Curriculum Matters 16: 2020

This year, 2020, has been an extraordinary year. It has seen the escalation of COVID-19 to global pandemic status, the Black Lives Matter movement, the Aotearoa New Zealand election in October (delayed by a month due to the COVID-19 pandemic) and the US Presidential election in November. These events highlight a range of issues that are of potential interest to curriculum researchers and scholars and provide fruitful areas for ongoing curriculum research and… Read more

The views that early childhood teachers have of children and childhood are informed by the rhetoric and theories of early childhood, their cultures, life stories, philosophies, and ongoing practices as teachers. In Aotearoa New Zealand, Te Whāriki, the legislated national curriculum for early childhood education, further guides early childhood teachers’ practice and frames teachers’ image of the young child. This article confronts and critiques a… Read more

This article provides an overview and critical analysis of The English Language Learning Progressions (ELLP) (Ministry of Education, 2008). Identifying main themes through critical policy analysis, this review seeks to place ELLP in context through a comparison with The English Language Learning Framework: Draft (Ministry of Education, 2005) and English Language Learning Progressions (ELLP ) Pathway Years 1–8 (Ministry of Education, 2020a). Within this review,… Read more

In 2018, a research project funded by New Zealand’s Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI) explored the impact of online citizen science (OCS) projects on the science education of primary school children in New Zealand. This article provides an in-depth case study from this project in order to share ways in which one teacher used OCS projects specifically to develop students’ science capability, “Critique evidence”. Comparing data from students’… Read more

Shadow education or private supplementary tutoring has become an international phenomenon as increasing numbers of students seek help beyond traditional schooling for academic achievement. The positive relationship between students’ academic achievement and participation in shadow education has been previously reported. However, the manner in which shadow education practices can help students to gain and maintain higher academic achievement remains understudied… Read more