Jacek Brant

Valuing initial teacher education at Master’s level

The future of Master’s-level work in initial teacher education (ITE) in England seems uncertain. Whilst the coalition government has expressed support for Master’s-level work, its recent White Paper focuses on teaching skills as the dominant form of professional development. This training discourse is in tension with the view of professional learning advocated by ITE courses that offer Master’s credits. Following a survey of the changing perceptions of Master’s-level study during a Post Graduate Certificate in Education course by student teachers in four subject groups, this paper highlights how the process of professional learning can have the most impact on how they value studying at a higher level during their early professional development.

International Instructional Systems: Social Studies.

ABSTRACT This paper reports on research conducted as part of the International Instructional System Study that explored five subject areas across nine jurisdictions in six high-performing countries. The Studys overall aim was to understand what, if anything, there is in common in the curricula and assessment arrangements among the high-performing jurisdictions to see if there are aspects of instructional system design that might account, in part, for high performance. This paper focuses on social studies which in most jurisdictions includes elements of history, geography and citizenship and highlights a number of emerging issues. These include the advantages and disadvantages of teaching history and geography separately or within a social studies programme; the extent to which key concepts are embedded within the social studies/history/geography curricula; whether the level of demand should be considered in terms of a generic taxonomy or in terms of subject specific models; how progression might be defined and considerations of an appropriate balance between teacher assessment and external assessment.

School Economics and the Aims of Education: Critique and Possibilities

Abstract Education is increasingly coming under the shadow of economics. In this article we engage in ideology critique by applying a critical realist analysis to conventional economic models and the teaching of students. Through a historical and philosophical interrogation, we argue that the current curriculum suffers from a diminutive understanding of human being. We argue that economics education has for a long time now worked with a highly abstracted and decontextualized idea of human being that has absented other dimensions of human concerns. We examine the current English Advanced level economic curriculum and the revised curriculum which will be taught from September 2015. Using an understanding of the dynamics of structure and agency and that economics operates in open systems, we argue for retroduction as an appropriate methodology.

Participation, Progression and Value Added: Business and Economics for 14 - 19 year olds in England

This article attempts to map the business and economics curriculum and explain some of the reasons for it being as it is; and to examine the number of students choosing to study the subjects and the ‘perceived relative value’ of studying economics and business studies. In 1988 a National Curriculum was introduced for all 5–16-year-olds in state schools in England but curiously neither business studies nor economics were mandatory subjects. In England, government education policy has influenced the development of the business and economics school curriculum in four main ways: first, in defining a core curriculum; second, in changes in school type; third, in the treatment of the academic/vocational divide; and, finally, in the development of a qualifications framework. With a new government elected, changes in education policy will therefore have an impact on the study of these subjects. We argue that while business and economics are very popular options for study by 14–19-year-olds, this area of the English curriculum needs further strengthening, and that all students should have the opportunity to study business and economics in some form to develop their own economic wellbeing and to better understand the world in which they live.