Joce Nuttall (Ed.). (2013). Weaving Te Whāriki: Aotearoa New Zealand’s early childhood curriculum document in theory and practice. 2nd edition. Wellington: NZCER Press. ISBN: 978-1-927151-81-5

Reviewed by Alexandra C. Gunn, University of Otago, College of Education

Educational change in New Zealand has been a hot topic in 2012. We have faced cutbacks, closures, charter schools and league tables, not to mention the ‘rejuvenation and consolidation’ of Christchurch schools following the 2010/2011 earthquakes. A common reaction has been resistance—from teachers, principals, teacher unions, academics and, in the ...

This article examines the different outcomes that have emerged in the framing of knowledge for senior secondary school subjects through the process of aligning curriculum and assessment. By tracing paths of development in the Alignment of Standards Project for history, art history, classical studies and social studies it can be ...

This article questions whether the increased involvement of private enterprise in the ECEC sector in recent years has unintentionally reinforced a simplistic understanding of disability. Reliance on such understandings will restrict access to meaningful, respectful curriculum in the sector for children with disabilities. Given that Aotearoa/New Zealand’s ECEC curriculum document ...

This article describes my research project which sought to discover generalist primary teachers’ perspectives on including visual arts in their classroom programme, and the factors that supported or limited them in this. A picture of the everyday classroom and its complex demands emerged from the quantitative and qualitative data gathered ...

Pasifika learners. NCEA, as the nationally endorsed means of measuring achievement, exerts considerable power over what educators teach Pasifika young people is important and of intrinsic value for them as they prepare to take their places in society. This article argues that the NCEA drama texts are culturally charged with ...

Current notions of “good” citizenship have become closely related to the pursuit of good health and wellbeing. This, alongside popular claims that physical education can be associated with the promotion of particular morals, values and attitudes, suggests that the subject may be viewed as cultivating a specific type of person ...

Three years ago Ruth Round began teaching her Year 4, mixed-ability class in ways that made music central to her teaching while at the same time integrating The New Zealand Curriculum focusing in particular on language learning, poetry and art. Through a theoretical frame based on the ideas of ...

The teaching and learning of languages additional to English (L2) in English-dominant societies has reached a crisis point, with teachers often facing considerable challenges with recruiting, and then retaining, students. This article presents findings from a study in New Zealand, where the introduction of a revised curriculum has provided the ...