What is a knowledge-rich curriculum?

A well-designed curriculum creates a knowledge-rich one. The application of the Curriculum Design Coherence Model (CDC Model) in the international Knowledge-Rich School Project is discussed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the Model as a design tool. It achieves coherence by connecting the three forms of subject knowledge: generalising concepts, materialised content and applied competencies. Concepts’ generalisability creates knowledge’s internal logic – the source of understanding (learning). Students only develop deep understanding when they work with generalising concepts. Thinking (learning) doesn’t occur in a vacuum – one must think with something (concepts). And students also need to think about something (content). The article explains why it is essential to connect concepts and content. Such connection overcomes the limitations of both a ‘big ideas’ or concepts-only approach and a content-list approach. The CDC Model’s connection of generalising concepts, materialised content and applied competencies also reveals why New Zealand’s current competency-centred curriculum is inadequate. Two examples show how the CDC Model is used – a Physical Education topic ‘Exercise’ and a Social Studies topic, ‘The History of Ngati Kuri.’ Topics designed in the Knowledge-Rich School Project are mentioned

A Study of the New Zealand Mathematics Curriculum

Given the profound and uncritiqued changes that have been implemented in Aotearoa New Zealand education since the 1990s, this paper provides a critical commentary on the characterising features of the New Zealand mathematics' curriculum in the context of the first stage of a study. The emphasis is on the importance of research design that begins with an explicit, evidence-based hypothesis. To that end, we describe evidence that informs and identifies the study's hypothesised problem and causes. The study itself will show whether or not the hypothesis is justified; that is, is the absence of standardised prescribed content in New Zealand mathematics' curriculum the reason for the country's declining mathematics rankings? The study aims to increase understanding in the field of mathematics education by exploring the effects on New Zealand year 7 public school teachers' mathematics curriculum selection and design practices, teaching practices, and subsequently student achievement.Comment: Submitted to the New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies, 12 June 202

Response

No abstract

Refugee Education under International NGOs: A Major Shift from National Institutions to Patron–Client Relations

What happens when a group of structurally powerless refugees exist within a nation-state’s territory but outside its regulatory institutions? An empirical study of the education of Pakistani Christian refugees in Bangkok, Thailand, identifies an entrenched gap between the education provided by INGOs and Pakistani Christian refugee expectations of the academic education of their children. We generalise from the specific problem of the entrenched educational discrepancy to a deeper structural inequality by using a ‘realist conceptual methodology’ characterised by the type of co-dependency found in the historical form of patron–client relations. The patron–client relationship is the outcome of being placed outside a nation-state’s institutions and the co-dependence that the relationship itself creates between the INGO providers and the refugees. We suggest that patron–client theory is a useful conceptual tool with which to explain the sociopolitical position of groups today who find themselves placed outside a modern nation-state’s institutions

Ethnic classification in the New Zealand health care system

The ethnic or “racial” classification of Maori and non-Maori is a pivotal feature of New Zealand’s health system and affects government policy and professional practice within the context of Treaty of Waitangi “partnership” politics. Although intended to empower Maori, ethnic categorization can have unintended and negative consequences by ignoring the causality of material forces in social phenomena. The authors begin by showing how the use of ethnic categories in health policy is justified by the Treaty of Waitangi partnership policies. This provides the context for the argument made in the manuscript that an understanding of the social experience of ethnicity within the complex interaction of sociocultural factors such as socioeconomic location and lifestyle is more useful than using the political construct of ethnic categories in explaining the persistence of low health status for a section of the Maori population

Theorising Teacher-led, student-led learning in a project based curriculum [abstract only]

In my talk I will discuss curriculum development in a UK secondary school that follows an innovative approach to curriculum design and pedagogy based on the interdisciplinary, problem based learning, approaches of Expeditionary Learning schools in the USA. This pedagogy aims to combine a knowledge-led curriculum with pupils’ engagement, to effect a Future 3 School (Young et al., 2014). I focus on how teachers develop their professional knowledge through their understanding of ‘critique’ and ‘rigour’ in developing the curriculum. By means of a theory of teacher autonomy (Pountney, 2015) I elaborate an understanding of expertise and authority in teachers' practices, and of consensus and purpose in their moral and practical lives. This extends the judgement of quality of teaching to include the process of effectively reviewing, critiquing and forward-planning teaching practice in a collegial context