In this paper we outline a case for including realism as an approach for carrying out research in education. Realism is often missing or under-represented in methodology text books which tend to misrepresent positivism and over-claim the epistemic authority possible for interpretivism. While interpretivism is arguably the dominant research…

This paper theorises a curriculum model containing four features. We use these features as criteria to analyse and evaluate two distinctive curriculum design types: '21st Century Learning' and 'Powerful Knowledge'. The four features are: (i) the underpinning theory of knowledge in each curriculum design type; (ii) the knowledge structures used to…