School Curriculum Reform Research Articles

Teachers’ Belief and Practices in Teacher-Centered Empowerment Reform in Taiwan

Over the past 2 decades, Taiwan has introduced a series of decentralization reforms in school administration and curriculum. Teachers, who are at the center of these reforms, are expected to enrich their knowledge and cultivate strong beliefs regarding these reforms; the teachers’ beliefs and knowledge are not only affected by their personal profile but also by contextual factors of structure and culture at all levels. I conducted this study in order to explore these factors and determine how they affect teachers’ beliefs and practices. Qualitative methods guided this study in which a case-study approach was used. The findings of this study highlight a variety of factors that were identified by teachers. Contextual factors of structure and culture identified by the teachers include the context of the classroom, school administration and top-down authority, teachers’ culture, and government policy. The personal factors include personality, educational background and teacher preparation, demographic profiles, and teachers’ abilities. For the purpose of developing a comprehensive and culturally sensitive model of belief development, implications for practice and future research are provided.

Faculty reflections on the process of building an integrated preclerkship curriculum: a new school perspective.

This is a reflective essay based on the experience of developing a structure and function module within a new integrated medical curriculum. Our hope is that the insights we gained during a 4-yr journey in a new medical school will be transferable to others engaged with curriculum development. Here, we present an interpretive analysis of our personal experiences together with some original research data and a synthesis of the literature. We will argue that a focus on teaching faculty is the key to successful curriculum integration and suggest an agenda for faculty development. Our essay begins by exploring what curriculum integration really means and what its purpose might be. Our case study explores the challenges of building a shared understanding among stakeholders and of negotiating learning outcomes and methods of teaching as well as the process of developing content and assessment. We feel that many of our experiences in the new medical school are applicable in other settings, such as curriculum reform in established schools and for developers of competency-based premedical curricula. We conclude with recommendations to assist other curriculum planners and teachers by offering some benefits of hindsight.

Mediating pedagogical innovation via reflective practice: a comparison of pre-service and in-service teachers’ experiences

Recent school curriculum reform in New Zealand is promoting a shift from a teacher-led didactic pedagogical approach to a learner-centred and experiential model. However, facilitating changes to teachers’ practices in line with curriculum expectations is challenged by teachers’ existing beliefs and practices, which are often influenced by their own experiences as students in school. Focusing on one curriculum area, this article describes how one university has attempted to support curriculum innovation through two teacher education courses (one for pre-service and the other for in-service teachers) and presents data from an exploratory study into this attempt. The two courses contained a parallel scaffolded reflective written assignment (a reading log) designed to help teachers to reflect on their thinking and practice with regard to effective learner-centred and experiential pedagogy. Data from logs completed at the beginning and the end of the courses were used to determine and compare the extent to which shifts in thinking occurred for participants (pre-service n = 20; in-service n = 27). The article concludes by considering the implications for reflective practice as a means of supporting innovative practice.

School library policy in South Africa : where do we stand?

The absence of national school library policy guidelines is of great concern to the school library profession as this has an adverse effect on the provision of school library services and curriculum reform initiatives in South Africa. The purpose of this article is to present a review of school library policy initiatives since the report of the National Education Policy Investigation (NEPI) up to the present time, and to provide a perspective on the relationship between school library policy development and the provision of school library services and curriculum reform. The implications for the LIS profession are discussed. It is suggested that the LIS profession make a combined effort to form a partnership with educators, other stakeholders and government to engage in school library policy development based on realities on the ground and financial constraints for the benefit of curriculum reform, meaningful school education and a democratic society.

Encouraging innovation in a modern foreign language initial teacher education programme: What do beginning teachers make of task-based language teaching?

Task-based language teaching (TBLT) is an innovative learner-centred and experiential approach to modern foreign language (MFL) teaching and learning that is not without controversy in the secondary MFL classroom. This article considers one secondary-level initial teacher education programme in New Zealand in which, following school curriculum reform, TBLT has become a specific focus. Drawing on aspects of participants' critical reflections as part of the year-long programme, the article explores participants' developing understandings of TBLT and its suitability for New Zealand's secondary schools. It was found that beginning teachers were generally positive about TBLT. They also perceived several challenges to its successful implementation. Reflections after experiences in schools revealed that local school contexts, including the levels of understanding of, and receptivity to, innovation among more experienced colleagues, made a difference to successful task utilisation. The article draws some conclusions about the role of teacher education in mediating innovation in MFL teaching successfully.

從大學的發展趨勢探析十二年國民基本教育普通高中階段的課程改革 From the Development Trend of University to Study High School Curriculum Reform of 12-year Basic Education

從大學的發展趨勢探析十二年國民基本教育普通高中階段的課程改革 From the Development Trend of University to Study High School Curriculum Reform of 12-year Basic Education

Challenges in the transition to large-scale reform in chemical education

It is not often that research accompanies large-scale science education reforms. In order for an educational reform to be sustainable and for its implementation to grow from small to large scale, one should account for policy, culture, and assessment. This study investigated a large-scale national-level chemistry curriculum reform in Israeli high schools, which emphasized higher order thinking skills, learning in context, visualization, and chemistry understanding at four levels. By the end of a five-year-long intervention, the implementation encompassed 4031 participants in the reformed curriculum, representing approximately half of the chemistry majors in Israel. The study investigated the effect of the nationwide implementation on (a) teachers’ challenges in terms of the transition to a reformed-based curriculum that emphasizes thinking skills in a large-scale setting and (b) students’ knowledge, chemical understanding, and thinking skills in specific questions in the national matriculation examination, based on an analysis of the examination data. This paper focuses on one of the new learning units, Taste of Chemistry, as a case in point to demonstrate higher order thinking skills, such as graphing skills and modeling skills. We analyzed the following sources: (1) interviews with teachers, (2) questions from the traditional matriculation examinations, (3) questions from the new matriculation examination, which featured higher order thinking, (4) the number of students who responded to the reformed examination compared with the number of their peers who responded to the traditional one, and (5) students’ scores in the two examination versions. We classified the reform scale-up challenges into two types: (a) issues related to teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and assessment knowledge and (b) system-related policy issues. Between 2007 and 2010, the number of students studying the reformed curriculum increased exponentially, while the failure rate decreased and the percentage and average scores of students who elected to respond to the Taste of Chemistry question in the matriculation examination increased. We conclude that the reform was successful due to its emphasis on (a) the close collaboration between the three stakeholders, which included two academic institutions, the Ministry of Education, and the teachers and (b) on clear, consistent policy, longitudinal support, and the implementation process.

The Roles of University Researchers in a University-School Collaborative Action Research Project - A Chinese experience

Teacher research as an international movement since the 1970s has been advocated worldwide to promote school curriculum reform and the professionalization of school teachers. University-school collaborative action research is a new attempt to support school teachers who learn to do research in their classrooms while providing opportunities for university researcher to develop a better understanding of classroom practice with more effective strategies to support teacher change. Such collaborative research has been promoted in the recent curriculum reform in basic education in China. This paper reports on an action research project conducted by school teachers supported by university researchers in the Chinese context with a focus on examining the roles and gains of university researchers in this project. Data was collected through project meeting observations, questionnaires, interviews and participants’ reflective journals. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis methods were used respectively for analyzing the data collected. The purpose of this study is to understand better the nature of such collaborations and the gains as well as challenges on the part of university researchers so that implications can be drawn for establishing a sound university-school collaborative research body that promotes the professional learning of both parties.

Impact of national context and culture on curriculum change: A case study

Background: Earlier studies suggested national culture to be a potential barrier to curriculum reform in medical schools. In particular, Hofstede's cultural dimension ‘uncertainty avoidance’ had a significant negative relationship with the implementation rate of integrated curricula.Aims: However, some schools succeeded to adopt curriculum changes despite their country's strong uncertainty avoidance. This raised the question: ‘How did those schools overcome the barrier of uncertainty avoidance?’Method: Austria offered the combination of a high uncertainty avoidance score and integrated curricula in all its medical schools. Twenty-seven key change agents in four medical universities were interviewed and transcripts analysed using thematic cross-case analysis.Results: Initially, strict national laws and limited autonomy of schools inhibited innovation and fostered an ‘excuse culture’: ‘It's not our fault. It is the ministry's’. A new law increasing university autonomy stimulated reforms. However, just this law would have been insufficient as many faculty still sought to avoid change. A strong need for change, supportive and continuous leadership, and visionary change agents were also deemed essential.Conclusions: In societies with strong uncertainty avoidance strict legislation may enforce resistance to curriculum change. In those countries opposition by faculty can be overcome if national legislation encourages change, provided additional internal factors support the change process.

Kaupapa Māori, Philosophy and Schools

Goals for adding philosophy to the school curriculum centre on the perceived need to improve the general quality of critical thinking found in society. School philosophy also provides a means for asking questions of value and purpose about curriculum content across and between subjects, and, furthermore, it affirms the capability of children to think philosophically. Two main routes suggested are the introduction of philosophy as a subject, and processes of facilitating philosophical discussions as a way of establishing classroom ‘communities of inquiry’. This article analyses the place of philosophy in the school curriculum, drawing on three relevant examples of school curriculum reform: social studies, philosophy of science and Kura Kaupapa Māori.

OECD, ‘Key competencies’ and the new challenges of educational inequality

In this paper, I develop a critique of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)-based lifelong learning policy discourse with a particular focus on ‘key competencies’ (KCs) and its equity implications for school curricular policies. First, I review the discussion of KCs in the writings by the OECD-affiliated researchers and other OECD documents. In so doing, I identify a marked decoupling of KCs from the initial lifelong learning policy framework. Then, I situate the discussion of KCs within the sociological critique of the new mode of learning deemed essential for a ‘knowledge society’. I identify KCs’ potential to naturalize the (re)production of inequalities through schooling and argue that this can be further compounded by the extraction of KCs from the lifelong learning policy discourse. Finally, I ground these expositions in the specific policy context of Japanese education, highlighting how KCs and its decoupled articulation pose a difficult policy dilemma for Japan’s Ministry of Education attempting to address the widening class-based inequalities through schooling. Hence, this study critiques the contemporary school curriculum reform driven by KCs by tracing the flow of this concept from the international policy discourse down to the level of a national policy development. In conclusion, I call for curriculum studies to recognize the increasingly globalized curricular policy context and develop strategies for the new challenges of educational inequalities that confront us today.

MOKYMO PROGRAMOS ISTORIJA IR PLANAVIMAS: TEORINĖ KONSTRUKCIJA IR KAI KURIOS MOKYMO PROGRAMOS TOBULINIMO GAIRĖS ESTIJOJE 1987–1996 METAIS

PhD candidate, Tallinn University, EstoniaSpecial research course student at the Institute of Education,University of London 2012/2013Collections manager at the Estonian Pedagogical Archives Museumof Tallinn UniversityResearcher at the Institute of Educational Sciences, Tallinn UniversityAddress: Rüütli 6, 10130, Tallinn, Estoniatel. (372) 55 655655e-mail: vadim.rouk@tlu.ee Straipsnis skirtas teorinei ir istorinei mokymo programos (curriculum) analizei. Jame pristatomos pagrindinės šią temą gvildenančių Vakarų teoretikų pozicijos. Daugelis jų pabrėžia istorinę mokymo programos raidą. Pavyzdžiui, estų kilmės JAV mokslininkė Hilda Taba teigia, kad pagrindinis mokymo programos planavimo uždavinys – perimti ir įsisavinti svarbiausias paveldo žinias, idėjas, mintis. Tačiau tai tik viena teorinės mokymo programos analizės gija. Mokymo programų raidą galima nagrinėti ir valstybės, taip pat mokyklos lygmenimis. Mokymo programa gali būti vertinama kaip valstybės kišimasis į mokyklos gyvenimą. Mokyklos lygmeniu į mokymo programą taip pat galima žvelgti per ideologijos, valdžios, ekonominių išteklių prizmę, analizuojant ją švietimo, socialinių ir politinių pokyčių kontekste.Straipsnyje parodoma, kad Vakaruose, konkrečiau JAV švietimo sistemos kaitos ir su tuo susijusios mokymo programos teorinės analizės poreikis labiausiai išryškėjo šeštajame XX a. dešimtmetyje, Sovietų Sąjungai ėmus pirmauti kosmoso „užkariavimo“ srityje. Sovietų Sąjungoje ir Rytų Europoje ypač akivaizdūs pokyčiai pastebimi „Perestroikos“ metu, kai vienas iš pagrindinių naujo „kurso į Vakarus“ uždavinių buvo švietimo sistemos reformavimas.Straipsnyje ypatingas dėmesys skiriamas devintojo XX a. dešimtmečio pabaigoje Estijos švietimo sistemoje prasidėjusioms permainoms, mokymo programos kaitai. Iki 1987 m. Estijos švietimas buvo centralizuotos ir politizuotos Sovietų Sąjungos švietimo sistemos dalis, o mokymo programa ypač ideologizuota. Be to, sovietinėje mokymo programoje itin ženkli vokiškos didaktikos įtaka ir perėjimas prie britiško–amerikietiško curriculum tipo programos buvo gana sudėtingas procesas.

Building Potemkin schools: Science curriculum reform in a STEM school

‘Potemkin schools’ is used as the phrase to capture what a US science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) public speciality high school becomes as a result of its institutional branding. By way of an examination of the efforts of one teacher drawn into school branding through his ‘inquiry-based reform’ of an Advanced Chemistry course, this paper illuminates the tensions between the rhetorical intentions to engage in curriculum innovation and the reality of constraints and conflicting goals. The teacher, unable to resolve the tensions, was pushed into formalizing and routinizing his ideas into a reform project without understanding what was behind the rhetoric of the school’s self-image statements. The need to find and develop a ‘language’ to talk and think about ‘inquiry-based’ reform and its processes in meaningful terms and not in slogans is discussed. The irrationality and complexity of the reform which emerged from the findings contrast with the rationality of building Potemkin villages, hence illuminating the complexity in curriculum reform in STEM schools.

From science as ‘content’ to science as ‘interpretive key’: experiences and reflections from a science course in teacher education

Despite science's central role in European culture, public perception of, and participation with, science is characterised by contradictions and conflicting agenda. School curriculum reform, for example by Scottish Government, promotes ‘science for citizenship’, yet teachers' understandings of the nature of science and its relationship with society are often underdeveloped. This article reports on the experiences of a group of first-year students enrolled in the course ‘socio-cultural perspectives in science learning’ within a primary teacher education programme. Drawing on sociocultural theory, attention was given to language as a system for constructing symbolic realities. Through participation in activities, which explored science knowledge production and communication, students were encouraged to reflect on the nature of science and the dynamic relationship between content, methods and value-frameworks. Findings cluster around interconnected themes: students' views of knowledge, language genres across communities and knowledge–power negotiations. The course attempted to move from a space for knowledge consumption to an intermediary space between science and society for students to inhabit in the dual roles of citizens and co-constructors of knowledge. In this transition, linguistic genres pointed to the complexity of interactions between curricular materials offered by the course and newly established social networks. The article argues for further consideration of linguistic practices in science education as a means for disclosing interpretations and cultural framings and a necessary step in equipping teachers to understand ‘science for citizenship’ issues.

Medical education in the United States of America

This article was written to provide a brief history of the medical educational system in the USA, the current educational structure, and the current topics and challenges facing USA medical educators today. The USA is fortunate to have a robust educational system, with over 150 medical schools, thousands of graduate medical education programs, well-accepted standardized examinations throughout training, and many educational research programs. All levels of medical education, from curriculum reform in medical schools and the integration of competencies in graduate medical education, to the maintenance of certification in continuing medical education, have undergone rapid changes since the turn of the millennium. The intent of the changes has been to involve the patient sooner in the educational process, use better educational strategies, link educational processes more closely with educational outcomes, and focus on other skills besides knowledge. However, with the litany of changes have come increased regulation without (as of yet) clear evidence as to which of the changes will result in better physicians. In addition, the USA governmental debt crisis threatens the current educational structure. The next wave of changes in the USA medical system needs to focus on what particular educational strategies result in the best physicians and how to fund the system over the long term.

The Downstate Video Atlas of Anatomy, a Project Powered by Dyad Pedagogy

The medical school curriculum reform movement requires an effective method of eliciting leadership, independent research and productivity from each student. Dyad pedagogy has been demonstrated to answer this call. Working only in groups of two, a student worked with SUNY Downstate faculty members to create an expansive video atlas of anatomy. Production was labor intensive, ultimately generating 37 videos, each profiling an anatomical region. The application of dyad pedagogy allowed for constant feedback and refinement of the videos, optimizing them as a learning resource for the student body. Activity logs indicated that 38.6% of physician assistant and 25.5% of medical students (n=158 and 102 respectively) watched the videos 5 or more times. Usage increased up to 657% of average in the days before an exam. The significant percentage of students who repeatedly returned to the resource, as well as the usage peaks before a test day impy active utilization of the videos as a study tool. Informal surveys as well as unsolicited reviews from the class indicated enthusiasm and appreciation for the videos, confirming the success of the project and of dyad pedagogy in fueling the endeavor.Grant Funding Source : SUNY Downstate College of Medicine

Teaching and learning fractions: Lessons from alternative example spaces

Introduction Large-scale international studies (see, for example, 2009 Program for International Student Assessment Scores, 2010) involving Asian and Western countries consistently identify Chinese students, mainly from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, as top performers in (Fan & Zhu, 2004; Wang & Lin, 2009). Cross-cultural studies propose a range of factors that contribute to gap in achievement (Brenner, Herman, Ho, & Zimmer, 1999; Cai & Hwang, 2002; Stevenson & Stigler, 1992). Significant factors relate to culture (Education Review Office, 2000), teacher recruitment and status (Pang, 2009), teacher expertise (Ding & Jones, 2009; Ma, 1999) and organisation of school and curricula (Zhou, Peverly, & Xin, 2006). While acknowledging this complex network of influences, we have chosen in this paper to focus our attention on opportunities for learning that are designed into curriculum by way of textbooks. Through an examination of tasks presented in a mainstay Chinese textbook--the analysis of which is framed against approach presented in a recently published New Zealand textbook--we look at task potential to engage learners with specific content and cognitive processes. Our domain of inquiry concerns teaching and learning of fractions. We have selected fractions for two reasons. Firstly, worldwide, fraction teaching and learning presents a major challenge. The situation is no different in New Zealand (Young-Loveridge, 2009) and China (Zhou et al., 2006). In New Zealand, findings from National Education Monitoring Project (Crooks, Smith, & Flockton, 2010) and Numeracy Development Project (Young-Loveridge, 2009; Young-Loveridge, Taylor, Hawera, & Sharma, 2007) all provide evidence that student performance in fractions is weak. While Wang and Lin's (2009) meta-analysis of large-scale comparative studies indicates that Grade 8 Chinese students performed better than their United States peers in fractions and proportionality, a recent study by Wu (2008), testing 491 Grade 6 Chinese students' mathematical proficiency in fractions, raised concerns about procedural nature of students' knowledge. The results showed that students were proficient at computations, much more so than at creating appropriate visual models and solving word problems. However, researcher takes care to stress that students in this study were using textbooks that were influenced by more traditional teaching approaches than would be found in reform-type Chinese classes (see Li, Zhang, & Ma, 2009, for discussion of textbook changes). A second reason for our focus on fractions arose through our involvement in Learner Perspective Study (LPS) (Clarke, Keitel, & Shimizu, 2006). As members of an international project we studied three sets of lessons from Year 9 New Zealand classes, one of which was fractions. Expressions of surprise from our LPS colleagues in Asia with regard to fact that in New Zealand we teach fractions at secondary level piqued our interest in comparative curricula. In looking to better understand how those practices that are embedded in educational ways of being are implicated in students' mathematical learning and achievement, we claim that textbook tasks provide a useful site of inquiry. As Silver (2009) notes, the tasks in which students engage, constitute, to a great extent, domain of students' opportunities to learn mathematics (p. 829). They influence learners by directing their attention to particular aspects of content and by specifying ways of processing information (Doyle, 1983, p. 161). Informed by recent studies that focus on role of example/task design and sequencing (for example, Runesson & Mok, 2004; Sun, 2009; Watson & Mason, 2005), we provide a comparative sample of task activities from a Chinese textbook, The Nine Year Compulsory Education Textbook, Mathematics, First Term, Grade Six (Shanghai Primary and Secondary School (Kindergarten) Curriculum Reform Committee, 2005), and a New Zealand text, Mathematics & Statistics for New Zealand Curriculum Year 9 (Brookie, Halford, Lawrence, Tiffen, & Wallace, 2008). …

The implementation of entrepreneurship education through curriculum reform in Finnish comprehensive schools

How has entrepreneurship education been implemented in Finnish comprehensive schools. A two‐part survey was undertaken in 43 municipalities with different educational and socio‐economic backgrounds. The first part, in 2005, dealt with the local curriculum reform with a focus on the development of entrepreneurship education. The second part, in 2006, dealt with the implementation of entrepreneurship education. Questionnaires were sent to the representatives of the education and business sectors in the municipalities. The research questions were: (1) What is the sense of responsibility for implementing entrepreneurship education? (2) What kind of knowledge is there about entrepreneurship education? The results indicate that an atmosphere of responsibility for implementing entrepreneurship education is developing, although teachers do not possess knowledge of how to implement entrepreneurship education in practice. To develop such new curricular fields, such as entrepreneurship education, one could develop partnership forms of curriculum reform in order to develop teachers’ learning, school/work partnerships, and local curriculum work. Reforms need to be framed in practice‐oriented terms, thus strengthening the realization of aims and contents.

The Effects of a Dutch High School Curriculum Reform on Performance in and After Higher Education

This paper investigates the effect of a major reform in the final years of the two highest levels of Dutch secondary education. The reform focused on increasing active and independent learning and aimed to improve the match between secondary and higher education. We use data from six graduation cohorts from Dutch higher education and exploit the fact that two recent graduation cohorts contain both students that were treated with the new curriculum and students that were treated with the old curriculum. The effects of the curriculum change have been estimated by using a difference-in-differences approach for matched samples of treated and untreated graduates. We find that the reform had no effect on student performance and labour market outcomes.

Short-term Reforms in the Present High School Curriculum of History

Short-term Reforms in the Present High School Curriculum of History