The recursive elaboration of key competencies as agents of curriculum change

This paper views key competencies through a sociocultural lens to discuss the role they have played as agents of change in The New Zealand Curriculum and their as yet unrealised potential to stimulate further change. It draws on several exploratory studies to describe broad types of action and change which the key competencies have afforded, tracing several recursive cycles of professional learning during which understanding of the role key competencies might play in curriculum change became elaborated in deeper and more nuanced ways.