Purpose: A recent United Nations (2021) report stated that education needs to be concerned with enhancing human relationships with the natural world if we are to work toward building a sustainable future. This paper proposes that educational practices underpinned by an ecological orientation in mid-century Aotearoa offer insights for educators…

Educational leadership has become a prime focus in the past few decades. Margaret Stuart's thesis is that, as the New Zealand education reforms of the 1990s were bundled with neoliberal economics, the discourse of educational leadership ascended. The country is unique in that its devolution of educational management to individual schools, and an…

From the 19th to the 20th century, a separate system of education existed for Maori learners in New Zealand in which health, hygiene, and manual work were emphasised. This system was based on beliefs that Maori students were less capable, therefore they needed a reduced curriculum to that provided for non-Maori in state schools. Known as the…

This article draws attention to shifting educational discourses on the two texts of the 1840 treaty: te Tiriti o Waitangi and the Treaty of Waitangi. Policy and resource conversations in education reveal subtle strategic shifts in use of an invented idea of "treaty principles"--from standing in for and attempting to reconcile the two…

This article sets out to demonstrate the considerable extent to which the New Zealand school system has become saturated by private interests, and to explain this development over time. It is the first such overview of the privatisation of schooling in the New Zealand context. The analysis illustrates that the rise of private actors has involved…

Leadership is now promoted as the sine qua non (essential ingredient) for maintaining and developing effective education in New Zealand. It was not this way in the latter years of the 1980s and through the 1990s, when educational management was the preferred nomenclature. Since the turn of the millennium, management has subsided into the shadows…

In this paper we examine the history and development of internal assessment practices at a university in New Zealand. The work re-visits the 'assessment arms race' study and builds upon the key arguments presented so far. It was discovered that student demand in the early 1970s triggered the introduction of internal assessment and workloads…

Since its emergence as a distinct subject area in the nineteenth century, English has been an important, but contested, subject. Competing discourses, resulting in different models of English, have vied for prominence, each with ideologies about the purposes of education and the needs of students and the state. However, while international…

Since its inception in 1907 New Zealand's "School Journal" has provided primary schools with free good quality material to be used for a variety of purposes in the classroom. At the same time, in reflecting curriculum reforms and changing perceptions of literacy learning, it has reproduced often conflicting ideologies. This article…

Parent participation with learning, defined here as parental engagement, has been a particular educational policy focus in many countries in recent decades. Grounded in neoliberal education sector reforms, the relationship between parents, learning, and schools has been reframed over this period. Using a genealogical approach, this article…

From the outset, the Labour-led Coalition Government of 2017 was intent on 'transformation'. For the education sector, this was signalled immediately with the announcement of an extensive programme of review and reform initiated in their first 100 days of power. Yet, what is at the heart of the proposed changes and what were they trying to…

This paper provides insights into political battles associated with the attempted introduction of a postcolonial bicultural dimension to the 'Health Physical Education in the New Zealand Curriculum' (NZHPE). Limited attention has been given to the gestation period of four years between the submission, release of the draft and the final publication…

This book contributes extensively to a better understanding of how vocational education and training (VET) and practice-based learning and teaching is developed and designed. It presents examples of vocational education as an ongoing dialogue, continually refreshed through engagement between educators and learners, Maori, employers, industry, and…

Calls for educators to promote student voice and agency in classrooms often overlook the importance of the policy milieu in which teaching and learning is performed. In this article we interrogate the constitution of student, teacher and researcher subjectivities within student voice research. Working with Stephen Ball's neoliberal technologies of…

This paper addresses the issues of managerialism and collegiality in universities in times of change. It is based on a case study of a New Zealand university from 1985 to 2010 using interviews with key participants and documentary evidence from the public and private domains. The study concludes that views of university staff about the concepts of…