English history teachers’ views on what substantive content young people should be taught

Public and policy discourse about the content of history curricula is frequently contested, but the voice of history teachers is often absent from such debate. Drawing on a large scale on-line survey of history teachers in England, this paper explores their responses to major curriculum reforms proposed by the Coalition government in February 2013. In particular it examines teachers' responses to government plans to prescribe a list of topics, events and individuals to be taught chronologically that all students would be expected to study. Nearly 550 teachers responded to the survey, and more than two-thirds of them provided additional written comments on the curriculum proposals. This paper examines these comments, with reference to a range of curriculum models. The study reveals a deep antagonism towards the proposals for various reasons, including concerns about the extent and nature of the substantive content proposed and the way in which it should be sequenced. Analysis of these reactions provides an illuminating insight into history teachers’ perspectives. While the rationales that underpin their thinking seem to have connections to a variety of different theoretical models, the analysis suggests that more attention could usefully be devoted to the idea of developing frameworks of reference.

A case study of the Tatweer school system in Saudi Arabia: the perceptions of leaders and teachers

School reform is a major concern in many countries that seek to improve their educational systems and enhance their performances. In consequence, many global schemes, theories, studies, attempts, and programmes have been introduced to promote education in recent years. Saudi Arabia is one of these countries that implemented educational change by introducing many initiatives. The Tatweer Programme is one of these initiatives and is considered as a major recent reform. The main purpose of this study is to investigate this reform in depth by examining the perceptions and experiences of the Tatweer leaders and teachers to find out which extent they have been enabled to be innovative, and to examine the types of leadership and decision-making that have been undertaken by such schools. This study adopted a qualitative case study that employed interviews, focus groups and documentary analysis. The design of the study has been divided into two phases; the first phase was the feasibility study and the second phase was the main study. The research sample of the feasibility study was head teachers, educational experts and Tatweer Unit’s members. The sample of the main study was three Tatweer schools, Tatweer Unit members and one official of Tatweer Project in Riyadh. The findings of this study identified the level of autonomy in managing the school; the Tatweer schools’ system is semi-autonomous when it comes to the internal management, but it lacks autonomy when it comes to staff appointment, student assessment, and curriculum development. In addition, the managerial work has been distributed through teams and members; the Excellence Team plays a critical role in school effectiveness leading an efficient change. Moreover, Professional Learning Communities have been used to enhance the work within Tatweer schools. Finally the findings show that there have been major shifts in the Tatweer schools’ system; the shifting from centralisation to semi-decentralisation; from the culture of the individual to the culture of community; from the traditional school to one focused on self-evaluation and planning; from management to leadership; and from an isolated school being open to society. These shifts have impacted positively on the attitudes of students, parents and staff.

Science learning and graphic symbols: an exploration of early years teachers’ views and use of graphic symbols when teaching science

The study investigated early years teachers’ understanding and use of graphic symbols, defined as the visual representation(s) used to communicate one or more “linguistic” concepts, which can be used to facilitate science learning. The study was conducted in Cyprus where six early years teachers were observed and interviewed. The results indicate that the teachers had a good understanding of the role of symbols, but demonstrated a lack of understanding in regards to graphic symbols specifically. None of the teachers employed them in their observed science lesson, although some of them claimed that they did so. Findings suggest a gap in participants’ acquaintance with the terminology regarding different types of symbols and a lack of awareness about the use and availability of graphic symbols for the support of learning. There is a need to inform and train early years teachers about graphic symbols and their potential applications in supporting children’s learning.