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Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA
Interests: curriculum and instruction; gifted and talented education; early childhood education

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Dear Colleagues,

Curriculum has been considered the mainstay of planning and implementing teaching and learning processes; however, it is often an elusive element in discussions and decisions among educators regarding to how and why “the curriculum” has been developed and designed. As contemporary national and local educational issues emerge, there also is a parallel need to respond to the theoretical constructs, formats, and goals of the curriculum and its impact for our students and the disciplines the curriculum represents. Providing a clearer understanding of the curriculum to educators and students could affect both the subsequent educational impact of the curriculum and the specific objectives the curriculum has been designed to attain. A variety of topics that could offer clarity regarding the development, implementation, and outcomes of curriculum for educators and students need to be discussed. These topics include:

Curriculum designs and practices related to cultural diversity;
Theories old and new underscoring curriculum development;
Curriculum affecting political, social economic and societal issues;
Intra-and interdisciplinary approaches to curriculum;
Play-based curriculum across subjects and grades;
Common and different features of curriculum across subject areas;
Students as curriculum designers.

Prof. Dr. Sandra N. Kaplan
Guest Editor

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Keywords

curriculum: past, present, and future

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Research

Open AccessArticle

Representation of Image Formation—Observation in Optics in Ethiopian Textbooks: Student Learning Difficulties as an Analytical Tool

Ehtegebreal Aregehagn

Annette Lykknes

Dawit Asrat Getahun

and

Maria I. M. Febri

Educ. Sci. 2023, 13(5), 445; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13050445 - 26 Apr 2023

Viewed by 686

Abstract

Studies have reported that students find geometric optics topics difficult partly because of representations in textbooks. In Ethiopia, textbooks are the main source of content in schools. Therefore, a study of how textbooks present certain topics can shed light on students’ learning difficulties. This study specifically examines how image formation–observation is presented in Ethiopian textbooks and how these representations might be the possible causes of students’ learning difficulties. Sixth-, eighth-, and tenth-grade physics textbook chapters containing topics related to image were analyzed. The analysis followed a directed approach to qualitative content analysis. The results show that textbooks sometimes contain explanations that explicitly clarify pictorials and are consistently integrated. However, the textbooks also contain implicit, missing, and incorrect verbal representations as well as incomplete, selective, and patterned pictorial representations that are presented inconsistently. Moreover, the textbooks rarely show alternative representations that complement the problematic representations, hence limiting their misinterpretations. Students may intuitively interpret implicit, selective, and patterned representations that may not conform to scientific concepts. Similarly, incorrect, missing, and incomplete representations could be seen as a direct source of students’ misconceptions. The results suggest that authors and teachers of optics textbooks should be aware of students’ learning difficulties because of representations and should emphasize alternative representations. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multiple Dimensions of Curriculum)

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