In 2003, the International Conflict Resolution Centre at the University of Melbourne, Australia, produced a primary school teaching manual for UNESCO Vietnam. The finished manual included lesson plans and materials for a five year, 50 lesson peace education course. The manual is one of the first examples of a systematic core national curriculum in…

There is a growing expectation that schoolteachers should not only act as educators by delivering the national curriculum, but also be more involved as tier one mental health professionals. In this role they are expected to assume some responsibility in the early identification of children's mental health problems and to refer these children for…

This study seeks to explore whether unregulated school choice has the potential to diversify the high school curriculum, as elitist conservatives and neoliberals in Korean argue. Making use of qualitative research methods, this paper examines how national curriculum policies are implemented at two selected high schools (high-achievement 1,…

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…

Sickle cell disorder (SCD) is a chronic illness that in England disproportionately affects marginalized ethnic groups, but has yet to feature extensively within educational or disability research. This review of existing literature makes the case for a sustained developmental research programme around SCD, disability and education. There are…

The Education Reform Act of 1988 introduced both a National Curriculum and a regime of inspection designed to ensure that schools were adequately meeting the demands of this curriculum. At the same time schools were being given greater autonomy through the increased powers of the governing body and open enrolment. Rather than add to the freedoms…

A behavioral genetic analysis of general writing ability was conducted using teacher assessments based on UK National Curriculum criteria for a sample of 3296 same-sex pairs of 7-year-old twins. Writing was highly heritable within the normal range (0.66) and at the low extreme (0.70). Environmental influences were almost all non-shared, with…

There is growing concern that almost 20 years after the 1988 Education Act, top-down, large-scale reform has stalled. The policy mix of choice, competition, markets, regulation, accountability and leadership seems not to have closed the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged areas and individuals, while most variations in school performance can…

This paper explores the social construction of the "Revised National Curriculum Statement (Grades R-9)" in South Africa between 2000-2002. The author, a participant in the process, uses the experience of the insider to tell the story. The paper discusses the relationship of different lobbies, voices, and interests to the curriculum, and…

This article examines the many critiques of educational policies concerning the National Curriculum and the standards and testing regimes for pupils and teachers associated with it. It goes on to suggest that there is a danger of educational researchers and policy-makers arguing themselves into a "cul de sac" where an unproductive stand-off may…

This article discusses the detailed analysis of utterances in two classes where the pedagogy enshrined in the UK government's Literacy Strategy was followed. The pedagogy is set out in "The National Literacy Strategy: framework for teaching" (DFEE, 1998 ) which provides termly objectives for each year for word, sentence level and text work.…

In the past two years, considerable media and government attention has been directed towards the teaching of Australian literature in secondary schools. This article explores the main themes of this discourse, and considers recent discussions about Australian literature in the National English Curriculum in the context of this debate. By way of…

During the Latin American oppression of the 1970s, as the rapidly increasing number of grassroots "popular" social movements sought to profit from and expand the ideas of the radical Brazilian educationist Paulo Freire, there developed, in its own right, a "popular education" movement which engaged in radical education for…

The study examines the Saudi national reading curriculum for Grades 1-6; defines the word identification, reading comprehension and teaching approaches; describes the reading lesson design, reading themes, the word identification and reading comprehension skills developed; and reports the strengths and weaknesses of the reading curriculum.…

The New Zealand technology curriculum requires children to solve problems to meet people's needs. So who are these people? Are they the users of the product, people who are affected by the product or someone else? This article investigates the confusion and limitations that exists in the New Zealand curriculum about the terms society, community,…