The attainment gap associated with socio-economic status is an international problem that is highly resistant to change. This conceptual paper critiques the drive by the Scottish Government to address the attainment gap through the Scottish Attainment Challenge and the National Improvement Framework. It draws upon a range of theoretical…

In several European countries, teacher education is regulated by national plans that emphasise pedagogy as the central subject. Pedagogy shall include research-based knowledge, as well as having a strong connection between theory and practice. We have interviewed teacher educators about what they emphasise about theoretical and practical issues in…

This supporting document sets out the content analysis technique and detailed findings that underly part of the research conducted for the report titled "VET for secondary school students: acquiring an array of technical and non-technical skills." That report is the first in a set of studies that aims to understand the value of…

Background: Despite the large body of literature regarding student misconceptions, there has been relatively little cross-cultural research to directly compare the prevalence of common scientific misconceptions amongst students from different cultural backgrounds. Whilst previous research does suggest the international nature of many…

Purpose: This paper introduces Stroud's 'Linguistic Citizenship', a concept committed to democratic participation, to voice, to the heterogeneity of linguistic resources and to the political value of sociolinguistic understanding. Approach: It first outlines Linguistic Citizenship's links with the ethnographic sociolinguistics inspired by Hymes,…

This article examines the special nature of "Te Whariki," Aotearoa New Zealand's early childhood national curriculum, as a dynamic social, cultural document through an exploration of two art-inspired imaginary case studies. Thinking with "Te Whariki" retains the potential to ignite thinking post-developmentally about art,…

A Chinese and a Swedish preschool teacher education programme were examined in search for commonalities and differences of the curriculum decision-making considerations involved in the respective programme revision process. Findings include: (1) the two programmes have shifted orientations and become similar, yet there was no fundamental…

The new National health and physical education curriculum in Australia includes outdoor education activities as a viable way to achieve intended learning outcomes. However, most health and physical education teacher education courses do not provide a strong focus on the theories, skills and pedagogies that are unique to the effective use of…

In 2011, the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership introduced new Professional Standards for Teachers, which require that graduate teachers possess knowledge and understanding of Indigenous students and cultures. The authors conducted interviews with 12 non-Indigenous teacher educators at one Australian university in order to…

The present paper is a case study based on a first year BA Hons Education Studies module that explores a number of important questions about the relationship between technology, knowledge and society and begins to think about how our ideas about each of these contribute to an understanding of what education means. Following a Foucauldian…

This article suggests that citizenship education is essential to establish a culture of democratic practices and national commitment in Tunisia. The growing demands for and debates about democratisation and political participation from the mass citizenry, along with an increased pressure from civil society, go beyond the legalistic definition of…

This article reports on the results of a survey of Australian primary pre-service teachers' experiences, conceptions and perceptions of geography. Research was conducted with two cohorts of undergraduate primary pre-service teachers; one group in second year and another in the final year of a four-year teacher education course. The findings show…

Over the last decades, teachers have often been identified as 'key' players for the improvement of education systems. The successive waves of reform taking place in Latin America since the 1990s have aimed at initial and continuous teacher training. The main changes intended to improve the quality and lengthen the duration of initial teacher…

The last two decades have seen unprecedented interest in science curricula, with many governments seeing improvements in the performance of their school students in science as key to future economic prosperity. We present the results of an analysis of the curriculum documents for primary and secondary science in Australia (New South Wales and…

The national bicultural early childhood curriculum in New Zealand, Te Whariki, and the Graduating Teacher Standards require that graduating teachers are competent in Maori language as well as English, and have an understanding of aspects of Maori knowledge. However, research shows that teachers are not yet proficient in the skills needed to…