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The main research aim was to investigate relationships among teachers' occupational stress, coping, teacher self‐efficacy and relevant teachers' perceptions of curriculum changes in a major educational reform.

A theoretical framework that included the attribution of responsibility for stress model, aspects of social cognitive theory and perceptions of the changes to the HSC, was used to guide the study. Multilevel variance decomposition and structural equation modelling were employed.

Stress attributions to personal and organizational domains were associated with the teachers' perceived stress from implementation of the new curriculum. Furthermore, results suggested that these teachers may have coped with stress associated with the changes using palliative strategies rather than direct problem solving. Teachers' greater understanding of what the curriculum changes entailed was associated with lower teacher self‐efficacy.

Emphasises that curriculum reform cannot be carried out in a vacuum, and that teachers' mental models or schemata of the education system within which they work are likely to influence their interpretations of the reform and its implementation. Analyses provide insights into teachers' cognition in relation to stress and self‐efficacy during curriculum change.

The nature of the reform, which was the focus of this study, is relatively rare, for both the magnitude of the curriculum change and the size of the education system (750,000 students) involved.

The national core curriculum is renewed in Finland approximately every ten years, the most recent one being 2016. The core curriculum sets the general goals, providing the foundation for district- and school level curriculum development work (Finnish National Board of Education, 2016). The messages from transnational educational policy (e.g. OECD) are apparent in the core curriculum. However, districts, schools and teachers are highly autonomous in upholding, resourcing and deciding about the curriculum making at the local sites of activity. Accordingly, the curriculum making relies heavily on shared sense-making as a tool for cultivating transformative learning throughout the educational system. The chapter draws on the results of the national “School Matters” research project (2014-2018), to provide the meta-analysis of the sense-making in national curriculum making. Results suggested that the shared sense-making focused on engaging educational practitioners in learning at all layers of the system. However, the means for facilitating shared sense-making between the different layers of the system and curriculum was perceived to be less coherent by the stakeholders at the district and school level, than at the state level. This implies that the educational providers should not only be involved in co-creation of the aims, contents and values of the curriculum document, but also in designing novel and ecologically valid ways for orchestrating the complex and dynamic curriculum making.

Key challenges currently facing Higher Education (HE) in the UK are the continuing dominance of curricula by West-centric knowledge traditions which reinforce normative Whiteness and undergird racism, and glaring disparities in student outcomes. Seeking to address these challenges and promote fair access and educational opportunities aimed at enabling a more equitable, just and life-enhancing society, London Metropolitan University has launched its Education for Social Justice Framework (ESJF) (2020) as an integrative framework for inclusive curriculum redesign.

This chapter explores the context and moral imperative of the ESJF, its integrative elements, its pedagogical challenges and its transformative potential, through critically reviewing its application during a pilot phase of implementation in 2020–2021, based on the perspectives of six academics involved as course leaders of the participating programs from various disciplines, as well as the authors. Data from individual interviews with the course leaders are used to throw light on key themes concerning the importance and character of the ESJF, challenges and enabling factors in implementing the ESJF, resulting course changes, and the role of students in curriculum development. This chapter concludes with some general implications of adopting an ambitious, integrative approach to curriculum and pedagogical transformation.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of applying sustainability to the engineering curriculum at a university in China.

A new curriculum, “ethics, involvement and sustainability,” was designed and presented to engineering students from an undergraduate major in quality management engineering. This curriculum incorporated knowledge acquisition and skills training into sustainability via various teaching approaches in a mandatory curriculum at Tongling University, China. Pre- and post-questionnaire surveys, as well as a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation model, were adopted to evaluate the changes in knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of respondents before and after curriculum implementation.

Significant changes in knowledge and attitudes were observed following the implementation of the curriculum. In terms of the development of new behaviors, the changes tended to be moderate. Generally, respondents were satisfied with the effectiveness of the new interdisciplinary curriculum post-implementation.

Positive results were observed for the pilot and practice of the new engineering education (NEE) strategy at the cooperating university in China. Specifically, the integration of sustainability into curriculum design, implementation and evaluation inspired greater social responsibility in engineering students’ decision-making processes. Additionally, it shed light on how to integrate the concept of sustainability into curricula. One limitation of this study was the absence of a comparison group that did not experience the new curriculum.

Scant attention has been paid to local universities in the context of the newly-launched NEE strategy. This study provides new insight regarding the implementation of sustainability into engineering curricula and practice via formal, but diversified, teaching approaches.

The purpose of this paper is to account for, and conceptualize, the internal and external forces that influence higher education business schools as they strive to integrate sustainability issues into their curricula in the effort to achieve a more sustainable (yet capitalist) world.

A case study approach is used for the research, which is grounded in the relevant literature, to investigate sustainable development issues in the context of a Swedish business school (university level). The empirical data consists of a review of internal documents plus e-mail surveys and interviews and discussion seminars with university teachers/researchers and key administrators.

Two tentative models are presented that map the various internal and external forces behind business schools’ curriculum change. One important finding describes how supply and demand influences business schools and recruiters of business students.

Because this research is based on a single case study, the analysis and the mapping in the paper are somewhat limited in their general applicability. However, the research context of the business school permits drawing conclusions that may apply to a broad class of colleges or departments in higher education. In addition, because the research is supported by significant ideas from the literature, general inferences may be drawn about business school curricula.

The two tentative models provide a holistic framework that adds to the understanding of the composition and interrelationship of influential forces on business schools when major changes in curricula and their management are contemplated.

The Czech case sheds light on the processes of curriculum making inthe post-socialist context. To explain the relationship between the macro and micro levels of curriculum development, Graeber's concept of interpretive labour is used. In the Czech Republic, from the very first days of the Velvet Revolution (November 1989), groups of citizens and teachers demanded profound change in school education but the new conservative-liberal government preferred piecemeal steps.An alternative route to radical school reform was proposed at the meso level by an alliance of health psychologists and progressive teachers, using the know-how of the World Health Organization. Schools that voluntarily joined the Healthy Schoolnetwork were expected to restructuretheir core processes by an approach similar to school-based curriculum development. This change model was adopted at the macro level,when the Social Democrats formed a government in 1998. The new Education Act mandated that each school had to develop its own curriculum using the new national framework. The analysis of policy documents paving the way for this reform, however, showsa sequence of unfulfilled plans and promises. Almost all independent evaluations have found that the essential goals of the reform have remained unfulfilled, as schools mostly created their curriculaby, for example, formally recycling the old national syllabi.As curriculum making occurs across different levels, the failed curricular reform resulted in a blame game among thelevels(the ministry, curricular agency, inspectorate, school leaders, teachers and others),with no actor accepting theirshare of the responsibilityand probably considering any lessons for future curriculum revisions.

This chapter will consider curriculum making in lower secondary education in Ireland. Building on the concept of curriculum as a social practice involving multiple actors across different contexts and involving intersecting domains of influence from the supra, to the nano, we characterizethe landscape of lower secondary education in Ireland as an “assemblage” (Deleuze & Guattari, 2003). An assemblage is any number of elements that are engaged in a process of arranging, organising, fitting together and a process of knowledge making. We discuss the emerging properties that have begun to evolve through the inter-connections of the assemblage as they engage in the process of reform by structuring the findings through the lens of how the semiotic, material and social flows worked simultaneously to open up or close down the process. Curriculum ideology, concepts, language and communication are examples of the semiotic flow. The material flow is the content of the domains, such as the actors, the physical structures, documents and artefacts. Relationships, pedagogy, and collaborative practice are involved in the social flow of the assemblage. The research underpinning this chapter mapped the agency of the actors in their capacity to make curriculum as these three flows worked simultaneously during a process of assemblage wide curriculum reform of lower secondary education in Ireland. The analysis and discussion gives rise to a number of insights into processes of curriculum making and into the complexities of system-wide reform.

The purpose of this paper is to provide concepts and strategies to successfully introduce and implement curricular change; especially, related to incorporating diversity management into academic programs.

Utilizing documents and accounts from two agents involved in the change process and an outside observer, an inductive‐deductive approach is applied employing concepts of exploration and exploitation from the organizational innovation literature in order to describe a 12‐month process and the resultant curriculum at a major European university.

The paper demonstrates the importance of external conditions, organizational structures and their relationship to strategies that balance exploration and exploitation to graft a new academic concentration to existing academic programs.

The paper offers concepts, strategies, and lessons to assist colleges and universities to assess the internal and external organizational environment and the availability of resources and to plan approaches to successfully introduce and develop curricular change around sensitive topics such as diversity, gender, equality.

This paper is the first to apply George March's work on organizational exploration and exploitation to curricular change. It offers valuable information for those seeking to create a more inclusive curriculum.

This research aims to analyze to what extent sustainability and its related core aspects are integrated in media and communication's curricula of higher education institutions in Europe.

A total of n = 1068 bachelor and master’s degree programs, as well as their related curricula/program specifications, from 28 European countries were analyzed by means of content analysis.

Results show that the level of curricular integration of sustainability aspects in the field of media and communication is low (14%) to very low (6%) on module level. In most cases, sustainability remains an abstract guiding principle that is not translated into a dedicated course offer. This can indicate the difficulty of operationalizing such a concept as sustainability, which is experienced by not only higher education institutions but also policy and society as a whole. In addition, the results leave space for a reflection on the social and educational responsibility of higher education institutions.

The authors are aware that not all teaching (content) is depicted in curricula. Especially where teaching is research-based, The authors assume that sustainability (communication) is more present as the curricula' analysis can represent it. In addition, the fact of solely investigating English language curricula can be seen as a further limitation.

This research is one of the few attempts to verify the actual integration level of sustainability aspects in the curricula of a specific sustainability-relevant discipline, which is neither conducted as a case study nor as a single-country analysis.

This chapter examines curriculum reform in Scotland, showing how the ambitious aspirations of its flagship policy, Curriculum for Excellence, were subject to a complex array of global, national and local pressures and had to take account of political and cultural circumstances that posed particular challenges. Both the Scottish Government's management of the reform programme and the teaching profession's response to it are subject to detailed scrutiny. The discussion pays particular attention to the discourse used in promoting the policy, the shifting nature of the official narrative as the recommendations of international agencies were taken on board, and the issues that arose as the policy moved from intention to enactment. Drawing on the notion of ‘curriculum making’, which serves as a conceptual thread for all the contributions to this volume, the analysis highlights both evidence of progress and sites of continuing debate.