Curriculum Policy

This article advocates for the necessity of Indigenous Knowledges in furthering Indigenous self-determination in public schools, as well as furthering the broad aims of public education. Drawing attention to past efforts across the United States to transform the public school curriculum and analyzing data from testimonies given at Oregon State Legislature Hearings, we argue that Indigenous Knowledges offer an important resource for educating all students responsibly and improving relationships within and across communities. Framing these ideas as gift-giving logic, we argue that if educators and policy-makers are open, they can learn a great deal from Indigenous Knowledges and advocacy efforts.

My research involved exploring how two universities were responding to recent curriculum policy, with a particular interest in the responses of academics to the pressures placed on them to collaborate across disciplinary boundaries to produce multi-or interdisciplinary programmes that were responsive to South Africa's economic and social development needs, and that conformed to outcomes-based approaches to curriculum design. The issue that I came across again and again was the distinction between public discourse (the 'best face forward' accounts) and the more private disclosures which offer clearer insight into the actual responses of academics and the processes that were followed in attempting to fulfill the policy. This is, I'm sure, a fairly perennial challenge facing qualitative researchers. I think some conditions may have sharpened the problem in my case. Probably most important was the fact that the changes were policy-driven, with the promise that eventually state subsidies would be tied to enrolments in 'programmes' approved by the state, rather than simply on enrolments generally, as in the past. Thus external perceptions of the 'strength' of particular programmes could be important in determining the credibility (and thus fundability) of particular programmes. Thus there was an understandable impulse on the part of many respondents (especially more senior ones) to offer 'public discourse', rather than the more nuanced accounts needed for qualitative enquiry. But as the process proceeded, I became conscious of particular strategies I was adopting to counter this, and of sometimes changing responses from my informants as their perceptions of me shifted during the course of an interview. I became aware that the identity I presented during interviews may have conditioned the openness (or otherwise) of respondents, and I realised that the way I framed the purpose of interviews for respondents at the outset changed somewhat as the data-gathering proceeded, and I also became aware of my own comportment during interviews, especially ways in which I endeavoured to put informants at ease, and encouraged particular kinds of response. (Often my signals are simply murmurs of agreement, or of sympathy, PAGE 121 or of enthusiasm – sounds that I only become aware of listening to the tapes, signals that have often not found their way onto transcripts) Interestingly my awareness of these issues grew at about the same time as I became interested in the issue of identity (not originally a theme foregrounded in my planning for the project, but subsequently central to my analysis), and the ways in which the policy was asking academics to adopt changing identities, to comport themselves differently in their relationships with each other and the outside world, and to prioritise changing values. As my awareness of this theme deepened, I began to see the interview as a dance of identities, with each of the two players projecting particular personas. In some cases the responses of the colleagues remained fairly consistent throughout (sometimes strongly assertive, sometimes persistently evasive), but in other cases, a respondent would begin with a 'public' account, but would relax during the course of an interview and feel confident enough to offer insight into the messier, more complex realities behind the public face. These would often be some of the more rewarding interviews because they reflected much of the broader pattern of the policy responses generally: apparent compliance at the level of public rhetoric, working to camouflage widespread business-as-usual on the ground, or in very rare instances, highly conflictual and traumatic attempts to bring about significant change.

Policy studies in science education do not have a particularly high profile. For science teachers, policy lurks in the background, somewhat disconnected from their normal classroom practice; for many, it is simply taken-for-granted. This paper analyses policy documents which have emerged from Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) that impact on science education. It does so through the prism of Roberts' (2007) visions and image of science curricula to ask (i) how the stated rationale or vision for the science curriculum is reflected in the published experiences and outcomes (E&Os); (ii) what policy image of science education do these E&Os portray; and (iii) how well do these fit with teachers' current experiences and (evolving?) classroom practices. We argue that there is a disconnection between the stated purposes of Scottish science education and the published E&Os. Pupils' development towards functional scientific literacy cannot be achieved if there is confusion as to the ...

The school system in the Slovak Republic, as in other post-communist countries, was first reformed at the beginning of the 1990s. It was not until 2008, when an education law was adopted to set out new parameters for creating a national curriculum at all levels, that fundamental curricular reforms were made. Thus the law also meant that preschool educational institutions could be fully incorporated into the school system and that an entirely new national curriculum could be developed for these schools (nursery schools). The ten-year national Education Programme for Nursery Schools ceased to be valid and nursery schools were faced with the task of implementing the new 2008 national programme. The national curriculum soon began to exhibit fundamental flaws and so a new version had to be produced in 2013. Within a short period of time, teachers were faced with the pressures of having two new national curriculums. This study captures the way in which teachers dealt with this process when first encountering the 2013 national curriculum. This was accomplished by intentionally using Facebook as a con- textual platform alternative to face-to-face research; as a unique research tool, and as data source. The data collected and analysed from the Facebook platform was based on discussion topics created by teachers. The discussion platform provided access to the emotional side of teachers’ reactions to the changes taking place, which must be considered a significant factor in implementing reform. The article describes the various emotional states preschool teachers experience while accepting or resisting the various forms of the national curriculum.

In 2013 the Council of Higher Education (CHE) released a proposal for the reform of South Africa’s undergraduate degree arguing that all current 3-year degrees and diplomas, as well as four-year Bachelor’s degrees be extended by one year with an additional 120 credits. The proposal argues that essential to the success of this reform and its goal of improving student success is how the structure enables a different kind of curriculum. This paper argues that what is fundamentally different about the flexible curriculum structure is that it must enable epistemic access and development. Drawing on the sociology of knowledge, the notion of ‘epistemic access’ is elaborated to conceptualize some of the key conditions of such an enabling curriculum structure. The paper then moves to discuss what a curriculum structure which enables epistemic access and development might look like. This is described at the level of general and qualification specific principles. The analysis reveals how knowledge domains differences (for example, science vs. humanities) and the qualification type differences (formative vs. professional degrees vs. vocational) will require different curriculum models for enabling epistemic access.

Este trabalho apresenta uma leitura comparativa entre a primeira versão da Base Nacional Comum Curricular (BNCC) e a consulta pública online a este texto com a participação de professores de todo o Brasil. Realizou-se uma análise lexicográfica com o software IRaMuTeQ, que permitiu dividir o texto em classes de segmentos de texto (ST) com conteúdo semântico semelhante. Os resultados mostram que as contribuições dos professores possuem uma estrutura compartimentada. Ademais, os verbos utilizados permitem inferir, a partir dos princípios da taxonomia de Bloom, que os contextos de utilização dos verbos remetem a processos cognitivos de ordem mais baixa do que os encontrados no texto da BNCC.

I focus, in this work, the identity demands present in curricular policies produced by epistemic communities for the Teaching of Sciences. Based on poststructural and post-foundational registration of identity, I seek to question the identities universalisms projected over teachers, students and social in the political texts analyzed, critically arguing about the fixity of the profiles produced and their explicit link to the question of quality in science education. I argue that the radical assumption of difference allows blocking the hypertrophy of controlling reason in science education, being able to disarticulate foundational identity principles marked by the desire of signifixation of subjects and school processes in anticipated and authorized versions of otherness.
Keywords: Science Education. Identity. Curriculum Policies.