This is a practical guide for school leaders and teachers who have responsibility for designing and delivering a knowledge-rich and skills-focused curriculum at KS3 and KS4. It considers the elements that underpin a high-quality curriculum and how to create sequential and conceptually rich learning experiences for pupils across the secondary…

The School of Languages and Applied Linguistics at the Open University (OU) radically re-designed its modern languages curriculum in 2014, launching its first suite of new modules in 2017. The institution as a whole has since also developed a new employability framework. Our paper describes the principles underpinning the design of the new…

This paper discusses the conceptual and methodological challenges facing two researchers investigating the development of interdisciplinary curricula in two new secondary schools, one in the UK and one in New Zealand. It is a discussion of research in progress that will be of interest to readers because of both the methodological challenges…

Open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP) are relatively new areas in educational research. How OER and OEP can help practitioners enhance curricula is one of a number of under-researched topics. This article aims to enable practitioners to identify and implement appropriate open practices to enhance higher education…

This paper presents findings from a large-scale study which explored the socio-political impact of teaching and learning in virtual worlds on UK higher education. Three key themes emerged with regard to constructing curricula for virtual world teaching and learning, namely designing courses, framing practice and locating specific student needs.…

Cross-curricular work in schools across the United Kingdom generally involves the use of a cross-curricular dimension or theme that spans the work of several subject teachers. The limitations of this type of curriculum planning have been noted in the research literature both within the United Kingdom and across Europe. The research reported here…

Purpose: The need to establish more flexible and adaptable university curricula has been recognised as a strategic priority in recent years and has been supported by a number of initiatives including the Curriculum Design and Delivery programme funded by the Joint Information System Committee (JISC) in the UK. The challenges of addressing…

We report on the incorporation of e-book readers into the delivery of two distance-taught master's programmes in Occupational Psychology (OP) and one in Education at the University of Leicester, UK. The programmes attract work-based practitioners in OP and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, respectively. Challenges in curriculum…

This paper reflects on the relevance and applicability of "key transferable skills" to the higher education curriculum. Although they are regarded as having common currency within universities, it is argued that their uncritical acceptance devalues and distorts the nature and character of the teaching and learning employed in academe.…