricular level, a significant body of literature highlights the shortcomings associated with additive curricular approaches. These include tokenism and a failure to challenge dominant mainstream-centric perspectives and wider systemic inequities. The potential for curricular interventions to obscure or side-line critical consideration of the role of teachers’ and student teachers’ subjectivities, privileges and biases in perpetuating inequities is another dimension of this critique. This article draws on critical social justice literature, including tools from Critical Whiteness studies, to critically explore anti-Traveller racism and to analyse the tensions inherent in including Traveller culture and history in Irish primary and post-primary curricula.

Asynchronous Choice of Topics‐ an Adventure in Classroom Instruction

Student-led learning has often shown to be beneficial to the learner. These self-directed experiences are more often aimed at an activity/assignment level of instruction, allowing students to explore topics personally through inquiry. With the shift to online instruction caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic, I decided to take student-led instruction to the curricular level. This fall semester, I employed a “Choose your own adventure” approach to instruction, giving students the ability to tackle subjects in the order they chose to rather than the order determined by the instructor or the book. In preparing for the fall semester, I focused on redeveloping my undergraduate non-major physiology course in a way that allowed students the most flexibility- fully asynchronous presentation. The move to an asynchronous teaching model required the creation of activities and presentations that students could attend to on their own schedule. While creating these resources, I decided to make the class even more asynchronous by allowing students to choose the path of learning that they took through the course. Following a short introduction and review module, students were allowed to choose the order that they would cover material in the course during three “blocks” of information; each with its own quizzes, activities and an exam. Following each block, I asked students why they chose that section, whether they would alter their study habits for the next block of material and a series of Likert-scale questions addressing aspects of their comfort, motivation and learning. At the end of the course, I asked students if they had approached the class differently than traditional courses, whether they would rearrange the material within each block and whether they would like to have additional courses taught in this method.

Skills in Geography and Economics Reflected in Austria’s Newly Developed Key Concepts and Competencies for the 2023/24 Curriculum

The Austrian school subject Geography and Economics is taught throughout lower secondary level (grades 5 to 8). Following three subject-related didactic paradigm shifts since 1962, it has developed into an integrated, socially-oriented subject in the social sciences tradition, and focuses on the person acting spatially and economically in social contexts. The central research question is: How can the goal of the subject of Geography and Economics, which is to enable young people to act in the "society-economy-politics-environment" framework, be pursued and supported at curricular level? In a Vienna-wide study (n = 527), assessments made of Geography and Economics teachers in respect of their teaching of the subject were collected in a triangulation design, using a questionnaire with open and closed questions. The evaluation of their responses used a mixed methodology of inductive category formation within the framework of qualitative content analysis (Mayring, 2000), as well as variance analyses and significance tests. At the centre of their teaching, teachers place the acquisition of knowledge, the human being acting in spatial, societal and economic contexts and man–environment systems, or precisely described skills; statistical correlations between teachers’ years of service and level of education become apparent. The perception of the degree of integration of the two areas of Geography and Economics depends, among other things, on the teachers’ attitude towards the economy. While the teachers’ assessment of Geography and Economics as an integrated or combined subject is appropriate, the integration in the classroom could be further developed. For the new 2023/24 curriculum, integrated competence-oriented learning objectives and integrated key concepts were generated on the empirical basis of our results, and on the basis of subject-related didactic considerations and principles. This should further deepen the integration of geography and economics perspectives and how their integration is achieved in the classroom.