In this article, I examine how teachers can enact 'powerful knowledge' (PK)--a curriculum principle proposed by Michael Young--by linking it with the scholarship of teacher professionalism (TP). Despite the significance of teachers' role in curriculum enactment, effort to understand this topic has been insufficient. I first indicate that…

Curriculum reform was high on the agenda of South Africa's post-apartheid governments. Yet as time passed, the initial reforms were seen as increasingly problematic, especially when pedagogical realities met policy priorities. There was reluctance on the part of policymakers to give up what was seen as the democratic imperative behind the reforms.…

This article examines curricular development within compulsory science and mathematics education (grades k-9) in Denmark during a 20-year transition towards competency-oriented curricula. The article contains two main parts. In the first part, we describe the Danish case, emphasizing how international and national trends at the turn of the…

Bridging curriculum research with educational leadership, we examined the 2014 Finnish curriculum reform compilation and enactment process through the lens of distributed leadership. As a tool for the examination, we used the resource-agency duality model of distributed leadership. It explicates how organizational members create resources and…

Previous work has not yet comparatively studied which forms of peace education (PE) have been adopted in national laws. Through content analysis of policy documents, we seek to find out why the Colombian Congress established PE as mandatory content across all educational levels in 2014 in a postwar phase, while the German Standing Conference of…

China's 2017 'classroom revolution' call intends to "transform" current teacher-centered pedagogies with brand-new philosophies and technologies. As a new entry point for classroom research, I problematize a naturalized (mis)belief--" teacher-centered (Confucian) didactic pedagogies are not conducive to critical thinking…

The increasing use of media and digital technologies has been modifying how people think over and shape their physical activities and healthcare consumption. This growing trend has been reflected in school curriculum developments for Physical Education and Health. As educators and policy makers adjust local curricula to reflect these technological…

Scandinavian countries have a long tradition of widespread public schooling linked to civic education. In the most recent curriculum reforms, concepts from rhetoric appear in various forms in language arts subject curricula from primary to upper-secondary school. In this article, we examine how current Scandinavian curricula reflect rhetoric and…

This study builds on previous work in curriculum studies by providing insight into manifestations of the interplay between curriculum traditions, that are interested in education on a global scale and emphasized in the newest curriculum reform in Finland. This reform proposes a shift towards a competency-based curriculum, emphasizes integrative…

Schools today face the challenge of preparing students to live, work, and prosper in a rapidly changing world. As a response to this global challenge, Norway has adopted a national curriculum focusing on the development of 21st-century skills. In this study, we investigate if and how the tasks in science and language arts textbooks in…

The increase in nationalist tendencies around the world after 2001 signifies changes in the concept of citizenship as reflected in the discourses of the parties coming to power. How does this translate into changes in education? In this article, I analyse the case of Poland. The research is focused on finding an answer to the following question:…

The article sets the international context for the development of a curriculum of education for sustainable development and shows the directions being taken in the Francophone community. Building on a significant number of studies carried out in France, we constitute a typology of the positions of French-speaking researchers involved in those…

This article investigates the composition of the Norwegian lower secondary school curriculum with a special emphasis on pre-vocational education from a contemporary perspective. The data consist of four official national curricula enacted from the 1970s until the present. Despite differences between the curricula, the main structure of school…

Recent critiques of citizenship education have identified the need for curricula that cover not only civil, political, social and cultural aspects of political belonging and responsibility, but that orient students to the realities of global engagement and responsibility. Rather than focussing on national values, histories and political…

This article investigates how learning outcomes, a concept inspired by an Anglo-Saxon curriculum approach, are expressed in policy documents, with an emphasis on expectations articulated to teachers. Developments in education policy for the last two decades reflect a widespread expansion of learning outcome orientation in curricula and assessment…