Is Asia represented in New Zealand secondary school curricula?

Margaret Kitchen

Abstract

It is likely that 16 percent of the New Zealand population will be Asian by 2026. Asian secondary school students desire more contact with local students; local students are unfamiliar with Asia. Asian students are a rich and largely untapped classroom resource. Could carefully structured classroom tasks with social and pedagogic agendas draw on this knowledge, thus moving in the direction of the social and economic imperatives of The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007a)? After all, we are told that human creativity, “the ultimate economic resource” (Florida, as cited in Peters & Besley, 2006, p. 4), can be effected through interaction in linguistically and culturally diverse groups (Hipkins, 2006).

Introduction

It is likely that 16 percent of the population will be Asian by 2026 (Statistics New Zealand, 2008). Given New Zealand’s current and projected demographic profile, and its forecast future reliance on its Asian neighbours, an Asian component in secondary school curricula, incorporating knowledge about Asia and Asian languages, coupled with a focus on developing the disposition and skills to interact with people from Asia, would seem justified. The New Zealand Secretary for Education, Karen Sewell, in her foreword to The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007a, p. 4), writes of a societal or state agenda, of the need to equip young New Zealanders with the “knowledge, competencies and values they will need to be successful citizens”. This call to educate young people to work together to create a better society reflects discussion of significant changes in Aotearoa New Zealand’s underpinning educational philosophies (see, for example, Adams, 2005; Clark, 2005). Whether social and economic purposes can be bedfellows (Codd, 2005) is not the focus of this paper. One strand underlying the concept of “successful citizens” is the argument that successful citizens create wealth and the acknowledgement that economics now drive education (Codd, 2005); another strand, complementary or not, is that relationships and connections between people with different life experiences, and between people and ideas, are vital and result in both knowledge creation (Bolstad & Gilbert, 2008) and a cohesive society. Whatever strength or value these arguments have, using the rich resources of Asian students to contribute to the generation of new knowledge and new ways of thinking and doing seems a useful orientation for curricular implementation. Writing about Western society, Cummins (2004, p. xv) argues that “any student who emerges into our culturally diverse society speaking only one language and with a monocultural perspective on the world can legitimately be considered educationally ill-prepared”.

The demographics

The increasing diversity of the school population was a fundamental driver in the revision of the curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007a, p. 4). Diversity is at times used imprecisely in New Zealand educational terminology. Alton-Lee’s 2003 synthesis of best evidence commissioned by the Ministry of Education uses diverse as an epithet to describe all school students, but in the field of second-language acquisition research, and in this paper, diversity refers to linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds (Nieto, 2004). Secondary schools, which are the focus of this paper, being familiar contexts for the writer, have significantly different demographics from even 10 years ago, and the fastest growing sector is the widely disparate group described as “Asian”, comprising groups who differ widely in history, culture and language. While the category “Asian” is used in data gathering as a panethnic label, and is used similarly here, it is noted that it is also a term used in racist discourse and is not acceptable amongst students as a nomenclature (Bartley & Spoonley, 2008). More than 9 percent of New Zealand’s population currently identify themselves as Asian (Statistics New Zealand, 2008). Statistics New Zealand identifies the main Asian groups, in order of numbers, as Chinese, Indian, Korean, Filipino, Japanese, Sri lankan, Cambodian and Thai. Not included in these statistics are the 7,331 foreign fee-paying students (FFPs) in secondary schools (Education Counts, 2007). Most of the FFPs are Asian. However, it is the public education system, not the export education industry and the possible threats it poses to the public system, that is the main focus of discussion here. (See Codd, 2005 for further discussion of educational policy and the challenges of globalisation.) The mere number of students of Asian descent in the public education system warrants an orientation towards Asia in the implementation of The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007a).

The rate of demographic shift in Aotearoa New Zealand may have accelerated in recent years, but the dominant culture is still Pākehā/European. A possible orientation towards Asia is considered in this paper from the stance of the dominant culture. What Asian students might do to assist their learning in a New Zealand classroom is not its focus. “Those with power are frequently least aware of—or least willing to acknowledge—its existence. Those with less power are often most aware of its existence” (Delpit, 1988, p. 282). It is acknowledged that, while not discussed in this paper, issues of power and inclusion for minority groups have a primary urgency for Māori and Pasifika students.

Research into the experiences of students of Asian descent in secondary schools is currently meagre and focuses largely on international students’ relationships with their host communities. The tertiary international-student sector is more researched, and the themes there are worryingly clear and repetitive—that Asian students require more planned help, in particular with relating to local students (Berno & Ward, 1998; Li, Baker & Marshall, 2002; Liew, 2004; Mills, 1997; Ward, 2001). All international students would like more contact with New Zealand students than they have, but this is particularly true for Asian students (Berno & Ward, 2003, p. 18). Native English speakers are reluctant to interact with Asian students in the classroom (Pang, 2006; Ward & Masgoret, 2004). Significant interaction is clearly not occurring spontaneously to any large extent, nor are structured opportunities being provided for students in secondary school classrooms to interact while thinking through new learning. School experiences are not developing for Asian students, or others, the new curricular visionary qualities of being connected and actively involved “in a range of life contexts” (Ministry of Education, 2007a, p. 8). In Berno and Ward’s 2003 study of international students, close to 60 percent of the 43 participants reported feeling rejected by New Zealanders. Most Asian international students return home having not achieved the level of engagement with their New Zealand student peers that they would have liked (McGrath, Stock, & Butcher, 2007). Despite research recommendations (Ward & Masgoret, 2004), interventions to increase the frequency and improve the quality of contact between Asian students and native speakers of English in schools have not been put in place. Are schools prepared to use these findings as a basis for curricular change as they implement plans for learning guided by The New Zealand Curriculum?

The current situation in secondary schools

Surprisingly, given this context, there is currently little commitment to a study of Asia or Asian languages within most New Zealand secondary schools. A consideration of the teaching of Asian languages is revealing. While Asian languages are taught in many schools, 80 percent of these schools are teaching Japanese (Asia New Zealand Foundation, 2005, p. 9). Japanese language has traditionally benefited from the strong Japanese teaching community, the provision of Japanese-language assistants and the competitions and trips that foster interest. Other Asian languages struggle, and although Chinese and Korean students constitute a greater proportion of the Asian school community, and pedagogical and curricular imperatives would suggest it is these languages students should be studying, Chinese remains the least popular of foreign languages taught in New Zealand schools.

There have been initiatives to increase secondary teachers’ and students’ knowledge of Asia. The Asia New Zealand Foundation, founded in 1994 as a nonprofit, apolitical organisation, is dedicated to building New Zealand’s links with Asia. If Korea is taken as an example, the foundation has offered secondary teachers short-term scholarships to visit Korea and experience the culture. Under an initiative initially proposed by the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs, a small group of teachers was offered incentives to learn the Korean language and to teach it in secondary schools in the early 1990s (resulting in the writing of a Korean curriculum in 1998) (Ministry of Education, 2002). However, the visiting-teacher schemes have not translated into school-wide policy initiatives, the Korean teaching initiative in secondary schools has not been sustained and there is no updated curriculum document for Korean language. The University of Auckland-based Confucius Institute is finding its mission to make Mandarin the second language of choice in New Zealand schools a mission impossible. It tried marketing the language to principals in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, but none bought the idea. The institute offered free Mandarin taster programmes to Auckland schools, but only 13 accepted the offer—and fewer than half said they would consider offering lessons in the language after the free trial period ended (Tan, 2008). Such reluctance is surprising given that all schools are required to offer opportunities to learn at least one language other than the language of instruction to all students in Years 7–10. “there is, arguably, a low frequency of Asian content taught in most secondary schools in relation to its importance to New Zealand” (Asia New Zealand Foundation, 2005, p. 50). Schools have generally relegated Asia to policy documents or recruitment of international students.

For most teachers, inclusion of Asian knowledge within their mainstream curricula would require considerable professional support and professional development. New Zealand preservice teacher education does not prepare teachers for using Asia-related material in the social studies curriculum, according to the 2005 Asia New Zealand Foundation Research on Studies of Asia in New Zealand Secondary Schools. Respondents to this survey on the teaching of Asian studies within teacher-education institutions commented that lecturers are inadequately prepared and resourced for mediating Asia-related material to their New Zealand students. New Zealand teachers are not provided with professional development to exemplify the social sciences conceptual strands through studies of an Asian context, for example (Asia New Zealand Foundation, 2005, p. 9). The report indicated a low frequency of Asian content being taught at any time throughout the year in New Zealand secondary schools. The barriers identified were availability of resources (68 percent), assessment commitments (66 percent), availability of professional development (66 percent) and preparation (58 percent).

The government may have Asia in its sights, but in The International Education Agenda: A Strategy for 2007–2012, it admits that “more knowledge of Asia [is] needed in the New Zealand education system” (Ministry of Education, 2007b, p. 14). This document makes four points: few schools are committed to studying Asia; few New Zealanders speak Asian languages; there is little commitment to Asia in teacher education; and there are few teachers of Asian descent.

Recruitment, retention and performance of teachers of Asian backgrounds are significant concerns in the wider AustralAsian area (Han & Singh, 2007). Immigrant teachers provide important role models for an ethnically diverse population (Cruickshank, 2004). Recruitment of immigrant teachers may appear a priority, but it is teacher professional development in general that is a regular refrain in reports from government-funded “apolitical” bodies such as Asia New Zealand. There has been little support given to secondary teachers to teach students about Asia (Asia New Zealand Foundation, 2005, p. 57). The older age profile of teachers in the areas where Asian studies are commonly found (geography, economics, social studies) means that any knowledge gained from university study is likely to be obsolete (Asia New Zealand Foundation, 2005, p. 52). Resourcing and professional support for teachers in schools is required. Moreover, teacher educators need funding and direction to orient courses towards Asia. In terms of language and knowledge of Asia there is “a long way to go” (Zhang, 2007).

In conflict with the reluctance to engage with Asia in schools, education systems internationally are coming to understand that students’ ethnicity and culture exert a major influence over what they learn or do not learn at school. In her study of international students, Ward (2001) found that New Zealand secondary school teachers were unlikely to make changes to the way they taught or to the content of what they taught to accommodate these different learning needs. In classroom life in New Zealand, students from migrant cultures frequently encounter learning difficulties arising from the mismatch between the pedagogical assumptions of the New Zealand classroom and student expectations of how instruction should be delivered (Hamilton, Anderson, Frater-Mathieson, Loewen, & Moore, 2006). “To date relatively little has been done to help teachers deal with the changing dynamics of classrooms that now include students … with different skills and prior knowledge, who are accustomed to different learning methods and traditions” (Asia New Zealand Foundation, 2003, p. 13). Mainstream classrooms where teachers incorporate these different learning methods and traditions, where local pedagogic assumptions are made explicit, where first language and prior knowledge are valued and used as resources and where language and content learning are integrated are likely to engender appropriate learning environments (Met, 1994). In such classrooms students’ conceptual and linguistic understandings could be developed, and important contributions could also be made towards broadening all students’ world views.

Inertia towards change is an issue. The 2006 joint Asia New Zealand Foundation and Ministry of Education report Preparing for a Future with Asia reiterates this lack of interest in Asia, and that there is little evidence of the incorporation of Asian people’s voices in policy or practice in schools. Teachers are missing out on opportunities to include Asian contexts. Ward and Masgoret (2004) contend that secondary classrooms are less inclusive than tertiary. Most teachers with migrant and international students are unlikely to make any changes in the content of the classroom learning tasks or the structure of the learning tasks (Ward, 2001). Although Asian students have been coming for a long time now, “New Zealand’s ‘Asian’ literacy remains poor” at all levels (McGrath et al., 2007, p. 2).

Other reasons have been advanced for the unpreparedness of secondary schools to tackle Asia in the classroom. Current pedagogical discussions at both national and local level focus on assessment and literacy and numeracy (the Literacy and Numeracy Strategy that has been in place now for some eight years). Such initiatives should be advantageous to students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds; however, as Australian researchers point out, school improvement projects focusing on literacy are not fundamentally driven by second-language-acquisition theories (Hammond, 2001). Contextualised local imperatives have also been very important since Tomorrow’s Schools, although even in Auckland, which has the largest population claiming Asian descent, and whence the loudest noise came with schools demanding more resourcing to cope with “the Asian influx” in the late 1980s, the local imperative is unlikely to be Asia or Asian students, perhaps because Asian students, except those from refugee backgrounds or who are FFPs, do not appear in the underachieving statistics (Wang & Harkess, 2007).

The barriers are clear and make unlikely, without a huge shift in thinking and resourcing, an orientation towards Asia in the implementation of the new curriculum. The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007a) forefronts social competencies such as relating to others and being connected. Schools, and teachers in particular, will be expected to design teaching and learning programmes that are situated in particular contexts and that embody this knowledge and these generic competencies and values. This is a huge and demanding expectation. The 2006 Asia New Zealand Foundation and Ministry of Education report Preparing for a Future with Asia recommends that schools begin by recognising the importance of Asia; by engaging with Asian communities; by incorporating learning about Asian nations through subjects such as art, history, social studies and geography; and by valuing and supporting Asian languages.

Young people interacting successfully on the global economic stage add wealth to the New Zealand economy, and so do Asian students studying in mainstream classes in Aotearoa New Zealand. The export education industry creates thousands of jobs and contributes roughly two billion dollars annually to the local economy (Ministry of Education, 2007b). If New Zealand wants to attract Asian international students, then their learning contexts need to appeal. Currently the experiences of international students do not meet their expectations. “International students expect and desire contact with their domestic peers, and positive social, psychological, and academic benefits arise from this contact; however, the amount of interaction between international and domestic students is low” (Ward, 2001, p. 3). The focus of public discussion on export education has been predominantly on its potential as a revenue-earning industry, yet clearly attention warrants being devoted to the critical, yet mundane, issue of crosscultural classroom interaction. New Zealand has yet to fully seize the opportunities that diversity of the student population offers. Wide-ranging discussion of such issues around the implementation of the revised curriculum has the potential to begin to effect change.

What could be done: Students as resources

Central to the new curricular vision is the coupling of a social agenda with new knowledge creation. One of the key enabling structures spelt out in supporting documents is diverse groupings. In unpacking the key competencies, Hipkins (2006) draws on Gilbert’s Catching the Knowledge Wave (2005), alerting us to the creative thinking opportunities that come from working in culturally and linguistically rich groups. Interventionist strategies clearly need to be introduced to promote effective intercultural thinking (Ward, 2001). Teachers need to plan tailored interactive tasks, and Hipkins (2006) makes it clear that students need regular practice at these tasks. Students must experience knowledge building rather than merely listening to teacher talk about the competency. Wells (2002) recommends the setting up of “communities of inquiry” where students work on authentic tasks that are of interest to them. New understandings are internalised as students talk to solve a collaborative problem. They relate this new knowledge to what they currently believe, and use it to guide the action around the problem.

Drawing on the different world views of students by problem solving in linguistically and culturally diverse groupings works well when all students are competent users of both social and academic English. Many second-language users are in the process of developing these English-language skills, and interventions are often needed to ensure their equitable participation in discussion which is dependent on concurrent language and conceptual development. Second-language-acquisition researchers would add another layer—the fundamental importance of role allocation or turn taking within the group, so that each student has a role that is integral to the problem solving. It is this reliance on the work of all members of the group that fosters intercultural dialogue, understanding and language development (Nation, 2007). A careful structuring of the collaborative learning task may be fundamental to this rich interchange of ideas when the group members are from different cultural backgrounds and at different levels of English. An example is the interpersonal benefits of the carefully structured talk involved in reciprocal teaching. Such group work reduces stereotypes and increases the willingness to work with members of other groups, and to take on board new ways of thinking and relating. Students with co-operative experiences are more able and willing to take the perspective of others and are more effective interpersonally (Johnson & Johnson, 2002). Literature on co-operative learning in ethnically diverse classrooms, such as reciprocal teaching, with its insistence on the interdependence of the learners in the group, demonstrates clear academic gains (Hattie, 2008). Creative sparks, thinking outside the square, language and conceptual development, understanding and valuing of diversity are all claimed as benefits of well-structured crosscultural group work. Senior (2006) uses the double helix to represent her sociopedagogic theory of classroom practice that is task based. She draws on and develops Kramsch’s “third place” hypothesis (1993), showing through research that effective learning and teaching takes place for language learners when a common shared world can develop that is created through interaction with other learners.

Enabling structures such as working in crosscultural groups may be one factor in implementing the new curriculum—incorporating Asian students’ prior knowledge is another. The new curriculum values young people being “able to relate well to others”, being “members of communities” and being “international citizens” (Ministry of Education, 2007a, p. 8). This agenda is threaded through the vision, principles, values and key competencies. For example, from the principles, teachers and students are to [value] cultural diversity, through inclusion of the values, the histories and traditions of all students, including Asian. It may be possible to align the social benefits of reciprocity in local curricula with the future-focused themes of the new curriculum, such as citizenship, enterprise and globalisation (Ministry of Education, 2007a), drawing on the knowledge bases of the diverse students in the classroom. The economic themes echo recurring arguments by politicians, educational strategists and others. McGrath et al. (2007), for example, argue for developing literacy and crosscultural competence focusing on Asia in particular. These arguments are driven by the government’s overarching priorities of economic transformation and national identity (Ministry of Education, 2007b), although note that others argue that these social and economic imperatives are incompatible (Codd, 2005, for example).

Using “reciprocity” in local curricula, where migrant students are linked into the local curriculum and local students enhance their intercultural awareness and skills through, in this case, an Asian studies curriculum that includes well-planned group work, is consistent with recommendations from second-language-acquisition research (Nation, 2007). Reciprocity also characterises successful interventions overseas (Eisenchlas & Trevaskes, 2007). The implementation of the revised curriculum provides a clear rationale for drawing on Asian students’ funds of knowledge. (Moll, Amanti, Neff and González, 1992, and González, Moll and Amanti, 2005, advocate an approach where teachers, in their roles as researchers and learners, visit families to document funds of knowledge, the premise being that people are competent and have knowledge based on their life experiences, and that these resources can be harnessed for classroom teaching.) The classroom inclusion of such funds of knowledge would assist with a raft of competencies and values the new curriculum document aims for. Students should be “positive in their own identity … able to relate well to others . . . contributors to the well-being of New Zealand . . .” (Ministry of Education, 2007a, p. 8), for example. The key competencies imply the development for all students of crosscultural skills. The New Zealand Curriculum provides opportunities for international content in all eight learning areas, but particularly in the areas of English, the arts, social sciences and learning languages. The creation of structured learning opportunities that build cultural and economic skills and understandings are imperatives in The New Zealand Curriculum. Using reciprocity in local curricula would implement these curricular imperatives.

Incorporating the resources that Asian students in secondary school classrooms embody would change relationships between Asia and New Zealand. Developing such relationships, rather than merely developing knowledge about other people, embodies the shift in thinking from the skills of the previous curriculum to the competencies of The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007a). For their current and future lives students need also the disposition to want to develop lifelong crosscultural skills. “Competencies include the skills, knowledge, attitudes and values needed to meet the demands of a task” (Brewerton, 2004, p. 2).

Another approach that has been used informally and formally in New Zealand schools is peer tutoring. Peer-tutoring systems can have a two-way beneficial effect (Barnard, 2002; van Hees, 1994), although such systems may not be as successful in a secondary school setting, especially when pairings are with untrained native English speakers (Strauss, smedley, & Hayward, 2004). Qualified peer tutors may be the key. In a 1991 Massachusetts study that could be translated into the New Zealand secondary context, native English-speaking students were provided with an intensive programme on how to communicate with speakers of other languages (Tabors & Snow, 1994). The students were taught how to initiate conversation, how to speak slowly and clearly, to request clarifications and rephrase and clarify their own thoughts. This intervention was successful in increasing contact and communication between new learners of English and native speakers of English, since it distributed the burden of communication more evenly throughout the classroom (Tabors & Snow, 1994). The native speakers saw overcoming the communication barriers as their responsibility. Hipkins (2006) reports on two projects reviewed by the British National Education Research Forum, where primary school students were explicitly taught skills for listening to and interacting with each other in learning conversations. The students in these studies improved both cognitive learning and communication competencies. These studies were with young students, however, and would need fine-tuning and further research for the New Zealand secondary sector. There has been little research on either the extent or the outcomes of activities that promote inclusion in the classroom in New Zealand. This is clearly an area that warrants further attention (Ward, 2001). Teachers could begin by intervening with, and closely observing, strategies that engage students with each other as they learn.

What could be done: Leadership

While individual teachers can make specific changes in their classrooms, it is also important to consider the context of the entire school. Principals play a role that is vital in the advancement and support of policy, programme implementation and especially teacher professional development (Alton-Lee, 2007; Hamilton et al., 2006). It is difficult for individual classroom teachers to develop a classroom that is inclusive of other cultural perspectives if they are not supported by inclusive practices throughout the school. Such practices need to go beyond the familiar level of multicultural food festivals, cultural festivals and bilingual and multicultural signage. It needs to be acknowledged that during the time it takes to develop inclusive school systems both principals and teachers need considerable support. For experimentation with teaching and learning to occur, teachers need the time and space to talk with others, to reflect on and modify their current understandings and classroom practices. Wells (2002, p. 204) calls for a radical change to teachers’ working conditions to include time for “enacting the curriculum through critical inquiry into their own practice that is conducted in collaboration with their colleagues and, ideally, in conjunction with parents and other community members”.

An inclusive school culture filters down to teachers and students. Attitudes of native English speakers have important roles in both the language learning and integration of Asian students. The extent to which migrant students acculturate to the target language group (in this case native English speakers) will affect the degree to which they acquire the second language (Baker, 2006; Schumann, 1978). Students who feel they belong are more likely to see ways they can participate and contribute (Hipkins, 2006). It is through language and culture that we construct ourselves as human beings and make sense of the world around us.

If secondary school students are unwilling to socialise and mix with Asian New Zealanders or Asian international students, what kind of society will be ours in the future? How will our young people learn to engage with the Asian region and with other societies in other parts of the world if interventionist strategies are not implemented in the secondary school classroom? Asian New Zealanders and Asian international students are rich and available resources in the secondary school classroom. Learning to interact with students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds and learning from their different world views will help to prepare students for a fast-changing world. Well-planned, positive learning experiences of working in culturally and linguistically rich groups will prepare students to be the “powerful, resilient, independent learners, who are intellectually nimble enough for the unknowable societies and economies of the future” (Gilbert, 2008, p. 6).

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The author

Margaret Kitchen is a senior lecturer on The Graduate Diploma of TESSOL at the University of Auckland. She tries to put into practice what she teaches by running English language classes for Korean parents and caregivers associated with a large urban secondary school. She has been a secondary school teacher of English, ESOL and Korean.

Email: m.kitchen@auckland.ac.nz