Adapting an Undergraduate Multiliteracies German Curriculum for Online Instruction During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This article reports on the adaptation of an undergraduate German curriculum for a distance language education (dle) context. Understanding that dle has evolved over the course of decades, the article reviews literature describing pedagogical and technological developments that are fundamental to understanding current practices in dle. Against this backdrop, a detailed methodology is presented that explains the pedagogical practices that were adopted and adapted following the pandemic-induced shift from classroom-based teaching to dle. Special attention is devoted to the role of synchronous instruction, as well as asynchronous tools that support multiliteracies instruction. The article concludes by considering those curricular innovations that are likely to have a long-lasting impact on the delivery of instruction following a return to classroom-based teaching.

Teacher’s Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes towards the Implementation of Preschool Curriculum Innovations

This article reports the results of a study on the Teacher’s Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes towards the Implementation of Preschool Curriculum Innovations. The implementation of curricular innovations is a complex process. Studies on curricular changes have shown that teachers play a pivotal role in the success or the failure of implementation projects. The study focuses on teachers’ perceptions and attitudes toward the implementation of the newly introduced National Preschool Curriculum Standards (NPCS) in Malayisan preschools. The study uses the survey method involving preschool teachers set to explore the teachers’ level of knowledge about the curricular innovations, the teachers’ level of skill in implementing the curricular innovations, and the teachers attitudes towards the change. Data was gathered using questionnaires that captured teachers knowledge, skills and attitudes towards NPCS. Findings showed that teachers had high mean score on knowledge of NPCS and positive attitudes towards the curricular innovations. However the low to moderate mean score on teachers’ skills in implementing curricular changes indicate that they are notready and lack in proficiencies to implement the changes as required. The results suggest that teachers need professional development promoted by personal learning and understanding, support and guidance as well as planned intervention programs in order to equip them with the necessary skills to ensure the grounded change in curriculum can be successfully initiated and the NPCS is a reality.

On the Edge of Reason

This chapter explores engagement at the Scottish universities with new intellectual trends between the Reformation and Enlightenment. The chapter begins by assessing the impact of the reformation on Scottish higher education, and the role of the humanist and reformer Andrew Melville in creating a network of modern godly seminaries out of the three pre-reformation universities and the two new protestant arts colleges established in Edinburgh and in New Aberdeen. It then reviews the limited range of Scottish curricular innovations that emerged in response to broader European developments in ‘proto-empirical’ thinking and research in the early seventeenth century. The chapter concludes that intellectual innovations at Scotland’s universities across this period were disjointed and circular, with teaching ultimately remaining Aristotelian in form and content. However, a broader continuity of aim—the creation of a ‘godly’ commonwealth and the education of ministers to populate it—underpinned all the developments in this period.