No abstract

<p>The New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) and the national secondary school qualification, the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), afford teachers an enormous degree of autonomy over what they teach in their classrooms. This is in line with international trends in curriculum design which shape curricula around generic, open-ended learning outcomes rather than specific content. However, as of yet there is very little research either in New Zealand or internationally into the ways teachers make decisions about what to teach within an environment of great curricular freedom. Accordingly, this thesis investigates how high school English teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand make decisions about which written texts to teach within the context of current curriculum and assessment frameworks. It conducts this investigation from what will be called a modified social realist perspective. This theoretical perspective adapts the classic social realism promoted in the work of Michael Young and others, in order to develop a version of social realism which has explanatory power for humanities subjects, and subject English in particular.  The thesis moves through three main sections: context, theory and findings. The first section details the context in which this study is located, with a focus on how the New Zealand Curriculum and NCEA are clear examples of what will be called the New Curriculum: a movement in curricular reform which advocates for the removal prescribed content and positions the teacher as a curriculum maker, rather than a curriculum implementer. This section also includes a literature review. The second section outlines the theoretical position of this thesis. It shows how classic social realism struggles to account for both the non-abstract and subjective nature of literary experience, and moves from this to advance a ‘modified social realism’ which incorporates these features of literary experience into its model. The methodology of the study is also included here. Finally, the third section outlines the study’s findings. It is shown that given the freedom to choose their own texts, teachers make decisions based on, in order of importance, students’ interests, the likelihood of a text succeeding in NCEA assessments, and whether the text will expose students to important perspectives and ideas. This thesis argues that such priorities are problematic, as, from a modified social realist perspective, focusing on student interests and assessment success can limit opportunities for students to be exposed to truly transformative literature. This thesis therefore ends by suggesting three potential reforms which would allow students to encounter such literature more frequently, including enhanced professional development, and a curriculum document with clearer guidelines around the types of texts that students should encounter.</p>

The last 30 years have witnessed a global ‘curricular turn’, with curricula increasingly moving from specifying particular content to specifying broad, skill‐based ‘learning objectives’. This paper explores the implications of this curricular turn through a critical assessment of the current state of secondary school English in Aotearoa New Zealand. This is achieved through a critical discourse analysis of key curricular and assessment documents and a series of semi‐structured interviews with English teachers. Biesta's concept of ‘learnification’, which captures how contemporary schooling can focus on learning in a way which can obscure important questions of what students are learning and why, is used as a lens through which to analyse this data. The paper argues that secondary school English in New Zealand is highly ‘learnified’, that is, both official documents and teachers are concerned above all else with ensuring ‘learning’ is happening and ‘learning objectives’ are being met, rather than with bigger questions of purpose. This problematically decreases the opportunity for what Biesta calls a ‘pedagogy of interruption’: the opportunity for curricular encounters to challenge and extend students’ horizons.

<p>The New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) and the national secondary school qualification, the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), afford teachers an enormous degree of autonomy over what they teach in their classrooms. This is in line with international trends in curriculum design which shape curricula around generic, open-ended learning outcomes rather than specific content. However, as of yet there is very little research either in New Zealand or internationally into the ways teachers make decisions about what to teach within an environment of great curricular freedom. Accordingly, this thesis investigates how high school English teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand make decisions about which written texts to teach within the context of current curriculum and assessment frameworks. It conducts this investigation from what will be called a modified social realist perspective. This theoretical perspective adapts the classic social realism promoted in the work of Michael Young and others, in order to develop a version of social realism which has explanatory power for humanities subjects, and subject English in particular.  The thesis moves through three main sections: context, theory and findings. The first section details the context in which this study is located, with a focus on how the New Zealand Curriculum and NCEA are clear examples of what will be called the New Curriculum: a movement in curricular reform which advocates for the removal prescribed content and positions the teacher as a curriculum maker, rather than a curriculum implementer. This section also includes a literature review. The second section outlines the theoretical position of this thesis. It shows how classic social realism struggles to account for both the non-abstract and subjective nature of literary experience, and moves from this to advance a ‘modified social realism’ which incorporates these features of literary experience into its model. The methodology of the study is also included here. Finally, the third section outlines the study’s findings. It is shown that given the freedom to choose their own texts, teachers make decisions based on, in order of importance, students’ interests, the likelihood of a text succeeding in NCEA assessments, and whether the text will expose students to important perspectives and ideas. This thesis argues that such priorities are problematic, as, from a modified social realist perspective, focusing on student interests and assessment success can limit opportunities for students to be exposed to truly transformative literature. This thesis therefore ends by suggesting three potential reforms which would allow students to encounter such literature more frequently, including enhanced professional development, and a curriculum document with clearer guidelines around the types of texts that students should encounter.</p>

This article seeks to explain how Aotearoa New Zealand moved from a consensus that the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) should grant a high degree of autonomy to teachers, to an emerging view that it ought to be more prescriptive about content. To do this, it takes an assemblage approach to policy analysis, understanding policies as constantly evolving ‘bundles’ of divergent components temporarily woven together. The article first explores the complex intermingling of Third Way priorities, knowledge economy discourses, educational progressivism and narratives of ‘harmonious’ biculturalism which constitute the 2007 NZC. It then explores the sustained critique of the NZC from the 2015 parliamentary petition calling for compulsory teaching of the New Zealand Wars, up to the government’s 2021 ‘curriculum refresh’ announcement. It is argued that this ‘refresh’ moves to reassemble the NZC so that it accommodates a series of demands made of it in recent years, including demands the curriculum take a more active role in redressing the impact of colonisation, and demands from both business-aligned groups and academics that the curriculum become more ‘knowledge-led’.