Background: Palliative care (PC) is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problem associated with life-threatening illness through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification, impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems like physical, psychosocial and…

This article discusses the five-string kantele as an example of the Finnish national heritage, a school instrument and an example of sustainable design. A qualitative case study was made by collecting the data from the Finnish students--prospective teachers--and the sixth form pupils, who had designed and carved their own five-string kanteles. The…

Classroom experience is shaped by a number of factors. In this paper, we report a classroom observation study in China, illustrating regional variation in students' classroom learning experiences. Through comparing and contrasting observed classroom practices in three different regions in China (Chongqing, Hong Kong and Shanghai), the paper…

In this paper, we report on an investigation into initial teacher education students' (ITES) understandings of sustainability and the Australian National Curriculum Sustainability Cross Curricular Priority (CCP). We also explore their willingness and capacities to embed the CCP into their own teaching practices. The ITES (N = 392) completed a…

Recently Australia has witnessed a revival of concern about the place of Australian literature within the school curriculum. This has occurred within a policy environment where there is increasing emphasis on Australia's place in a world economy, and on the need to encourage young people to think of themselves in a global context. These dimensions…

Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence typifies many international trends in curricular policy, through its emphasis on generic skills and competencies, its focus on pedagogy and its apparent extension of autonomy to teachers as agents of change. Such curricula pose considerable challenges to school systems, where prevailing practices are often at…

As proposed changes to the National Curriculum are furiously debated, and details of future changes to GCSE are anxiously awaited, history teachers in England are already wrestling with the implications of one change to the public examination system: the end of "modular" GCSE courses and a return to final examinations. Although modular…

Background: Among the many changes occurring across Chinese society in the early years of the 21st century has been the construction and implementation of a new national curriculum which includes physical education (PE) as one of the main subject areas. Unlike the old PE curriculum with its sports performance-oriented criteria, the new curriculum…

This paper reports on findings related to the Nature of Technology from Stage Two of the "Technological Knowledge and Nature of Technology: Implications for teaching and learning" ("TKNoT: Imps") research project undertaken in 2009. A key focus in Stage Two was the trialing of different teaching strategies to determine how…

Since 2003, the Vietnamese government has prioritised curriculum reform efforts and commitment to improving the quality of the national curriculum. The Vietnamese early childhood education renovation has encountered considerable changes and challenges, particularly in the area of pedagogical approaches. Many early childhood teachers continue to…

Internationalization of geography in higher education comes in many guises. This paper discusses some of these, with particular attention to curriculum development and transfer. The context is Bangladesh and a case study is presented of a link programme between three higher education institutions in that country and one in the UK. The British…

Teaching her Key Stage 3 students in Essex, Catherine McCrory was struck by the stark contrast between their enthusiasm for studying diverse histories of Africa and the Americas and their reluctance to engage with certain groups deemed different within England. Inspired by the resources in the local Record Office and keen to implement the part of…

The content for the school science curriculum has always been an interplay or contest between the interests of a number of stakeholders, who have an interest in establishing it at a new level of schooling or in changing its current form. For most of its history, the interplay was dominated by the interests of academic scientists, but in the 1980s…

This paper analyses how the impact of international student achievement studies and the recent economic crisis in Europe are influencing the development of educational policy transfer and borrowing, from East to West. This is contrasted with education reform movements in East Asia, which have long legacies of borrowing from so-called…

This paper explores the relationship between global, regional and local influences on adult literacy policy and practice in the UK through a discourse analysis of policy-related texts. The analysis is framed by theoretical perspectives from literacy studies and socio-material theory. The paper identifies a number of specific features in the UK…