Many empirical studies about STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) curriculum present problems for students to solve. This paper draws upon the data collected from the enactment of an integrated STEM curriculum to discuss problems as constitutive of problem spaces where four Grade 5 Singapore students engage with the…

Time is intrinsic in all forms of education. A growing body of educational research has begun examining time as something more than a context within which teaching and learning happen. While much of the existing research has tended to focus on either 'objective' clock time or 'subjective' time as experienced by individual teachers or students,…

Following the continental tradition of phenomenological pedagogy, this paper focuses on the lived time and space of school -- and on contexts in which school is understood as a democratic community. It does so by comparing and contrasting related works of G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831), Martinus Langeveld (1905-1989) and Eugen Fink (1905-1975). It shows…

Research shows that teachers and educators struggle to act when conflict appears in the classroom. This article argues that (political) conflict should not be avoided or eradicated. Teachers should enable conflict and attend to their pupils in the process, in order to enable further understanding of each other and their differences, as part of…

The curriculum resources used for teaching secondary mathematics vary considerably from school to school. Some schools base their teaching largely on a single published scheme, while others design their own schemes of learning, curating their resources from a range of (often free) online sources. Both approaches seem problematic from the…

Elementary mathematics curriculum materials can serve as a lever for instructional change. In this paper, we promote a particular kind of instructional change: supporting teachers in learning to integrate children's multiple mathematical knowledge bases (MMKB), including children's mathematical thinking and children's home and community-based…

In this paper I consider the notion of 'visible pedagogy' in refining a conceptualization of 'socially-just pedagogy' in the mathematics classroom. I explore reasons why the recent focus on promoting formative assessment and metacognition, embodied in Hattie's 'visible learning', has failed to bring about the fundamental shift in pedagogic…

Colleges in the US are being compelled to rethink what the First Year Experience or Seminar ought to be for students who have difficulty with mathematics, and what ought to be the mathematics education of teachers, K-12, given the minimal success most students are experiencing. It will be argued here that toward ensuring a more successful…

It is widely held that, by teaching individuals how to reason through and analyse everyday problems, the teaching of critical thinking develops the deliberative capacities essential to the healthy functioning of democracy. Implicit in this view is the assumption that a certain commensurability exists between the problems presented in such…

This paper documents the ways mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) and curriculum materials appear to contribute to the enactment of a 7th grade "Connected Mathematics Project" lesson on comparing ratios. Two teachers with widely differing MKT scores are compared teaching this lesson. The comparison of the teachers' lesson enactments suggests…

Mathematics educators often fail to see that their subject has social and ethical dimensions. If anything, mathematics is seen as a neutral tool that has a social dimension only because it can be used to solve social problems. This study critically examines this idea by arguing that, although school mathematics is indeed a technology, technology…

The arts of perception, i.e., the arts that enable curriculum workers to see and make use of the significant and particular features of problematic situations, are discussed. The ability to discriminate and give meaning to details has received scant attention in the literature on practical curriculum problem solving. (RM)

In this paper, we explore the influence of the teacher on the language games being played in a Grade 3 mathematics classroom. The kinds of listening strategies used by the teacher seemed to have an impact on the kind of language game being played as a small group of students engaged in a problem-solving activity. Understanding classroom…

Examines ideas on a thinking curriculum and "learning to learn" in the secondary education context. Explores computing studies at the Scottish secondary 3/4 level with 14- to 16-year-olds. Explains that this case study provides an example of the infusion approach being incorporated into the teaching of computer programming. (CMK)

Curriculum deliberation is an approach to constructing, operationalizing, and evaluating curricula. The essay describes the deliberative format, discusses habits that impede deliberation, and makes suggestions for the amelioration of these habits. (RM)