Curriculum Matters 5 : 2009

Curriculum is a hotly contested notion, yet it is a relatively new concept in educational thought. Pratt (1980) claims that it was only during the 20th century that attempts were made to describe, analyse and interpret curriculum as a phenomenon. Other writers (for example, Hargreaves, 1994) also claim that it took until the 1960s for it to become a substantial field of study within educational research and development. In the New Zealand context, Ivan Snook suggests that we did not have a… Read more

This article examines the status of Te Ātiawa histories of place in Port Nicholson Block secondary schools’ history classes. It describes the research participants’ experiences of cultural continuity and discontinuity experienced in familial and secondary school settings when learning about the past. It also describes their history topic preferences, and their perceptions of the benefits of and barriers to a place-based education partnership between local Te Ātiawa people and the… Read more

The study reported in this article trialled the effectiveness of cases as a teacher-education tool with a class of preservice history teachers. The collaborative critical analyses of cases, in a learning community of peers, enabled the teachers to develop their pedagogical content knowledge for history teaching, and helped them to make connections between their teacher-education programme and teaching practice in schools. The methodology engendered enthusiasm and motivation for linking… Read more

The integration of Number and Algebra into one strand in The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007) raises questions about the relationship between these two branches of mathematics and about suitable approaches to teaching. This article argues that arithmetic and algebra are intimately linked and should not be taught in isolation. There needs to be an emphasis on generalisation within the teaching of arithmetic and consideration of prerequisite arithmetic skills and… Read more

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?

This article aims to prompt discussion about thinking in the school curriculum. It begins with a brief exploration of thinking, in which the difficulty of defining and classifying thinking is acknowledged. The notion that the brain is a complex “living” and emerging system is at the core of this. A justification for emphasising thinking in education follows. Some thinking-focused strategies currently being used in schools are described and critiqued. These include those across, within and… Read more

The experiences of disabled students and the teacher aides who support them in accessing the New Zealand curriculum form the focus of this article, which begins with an overview of the legislative and policy context regarding students’ educational rights. Participants’ experiences are conceptualised as a continuum, in which students may have (a) full and meaningful participation in the curriculum, (b) partial access and participation mediated by a teacher aide or (c) no access at all.… Read more

This article compares the 1997 New Zealand social studies curriculum statement with The New Zealand Curriculum, in terms of the location of Pacific knowledge and experience, and argues that teacher decision making is a political process that has become an even stronger determinant for whether or not Pacific topics will be included in school social studies programmes, given that national curriculum directives for such topic inclusion no longer exist. Such a dislocation raises… Read more

ITE programmes are currently in transition, facing changes in society and societal expectations, changing concepts about knowledge and its uses, changing roles for teachers and changes to teaching and learning approaches. These must all be accommodated within the constraints faced by tertiary providers of ITE as they cope with competing demands. This paper discusses these tensions in New Zealand ITE provision and considers the possibilities through the lens of a futures-focused multinational… Read more

In their introductory acknowledgements to this two-volume set, editors Robin Averill and Roger Harvey recall that the initial idea behind the books was to create a suitable text for secondary mathematics initial teacher education programmes, modelling the structure around the very successful editorial efforts of Jim Neyland with Mathematics Education: A Handbook for Teachers. I expect the audience will be more numerous than that intention implied. These books have contributions from… Read more