This study contends that environmental education is being significantly altered by globalizing forces, witnessing the effort to convert environmental education into education for sustainable development. This internationally propagated conversion can be challenged from many vantage points. This study identifies anomalies that have arisen as…

This paper draws on the findings from an international programme of research that has demonstrated the need for teachers in many developing countries to be given more support in adapting monograded curricula to the needs of their multigrade classes. It describes four empirical models of multigrade practice and examines the models of curriculum…

This study reviews six traditional approaches to hermeneutics and presents a dialogic understanding of hermeneutics. It concludes with specific applications of hermeneutics to curriculum development practices in schools with a focus on inter-subjectivity. While 20th-century access to post-structural notions of subjectivity through aesthetic…

This paper examines the nature and socio-political functions of Hong Kong's "Chinese history curriculum" during colonialism and since decolonization and argues that these functions have resulted in a curriculum characterized by rote-learning and geared towards social control. Students are initiated into the traditional, orthodox view of…

This study examines apparently similar historical phenomena in 19th-century Prussia and Switzerland: the establishment of modern foreign languages in the curriculum of upper-secondary education. Through the course of the 19th century, there appear to have been great transnational European affinities with regard to both the differentiation of the…

Myriad international efforts exist to infuse and reform schools with ecological perspectives, but in the US those efforts remain largely on the fringes of schooling. The purpose of this study is to offer a perspective on this issue from inside schools. If one looks to the future success of environmental education, one must consider the work of…

This paper explores the intersection of curriculum studies/curriculum history/curriculum theory through the study of systems of reason that order reflection and action. Words about "learning", "empowerment", "problem-solving", "self-realization", "community", and so on, are not merely there in order that educators should "grasp" some reality to…

This paper examines the Europeanization of citizenship education policy through a comparative analysis of two European states, Germany and Spain, with strong traditions of regional control of education policy. While previous studies have tended to focus on national responses to and implementation of EU initiatives, they often disregarded the…

Competence-based education is becoming increasingly popular. Competencies are used more and more as the starting point for designing curricula and instructional methods, especially in vocational education and training, to realize authentic and self-steering study programmes. Despite its popularity in both research and educational settings, there…

This paper explores the substance of competence-driven changes in teacher education curricula by testing the possibility of using a framework distinguishing between the German pedagogical culture of "Didaktik" and the Anglo-Saxon Curriculum culture to describe the substance of these changes. Data about the perceptions of…

Mathematics education aimed at empowering students for economic and democratic participation must address two critical issues: the long-standing function of mathematics as a gatekeeper, and the complicated nature of designing and implementing systematic reform at the school department level. The study reported here examines a curricular redesign…

This article investigates the underlying themes and principles that inform curriculum debate and how they are articulated in current school policy discussions. This topic is approached with the help of a case study covering the debate on which subjects should be mandatory for students at the upper secondary school curriculum in Sweden. The focus…

What are the basic things that compose curriculum, and what are the questions that may be posed about these things? Joseph Schwab's conception of curriculum is used to introduce a scheme of questions concerning the nature, elements, and practice of curriculum. Formulations of questions by other curriculum theorists are reviewed and analysed in…

The paper analyses and compares developments in history teaching in Germany, England, and the Netherlands in the 19th and 20th centuries. The development of history teaching in the three countries shows striking similarities. National politics have always used history education for purposes which did not necessarily tally with distanced critical…

The democratization of South Africa has necessitated a transformation of the education system. The current transformational landscape of higher education in South Africa requires that basic curriculum concepts, and principles be rediscovered and, rethought with a view to ensuring that future educational practice is based on sound, and proven…