The increasing use of media and digital technologies has been modifying how people think over and shape their physical activities and healthcare consumption. This growing trend has been reflected in school curriculum developments for Physical Education and Health. As educators and policy makers adjust local curricula to reflect these technological…

Curriculum policies internationally are increasingly concerned with the promotion of national competitiveness and economic development. This involves more emphasis on skills than on knowledge, on learning than on teaching and on school/teacher autonomy than regulation from the centre. At the local level such global influences are inevitably…

The primary objective of the study was to empirically test theoretical claims made about differences between Didaktik and curriculum traditions concerning teacher autonomy (TA) and teacher responsibility (TR). It tests the hypothesis that TA and TR are higher among Didaktik than curriculum countries. The second objective was to explore…

Many countries, including Australia, China, the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, have included art subjects in their core curriculum. Using the theory of governmentality as a critical lens to investigate the intricate power--knowledge system in relation to curriculum, arts and pedagogy, this paper makes a comparative document…

This essay reflects on Daniel Tanner's "Race to the top and leave the children behind" by attention to the way our particular national histories impact on our thinking about what is valuable, the kinds of curriculum pressures and common senses that are now at work internationally at government and policy level, the specific forms these…

This paper explores how the discourse of history "works" in the context of Malaysian junior-secondary education. Using the tools of systemic functional linguistics, a representative selection of school texts is deconstructed. By focusing on the intimate relationship between ideology, context, and text, characteristic purposes and their…

Proposes seven principles of program evaluation to serve as guidelines for designing evaluation procedures in Australian schools. The object of evaluation is to generate useful information about the educational environment which can be used for decision making in the curriculum development process. (AM)

Identifies and discusses changes since 1960 in the science education curriculum in Australian schools in light of two perspectives--individual teachers and their students as the agents of curriculum implementation, and the schooling system as an instrument of a society and as the focus of many countervailing social demands. (DB)

The successful use of Decker Walker's curriculum development model in different educational settings in Israel and Australia demonstrates that inductively derived models can assist educational practice in a way that deductive models cannot. However, Walker's model should not be viewed as a general panacea. Issues that must be examined are…

The questions of the range of appropriate offerings for the secondary curriculum is a subject of much debate in Australia. The legitimacy of women's studies is examined, as well as ways in which women's studies might be offered in the secondary school curriculum. (RM)

In the 1970s there emerged a strong call for a core curriculum in Britain, Canada, and Australia. The implications of any attempt to define the content of a universal core for the schools of any state are examined through an examination of the Australian experience. (RM)

In 1985 Australian educators, administrators, parents, and students met in a conference to discuss a range of contemporary curriculum issues. Significant issues across the work of the conference as a whole are discussed. (RM)

The authority-innovation-decision-making model, a top-down approach successfully used to disseminate some educational projects in Australia, is described. The four ingredients that make for success in this approach are: administrative advocacy, high prescriptiveness, good administrative engineering of the implementation process, and strong back-up…

Investigates the extent to which Australian teachers participate in curriculum decision making. Evidence is presented from the Curriculum Action Project (CAP) initiated in 1976. Topics discussed include purposes of CAP, methodology, data analysis, and findings. Conclusions are that curriculum development is becoming less centralized but that it is…

Describes a course in the School of Education at Macquarie University, (Australia). Focusing on curriculum theory and practice as an area of undergraduate academic study, the course covers the process involved in curriculum development, encourages student participation, and emphasizes inductive as opposed to deductive learning. (Author/DB)