Curriculum Matters 9 : 2013

This message is only visible for not-logged-in users.

In a self-managing school system where localised curriculum decision-making prevails, this study asks the question “How were the geography and science senior secondary school curricula influenced by the Canterbury earthquake series?” Drawing on an ecological framework of teacher agency, the study found that responses to the Canterbury earthquakes were significantly impacted by the curriculum-assessment nexus, in… Read more

The changing media landscape of the Internet has created a diverse environment for learning about global and national current events. Keeping up with the news is difficult and can result in students feeling overwhelmed by having to absorb so much information from so many sources. The argument is presented that a critical literacy approach to news media promotes a deeper level of learning about current events by teaching students to view news media as a cultural text.… Read more

This article relates Korean parents’ stories of their children’s transition from primary to secondary school and identity struggles on entering secondary school. Mystified by the loss of a characteristically invitational culture at primary school, and without salient role models to provide ideas of who they might become, some students responded to pressure from newly arrived international students to prioritise Korean-language use and to learn traditional Korean school… Read more

This article explores the way in which a teacher educator worked with a group of undergraduate student teachers to use social sciences as a vehicle for developing three key competencies. While the study is primarily practitioner focused, it does include student perspectives of the learning process. The argument is made that preservice student teachers, who will be expected to teach through key competencies in the classroom, should be experiencing learning through key… Read more

This article reports how two first-year student teachers have used their initial teacher education programme experiences in science education to gain a better understanding of The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007) and its overarching science strand, the Nature of Science. These student teachers demonstrate how they would explicitly include the Nature of Science in their use of the Building Science Concepts resource but also why the Nature… Read more

National developments in curriculum and pedagogy have prompted interest in the ways that teachers plan for teaching. Preservice teachers are at a particular point in their teaching journey, yet little is known about how they go about planning for long-term student learning. This article discusses results from a study of preservice primary teachers who were preparing a long-term plan for mathematics. By using metaphors of navigating a curriculum landscape and of noticing… Read more

The scientific management of compulsory education in Aotearoa New Zealand has been well documented and it appears that it is being extended to early childhood education (ECE). Using the language of scientific management as a default language for describing the purpose and function of education is a key means for the enculturation of scientific management practices in ECE and compulsory schooling sectors. This article advances the argument that the scientific management of… Read more

This study explores how the stories of two teachers’ classroom practice intersect with current policies relating to primary mathematics education in New Zealand. It is identified through this study that fully enacting policy in mathematics holds challenges for the participant teachers, particularly owing to the incoherence of policies relating to teaching mathematics. Teacher desire to do the best for their students is revealed as the teachers explain how they grapple with and… Read more

This article examines the possibilities for challenging hegemonic understandings associated with the rehabilitation of intellectually disabled offenders detained for compulsory care and management, through the design of a tertiary diploma programme. The curriculum was developed to prepare care co-ordinators and care managers appointed to administer a piece of New Zealand legislation, the Intellectual Disability (Compulsory Care and Rehabilitation) Act 2003. The potential of… Read more