Curriculum Texts Research Articles

Ethics in compulsory education – Human dignity, rights and social justice in five contexts

What children learn through their ethics and values education in school is of crucial societal relevance and is directed by school curricula. As curricula vary between countries, an international comparison is of interest. The aim of this study was to compare curricula to reveal variations in how matters of social justice were described in curricular texts, with a special focus on class, gender and race. Curricula from five different contexts were compared: Namibia; South Africa; California State, United States of America; Province of Québec, Canada; and Sweden. This provided the study, originating in Sweden, with crucial comparative material from outside Europe. The studied curricula were systematically searched for the importance and significance of the terms ‘poverty/poor’, ‘gender’, ‘equity’, ‘equality’, ‘justice’, ‘race’, ‘racism’, ‘human dignity/rights’, ‘equal value’ and Ubuntu. Methodologically, this represented a qualitative content analysis approach with a research interest in intersectionality, that is, in how matters of class, gender and race intersect. The study showed considerable variation between the curricular formulations from the five contexts. For example, texts from California and Québec emphasised equality as a general matter and less as one of intersectionality, compared to Namibia and South Africa as well as Sweden. In general, human rights were emphasised, but human dignity less so. For future curricular development towards education as a global common good, matters of social justice, including sustainability, need critical monitoring. The aspects of intersectionality such as class, gender and race are thus crucial, as is the inclusion of an integrated, participatory view on students’ ethical competence.

A EDUCAÇÃO EM TEMPO INTEGRAL NO CURRÍCULO DO ENSINO MÉDIO INTEGRADO DO IFMG

O presente estudo transita na fronteira entre as políticas curriculares e o currículo do Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de Minas Gerais (IFMG), problematizando as conexões entre a educação profissional de nível médio e a educação em tempo integral (ETI). A seleção e a organização dos saberes curriculares devem realizar-se a partir do direito dos estudantes à formação plena. Contudo, imagens reducionistas e mercantilizadas do currículo pairam sobre a educação profissional tecnológica e ameaçam esse direito. Em tal contexto, analisou-se o currículo do ensino médio integrado do IFMG e suas conexões com a ETI, a fim de contribuir para a construção de propostas que considerem as especificidades das juventudes, dialoguem com os diversos tempos da vida e que problematizem as finalidades da jornada escolar ampliada. A metodologia da pesquisa incluiu a análise dos dados descritivos sobre o texto curricular expressos nas normativas institucionais e nos Projetos Pedagógicos de Cursos (PPCs) de 4 campi do IFMG. Os resultados apontam que os Institutos Federais apresentam em suas normativas interessantes contribuições para a ETI, contudo, os códigos presentes nos seus PPCs contêm as marcas do produtivismo e denotam truncamentos que invisibilizam as múltiplas dimensões da formação humana e as concepções pedagógicas que fundamentam tais projetos.

Approaching the renewed Finnish basic education curriculum as a potential and an option for aesthetics

This article provides an overview of how aesthetics is treated in the current Finnish basic education core curriculum document. Relatively little research has been conducted on aesthetics in Finnish curricula, particularly from an interdisciplinary approach. In the broader picture, the position of aesthetics and the appreciation of arts subjects in curricula has paradoxically weakened globally over recent decades, particularly in English-speaking cultures. At the same time, the significance of aesthetics has increased in postmodern culture with, for instance, increasingly more commercial brands. Finland has a broad national core curriculum, and although aesthetics (as a school subject) is not officially part of it the traditional arts subjects (arts, music, crafts), aspects of aesthetics are nevertheless involved in the curriculum. In this study, we investigate how aspects of aesthetics feature in the renewed Finnish curriculum text for basic education. Our analysis shows that only a few specific references to aesthetics can be found in the Finnish renewed curriculum. Conceptually, the lack of postmodern aesthetics is noticeable, particularly in the subject of art, where one can see features of it without the concept being explicitly mentioned. In order to successfully incorporate aesthetics into basic education curricula, we conclude that the subject needs to better reflect notions of participation, self-expression, and divergent thinking.

A queer youth’s challenges to normativities of time, space, and queerness: pedagogical encounters in a small town Christian youth group

ABSTRACT Previous scholarship on queer youth in small town and rural educational contexts has primarily documented educators’ perspectives and experiences of youth victimization. Drawing from a broader, interview-based teacher inquiry project, I extend this research by considering a queer youth’s voice and agency. Using queer theorizations of time and space, I examine the telling case of Sylvia, a queer young woman in a semi-rural, small Midwestern US town. Through her participation in the educational context of an interdenominational Christian youth group, she experienced pedagogical encounters that helped her challenge and reconfigure normative constructions of time, space, and queerness, which facilitated movement toward greater healthiness and happiness, even as she reproduced racial and class normativities through a politics of respectability. Sylvia’s experiences suggest the need to attend to heterogeneity and agency in working with queer rural youth and the importance of considering constructions of time, space, and queerness in queer-inclusive curricular texts.

Introduction: Ancient Rome in English Political Culture, ca. 1570–1660

IntroductionAncient Rome in English Political Culture, ca. 1570–1660 Paulina Kewes (bio) This special issue is dedicated to the memory of Justin Champion (1960–2020) scholar, teacher, colleague, friend cicero's de officiis, that most iconic of texts in the humanist curriculum, was popularized in England in a version by the apostate Protestant cleric Nicholas Grimald, Bishop Nicholas Ridley's former chaplain. First printed in 1556, Grimald's Cicero reappeared within two years with its English and Latin texts side by side, suggesting the volume's extensive use in schools. There were five more such bilingual editions by 1605.1 The ubiquity of Marcus Tullius Ciceroes thre bokes of duties, as Grimald christened his work, has been seen as prime evidence of the spread of civic republican ideas in later Tudor England.2 Those ideas are in turn typically taken to define the outlook of Elizabethan Protestants. Queen Elizabeth's principal adviser, [End Page 401] William Cecil, later Lord Burghley, whose rich archive facilitates detailed study of his thought—and who reportedly carried a copy of Cicero's De officiis with him at all times—is often cited as the perfect embodiment of what Patrick Collinson has dubbed "monarchical republicanism."3 What, though, of the fraught confessional dimension of Grimald's Cicero as reflected in its dedication, never mind the compromised reputation of the translator himself? Until 1600, editions of the book sported an oleaginous dedication to Thomas Thirlby, the Marian Bishop of Ely, who was also a Privy Councillor and a prominent diplomat. Flatteringly compared to "so noble a Senatour of Rome," Thirlby, who had been instrumental in effecting England's reconciliation with Rome and, in February 1556, presided over the divestment of the future martyr Thomas Cranmer, is touted as the ideal patron of the English Cicero—which, says Grimald, "so rightly point[s] oute the pathwaye to all vertue: as none can be righter, onely scripture excepted."4 Extolled by pagans and Christians alike—Augustus Caesar, Emperor Severus, Erasmus—Cicero's wholesome doctrine, Grimald vouchsafes in the preface, will guide readers, whether rulers or ruled, on how to conduct themselves in both private and public, commensurate with their station in life.5 Meanwhile, Grimald's apostasy, and his likely betrayal of his friend and patron Ridley, came under withering attack in personal testimonials collected in John Foxe's Actes and Monuments.6 Modern studies characteristically neglect to explore, or else dismiss or seek to explain away, the significance of Grimald's apparent conversion to Catholicism. One has argued that Grimald's Cicero represents "subversive Protestant conformity" and "a subtle critique of the Marian regime."7 Even if we were to accept—and it is a big if—that Grimald's aim in publishing the translation was to hint at his continuing evangelical allegiance, and that it was read as such by the cognoscenti, the book must have acquired a troubling and potentially contradictory resonance following Elizabeth's accession and the ejection and imprisonment of its episcopal dedicatee, "so reverend a father in god," for refusing to embrace the royal supremacy.8 For Grimald's [End Page 402] edition—through which generations of schoolboys and others, both ardent Protestants and Church papists, were gaining access to Cicero's treatise lamenting the fall of the Roman republic—bore the marks of its inception during the reign of the Catholic queen and king. And that poses something of an obstacle to treating it as the Protestant catechism of quasi-republican ideology. The case of Grimald's Cicero is symptomatic of wider scholarly reticence about how divided confessional loyalties shaped the uses of romanitas in post-Reformation England. This is despite early modern Catholicism's by now unassailable place in the historiographical mainstream, and the efflorescence of scholarship on various aspects of English, British, and European Reformations—including exile, conformity, recusancy, martyrdom, and their competing expressions in imaginative literature.9 So, too, reluctance to consider this question epitomizes the dominant "republican" paradigm in modern intellectual history, whether "monarchical republican" inspired by Patrick Collinson, "civic republican" spearheaded by Markku Peltonen, or "neo-Roman" championed by Quentin Skinner, who cites Grimald's Of Duties in his influential account of the impact of...

A física nos anos iniciais da educação básica: uma análise dos documentos curriculares adotados pela rede municipal de Curitiba/PR

Este artigo apresenta um estudo sobre os conhecimentos físicos presentes em documentos curriculares dos anos iniciais do Ensino Fundamental. O objetivo é abordar a questão da inserção da Física no âmbito do componente curricular referente às Ciências Naturais para esta etapa de ensino, tendo em vista as implicações para a organização didática docente e a formação inicial em Pedagogia. Trata-se de uma pesquisa do tipo documental, em que os documentos a serem analisados correspondem aos textos curriculares adotados pela rede municipal de ensino de Curitiba/PR nas últimas três décadas: o Currículo Básico para a Escola Pública do Estado do Paraná (1990), os Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais – ensino de primeira à quarta série (1997) e o Currículo do Ensino Fundamental de Curitiba (2016). Para a constituição dos dados que viabilizaram a análise, utilizou-se a metodologia da análise textual discursiva e, a partir do processo de organização das informações, foram construídas as seguintes categorias de análise: 1) conteúdos de Física indicados para as séries iniciais; 2) conhecimentos das Ciências Naturais que remetem à Física, indicados para as séries iniciais e 3) temáticas amplas que podem ser vinculadas a conhecimentos de Física nas séries iniciais. Como resultados, percebeu-se que conhecimentos de Física estão presentes de maneira explicita em todos os documentos analisados, porém com o passar do tempo as orientações curriculares incorporaram vertentes metodológicas em que os conteúdos da Física são cada vez mais articulados com temáticas do ensino de Ciências, bem como temas atuais de caráter científico e tecnológico, e suas relações no contexto social. Estes resultados mostram que a Física constitui-se em uma importante dimensão para a introdução às Ciências da Natureza nas séries inicias, e precisa ser abordada em conjunto com os conhecimentos das demais áreas que pertencem a essa ciência. Isso implica que a formação inicial nos cursos de licenciatura em Pedagogia deve garantir que os futuros professores, que atuarão nos anos iniciais do Ensino Fundamental, tenham acesso a uma formação científica adequada durante a graduação, que permita a articulação da Física, Química e Biologia, sem privilegiar uma área de conhecimento em detrimento de outras, algo que pesquisas apontam ser realidade recorrente nos contextos escolares.

ROMANIAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE: INTERCULTURAL EDUCATION IMPLICATIONS

The study approaches the new curriculum documents for pre-university education in the Republic of Moldova from the intercultural education perspective. In the 2019-2020 school year, the schools in the country are carrying out the education process based on a new curriculum, which represents the result of the third reform after the country's independence in 1992. The author analyses the correspondence of the curriculum texts to the stipulations of the Education Code, and the extent to which they respond to the demands in the development of the students’ intercultural competence. The findings of the study reveal that the texts are focused not only on the promotion of the national values and identity, but are open, at the same time, to the intercultural education and to the dialogue with representatives of different cultures in the multicultural divided society. Literature and policy review supplemented by discourse analysis are the main qualitative methods applied.

Políticas curriculares e formação de professores no Brasil: a disputa em torno do conceito de competências


 
 
 
 As reformas educacionais brasileiras dos anos 1990 apresentaram o onceito de competências como nuclear na organização curricular, estando este conceito presente nos principais documentos curricu- lares para a formação de professores em âmbito nacional. Nesse período, entre fins da década de 1990 e início dos anos 2000, foi predominante o discurso que objetivava construir a qualidade da formação docente, e neste discurso o conceito de competências era central. No entanto, tal discurso perde força nos documentos curriculares ainda no fim da primeira década dos anos 2000. A tônica do discurso passa a girar em torno da afirmação de uma base comum nacional para a formação inicial e continuada e na articulação entre Sistema Nacional de Educação, as políticas e a valorização dos profissionais da educação. Este artigo busca analisar o processo de disputa das políticas que giraram em torno da efeti- vação da ideia de competências como núcleo central dos textos curriculares, bem como dos processos de disputa pela sua negação. Embora apresente uma discussão específica de como estas disputas ocorreram no Brasil, ele lança luzes para processos relativamente semelhantes que ocorreram na Colômbia e em outros países da América do Sul.
 
 
 

ANALISIS SOAL-SOAL PADA BUKU TEKS MATEMATIKA KURIKULUM 2013 EDISI REVISI TAHUN 2014 KELAS XI BERDASARKAN KEMAMPUAN PENALARAN MATEMATIKA

<p>The process of reasoning has a very strong connection with mathematic world, especially on problem solving skills. But in real life, teachers usually use textbook to measure how much do their students understand materials taught by the teachers. Hence, it is necessary to understand completely do the widely used mathematic textbook has led students to increase their mathematic reasoning skills. The method used were descriptive qualitative, with Competency Test’s problems in 2013 Curriculum text book revised in 2014 for 1 th grade used for research subjects. Documentation method was used as data collection method. Problems analysis guide was based on mathematic reasoning skills indicator according to NCTM. The analysis result tells that from 225 problems analyzed there were 76 problems fulfilled the indicator 1, 110 problems fulfilled the indicator 2, 30 problems fulfilled the indicator 3 and 183 problems fulfilled the indicator 4. Analysis also shows that based on mathematic reasoning skills, from 225 problems there were only 8 problems haven’t fulfilled the mathematic reasoning skills with 3,56% presentation number. While the rest there were 217 problems have fulfilled the mathematic reasoning skills with 96,45% presentation number with 49 problems with 21,78% presentation number have a good criteria, 80 problems with 35,56% have an average criteria and 88 problems or 39,11% have a low criteria.</p>

Skills and knowledge as a basis for safety competence in teacher education curriculum

Enhancing the safety culture in school context sets new challenges to prospective teachers, their need for safety skills, knowledge and competence. Based on the latest studies, the paper describes the factors of safety culture in the educational institutions. These factors are risks, processes, learning environments, learning, normative guidance, actors, target groups and tools. As a case study, further analysis is provided about the factor of learning. The data is teacher education curriculum text of one Finnish teacher education unit.
 In the content analysis, the data was first classified with themes in the context of safety. During the second round of analysis, special attention was paid to the verbs. Further, two groups, skills (S) and knowledge (K) were established.
 The analysis showed that there were more knowledge based (K) than skills based (S) meaning units. As the university studies are based on theoretical issues, this is understandable. Based on the analysis, it seems that the curriculum describes safety one-sided as the social issues and the interaction were in focus in both groups, knowledge and skills. This could mean that safety is valued in the teacher education. However, the results raise some concerns, whether the future teachers are able to provide decent education for their pupils in the various safety and security areas, such as traffic safety, injuries or occupational safety, or whether they are able to respond in the sudden crisis situations during the school day, for instance in case of violence or fire.

Questions in Smart Digital Environments

Innovations in digital technologies have catalysed significant transformations of teaching and learning. Searching static webpages has evolved into dynamic online social networking and user generated content, and more recently interaction with intelligent services. The distinguishing features are embodied in the keywords – search, social, and smart. While search engines maintain a pivotal role in the web, social media now rivals them for dominance. The current era of smart technologies, based around big data and artificial intelligence, further extends the frontier of possibilities. With transition to the ‘world of smart’ in mind, we explore ways in which the natural human ability of questioning might be scaffolded and developed. Digital environments provide diverse opportunities to construct learning in ways that bring life inside and outside school closer together. They open-up new horizons for learners to engage in a curious dialogue with experience. Yet the answer driven paradigm of ‘search’ abbreviates much of the scope for questioning embedded in the expression and growth of curiosity. In this paper, we describe a set of generic generative questions that has the potential to transform questioning in digital environments. In so doing a conceptual analysis of how learners’ questioning might be scaffolded is presented. Applicable to all areas of learning, these questions promote imaginative thinking and deep understanding on which knowledge building and creation is predicated. Question driven dialogues generate critical and creative thinking, and thereby help to enact current mandates for creativity and knowledge building. The conformity emanating from the Global Education Reform Movement is anomalous with prescriptive curriculum texts and standardized tests emphasising answers, not questions. Clever use of digital environments has the potential to catalyse a shift towards a questions-based approach to teaching and learning.

ADAPTAR, ADEQUAR, DIFERENCIAR: reflexões a partir das políticas curriculares para o público-alvo da Educação Especial

O presente artigo tem como objetivo investigar como no conjunto de documentos que estamos nomeando como políticas curriculares, especialmente cinco textos curriculares criados pós Política Nacional de Educação Especial na perspectiva da Educação Inclusiva, em 2008, vêm evidenciando movimentos curriculares como adaptação, adequação ou diferenciação curricular como formas de inclusão do público-alvo da Educação Especial. O desenvolvimento metodológico deste trabalho deu-se por meio de pesquisa documental, investigando-se alguns dos textos políticos se referem a estes movimentos e que advogam na defesa de um determinado termo como processo de inclusão. Esta pesquisa fez parte do projeto intitulado “Escolarização de alunos com deficiência intelectual: políticas públicas, processos cognitivos e avaliação da aprendizagem” que procurou investigar as formas de escolarização dos alunos com deficiência intelectual inseridos na sala de aula regular e no Atendimento Educacional Especializado. Essa discussão, portanto, é um aprofundamento de questões curriculares presentes no projeto. A análise das políticas curriculares realizadas neste artigo identificou que poucas são as evidências dos movimentos curriculares de adaptação, flexibilização e/ou diferenciação curricular como possibilidades para a inclusão dos alunos público-alvo da Educação Especial. De acordo com a leitura atenta, por meio das políticas curriculares pesquisadas, os tipos de movimentos curriculares aqui conceituados não são representados como formas efetivas de possibilidade de trabalho pedagógico para o público-alvo da Educação Especial.

교육과정 텍스트로서 국제자원활동 이해: 라오스 한 지역 청년센터 참여경험을 중심으로

교육과정 텍스트로서 국제자원활동 이해: 라오스 한 지역 청년센터 참여경험을 중심으로

Curriculum Policies of Gender and Sexuality in Brazil: Between Biomedical, Socio-Juridical and Neoconservative Discourses

This paper proposes an analysis of the curriculum policies of gender and sexuality produced in Brazil, aiming at revealing the hegemonic practices and the articulation of different logics, such as theoretical, moral and political, that made these practices possible. Curriculum policies are here conceived as dispute fields which establish and contest meanings about curricular texts, while unstable and polysemic codifications. The present work seeks to show how the emergence and dissemination of socio-juridical discursive logics in the field of sexuality, as opposed to biomedical logics, have influenced Brazilian curricular policies since the 2000s. However, it also indicates that these logics have been strongly opposed, in recent years, for the articulation and intensification of the action of neoconservative movements in the country. This article also proposes the appropriation, within the sphere of this debate, of concepts such as the discursive field, hegemony and identification – as developed by Laclau and Mouffe's Discourse Theory – as resources to enable a more nuanced analysis of the processes of emergence, consolidation and crisis of regimes of dominant sexuality in the curricular field, as well as the permanent tensions, conflicts, negotiations and articulations between different discourses and logics in this scenario. Key-words: Gender; Sexuality; Discourse; Curriculum Policy.

Legitimising the need for another curriculum reform and policy framing: the case of South Korea

ABSTRACTThis paper examines how the initiation of a national-level curricular reform invites different educational ideas and how such ideas attain legitimacy through policy narratives that confer meanings about school knowledge, schooling, and the nation using the case of the South Korean national curriculum reform of 2015. By critically analysing curricular proposals presented during the agenda-setting stage of the 2015 National Curriculum Reform (2015 NCR), this project sought to identify problem-definition structures of suggested educational ideas. The analyses of political communications during the early stage of the 2015 NCR were organized and presented as the following four policy narratives: Metaphors of Competition, Bread and Butter Worries, The Unhappy Protagonist, and A Place for Common Experience. This study found that policy narratives within the 2015 NCR reinforced the neoliberal ideology, Western world–centric power relations, and the authority of the state. Ultimately, the analyses of this study encourage researchers and educational leaders in different national contexts to pay attention to policy narratives that drive the transformation to a new authorized curricular text because these narratives confer or renounce status and power to particular knowledge, skills, values, and practices.

Implementasi Pendidikan Quran Tingkat Lanjut Bagi Santri Usia Dewasa

The researchers intends to find out how Al-Quran Education in the Yogyakarta AMM Tartil Team includes supporting and inhibiting factors as well as how the team overcomes the obstacles to Al-Quran Education in the AMM Tartil Team Yogyakarta. The learning patterns of adults and advanced readers of the Quran in this education are different from those of students of Quran who are younger than them at the beginning level or those studying in Islamic boarding schools. This qualitative case study research uses several instruments, observation, mandala interviews, and documentation. Observations were made by directly following the Syahadah One education process for the students of the AMM Yogyakarta tartil team. In-depth interviews were addressed to informants, namely the management of the Foundation, Ustaz, and students participating in the education who were the object of the research. For documentation, it is emphasized on the data of the Tartilil Qur'an curriculum text. All collected data were then analyzed in a cumulative manner with inductive-deductive thinking patterns. Advanced education to read the Koran does have complex problems in terms of time and age of the participants, although it must be commended for their intention and sincerity to be fluent in reading it.

Curriculum interpretation and policy enactment in health and physical education: researching teacher educators as policy actors

ABSTRACTPast research in Health and Physical Education has repeatedly highlighted that curriculum development is an ongoing, complex and contested process, and that the realisation of progressive intentions embedded in official curriculum texts is far from assured. Drawing on concepts from education policy sociology this paper positions teacher educators as key policy actors in the interpretation and enactment of new official curriculum texts. More specifically, it reports research that has explored four teacher educators’ engagement with a specific feature of the new Australian Curriculum in Health and Physical Education (AC HPE); five interrelated propositions or ‘key ideas’ that underpinned the new curriculum and openly sought to provide direction for progressive pedagogy in Health and Physical Education. The paper provides conceptual and empirical insight into teacher educators consciously positioning themselves as policy actors, motivated to play a role in shaping policy directions and future curriculum practices. As such, the teacher educators in this project are identified as policy entrepreneurs and provocateurs. The paper details a dialogic research process between the researchers that was designed to make curriculum interpretation a more transparent, collaborative and generative process. The data reported illustrates the research process supporting teacher educators to engage in productive debate about the possible meanings and enactment of the five propositions. Analysis reveals differing perspectives on the propositions and a shared investment in efforts to support their progressive intent. Empirically, the paper highlights the critical role that teacher educators will play in the ongoing enactment of a new curriculum that is overtly identified as ‘futures oriented’. Conceptually, the paper adds depth and sophistication to understandings of teacher educators as policy actors. Methodologically, we propose that the research process described can be usefully adopted by other teacher educators and teachers engaged in similar processes of curriculum development, interpretation and enactment.

Decentring the ‘places’ of citizens in national curriculum: the Australian history curriculum

AbstractThere is debate internationally about the production of curriculum texts and the epistemologies underpinning the knowledge legitimated in national curricula. National History curricula in particular are a source of contention bounded by calls for coherent and unifying national narratives that are inclusive and reflect the complexity of the discipline and historical consciousness of the nation to which they are bound. This paper uses critical spatial theory to highlight the ‘spaces’ and ‘places’ of the Australian Curriculum History (years 7–10) which organise and disorganise representations of identities in and out of the centre of the national narrative. Interrogating the impact of these representations within purported inclusive and cohesive national narratives draws attention to the notions of belonging presented to Australian citizens. We argue that resistance to normative national narratives and colonial legacies presented with place‐based identities can reinhabit the curriculum. This reinhabiting and decentring seeks to engage History students with alternative perspectives and articulations to the national narrative, and foster meaningful connections to place and citizenship. Finally, critical place‐based education approaches invite an embodied local/global citizen through local and marginalised knowledges.

Making Authentic Literary Texts Relevant, Meaningful, and Fun in Advanced Beginner and Intermediate Spanish-language Classrooms

Making Authentic Literary Texts Relevant, Meaningful, and Fun in Advanced Beginner and Intermediate Spanish-language Classrooms Laura Graebner Shepin Introduction The incorporation of literary texts in advanced beginner and intermediate level language classrooms (high school Spanish, years 2–4; university Spanish, semesters 2–4) can seem intimidating. Teachers worry about students' ability to understand texts linguistically and to interpret them culturally. Additionally, the thoughtful exploration of literary texts takes time away from other content, specifically grammar and vocabulary, which often seem more straightforward to teach due to the plethora of instructional and assessment tools already available. Lastly, the accessibility of the literary texts found in some text books, and the lack of complete instructional materials for instructors to teach these texts, might discourage instructors from including literary texts in course curriculum. Despite these challenges, it is important to include literary texts at the advanced beginner and intermediate levels for three reasons. First, literary texts present grammar points and vocabulary in context, which actively supports language acquisition, for example, by highlighting the uses of the preterite and the imperfect. Second, literature is the verbal representation of the target culture; literary texts communicate emotions, perceptions, and human experiences in a way a verb chart cannot. A compelling case for the role of literature in the development of world citizens is made by the philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum, who argues that literature simulates a reader's "narrative imagination," which in turn allows the reader to feel empathy for others. Third, successful engagement with literary texts in the advanced beginner and intermediate stages of language study sets students up for continued success in Advanced Placement (AP) courses and upper-division university language coursework. ACTFL's "Guiding Principles for Language Learning" explicitly promote the benefits of literature in the foreign language curriculum. Gillian Lazar argues that authentic literature exposes students to "complex themes and fresh, unexpected uses of language" and is "more absorbing than the pseudo-narratives frequently found in course books" (15). Similarly, Jonathan P. A. Sell encourages L2 teachers to reject fiction authored specifically for the language learner in favor of authentic literary texts, citing its representation of language and culture to be more genuine, and ultimately, more beneficial and interesting to the learner. A well-chosen literary text "can be an effective tool for stimulating and achieving language learning and equipping learners with relevant linguistic and socio-cultural competence" (91–92). In addition to the linguistic authenticity of literature, its emotional authenticity is motivating to the reader and demands a "personal response" (Kousompou 75). In considering specifically how to approach teaching literary texts, Sanju Choudhary describes two approaches for L2 literary analysis. The first of these, reader-response, "demystifies" literature by encouraging readers to make personal connections. The second is a language-based [End Page 313] approach, which focuses language instruction and production related to the literature. Both strategies, he concludes, have value. Lazar's Literature and Language Teaching: A Guide for Teachers and Trainers provides many resources to guide teachers through the selection of texts and activities to support language acquisition, comprehension, and oral fluency in L2 learners, including those at the lower levels. Janet Swaffar and Katherine Arens's chapters 3 and 4 are also particularly useful resources for the selection and instruction of literature at the lower levels. Selecting and teaching a literary text successfully requires, like all good teaching, thoughtful and intentional lesson design. Teachers need to ask the following questions to understand the challenges the text presents to students and to identify the goals the teacher has for student learning: 1. Is the text thematically appropriate? The text must be relevant and accessible to the audience; relatable themes will lead to student success, whereas abstract, philosophical, or overly mature themes will tend to frustrate them. Sometimes the most canonical literary works are not the best fit for advanced beginner and intermediate students. 2. What vocabulary and grammar will students need to know to understand the text? What words and language structures do students already confidently know? What vocabulary and grammar can they be expected to decode on their own using reading strategies such as context clues and cognates? What vocabulary and grammar will need to be glossed...

The religious world in Chinese social studies textbooks

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this study is to explore the representation and interpretation of the religious world in Chinese social studies textbooks. The data cover six major subjects at both primary and secondary levels. The findings indicate that although the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China mandates a separation of religion and education, Chinese textbooks introduce students to a variety of religious traditions. These traditions are either presented as independent learning units or integrated with textbook content across subjects. Three discursive frames are used to categorise the information selected to represent religion and its interpretation in the discourse of Chinese curriculum texts: a de-mystification frame (deconstructing the mystery of religion and presenting a secular understanding of the religious world); a de-modernisation frame (representing religion as associated with pre-modernity); and a science/humanities frame (comprising two lenses for interpreting religion). The findings of the study suggest that although the framing of religion in China’s social studies curriculum reflects the state’s secularisation agenda, it also leaves space for further exploration of the meaning of religion.