Background: National school curriculum statements detail what it is important to learn and are highly context- and discipline-specific. The health and physical education (H&PE) learning areas have multiple learning purposes, and facilitating this in curriculum design is a significant and challenging task. Objective: There is little reporting…

This article reports on a line of findings that explores how New Zealand secondary teachers teach about inequality as part of the official New Zealand curriculum ("NZC") in their respective teaching subjects. This second phase of the study is part of a wider project about how inequality is positioned within "NZC." In-service…

In February 2020, the Ministry of Education asked the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) to examine the curriculum-levelling construct that sits at the heart of "The New Zealand Curriculum" (Ministry of Education, 2007) (NZC). A key goal of the research was to investigate, whether-- and if so, how--the construct helps…

The OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030 (E2030) project's overall goal is that of looking to the future in terms of how school curricula should evolve given the technological advances and other changes that societies are now facing. Towards that end, the E2030 project centres on the idea that education needs to equip students with the…

This paper explores the challenges for teachers in positioning them as independent curriculum makers. History teachers in New Zealand have recently entered uncharted territory with the abandonment of prescribed topics for history and a new-found authority to determine the selection of historical knowledge taught to their senior secondary students.…

In February 2020, the Ministry of Education asked the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) to examine the curriculum-levelling construct that sits at the heart of The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007). A key goal of the research was to investigate, whether-- and if so, how--the construct helps (or hinders)…

This article reports on some of the findings from case studies conducted with six secondary school music teachers in New Zealand. The purpose of the study was to investigate and explain the ways in which teachers manage the relationship between classical and popular music in their elective classroom programs, utilizing a theoretical framework…

Families play important roles in children's learning. Yet, teachers' values and beliefs may sway how families may participate in assessment of their child's learning within early childhood education. This paper reports on a qualitative case study in a New Zealand early childhood setting that explored teachers' views about involving families in…

Innovation is essential for the education sector. The ways in which curriculum decision making is organised reflects different implicit approaches on how educational systems pertain to promote innovation in education. Curriculum holds an outstanding place when seeking to promote innovation in education, as it reflects the vision for education by…

In this article, I argue that emancipatory possibilities for Maori, the Indigenous people of New Zealand, rely on structural changes that enable them to have control over resources, decision making, and meaning, and that emancipation is a journey traveled by oppressed groups as they exercise their collective agency. The 1990s development of…

Describes a major New Zealand research project testing various strategies designed to develop meaningful partnerships between caregivers and teachers. Four field officers (developers) from the Curriculum Review Action Unit of the Ministry of Education were responsible for facilitating developments within four clusters of six to eight schools…