Lyn Yates

Madeleine Grumet

How do curriculum, conceptions of knowledge and the schooling experiences of young people engage the great issues of this tumultuous time? Curriculum is always influenced by the events that shape our world, but when testing and bench-marking preoccupy us, we can forget the world that is both the foundation and the object of curriculum. This edited volume brings together international contributors to analyze and reflect on the way the events of the last decade have influenced the curriculum in their countries. As they address nationalism in the face of economic globalisation, the international financial crisis, immigration and the culture of diaspora, they ask how national loyalties are balanced with international relationships and interests. They ask how the rights of women, and of ethnic and racial groups are represented. They ask what has changed about history and civics post 9/11, and they ask how countries that have experienced profound political and economic changes have addressed them in curriculum. These interactions and changes are a subject of particular interest for an international yearbook in that they are almost always permeated by global movements and influenced by multinational bodies and practices. And as these essays show, in curriculum, global and international issues are explicitly or implicitly also about local and national interests and about how citizens engage their rights and responsibilities. This volume brings together a new approach to perspectives on curriculum today and a new collection of insights into the changes from different parts of the world which discuss: How is the world represented in curriculum? How do responses to world events shape the stories we tell students about who they are and can be? This book will be of great benefit to educational researchers and policy-makers, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Curriculum in Today’s World: Configuring Knowledge, Identities, Work and Politics

World Yearbook of Education 2011

Philip Mead

Brenton Doecke

Larissa McLean Davies

Wayne Sawyer

At a time when knowledge is being 're-valued' as central to curriculum concerns, subject English is being called to account. Literary Knowing and the Making of English Teachers puts long-standing debates about knowledge and knowing in English in dialogue with an investigation of how English teachers are made in the 21st century. This book explores, for the first time, the role of literature in shaping English teachers’ professional knowledge and identities by examining the impacts, in particular, of their own school teaching in their ‘making’. The voices of early career English teachers feature throughout the work, in a series of vignettes providing reflective accounts of their professional learning. The authors bring a range of disciplinary expertise and standpoints to explore the complexity of knowledge and knowing in English. They ask: How do English teachers negotiate competing curriculum demands? How do they understand literary knowledge in a neoliberal context? What is core English knowledge for students, and what role should literature play in the contemporary curriculum? Drawing on a major longitudinal research project, they bring to light what English teachers see as central to their work, the ways they connect teaching with their disciplinary training, and how their understandings of literary practice are contested and reimagined in the classroom. This innovative work is essential reading for scholars and postgraduate students in the fields of teacher education, English education, literary studies and curriculum studies.

The Role of Literature in Shaping English Teachers’ Professional Knowledge and Identities

Literary Knowing and the Making of English Teachers

“a powerful, well informed argument for the importance of pluralism… This book will tell young researchers what they need to know about doing educational research; it will encourage experienced researchers to see their own practice in context. It is a profound book that everyone should read." – Professor Jane Gaskell, Dean, OISE, University of Toronto “This brilliant guide to judging educational research examines the most basic questions about research practice that most people think are settled, and reveals them as problematic… Humorous, sharp, and thoughtful, this readable inquisition explores from differing perspectives ‘what does good education research look like’ in multiple forms including dissertations, journal articles, and grant proposals.” – Sari Knopp Biklen, Laura and Douglas Meredith Professor, Syracuse University, USA This book explains and critically examines some key debates about the quality and value of education research, and shows how it must meet different demands in different places, times and conditions. A major part of the book provides detailed analyses and guidance to different areas in which education research is judged: from academic theses to the press; from highest level competition for prestigious grants to collaborative work with practitioners. Lyn Yates asks probing questions in six education research arenas – the thesis, the research grant application, the journal article, the consultancy application, book publishing, and the press: Who are the judges here? What expectations and networks do they bring to the task? What are the explicit and implicit criteria for good research in that area? What are the common failings? What does good research look like? The book is an indispensable companion to existing textbooks on research methodology. It provides a clear and provocative discourse about the banalities and disorderliness in which education researchers have to operate.

What does Good Education Research Look Like?

Victoria Millar

Kate O'Connor

Peter Woelert

There is much discussion about what needs to change in education institutions in the 21st century, but less attention given to how core disciplinary studies should be considered within that context. This book is based on a major 4-year research study of history and physics in the changing environment of schools and universities in Australia. Are these forms of knowledge still valuable for students? Are they complementary to, or at odds with the concerns about ‘21st century skills’, interdisciplinary and collaborative research teams, employability and ‘learner-centred’ education? How do those who work in these fields see changes in their disciplines and in their work environment? And what are the similarities and differences between the experiences of teachers and academics in physics and those in history? The book draws on interviews with 115 school teachers and university academics to provide new perspectives on two important issues. Firstly, how, for the purposes of today’s schools and universities, can we adequately understand knowledge and knowledge building over time? Secondly, what has been productive and what has been counter-productive in recent efforts to steer and manage the changes in Australia?

Physics and History in the Changing World of Schools and Universities

Knowledge at the Crossroads?

Lyn Yates

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