David Scott

Curriculum and Assessment is the first volume of a new series International Perspectives on Curriculum. This edited book examines the relationship between curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, and, as with subsequent volumes, adopts a cross-sector and comparative approach. Contributors make reference to a number of important debates in the fields of curriculum and assessment: summative versus formative assessment; differentiation versus inclusion; psychometric versus holistic theorising; decontextualised versus contextualised assessment; symbol-processing versus situated learning approaches; integrated versus connected assessment; and high stakes versus low stakes assessment. The rationale for this volume is not to reach an agreement about assessment and curriculum frameworks, but to air the various debates referred to above and develop new frameworks for understanding these important issues.This volume and the series is timely as administrators and policy-makers in different parts of the world have taken an increased interest in education, and as moves to centralise curriculum provision have gathered pace. This has in some cases driven a wedge between curriculum theory and curriculum practice, as policy-makers have developed and implemented proposals without referring to academic debates about these issues. It therefore is an important task to reassert the need to discuss and debate the curriculum in a critical manner before implementation occurs. This volume sets about that task, addressing policy-makers, administrators, teachers and the research community.

Curriculum and Assessment is the first volume of a new series International Perspectives on Curriculum. This edited book examines the relationship between curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, and, as with subsequent volumes, adopts a cross-sector and comparative approach. Contributors make reference to a number of important debates in the fields of curriculum and assessment: summative versus formative assessment; differentiation versus inclusion; psychometric versus holistic theorising; decontextualised versus contextualised assessment; symbol-processing versus situated learning approaches; integrated versus connected assessment; and high stakes versus low stakes assessment. The rationale for this volume is not to reach an agreement about assessment and curriculum frameworks, but to air the various debates referred to above and develop new frameworks for understanding these important issues.This volume and the series is timely as administrators and policy-makers in different parts of the world have taken an increased interest in education, and as moves to centralise curriculum provision have gathered pace. This has in some cases driven a wedge between curriculum theory and curriculum practice, as policy-makers have developed and implemented proposals without referring to academic debates about these issues. It therefore is an important task to reassert the need to discuss and debate the curriculum in a critical manner before implementation occurs. This volume sets about that task, addressing policy-makers, administrators, teachers and the research community.

Reading Educational Research and Policy will improve the ability of teachers to deconstruct policy, research and media texts. This accessible book examines in turn the message systems through which educational meanings are conveyed in modern society: official policy texts; written media and spoken media. Through understanding how and why messages are conveyed, teachers will develop strategies for becoming more critical and reflective of the texts that confront them in their work.

This volume is a study of the theory and practice of researching education. It examines the philosophical, historical, political and social contexts of researching and the implications of these for the collection and analysis of data. The authors argue that power is ever present in the construction of research texts and this is inevitable, as research imposes a closure of the world through representation and thus is always involved with and implicated in the operation of power. The book addresses such fundamental questions as: What is legitimate knowledge?, What is the relationship between the collection and analysis of data? and How does the researcher's presence in the field affect his or her data?. Divided into three sections, the book reviews the philosophy of research; the strategies and methods of research; and the issues involved in research. The authors present the reader with a balance of theory and practice, providing case studies, examples and tables to support and illustrate their arguments.

Although the literature of social research covers a vast range of material, there has been little on the role of social theory in educational research. In this respect, David Scott's book covers an important gap in the market, as it focuses on the centrality of social theory in a variety of empirical projects. The volume covers a range of conceptual and theoretical discussions and subsequently applies these concepts to our analysis of empirical studies. As a consequence, it is a volume that deserves to be read widely by students and researchers alike.

Although the literature of social research covers a vast range of material, there has been little on the role of social theory in educational research. In this respect, David Scott's book covers an important gap in the market, as it focuses on the centrality of social theory in a variety of empirical projects. The volume covers a range of conceptual and theoretical discussions and subsequently applies these concepts to our analysis of empirical studies. As a consequence, it is a volume that deserves to be read widely by students and researchers alike.

How can we best forge a theoretical practice that directly addresses the struggles of once-colonized countries, many of which face the collapse of both state and society in today's era of economic reform? David Scott argues that recent cultural theories aimed at "deconstructing" Western representations of the non-West have been successful to a point, but that changing realities in these countries require a new approach. In Refashioning Futures, he proposes a strategic practice of criticism that brings the political more clearly into view in areas of the world where the very coherence of a secular-modern project can no longer be taken for granted. Through a series of linked essays on culture and politics in his native Jamaica and in Sri Lanka, the site of his long scholarly involvement, Scott examines the ways in which modernity inserted itself into and altered the lives of the colonized. The institutional procedures encoded in these modern postcolonial states and their legal systems come under scrutiny, as do our contemporary languages of the political. Scott demonstrates that modern concepts of political representation, community, rights, justice, obligation, and the common good do not apply universally and require reconsideration. His ultimate goal is to describe the modern colonial past in a way that enables us to appreciate more deeply the contours of our historical present and that enlarges the possibility of reshaping it.

Distributed by the U. of Washington Press. Although Delvaux (born 1897) is an artist of international standing, his work is relatively little known in the Anglo-Saxon world. This study places Delvaux's work in the tradition of European figurative painting, as well as in the more immediate context of