During Australia Day 2006, the Australian Prime Minister implicitly expressed that good Australian citizenship is interrelated with the proper knowledge of history. He also discussed how important dates in history often go unaddressed in most classrooms. Howard's comments serve as a useful introduction to a general discussion of the process of…

This article shares the opinions of several leaders in technology education regarding the need for a national curriculum for technology literacy. Laura Johnson Hummell, a North Carolina middle school technology education teacher and doctoral candidate at East Carolina University, believes that the United States should have a national curriculum…

Knowing the great impact education has on a nation, the author decided to investigate the education systems in America and Japan. The aim of the study was to answer how educational systems or practices in Japan and America differ, and how Japanese practices might improve those of American educators and administrators. Besides many similarities,…

Japanese, Germans, and Britons value the study of foreign languages, art, and music and favor long school years, state-supported preschool activities, and homework. Examining other nations' curricula is a valuable exercise that helps U.S. educators question the cultural values embedded in their own education system. (10 references) (MLH)

This paper examines some of the research for outcomes-based education in Australia. It does not claim to be a comprehensive review--only indicative of the sorts of research behind a movement that has frequently been dismissed as being only ideologically driven. It traces the genesis of the OBE movement in the USA, how it developed in Australia in…

"Choice" and "freedom" as measured by the ability of parents to select their children's schools are deeply embedded in the national ethos of the United States of America. Wealthy American parents have always exercised school choice but minority and low-income students are often trapped in failing schools. This paper is based on…

Geography teaching has been under constant change over the last decades. Innovations from research in geography and higher education have diffused in school practices in various ways. International trends have been applied to national contexts in co-operation among academics, administrators and school teachers depending on policies and educational…

Against a shifting set of assessment preferences in the US regarding whether educational assessment should continue to be a states rights game or become a federally dominated undertaking, the publication of five first-rate analyses about England's national curriculum assessment (NCA) is particularly propitious. Taken together, these five papers…

This article provides a brief picture of social studies education in the United States, China, and South Korea. It begins with a brief account of the K-12 curriculum structure and history of social studies education in each country in the 20th century. It then turns to a contemporary look at the social studies, the national curriculum standards…

In this article, the authors begin with a look back at the emergence of English education in the social and political context of the United States as a nation, situating the development of the research-practice divide narrative in debates concerning the nature and purpose of English as secondary-school subject in changing times. The authors turn…

This book focuses on educational change processes in the context of larger scale educational reform. The first of 2 volumes, the book contains 11 chapters that examine the historical, social, and economic forces at work in the formulation and implementation of educational policy. The chapters present different cross-cultural experiences of…

Describes Sign in Education, a pilot program in the United Kingdom that integrated Deaf children and hearing children in a hearing classroom with a culturally Deaf teacher who taught the national curriculum in British Sign Language one afternoon a week. Explores the advantage to the Deaf community, as well as the majority culture of adopting such…

This project examines the impact of standards-based and curriculum reforms on the role of materials in educational systems in the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and Australia. The project focused on identifying activities undertaken by publishing companies and in educational systems to develop, select and use materials in the…

Includes "Introduction" (Chitty); "Political Parties, Ideology, and National Curriculum" (Lawton); "First Three National Curricula and Millenium" (Graham); "Politics of Curriculum in European Perspective" (McLean); "Curriculum Scene in the United States" (Holt); "Similar but Different"…

An examination of the National Curriculum in England and Wales illustrates the possibilities for implementing a U.S. program that maintains two languages. A better approach is to require proficiency in two languages as part of a core curriculum. Second-language ability would become a strength, not a liability. (33 references) (MLH)