Rationale For Curriculum Research Articles

An in-depth analysis of programming in the Swedish school curriculum—rationale, knowledge content and teacher guidance

This paper reports a study of Swedish curriculum documents for compulsory school in order to unfold how novel programming content is communicated to the main policy enactors, that is, the teachers. Specifically, the study focusses on: (1) arguments for why programming is relevant and for what purposes, (2) what programming knowledge that is specified and (3) what guidance the curriculum documents provide to help teachers realise the programming content in their teaching. Text analysis was used as method of analysis. Two conceptual frameworks were used during analysis to identify and classify arguments for computer science in compulsory education, and to identify types of programming knowledge. Results reveal that the curriculum documents are sparse on details about what programming knowledge entails. Instead, programming is mainly presented as an interdisciplinary tool to achieve other learning goals. Guidance is given mainly in the form of cautious suggestions on how the work can be organised and through broad explanations and examples of how programming can be useful. However, some important and difficult strategic decisions are left entirely to the teachers without any clear guidance. The programming message in its entirety is communicated through several texts from different subjects. Altogether, this may complicate teachers’ process of transforming the curriculum into teaching and learning activities. In turn, there is a risk of inequality amongst schools and that the programming experience for the children becomes fragmented, superficial, misses out on key points, or is omitted, in part or in whole.

Economics Across the School Curriculum-Benefits and Drawbacks of Some Related Approaches

Teaching economics as a distinct subject matter requires a curriculum rationale and curricular orientation no less than any other subject matter field. As with any social studies curriculum component, it is necessary to delineate the curriculum parameters of economics so as to justify and guide its teaching in the schools. This article aims to explore various approaches to developing and implementing economics curricula, weighs their benefits and drawbacks, and ends with a suggestion for blending the alternatives so as to optimize the benefits. Prior to the development of a curriculum rationale, however, the educator must ask a question seldom raised with the other social sciences: What kind of economics should be taught? Positive Versus Normative Economics The positive versus normative distinction in economics is particularly important in economic education.

Collaboration in teacher design teams: Untangling the relationship between experiences of the collaboration process and perceptions of the redesigned curriculum

This qualitative case study involved exploration of the experiences of teacher educators (n = 6) who collaborated on a curriculum design task. The study offers insights into collaboration processes of teacher design teams in relation to the outcomes of the collaborative work, in the specific context of a curriculum innovation. The role that the collaboration process played in teachers’ perceptions of the designed curriculum is described using concepts regarding the nature of collaboration. Results from in-depth interviews and storylines indicated that positive collaboration experiences during the design process explained teachers’ positive and/or more explicit perceptions of the designed curriculum. However, perceptions related to the curriculum rationale were an exception to this general pattern: They remained diverse and superficial. Recommendations for practice are given in the form of design guidelines.

Developing Best Clinical Practices Through Outcomes Improvement: An Ongoing Quality Improvement Curriculum for Faculty and Residents.

Practice patterns in clinical learning environments are an important predictor of the patient care quality that residents will deliver after training. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Clinical Learning Environment Review Evaluation Committee reported that from 2012-2015, residents and fellows rarely engaged in quality improvement (QI) activities. A QI curriculum was created for OB-GYN faculty and trainees to develop and implement best practices and study the resulting improvement in patient outcomes. Educational leadership in the Dell Medical School Department of Women's Health designed a five-stage curriculum: (1) learning module describing the curriculum's rationale, (2) clinical practice proposal development, (3) implementation/data analysis for selected proposals, (4) dissemination of proposals and outcomes during a live forum, and (5) evaluation. PGY1 and PGY4 OB-GYN residents collaborated in dyads with selected faculty mentors to draft evidence-based proposals. Dyads identified suggested outcomes measures to be analyzed postimplementation. Remaining faculty analyzed outcomes from the previous year's proposals with PGY2 and PGY3 OB-GYN residents. Forum participants, including faculty, residents, nursing staff, and private obstetrician-gynecologists, evaluated the activity. In 2017, 15 (35%) completed the evaluation. All respondents intended to change their practice based on findings. In addition, the 2016 ACGME survey indicated significant increases in faculty perception of resident QI from 58% in 2014-2015 to 89% in 2015-2016 (p = .01) and in collaboration in scholarly activity from 50% to 85% (p < .01). This curriculum was effective in engaging OB-GYN faculty and residents in formalized problem-based learning to address QI.

THE EUROPEAN CONCEPTION OF THE UNIVERSITY KNOWLEDGE WITHIN THE BOLOGNA-INITIATED COMPETENCE-BASED CURRICULUM MODERNISATION: REPERCUSSIONS AT THE NATIONAL POLICY LEVEL IN ESTONIA AND LITHUANIA

The European 'knowledge economy' policies and higher education policies and reforms associated with the Bolognian process, as largely driven by efficiency concerns, have continually stressed the failures of European universities to meet efficiency targets. This has provided the justification for a radical European-wide modernisation of the higher education curriculum which has uniformly introduced a competence (outcomes)-based curriculum rationale to all European universities as a strategic device to enhance the efificiency and relevance of the university curriculum. Within the competence-based curriculum rationale, c ompetence has been designated as a major component within the university curriculum, whereas knowledge, traditionally being the main educational category of the university curriculum and a fundamental pillar of the university research, has been increasingy given a scarce mention in the European policy documents dispite the common European policy discourse on the 'knowledge economy' and 'knowledge society' and a new prominence of knowledge that these notions imply. Accordingly, t he European assumptions about the nature of the university curriculum knowledge have had significant implications for the way university knowledge and the role of university have been defined at the national policy level in the light of the curriculum change. Thus, it becomes important to examine the explicit and implicit epistemological stances behind the Bologna-initated competence-based curriculum modernisation and their repercussions throughout the national higher education policies. The aim of this paper is to examine the way the European assumptions about the nature of the university curriculum knowledge as implied within the Bologna initiated competence-based curriculum modernisation reverberate throughout the national higher education policies in Estonia and Lithuania. The objectives of this study are to examine the ongoing Bologna-initiated university curriculum modernisation as based on the competence framework and its assumptions about the nature of the university curriculum knowledge and to map the way the European policy assumptions about nature of the university curriculum knowledge as implied within the curriculum modernisation reverberate at the national policy level in Estonia and Lithuania. The research methods served are qualitative research methods, namely, an overview of research literature and a content analysis of the official strategic European policy documents and Estonian and Lithuanian national policy documents. The main results of the study are the following: situating the phenomenon of the competence-based curriculum modernisation within a broader socio-economic and political context and, in doing this, providing the basis for a better understanding of the driving forces generating this curriculum change; discerning the main patterns of the Bologna-initiated higher education curriculum modernisation and its underlying assumptions about the nature of the university curriculum knowledge and the role of universities both at the European and national levels; providing insights about the way the higher education curriculum modernisation has been taken-up at the national policy level in Lithuania and Estonia; revealing the lack and the need for educational arguments as informed by curriculum theory to complement and challenge the currently predominant economic rationale underpinning the higher education curriculum modernisation in Europe. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eis.0.10.14534

The kindness of strangers

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to argue that curriculum‐based careers education is part of a wider move to treat higher education students as holistic learners and to reframe the ways in which careers educators can learn from, and contribute to, these wider developments.Design/methodology/approachThe paper conceptualises students as “embodied learners” who require opportunities for reflection to understand and process the existential, affective and pedagogic challenges inherent in their learning. Drawing on Palmer's notion of “paradoxical spaces”, careers education is shown to be one of many related responses to these student needs.FindingsConsequently, while sometimes perceived as an anomalous feature of the higher education landscape, careers education is found to share important commonalities with other pedagogic initiatives which inform and extend current debates about careers in the curriculum.Originality/valueBy showing the familial characteristics that careers education shares with related initiatives, a new basis for including careers within the curriculum is proposed and a new collaborative mode for careers educators to engage with other teaching staff is encouraged. A new rationale for curriculum based careers education is advanced, that differs from utilitarian and vocational arguments by being derived from a pedagogic discourse, which seeks to establish common ground between careers educators and other academics.

Curriculum matters: building capacity for strategic change in UK higher education

Substantial increases in undergraduate tuition fees, likely in 2011, might prompt universities in England to evaluate educational strategies to ensure a high-quality student learning experience and maintain competitive advantage. In this paper the author reflects on trends, policy directions and innovative practice and provides a rationale for curriculum to take centre stage in educational decision-making. The paper concludes with three fundamental dimensions to underpin a future learner-centred higher education curriculum. These curricula should be ability-based, so that undergraduates can increase their opportunities for employability; more creative, so that students engage with subject matter, each other and the wider community in collaborative ways; and multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, so that students are able to learn from multiple perspectives and take advantage of all the resources that research-intensive universities have to offer. Initiating fundamental educational reform at department level – within wider institutional academic priorities – is an important condition for evolving future learning environments.

Il segreto di Fata Lina: progetto di prevenzione dell'abuso sessuale per la scuola primaria e secondaria di primo grado

- This paper describes a new child sexual abuse school-based prevention program targeting schoolchildren attending grades 5-8. This curriculum is based on a special episode, titled "Fata Lina's secret", belonging to the popular RAI3 television show for children named Melevisione. The paper allows to understand this curriculum's rationale, goals, structure and format. Some activities, included in this curriculum, are presented to show how teachers, educators and parents can easily involve children in child sexual abuse prevention activities.Key words: child sexual abuse, school-based programs, primary prevention.Parole chiave: abuso sessuale, programmi scolastici, prevenzione primaria.

Symposium. An innovative approach to course restructuring in leadership education. Course restructuring in leadership education. Using differentiated literature to promote professional thinking. Pedagogical and andragogical challenges in leadership studies

AbstractIn his germinal writing, The Child and the Curriculum, John Dewey (1902) made the forceful case for the development of a curriculum that could integrate and valuate students' desires and needs as crucial elements of education. Similarly, Ralph Tyler's (1949) famous and widely influential curriculum rationale called for the participation of the entire community as an element of curriculum decisions, but this element of his work has been largely absent from educational discourse, especially in a time of national accountability in elementary, secondary, and even postsecondary institutions. In this symposium, we offer a position paper by Dr. Cathy Kaufman that seeks to return students' needs to the forefront of curriculum planning for an interdisciplinary audience. Our respondents, Robert Millward, Ted Pappas, and Winnie Younkin, themselves representing interdisciplinary backgrounds and interests, add their own perspectives to this intersection of leadership education, and the all‐too‐often muted voice of the student in the curriculum development process.

A Reconceptualized Rationale for Elementary Social Studies

This article describes and defends a revision of the traditional elementary social studies curriculum rationale. It calls for retaining most of the same topics, but developing them more coherently and shifting emphasis from the expanding communities sequence to introducing students to the fundamentals of the human condition as the primary rationale. It refutes criticisms of elementary social studies commonly advanced by those who call for replacing pandisciplinary social studies with history courses, and most importantly, presents the positive case for the reconceptualized pandisciplinary rationale as superior to a history rationale as the basis for developing early social education curricula.

Delivering the Discourse—Urban Adolescents' Perceptions of Physical Education

abstract This study investigates how National Curriculum policy for England and Wales has been translated into practice as perceived by the pupils who are its recipients. Results suggest that pupil entitlement as enshrined in the National Curriculum rationale is at best being provided at the level of access to activity and pupil experiences are differentiated sharply by activity, by gender and by school. The paper suggests that the physical education National Curriculum already advantages certain pupil groups rather than others, and that changes in the discourse of physical education, exemplified by the texts of the latest official publications, will, if translated into practice, militate further against access to a curriculum relevant to all pupils.

An analysis of the rationales for learning history given by children and teachers at Key Stage 2

ABSTRACTSubject knowledge at Key Stage 2 of the English National Curriculum has recently assumed increased importance, leading, to an increased research interest in the forms of subject content knowledge and pedagogic content knowledge employed by teachers. This paper examines the extent to which teachers and pupils were aware of a specific subject curriculum rationale. The paper discusses the findings of an enquiry into the extent to which non‐specialist teachers (n = 40), initial teacher training students (n = 46) and Key Stage 2 pupils in four primary schools exhibited an understanding of the reasons why history should be studied, following the introduction of the National Curriculum for history in 1991. Results showed that experienced teachers had a tacit understanding of the aims of history produced by the National Curriculum Council, although students’ understandings were less well developed. Teachers had succeeded in transmitting some key ideas about why history should be studied to their pupils, although differences between schools show that teaching makes a difference. However, some pupils had only sketchy ideas about why they studied the subject or did not find it exciting or enjoyable.

Helping gifted students to analyze public issues: The jurisprudential approach

The jurisprudential approach to social studies is appropriate for gifted students because they tend to be concerned with moral issues and are likely to be in leadership positions as adults. The approach focuses on the analysis of public issues—political‐ethical issues about proper aims and actions for the society and its members. It is based on the assumptions that controversy is inevitable and that learning to recognize and handle disputes over values is, along with learning concepts for dealing with factual and language disputes, essential to valid decision‐making about public issues. The approach provides a rationale for curricula, as well as for case discussions.

The People of Broken Bay : An Aboriginal Studies Course for Secondary Students Conceived and Implemented by an Aboriginal Community Member

The Aboriginal Studies course outlined here was conceived by Jennie Fraser, a member of the Woy Woy Aboriginal community. In 1979 Jennie, who lives in Woy Woy with her family, approached the principal of Woy Woy High School with a proposal to introduce Aboriginal Studies within the school. The principal, in consultation with the Social Science and History masters, agreed to the idea and responded by allocating for Jennie Fraser’s proposed course, a segment of the Years 9 and 10 Social Science program.This showed considerable flexibility on the part of the school and left Jennie Fraser with a commitment to develop and participate in the teaching of an Aboriginal Studies course in 1980. She realized the constraints on the program, her own lack of teaching experience worried her and the curriculum aspects of developing a unit were of concern to her. However, she had expertise in Aboriginal Studies, and with the assistance of the school, was able to meet appropriate resource personnel. She contacted the Curriculum Consultant (Aboriginal Studies) and several visits and planning workshops were arranged for consultation which was beneficial to all parties concerned. During this process she met with the N.S.W. State Aboriginal Education Consultative Group and a workshop was organised to consider curriculum rationale at which she was able to discuss approaches to designing a unit. Alan Fidock, from the Curriculum Development Centre, attended this workshop.