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1 – 10 of over 22000Thi Van Su Nguyen and Kevin Laws
The purpose of this paper is to examine the degree to which a compulsory induction program for Vietnamese higher education teachers influences participants’ perceptions of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the degree to which a compulsory induction program for Vietnamese higher education teachers influences participants’ perceptions of curriculum and course design.
Design/methodology/approach
This case study uses a qualitative, interpretive approach to data collection. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 program participants before they started the program and immediately after they completed the program. Five program presenters also were interviewed and documents related to the program were analyzed.
Findings
The findings reflect the influence of Biggs’ (2003) constructive alignment approach on participants’ curriculum perceptions, although this approach was not explicitly stated in the program guidelines. Upon the completion of the program, participants realized the importance of their voices in curriculum construction and course design, which was absent from the pre-program findings. However, students’ agency in co-constructing the curriculum and the “being” of curriculum were not perceived.
Research limitations/implications
The paper adds to the growing literature on induction programs and their relation to curriculum perceptions.
Practical implications
The paper provides examples of the changes in participants’ perceptions of curriculum and accentuates, what is neglected in the construction of curriculum.
Originality/value
The paper invites reflection on the design and implementation of curriculum from academic developers, education practitioners and researchers in similar contexts.
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Joe Tin-yau Lo, Irene Nga-yee Cheng and Emmy Man-yee Wong
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the complex, intricate relationships between the central (intended) curriculum, teachers’ perceived curriculums, and the enacted/assessed…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the complex, intricate relationships between the central (intended) curriculum, teachers’ perceived curriculums, and the enacted/assessed curriculum in classroom contexts. To do this, the authors have used Hong Kong’s new core senior-secondary liberal studies (LS) curriculum as a case study, with a special focus on its key pedagogical component – inquiry teaching/learning.
Design/methodology/approach
This study’s objects are two teachers (from two local schools), each with a LS teacher’s education. Documentary analysis, lesson observation, and focus interviews were used to triangulate data for interpretation and analysis.
Findings
The findings illuminate: how LS teachers’ perceptions of inquiry teaching/learning relate to and align with the advocacy embodied in the intended curriculum, the relationships between teachers’ perceptions and practices of inquiry learning and teaching, and how this aspect of the intended curriculum reform can be made more relevant to the classroom context.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the under-researched area of curriculum gaps and (mis)alignments in Hong Kong’s LS curriculum reform.
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The purpose of this paper is to add a South African perspective to deliberations on educational approaches in order to promote real responsibility in business.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to add a South African perspective to deliberations on educational approaches in order to promote real responsibility in business.
Design/methodology/approach
This is achieved by drawing on broad concepts of African philosophy as well as research and experience around a management studies curriculum developed in response to the local and global context of a newly liberated, developing country in a global economy. Realities involve the need to empower learners, including disadvantaged black Africans, as effective students. This raises questions about inequities between developed and developing nations; the power of dominant business approaches to undermine traditional value systems; and the apparent unsustainability of the global status quo.
Findings
The curriculum has promoted free thought and academic/business literacy in students from diverse backgrounds and cultures, inducing criticality; making explicit the links between prior/practical and new/theoretical knowledge; giving access into business discourses and requiring students to argue about businesses' responsibilities to incorporate social and environmental with financial accountability. Similarities and differences between African and western values emerge, indicating lessons that might be learned from Africa, particularly South Africa.
Originality/value
Some lessons from African philosophy and from this responsive curriculum might feasibly be relevant to educators for management elsewhere, based on the assumption that the approach would promote more responsible management and that this aim has global significance.
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Vidmantas Tūtlys, Sigitas Daukilas, Rita Mičiulienė, Nijole Čiučiulkienė and Ričardas Krikštolaitis
This paper aims to explore how the competence-based vocational education and training (VET) curricula facilitate shaping of work values of VET students. It discusses…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore how the competence-based vocational education and training (VET) curricula facilitate shaping of work values of VET students. It discusses methodological and ideological orientations of competence-based VET in teaching work values and discloses the typical characteristics of teaching work values in the VET system of Lithuania.
Design/methodology/approach
A quantitative research approach leading to a survey method is adopted to investigate how VET students acquire and apply work-related values and attitudes to work.
Findings
The survey of the VET students has disclosed that students are open to accepting different values of work, including cognitive values, social prestige and altruist values. However, orientation of the VET curricula to and provision of instrumental values lead to relatively weak internalization of the work values related to societal and spiritual dimensions.
Originality/value
The paper provides empirical evidence regarding the implications of the competence-based curricula for teaching students work values in the school-based VET.
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Caroline J. Burns and Samuel M. Natale
The purpose of this paper is to discuss how liberal higher education can strengthen vocational higher education.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss how liberal higher education can strengthen vocational higher education.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses Shay's (2013) framework of curriculum differentiation to articulate how the strengths and shortcomings of liberal education differ from those of vocational education and to allow the differences highlighted to inform a resolution to each other's shortcomings.
Findings
There is nothing new in the findings that liberal education differs from vocational education and that both have shortcomings. What the paper presents is a viewpoint that the differences are not confirmation that these two approaches to education are in opposition but rather that they complement each other. The strength of one is the weakness of the other.
Originality/value
The perspective taken in this paper is developed using the language of semantic density (SD) and semantic gravity (SG). Using Shay's semantic field of recontextualized knowledge, this paper suggests that liberal and vocational education inhabit two sides of contexts and concepts continua. The paper further proposes that both are alike in a meaningful way because both have unsuccessfully managed the role of context in their curricula.
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Choon Boey Lim, Duncan Bentley, Fiona Henderson, Shin Yin Pan, Vimala Devi Balakrishnan, Dharshini M. Balasingam and Ya Yee Teh
The purpose of this paper is to examine issues academics at importing institutions face while delivering Australian degrees in Malaysia. Transnational higher education (TNE) has…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine issues academics at importing institutions face while delivering Australian degrees in Malaysia. Transnational higher education (TNE) has been widely researched. However, less widely researched is the area of understanding what academics at the offshore locations need to uphold the required academic standards of their partnered exporting universities. This area warrants close attention if Australian and other transnational education universities are to sustain their growth through a partnership model with offshore academics delivering a portion (often a substantial portion) of the teaching.
Design/methodology/approach
Two focus groups were conducted with a mix of long standing and newly recruited Malaysian lecturers who taught into an Australian degree through a partnership arrangement. The semi-structured questions which were used were derived from a preliminary literature review and previous internal institutional reports.
Findings
The findings from the focus groups indicate that TNE is largely “Australian-centric” when addressing the standard of academic quality and integrity. The findings pointed not so much to any sustained internationalisation of curriculum or administration or personnel but more as internationalisation as deemed required by the local academic.
Originality/value
To a greater extent, the findings highlighted that equivalent student outcomes do not necessarily equate to equivalent learning experiences or teaching workload. In fact, the frustration of the interviewees on the tension to fulfil the home institution curriculum and helping students to “comprehend” an Australian-centric curriculum translates to “additional and unrecognised workload” for the interviewees.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore issues of race and culture in health education in the secondary school health and physical education (HPE) curriculum in Ontario, Canada.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore issues of race and culture in health education in the secondary school health and physical education (HPE) curriculum in Ontario, Canada.
Design/methodology/approach
Using Ontario’s secondary school curriculum as a point of analysis, this paper draws from critical race theory and a whiteness lens to identify how cultural and race identities are positioned in contemporary health education documents. The curriculum document and its newest strategies for teaching are the focus of analysis in this conceptual paper.
Findings
Within the curriculum new teaching strategies offer entry points for engaging students in learning more about culture and race. In particular, First Nation, Métis and Inuit identities are noted in the curriculum. Specifically, three areas of the curriculum point to topics of race and culture in health: eating; substance use, abuse and additions; and, movement activities. Within these three educational areas, the curriculum offers information about cultural practices to teach about what it means to understand health from a cultural lens.
Social implications
The HPE curriculum offers examples of how Ontario, Canada, is expanding its cultural approaches to knowing about and understanding health practices. The acknowledgment of First Nations, Métis and Inuit health and cultural ways of approaching health is significant when compared to other recently revised HPE curriculum from around the globe. The teaching strategies offered in the curriculum document provide one avenue to think about how identity, culture and race are being taught in health education classrooms.
Originality/value
First, with limited analysis of health education policy within schools, the use of critical theory provides opportunities for thinking about what comes next when broadening definitions of health to be more inclusive of cultural and race identity. Second, curriculum structures how teachers respond to the topics they are delivering, thus how HPE as a subject area promotes healthy practices is highly relevant to the field of health education. This paper provides an important acknowledgment of the educative work being undertaken in the revision of HPE curriculum.
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Soula Ioannou, Christiana Kouta and Neofytos Charalambous
This paper seeks to discuss the rationale of the newly reformed health education curriculum in Cyprus, which aspires to enable not only teachers, but also all the school…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to discuss the rationale of the newly reformed health education curriculum in Cyprus, which aspires to enable not only teachers, but also all the school personnel, to work from the perspective of health promotion. It is a curriculum which moves from the traditional approach of health education focusing on individual lifestyle/behaviour modification into approaches that recognise and tackle the determinants of health.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper critically discusses the structure and the content of the learning objectives of this curriculum that encourages teachers to work in a health promoting way.
Findings
The central goal of this curriculum is to enable students and schools to act as health agents, addressing the structural determinants of health and promoting environmental changes. The optimum level for all topics of the curriculum is achieved through learning objectives, which concern three interconnected levels. These are: “investigating determinants of health”, “practising action competency skills for health” and “achieving changes in favour of health”. All levels are means as well as end products in terms of the curriculum objectives.
Practical implications
The outcome of the development of the health education curriculum acts as a guide for school interventions, through a methodological framework, which encourages participants to identify and promote environmental changes that facilitate healthy choices. This is of significance to those working in the field of health promotion and who seek to establish a new language of health promotion that goes beyond the pervasive discourse of individual lifestyles.
Social implications
The implementation of the particular health education curriculum will promote not only health in the school community but also in the local community. This is because a key principle which underlies the curriculum is the involvement of the students, school staff, family and community in everyday health promotion practice. It also promotes the development of partnerships among them.
Originality/value
This is an innovative curriculum for Cyprus, based on health promotion and health education principles, but at the same time taking in account the local socio‐cultural and political perspective. This curriculum may be applicable to other European countries.
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Much has been written about the theory andpractice of work experience, but mostly inacademic terms and aimed specifically at the“world of education”. What follows ispresented in…
Abstract
Much has been written about the theory and practice of work experience, but mostly in academic terms and aimed specifically at the “world of education”. What follows is presented in practical terms, and is intended to be of help to industrial colleagues. It has been written by an experienced practitioner who has worked at both the chalk‐face and Local Education Authority (LEA) level providing work experience for thousands of students. Basically, work experience is examined briefly in terms of its origins in the 1960s. The mechanics of its delivery are looked at and an indication of the current picture and the anticipated future expectations is given: a practical approach therefore to a very important curricular development area.
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Chandra L. Alston and Sarah Byrne Bausell
This study aims to understand the supports and challenges to using disciplinary and antiracism lenses when teaching with informational texts in middle grades English Language Arts…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to understand the supports and challenges to using disciplinary and antiracism lenses when teaching with informational texts in middle grades English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper analyzes teacher talk in four virtual sessions with four middle grades ELA teachers in one school district. Teachers had recently completed a voluntary, school-based antiracism professional development. Researchers used thematic analysis of session transcripts and semi-structured interviews.
Findings
Teachers’ informational text use was nested in and directed by curriculum and contexts that limited disciplinary and antiracist teaching. The context and texts constrained instruction to basic reading skills. Equity was conceptualized as supporting students’ persistence. Discussions of race were avoided.
Research limitations/implications
This study has implications for ELA teacher preparation, and district and state resources to support merging disciplinarity and antiracism in informational text instruction in ELA. The study is limited by the small sample from one district and access to only teacher self-reports.
Originality/value
Secondary ELA disciplinary literacy has privileged literature, yet there is an increase of informational text use in middle grades ELA. Teachers need support teaching informational texts through disciplinary and antiracism lenses.
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