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The chapter is a practise led example of how the inclusive pedagogical approach in action (IPAA) framework lives as evidence of inclusive pedagogy. In particular it draws on understandings of cross-curriculum design as an approach that supports teaching practises for all children. Some readers may be familiar with the language of curriculum differentiation. Commonalties may be seen in the approaches that advocate for curriculum differentiation and cross-curriculum design, however not a lot is gained by adding another language game or rule of curriculum talk which asserts the power of difference by applying the language of differentiation as the focus for inclusive pedagogical action. As the IPAA framework stresses, teachers must believe that they are qualified and capable of teaching all children. Teachers who are engaged in the IPAA in action continually develop creative new ways of working and their professional stance is one where they are willing to work with others (including all of their students) to continually enhance their professional learning through practise orientations. Hence, in this chapter, both the theoretical underpinnings of effective teaching associated with the cross-curriculum design are assumed to have a potential link to any one of the other curricular areas specified in this book. Cross-curriculum design inherently foregrounds inclusive pedagogical possibilities and a concern for knowing more about curriculum theorising and reimaging classroom practice for all students, that is engaging in generative and productive pedagogical work.

The most recent alteration in engineering technology education in South Africa is the establishment of a new degree qualification – Bachelor of Engineering Technology. The new qualification standards alone do not give a clear distinction between knowers in the engineering technician and engineering technologist categories. This lack of clarity about what knower the new programme is intended to produce is a stumbling block to educators who need to plan, develop and implement the new curriculum. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise the intended knower dispositions for the new programme by carrying out a comparative analysis with the existing programme, thereby assisting curriculum designers particularly with development of effective scaffolding for engineering technology students.

In this paper, the authors conceptualise the intended knower dispositions for the new programme by carrying out a comparative analysis of the current and new exit-level outcomes. Each of the qualifications for the engineering technology programmes are comprehensively interpreted and analysed in this paper. This paper uses Bloom’s taxonomy and Luckett’s knowledge plane as lenses to perform the analysis and draw a distinction between knowers in the engineering technician and engineering technologist categories.

The analysis used in this paper suggests that the engineering technologist category exhibits a relative shift towards subjective and theoretical “ways of knowing”. It is found that the shift from practical ways of knowing to theoretical will evoke a shift from contextual to conceptual knowledge. The authors also flesh out how this shift could influence the new curriculum particularly with regard to developing effective scaffolding for engineering technology students. A useful tool for mapping these shifts in knowing is also established in this paper.

The most recent alteration in engineering technology education in South Africa is the establishment of the new Bachelor of Engineering Technology qualification. This qualification marks a paradigm shift in the nature of engineering technology education itself. In this paper, this paradigm shift is conceptualised. It is expected that the interpretation of the new qualification standards, and the influence of the shift in intended knower and exit-level outcomes on curriculum will be grappled with by engineering technology educators in South Africa in the coming years, as the new programmes are established around the country. This conceptual paper is significant because it marks the first work towards grappling these crucial and forthcoming issues in the country.

Literacy instruction for children with a disability is not highlighted as a priority in South Africa. This can be attributed to numerous reasons, amongst others: the focus on care of children with disability to the detriment of learning; the high number of children with disabilities who are currently out of school; the gradual change and movement towards inclusion despite policies being in place, poorly qualified teachers with limited knowledge regarding best teaching practices and limited experience of teachers in teaching functional literacy. However, the National Department of Education is attempting to address these factors by, for example introducing a compulsory year of schooling before Grade 1 commences (Grade R), developing work books for all learners in the foundation phase and making them available across the country as well as introducing a new national curriculum – Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement CAPS – with a stronger emphasis on literacy.

In this chapter I will briefly provide a contextual background to the South African context; then provide a short discussion of the challenges faced in this context and finally focus on the best practices that have some evidence in this context.

Gifted education suffers from the lack of a legal definition of giftedness and federal mandate for the provision of services in schools, and also from a lack of any federal funding to provide services. These lead to a situation characterized by extreme inconsistency in provision of educational services across locations, sometimes even within the same school district. We offer a historical perspective on these issues and a view of the current status of gifted education services, followed by discussion of relevant legal issues in this context.

This qualitative case study explores how one secondary world history teacher, teaching in a high-stakes testing context in a district pushing teachers to utilize differentiated instruction, makes sense of this pedagogical approach. We examine teacher sense-making within a conceptual framework of policy realization and ambitious teaching and learning. The teacher made no claims to being an expert on differentiation; yet, the findings indicated that she did possess an understanding of differentiation congruent with the literature and, whether she recognized it or not, used many strategies suggested by Tomlinson and other experts on differentiation. Her thinking about differentiation also appeared to be shaped by relational and contextual issues. Stated differently, the Virginia Standards of Learning exams and the pressure from administration for high pass rates appeared to shape how the teacher thought about her students, her content, her instruction and, ultimately, her approach to differentiation.

In light of contemporary critiques of New Zealand comprehensive schooling published mainly in the popular press, it is timely to re‐examine the origins of and the rationale for the widespread adoption of this model of education. The comprehensive schooling philosophy, it was recently alleged, has produced a situation in which ‘as many as one in five pupils in the system is failing’ and where ‘there is a large group at the bottom who are not succeeding’. This group was estimated to include some 153,000 students out of the total current New Zealand student population of 765,000. In this context, however, Chris Saunders and Mike Williams, principals of Onehunga High School and Aorere College in Auckland respectively, have noted that having underachieving students in secondary schools in particular is not a recent phenomenon. A large ‘tail’ of poor performing high school students has long been a cause of concern, Williams suggests.

African-American and Hispanic students are underrepresented in gifted education. In many cases, African-American and Hispanic students are underachieving in the classroom setting and lack interest in what is being taught. This chapter will discuss the underrepresentation of African-American and Hispanic students in gifted programs, curricula and program challenges within general and gifted classrooms, Bloom’s taxonomy and James Banks’ multicultural curriculum model. The chapter will also provide an overview of the Ford–Harris matrix, and introduce a color-coded layout of the matrix and provide pros and cons for each matrix level.

Despite the existence of legislation and policy, the inclusion of students with special needs remains a challenge for teachers when research-based pedagogies and collaboration are not translated into practice. Given emerging Indexes for inclusion, perhaps we should be attending to measuring school and classroom indicators of inclusive education to allow for professional development for teachers in an empirical and guided manner. Following a brief introduction to the importance of inclusive practice in schools, this chapter will address teacher use of research-based pedagogies and curriculum differentiation required to enhance success with students in schools; teachers’ capacity to communicate about learning using professional language and collaborative problem-solving processes; teachers’ sense of self-efficacy when working with students who have special needs; and translation of these research-based skills into actual classroom practice.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how liberal higher education can strengthen vocational higher education.

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.

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.

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.