In a year of unprecedented events in New Zealand’s history, in which I was to lose people close to me and in which I saw firsthand the toll taken on my hometown community of Greymouth and my current place of residence, Christchurch, I cannot reflect on this year in curriculum ...

This paper explores views of mathematics that have been offered in parliamentary exchanges over the past two decades. It makes connections between the development of mathematics curriculum and the political and ideological arrangements in which curriculum is nested. In tracing how school mathematics debates in parliamentary sessions are set within ...

In New Zealand the majority of students attend schools that reflect the dominant mainstream context, yet these schools include indigenous Māori and learners from diverse cultural and language backgrounds. By building on contemporary cultural knowledge and students’ own experiences, the arts have the potential to enhance educational outcomes for a ...

This paper conceives history in the New Zealand curriculum as a curriculum problem. In exposing this problem, history’s identity is thrown into question. I outline a motif of disturbance in light of my professional experiences of history curriculum and assessment policy shifts (1990s to 2010). From a critical pedagogy stance ...

This paper views key competencies through a sociocultural lens to discuss the role they have played as agents of change in The New Zealand Curriculum and their as yet unrealised potential to stimulate further change. It draws on several exploratory studies to describe broad types of action and change which ...

The aim of this article is to comment on the ways in which beliefs and theories of learning affect the teaching and learning of mathematics. When mathematics is viewed as a static body of knowledge, a transmission style of teaching is often employed. In contrast, a radical constructivist view of ...

Currently, the Māori word hauora is translated in New Zealand curricula as health and wellbeing or as health and physical education for Māori-medium education. “Hauora, wellbeing” is also an underlying concept within Health and Physical Education in the New Zealand Curriculum, where it is claimed that it offers a “Māori ...

The official New Zealand curriculum as it pertains to social sciences embodies tensions between newer transformative and older transmissive agendas for education, and in its disciplinary divisions. This article explores the mixed messages in the curriculum for teaching and learning within social sciences. I argue that tensions in the curriculum ...

In November 2007, changes to the New Zealand curriculum were published, with an expectation that schools would fully implement these changes by February 2010 (Schagen, 2011, p. 1). Among the changes were aspects that encouraged greater recognition of an entrepreneurial orientation. We set out to gauge the understanding preservice teachers ...

International comparative studies offer unique opportunities to interrogate and challenge embedded practices within education systems. In this paper we explore the textbook presentation of fractions from a Chinese text. The fraction tasks reviewed in the Chinese text involve practice on learnt knowledge as well as exercises designed to extend the ...