Curricular Representations Research Articles

Queer breaches and normative devices: language learners queering gender, sexuality, and the L2 classroom

ABSTRACT Cisgender and heterosexual norms permeate every level of language classrooms, from textbooks to classroom discourse to teachers’ actions, constraining queer/trans learners’ ability to be themselves. Yet queer/trans and non-queer/trans learners alike may challenge cisheteronormativity within the language classroom and create new possibilities. We investigate the possibilities of queer/trans learners’ agency within these normative structures by bringing together three cases from larger separate projects, examining the context and actions of learners in each setting as they attempt to queer their classrooms to make them habitable. Drawing from Ahmed’s queer phenomenology, we analyze the devices that orient students to classroom cisheteronormativity, actions that students and their accomplices may take to breach these norms, and the reactions to and potential of such breaches within the L2 classroom context. We find that orienting devices, including curricular representation, language use, and grading practices, convey implicit and explicit messaging that can limit expressions of gender and sexuality. Yet queer breaches, when not subject to straightening, can lead to new classroom possibilities for expression, playfulness, and identity validation. We conclude by considering the implications of this analysis for practice.

Being l'Autre: French-Canadian immigrants in contemporary children's literature

PurposeImmigration-themed children’s literature can be an important resource in the classroom, especially because some U.S. immigrant groups, including French-Canadians, have received limited curricular representation. Using the qualitative method of critical content analysis, this study aims to examine depictions of French-Canadian immigrants to the United States in contemporary children’s books.Design/methodology/approachPostcolonialism is employed as an analytical lens with special attention given to the ways immigrant characters are constructed as different from the dominant group (i.e., othering), how dominant group values are imposed on immigrant characters, and how immigrant characters resist othering and domination. Three books comprise the sample: “Charlotte Bakeman Has Her Say” by Mary Finger and illustrated by Kimberly Batti, “Other Bells for Us to Ring” by Robert Cormier, and “Red River Girl” by Norma Sommerdorf.FindingsThe findings reveal multiple instances in which French-Canadian immigrants are constructed as Other and few instances in which these characters resist this positioning, and these books reflect the real ways French-Canadians were perceived as subalterns during the mass migration from Québec to the United States between the late 19th and early 20th centuries.Originality/valueThis study is significant because it examines portrayals of a substantial immigrant group that has been overlooked in the immigration history curriculum. This sample of children’s books may be used to teach children the complexities of immigration history and provide a more nuanced understanding of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Does Curriculum Fail Indigenous Political Aspirations? Sovereignty and Australian History and Social Studies Curriculum

Through analysis of curricular materials (syllabus documents and supplementary readers) from the late-nineteenth century to the present, this article explores the role of school curriculum in shaping understandings of Indigenous political aspirations in the Australian context. It juxtaposes curricular materials with significant occasions of Indigenous political activism in Australia since the late-nineteenth century: the Coranderrk campaign of the 1870-80s, the Wave Hill Walk Off in 1966, the establishment of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in 1972, and the Bicentenary protests of 1988. From this analysis, five narrative sub-themes were developed—Invisibility, Benevolence, Obfuscation, Innocence, and Acknowledgement—which captured the ways that Indigenous sovereignty, nationhood, and political legitimacy had been represented. In drawing out some continuities and changes to curricular representations of First Nations’ and settler sovereignty, nationhood, and political legitimacy over a one hundred year period, this article highlights the uneven ways that curriculum has, and continues to, represent political possibilities on the Australian continent. This article offers insights for Nordic contexts where there are also contests about legacies of colonialism in the public sphere, including in education.

Identifying factors that promote or inhibit disability-related discussion in secondary English language arts classrooms

ABSTRACT Although disabled people encounter discrimination in almost every facet of life – such as employment, housing, education, healthcare, and transportation – disability is often missing from conversations regarding social justice. Disability-related discussion (DRD) in English Language Arts (ELA) offers an inroad to having students view disability through a social justice lens. This exploratory, qualitative study examines the factors that influence 13 secondary (6–12) ELA teachers’ decisions to lead (or refrain from leading) DRD in classrooms in the United States. Findings reveal that primary factors that helped or hindered DRD included the role of subject/curriculum, school and classroom culture, and personal factors. Participants also expressed a desire for professional development related to DRD, as well as increased curricular representation within ELA. This study represents a critical first step in solidifying disability as a component of social justice by identifying factors that secondary ELA teachers encounter when attempting to discuss disability in their classrooms.

You don’t know me: Welcoming gender diversity in schools via an ethic of hospitality

Canadian public school authorities are busily producing gender diversity policies in order to meet their new legal responsibility to provide an environment free from gender identity and gender expression discrimination. These policies tend to offer specific guidance about how administrators and educators should respond to the needs of particular students: those who are (currently legible to school actors as) somehow transgender. Leveraging Claudia Ruitenberg’s writings on enacting a Derridean ethic of hospitality in education, however, I argue that it is ethical to not intend that policy, pedagogy, and curriculum address the needs of particular children and youth in order to do something about how gender rigidly organizes life in schools. De-centring these subjects does not mean doing nothing about this problem; it means doing something paradoxically impossible, yet ethical precisely because it is so impossible: preparing to welcome a student who may never arrive and who the teacher can never know, gender-wise, even and perhaps especially if there are out transgender students in one’s very own school. I offer three orientations to guide teachers, in particular, towards enacting this welcome: not seeking to know the transgender student in advance of their arrival, not trying to be a good teacher for transgender students in particular, and being wary of curricular representation as a strategy of welcome.

Curricular representation of neurogastroenterology: A survey among medical students in Germany.

Neurogastroenterological disorders (NGDs) are highly prevalent and substantially impact patients' quality of life. Effective treatment of NGDs depends on the competence and training of medical caregivers. Students' perceived competence in neurogastroenterology and its place in medical school curricula are assessed in this study. A multi-center digital survey among medical students was conducted at five universities. Self-ratings of competence regarding basic mechanisms, diagnosis, and treatment of six chronic medical conditions were assessed. These included irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), gastroesophageal reflux disease, and achalasia. Ulcerative colitis, hypertension, and migraine were included as references. Of 231 participants, 38% remembered that neurogastroenterology was covered in their curriculum. Highest competence ratings were stated for hypertension and the lowest for IBS. These findings were identical for all institutions irrespective of their curricular model and demographic parameters. Students who remembered neurogastroenterology as a part of their curriculum reported higher competence ratings. According to 72% of students, NGDs should be highlighted more prominently in the curriculum. Despite its epidemiological relevance, neurogastroenterology is only weakly represented in medical curricula. Students report low levels of subjective competence in handling NGDs. In general, assessing the learners' perspective on an empirical basis may enrichen the process of national standardization of medical school curricula.

54.2 Addressing LGBTQ+-Related Mental Health in Schools

LGBTQ+ youth experience vulnerabilities in schools related to their minority status, including higher rates of bullying, mistreatment by staff, difficulty accessing affirming facilities and programs, and lack of curricular representation. Due to these factors, LGBTQ+ youth experience higher rates of mental illness and poorer psychosocial adjustment than their peers. State laws drive school policies, with varying degrees of protection or stigmatization towards LGBTQ+ youth. This presentation will outline specific vulnerabilities that LGBTQ+ youth face in schools, and it will attempt to recognize how school policies affect these vulnerabilities thereby driving mental health outcomes.

Queer and trans youth (not) knowing: experiences of epistemic (in)justice in the context of an LGBTQ+-inclusive secondary curriculum

PurposeCurrent legislative, policy and cultural efforts to censor and illegalize classroom discussions and curricular representations of LGBTQ+ people reflect longstanding challenges in English education. In an effort to explore what curricular inclusion can (not) accomplish – especially what and how current struggles over inclusion, censorship, illegalization and ultimately representation in English education might (not) contribute to queer and trans liberation – the purpose of this article is to feature the experiences of queer and trans youth as knowers in classroom lessons with LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum.Design/methodology/approachDrawing from a yearlong literacy ethnography at a Midwestern high school in which the author explored youth and adults reading, writing and talking about sexual and gender diversity, in this article the author focuses on one literacy learning context at the high school, a co-taught sophomore humanities that combined English language arts and social studies.FindingsEngaging theories of epistemic (in) justice, the findings of this article highlight the experiences of queer and trans youth – especially two queer youth of Color, Camden and Imani – as knowers in the context of an LGBTQ+-inclusive classroom curriculum. The author describes epistemic harms with respect to distortions of credibility and homonormative assimilationist requirements and reflects on alternative possibilities that youth gestured toward through their small resistances.Originality/valueBy centering the experiences of LGBTQ+ youth, this article contributes to research about LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum in English teaching. Previous research, when empirical rather than conceptual, has tended to focus on the perspectives of teachers.

“All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic”: The Presence of Anti-Latinx Political Rhetoric and Latinxs as Third World Threats in Secondary U.S. Citizenship Curriculum

Background/Context Anti-Latinx political discourses have long positioned Latin America and, by extension, U.S. Latinxs as economic, sociocultural, and political threats to the general welfare of the United States. In formal school curricula, this threat narrative has become one of the many political curricular discourses for codifying citizenship as White, and noncitizens as Other (read Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian American). Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The purpose of this study was to illustrate how collapsible Latin American tropes and current anti-Latinx sentiments are reproduced in social studies curricula across the United States. Drawing from and expanding upon Leo Chavez's notion of the Latinx Threat Narrative as a framework, we analyzed secondary social studies curricular standards across all 50 states and the District of Columbia to determine how anti-Latinx and anti-Latin American political rhetoric is reified in U.S. civic and citizenship-based curriculum. The following research question guided our study: In what ways do secondary U.S. civic and citizenship education curricular standards situate Latinxs and Latin America within the Latinx Threat Narrative and current anti-Latinx political sentiment? Research Design To carry out our study, we conducted a critical content analysis of secondary social studies curricular standards with a particular focus on U.S. history, civics, and economics content standards and benchmarks across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Situating our theoretical framework as an analytic tool, we systematically extracted and analyzed all standards with explicit or implicit references to Latinxs and Latin Americans. Findings/Results Findings indicate that Latin America and, by extension, Latinxs are regularly situated as social and political dangers to the overall welfare of the United States, suggesting the presence of what we refer to as the Latinx Third World Threat Narrative. We argue that this hemispheric homogenization of Latinx peoples in curricular standards flattens important historical and cultural distinctions, thereby facilitating exchange of anti-Latinx stereotypes present in contemporary political rhetoric. We also show how U.S. Latinx civic agency is encoded as an illicit, corrupt, and destabilizing force. Conclusions/Recommendations In light of our findings, we suggest that educators pay specific attention to the political amalgamation of Latinx subjectivities. Additionally, policy advocates and educators must move beyond understanding curricular representation as just an impediment to students’ heritage knowledge and begin to understand state-backed curricular standards as part of a larger political apparatus.

A global perspective? Framing analysis of U.S. textbooks’ discussion of Nigeria

Students are expected to develop the intellectual capacity needed to accurately portray other world societies. Few research studies in social studies education, however, draw on a systematic textbook analysis to investigate global perspectives on non-Western societies such as those found in African nations. Situated in framing theory, this study employs a qualitative content analysis approach to examine textual and visual curricular representations of non-Western societies framed in the content of four U.S. world history/cultures and geography textbooks by considering specifically how Nigeria, a very large, relatively wealthy and complex African nation, is represented. The results provide insights into curricular perspectives in U.S. classrooms about non-Western societies, particularly regarding national narratives. Deficit perspectives are the dominant frame so students are primed to construct social reality from the partial textual and visual information to which they are exposed in their classrooms. The findings indicate a lack of research by both textbook authors and publishers into the contents of the texts, which has the potential to negatively affect students’ construction of narratives and civic competence. This study contextualizes its results in visual literacy, cross-cultural behaviors, global perspectives, and attributes of global citizenship.

Are we preparing for collaboration, advocacy and leadership? Targeted multi-site analysis of collaborative intrinsic roles implementation in medical undergraduate curricula

BackgroundThe Collaborator, Health Advocate and Leader/Manager roles are highly relevant for safe patient management and optimization of healthcare system in rehabilitation and prevention. They are defined in competency-based frameworks and incorporate competencies empowering physicians to master typical daily tasks in interdisciplinary, interprofessional and institutional collaboration. However, appropriate implementation of roles remains difficult in undergraduate medical education (UME) and needs to be closely monitored. The aim of this cross-institutional mapping study was to examine for the roles of Collaborator, Health Advocate and Leader/Manager: (1) To what extent do German UME programs explicitly meet the given standards after 5 years of study? (2) Which information may be obtained from multi-site mapping data for evidence-based reflection on curricula and framework?MethodsIn a joint project of eight German UME programs, 80 to 100% of courses were mapped from teachers’ perspective against given national standards: (sub-)competency coverage, competency level attainment and assessment. All faculties used a common tool and consented procedures for data collection and processing. The roles’ representation was characterized by the curricular weighting of each role content expressed by the percentage of courses referring to it (citations). Data were visualized in a benchmarking approach related to a general mean of the intrinsic roles as reference line.Results(Sub-)competencies of the Health Advocate are consistently well-integrated in curricula with a wide range of generally high curricular weightings. The Collaborator reveals average curricular representation, but also signs of ongoing curricular development in relevant parts and clear weaknesses regarding assessment and achieved outcomes. The Leader/Manager displays consistently lowest curricular weightings with several substantial deficiencies in curricular representation, constructive alignment and/or outcome level. Our data allow identifying challenges to be considered by local curriculum developers or framework reviewers (e.g. non-achievement of competency levels, potential underrepresentation, lacking constructive alignment).ConclusionOur non-normative, process-related benchmarking approach provides a differentiated crosscut snapshot to compare programs in the field of others, thus revealing shortcomings in role implementation, especially for Leader/Manager and Collaborator. The synopsis of multi-site data may serve as an external reference for program self-assessment and goal-oriented curriculum development. It may also provide practical data for framework review.

Putovanje kao literarna i nastavna inspiracija - metodički pristup tekstovima o putovanju Vide Ognjenović i Isidore Sekulić u osnovnoj školi

This paper is instigated by the initial theoretical interpretation of literary work by Isidora Sekulić and Vida Ognjenović and it establishes and describes their methodic interpretation within the concept of project schoolwork, thematically framed by the issues of journey, travelling and travelogue. The literary project is based on teaching the texts included in the official curriculum ("Journey to the travelogue" by V. Ognjenović, "Storms" by I. Sekulić) and expanded by introduction of literary works close in topic and genre but not included in the official curriculum ("Letters from Norway" by I. Sekulić, "Travelling is an existential problem", "Light on water" by V. Marković). The goal of the presented concept is to overcome the recorded weak spots of curricular representation of Isidora Sekulić's work and the overall genre of travelogue in middle-school grade levels through methodical intervention, as well as to motivate the students to read and understand this type of text, as part of character education that would create open mind toward the experiences of travelling and coming into contact with the other.

Intrinsic roles in the crosshair \u2013 strategic analysis of multi-site role implementation with an adapted matrix map approach

BackgroundThe implementation of competency-based intrinsic roles in undergraduate medical education remains a challenge. Faculties in transition need to be provided with generalizable curricular data in order to facilitate orientation on curricular roles’ representation and to decide on steps of curriculum development. Explicit and implicit representation of objectives and multi-site agreement can be viewed as status indicators for the adoption of roles. Our aim was to develop a pragmatic cross-locational approach to capture roles’ developmental status in an overview and prioritize strategic recommendations.MethodsBased on the mapping data from six German medical faculties, the relationship between explicit and implicit curricular representation of role’ objectives (weighting) and extent of programs’ consent (agreement) was calculated. Data was visualized in a role-specific Matrix Map to analyse roles’ implicit-explicit relation and risk-value potential. The matrix was combined with Roger’s stages of innovation diffusion for differentiated interpretation of the developmental role status.ResultsEntangling multi-site agreement and curricular weighting, the 4-Field-Matrix allows to assess objectives based on their current localization in a quadrant: “Disregard” (lower left) and “Progress” quadrant (upper left) reveal the diffusion period; “Potential” (lower right) and “Emphasis” quadrant (upper right) indicate the adoption period. The role patterns differ in curricular representation, progression and clarity: (1) Scholar: explicit/implicit - scattered across the matrix; most explicit objectives in “Progress”. (2) Health Advocate: explicit – primarily in “Emphasis”; only role in which the explicit representation significantly exceeds the implicit. (3) Collaborator: explicit - mainly “Potential”; implicit - “Progress” or “Emphasis”. (4) Professional: explicit – primarily “Potential” but also “Emphasis”; implicit - “Progress” and “Emphasis”; appears better adopted but scattered in weighting; high hidden curricula. (5) Manager: explicit and implicit - exclusively in “Potential”, without signs of development. Role patterns correspond to evidences from literature. Exemplified with roles, quadrant-specific strategies and measures are suggested. Framework reviewers may gain information for discussion of critical content.ConclusionThe Matrix Map enables to catch intuitively the status of intrinsic roles’ profiles regarding role pattern, implicit-explicit relation and programs agreement. Thus, interpretation and informed discussions are fostered. Further target-oriented analyses and strategic developments can be conducted to enhance transparency and resource-efficiency.

Curricular Representation of Science Process Skills in Chemistry

The National Curriculum Framework (NCF, 2005) and Kerala Curriculum Framework (KCF, 2007) have laid a lot of stress on inclusion of process skills in the curriculum of science subjects. It is very important to develop student‟s science process skills which have considerable role in educational settings in order to facilitate students‟ learning abilities, support their critical thinking skills and make them competent in methods of science. Basic science process skills include observing, classifying, measuring and using numbers, making inferences, predicting, communicating and using the relations of space and time. While the integrated science process skills consist of interpreting data, operational definition, control variables, make hypotheses and experimenting. So in the present study analyses the extend of representation of science process skills in 8th grade and 9th grade Chemistry curricula. This was carried out by document analysis method. Findings of the study proves that, representations of basic level process skills and advanced level skills in curriculum of grades eight and nine are sufficient to promote curricular objectives and it can be inferred that the emphasis in the programs underlined by educators were not disregarded.

Fy ardal/my neighbourhood: How might pupils’ orientations to their neighbourhood contribute to a pedagogy of place?

The purpose of this study is to explore curricular and young people’s orientations to, and representations of, the areas in which they live contrasted against curricular representations of place in Wales. This is accomplished through a mixed methods approach incorporating statistical and content analysis. Responses were coded with a positive, neutral or negative value and organised into categories emerging from the data. While the majority (64.6%) of our participants are positively oriented to these areas, schools providing free school meals above the national average for Wales had more pupils with negative orientations. Additionally, the rhetoric in teachers’ guidance for the Curriculum Cymreig promotes cultural icons and symbols representing place, while pupils’ responses do not. The findings suggest a potential relationship between social disadvantage and negative orientations to place, as well as a dissonance between ‘official’ representations of Wales and pupils’ lived experiences. Recommendations are made to include place-based, dialectical critiques of curricular and pupils’ understanding of place within pedagogical practices of teachers in Wales.

Teaching Transgressive Representations of LGBTQ People in Educator Preparation: Is Conformity Required for Inclusion?

One strategy used to teach about diverse populations is to edit their -curricular representations to minimize their transgressive nature in an effort to gain more acceptance among students. This article explores the implications of these -assimilationist narratives when used in educator preparation programs to -represent LGBTQ people. It examines the potential advantages of teaching more diverse and transgressive representations in the interest of inclusion and educator -preparation.

‘You’ve got to teach people that racism is wrong and then they won’t be racist’: Curricular representations and young people’s understandings of ‘race’ and racism

This paper critically examines the discursive (mis) representation of ‘race’ and racism in the formal curriculum. Combining qualitative data derived from interviews with 35 young people who were enrolled in a Dublin-based, ethnically diverse secondary school, with a critical discursive analysis of 20 textbooks, the paper explores parallels between young people’s understandings of ‘race’ and racism and curricular representations of these constructs. It is argued that the formal education system reinforces, rather than challenges, popular theories of racism, and endorses the ideological framework of colour-blind racism by providing definitions and explanations which individualize, minimize, and naturalize racism. The analysis centres on four major inter-related themes: (1) the individualization of racism; (2) the attribution of racism to difference; (3) the role of narratives of denial and redemption in the construction of an ‘anti-racist’ state; and (4) the reification of ‘race’. The final section of the paper seeks to synthesize some of the broader political and ethical consequences and ideological effects of dominant discourses on ‘race’ and racism, and offers some concrete illustrations of how ‘race’ and racism could be re-narrativized in schools.

Learning about Vegetarian Diets in School: Curricular Representations of Food and Nutrients in Elementary Health Education

This paper examines the way non-meat and plant based diets are discussed in four elementary curricula. The author used an open coding technique of grounded theory to understand the way food, nutrition and vegetarianism was discussed. The curricula relied heavily upon the USDA Food Pyramid and a related concept of “balance” for nutritional information. The curricula also discussed nutrition in terms of food and food groups, rather than in terms of nutrients. Although some of the curricula included information about the benefits of vegetarian diets, the high level of use of the Food Pyramid often overwhelmed the low level of information about vegetarianism.

Representing self‐in‐society: education for citizenship and the social‐subjects curriculum in Scotland

The documented social‐subjects curricula for Scottish 5–16 year olds are analysed for representations of ‘self‐in‐society’. Such representations are important in Scotland because it is expected that the new Education‐for‐Citizenship framework will in part be delivered through the social subjects. However, citizenship education is also relevant throughout the UK and beyond and our analysis of the social subjects has wider relevance. An ideal‐type analysis was used on documents including national guidelines, examination syllabuses, examination papers, and assessor instructions. Our analysis suggests that in these documents: the self is seen as an abstract; people are understood by category; society is the sum of discrete institutions; self‐in‐society is fully defined; and this representation of society is not contested. This representation becomes increasingly exclusive with age/ability and may be linked to assumed modes of curricular division, teaching and assessment. We discuss how this overall picture might affect students’ sense of ‘agency’ in the light of citizenship education. We conclude that the social‐subjects’ curricular representation of self‐in‐society may not fully support the Scottish Education‐for‐Citizenship framework.

Schooling Ophelia: hysteria, memory and adolescent femininity

In this paper, I analyze the theorization of adolescent femininity within three popular cultural texts about girls and schooling written by women and published in the United States during the 1990s. The books, referred to as Ophelia narratives, include Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan’s (1992) Meeting at the Crossroads, Mary Pipher’s (1994) Reviving Ophelia, and Peggy Orenstein’s (1994) Schoolgirls. Drawing on feminist and literary theories informed by poststructuralism, I read the Ophelia narratives as alternative educative texts in which adult women use the figure of the hysterical adolescent girl to engage with knowledge about gender and sexuality. I argue that the adolescent girl, central to debates about gender and education in the 1990s, serves as a site of displaced self‐representation, where women challenge as well as reaffirm adolescent femininity as a state of injury. In this way, the Ophelia narratives provide an archive from which to examine the contradictory discourses of femininity that position the adolescent girl within curricular representations.