This article examines textual traces of the standard language ideology within current education policy in England, focusing on post-2010 reforms which are characterised by a (re)shift towards conservatism, discipline, and standards. Using tools and methods from critical stylistics and the critical discourse analysis of language policy, I…

This paper examines the effects of English Childhood home language (CHL) on teacher risk taking and identity in a Chinese context where Chinese and English bilingualism is prioritized in its national school curriculum. Data were collected from 3388 Chinese Singaporean teachers. We used structural equation modeling to examine the relationships…

Background: There is growing international awareness of the dividends of early reading success and the consequences of early reading failure. Many studies have shown that the educational achievement of South African learners is unacceptably poor. There are shortcomings in the curriculum for English home language (EHL) which could be the reason for…

From 2006 the British government strongly favoured synthetic phonics as the principal approach for the teaching of initial literacy in state-funded primary schools in England, and since 2010 has made it mandatory. In 2007-2013 just over 100 commercially published phonics schemes were available, and in that same period the government maintained a…

The current study aims to reveal the similarities and differences by comparing the mother tongue teaching curriculums implemented at the middle school level in Turkey and England in terms of "their structure, objectives, learning areas and learning outcomes." The current study employed the survey model used to reveal the subject of…

While helping students develop informed views about nature of scientific inquiry (VNOSI) has been emphasised in science education, little is known regarding students' current VNOSI at a certain grade level and whether there was evidence of higher attainment of VNOSI in students in higher grades as compared to lower grades? The purpose of this…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the alignment between the fourth-grade summative classroom assessments and the 'Matter and Energy' unit in the Lebanese science curriculum using: content and cognitive levels. Summative assessments were collected from a sample of 17 schools. The alignment between the classroom assessments and the…

This article engages postcolonial debate on citizenship education's power-knowledge nexus by interrogating the concerns of 37 secondary schoolteachers in a Western Cape Xhosa township, the first created during the apartheid era. Unmasking power-knowledge divides in the localisation of global norms, the data reveal state dismissal of indigenous…

I explore a series of incidents in my English classroom, which occurred while I was preparing my students for their high-stakes GCSE English Language exam ('Paper 2: Writers' viewpoints and perspectives'). I thereby attempt to confront some of my own failings and biases with regard to non-fiction and the teaching of persuasive writing in…

In England accountability measures have often been used to steer school behaviour in pursuit of policy goals. In 2010, the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) was introduced to increase uptake of traditional academic subjects at GCSE. These subjects, it was argued, would enhance students' future prospects, in part because they are favoured at A-level by…

It came as a surprise to me, after an extensive Google search and reading of numerous policies, that English, and more specifically Standard Australian English, is not the official language of Australia (ACARA, 2016c; Lo Bianco, 1987). There are examples cited by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) (1999) that state, 'English is regarded as…

The Maltese National Minimum Curriculum published in 1999 sought to strengthen bilingualism by reinforcing the practice of teaching and assessing some subjects in English and others in Maltese. It also pointed out that code-switching should only be used in cases of severe pedagogical difficulties. As a new National Curriculum Framework was being…

This paper provides a review of oracy in primary education (5-11) in England. It discusses the nature of talk, acknowledging it as integral to the learning and teaching process and traces the history and development of the place of oracy within the curriculum. The article provides a critique of related policy initiatives including various…

This paper forms the first part of research into the phenomenon of curriculum narrowing within Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence (CfE). It presents findings from a preliminary analysis of publicly available data -- Scottish Qualifications and school leavers' attainment data, aggregated by local authorities. Our findings show that the senior…

This article focuses on school curriculum documents. It specifically investigates teachers' perceptions of curriculum in the Solomon Islands context. Using a questionnaire as a means of gathering data, a sample of 35 teachers were asked to provide their perceptions about the curriculum documents for three subject areas, using criteria developed by…