This article explores how schools might develop a curriculum and pedagogy for the understanding of thinking, rather than the knowing of thinking. It suggests viewing the understanding of thinking processes through Bereiter and Scardamalia’s interpretation of educational process in Popper’s three-world schema. Such an interpretation leads schools to the development ...

This article looks at the current organisation of senior secondary curriculum in New Zealand, and raises some key questions that will need to be considered as we seek to develop a senior secondary curriculum designed for life in the twenty-first century. It asks: Do our current structures, for senior secondary ...

This article argues the view that curriculum policy is an educative resource for teachers, and that this view imposes certain design considerations on policy. Foremost among these is the need to signal shifts in meaning, in ways that enable teachers to better understand what the reform is requiring of them ...

This paper challenges the belief that methods of teaching reading are the answer to raising age cohort standards of achievement, and that literacy, in the form of reading and writing, is based on spoken language. It is argued that documents, advising how to raise standards of literacy, have overlooked the ...

This article explores and critiques the different ways in which the concept of “key competencies” has been understood and represented in the curriculum. It is argued that if competencies are to go beyond simply reinforcing the curriculum status quo, the role they play in the curriculum needs to be better ...

Though they are geographically close, England and France’s underlying philosophies regarding education and, for the focus of this paper, mathematics education, exhibit differences worth considering. The English system, influenced by the humanism school of thought, can be characterised by its desire to treat each student as an individual—and to guide ...

This article explores the value of listening to and heeding student voice. By doing so, teachers learn about the life experiences of students, and about how these contribute to the more formal learning environment of the classroom. They also learn the importance of explicitly articulating and adopting a relevant learning ...

Five conceptions of curriculum (i.e., humanist, social reconstructionist, skills, technological, and academic) are described and used to analyse the New Zealand Curriculum Framework. It is argued that the framework contains aspects of all five conceptions, despite their apparent contradictory nature. The conceptions were used in a study of 235 primary ...

The current New Zealand Curriculum/Te Marautanga o Aotearoa Project involves a wide-ranging process to engage teachers, principals, students, lecturers, and others in revitalising the New Zealand curriculum. In 2004, as one of many facets to this project, the Ministry of Education commissioned a background paper to explore principles and practices ...

The Curriculum/Marautanga Project was launched in 2003 to build on the recommendations of the Curriculum Stocktake Report (Ministry of Education, 2002) in reframing the national curriculum. A key change to the curriculum is the proposed replacement of the essential skills with key competency groups. The process of co-construction, through various ...