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This article focuses on four case study schools that have adopted innovative competence‐based curriculum (CBC) projects in Year 7 for a variety of educational and social reasons. The article discusses the issues and challenges posed by the CBC for teachers in the daily life of the classroom. Philosophical ideas about the purpose of education vary because they are driven by ideological positions. Consequently the nature and structure of the curriculum influenced by the stance adopted inevitably affects approaches to teaching and learning. It is contended that changes to the curricula in the case study schools have revealed tensions between traditional approaches to teaching and learning with ‘strong’ classification and framing and the new, more progressive approaches with ‘weak’ classification and framing. These tensions impact on teachers’ identities and this can make effective classroom practice problematic. The article concludes that managing the tensions between traditional and more progressive pedagogies is worthwhile as this will enable students to become more fully integrated, and successful participatory members of twenty‐first‐century society rather than simply reproducing the socio‐economic status quo, or the requirements of current dominant educational discourse in England.

There has been growing interest by British policy-makers in the importance of acknowledging the role of migrant children's background in their educational progress.Therefore, this article draws on studies of language-ethnicity and of language-religion to understand the linguistic and the religious heritage of four groups of Brazilian migrants in London. The discussions describe data collected for two studies. The first study was conducted in a Brazilian complementary school and the second, in three Brazilian faith settings. A new three-dimensional framework, the REL Triangle, is explained and applied to the two sets of data. It is argued that the REL triangle framework, which examines religion, ethnicity and language as intersecting aspects of identity , can help in the understanding of children's linguistic and cultural experiences in out-of-school contexts, and thus, allow new links to be developed between mainstream schools and migrant communities.

Este artigo discute a relação entre as mudanças de paradigmas no ensino tecnológico. Apresentamos a pesquisa bibliográfica, com uma breve revisão e análise da obra de Thomas Khun ‘A estrutura das revoluções cientificas’ à luz de ideias como: as revoluções como mudanças de concepção de mundo, trazendo um debate importante sobre a prática científica. Discutimos sobre Tecnologia na educação: São mudanças necessárias? E o Ensino tecnológico, uma revolução científica possível? A discussão aponta para compreensão de que a mudança de paradigmas na educação, leva-nos a ver o mundo de maneira diferente, e na medida em que compreendemos o que vemos e fazemos, poderemos dizer que, após uma revolução científica, reagiremos diferente sobre percepção de mundo e o conceito de ensino tecnológico. A discussão é ampla e necessária ser debatida, tendo em vista a falta e insuficiência de ações inovadoras que aumentem o debate sobre mudanças de paradigmas na educação e as consequências para o ensino tecnológico.

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This article presents a sub‐set of findings from a research project describing the experience of four case study schools which have implemented a competence‐based curriculum (CBC) for students in their first year of secondary education. Secondary schools are highly departmentalised environments with organisational structures based primarily around subject departments and this can present a considerable challenge to such a multidisciplinary curriculum initiative. School leaders and teachers involved in the implementation and development of a CBC speak in terms of championing and legitimising the curriculum to their subject specialist colleagues. Teachers recruited to the competence‐based approach were sometimes described as a mix of volunteers and conscripts and overcoming any initial scepticism toward the approach required the position and status of the curriculum initiative to be established within the departmentalised organisational structure of the secondary school, and required continuing advocacy for the competence‐based approach.

Despite the belief that schools tend to be resistant to change, it is possible to find secondary schools in the UK which are investing in the design of an innovative curriculum for their Year 7 (11‐year‐old students). This article focuses on four of these schools and discusses some of the challenges they face in planning and implementing their competence‐based curricula (CBC). Such curricula tend to be based on the rationale that they better prepare all students for the constant changes of human knowledge and understanding. They develop transferable skills rather than subject‐specific content, which are considered necessary requirements for learners as future productive members of society in the twenty‐first century. Advocates of CBC argue that such curricula are more inclusive and emancipatory than traditional curricula, although this view is contested. Employing Bernstein%s concepts of framing and classification of the curriculum, this article describes the challenges and constraints encountered by four schools which have endeavoured to develop a competence‐based curriculum.

This article examines the use of focus groups (FGs) as a way of gathering pupils’ views on the implementation of new curricula. We provide illustrations of creative activities, which were especially designed for a case‐study research project exploring the views of 11‐year‐old pupils in English schools adopting an innovative approach to the Year 7 curriculum. We argue that combining FGs with creative methods encourages pupils to take an active role in interviews, enriches the quality of the data being collected and enhances the place of FGs as important tools in eliciting pupils’ voices for both research and curriculum planning purposes.