Global citizenship education (GCED) is UNESCO’s response to the impact of global warming, poverty, inequality, and human-rights violations that threaten peace and sustainability worldwide. The goal of GCED is to empower learners of all ages to appreciate that these are serious issues and to actively advocate—both locally and globally—for more ...

This special section of Curriculum Matters provides the opportunity to consider the topic of global citizenship education from diverse perspectives. Global citizenship education (GCED) is one of those terms that can polarise people. Is it a fresh and new approach to engaging children and young people in global issues or ...

This article analyses research literature and policy texts to investigate the extent to which culturally responsive education policies can improve Māori achievement in schools. It presents a snapshot of current levels of Māori inequity, which is followed by an account of the history of Māori education policy to illustrate the ...

Traditional sole-teacher classrooms are being replaced by large, open, flexible learning environments in New Zealand schools. Teacher collaboration within these shared teaching and learning spaces raises important questions about curriculum organisation in secondary-school settings. If secondary teachers are to work collaboratively in shared spaces, will collaboration occur in cross-subject teams ...

Curriculum studies is a field of educational endeavour that presents a wide range of issues and questions relating to curriculum. To answer these questions, a variety of research is undertaken, including theoretical and empirical examinations of curriculum-related problems and challenges, which may take the form of larger or smaller scale ...

As the commemorations of the 100th anniversary of World War 1 draw to a close, it is timely to reflect on what we have learnt about that time in our history. This study used the New Zealand School Journal as a data source to investigate what school children were learning ...

Shadow education has been studied in areas such as comparative education, educational policy, sociology of education, education and economics, and lifelong education, but mainstream Anglophone curriculum studies have largely ignored this phenomenon. We argue that shadow education should be considered as an emerging (and significant) focus of curriculum studies worldwide ...

Multiple international studies have confirmed the positive impact of library services and teacher–librarian partnerships on delivering curriculum outcomes and quality student learning in secondary schools. Despite this, there are indications internationally that school libraries are in decline. This article uses qualitative data from a national survey of teachers and librarians ...

In national contexts where curriculum policies explicitly advocate for the development of students’ higher order thinking capabilities, evidence suggests that achieving this goal can be quite elusive. In this article we explore this challenge by drawing on senior secondary school examples from two national contexts (New Zealand and Israel) that ...

The school curriculum and teacher professional standards in Aotearoa New Zealand emphasise culturally responsive pedagogies for Māori learners. However, there is a gap between rhetoric and practice. Drawing on expert-interview methodology, and based on an interview with Tamsin Hanly about complex curriculum issues, this interview article seeks to stimulate deep ...