Is content literacy exclusively a U.S. phenomenon? In this installment we report on the state of content literacy from four international perspectives. Descriptions of content literacy from Ireland, Sweden, Germany, and Bulgaria offer insights into (a) the value policymakers may be placing on reading practices for content learning, and (b) the…

Geographical education in Portugal has undergone many reforms since the late 1970s. Reforms have affected mainly the content and the goals of the discipline's national curriculum, in a process designed to reflect the evolution of geography at academic level. However, the reforms seem to have had little effect on what teachers believe geography and…

Global and digital connectivity transform Australian classrooms by creating rich environments for inquiry learning. Developing inquiry learning in this Information Communication Technology (ICT) context is an Australian educational goal. Recently the Australian Curriculum reform and the Digital Education Revolution has become a catalyst for…

As a consequence of a substantially revised national curriculum in New Zealand, all schools are now required to provide opportunities for students in school Years 7 to 10 (age 11+ to 14+) to learn an additional language. There are, however, very few intermediate school (Years 7 and 8) teachers who are additional language 'subject specialists'.…

The New Social Studies movement was an effort by social scientists to reform US social studies/history curriculum at all levels during the 1960s and early 1970s. In the end, more than 50 different projects attempting to revitalise social studies were developed. Many of the projects focused on inquiry-based teaching practices and curriculum.…

In this article, the author explores the theme of inclusion. Inclusion is one of the themes within the recent Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) publication: "Engaging mathematics for all learners" and the author had the good fortune to participate in this project. This involved working with five schools which, frivolously, all had a…

James Moffett's influence in Australia is shown here manifested in a particular Syllabus for Years 7-10 from the 1970s. Moffett is discussed in terms of the totalising nature of the theory presented in "Teaching the Universe of Discourse" and it is argued that not only the details of Moffett's theory, but also its totalising nature were…

This study examined the professional development opportunities that about eighty mathematics teachers of junior high schools were provided with in the national curriculum reform of China and explored how their beliefs in mathematics instruction and instructional practice were affected by the professional development opportunities available to…

Almost a decade ago, the new subject of citizenship was created in the English National Curriculum and several universities were funded to train teachers in this new subject. This presented a rare challenge, namely how to train people to teach a subject that did not exist in schools, and in which they were unlikely to have a specialist degree. In…

The new schooling-leaving age policy in New South Wales, a state in Australia, requires all students to stay at school until they are 17 years old. The policy was introduced in January 2010, with little warning and, it appears, little consideration of its impact in complex contexts. In south-western Sydney, the most diverse region in the city, the…

This paper presents the response of the technology teacher education programmes at the University of Limerick to the assessment challenge created by the shift in philosophy of the Irish national curriculum from a craft-based focus to design-driven education. This study observes two first year modules of the undergraduate programmes that focused on…

As a lens through which to read and understand a subject area and its curriculum content and issues, a sociocultural perspective is a recent and arguably significant change for the Health and Physical Education (HPE) Key Learning Area (KLA) in Australia. Its significance lies, first, in the fact that it seems to represent a notable departure from…

The revised standards, like the earlier social studies standards published in 1994, continue to be structured around the ten themes of social studies. However, the revised standards offer a sharper focus on: (1) Purposes; (2) Questions for Exploration; (3) Knowledge: what learners need to understand; (4) Processes: what learners will be capable of…

Research on political education in schools suggests that an emphasis on formal structure, constitutional principles, formal citizen rights, and debates on current issues is common. The Norwegian national curriculum on political education envisions a different political education emphasizing that students should be critical of political life and…

The final report of the Williams committee (DCSF, 2008: 68) argues that the revised mathematics Framework (DfES, 2006) "should be reconsidered to achieve a more suitable, user-friendly form." It might also have added that there is not much help and support in it for early years teachers. A much more useful document is the "Practice guidance for…