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PurposeThe study investigated factors influencing how the curriculum is implemented in accredited private higher education institutions (PHEIs) in Botswana.Design/methodology/approachThe study investigated factors influencing curriculum implementation in accredited private universities (PUs) operating in a highly regulated higher education environment in Botswana. A total of six PUs which have been operating in Botswana for at least five years were purposively selected for the study. The mixed methods approach was used in the study. From the six PUs, a sample of 306 lecturers was selected from a population of 1,500 lecturers using stratified random sampling strategy for the quantitative phase of the study, and 25 academic middle managers (AMMs) were also selected from a population of 273 academic middle managers using purposive sampling strategy for the qualitative phase. A structured questionnaire and a semi-structured interview guide were used for data collection. Principal component analysis (PCA) was performed to test the reliability and validity of the measurements. Descriptive statistics, chi-square, one-way ANOVA and regression analysis were used for quantitative data analysis, while a meta-aggregative approach was used for analysing qualitative data. Results showed that educational level, characteristics of the curriculum, of the institution and of the external environment had a significant influence on how curriculum is implemented in PUs in Botswana, while gender, age and years of teaching experience did not have a significant influence. These results have implications on educational policy formulation by regulatory authorities as well as practice in universities for the purpose of enhancing curriculum implementation.FindingsResults showed that educational level, characteristics of the curriculum, of the institution and of the external environment had a significant influence on how the curriculum is implemented in PUs in Botswana, while gender, age and years of teaching experience did not have a significant influence.Research limitations/implicationsData were collected from lecturers in accredited private higher education institutions in Botswana only which limited the scope of insight into challenges facing accredited private institutions. Future research needs to expand the scope and consider private both private and public higher education institutions in Botswana and beyond so that more insight on the factors affecting curriculum implementation in higher education institutions can be established and appropriate policies and processes could be put in place for effective curriculum implementation.Practical implicationsThe study provides insight into challenges affecting curriculum implementation in higher education institutions and how regulatory authorities, institutional authorities and lecturers can contribute to effective curriculum implementation in these institutions.Social implicationsThe study offers an opportunity for higher education institutions to implement the curriculum in a manner that satisfies its primary customers who are the students by taking cognizance of and satisfying factors that contribute to effective curriculum implementation.Originality/valueThere is no study known to the researcher that has been conducted on factors affecting curriculum implementation in accredited private universities in Botswana. This study, therefore, is an eye-opener on such factors and what actions regulatory authorities, institutional management and lecturers should take to promote effective implementation of the curriculum in higher education institutions in Botswana.

Education in implementation science, which involves the training of health professionals in how to implement evidence-based findings into health practice systematically, has become a highly relevant topic in health sciences education. The present study advances education in implementation science by compiling a competence profile for implementation practice and research and by exploring implementation experts’ sources of expertise. The competence profile is theoretically based on educational psychology, which implies the definition of improvable and teachable competences. In an online-survey, an international, multidisciplinary sample of 82 implementation experts named competences that they considered most helpful for conducting implementation practice and implementation research. For these competences, they also indicated whether they had acquired them in their professional education, additional training, or by self-study and on-the-job experience. Data were analyzed using a mixed-methods approach that combined qualitative content analyses with descriptive statistics. The participants deemed collaboration knowledge and skills most helpful for implementation practice. For implementation research, they named research methodology knowledge and skills as the most important ones. The participants had acquired most of the competences that they found helpful for implementation practice in self-study or by on-the-job experience. However, participants had learned most of their competences for implementation research in their professional education. The present results inform education and training activities in implementation science and serve as a starting point for a fluid set of interdisciplinary implementation science competences that will be updated continuously. Implications for curriculum development and the design of educational activities are discussed.

Project-based learning (PBL) has been identified as an effective pedagogy for instructors to help students to learn interdisciplinary knowledge, problem-solving skills, modes of thinking, and collaborative practices through solving problems in a real-world context. However, previous studies reported that instructors from K-12 to tertiary learning environments found it challenging to implement such a pedagogy for various reasons. The emergence of PBL E-learning platforms in the recent decade has attracted increasing interest in adoption and seems to provide a solution to tackle the difficulties in PBL implementation. Yet little is known about designing these platforms and how they facilitate the PBL learning process and management. In the current study, we conducted a multiple case survey study on 16 PBL learning platforms in English and Chinese, collected data on their features and functions, categorized them according to their services provided, and analyzed how they tackle the implementation challenges. Additionally, we identified four trends in PBL development as pedagogy, the skills, and competence required for teachers and students to successfully carry out PBL via e-learning platforms and provide suggestions to improve and refine the platform design for educational technologists and related stakeholders. The limitations of this study and the future research direction are included.

Internationalisation has moved to the core of universities' mission, emphasising the qualitative elements of internationalisation, which is inter alia evident in the implementation of an internationalised curriculum. The latter must be implemented following the constructive alignment model; thus, the framework for a constructively aligned internationalised curriculum is proposed in this article, combining an internationalised curriculum with Biggs' constructive alignment model. Since academics are the owners of an internationalised curriculum and they are determined by their academic disciplines, in this paper, the impact of disciplines on a constructively aligned internationalised curriculum is evaluated, following Biglan's typology of academic disciplines. It was found from the sample of 1367 academics from all Slovenian higher education institutions that an internationalised curriculum is constructively aligned in practice, wherein we observed relevant disciplinary differences in the level/rate of appearance of international perspectives in the individual steps of a constructively aligned internationalised curriculum, with a noticeably higher incidence in the case of soft disciplines. Besides introducing the framework for a constructively aligned internationalised curriculum and identifying relevant differences between disciplines, an important contribution to the research topic is in several other characteristics of academic professions that were identified as having an impact on the implementation of an internationalised curriculum. Examples of these were academics' inclusion in pedagogical courses and academics' various modes of international engagement. The authors also highlight several opportunities for improvement and further research, as well as implications for the enhancement of curriculum internationalisation in hard disciplines. [Author abstract]

Online learning is an educational process which takes place over the Internet as a form of distance education. Distance education became ubiquitous as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic during 2020. Because of these circumstances, online teaching and learning had an indispensable role in early childhood education programs, even though debates continue on whether or not it is beneficial for young children to be exposed extensively to Information and Communication Technology (ICT). This descriptive study demonstrates how a preservice teacher education course in early childhood education was redesigned to provide student teachers with opportunities to learn and teach online. It reports experiences and reflections from a practicum course offered in the Spring Semester of 2020, in the USA. It describes three phases of the online student teachers’ experiences–Preparation, Implementation, and Reflection. Tasks accomplished in each phase are reported. Online teaching experiences provided these preservice teachers with opportunities to interact with children, as well as to encourage reflection on how best to promote young children’s development and learning with online communication tools.

BackgroundFor schools to include quality STEM education, it is important to understand teachers’ beliefs and perceptions related to STEM talent development. Teachers, as important persons within a student’s talent development, hold prior views and experiences that will influence their STEM instruction. This study attempts to understand what is known about teachers’ perceptions of STEM education by examining existing literature.ResultsStudy inclusion criteria consisted of empirical articles, which aligned with research questions, published in a scholarly journal between 2000 and 2016 in English. Participants included in primary studies were preK-12 teachers. After quality assessment, 25 articles were included in the analysis. Thematic analysis was used to find themes within the data. Findings indicate that while teachers value STEM education, they reported barriers such as pedagogical challenges, curriculum challenges, structural challenges, concerns about students, concerns about assessments, and lack of teacher support. Teachers felt supports that would improve their effort to implement STEM education included collaboration with peers, quality curriculum, district support, prior experiences, and effective professional development.ConclusionsRecommendations for practice include quality in-service instruction over STEM pedagogy best practices and district support of collaboration time with peer teachers. Recommendations for future research are given.

BackgroundIn the midst of digital transformation, schools are transforming their classrooms as they prepare students for a world increasingly automated by new technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI). During curricular implementation, it has not made sense to teachers to teach AI as a stand-alone subject as it is not a traditional discipline in schools. As such, subject matter teachers may need to take on the responsibility of integrating AI content into discipline-based lessons to help students make connections and see its relevance rather than present AI as separate content. This paper reports on a study that piloted a new lesson package in science classrooms to introduce students to the idea of AI. Specifically, the AI-integrated science lesson package, designed by the research team, provided an extended activity that used the same context as an existing lesson activity. Three science teachers from different schools piloted the lesson package with small groups of students and provided feedback on the materials and implementation.FindingsThe findings revealed the teachers’ perceptions of integrating AI into science lessons in terms of the connection between AI and science, challenges when implementing the AI lesson package and recommendations on improvements. First, the teachers perceived that AI and science have similarities in developing accurate models with quality data and using simplified reasoning, while they thought that AI and science play complementary roles when solving scientific problems. Second, the teachers thought that the biggest challenge in implementing the lesson package was a lack of confidence in content mastery, while the package would be challenging to get buy-in from teachers regarding curriculum adaptation and targeting the appropriate audience. Considering these challenges, they recommended that comprehensive AI resources be provided to teachers, while this package can be employed for science enrichment programs after-school.ConclusionsThe study has implications for curriculum writers who design lesson packages that introduce AI in science classrooms and for science teachers who wish to contribute to the development of AI literacy for teachers and the extension of the range of school science and STEM to students.

The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) necessitates promoting AI education at the K-12 level. However, educating young learners to become AI literate citizens poses several challenges. The components of AI literacy are ill-defined and it is unclear to what extent middle school students can engage in learning about AI as a sociotechnical system with socio-political implications. In this paper we posit that students must learn three core domains of AI: technical concepts and processes, ethical and societal implications, and career futures in the AI era. This paper describes the design and implementation of the Developing AI Literacy (DAILy) workshop that aimed to integrate middle school students’ learning of the three domains. We found that after the workshop, most students developed a general understanding of AI concepts and processes (e.g., supervised learning and logic systems). More importantly, they were able to identify bias, describe ways to mitigate bias in machine learning, and start to consider how AI may impact their future lives and careers. At exit, nearly half of the students explained AI as not just a technical subject, but one that has personal, career, and societal implications. Overall, this finding suggests that the approach of incorporating ethics and career futures into AI education is age appropriate and effective for developing AI literacy among middle school students. This study contributes to the field of AI Education by presenting a model of integrating ethics into the teaching of AI that is appropriate for middle school students.

This article explores the following question: What does it mean to enact curriculum? In order to do so, it offers a conceptualization of the enacted curriculum and situates it within a curriculum policy, design, and enactment system. The system depicts the formal and operational domains in which curricular aims and objectives are developed and curriculum plans formulated and enacted. The authors situate the enacted mathematics curriculum in the operational part of the system and define it as the interactions between teachers and students around mathematical tasks of a lesson and collection of lessons, but argue that understanding what it means to enact curriculum involves examining the many places within the system that curricular elements are translated and transformed. The authors describe each of the articles in this special issue with respect to the framework.

In this survey paper we aim to provide an overview of research on mathematics textbooks and, more broadly, curriculum resources as instruments for change related to mathematical content, instructional goals and practices, and student learning of mathematics. In particular, we elaborate on the following themes: (1) The role of curriculum resources as instruments for change from a theoretical perspective; (2) The design of curriculum resources to mediate the implementation of reform ideas and innovative practice; (3) Teachers’ influence on the implementation of change through curriculum resources; (4) Students’ influence on the implementation of change through curriculum resources; and (5) Evidence of curriculum resources yielding changes in student-related factors or variables. We claim that, whilst textbooks and curriculum resources are influential, they alone cannot change teachers’ teaching nor students’ learning practices in times of curricular change. Moreover, more knowledge is needed about features of curriculum resources that support the implementation of change. We contend that curriculum innovations are likely to be successful, if teachers and students are supported to co- and re-design the relevant curriculum trajectories and materials in line with the reform efforts and their own individual needs.