The purpose of this study was to investigate the implementation process of the present and newly introduced instructional techniques in new elementary school mathematics curriculum in sixth grade through the reports of teachers, which has been piloted in some specific schools. Moreover, it was aimed to find out the effects of several parameters on implementation, like city where school teachers are working is located, teachers&amp / #8217 / gender, teaching experience and number of students in the classroom. In addition, difficulties faced by teachers during the implementation process and teachers&amp / #8217 / general opinions about the new curriculum are examined. The sample consisted of 80 teachers working at elementary schools located in Ankara, Istanbul, Bolu and Kocaeli (Izmit). The Teacher Questionnaire was administered to participants in the 2005-2006 academic year. In order to investigate the differences in Teacher Questionnaire&amp / #8217 / s sub-scales&amp / #8217 / scores (Learning-Teaching Process, Material Usage, Evaluation Techniques) of the participants with respect to city, gender, teaching experience, academic level and number of students in classes, separate Multivariate Analysis of Variance were run. The results of this study indicated that teachers&amp / #8217 / implementation of the new methods and techniques highlighted in the curriculum can be interpreted as at high level. MANOVA tests indicated that teachers&amp / #8217 / implementation of the new methods and techniques were not affected by number of students in the classrooms, gender and teaching experience. According to the results of the study, teachers&amp / #8217 / usage of recommended educational equipments was found as at average level and MANOVA tests indicated that teachers&amp / #8217 / usage of recommended educational equipments was affected by teaching experience but not by gender and number of students in the classroom. The results of this study also showed that teachers&amp / #8217 / implementation of new evaluation techniques was at average level and MANOVA tests indicated that teachers&amp / #8217 / implementation of new evaluation techniques were not affected by gender, teaching experience and number of students in the classrooms.

The research dissects how to construct the setup of school-based curriculum management and to carry the plan into execution through studying a junior high school. The research helps the teachers grow in professional knowledge, encourages them to have professional teamwork and makes them innovate their teaching, so that they can elevate the quality of school teaching. The purposes of the research are as followed: 1. To dissect the theory of school-based curriculum management in junior high school, which can be the basis of constructing the school-based curriculum management. 2. To dissect how to construct the setup of school-based curriculum management in junior high school through action research. 3. To dissect the difficulties and stratagem of solving problems which the junior high school encounters in constructing school-based curriculum management. 4. According to the research result and practical experience, the research brings up conclusions and suggestions, which can be the reference of enforcing school-based curriculum management while junior high school puts nine-year curriculum into practice. In order to achieve the purposes of research, I take the ways of action research, literature reviews, participatory observation, individual interview, documentary analysis and so on. As to the ways of collecting information, I take notes, record in the interview, take notes in the meetings, and keep research diaries and keep analyzing information in all aspects. Through the continuous comparison, the research results show: 1. The process of action research is filled with uncertainties, which is a matter of deep concern to the success and failure of research, because the researchers can¡¦t have the chances of penetrating, communicating and coordinating about the uncertainties. 2. Action researchers should take the serious attitude towards researching ethical issues. 3. Such elements as the principle¡¦s philosophy of curriculum-based coordination, macroscopic ability of organizing and interacting the school administration, and the level of teacher¡¦s autonomy have great influence on the research results. 4. Administration¡X the professional teaching teamwork and team spirit have a lot to do with the success and failure of conducting school-based curriculum management. 5. Constructing the setup of school-based curriculum management in Chuan-Yang junior high school includes the setup of dispensing curriculum affairs, the setup of evaluating curriculums and teaching, the setup of evaluating school curriculum management and so on. 6. School teaching administration should hold ¡§the spirit of school-based curriculum management, ¡¨ so that school can enforce the affairs of school-based curriculum management effectively and specifically. 7. The group, which enforces curriculum management, not only accumulates practical experience and constructs systematic knowledge, but also encounters lots of difficulties and obstacles. Because the problems appear, the group keeps studying the solution of project and improving the problems. The procedure of solving problems is as followed: finding problems

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The educational system in Kuwait is intended to provide primary and secondary students with required skills in order to operate in the technical careers commonly undertaken. However, mathematics education lags significantly behind other countries in Kuwait. In the 1997 and 2008 TIMMS international studies of primary and secondary mathematics achievement, Kuwait ranked near the bottom on almost all scores. Thus, improving mathematics education in Kuwait is an issue of serious concern. This research focuses on the question of whether mathematics teaching and learning in Kuwaiti primary schools (grade 4) can be improved through the use of computer-based tools for practice drills and constructive mathematics play. An observational intervention was used in a classroom of 24 children, where students took a pre-test for mathematics achievement, then engaged in a series of exercises through the term and were retested at the end of the term. This was accompanied by a series of in-services and teacher interviews that were conducted within the school, in order to discover attitudes about mathematics teaching and learning and to train teachers in the suggested approaches and techniques. A combined qualitative and quantitative approach included analysis of test scores and interviews with teachers and students. The overall outcomes of the study did show a slight increase in mathematics achievement scores. However, more importantly it showed an improvement in children's and teacher's attitudes to mathematics learning related to the introduction of constructive play activities (derived from the Cambridge University N-RICH program and selected for students based on level of achievement) Overall, the importance of this study is that it provides pragmatic information for Kuwaiti teachers and curriculum designers on improving mathematics teaching and learning.

This thesis analyses the implementation of a student-centred learning approach at the Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM), in the context of the current curricular reform. The main objective of the thesis is to gain understanding of the implementation of a student-centred learning approach and how the innovation is related to the acquisition of teachers’ pedagogical competence at the above mentioned university. A sociocultural approach and more specifically Cultural Historical Activity Theory is used as a theoretical framework given that it provides a view of learning as a context based social activity. A qualitative approach based on document analysis, classroom observations and semi-structured interviews with different actors in the process of teaching, learning and teacher training was used. The findings of the three studies carried out and presented in four articles in the thesis show that the lecturers do not feel ownership of the curriculum reform introducing the new pedagogical approach, and revealed a conflict of interests in the process of implementation of the reform. Students appear to be unclear about the significance of the new approach and they cannot judge if it is correctly implemented. Contextual factors such as a high number of students in the classroom, poor infrastructure and inadequate access to educational resources also affect the students’ performance in their learning. The university teachers expressed a need for training and the creation of adequate material conditions in order to be able to apply the innovations. However, signs of positive attitudes towards this approach were also revealed by the informants, which demonstrates the existing potential of the reform. It was found that the role of the teacher is crucial in making students active, motivated and self-regulated. Moreover, the students’ active learning depends on several factors, such as contextual, social and psychological aspects of the process. In relation to the acquisition of teachers’ pedagogical competence, a comparative study of the official documents of Eduardo Mondlane University and Umeå University explicitly shows a focus on the development of pedagogical competence for all categories of teachers. However, due to significant differences in historical pre-conditions, cultural contexts and educational artefacts the findings revealed many differences in the corresponding collective activity systems. In conclusion, the thesis indicates that the implementation of student-centred learning at UEM depends on the availability of good educational infrastructure and also the development of human resources. Furthermore, less hierarchical communication at the university could accelerate the process.

China’s curriculum system has been undergoing substantial transformations since 1986. In response to public criticism of the highly prescribed national curriculum, the central state of China is attempting to build a more inclusive system which is composed of national curriculum, province curriculum and school-based curriculum. The new curriculum system accommodates more flexibility in carrying out national curriculum policies and even encourages local input in curriculum development and management. Apparently, the current curriculum reform in China is moving toward decentralization. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate the complexity of decentralization reform in China’s curriculum system and examine the dynamics of policy formulation and outcomes of reform efforts in great depth. The main argument made in this socio-philosophical work is that the on-going Chinese curriculum reform is a process of centralized decentralization, which merely transfers work to the local level but not real authority. With an inquiry into the impetus of current Chinese curriculum reform, this theoretical research illustrates that centralized decentralization is taken as a strategic imperative by the state to avoid loss of control over school curriculum that carries particular social and political significance for China in a transitional period. Another major task for this cultural studies research is to problematize the strategy of centralized decentralization, investigating the consequences of the superficial decentralization in reality and analyzing the bottlenecks in promoting current Chinese curriculum reform. In this research, Mark Hanson’s conceptual framework of education decentralization is used to clarify ambiguity in defining decentralization reform in the education sector in China. Meanwhile, Foucault’s theory about power/knowledge and governmentality and Williams’ theory about hegemony are used to deepen the understanding of the state-education relationship in contemporary China. Besides a descriptive analysis of phenomena in current Chinese curriculum reform, the discussion is deployed through pragmatic approach and logic-based reasoning. Most data are obtained from literature review, including previous studies on Chinese education reform, government documents, laws and regulations related to current Chinese curriculum reform.

China, the developing country with the largest and oldest public education system, is transforming its education system through a large-scale curriculum reform. The new national curriculum marks a dramatic change in the underlying educational philosophy and practices, which, in turn, have deep cultural and historical roots in Chinese society. During this system-wide curricular change, Chinese teachers find themselves, more or less, situated in an ambivalent space. That is, most teachers know of the curricular change, but they are uncertain about the meaning of the change and have some resistances borne out of the experiences of loss and challenges to their teacher identities. This study investigates what this massive curriculum reform means for Chinese teachers by grounding an enquiry in in-depth conversations with six teachers in Western China. An interpretation of these conversations reveals the complex dimensions of teachers’ compliance and/or resistance with respect to change at a time when the Chinese curriculum landscape is shifting dramatically from a local to global perspective. Hermeneutics is employed as the research approach in this study because it attends to the humanness and interpretive nature of the participants’ living through curriculum change and it offers important insights to the deeply inter-subjective nature of teachers’ learning and unlearning. New understandings of teachers’ identity transformation, cross-cultural curriculum conversations, and the psychic and social dynamics of teachers' learning are presented in this study. New discourses for enhancing cross-cultural understandings in curriculum studies and international development are also suggested. This study addresses an absence of research on education change and curriculum theories and serves as an example of engaging curriculum as a transnational conversation between East Asian and Western contexts.

This study interrogates whose knowledge about the self and the other is represented to Iranian students in the 2004 and in selected pre-2004 editions of elementary and guidance school textbooks by analyzing how issues of identity politics, diversity, “citizenship” and development inform the construction of Iranian national identity since the introduction of various curriculum reforms (i.e.: global education) after the Revolution of 1978-79. I draw upon antiracism and transnationalism as discourses of analysis through which the West-East dichotomy is (re)evaluated and interrogated within the context of Edward Said’s notion of Orientalism and Boroujerdi’s (1996) conceptualization of “Orientalism in reverse”. I utilize deconstruction, discourse and qualitative interpretative content analyses as methods of investigating how “race”, ethnicity, social class and gender are configured in representations of sameness and difference. I “look at style, figures of speech, settings, narrative devices, historical and social circumstances, not the correctness of the representation nor its fidelity to some great original” (Said, 1978, p. 28). I argue that the ideal citizen and Iranian national identity are constructed by references to conflicting discourses of mustāżafīn (the oppressed), jīhād-i sūzandagī (the Reconstruction Jīhād), ‘ashayir (nomadic tribes), Ummat-i Islamī (Islamic Nation/Community), Īrān-dūstī (loving Iran), the Aryan migration, velayat-e-faqih and colonialism. In their discursive formations, nationalist, anti-imperialist, Islamic, middle-class and Orientalist narratives construct a homogenized Iranian citizenry who has always been active in regional/global relations of power. The ideal citizen is represented through the invocation of two types/sets of “shifting collectivities” that identify it as “white”, male, Shi’a, Aryan-Pars, progressive, independent, pious and a leader in the Islamic world. The first set divides between Shi’a-Persians and non-Shi’a and non-Persians. The second set of binary oppositions represents the ideal citizen in relation and in opposition to the West and the East in their multiple and historical forms. These textbooks are assimilationist texts that act as “border patrolling” and “stignatizing” discourses. They are also forms of “textual genocide” that exclude the voices and histories of national and global minorities and acts of discrimination committed by Iranians against women and minority religious and ethnic groups as official knowledge about friendly/enemy insiders and outsiders.

The intent of this professional doctorate study was to clarify theory and develop knowledge that could benefit the researcher's workplace. It achieved two aims. The first was the useful knowledge gained by the insider-researcher about how to effect teacher learning in a reform context. The second was the improved understanding of the uniqueness of contextual conditions that affected teacher learning in one school. A case study of a single school site was the means of examining the problem of what issues confronted teachers in learning new knowledge mandated by curriculum reform, along with why those issues existed and how teachers dealt with them. A genealogical approach to the literature investigation determined where, why and how teacher learning should be effected in a learning community, in what reflected an "outside in" approach to the problem. However, the intent of the study was that this should be balanced by the "inside out" approach evident in the consideration of what teachers in a school had to say about the realities of teacher learning. Interviews with teachers considered good informants resulted in quality data that facilitated the construction of explanatory theory. A comparison of this theory constructed from data grounded in the realities of teachers' experiences with the theory derived from the literature constituted the final stage of clarifying the problem. Results from the study, therefore, represented both useful knowledge and understanding of the problem. These were of benefit to the specific school, while contributing to the professional efficacy of the researcher-insider, responsible for delivering curriculum reform that was dependent on teacher learning.

A trajetória histórica dos cursos de Licenciatura é demarcada por pequenos avanços e eventuais retrocessos. As descontinuidades desse processo sinalizam a interferência de inúmeros fatores políticos e culturais. A proposta de formação de professores instaurada no país a partir da Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional (LDBEN) e disciplinada por meio das Resoluções CNE/CP 1/2002 e 2/2002 e das Diretrizes Nacionais específicas aos cursos, trouxe ideias inovadoras e animadoras acerca desse tema, visto que sugeriu reflexões mais amplas do que as reformas anteriores, promovendo um processo de reconstrução das Licenciaturas e, consequentemente, a necessidade de adequação na mentalidade dos formadores que nela atuam e das instituições que as facultam. Desse modo, as Instituições de Ensino Superior (IES) de todo o país vêm implementando, de forma mandatória, reformas em suas estruturas curriculares. É neste contexto que se desenvolve esta pesquisa, que tem por objetivo analisar as implicações das atuais DCN‟s para os cursos de Licenciatura e as possibilidades de uma nova perspectiva de formação inicial docente. A pesquisa foi desenvolvida numa abordagem qualitativa, por meio de estudo de caso, a fim de investigar os cursos de Licenciatura de Ciências Biológicas e de História da UFRGS. Para coleta de dados, foram utilizadas duas técnicas: a análise documental, para examinar os documentos legais e os projetos pedagógicos dos cursos, e a entrevista semiestruturada, buscando na fala dos professores a sua perspectiva sobre a reforma curricular e a existência de práticas incentivadoras da formação do sujeito crítico-reflexivo. A investigação aponta para a dificuldade de construção dos Planos Políticos Pedagógicos (PPPs) e de adequação das matrizes curriculares conforme a verificação da imprecisão de alguns dados conferidos na análise documental como, por exemplo, a ampliação da carga horária das práticas pedagógicas. Outro aspecto a ser destacado é o desconhecimento dos professores das disciplinas específicas sobre o conteúdo da reforma. Um achado deste estudo diz respeito a uma não autonomia dos cursos de Bacharelado e Licenciatura, identificada na seleção por um mesmo concurso vestibular. Esses e outros fatores permitem afirmar que o processo de reforma ainda está em andamento devido aos dissensos e conflitos historicamente instituídos no cotidiano das instituições. Esta pesquisa encontra-se inserida no campo de discussões teóricas sobre políticas educacionais, formação docente e relação teoria e prática, e apoia-se nos estudos de Pimenta (2008), Contreras (2002), Zeichner (2008), Popkewitz (1997), Diniz-Pereira (2008) e Tardif (2007). / The historical trajectory of the undergraduate courses is marked for small advances and accidental setbacks. The discontinuities of this process signalize the interference s of countless cultural and political factors. The proposal for training teachers established in the country from LDBEN and disciplined by the resolutions CNE/CP 1/2002 e 2/2002 and the Diretrizes Nacionais specified to the coursers, brought innovative and exciting ideas about this subject since it proposed wider reflections than the previous renovations, promoting a process of rebuilding of Undergraduate courses, and consequently, the necessity of adequacy of trainer teachers that act in there and the institutions that provide them. Thus, the IES of the whole country have been implementing reforms in a mandatory way, reforms in their curriculum structures and it is in this context this research develops , which has the aim to analyze the implications of the present DCNs for the Undergraduate courses and the possibilities of a new perspective of the initial teaching training to investigate. The research was developed in a qualitative approach by of case study to investigate the Undergraduate courses of Biological Sciences and History of UFRGS. To collect data two techniques were used: the document analyses for analizyng the legal documents and the pedagogical projects of the courses and a semi- structured interview looking for in teachers‟voices their perspective on the curriculum reform and existence of supportive practices formation of critical reflexive subjects. The investigation points to the difficulty of construction of PPCs and the adequacy of curriculum matrices according to the inaccuracy of some analyzed data in the documental analysis; for example, the expansion of teaching practices, teaching formation working hours. Another aspect to be emphasized is the unfamiliarity of the specific subjects teachers on the content of this reform. A finding of this study refers to the non autonomy of the bachelor and Undergraduate identified in the selection through a same entrance exam. These and other factors allow to affirm that the reform process is still going on due to dissensious historical institute conflicts in the daily work of the institutions. This research is based on theory and discussions about educational policies and the practice –theory relation, supported by the studies of Pimenta (2008), Contreras (2002), Zeichner (2008), Popkewitz (1997), Diniz-Pereira (2008) e Tardif (2007).