Curriculum Journal names winners of Best Practitioner and Early Career Researcher Paper awards

This year new awards recognise the best sole-authored papers published in the Curriculum Journal in 2020 by practitioner and early career researchers (ECRs) respectively.

The winner of the Best Practitioner Paper Award was Esther Vernon for ‘Teaching to the epistemic self: Ascending and descending the ladder of knowledges’ (Curriculum Journal, 31[1], 27–47). The editors and editorial board agreed that it was impressive work that brought together theoretical concepts in ways that challenge us to think around epistemological matters in curriculum and teaching in an empirical study.

The two winners chosen for the Best ECR Paper Award were:

• Alexander Pratt for ‘Curriculum in conflict: How African American and Indigenous educational thought complicates the hidden curriculum’ (Curriculum Journal, 31[1], 97–114)
• Eli Tronsmo for ‘Changing conditions for teachers’ knowledge work: New actor constellations and responsibilities’ (Curriculum Journal, 31[4], 775–791).

Both papers offered in-depth engagement with a breadth of literature, bringing together various analytical concepts that provide new ways to understand the hidden curriculum and teacher curriculum-making respectively.

Winners of the Curriculum Journal Editors’ Choice Award announced

The annual Curriculum Journal Editors’ Choice Award, which recognises the best paper published in the journal in 2020, was awarded to

• Ana Lucia Lennert da Silva and Christina Elde Mølstad for ‘Teacher autonomy and teacher agency: A comparative study in Brazilian and Norwegian lower secondary education’. (Curriculum Journal, 31[1]: 115–131).

The editors said, ‘This paper addresses one of the key concerns facing contemporary education systems – the pervasive homogenisation of educational accountability practices characterised as GERM – through a comparative study of two quite different education systems, Brazil and Norway. The paper explores the related but conceptually distinct issues of agency and autonomy in these contexts, illustrating how global policy agendas are mediated quite differently in the two settings. A strength of the paper lies in its conceptualisation of these two concepts, which are often conflated. The paper shows how teachers negotiate the constraints and opportunities afforded by centrally imposed accountability systems, often in creative ways that demonstrate considerable agency and result in the enactment of different kinds of curricula.’

Two further papers were commended:

• Claire Gorrara, Lucy Jenkins, Eira Jepson and Tallulah Llewelyn Machin for ‘Multilingual perspectives: Preparing for language learning in the new curriculum for Wales’ (Curriculum Journal, 31[2]: 244–257).
• Livingston, K. and Doherty, C. for ‘A counter‐narrative of curriculum enrichment in performative times (Curriculum Journal, 31[4]: 666–686).

The editors said, ‘These are three very different papers, but have in common that they offer a challenge to existing assumptions about curriculum that underpin much contemporary policy. The papers challenge in different ways – empirically and theoretically – and offer nuanced accounts of the instrumentalism, narrow performativity and weak conceptualisation that often characterises education policy and practice.’