Curriculum Policy and Practice in Jamaican Primary Schools: An Analysis of School Leaders’ and Teachers’ Experiences

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-190
Author(s):  
Carmel Roofe
Keyword(s):  
Primary Schools ◽  
School Leaders ◽  
Curriculum Policy ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Teachers Experiences

scholarly journals Irish and Polish in a New Context of Diversity in Northern Ireland’s Schools

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugene Mckendry
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Primary Schools ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Community Relations ◽  
Economic Downturn ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Accession Countries

Abstract While Modern Languages are in decline generally in the United Kingdom’s post-primary schools, including in Northern Ireland (Speak to the Future 2014), the international focus on primary languages has reawakened interest in the curricular area, even after the ending in 2015 of the Northern Ireland Primary Modern Languages Programme which promoted Spanish, Irish and Polish in primary schools. This paper will consider the situation in policy and practice of Modern Languages education, and Irish in particular, in Northern Ireland’s schools. During the years of economic growth in the 1990s Ireland, North and South, changed from being a country of net emigration to be an attractive country to immigrants, only to revert to large-scale emigration with the post-2008 economic downturn. While schools in Great Britain have had a long experience of receiving pupils from diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, firstly from the British Empire and Commonwealth countries, Northern Ireland did not attract many such pupils due to its weaker economic condition and the conflict of the Northern Ireland Troubles. The influx from Poland and other Accession Countries following the expansion of the European Union in 2004 led to a sudden, significant increase in non-English speaking Newcomer pupils (DENI 2017). The discussion in Northern Ireland about a diverse democracy has hitherto concentrated on the historical religious and political divide, where Unionist antipathy led to the Irish Language being dubbed the ‘Green Litmus Test’ of Community Relations (Cultural Traditions Group 1994). Nevertheless, the increasing diversity can hopefully ‘have a leavening effect on a society that has long been frozen in its “two traditions” divide’ (OFMDFM 2005a: 10). This paper will revisit the role and potential of Irish within the curricular areas of Cultural Heritage and Citizenship. An argument will also be made for the importance of language awareness, interculturalism and transferable language learning skills in Northern Ireland’s expanded linguistic environment with a particular focus on Polish.

scholarly journals Informing one-to-one computing in primary schools: Student use of netbooks

2011 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Larkin ◽  
Glenn Finger
Keyword(s):  
Primary Schools ◽  
Computer Usage ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Laptop Programs ◽  
Individual Teacher ◽  
One To One ◽  
Student Ratios ◽  
Minimal Research ◽  
Actual Computer

<blockquote>Although one-to-one laptop programs are being introduced in many schools, minimal research has been conducted regarding their effectiveness in primary schools. Evidence-based research is needed to inform significant funding, deployment and student use of computers. This article analyses key findings from a study conducted in four Year 7 classrooms in which students were provided with netbook computers as an alternative to more expensive laptop computers. Variable access was provided to students including computer to student ratios of one-to-one and one-to-two. Findings indicated that increased access to the netbook computers resulted in increases in computer usage by these students, compared with their minimal use of computers before the study. However, despite the increased access, actual computer usage remained limited. The article reports that factors contributing to the minimal use of computers included individual teacher agency, a crowded curriculum, and the historical use of computers. Implications for policy and practice are suggested.</blockquote><p> </p>

Shifts in policy and practice in early childhood curriculum priorities in Aotearoa-New Zealand: Entanglements of possibility and risk

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 739-756
Author(s):  
Maggie Haggerty ◽  
Judith Loveridge ◽  
Sophie Alcock
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Early Childhood Curriculum ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Curriculum Policy ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
National Education ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
National Education Policy ◽  
Recent Policy

Recent policy developments in the early childhood (EC) care and education sector in Aotearoa-New Zealand have seen a shift in focus from children and play to learners and learning. While few would argue against learning as priority this article raises pressing questions about the ‘intended’ and ‘(un)intended’ consequences of this turn. We analyse national education policy reforms that have served to promote the construction of child-as-learner-subject, alongside moves internationally toward the learnerfication of EC services (Biesta, 2010). As a particular focus, we examine the legacy EC curriculum policy has drawn on from indigenous Māori discourses, as a complex entanglement of both possibility and risk. We focus also on how, in this policy context, an intermix of ‘old’ and ‘new’ curriculum priorities was playing out in one EC setting and how teachers sought to navigate the complex entanglement this effected in practice. On the basis of our analyses, we argue that the problem is not with learning as priority, but with the (school-referenced) narrowing of curriculum, the prioritising of homogenised predetermined outcomes and the ways in which children (parents and teachers) are being positioned in these particular constructions of learners and learning.

scholarly journals Teaching Latin and Greek in Primary Classrooms: the Classics in Communities Project

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (33) ◽  
pp. 50-53
Author(s):  
Arlene Holmes-Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Primary Schools ◽  
Curriculum Policy ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
Primary Curriculum ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Classical Language ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact

The Classics in Communities project (http://classicsincommunities.org/) is a partnership between members of the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge and the Iris Project. It was set up in response to the primary curriculum reforms which were implemented in England from September 2014. In the Key Stage 2 (KS2) Languages curriculum policy, for the first time, Classical Greek and Latin can be chosen for study by pupils aged 6-11 in place of a modern language. The project particularly targets schools where Classical languages have not previously featured on the curriculum. It has twin aims: to equip teachers in primary schools with the skills and knowledge necessary to teach these languages; and to conduct parallel research to determine the impact of Classical language learning on children's cognitive development.

Disabilities within Sweden’s Art and Music Schools: Discourses of inclusion, policy and practice

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 391-409
Author(s):  
Adriana Di Lorenzo Tillborg
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Music Education ◽  
School Leaders ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Music School ◽  
Music Schools ◽  
Starting Point

The aim of this paper is to investigate the discourses that emerge when Sweden’s Art and Music School leaders talk about the inclusion of pupils with disabilities in relation to policy. A starting point is that both earlier studies and policy documents have revealed inclusion problems within Art and Music Schools. The research question is: how are Art and Music School practice, policy and inclusion of pupils with disabilities connected within and through leaders’ discursive practices? The data are based on three focus group conversations with a total of 16 Art and Music School leaders from northern, central and southern Sweden. Discourse analysis as a social constructionist approach is applied since it provides a means to investigate the connection between social change and discourse. Concepts from both discursive psychology and Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysis are applied in order to investigate connections between rhetorical strategies on a micro level and discourses on an institutional level. The concept of multicentric inclusion is introduced and applied in the analysis. In addition, concepts from educational policy theories are applied in order to analyse how policies are conceptualised and enacted in the context of leaders’ discursive practices. Regarding terminology, the results challenge this researcher when the concept of mixed abilities is introduced by the participants. The analysis exposes three discourses: multicentric inclusion discourse, normality discourse and specialisation discourse. There are tensions between the multicentric inclusion discourse and the normality discourse, as well as between the multicentric inclusion discourse and the specialisation discourse. The analysis leads to the following suggestions in order to achieve justice in music education practices and policies: (a) to enforce a specific national inclusion policy, (b) to challenge the normality discourse and (c) to bring together the multicentric inclusion discourse with the specialisation discourse.

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