Category: Education reform
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Some thoughts on curriculum development and instructional design: Part 5 – Empirically-based instructional design
So far in this series of blogs, I have discussed some theoretical frameworks and then, using the properties of matter strand of physics looked at how the policy and programmatic curricula in a jurisdiction could be set out to support effective classroom curriculum making by teachers and groups of teachers…
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Some thoughts on curriculum development and instructional design: Part 4 – Matter matters!
In this blog I would like to consider the purpose and content of a properties of matter strand in a science curriculum. It follows on from the previous blogs in the series where I set out some theoretical background, a case study from early in my career, and some observations…
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Some thoughts on curriculum development and instructional design: Part 3 – Learning from elsewhere
In the first two blogs in this series, I have discussed some of the theoretical frameworks that can be used in curriculum and instructional design and then a case study describing the development of a research informed unit on the particle theory of matter. In this blog I would like…
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Some thoughts on curriculum development and instructional design: Part 2 – An early case study
In my previous blog, the first in a short series, I set out some background to the process of curriculum making and instructional design. In this next instalment I will describe a significant piece of research-informed curriculum and instructional design I undertook relatively early in my career in the early…
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Some thoughts on curriculum development and instructional design: Part 1 – Some background
This is the first in a short series of linked blogs where I muse on curriculum making and instructional design. I will provide some theoretical background as an introduction and then in subsequent blogs delve more deeply into some aspects in detail. Reflecting my background, most of the detail will…
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Learning from the other side of the world
In October, alongside a trip to see my daughters in Australia, I arranged to visit in person several people from the education world in both Australia and New Zealand who I had met previously, mostly online. They in turn arranged various visits and meetings where I was able to meet…
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Research-informed improvement in Scottish education?
Anyone reading this and already familiar with my previous series of four blogs from last August https://stuartphysics.co.uk/2024/08/01/improving-education-curriculum-explanations-professionalism-and-more-part-1/ or from the recommendations I made in my PhD thesis https://stax.strath.ac.uk/concern/theses/w66344189 (Farmer, 2024a) will know I would like to see teachers using research and evidence-informed approaches with enquiry-as-stance-based professional learning embedded in their…
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Improving education – curriculum, explanations, professionalism and more – Part 4
In the previous three blogs in this series, I have considered several factors important to curriculum reform, both at a national institutional curriculum level and at the classroom curriculum level of individual teachers. But how might we go about more effective curriculum reform in the future? Complexity and expertise I…
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Improving education – curriculum, explanations, professionalism and more – Part 3
In the previous parts of this series of blogs, I explored the importance of good explanations in teaching and the potential benefits of good-quality textbooks and how good quality curriculum and teaching resources, including textbooks, might be developed. In this blog I will explore aspects of teacher professionalism and how…
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Improving education – curriculum, explanations, professionalism and more – Part 2
In the first of this series of blogs I discussed the importance of good explanations in teaching and the potential benefits of good-quality textbooks. Here I explore how good quality curriculum and teaching resources, including textbooks, might be developed. Curriculum development Curriculum and curriculum-making exist at different levels. Deng (2020)…
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