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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.

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.

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.

The paper provides empirical evidence regarding the implications of the competence-based curricula for teaching students work values in the school-based VET.

The study explores diverse and critical understandings of “international” in a higher education curriculum context, situated in a curriculum review of a postgraduate taught programme entitled “International Education” at a university located in England. Our study problematises and decentres some dominant, normalised notions of “international”, exploring critical possibilities of engaging with the term for higher education internationalisation.

We examined a set of programme curriculum documents and conducted a survey exploring teaching staff’s uses and interpretations of “international” in their design and delivery of course units. Through a thematic analysis of the dataset, we identify what “international” might mean or how it may be missing across the curriculum.

Our findings suggest a locally-developed conceptualisation of “international” beyond the normalised interpretation of “international” as the inclusion or comparison of multiple nations, and different, other countries around the global world. More diverse, critical understandings of the term have been considered, including international as intercultural, competences, ethics, languages and methods. The study provides an example approach to reflective scholarship that programmes can undergo in order to develop clarity, depth and purposefulness into internationalisation as enacted in a local curriculum context.

The study provides a first step towards establishing clearer guidelines on internationalising the curriculum by higher education institutions and individual programmes in order to challenge a superficial engagement of “international” within internationalisation. It exemplifies a starting point for making purposeful steps away from normalised notions and assumptions of international education and facilitates development towards its critical, ethically-grounded opportunities.

The purpose of the research is to propose reforms that would help to bridge the gap between theory and practice and produce more effective urban planners. The research on urban planning curricula in the global South is a valuable contribution to the field of urban planning education. It provides a new perspective on the challenges facing urban planning education in these countries and offers a roadmap for improvement.

The research explores and evaluates the urban planning curricula in the global South, with a particular interest in Egypt. The research employs the use of questionnaires with 56 university instructors, analysed thematically, to evaluate the current content of curricula. The results are compared and correlated with a pilot study exploring research interest, government policies and practices of urban planning in Egypt.

Through comparing the results of the evaluation with the current research interest in urban planning in Egypt, the paper investigates the possibility of improving current educational curricula using comparative network analysis which would establish stronger interdisciplinary connections.

The seeming disconnects between urbanism concepts taught in educational curricula and their relevance in practice and reality is a vital issue in urban studies and planning. Interdisciplinary connections with topics like politics, economies, gender, and others can assist curricula in becoming more relevant to real-world situations. This disconnect is even more apparent in the global South where most educational content is highly derivative from Northern contexts. Though such interdisciplinary aspects are under discussed in educational curricula, they are frequently discussed in academic research.

This research aims to investigate the leadership strategies employed by two higher education institutions in Malaysia as they navigated the shift to online delivery of their computer science programs in response to the demands of Education 4.0.

A phenomenological, comparative case study approach was used to delve into the leadership and management practices of these institutions during the transition to online learning. Data were collected through interviews and document analysis.

This study explores the leadership strategies employed by two higher education institutions in Malaysia during their transition to online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Five key themes emerged from the data: leadership and team coordination, training and skill development, adaptation to new assessment methods, resource management and work culture and environment. Both institutions demonstrated effective leadership, continuous training and adaptability in assessment methods. However, differences were noted in resource management and work culture. Institution A's leader had to liaise with various departments and personally invest in equipment, while Institution B was already well-equipped. The work culture at Institution A demonstrated flexibility and mutual understanding, while Institution B used key performance indicators to measure progress. Despite these differences, both leaders successfully managed the shift to online teaching, underscoring the importance of effective leadership, continuous training, flexibility, resource management and a supportive work culture in managing change. The study also highlighted the distinct roles of curriculum leaders in both institutions, with Institution A's leader focusing on multiple activities, while Institution B's leader was able to focus solely on curriculum change due to their institution's preparedness.

This study provides a rich, qualitative exploration of the strategies and challenges faced by program leaders in managing the shift to online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. Future research could build on these findings by conducting similar studies in other educational contexts or countries to compare and contrast the strategies and challenges faced by program leaders. Additionally, future research could also employ quantitative methods to measure the effectiveness of different strategies in managing the shift to online teaching. This could provide a more comprehensive understanding of the factors that contribute to successful change management in educational institutions.

This study provides valuable insights for program leaders, educators and policymakers in managing change in educational institutions. The themes identified in this study – effective leadership, continuous training and skill development, flexibility in adapting to new assessment methods, effective resource management and a supportive work culture and environment – can serve as a guide for program leaders in managing future changes in their institutions. Moreover, the strategies employed by the program leaders in this study, such as forming a powerful coalition, providing training on online tools and prioritizing student welfare, can be adopted or adapted by other program leaders in managing change.

This study presents a unique contribution to the existing literature by offering a comparative analysis of change management strategies in two distinct educational institutions during the shift to online teaching due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It uncovers the nuanced differences in leadership styles, resource management and pedagogical adaptations, providing a rich, context-specific understanding of the change process. The study fills a research gap by examining the practical application of Kotter's 8-Step Change Model and the McKinsey 7S Model in real-world educational settings. The findings offer valuable insights for other institutions navigating similar changes, thereby extending the practical and theoretical understanding of change management in higher education.

In this chapter, we outline the research presented by each of the contributors, who used narrative inquiry approaches that were grounded in long-term research, to examine teacher experiences of cross-cultural teaching. The authors write about cross-cultural experiences that cross temporal, spatial, and social-personal dimensions. Woven into teaching and learning experiences set across time and context were interactions with colleagues, peers, and community members that offered insight into rationale for pedagogical decisions about ways in which practices and curricular materials may be mismatched or well aligned, or unfolded with tension in their current professional contexts. This crossing of time, context, and across social-personal interactions added complexity in ways that highlight the need for research methodologies that support examination of experience that unfolded across time, space, and social-personal dimensions. The authors elaborate upon ways in which a narrative inquiry approached provided a theoretical foundation to highlight complexities and reveal nuances of cross-cultural teacher experiences. The cross-cultural features in these chapters, whereby teachers cross cultural boundaries when they assumed teaching positions in communities culturally different from those in which they themselves were educated and certified. We argue for the need for cross-cultural comparative narrative inquiry approach, that help to reveal complexities of these cross-cultural teaching and learning as a fitting research approach to document and to analyze complexities underlying and informing understanding of teacher knowledge in cross-cultural teaching contexts.

Embedding citizenship and sustainability into higher education curricula is vital for ensuring that curricula remain up-to-date and support students with the skills and knowledge they need for our ever-changing world. But the conceptualisation of the term “sustainability” radically affects its perceived relevance for curriculum design, and hence the recognition of where education for sustainability is already embedded within a curriculum. Here we present a student-designed, freely accessible workshop, which can be used by colleagues off-the-shelf to challenge workshop participants to reconsider their understanding of sustainability and recognise its vast scope. The workshop is provocative yet encourages collaboration, drawing on participants' prior experiences to identify sustainability concepts already embedded within their course, and opportunities to further enhance the inclusion of sustainability in the curriculum. The workshop is also fully supportive of the increasing recognition of the value of engaging students, and others, as partners in curriculum development.

This essay engages with scholarship on history as a discipline, curriculum documents and academic and public commentary on the teaching of history in Australian, British and Canadian secondary contexts to better understand the influence of the tension between political pressure and disciplinary practice that drives the history wars in settler-colonial nations, how this plays out in secondary history classrooms and the ramifications this may have on students' democratic dispositions.

This article aims to compare secondary history curricula and pedagogies in Australia, Britain and Canada to better articulate and conceptualise the influence of the “history wars” over the teaching of national histories upon the intended and enacted curriculum and how this contributes to the formation of democratic dispositions within students. A conceptual model, drawing on the curriculum assessment of Porter (2006) and Gross and Terra's definition of “difficult pasts” has been developed and used as the basis for this comparison. This model highlights the competing influences of political pressure upon curriculum creation and disciplinary change shaping pedagogy, and the impact these forces may have upon students' experience.

The debate around what content students learn, and why, is fraught because it is a conversation about what each nation values and how they construct their own national identity(ies). This is particularly timely when the democratic self-identification of many nations is being challenged. The seditious conspiracy to storm the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, Orban's “illiberal democracy” in Hungary and the neo-Nazis in Melbourne, Australia are examples of the rise of anti-democratic sentiment globally. Thus, new consideration of how we teach national histories and the impact this has on the formation of democratic dispositions and skills is pressing.

The new articulation of a conceptual model for the impact of the history wars on education is an innovative synthesis of wide-ranging research on: the impacts of neoliberalism and cultural restorationism upon the development of intended curriculum; discipline-informed inquiry pedagogies used to enact the curriculum; and the teaching of national narratives as a political act. This comprehensive comparison of the ways in which history education in settler-colonial nations has developed over time provides new insight into the common elements of national history education, and the role this education can play in developing democratic dispositions.

This paper aims to identify how the faculties of a Colombian University have understood the concept of sustainability and the way they have embedded it into their training.

Qualitative research was done using documentary and content analysis which allowed researchers to recognize features correlated to sustainability which are needed to promote and act for social equity, ecological care and economic development.

It was found that most faculties at the university do not conceptualize it; ergo, courses are designed neither for promoting sustainability nor sustainable education. Besides this, almost no level of integration was identified among faculties on this topic.

Many people agree education for sustainability is a key action to overcome the complex challenges the planet is facing; nevertheless, the prejudice that training to solve sustainability problems is an exclusive task of certain disciplines is common. This misunderstanding reduces the possibilities of pursuing a sustainable future, considering that these issues affect all humankind and that they can only be solved through interdisciplinary and collaborative work.

The paper also outlines some actions that Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (UPB) can take to consider sustainability issues, and they are as follows: identification of competencies to include in the curricula; recognition of the potential of integrating education for sustainable development (ESD) into the curricula by strengthening the competencies and capacities; strengthening the competencies and capacities of the academic staff through ESD training processes; articulation of research with the curricula in such a way that the results of research processes permeate the curricula.

This study has some limitations. For instance, regarding the survey, the size of the sample may seem too small, a bigger sample will allow better information for the results. Regarding the case studies, a greater diversity of programs could have provided a wider range of results. Despite these limitations, for UPB, the study shows a snapshot of the literature review and the articulation of sustainable development and climate change education (CCE) in all programs the university has. The implications of this paper and research are the following. First, it reiterates the importance of having within the same institution a common language to talk about sustainability. Second, it recognizes the competencies and skills that should considered when implementing ESD and CCE in curricula.

This idea corresponds to a lack of debate about what the term signifies and means. It is believed that, as sustainability has been highly researched in the past two decades, it is a cross-cutting element in any faculty proposal; however, due to the complexity of the term, it is understood differently by each member of the same academic community, affecting their ability to design a systemic and systematic curriculum that enables to educate for sustainable goals.

As UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) are integrated across Asia-Pacific Higher Education Institutes (HEIs), the purpose of this descriptive and exploratory study is to investigate undergraduates’ own self-stated commitment to the SDGs and their perceived feasibility by the 2030 target.

A mixed-methodology approach covered quantitative and qualitative approaches facilitated by purposive selection of an Asia-Pacific HEI via a Japanese liberal arts college where a questionnaire survey was administered in Autumn 2021. Responses were monitored from freshmen students in twin courses within the same major (introduction to “Environment” and “Development” studies, respectively; n = 177) that both integrated SDGs within their respective curricula.

Students in both classes rated the SDGs as a useful learning tool but were sceptical of their feasibility by 2030. A self-stated commitment was high, especially among environment studies students. Multiple regression was run to predict SDGs commitment from gender, major, perceived SDGs’ usefulness and feasibility. These variables partially predicted SDGs commitment but only gender and major variables added statistical significance. Moreover, the same variables were less equivocal in terms of predicting the self-stated belief that the SDGs could be achieved by 2030.

The findings can inform instructors of students’ perceptions towards SDGs. Significant differences raise academic and applied discussion points, such as how to engage male students, for example, by setting up sustainability “business case” practicums.

As global HEIs grapple with effective ways to vertically integrate SDGs into a university’s curriculum, students’ opinions are often underrepresented. This paper’s originality and value address these gaps by exploring a holistic student-centric perspective on SDGs in the context of commitment. This paper also has implications for more effective cross-curricula integration of the SDGs.

This article outlines theoretical and pedagogical approaches to investigating racial violence with learners in grades 3–12 and K-12 teacher candidates. Throughout, the authors use the 1898 Wilmington Race Massacre as a central example of racial violence. Using a blended framework of Muhammad’s historically responsive literacy, King’s Black historical consciousness and place-based learning, the authors describe two different inquiries that build content knowledge around the Wilmington Race Massacre and context knowledge around place as it relates to Black agency, resistance and perseverance.

The first inquiry, aimed at 3–12 learners, explores the Black historical consciousness themes of Black agency and resistance. It uses the inquiry design model (IDM) template but expands the template to include a historically responsive literacy lens. The second inquiry describes how to incorporate historical sites into the study of racial violence. This inquiry explains how local cemeteries can be used as interdisciplinary classrooms and also artifacts.

Throughout, the authors also reflect on how this work has changed and improved over time as well as thoughts moving forward with examining the 1898 Wilmington Race Massacre through an interdisciplinary lens.

This article is the first to explore the 1898 Massacre in Wilmington, North Carolina from an interdisciplinary practice and cross-grades lens. It offers multiple step by step approaches for classroom teachers and teacher educators to enact interdisciplinary work with both 1898 and other acts of racial violence in their own places and across the United States.