Collective Teacher-Researcher Inquiry: Localizing School-Based Curriculum Development in Diversified Hong Kong Schooling Contexts

Responding to a recent call for turning a focus on advancing practices in curriculum studies, this paper reports collective memory work that disrupted academics’ hegemonic voices in School-Based Curriculum Development (SBCD) studies and elicited teachers’ stories about their school-based curriculum development (SBCD) practices. With post-colonialism as the theoretical underpinning, we explored how the Western-centric construct of SBCD was recontextualized in various Hong Kong school contexts. Findings revealed teachers’ struggles with hegemonic discourses that constrained their autonomy in SBCD projects to benefit diverse learners, such as the accountability mechanism, linguistic imperialism, Western-centrism, and top-down curriculum decision-making. Situated in the local realities of Hong Kong schooling, teachers’ SBCD projects also illuminate productive, hybrid spaces where new forms of knowledge, identity, and culture come into being.

Challenges to the Process of Change, Transformation and Curriculum Decision-making in Early Childhood Education

The data presented in this paper is qualitative in nature and was obtained through ethnographic observation and participant interviews and arises from the first author's doctoral research.<br><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Tables 1-3 - First author</div>

Challenges to the Process of Change, Transformation and Curriculum Decision-making in Early Childhood Education

The data presented in this paper is qualitative in nature and was obtained through ethnographic observation and participant interviews and arises from the first author's doctoral research.<br><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Tables 1-3 - First author</div>

‘Doing’ socio-political sustainability in early childhood: Teacher-as-researcher reflective practices

Young children’s engagement in Education for Sustainability has focussed predominantly on their participation in environment-based initiatives or practices. Reasons for this include a notion that wider dimensions of sustainability, including social, political and economic areas of concern can be too complex and overwhelming for young children. When children experience learning around wider dimensions of sustainability, there is potential to develop genuine and critical understandings about global issues in a transformative and critical learning context. This article investigates how an early childhood teacher, in the role of teacher-as-researcher, engaged young children in a kindergarten classroom in an investigation of poverty as a socio-political aspect of sustainability. The authors focus on teacher-as-researcher critical reflections from action research data to contextualise how curriculum decision-making unfolded. Using critical theory as a guiding framework, the authors examine how knowledge around poverty was co-constructed between children and adults, thus unsettling the idea of teacher as ‘expert’. The authors advocate for early childhood teachers to employ a teacher-as-researcher role in sustainability education and to critically reflect on ways to embed a holistic approach to Education for Sustainability in early childhood contexts.

Curriculum Development and Review in Sports Academy Setting: Proposing Models and Methodologies

In recent years, the curriculum has become a widely appealing construct within the global discourses of quality assessment and continual improvement. However, the literature in this field reveals a lack of clarity and consensus regarding its meaning and other technical issues related to its development and review, particularly in the sports academy setting. This review article provides a comprehensive overview of current knowledge in this area through broadly exploring a range of dimensions underpinning the concept of curriculum, including its definitions, elements, processes, and the resultant pedagogical implications. Besides, this review article proposes a model to facilitate the development and review of the curriculum in Ethiopian sports academy programs and provides designers, youth coaches, and administrators with a practical approach for designing and implementing the curriculum. This proposed model seeks to support the Ethiopian sports academies in systematically developing and reviewing curriculum, and using that assessment data to trigger further improvement of the program. Moreover, a systemic view of sports academy is suggested to create broader insights about key ingredients of quality, and identify issues that impinge on curriculum decision-making. The article concludes by summarizing the results of the analyses and offering implications for practices.

English Teachers’ Decision in Utilizing Textbook in Their Classroom

This study was conducted at SMAN 1 Manokwari, West Papua. The data were collected through classroom observation and interview with two qualified English teachers in the school. The results showed that the English textbooks provided were the main learning source in teaching reading comprehension. The teachers contextually modified the sequence of the tasks and lessons from the textbooks before assigning them to the students in teaching speaking, listening and grammar. Some factors that were considered by the teachers in selecting materials were the availability of learning materials in school, students’ needs, and students’ level of English competence, school facilities and the national exam. The results of these study consider practical implications to give teachers, practioners, other reserachers and author of textbooks in developing teaching materials to be used in different context of classroom. Keywords: the 2013 curriculum, decision making, textbook use