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Book part
Publication date: 20 January 2021

Walter Humes and Mark Priestley

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…

Abstract

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.

Details

Curriculum Making in Europe: Policy and Practice within and Across Diverse Contexts
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-735-0

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Book part
Publication date: 20 January 2021

Mark Priestley, Stavroula Philippou, Daniel Alvunger and Tiina Soini

This chapter provides an introduction to the European case study chapters in this volume on curriculum making. The chapter explores different conceptions of curriculum and…

Abstract

This chapter provides an introduction to the European case study chapters in this volume on curriculum making. The chapter explores different conceptions of curriculum and curriculum making. It offers a critique of existing thinking about curriculum making as something that occurs withinreified levels within an educational system. Such thinking often construes curriculum making as occurring through linear and hierarchical chains of command from policy to practice. Drawing upon previous conceptualizations of curriculum making, the chapter develops a new approach to understanding curriculum making. This is a heuristic rather than a normative framing; it is essentially non-linear, framed around the concept of intertwined sites of activity – supra, macro, meso, micro and nano – within complex systems, with curriculum making framed as types of activity rather than institutional functions.

Details

Curriculum Making in Europe: Policy and Practice within and Across Diverse Contexts
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-735-0

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 20 January 2021

Daniel Alvunger, Tiina Soini, Stavroula Philippou and Mark Priestley

This chapter provides a summary and a concluding discussion on the main findings from the different cases and chapters throughout this volume. The chapter revisits the approach on…

Abstract

This chapter provides a summary and a concluding discussion on the main findings from the different cases and chapters throughout this volume. The chapter revisits the approach on curriculum making as non-linear and as framed around a conceptualisation of interrelated sites of activity – supra, macro, meso, micro and nano – presented in the introduction. A central conclusion of this book is that the meso site of activity stands out as critical for current developments within curriculum making, both in terms of a transformed role for the nation state in macro curriculum making, as well as implications of policy flows and processes from the supra site of activity. Based on our observations, we suggest an elaborated model for understanding curriculum making, with special attention to the significance of meso curriculum making and teacher agency. In the final part of the conclusions, we argue that there are a number of lessons to be learned from curriculum making in the European context. In line with the significance of meso curriculum making observed throughout the volume, we emphasize the importance of middle ground and mobility, the necessity of participatory curriculum making, and that systems of accountability need to be based on trust. We also underline the importance of a delicate balance concerning regulation– providing support, guidance and steering – together with a critical awareness of destructive as well as progressive forces for maintaining and providing the agency of the educational systemfor good curriculum making.

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Curriculum Making in Europe: Policy and Practice within and Across Diverse Contexts
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-735-0

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Book part
Publication date: 20 January 2021

Bob Lingard

The chapter demonstrates that one way to read recent developments in national curriculum in nations around the globe is as both expressions of and responses to globalization…

Abstract

The chapter demonstrates that one way to read recent developments in national curriculum in nations around the globe is as both expressions of and responses to globalization. Additionally, the chapter argues that curriculum making today is affected by ever-changing imbrications between local, national, regional and global relationships. Examples of this include the curriculum impacts actual and potential of the OECD's testing regime and aspirations in relation to curriculum and the EU's creation of a European education policy space. The more recent rise of new nationalisms and ethnonationalism is seen to have potential impact on national curriculum. Some consideration is also given to the content of the curriculum and the contemporary focus on both disciplinary knowledge and on what sorts of people schools should produce; both it is argued are responses to globalization. The ways the message systems (curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation) sit in a symbiotic relationship with each other and the impact of the strengthened significance of international and large-scale assessments on the enactment of the curriculum are also documented. Some brief account is provided of the enhanced involvement of EdTech companies producing online curricula and the ways the pandemic has accelerated this development with the concerning potential for the privatization of the curriculum.

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Curriculum Making in Europe: Policy and Practice within and Across Diverse Contexts
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-735-0

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Book part
Publication date: 20 January 2021

Dominik Dvořák

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…

Abstract

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.

Details

Curriculum Making in Europe: Policy and Practice within and Across Diverse Contexts
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-735-0

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 20 January 2021

Majella Dempsey, Audrey Doyle and Anne Looney

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…

Abstract

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.

Details

Curriculum Making in Europe: Policy and Practice within and Across Diverse Contexts
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-735-0

Keywords

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 20 January 2021

Abstract

Details

Curriculum Making in Europe: Policy and Practice within and Across Diverse Contexts
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-735-0

Book part
Publication date: 20 January 2021

Gemma Parker and David Leat

England is a clear example of a country where government has imposed a stranglehold over curriculum development over the last 30 years, driven by a belief in the power of markets…

Abstract

England is a clear example of a country where government has imposed a stranglehold over curriculum development over the last 30 years, driven by a belief in the power of markets and testing to improve education. We provide an account of the evolution of a national curriculum in England, along with the growing importance of the school inspection system, which has served as a form of surveillance and as a constraint on curriculum development in schools, resulting in a very subject dominated curriculum. This has been exacerbated by demise of many traditional meso level curriculum actors and the emergence of a different assemblage of support. We give particular attention to the prominence given to interventions in pedagogy and curriculum, set within a school effectiveness paradigm. We explain that within government rhetoric there is encouragement to innovate but we show through research evidence that accountability pressures overwhelm this message and that younger teachers have not been introduced to or trained in curriculum development processes. In the final section of the chapter, we describe some schools which are going against the grain and innovating, but they do stand very much as oases in a curriculum desert.

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Curriculum Making in Europe: Policy and Practice within and Across Diverse Contexts
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-735-0

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Article
Publication date: 11 January 2016

Valerie Drew, Mark Priestley and Maureen K. Michael

In recent years, there has been considerable interest within education policy in collaborative professional enquiry/inquiry methodologies, both as an alternative to top-down…

9943

Abstract

Purpose

In recent years, there has been considerable interest within education policy in collaborative professional enquiry/inquiry methodologies, both as an alternative to top-down implementation of change and for the purpose of fostering educational improvement. However, researchers have been critical of this approach, pointing to various concerns: these include the risk of reducing a developmental methodology to an instrumental means for delivering policy, as well as issues around sustainability of practices. The purpose of this paper is to describe a Scottish university/local authority partnership, which developed an approach entitled Critical Collaborative Professional Enquiry, designed to address some of these concerns. The paper also reports on empirical outcomes related to the partnership project.

Design/methodology/approach

This interpretivist study generated qualitative data from multiple sources, utilising a range of methods including semi-structured interviews with teachers and school leaders, evaluation surveys and analysis of artefacts developed during the inquiry phases of the project.

Findings

This programme exerted a powerful effect on the teachers who participated. The research suggests that teachers developed better understandings of the curriculum, and of curriculum development processes. There is evidence of innovation in pedagogy, some sustained and radical in nature, and further evidence of changes to the cultures of the participating schools, for example, a shift towards more democratic ways of working.

Originality/value

This paper reports upon an original approach to curriculum development, with considerable potential to transform the ways in which schools approach innovation.

Details

Journal of Professional Capital and Community, vol. 1 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2056-9548

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Book part
Publication date: 20 January 2021

Stavroula Kontovourki, Eleni Theodorou and Stavroula Philippou

In this chapter, we trace the emergence of a particular type of teacher subject, the subject-area counsellor, who became a key player during different phases of the recent…

Abstract

In this chapter, we trace the emergence of a particular type of teacher subject, the subject-area counsellor, who became a key player during different phases of the recent curriculum reform in the Republic of Cyprus (2004–2017).The understanding of teachers as subjects is theoretically informed by the Foucauldian notion of discursive power that helps understand how individuals are constituted (subjectivated) and governed (subjected) through language in power relations that permeate social institutions. This type of teacher was constitutedas a hybrid expert-subject by embodying academic expertise and teaching/practical experience in classrooms. We utilize data from individual, semi-structured interviews conductedwith subject-area counsellors and elementary schoolpractising teachers during the introduction and implementation of new curricula (2011-2014), to argue that this particular type of teacher subject emerged as a meaningful and dynamic meso-level. As counsellors moved in between the Ministry of Education and Culture/Pedagogical Institute (macro-level) and schools/teachers (micro-level), it was possible to observe that multiple curriculum makings were taking place, given that subject-area counsellors sometimes opened up spaces and further possibilities of curriculum-making with teachers; but, at others, those spaces were rendered impossible when teachers expected to receive teaching materials from them, thus reinstating pyramidal traditional hierarchical-administrative roles for both.

Details

Curriculum Making in Europe: Policy and Practice within and Across Diverse Contexts
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-735-0

Keywords

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