ABSTRACT The curriculum resources used for teaching secondary mathematics vary considerably from school to school. Some schools base their teaching largely on a single published scheme, while others design their own schemes of learning, curating their resources from a range of (often free) online sources. Both approaches seem problematic from the perspective of experiencing the mathematics curriculum as a coherent story, and neither seems likely to take best advantage of the accumulated body of knowledge in the education research literature about effective didactics for mathematics. In this position paper, as we embark on the collaborative, research-informed design of a complete, fully-resourced, free-to-access mathematics curriculum for students aged 11–14, we use the conceptual framework of mathematics curriculum as a story to draw out five key curriculum design principles. A mathematics curriculum should harness and develop the skills and expertise of teachers; balance the teaching of fluency, reasoning and problem solving; give explicit attention to important errors and misconceptions; compare and contrast alternative methods; and engineer coherence through strategic use of consistent representations and contexts. We use these five principles to set out our vision for the next step in research-informed mathematics curriculum design.

ABSTRACT Previous work has not yet comparatively studied which forms of peace education (PE) have been adopted in national laws. Through content analysis of policy documents, we seek to find out why the Colombian Congress established PE as mandatory content across all educational levels in 2014 in a postwar phase, while the German Standing Conference of Ministers of Education rejected attempts to implement PE since the Cold War. Whereas the German school curriculum has maintained a strong disciplinary structure that leads to the rejection of the local version of PE developed in the Federal Republic of Germany, either as military indoctrination or critical pedagogy, Colombia’s curriculum based on classical education is now influenced by educational standards and citizenship education—both influences from the United States. Therefore, it was easier for Colombian policymakers and educators to mutate the local fusion of citizenship competences into a psychological version of PE to solve national conflicts at the expense of promoting moral, historical, and political thinking in connection with traditional school subjects. We conclude by reflecting on how socio-political context and didactic traditions matter in explaining why some educational discourses are rejected or mutate with previous institutionalized educational rhetoric.

ABSTRACT Secondary education students do not usually perceive history as a subject connected with their lives, backgrounds and interests. At the same time, prospective and in-service teachers do not always have a coherent vision of this discipline, which can reflect on their students’ perceptions. This study makes use of a theoretical framework developed by Van Straaten, Wilschut and Oostdam to examine the validity and reliability of the model, and to analyse secondary and tertiary education students’ conceptions about the relevance of history using three categories: developing a personal identity, becoming a citizen and understanding the human condition. This quantitative study makes use of the RHMS questionnaire with a sample of 403 participants divided into three groups: secondary education students, pre-service teachers and undergraduate history students. After conducting a confirmatory factory analysis (CFA), a one-way ANOVA indicated statistically significant differences between the groups. While pre-service teachers and history undergraduate students obtained higher scores in all three subscales than secondary education students, fundamental differences were identified between the first two groups. A discussion is presented about the importance of initial teacher training and the necessity to reinforce notions related to the relevance of history in the formative development of prospective teachers.

ABSTRACT Continuing efforts have been made in the United States (US) to examine the role of schooling in alleviating the ethnic/racial inequalities in student performance. Using the US data from the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), this study examines the between-school and within-school racial/ethnic differences in opportunities to learn (OTL) and their relationship to the corresponding differences in student mathematics achievement. In all models and for all types of students, OTL showed a significantly positive relationship to student mathematics achievement, and its effect size was about four times as large as the socioeconomic status (SES) effect. The results suggest the importance of OTL in alleviating the racial/ethnic inequalities in mathematics performance.

ABSTRACT In Finland, curriculum design is allegedly carried out through a deliberative process that involves various stakeholders, interest groups, experts and ordinary citizens. To facilitate participation in curriculum design, online crowdsourcing has been applied. The objective of this study is to explore to what extent the design process of the latest Finnish national curriculum for mathematics was open, democratic and deliberative. The theoretical framework of the study is the theory of democratic will-formation of the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas. The comments given on the early version of the core curriculum of mathematics were analysed using directed content analysis, in which the above theory was applied. In the empirical analysis, the comments on the core curriculum were divided into three categories based on the quantity and quality of the arguments: strong, medium and weak modifications. Based on this empirical analysis, it is argued that majority of modifications suggested by commenters did not play a significant role in the curriculum design. Thus, in terms of the theory of democratic will-formation, there are legitimate reasons to suspect that the process was not as democratic as it was intended to be. To conclude, limits and opportunities for deliberative democracy in curriculum design are reflected upon.

ABSTRACT Singapore is known as a high-performing country with high-quality teachers and is considered a model system for educational benchmarking. Still, many accolades for the system address teachers’ productivity in raising student achievement, which could reinforce a partial understanding of teacher quality in the system. Aiming at developing a more comprehensive and balanced understanding of the concept of teacher quality, this study explores the perspectives of two primary stakeholders in education in Singapore: the policymakers and the teachers. Although both groups value teachers’ role in students’ all-round development rather than mere academic achievement, they present different perspectives regarding the purpose and significance of teacher quality and its key factors. The policymakers perceive teacher quality as an apparatus for nation building and make it a target for bureaucratic control, whereas teachers consider the ‘self’ of individual teachers a key driver for quality teaching that caters to students. It is indicated that the current situation prioritizes the policymakers’ preference of productivity approach regarding teacher quality. However, this may overlook the significance of teachers’ selves and their efforts at care and student engagement, which could reduce teaching to a merely performative act.

ABSTRACT In the context of legacies of mass violence and political oppression during the recent past in the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia), history teaching is seen as an important factor in building sustainable peace and democracy. Caught between various national and international policy actors, history teaching has been subject to frequently overlapping and inconsistent reforms. Despite prolific research on history education in the Western Balkans teachers’ experiences of history education and its transformation have largely remained unexamined. This paper explores history teachers’ perceptions of and approaches to the topics they find difficult to teach. The paper draws on data gathered through an online survey that yielded 793 responses from history teachers and 14 regional history education expert interviews. The results show which topics teachers consider difficult to teach in six Western Balkan countries, and how certain individual characteristics (e.g. religiousness and level of education) and school characteristics (e.g. urban or rural and a monocultural or multicultural environment) link to the roles teachers assume when teaching controversial topics.

ABSTRACT This study builds on previous work in curriculum studies by providing insight into manifestations of the interplay between curriculum traditions, that are interested in education on a global scale and emphasized in the newest curriculum reform in Finland. This reform proposes a shift towards a competency-based curriculum, emphasizes integrative teaching and obligates to multidisciplinary teaching. Here, the suggestions are analysed from teachers’ perspectives. This data-based case study uses qualitative content analysis to examine interviews conducted with five teachers from three Finnish schools. The results reveal growing diversity as a result of multiple implementations of integrative teaching in Finland. Autonomy was maintained in teaching activity and provided possibilities for professional development. That being said, some limitations and challenges for integrative teaching were identified. This study argues that the ongoing curriculum reform process, which emphasizes integrative teaching, is a fruitful starting point for expanding teacher autonomy and collaboration. Further study is needed to follow the teachers’ changing perceptions of teacher autonomy.

ABSTRACTThe idea of powerful knowledge as a curriculum principle has led to extensive discussion. It has been framed as a way of bringing knowledge back into curriculum thinking in the light if its absence in curriculum theory. However, questions have been raised regarding powerful knowledge as a knowledge-based curriculum principle; questions about difficulties in converting it into curriculum content, as well as putting knowledge-as-an-end-in-itself above educational aims.The focus of this article is on how powerful knowledge can be conceived of as capacity-building curriculum content, as well as how this is related to the epistemological underpinning of the idea of powerful knowledge. Knowing as the capacity-building aspect of powerful knowledge is highlighted as is a widening of the concept of knowledge to also include tacit aspects in what counts as knowledge. Through revisiting Paul Hirst’s forms of knowledge as well as his practice turn, I argue that Hirst became stuck in a tension similar to Michael Young and Johan Muller. By a shift of focus from powerful knowns to powerful knowings the tension between a knowledge and practice-based view of the curriculum can be dissolved.