Curriculum Matters 6 : 2010

Recently, I had the opportunity to listen to Michael F. D. Young, whose book Knowledge and Power (1971) was very influential on my early thinking about curriculum. Michael Young is an emeritus professor at the University of London and was in New Zealand to give the prestigious Hood lecture at The University of Auckland...

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This article deals with the philosophical issue of epistemology, or knowledge theory, in education as related to forms of learning, teaching methods and assessment in the language arts classroom, specifically reading instruction. The article details two common forms of curricular knowledge emerging from the essentialist and instrumentalist epistemological clusters; the former represents knowledge that is “given in advance to students”, and the latter refers to knowledge that is “created… Read more

Visual arts education has long enjoyed a place in the New Zealand curriculum. Institutional endorsement of the value of visual arts learning for all children has maintained its status as a core subject in schools, a secondary schools examination subject and as specialist courses in colleges of education and schools of arts. The visual arts retain their presence today, and few question their centrality to a healthy curriculum. In drawing together a comprehensive statement of subject knowledge… Read more

Through the use of fictionalisation, a narrative inquiry tool that allows for the “trying on” of future possibilities, I survey the state of the US curriculum field in the aftermath of Schwab’s “practical”. I note that the theory–practice binary, which Schwab explicated in the 1970s, morphed into a highly convoluted theory–practice–policy divide by the 2000s. I demonstrate the latter in the narrative exemplar of my teacher education practices I include. To end, I sketch seven research… Read more

In this review of the English area of the New Zealand curriculum, the spotlight is focused on the grammar teachers in primary schools are expected to know and understand in order to effectively teach and assess literacy. It is suggested that, despite some professional development in the 1990s during the Exploring Language project, teachers currently fronting New Zealand primary school classrooms lack sufficient declarative knowledge of grammar to teach and assess the grammatical components… Read more

This article argues that empathy has an important place in the history classroom and can contribute to the aims of The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007). The article examines the concept of empathy from both an affective and cognitive angle. It proposes that empathy is linked to The New Zealand Curriculum in the affective domain through the key competency relating to others and cognitively through the Social Sciences learning area’s focus on… Read more

Heteronormativity is pervasive and ongoing in most societies. New Zealand, despite its comparatively liberal laws in relation to sexual orientation, is no exception. The effects of such attitudes, values and prejudices extend into education and, by default, into curriculum. Findings from a study including student and staff online surveys, a series of focus group and individual interviews and an overview of programme content suggest that there was a hidden curriculum of heteronormativity in… Read more

In an attempt to develop tolerance and acceptance of other cultural groups, teacher educators from the University of Newcastle worked with members of the local African community to develop a creative arts programme for young school children. The process of engaging with the African cultures, the school teachers and students, and different aspects of the creative arts led us in directions, through an action research cycle, that we could not have anticipated. We moved from a position of… Read more