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This paper provides a critical interpretative analysis of the first secondary English syllabus for schools in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, contained within the Courses for Study for High Schools (New South Wales Department of Public Instruction, 1911). The purpose of the paper is to examine the “continuities that link English curriculum discourses and practices with previous discourses and practices” in the rhetorical curriculum. The analysis identifies those aspects of the 1911 English syllabus that have since become normative and challenges the appropriateness of certain enduring orthodoxies in a twenty-first century context.

Focussing on a landmark historical curriculum document from 1911, this paper draws on methods of historical comparative and documentary analysis. It sits within the tradition of historical curriculum research that critiques curriculum documents as a primary source for understanding continuities of discourses and practices. A social constructionist approach informs the analysis.

The conceptualisation of subject English evident in the structure, content and emphases of the 1911 English syllabus encodes a range of “discourses and practices” that have in some form endured or been “reconstituted and remade” (Cormack, 2008, p. 275) over the course of a century. The analysis draws attention to those aspects of the subject that have remained unproblematised and taken-for-granted, and the implications of this for universal student participation and attainment.

This paper reorients critical attention to a significant historical curriculum document that has not, to date, been explored against the backdrop twenty-first century senior secondary English curriculum. In doing so, it presents extended insights into a range of now normative structures, beliefs, ideas, assumptions and practices and questions the potential impact of these on student learning, access and achievement in senior secondary English in NSW in the twenty-first century.

This historical analysis investigates treatment of the important discipline of internal communication in a number of globally influential public relations education frameworks over time. The purpose of this paper is to develop insight with the potential to inform future education and professional development programmes.

The conceptual framework for the study is set via discussion of the historical approach, internal communication, professionalization, and knowledge. The historical critical analysis research methodology is used to study data sources including professional body reports and archival documentation. Deductive and inductive coding is combined with template analysis to ensure rigorous qualitative data analysis.

The study finds inconsistent treatment of the internal communication discipline in public relations education frameworks over time. Distinct inclusion was found in early frameworks, clear recognition of the growing importance of internal communication was evident in later guidelines, but the study discovers that the discipline has been excluded from recent frameworks.

While the study draws on relevant data sources credited with international influence, it is limited to sources published in English.

Practical educational and methodological implications of the research are discussed along with avenues for further research including surveys or qualitative research to investigate contemporary views held by practitioners and educators on internal communication curricula.

Social and management implications are discussed including a call for the reinstatement of internal communication in globally influential public relations education frameworks.

The discipline of internal communication is still understudied which is surprising given its impact on organisational effectiveness. Furthermore, little previous attention has been paid to the history of internal communication education. This paper tackles that void, finds inconsistent treatment of the discipline in education frameworks over time, and contributes discussion on why these inconsistencies have occurred.

This paper explores the possibilities of engaging in cross-disciplinary research to generate social studies curricula that disrupt singular historical constructions about the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), specifically for US high school teachers and students. As part of a larger multi-sited study that investigated and analyzed the common categories used to describe and teach MENA in US World History textbooks, the team engaged in multidisciplinary scholarship on the region to (1) review and analyze the five most widely adopted high school World History textbooks in the US; (2) share analyses with researchers and experts in the fields of MENA studies, history, and religion; (3) synthesize and integrate innovative scholarship on the region for potential curricula; and (4) generate robust alternative curricula for Grades 9-12 teachers. The authors, consequently, consider how educational research spurs innovative and culturally relevant curricular interventions for high school teachers. We argue thorough analysis of existing textbooks, informed by deep understandings of contested versions of historical events, should undergird social studies curriculum development. We suggest multidisciplinary and transnational collaboration can inform curricula in order to respond critically to singular narrations of peoples, cultures, and histories of a region.

The aim of this paper is to begin a conversation about historicising the public relations (PR) curriculum in universities.

The paper discusses PR history and historiography to identify the underlying ideological and methodological influences. It considers scholarship on PR education, and the inclusion or, more often, the exclusion of history except where it serves to reinforce a narrative of steady, and apparently unproblematic, professional development. The paper reviews the presentation of history in textbooks and discusses the authors' experiences of teaching PR history. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the inclusion of history in the PR curriculum offers an important critical intervention in PR education.

The PR curriculum tends to meet industry expectations around practice and skills in order to develop students as future practitioners. But this paper argues that a more historical and historiographical understanding of PR can develop in students important skills in research, analysis and interpretation. It can also introduce students to working with ambiguity and alternate perspectives. Foregrounding new histories and challenging existing histories introduce students to richer and more complex understandings of PR. It also introduces students to epistemology and ethics, and therefore offers a way to introduce critical thinking into the curriculum.

A more historical understanding of PR develops student skills in research, analysis and interpretation as well as critical thinking.

In this qualitative case study, we examine pre-service teachers’ understandings’ of history as narrative. This analysis specifically explores the kinds of new historical narratives pre-service teachers create as a result of purposeful secondary social studies methods instruction that juxtaposes traditional narratives (e.g. individual achievement and motivation) and alternative narratives (e.g. those attentive to empathy and race, class, and gender) in an effort to help future teachers understand the nature of critical historical inquiry. In examining the understandings and initial efforts of young secondary social studies teachers, the study concludes that while troubling the traditional narrative is viable and likely event, the challenges of developing critical historical inquiry are clear and persistent.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2018.

The paper provides a brief description of all 422 sources, and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians and anyone interested as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

Public health authorities have long regarded schools as important sites for improving children and young people’s health. In Australia, and elsewhere, lessons on health have been an integral component of public health’s strategy mix. Historical accounts of schools’ involvement in public health lack discussion of the role of health education curriculum. The purpose of this paper is to redress this silence and illustrate the ways health education functioned as a key governmental apparatus in Victoria in the 1980s.

The paper draws on governmentality studies to consider the explicit governmental role of official health education curriculum in the 1980s in Victoria, Australia. The authors conduct a discourse analysis of the three official curriculum texts that were released during this period to consider the main governmental rationalities and techniques that were assembled together by curriculum writers.

School health education functions as a key governmental apparatus of governmentality. One of its major functions is to provide opportunities to responsibilise young people with an aim to ensure that that they can perform their duty to be well. The authors demonstrate the central role of policy events in the 1970s and how they contributed to conditions of possibility that shaped versions of health education throughout the 1980s and beyond. Despite challenges posed by the critical turn in health education in the late 1980s, the governmental forces that shape health education are strong and have remained difficult to displace.

Many public health and schooling histories fail to take into account insights from the history of education and curriculum studies. The authors argue that in order to grasp the complexities of school health education, we need to consider insights afforded by curriculum histories. Historical insights can provide us with an understanding of the changing approaches to governing health in schools.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the views of educators regarding the constructs of the history curriculum to determine whether history education is usually used for polarization and negative identity enactment or for positive purposes such as tolerance, peace and social justice.

This study used a qualitative approach, using focus group discussions as a means of data collection. The data were coded deductively based on the preconceived constructs of the Korostelina (2013) model.

This study found that history education in Pakistan is generally used for national identity formation, which forces manipulation of historical facts and accounts. This study identifies apprehensions that upon knowing the true historical accounts in the later stages of life, students may react adversely to the formed narratives, which may cause further polarization.

This study has significant implications for future researchers, curriculum developers, educators and policy actors.

This study is notable for providing a holistic investigation into the usefulness of history curricula in the context of peacebuilding. In nations where intolerance is prominent, such as Pakistan, the history curriculum can serve to transform people’s perceptions of history. This study offers insights into making the history curriculum more meaningful by offering insights and a way forward to help break down binaries and promote peace and harmony.

This study aims to explore how teachers in a large, diverse district could use a complex adolescent literacy curriculum, and it coincided with the start of the coronavirus 2019 pandemic, also a time of great upheaval for this nation. The authors and district partners collaboratively designed document sets that could help students explore socially complex historical topics with discipline-specific reading and writing support. These challenges led to fully virtual PD and redesigned cognitive tools and lesson materials that could be used in a fully distanced learning environment.

PD and data collection were ongoing and iterative, as the authors' goals were to understand variability in teachers' understanding and how the social unrest in the nation and the need for distance learning would influence their application of our curriculum. Data sources included teacher artifacts, interviews and implementation surveys and anonymized student work samples. The third author wrote memos during webinars and district meetings. The authors employed a grounded theory approach to analyze teachers’ evolving understandings of how to teach students to make judgments, their lesson differentiation and their attention to social justice issues.

Teachers who attended the authors' online PD increased their knowledge of the authors' cognitive apprenticeship (CA) approach to instruction, demonstrating more sophisticated understandings of important historical thinking skills and the need to provide students with explicit instruction and appropriate cognitive scaffolds. By the end of the year, teachers also showed ease in using new technological platforms and a more flexible use of disciplinary thinking scaffolds in ways the authors hoped. Finally, teachers in the authors' sample (and their students) frequently made connections between topics and sources in the authors' curriculum and ongoing societal problems (such as systemic racism) in this nation.

The authors' original sample of teachers was over 70; however, this number eventually fell to nine teachers (about 12.5% of the eligible participants) due to many ongoing challenges (e.g. teaching while parenting) during this time period. The authors note that teachers who remained engaged with the authors had over 10 years of experience and all but one had at some point been in a leadership position such as a team lead or department head. It is possible that experience teachers found on the authors' curriculum intervention to be too challenging to implement during the pandemic.

Online PD can be successful when sessions focus on content that teachers will use with students. We provided video models showing teachers how to teach historical reading and writing using the authors' tools and supports authors' platform. Although brief, the authors gave teachers opportunities for collaborative practice during webinars, and time to share challenges related to virtual teaching. In return, teachers shared what was working for them and allowed the authors to use anonymized student materials as the basis for subsequent materials for teaching students to make historical judgments.

All students, including those with learning or attentional disabilities/difficulties, emergent bilingual students, underrepresented students or marginalized students, must learn to grapple with complex historical and political information. Doing so will support their ability to make sense of conflicting and/or politicized information that pervades the media today and to judge for themselves what counts as evidence and truth.

Although there are a small number of teachers, this study shows that a strong research partnership between a university and district office can support the successful implementation of a complex historical literacy curriculum that allows students to explore social justice issues while learning important disciplinary literacy skills. Future work will share student learning outcomes.