Curriculum Matters 14: 2018

Curriculum studies is a field of educational endeavour that presents a wide range of issues and questions relating to curriculum. To answer these questions, a variety of research is undertaken, including theoretical and empirical examinations of curriculum-related problems and challenges, which may take the form of larger or smaller scale studies that canvas issues globally, nationally, or locally. Curriculum research is carried out by academics, teacher educators, educational researchers,… Read more

Shadow education has been studied in areas such as comparative education, educational policy, sociology of education, education and economics, and lifelong education, but mainstream Anglophone curriculum studies have largely ignored this phenomenon. We argue that shadow education should be considered as an emerging (and significant) focus of curriculum studies worldwide and advance five approaches to studying shadow education as an object of transnational curriculum inquiry, including shadow… Read more

In national contexts where curriculum policies explicitly advocate for the development of students’ higher order thinking capabilities, evidence suggests that achieving this goal can be quite elusive. In this article we explore this challenge by drawing on senior secondary school examples from two national contexts (New Zealand and Israel) that demonstrate how the implementation of student-centred pedagogies can lead to the development of fragmented, shallow knowledge rather than the deep,… Read more

Multiple international studies have confirmed the positive impact of library services and teacher–librarian partnerships on delivering curriculum outcomes and quality student learning in secondary schools. Despite this, there are indications internationally that school libraries are in decline. This article uses qualitative data from a national survey of teachers and librarians in New Zealand secondary schools to investigate teacher and librarian attitudes and beliefs about the role of… Read more

The school curriculum and teacher professional standards in Aotearoa New Zealand emphasise culturally responsive pedagogies for Māori learners. However, there is a gap between rhetoric and practice. Drawing on expert-interview methodology, and based on an interview with Tamsin Hanly about complex curriculum issues, this interview article seeks to stimulate deep thinking about how Māori and Pākehā histories and relationships can be addressed across the curriculum. Arguments are made about the… Read more

Grounded in a research project relating to the use of academic reading to support learning for TESSOL (Teaching English to Speakers in Schools of Other Languages) teachers, this article focuses on the experiences of Mei in a specialised professional learning and development (PLD) programme. Mei’s case illustrates how TESSOL teachers’ own experiences of second-language learning at school can conflict with approaches to teaching and learning that are emphasised within PLD. This raises… Read more

As the commemorations of the 100th anniversary of World War 1 draw to a close, it is timely to reflect on what we have learnt about that time in our history. This study used the New Zealand School Journal as a data source to investigate what school children were learning about the war at the time. In this article, we discuss the overt and covert messages that New Zealand school children were given about their relationship, first, to the British Empire and, second, to a new distinct… Read more