Perspectives on the Knowledge Problem in New Zealand Education: Towards Equity (SpringerBriefs in Education) 9811629072, 9789811629075

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SPRINGER BRIEFS IN EDUC ATION

Megan Lourie Graham McPhail   Editors

Perspectives on the Knowledge Problem in New Zealand Education Towards Equity

SpringerBriefs in Education

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Megan Lourie · Graham McPhail Editors

Perspectives on the Knowledge Problem in New Zealand Education Towards Equity

Editors Megan Lourie Auckland University of Technology Auckland, New Zealand

Graham McPhail University of Auckland Auckland, New Zealand

ISSN 2211-1921 ISSN 2211-193X (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Education ISBN 978-981-16-2907-5 ISBN 978-981-16-2908-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2908-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Foreword

This book is written by members of the Knowledge in Education Research Unit (KERU) to celebrate KERU’s tenth anniversary. Established in 2010, the Unit is dedicated to research into how our understanding of knowledge contributes to helping teachers and provides a robust subject-based curriculum through progressive pedagogy. Both these aims require knowledgeable teachers who are able to teach in motivating ways so that students acquire a love of knowledge. It is this love that unlocks our intellectual potential and holds out promise for the future. Although KERU is based in New Zealand, it is connected to the post-2000 international research movement dedicated to subject knowledge provision as the purpose of national education systems. As in the title of Michael Young’s 2008 book, the purpose is to ‘bring knowledge back in’. Indeed it was a serendipitous encounter with Professor Young that inspired the establishment of KERU. That connection continues to grow as international links are made and cemented with colleagues in the Knowledge in Education International Network which meets biennially at Cambridge University in England. The KERU contributors to this book acknowledge and deeply appreciate the ways in which the involvement with these colleagues has proved so generative. Numerous research projects, including the current KERU Knowledge-Rich School Project, publications, and presentations are the result. This book is the latest. It enables us to discuss our latest research into the key role of effective curriculum design with several chapters devoted to the Curriculum Design Coherence Model (CDC). In acknowledging our thanks to our international colleagues, we note that the book is the work of the authors alone. Its limitations are ours.

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Finally, a word to two important groups: To the many teachers both in New Zealand and overseas who have told us of their interest in the ‘knowledge-rich’ curriculum, and to our masters and doctoral students who are taking the knowledge project into new and exciting directions; this book has been written for you. We hope that it encourages you to continue your interest in the liberating power of a knowledge-rich curriculum as well as feeding your own love of knowledge. September 2020

Elizabeth Rata Director Knowledge in Education Research Unit (KERU) Faculty of Education and Social Work University of Auckland Auckland, New Zealand

Introduction

Graham McPhail and Megan Lourie We are living in a time when information is everywhere. Devices handy, we can Google virtually anything we would like to know, so it seems we no longer need to teach traditional forms of knowledge but rather to focus on skills. Globalisation is a fact of everyday life, and the rate of technological advancement is accelerating. Schools need to prepare students for jobs that have not yet been created, for technologies that have not yet been invented, and to solve problems that have not yet been anticipated. These are statements that many teachers and teacher educators will find familiar. For anyone concerned about the future of education, the stakes seem very high. How do we best prepare young people for an unknown future? This is the urgent question of the day framing our thinking about curriculum and is the question at the heart of this book. It is a particularly urgent question given the persistent inequality in educational outcomes in New Zealand. Despite claims that New Zealand education is the envy of the world and the commitment by dedicated teachers, schools, and successive governments to raising achievement for all students, there has been little improvement for those at the bottom, and our PISA results show a general downward trend for everyone (Walters, 2019). Given these serious problems, the book aims to provide some new ideas for thinking about how more equitable outcomes might be achieved in New Zealand so that all students are well-equipped to live and work in contemporary society. While the issues that surround student achievement are complex and multifaceted including both in school and out of school effects (Snook & O’Neil, 2010), being willing to consider ‘alternative’ possibilities to add to those already being put into practice (for example, culturally responsive pedagogies) is vital if New Zealand education is to better deliver on its promise of educational equity. In this book, we argue that it is necessary to confront what we term ‘the knowledge problem’. The word knowledge tends to be associated with conservative agendas in education and is often not clearly defined. We make the distinction between knowledge as facts and information and the deeper conceptual knowledge

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that subjects offer as systems of interrelated concepts and make the case for the continued importance of subject knowledge as the basis for curricula. We refer to subject knowledge as comprising both knowledge-that and know-how-to which are very different from generic skills or competencies such as collaboration or communication. Knowledge-that refers to the specialised concepts and content of a subject and know-how-to refers to subject-specific applied knowledge—subject competencies, techniques, and skills. It is important to reiterate here that in this book ‘knowledgethat’ does not mean lists of information and facts and rigidly prescribed lists of content. For us, the term subject knowledge connotes something conceptual and abstract born out of an interrelationship between knowledge-that and know-how-to which is the means to developing critical and creative thinking (Winch, 2017), the type of intelligence required to prepare students for the unknown future referred to above. Education has always been about preparing students for an unknown future and while the rate of technological innovation appears to have increased in pace, the challenge for education to be future-focussed is not new. For example, in 1940, John Dewey said, “The world is moving at a tremendous rate—no one knows where. We must prepare our children not for the world of the past—not for our world—but, for their world—the world of the future.” (cited in Little, 2013, p. 87). What does appear to be new, however, is the message of urgency about the need for change (Doogan, 2009). This sense of urgency is encouraged by the international forces of educational governance that have emerged in recent decades, for example from UNESCO (Hoadley, 2018) and particularly from the OECD with its forms of international comparison, and its emphasis on generic skills and constructivism as educational principles (Robertson, 2016). We argue that this emphasis on skills is having a major influence on both curricular content and pedagogical approaches at the expense of what is being taught and the development of teacher and student subject knowledge. Biesta (2012) refers to this worldwide trend as ‘learnification’. Teachers are under pressure to focus their practice on teaching students ‘how to learn’ with much less focus on the question of what to learn. An example of this shift can be seen in the increased prevalence in schools of inquiry forms of pedagogy. New Zealand’s curriculum changes of the past two decades reflect the international trend toward a greater emphasis on skills in education (Lourie, 2018, 2020). Before the 1993 New Zealand Curriculum Framework (NZCF) was published, the New Zealand curriculum was specified through more than a dozen syllabi and guidelines which were predominantly framed in terms of what students ought to know (Bolstad et al., 2012). The NZCF represented a shift in curriculum policy from a focus on subject knowledge, activities, and experiences, to outcomes. The New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) (Ministry of Education, 2007), which replaced the NZCF, is also an outcomes-based curriculum. The knowledge-that dimension of subject knowledge is mostly tacit because in an outcomes-based curriculum, learning outcomes describe what students should be able to do. If teachers are not clear about what is needed in order for students to demonstrate a deep understanding of the subject, the result can be the demonstration of know-how-to without a connection to knowledge-that.

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The lack of explicit subject knowledge in the New Zealand Curriculum means that each school is left to make its own decisions about what to teach. The decisionmaking process is further complicated by the inclusion of Key Competencies in the curriculum. While the Key Competencies are intended to be integrated with subject content knowledge, they appear in a separate place in the curriculum. This can lead to the misconception that they do not necessarily need to be thought of as subject-based competencies. Our concern is that we have a national curriculum that emphasises skills and competencies and contains broad achievement objectives rather than specific subject knowledge and that the result of this combination can be uneven access to the forms of knowledge that result in academic achievement (McPhail, 2020a). Our central argument is that educators need to engage more explicitly with both forms that subject knowledge takes—knowledge-that (subject concepts and content knowledge) and know-how-to (subject procedural knowledge—subject competencies, techniques, and skills). Deeper levels of learning are most likely to be achieved when the two types of knowledge are more explicitly differentiated in design and integrated in practice to enable students to develop expertise (Winch, 2017). For example, students demonstrate deep learning and are knowledgeable when they are able to make judgements that draw on knowledge-that in relation to the outcomes of their learning—knowing why. This theory of knowledge has significant implications for curriculum design (the what of teaching), pedagogy (the how of teaching), and assessment (McPhail, 2020a, b; Rata, 2019; Rata & McPhail, 2020). A second key point is to acknowledge the theoretical distinction between curriculum content and pedagogy. This distinction allows us to theorise more clearly the interrelationship between what we teach and how we teach it, and in particular, to acknowledge the interrelationship between the conceptual structure of a subject and pedagogy. The 21st C emphasis on learnification and skills has shifted the focus in education towards pedagogy at the expense of the subject knowledge the pedagogy is intended to reveal. A key tenet of our argument that the relationship between knowledge-that and know-how-to needs recalibrating in education is the recognition that knowledge-that is paramount. There is something special about the structure of subject knowledge that offers unique affordances for learning (McPhail, 2020a). This structure is called ‘epistemic’ and it refers to the constellations of related concepts that comprise a discipline, a subject, and a topic. For example, the superordinate concept of ecosystems in Biology infers subordinate concepts such as energy transformations, biogeochemical cycling, abiotic, and biotic. Expertise and fluency in a subject normally develop when we begin to have a sense of ‘the whole’ and understand how the conceptual parts relate to each other and fit together. Winch (2017) argues that effective teachers need a panoramic view of a subject so that they can make informed choices about what, why, when, and how to teach. In this approach, the content is the carrier of something significantly more important, and the means for deeper learning, the subject concepts. The final key point we wish to make in this introduction concerns the link between the ideas we are advocating and the moral aim of equity and social justice. We argue that access to the forms of knowledge described above is a social justice concern.

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This can appear somewhat counterintuitive, since, as mentioned above, the word knowledge is often associated with conservative and elitist ideas and practices in education, but we argue that education that utilises this theory is progressive. It is progressive in its aims to combine the need for a knowledge-rich, conceptually deep curriculum with a student-centred approach to pedagogy. Epistemic knowledge is the means to develop reasoned thought and abstract and critical thinking. We propose this as a more likely route to increased equitable outcomes than the current over-emphasis on ‘learnification’ (Biesta, 2012). In our approach, a number of the key dimensions of education are taken into account—curriculum content, pedagogy, and the different identities of students, which can include both cultural identity and an academic identity. This integrated approach is pivotal for looking afresh at ways in which social justice aims in education can be met. A focus on pedagogy alone will be insufficient to close the achievement gap common to many societies. As a shorthand for the ideas associated with our definition of knowledge, we use Michael Young’s (2010a, 2010b) phrase powerful knowledge. The ‘power’ refers to the epistemic structural affordances described above, the specialisation, coherence, and explanatory power of epistemic knowledge, and the potential this provides for social and intellectual change when students have access to it. Scholars from around the world who have become increasingly concerned about the general neglect of knowledge in education have begun to work to address this problem by researching our understanding of knowledge itself; how it is produced, its organising principles, and the effects of its recontextualization in schools. The work of British sociologist of education Basil Bernstein (1924–2000) has provided the most sustained theoretical source for this work which is continuing to develop worldwide under the umbrella term of social realism (see Hoadley et al., 2019). Amongst a great many useful concepts, Bernstein (2000) espoused a set of pedagogic rights for students—rights of inclusion, enhancement, and participation, and these rights underpin the educational and social justice aims of our argument. Enhancement is realised through the development of confidence at the individual level while inclusion is realised at the social level including intellectual, cultural, and personal dimensions. Participation ultimately leads to involvement in the construction, maintenance, and transformation of order at the civic and political levels: the right to participate in decision-making. These rights espouse recognition of the student as a culturally and socially located individual with certain needs and rights. Such ideals are currently strongly emphasised in New Zealand education, for example through the notion of identity in the curriculum and in culturally responsive pedagogies. However, we suggest that this alone will be insufficient without recognition of the ‘epistemic self’ as well (Lynch & Rata, 2018; McPhail, 2014). This recognition can be secured for students by providing them with access to the subject or academic identities—exemplified in the specialised knowledge and identities of their teachers. For this reason, teachers must be seen as far more than facilitators. The epistemic self emerges as students develop an interest in and connection to a subject area, and growing expertise develops through the integration of the different types of knowledge; the knowledge of ‘know-how-to’—applied subject skills and capabilities—and the important ‘knowledge-that’ that glues the two forms of knowing together (Winch, 2013).

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To sum up, the central premise of the book is that we need to begin a fresh discussion about the relationship between what students need to know (subject knowledge or ‘knowledge-that’) and what they need to be able to do (skills or ‘know-how-to’). This is necessary for deciding how best to prepare students for the future and is a curriculum design issue. Curriculum, therefore, is our focus in this book; however, we acknowledge the importance of pedagogical expertise. We argue that by differentiating between what is to be taught (the curriculum—subject concepts, content, skills, and competencies) and how these things might be taught (pedagogy), both dimensions can fulfil their intended function in a knowledge-rich curriculum carried by progressive, student-centred pedagogies.

Overview of Chapters Chapter 1 contributes to the book’s aim of providing an alternative way of thinking about how equitable outcomes might be achieved in New Zealand education. Elizabeth Rata focuses on what knowledge is taught to students in the context of curriculum localisation. A number of questions about the nature of knowledge are posed: what is the type and form of knowledge which leads to educational achievement? What theory of knowledge informs the current New Zealand curriculum? And finally, what should be taught to all students and how? In Chap. 2, Graham McPhail introduces a framework that describes three possible approaches to teaching. The three approaches or models provide a shorthand for thinking about education. The approaches are: teacher as transmitter, teacher as facilitator, and teacher asprofessional. Each term condenses a number of ideas about education and the relationship between subject knowledge and pedagogical approaches. Chapter 3 demonstrates how to design a topic using the Curriculum Design Coherence (CDC) model (McPhail, 2020b; Rata, 2019) to achieve the logical coherence found in an epistemic structure. Elizabeth Rata uses the topic ‘the history of Ngati Kuri’, an iwi (tribe) in New Zealand’s Far North to illustrate the problematic nature concerning who selects what curriculum knowledge and why; that initial curriculumselection process which precedes design. It also demonstrates the crucial role of the connection between a topic’s concepts and the content chosen to express those concepts. The next three chapters look more closely at different aspects of schooling and some of the outcomes and possibilities associated with different practices. In Chap. 4, Barbara Ormond illustrates how students’ engagement with substantive knowledge can be marginalised when a curriculum that is broadly stated and minimal in its knowledge specification operates in tandem with strong accountability and performance measures. The potential for a curriculum to position substantive knowledge (knowledge-that) at the forefront of education, while also accommodating important procedural knowledge (know-how-to), is examined for the senior secondary subject of History and other humanities subjects.

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In Chap. 5, Alexis Siteine explores the concept of identity as a dimension of curriculum. A broader discussion is provided about the purpose of schools by asking whether the primary role of the school is to develop a student’s identity as a member of their social group or their identity as a learner. The purpose of the chapter is to suggest a way in which both identities can be promoted as the student’s rights to subject knowledge is acknowledged as the central role of schooling. The next chapter provides an example of a pedagogical approach that illustrates the important relationship between knowledge-that and know-how-to. Sophie Tauwehe Tamati discusses how the combined use of TransAcquisition Pedagogy with the Curriculum Design Coherence (CDC) model (McPhail, 2020b; Rata, 2019) supports bi/multilingual students to acquire the academic language required for subject knowledge. This combination provides in the first instance, cognitive, and linguistic coherence for the students to draw on all their languages to build ‘knowledge-that’ (via TAP) and secondly, curriculum design coherence for them to ‘know-how-to’ apply their knowledge in their school work. The final two chapters of the book draw together some of the themes which have emerged in earlier chapters with a focus on the cultural, political, and economic contexts of curriculum thinking. In Chap. 7, Megan Lourie discusses three significant characteristics of contemporary education in New Zealand within the context of a changing education policy landscape over the past thirty years. She demonstrates how and why the knowledge-that dimension of subject knowledge has been moved to the background of curriculum design in New Zealand. She argues that we need a curriculum that carefully balances knowledge-that and know-how-to and that teachers need a clear understanding of the difference between what we teach and how we teach it. In the last chapter of the book, John Morgan takes an expansive approach to think about curriculum; where we have been, we are now, and where we are going. His chapter charts some of the major shifts in culture and curriculum in the British context and he invites the reader to reflect on how their own experiences resonate with the argument of the chapter regardless of their local context. The chapter makes the case that curriculum is both a reflection, and part of, the production of culture, and culture is always political. The book finishes with a reminder that a political theory of the curriculum is as important now as ever.

References Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research, critique. (rev. ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. Biesta, G. (2012). Giving teaching back to education: responding to the disappearance of the teacher. Phenomenology and Practice, 6(2), 35–49. Bolstad, R., et al., (2012). Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching – A New Zealand perspective. Ministry of Education commissioned report from NZCER. Retrieved September 26, 2020 from http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/schooling/109306. Doogan, K. (2009). New Capitalism? Polity Press. Hipkins, R., Johnston, J., & Sheehan, M. (2016). NCEA in Context. NZCER Press.

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Hoadley, U. (2018). In Taylor & Francis (Ed.), Pedagogy in poverty: Lessons from twenty years of curriculum reform in South Africa. Routledge. Hoadley, U., Sehgal-Cuthbert, A., Barrett, B., & Morgan, J. (2019). After the knowledge turn? Politics and pedagogy. The Curriculum Journal, 30(2), 99–104. Little, (2013). 21st Century Learning and Progressive Education: An Intersection. International Journal of Progressive Education, 9(1), 84–96. Lourie, M. (2018). ‘21st century practice in teaching and learning’ in New Zealand education: Strategic intention statements 2010–2016. Pacific-Asian Education, 30, 21–32. Lourie, M. (2020). Recontextualising 21st century learning in New Zealand education policy: The reframing of knowledge, skills and competencies. New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies, 55, 113–128. Lynch, C. & Rata, E. (2018). Culturally responsive pedagogy: A New Zealand case study. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 27(4), 391–408. McPhail, G. (2014). The right to enhancement: Students talking about music knowledge in the secondary curriculum. The Curriculum Journal, 25(3), 306–325. McPhail, G. (2020a). Twenty-First Century Learning and the Case for More Knowledge About Knowledge. New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40841-02000172-2. McPhail, G. (2020b). The search for deep learning: a curriculum coherence model. Journal of Curriculum Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2020.1748231. Ministry of Education. (2007). The New Zealand Curriculum. Ministry of Education. Rata, E. (2019). Knowledge-rich teaching: A model of curriculum design coherence. British Educational Research Journal, 45(4), 681–697. Rata, E., McPhail, G. (2020). Rata, E., & McPhail, G. (2020). Teacher Professional Development, the Knowledge-Rich School Project and the Curriculum Design Coherence Model. In J. Fox, C. Alexander, & T. Aspland (Eds.), Teacher Education in Globalised Times: Local Responses in Action (pp. 311–329). Singapore: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4124-7_17. Robertson, S. L. (2016). Global governance of teachers’ work. In K. Mundy, A. Green, B. Lingard, & A, Verger (Eds.), The Handbook of global education policy (pp. 275–290). Wiley Blackwell. Snook, I., & O’Neil, J. (2010) Social class and educational achievement: beyond ideology. New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies, 45(2), 3–18. Walters, l. (2019). Education report makes for grim reading. Retrieved September 17, 2020 from https://www.newsroom.co.nz/grim-report-on-education-on-how-students-are-faring. Winch, C. (2013). Curriculum design and epistemic ascent. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 47(1), 128–146. Winch, C. (2017). Teachers’ know-how: a philosophical investigation. Wiley Blackwell. Young, M. (2010a). The future of education in a knowledge society: The radical case for a subjectbased curriculum. Pacific Asian Education, 22(1), 21–32. Young, M. (2010b). Why educators must differentiate knowledge from experience. Pacific Asian Education, 22(1), 9–20.

Contents

Part I

Knowledge, Curriculum, and Teaching

1 Powerful Knowledge and a Progressive Subject Curriculum . . . . . . . . . Elizabeth Rata

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2 Approaches to Teaching for Achieving Equitable Outcomes . . . . . . . . . 11 Graham McPhail 3 Curriculum Coherence and the CDC Model: A History Example . . . . 23 Elizabeth Rata Part II

A Closer Look at Schooling Practices

4 Knowledge Marginalisation in Curriculum and Practice: Walking the Tightrope Between Curricula Freedom and Accountability . . . . . . 35 Barbara Ormond 5 Knowledge and Student Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Alexis Siteine 6 The TAP/CDC Combination for Bi/Multilingual Students to Acquire the Academic Language Required for Subject Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Sophie Tauwehe Tamati Part III Knowledge and Curriculum in Cultural, Political, and Economic Contexts 7 Subject Knowledge in New Zealand Education Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Megan Lourie 8 Why We Still Need a Political Theory of the Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 John Morgan

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Knowledge, Curriculum, and Teaching

Chapter 1

Powerful Knowledge and a Progressive Subject Curriculum Elizabeth Rata

Introduction This chapter contributes to the book’s aim of providing an alternative way of thinking about how equitable outcomes might be achieved in New Zealand education. I propose a progressive subject curriculum, one aimed to ensure that all students receive the type of specialised knowledge which enables us to understand the natural and social worlds. This is the knowledge produced in the disciplines and altered for teaching at school, knowledge which provides explanations for phenomena that we do not experience in our daily lives. My purpose in highlighting the need for such a curriculum is to redress the unintended consequences of the 1990s’ shift to an outcomes-based and localised curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2020). The consequences of the shift to a localised curriculum include a wide variation in the type and provision of knowledge offered by schools, with the variation often occurring along socio-economic lines (Wilson, Madjar, & McNaughton, 2016). The effects of the shift, one characterised by a learner-led rather than a knowledge-centred pedagogy, can be seen in the steady decline in New Zealand’s international educational rankings since 2000 (Walters, 2019). The role given to individual schools to decide in consultation with their local communities what knowledge will be taught to students was intended as an equity initiative. However, it is an initiative that lacks an explicit theory of knowledge and hence is not fully justifiable and defensible. In contrast, the progressive knowledge curriculum (or a theory of knowledge differentiation) argued for in this chapter is justified by the theory of two types of knowledge which explains how subject knowledge is constituted (its epistemic structure). The argument is; if the national curriculum is created by specialists in each subject (for primary and secondary), if that standardised curriculum is designed according to E. Rata (B) University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. Lourie and G. McPhail (eds.), Perspectives on the Knowledge Problem in New Zealand Education, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2908-2_1

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the epistemic structuration of the knowledge, and following from that, if that epistemically designed curriculum is taught in engaging ways, then students from all backgrounds are more likely to achieve educationally (Rata, McPhail, & Barrett, 2019). In other words, the progressive value of equity for all students depends upon access to expertly selected and well-designed subject knowledge. Knowledge differentiation theory as used by contemporary social realists writers (Maton & Moore, 2010; Barrett & Rata, 2014; Barrett, Hoadley, & Morgan, 2018) builds on Durkheim’s idea of a distinction between the ‘sacred’ (i.e. propositional or theoretical knowledge) and the ‘profane’ (i.e. knowledge about how to live in the everyday world). In this explanation, the two types of knowledge are (i) conceptual knowledge developed in the disciplines of the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and arts which are altered for teaching in schools as subjects; and (ii) knowledge acquired from experience and observation to use in daily life. This knowledge type also has a number of names: socio-cultural, social, culture, folk, experiential, spontaneous, everyday, primary, tacit, and common-sense. I prefer the term ‘socio-cultural’ (Rata, 2012) for the latter type for two reasons. Firstly, it connects to the social group to which the child belongs. This may be a heritage group characterised by kinship, ethnicity, or religion, or a contemporary group characterised by its socio-economic circumstances and location. Secondly, the term also refers to ‘culture’, that is, to the practices, beliefs, and values which provide a group’s cohesion and sense of identity. Because this knowledge is the culture of our primary social group we tend not to question it; simply taking it for granted as ‘natural’. That is certainly true for young children who are surprised to discover that other people may not live the same way as they do. The two types of knowledge are distinguishable in terms of their respective characteristics and, significantly for education, in their different purposes. Socio-cultural knowledge is simply picked up as children are socialised. This is the case with spoken language for example. Disciplinary-derived theoretical knowledge, on the other hand, enables understanding of the world beyond the experiences of the group and is characterised by its written form and epistemic structure. This knowledge is produced in socio-epistemic contexts with specific methods of inquiry, however, where the knowledge is found to be credible it becomes abstracted from its context to become an epistemic ‘object’ available for all. Its capacity to take the knower beyond the local world is what gives this type of knowledge the value I discuss in the next section. It is a value that justifies subject knowledge as the purpose of education systems in modern pluralist societies (Rata, 2018).

Types of Knowledge Prior to the development of the localised curriculum in New Zealand from the 1990s, subject knowledge was placed at the centre of education. Its centrality was justified in two ways. The first concerns the intrinsic or theoretical power of this type of knowledge to explain the natural and social worlds that are unknown to us through

1 Powerful Knowledge and a Progressive Subject Curriculum

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experience and observation alone. Following the social realist writers mentioned above, I will use the term ‘powerful knowledge’ to refer to the explanatory power of this type of knowledge (Young & Muller, 2013, 2019). The second reason for the centrality of subject knowledge is that those who have access to this knowledge are provided with the intellectual means to acquire power over their lives. This power may operate in intellectual, economic, social, and cultural spheres and gives the ‘potential or capacity’ (Young & Muller, 2019, p. 199) to change one’s life circumstances. Those with this knowledge have greater choices about how to live, what career to pursue, and how to contribute to society at large. Those without are far less likely to enjoy control over their lives and to enjoy the self-worth and social benefits that come from ‘making oneself as one makes one’s life’.

Powerful Knowledge and Knowledge of the Powerful Acquiring the means by which individuals can improve their circumstances includes, by extension, the potential to belong to the decision-making class in society. This implicates subject knowledge in socio-economic class division, inviting questions about the use of such ‘powerful knowledge’ as ‘knowledge of the powerful’, that is, as an intellectual resource for perpetuating social inequalities. Equally, however, ‘powerful knowledge’ may well be a resource for improving society in the interests of all as seen, for example, in the ways in which highly specialised workers in a nation’s health system raise the overall standard of life for all citizens. This ‘powerful knowledge’ (education as interruption) versus ‘knowledge of the powerful’ (education as reproduction) dichotomy is one that has led to fundamental disagreements amongst educationalists about whether schooling offers an opportunity or perpetuates inequality. ‘Equality of opportunity’ to acquire subject knowledge is the principle behind Peter Fraser’s famous comment in 1939 when, as Prime Minister and Minister of Education, he spoke of the opportunities which were to be provided to all by New Zealand’s education system (AHJR, 1939). From the 1970s, this optimism was challenged by writers who claimed that equal opportunity is a myth and that subject knowledge is the knowledge of the powerful (Shuker, 1987). Instead of regarding science and the other disciplines as universal knowledge, these postmodern-informed claims held that all knowledge is relative to the society which produces it. The use of the term ‘Western knowledge’ for disciplinary knowledge captures this view that the knowledge is not separate from socio-cultural knowledge but is in fact the beliefs and values of the West. In addition, it is claimed that knowledge has been used to oppress others, particularly during the period of colonisation (Stewart & Devine, 2019). These views have produced an ambivalence towards, even by some a rejection of, subject knowledge and contributed to localising New Zealand education. Is science the culture and the tool of the oppressor? Is it universal knowledge that, if acquired by a powerful group, gives that elite not only increased power but the ideological means to control thought? Or is it universal knowledge which

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if made available to all members of society contributes to a just society? It is in these questions that the lines of the knowledge ‘battle’ can be delineated. On one side is the ‘knowledge of the powerful’ view; that it is knowledge created by the oppressor from their culture and used to oppress others (Stewart & Devine, 2019). Education systems are seen to be complicit in this oppression. On the other side, is the ‘powerful knowledge’ view (Rata, 2019b). This regards scientific and disciplinary knowledge not as socio-cultural knowledge but as a different type of knowledge, the theoretical or propositional knowledge produced in philosophical and scientific communities. The difficulty in establishing the nature of the difference between the two types of knowledge is that both types have a relationship to the material world, thereby creating a ‘grey area’ of potential connection. Here proto-science observation methods found in socio-cultural knowledge sometimes suggest hypotheses that can be developed using disciplinary theories and in turn, those theoretical ideas may be used to apply the knowledge to real life. This potential for a type of connection has implications for pedagogy. For example, knowledge about chemical bonding taught in science may be used to understand how soap works as a barrier to viruses. Contributing to the ‘powerful knowledge’ versus ‘knowledge of the powerful’ debate is the complex history of the most recent period of intellectual advances. The post-seventeenth century Enlightenment is concurrent with European imperialism and colonisation, the most recent in the age-old history of imperial expansion; a history which includes empires from across the globe: for example, the Mali Empire, China’s imperial dynasties, the Inca Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. However, in contrast to earlier empires, European imperialism benefitted from three other concurrent processes; the emergence of the capitalist economic system, revolutionary political philosophies, and the scientific developments of the ‘Enlightenment’ (Kant, 1784, p. 1). This potent mixture produced equally potent forces of change. Technologies developed from scientific knowledge and funded by the economic system contributed to the oppressive practices of those empires. They also led to advances of enormous benefit to humans contributing not only to longer and healthier lives but also to the new democratic movements based on the revolutionary ideas about human equality and rights. Technologies developed today, including digital technologies, continue to be a potent mixture of the beneficial and the damaging, depending upon their uses. The enormous complexity of ‘powerful knowledge’, its application in technologies, and the practices and ethics of those who produce and use the knowledge takes us back to the fundamental questions asked above: does knowledge have an intrinsic character that is neutral, truth-seeking, and universal (i.e. ‘powerful knowledge’) or is it the ‘culture’ of the powerful?

Disciplinary Knowledge The ‘truth-seeking’ quality of disciplinary knowledge, the knowledge produced in the disciplines and altered for teaching at school as subject knowledge, is the result

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of its genesis in propositional hypotheses and its conceptual or epistemic structure. Ideas, which may begin as hypotheses, that is, as attempts to identify phenomena or to solve problems, are initially proposed in the form of concepts about the properties of the material world. These concepts are combined into increasingly more sophisticated systems or structures as they attempt to prove or disprove the hypothesis; hence ‘truth-seeking’. For example, scientists’ hypotheses about electricity may have been prompted by the same questions asked by socio-cultural groups, but whereas the latter used religious or mystical explanations to explain the flashes observed in storms, science proposed a very different way of explaining the properties and operation of those electrical currents. This new type of explanation required a whole new language; words including ‘voltage’, ‘charge’, ‘amps’, ‘watts’, ‘current’, and ‘electricity’ itself. Another example is the theory of social class developed in sociology (a nineteenth century discipline) to account for the type of inequality found in modern capitalist societies, one replacing traditional forms of inequality. Concepts such as ‘socio-economic class’, ‘capital’, ‘labour’, and ‘profit’ became the explanatory tools. With the establishment of national education systems, including New Zealand’s in 1877, the school curriculum was developed to include practical ‘socio-cultural’ subjects, such as homecraft and woodwork, along with more conceptually structured subjects derived from the new and expanding disciplines of the time. Some subjects like mathematics and physics have a direct connection to their disciplinary roots. Others, especially those categorised in the arts, the humanities, and the social sciences, are connected to disciplines but also to a society’s culture. Music is an example of knowledge that may at first glance appear to be socio-cultural. However, music can be explained by using concepts such as ‘tonality/atonality’, ‘harmony’, and ‘pitch’ whatever type of music is referred to. These are universal concepts about what sound is and how it is arranged and applied in the ‘sound cultures’ of a particular social group (McPhail, Rata, & Siteine, 2018). The distinction between disciplinary knowledge and socio-cultural knowledge is highly complex but is required for a critical appraisal of New Zealand’s localised curriculum. Indeed, asking questions about the purpose of the knowledge assists in clarifying the distinction. Is the knowledge for practical purposes or theoretically informed? Is it to express a social group’s culture? Are only those of the group eligible to produce and use this knowledge for it to be considered culturally authentic? Is the knowledge available to all universally and open to criticism and change? The distinction is also found in the methods used to produce the knowledge. Are the methods confined to identifying, observing, and describing a real-life phenomenon or problem in a particular place and by the people of that place, the proto-science I mention above? Or is the main method the proposal of a hypothesis that is explored by using specialised concepts that may then be applied to a real-life phenomenon or problem in any part of the world? The methods used to understand the poison of the tutu plant are an example of the knowledge type distinction. On the one hand, the tutu plant’s poison may be known as the basic abstract concept ‘poison’, knowledge acquired by observing, perhaps eating, the plant and experiencing unpleasant, even deadly consequences. On the other hand, the poison may be identified not by its appearance as a shrub but by its theorised chemical formulae C15 H18 O6.

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The theory of two different types of knowledge requiring different types of education has a long history. Moutsios (2018) points out that the establishment of schools for teaching young people the type of scientific thinking and philosophical questioning now associated with school subjects is first identified in Ionia two and a half thousand years ago. He contrasts this with the purpose of education for practical purposes seen earlier in Eygpt, Mesopotamia, and Syria, and found in all traditional societies. Associated with the provision of formal education, is the emergence of the idea of individual autonomy and the role of education in enabling ‘the universal potential of humans to develop themselves’ (Moutsios, 2018, p. 43) to that period of the first schools in Ancient Greece. The knowledge-power connection whereby intellectual thought is linked to the autonomy of individuals to think for themselves and to have power over their lives became a central idea in the Enlightenment (Kant, 1784). It remains a key idea in modern education systems. Subject knowledge consists of specialised concepts and content. The subject concepts are linked in logical ways to create increasingly sophisticated ideas— an epistemic structure. The Curriculum Design Coherence Model, mentioned in the Foreword draws on the logic of subject concepts to structure the curriculum (McPhail, 2020; Rata & McPhail, 2020; Rata, 2019a, 2021). In this model we refer to this building of subject concepts as ‘epistemic structuring’. The idea of epistemic structuring is central to the CDC Model knowledge because the Model’s proposition is that a curriculum design that reveals to students an epistemic structure of related concepts assists the understanding of those logical patterns. In Chap. 3, I consider the structure and structuring of subject knowledge which is difficult for students to acquire. I use a social studies topic to illustrate how curriculum design using the CDC Model reveals its ‘inner workings’ or epistemic structure to students and creates the potential for deep and coherent learning. The purpose of this chapter has been to make the case for a subject-based curriculum to be available to all New Zealand students. It is a curriculum that can claim to be progressive in that it is in New Zealand’s tradition of commitment to universal equality and to the role of the education system in contributing to this tenet of social justice. While the equity justification is the same as that made for the localised curriculum, I have argued that providing an equitable education system is achieved by ensuring that no child misses out on the opportunity to access epistemic knowledge.

References AHJR, Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives. (1939). Wellington: House of Representatives. Barrett, B., & Rata, E. (Eds.). (2014). Knowledge and the Future of the Curriculum: International Studies in Social Realism. Palgrave MacMillan. Barrett, B., Hoadley, U. & J. Morgan, J. (Eds.). (2018). Knowledge, Curriculum and Equity. Routledge.

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Kant, I. (1784/1990). Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and What is Enlightenment? Macmillan. (Originally published 1784). Maton, K., & Moore, R. (Eds.). (2010). Social Realism, Knowledge and the Sociology of Education, Coalitions of the Mind. Continuum. McPhail, G. (2020). The search for deep learning: A curriculum coherence model. Journal of Curriculum Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2020.1748231 McPhail, G., Rata, E., & Siteine, A. (2018). The changing nature of music education. In G. McPhail, V. Thorpe, & S. Wise (Eds.), Educational Change and the Secondary School Music Curriculum in Aotearoa New Zealand (pp. 74–92). Routledge. Ministry of Education. (2020). Strengthening local curriculum. Retrieved June 25, 2020, from https://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Strengthening-local-curriculum/Leading-local-curriculumguide-series Moutsios, S. (2018). Society and Education: An Outline of Comparison. Routledge. Rata, E. (2012). The Politics of Knowledge in Education. Routledge. Rata, E. (2018). Connecting knowledge to democracy. In B. Barrett, U. Hoadley & J. Morgan, (Eds.), Knowledge, Curriculum and Equity: Social Realist Perspectives (pp. 19–32). Routledge. Rata, E. (2019a) Knowledge-rich teaching: A model of curriculum design coherence, British Educational Research Journal, 45(4), 681–697. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3520. Rata, E. (2019b). Response: To the article by Georgina Stewart and Nesta Devine: A critique of Rata on the politics of knowledge and M¯aori education. Waikato Journal of Education, 24(1), 12–24. Rata, E. (2021). The curriculum design coherence model in the knowledge-rich school project. Review of Education. https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3254 Rata, E., & McPhail, G. (2020). Teacher professional development, the knowledge-rich school project and the curriculum design coherence model. In J. Fox, C. Alexander, & T. Aspland (Eds.), Teacher Education in Globalised Times: Local Responses in Action (pp. 311–329). Singapore: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4124-7_17. Rata, E., McPhail, G. & Barrett, B. (2019). An engaging pedagogy for an academic curriculum, The Curriculum Journal, 30(2), 162–180. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585176.2018.1557535. Shuker, R. (1987). The one best system: A revisionist history of state schooling in New Zealand. Dunmore Press. Stewart, G. T., & Devine, N. (2019). A critique of rata on the politics of knowledge and M¯aori education. Waikato Journal of Education, 24(1), 93–101. https://doi.org/10.15663/wje.v24v1.6 Walters, l. (2019). Education report makes for grim reading. Retrieved June 27, 2020, from https:// www.newsroom.co.nz/grim-report-on-education-on-how-students-are-faring. Wilson, A., Madjar, I., & McNaughton, S. (2016). Opportunity to learn about disciplinary literacy in senior secondary English classrooms in New Zealand. The Curriculum Journal, 27(2), 204–228. Young, M., & Muller, J. (2013). On the powers of powerful knowledge. Review of Education, 1(3), 229–250. Young, M., & Muller, J. (2019). Knowledge power and powerful knowledge re-visited. The Curriculum Journal, 30(2), 196–214.

Chapter 2

Approaches to Teaching for Achieving Equitable Outcomes Graham McPhail

Introduction The purpose of this chapter is to introduce a framework that describes three possible approaches of teaching. The approaches are teacher as transmitter, teacher as facilitator, and teacher as professional. Each of these terms condenses a number of ideas about education and I hope they will be useful in providing a shorthand for thinking about teaching and for thinking about the ideas presented in this book. For example, the teacher as transmitter aligns with a view of knowledge (and education) outlined in the introduction that we reject—that of knowledge as lists of facts and content. However, a problem with such ‘condensed’ descriptors is that they seldom reflect the complexity of ‘the real world’, nevertheless, they can provide a useful starting point and a means for enabling comparisons and explanations to be made. I also link these approaches to ‘three futures’ for education theorised by Young and Muller (2010). In the first section of the chapter, I elaborate on the first two approaches which will be familiar to most readers. The teacher as transmitter is most often associated with past and conservative views of education, Young and Muller’s Future 1,1 and the teacher as facilitator with present and progressive views, Young and Muller’s Future 2.2 A key argument in this book is that neither of these first two approaches is sufficient for teaching to achieve equitable outcomes. Our argument is that an approach 1

Young and Muller outline a possible Future 1 for education where there is a return to culturally hegemonic forms of education with highly prescribed lists for learning such as those found in the knowledge standards produced by E.D. Hirsch and the Core Knowledge Foundation in the USA (https://www.coreknowledge.org/about-us/e-d-hirsch-jr/) and in the ideas of some educators in the UK for a return to subject-based curricula (see Morgan et al. 2019). 2 Future 2 champions generic outcomes and Learner Centred Pedagogies (LCP) and a dismantling of boundaries between types of knowledge in a pluralistic epistemological relativism. G. McPhail (B) University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. Lourie and G. McPhail (eds.), Perspectives on the Knowledge Problem in New Zealand Education, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2908-2_2

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to education that is concerned with social justice must focus equally on both knowledge and the knower—in other words on both the what and how of teaching. Social justice is normally associated with approach two—teacher as the facilitator—and is underpinned by critiques of education as a mechanism for the reproduction of societal inequalities (see Rata, Chap. 1). ‘Critical’ issues such as revealing the hidden curriculum and the development of culturally responsive pedagogy are responses to the aim of reducing inequality. We support a third approach—that of the teacher as professional (TaP). This model builds on the strengths of the facilitator approach with the addition of ideas from (i) developments in our understanding of the significance of knowledge itself—its categories and structures and (ii) on developments about learning from cognitive science. This third approach aligns with Young and Muller’s ‘Future 3’—a vision of education where both epistemic and socio-political dimensions of knowledge and education are considered in providing access for all students to ‘powerful knowledge’.

Section 1 (i)

Teacher as transmitter

In the teacher, as transmitter approach the emphasis is on the transmission of factual information from an all-knowing teacher (‘the sage on the stage’, ‘chalk and talk’) to a passive and subservient student body (seated in factory-like rows). Freire (2007) famously termed this the banking model of education; a metaphor for the idea of the student as an empty vessel, into which facts are ‘banked’ for some future use. This one-way transmission approach is also often described as ‘Gradgrind’, an allusion to the fact-obsessed teacher Mr. Gradgrind in the Charles Dicken’s novel Hard Times. Pedagogy is teacher-dominated, and ‘learning’ is by rote memorisation. This is a onesize-fits-all approach that takes little or no account of the heterogeneity of pupils and the diversity of their learning needs or interests. This approach also carries with it a particular conception of knowledge. Knowledge equals facts, which in turn are regarded as static, unchanging truths (Gilbert, 2005). The obvious but important point to make here is that the cumulative effect of these descriptions is extremely negative. The image drawn is one that few educationalists would endorse and is unlikely to be found in practice in many countries but the image is utilised often in arguments about educational reform.3 It is used as a ‘straw-man’ argument; an argument that misrepresents the actuality of practice. This makes it easier to dismiss the approach and to represent the counterargument in a comparatively more favourable light. In other words, through the utilisation of

3

Hoadley (2018) however notes that such traditional models remain a common pedagogic form in developing countries despite efforts to shift practice towards student-centred constructivism (see Hoadley, 2018, Chap. 2).

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a teacher as transmitter image, teaching as transmission is regarded as bad and the alternative, teaching as facilitation, as good (Robertson, 2016). (ii)

Teacher as facilitator

An alternative to the teacher as transmitter is that of the teacher as facilitator. This is the current preferred orthodoxy in international educational discourse (Hoadley, 2018; Parker, 2018; Robertson, 2016). This approach is aligned with ideals such as democracy and social inclusion, and of learning as an active social process, and it has its roots in the progressive educational ideas of John Dewey but has recently intersected with ideas known as twenty-first century learning (Couch, 2018; Little, 2013). The student rather than the teacher is placed at the centre of the educational encounter. The teacher is encouraged to regard each student as already possessing rich funds of knowledge worthy of acknowledgment, inclusion, and development in the classroom thereby potentially effecting the content of the curriculum itself.4 Teachers are also encouraged to become facilitator-pedagogues who co-construct knowledge5 with their students in a personalised curriculum that aims to engage and motivate through its relevance to the ‘real-world’ and to students’ personal interests. Learner-centred pedagogies (LCPs) such as inquiry approaches are seen as a means to develop both academic and generic skills, competencies, and dispositions such as critical thinking and collaboration, as well as enabling students to ‘learn how to learn’ rather than to merely memorise ‘things’. For some educationalists, for example, Claxton (2013), learning to learn is regarded as ‘more fundamental even than the concern with literacy and numeracy’ (p. 1). Part of the rationale for this approach is that facts are now readily available via a quick Google search, so our curriculum and pedagogy should focus instead on building skills for life-long learning such as critical thinking and collaboration. In summary, we can note international trends away from content-driven curricula to outcomes-based curricula underpinned by a pedagogy of facilitation (Baker & LeTendre, 2005; Hoadley, 2018; McEneaney & Meyer, 2000; Preistley & Sinnema, 2014; Sinnema & Aitken, 2013).

Problems with the Teacher as Transmitter and Teacher as Facilitator Approaches There are a number of significant problems with both the teacher as transmitter and teacher as facilitator approaches. Firstly, in the transmitter approach, the lack of acknowledgement of the student as an individual learner with specific needs and capabilities is particularly problematic. We know that learning is likely to be more successful in environments where students are valued, known, and cared for by their teachers (Alton-Lee, 2003; Bernstein, 2000; Hattie, 2009). This affective dimension 4

See O’Connor and Greenslade (2012) and Christodoulou (2014) for examples of such effects on curriculum content. 5 See McPhail (2016, 2017b) for a discussion of this idea in relation to constructivism.

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may be considered a prerequisite for learning to occur. Secondly, the transmission approach utilises an inaccurate view of knowledge itself. It equates knowledge with static or unchanging facts. It is an approach overly focussed on content for its own sake; content separated from both concepts and knowledge ‘put to use’. This is an impoverished view of knowledge and learning. The first of the problems is a pedagogical problem and the second a curriculum problem. In relation to the teacher as facilitator approach I highlight four key areas of concern and discuss each briefly in turn; (i) the overly optimistic view of the capabilities of the student to self-manage and learn in LCPs; (ii) the problematic view of curriculum content comprising generic competencies rather than learning ‘some-thing’; (iii) the contradiction between progressive LCPs and outcomes-driven curricula and (iv) the conflation between values, hopes, and ideals for education and what we know from cognitive science about how such ideals might be realised. (i)

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The optimistic view of the students to self-manage their learning is appealing from a progressive, democratic perspective where developing student agency is a key aim. However, the degree to which students can self-manage is the key issue. The cognitive science literature warns us that pedagogies with minimal guidance are unlikely to be successful for the majority of students and that we need to adopt them with some degree of caution (Clark, Kirschner, & Sweller, 2012; Kirschner & Van Merrienboer, 2013; De Bruychere, Kirschner, & Hulshof, 2015; Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2006; Riley, 2014). While it is common practice in inquiry or learning to scaffold the procedural steps—the pedagogy6 —it is less well understood how scaffolding needs to be applied to the content itself. For example, for a student to succeed in researching an area of interest they will need an overview or schema of the area of inquiry to know how to begin to organise and categorise the information they find. Without the necessary scaffolding derived from prior knowledge such as some key structuring concepts, students are likely to suffer from cognitive overload. The cognitive science research argues that pedagogies with minimal guidance are best utilised in contexts where students can put knowledge already learnt to use; to deepen understanding, rather than using inquiry to ‘discover’ the knowledge in the first place; ‘small group and independent problems and projects can be effective—not as vehicles for making discoveries, but as a means of practicing recently learned content and skills’ (Clark et al., 2012, p. 6). In contrast, the approach to pedagogy the teacher as a professional will take (see below) comprises a wide pedagogical palette with both inquiry and direct instruction as possible options depending on the knowledge being taught and the stage and prior learning of the student. Since the 1990s there has been an emphasis placed on the development of skills and competencies in international curricula (Voogt and Roblin, 2012). In a fastchanging world where knowledge proliferation appears to create insurmountable challenges for what to teach and knowledge is perceived as going quickly

For example with lists such as Engage, Question, Plan, Search, Connect, Understand, and Communicate.

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(iii)

(iv)

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out of date, generic competencies are seen as a key component in futureproofing education. For example, the New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007) foregrounds what are termed key competencies and the Ministry of Education along with NZCER champion their utilisation as a means to deepen the curriculum experiences of students (https://nzcurriculum. tki.org.nz/Key-competencies). Voogt and Roblin (2012) found international frameworks focussed in C21 learning ‘converge on a common set of twentyfirst century competences: collaboration, communication, ICT literacy, and social and/or cultural competencies (including citizenship). Most frameworks also mention creativity, critical thinking, productivity, and problem-solving’ (p. 315). The key problem with an over-emphasis on generic skills is the lack of recognition that capabilities such as critical thinking and effective collaboration are epiphenomena of subject specific knowledge. For example, Hattie and Donoghue (2016, p. 9) suggest ‘the current claims about developing twenty-first century skills sui generis are most misleading’ and Kuncel (2016) suggests that ‘generic skills’ such as critical thinking are really ‘a class of very specific reasoning skill, or the formation of expertise in a field’ (Kuncel, 2016, quoted in Hirsch, 2016, p. 85). In this argument, the ability to transfer knowledge and problem-solve emerges from subject contexts not generic ones. ‘Soft skills’ and generic capacities and competencies (e.g. collaboration, critical thinking, communication, creativity, etc.) emerge because of the growth in understanding of domain-dependent and domain-specific epistemic knowledge. The teacher as facilitator encouraging student-led inquiry and inclusion of social knowledges appears to sit somewhat uneasily with outcomes-based reforms that demand the teacher meet pre-determined learning outcomes for their students and, in the secondary school in particular, enable students to accumulate learning outcomes as commodified and segmented ‘knowledge bites’ through maximised choice and ‘relevance’ of curricula (McPhail & McNeill, in-press; Hipkins, Johnston, & Sheehan, 2016). Being ‘studentcentred’ appears to have become synonymous with letting students choose what they do and don’t want to learn within a subject area. Within the secondary school, this has often led to students becoming pragmatic and opportunistic credit hunters (Taylor, 2014), and within the primary school, it has led to a situation where student learning is too often based on everyday experiential knowledge (Siteine, 2017). In both contexts, there is a danger that such approaches lead to fragmented curricular experiences and understandings. Critical academics might also argue that the forms of choice offered to students, particularly in the secondary school, are pseudo-market ideas masquerading as student-centred education (Couch, 2018). Elsewhere I have highlighted the problem of a lack of differentiation between our aspirations for learners—our democratic ideals in favour of LCPs—and the epistemic requirements for actually realising those aspirations (McPhail, 2016). Riley (2014, p. 22) also warns that often our aspirations, aims, and values for education can override the cognisance we should assign to what we

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know about how learning actually happens. In relation to the New Zealand Ministry of Education’s emphasis on personalised learning he notes: The problem with this alleged principle is that most of its components do not square with our current understanding of cognition. People learn by thinking, but “feeling in charge” is not an absolute precondition to thought … Other research suggests that minimally guided instruction, which appears to philosophically undergird the claims about student “feeling in charge” of their learning, is equally suspect: “The past half-century of empirical research on [minimally guided instruction] has produced overwhelming and unambiguous evidence that [it] is significantly less effective than guidance specifically designed to support the cognitive processes necessary for learning” (p. 22).

An example of the mismatch between what we know about how humans learn and the aspirations for LCPs is seen in the advocacy for inquiry learning which relates to the optimistic view for student self-management discussed above. While one of the key aims of schooling is to enable students to work, learn, and solve problems independently it is a mistake to think that they will learn independence by working independently (Christodoulou, 2014). We know, for example, from cognitive load theory (Sweller, van Merriënboer, & Paas, 2019), that deep learning firstly relies on the accumulation and retention of factual knowledge transferred to the longterm memory (e.g. times tables in Maths and key signatures in Music). The limited capacity of the working or short-term memory to hold new information relies on using the long-term memory in concert with the short-term to avoid cognitive overload and to enable the development of ‘cognitive schema’—an overarching view of a topic and its conceptual interrelationships—and eventually problem-solving capacities. This ‘data’ stored in the long-term memory is subsequently utilised in concert with subject-specific concepts to develop understanding. The cognitive schema is constructed from a students’ growing understanding of the inferential relationship between concepts. Pedagogies with minimal guidance and where students are left to explore and construct their own knowledge seem somewhat misguided. However, as Willingham (2009) notes ‘our goal is not simply to have students know a lot of stuff – it’s to have them know stuff in the service of being able to think effectively’ (p. 48). Willingham also reminds us that ‘teachers should not take the importance of knowledge to mean that they should create lists of facts …. knowledge pays off when it is conceptual and the facts are related to each other’ (p. 50). This idea of a topic, and indeed a whole subject, comprising an extended series of interrelated ideas and concepts (see Chap. 1) is pivotal to the teacher as professional approach. With what Winch (2017) calls a panoramic view of the subject, the teacher can then select, sequence, pace, and evaluate students’ learning in relation to a conceptual overview of what is available to be taught. It is clear then that most significantly both approaches—the teacher as transmitter and the teacher as facilitator—often misrepresent (i) the nature of knowledge and (ii) the cognitive needs of learners to learn. This leads to confusion and unnecessary polarising of ideas about what to teach and how best to do it. (iii)

The Teacher as Professional approach

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The alternative approach to teaching championed in this book draws on certain features from the first two approaches as well as rejecting certain aspects of both. From the transmission model, the teacher as professional recognises that ‘facts’ are important, and that lots of them are required to activate young brains (Kirschner and Van Merrienboer, 2013; Kirschner et al., 2006; Willingham, 2009). Also from the transmission approach, the professional teacher recognises that there are times for teacher talk, transmission of knowledge, and strongly guided forms of pedagogy. From the facilitation model, the teacher as professional (TaP) understands that students must be given the opportunity to put their developing understandings of knowledge to use in some way, for example by carrying out an experiment, composing a song, or planning and discussing a logical argument for an expository essay. This is a learning context in which knowledge-that and know-how are brought together; where factual knowledge (information) becomes dynamic as it is put into practice conceptually through the development of intelligent knowing-how and knowing why (McPhail, 2020; Rata, 2019). The key point to note is that teachers require a pedagogic palette of many colours; at times explaining, at times showing worked examples, at times letting students work actively together. The current tendency is to create polarised positions with direct transmission seen as bad and constructivism as good. This is unhelpful and inaccurate (Robertson, 2016). In keeping with the teacher as facilitator model and rejecting the one-size-fits all tendency of the transmission approach, the TaP approach recognises students as individuals with specific learning needs and interests. However, it is important to keep in mind Willingham’s observation that ‘children are more alike than different in terms of how they think and learn’ (2009, p. 147). The TaP is sceptical about the over-emphasis on personalised learning in current C21 narratives and the unrealistic demands this may make on the successful development of subject competencies. The TaP is likely to consider individualised inquiry pedagogies and interdisciplinary projects as a part of their teaching programme rather than a predominant aspect (McPhail, 2017a). Moreover, drawing on the work of Winch (2017) I suggest the TaP will regard teaching in a number of ways that support the idea of the teacher as a professional with specialised expertise. I summarise these dimensions of practice below. Firstly the TaP will regard themselves as knowledge specialists and will have expert knowledge of their subject and its relationship to its parent discipline (Disciplinary Knowledge) or DK. They will ‘keep up’ with developments in their discipline and be aware of the dynamic nature of academic knowledge production; the way knowledge continually develops, and it is always fallible. This knowledge and the understanding of the epistemic structure of the discipline and the subject will, in turn, inform teacher’s selection, sequencing, evaluation, and pedagogical approaches. Secondly the TaP will develop specialised pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and general pedagogical knowledge (GPK). In PCK the TaP understands how disciplinary knowledge is best recontextualised for the various levels they teach. This knowledge is derived from the panoramic view they acquire of the discipline and subject. In PCK they also understand the common conceptual challenges, and misunderstandings students commonly encounter in their subject. In GPK the teacher

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develops understandings of how to approach the process of teaching as a form of in situknow-how underpinned by knowledge-that from educational research and experience. Thirdly the TaP will have the motivation and ability to engage with educational research; to consider its potential and ‘relevance for their own circumstances and how they can make use of it’7 (Winch, 2017, p. 184). Finally, the TaP will have serious regard for the ethical undertaking of teaching for the benefit of the student and the development of their academic identity (Rata, 2019). This involves the teacher putting certain intentions into action such as taking appropriate long-term planning for epistemic ascent and appropriate measures to evaluate if teaching has been effective through assessment for learning. More broadly the TaP is concerned with ‘developing the capacity for rational autonomy [in] what they consider to be the long-term interests of their pupils, regardless of what the pupils, their parents or commentators may think is in the pupils’ interests’ (Winch, 2017, p. 191). Drawing on their Disciplinary Knowledge, Pedagogical Content Knowledge, and General Pedagogical Knowledge teachers develop specialised knowledge which is brought together in a form of praxis where, to use the Aristotelian terms, theoria (knowledge-that) and techne (know-how-to) combine in a form of ‘knowingin-action’ called phronesis; an ethical critical reflection in situ that guides action towards the right or good ethical results (‘standards of care’) for students in a given context (Regelski, 1998). This is a conception of teaching far beyond that of teaching as a technical, ‘best-practice’ exercise, teaching as a craft, or teaching as the transmission of information. In this conception, the educational ideal is to provide equal access for all students to the ‘goods’ of epistemic knowledge. This is the missing piece of the jigsaw referred to in the introduction, which has been displaced by a wellmeaning but disadvantageous over-emphasis on the student’s well-being as a culturally situated person and on the idea of generic skills and capabilities for an unknown future. As important and significant as these aspects are—the first is a prerequisite for learning and the second, a by-product—they are not the ideal endpoints of education. After Winch (2017) I suggest that access to powerful knowledge for all students—the means for the development of critical thinking and ‘the ability to the ability to rationally, authentically and independently make choices’ (Winch, 2017, p. 190) about their lives—is a requirement for societies who are serious about their equal opportunity education systems.

Summary A Future 1 type curriculum delivered by the teacher as the transmitter is particularly problematic from a knowledge perspective. Knowledge in this view is considered static and assumes a received truth that is also likely to be culturally exclusive. The Future 2 type curriculum with a co-constructing, facilitator teacher where the 7

The Education Hub has as its key purpose making academic research readily available and accessible for teachers. See https://theeducationhub.org.nz/.

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curriculum is ‘over-socialised’ in favour of what teachers perceive to be the interests of the students is also problematic. It fails to differentiate between the varied affordances of different types of knowledge. So who decides what and how we are to teach? The TaP model is premised on the ideal teacher having curriculum expertise to call on, and that expertise will be continually developing. In concert with awareness of continuing developments in their discipline and by being a serious member of a professional community the TaP will make informed decisions about what powerful knowledge is likely to be in terms of meeting the long-term needs of their students. They will make decisions based on both epistemic and socio-political criteria (Rata, 2019).

Conclusion I began the chapter by outlining three approaches, or models of teaching, to provide a shorthand for thinking about education and teaching. I have also linked these approaches to Young and Mullers ‘three futures’; Future 1—a view of education as under-socialised and rigid in terms of curriculum and pedagogy, Future 2—a view of education as over-socialised with weak boundaries between the everyday world and the school, and a Future 3 where epistemic and socio-political dimensions are brought into a balance so the affordances of epistemically powerful knowledge are at the centre of students rights to enhancement.

References Alton-Lee, A. (2003). Quality teaching for diverse students in schooling: Best evidence synthesis. Report prepared for the Ministry of Education. Wellington: Ministry of Education. Baker, D., & LeTendre, G. (2005). National differences, global similarities: World culture and the future of schooling. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research, critique. (Rev. ed.). New York & Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. Clark, R., Kirschner, P., & Sweller, J. (2012) Putting students on the path to learning: The case for fully guided instruction. America Educator, Spring, 6–11. Claxton, G. (2013). Learning to learn: A key goal in a 21st century curriculum. Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. Retrieved from http://escalate.ac.uk/downloads/2990.pdf. Christodoulou, D. (2014). Seven myths about education. London & New York: Routledge. Couch, D. (2018). From progressivism to instrumentalism: Innovative learning environments according to New Zealand’s Ministry of Education. In L. Benade & M. Jackson (Eds.), Transforming education (pp. 133–212). Singapore: Springer. De Bruychere, Kirschner, & Hulshof. (2015). Urban myths about learning and education. London: Elsevier. Freire, P. (2007). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum (Original work published 1970). Gilbert, J. (2005). Catching the knowledge wave. Wellington: NZCER Press.

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Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. New York: Routledge. Hattie, J., & Donoghue, G. (2016). Learning strategies: A synthesis and conceptual model. npj Science of Learning. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/npjscilearn201613. Hipkins, S., Johnston, M., & Sheehan, M. (2016). NCEA in context. Wellington: NZCER Press. Hirsch, E. D. (2016). Why knowledge matters. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Hoadley, U. (2018). Pedagogy in poverty: Lessons from twenty years of curriculum reform in South Africa. Abingdon & New York: Routledge. Kirschner, P., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. (2006). Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential, and inquiry-based teaching. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 75–86. Kirschner, P., & Van Merrienboer, J. (2013). Do learners really know best? Urban legends in education. Educational Psychologist, 48(3), 169–183. Little, T. (2013). 21st century learning and progressive education: An intersection. International Journal of Progressive Education, 9(1), 84–96. McEneaney, E. H., & Meyer, J. W. (2000). The content of the curriculum: An institutional perspective. In M. T. Hallinan (Ed.), Handbook of the sociology of education (pp. 189–211). New York: Kluwer. McPhail, G. (2016). The fault lines of recontextualisation: The limits of constructivism in education. British Journal of Educational Research, 42(2), 294–313. McPhail, G. (2017a). Curriculum integration in the senior secondary school: A case study in a national assessment context. The Journal of Curriculum Studies, 50(1), 56–76. McPhail, G. (2017b). Constructivism: Clearing up confusion between a theory of learning and ‘constructing’ knowledge. SET, 2, 29–33. McPhail, G. (2020). The search for deep learning: A curriculum coherence model. Journal of Curriculum Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2020.1748231 McPhail, G., & McNeill, J. (in-press). Music education and the neoliberal turn in Aotearoa New Zealand. Action, Criticism, and Theory for Music Education. Ministry of Education. (2007). The New Zealand curriculum. Wellington, Learning Media. Morgan, J., Hordern, J., & Hoadley, U. (2019). On the politics and ambition of the ‘turn’: unpacking the relations between Future 1 and Future 3. The Curriculum Journal, 30 (2), 105–124. O’Connor, N., & Greenslade, S. (2012). Co-constructed pathways of learning: A case study. Set: Research Information for Teachers, 1, 49−55. Parker, W. (2018). Human rights education’s curriculum problem. Human Rights Education Review, 1(i), 4–24. Priestley, M., & Sinnema, C. (2014). Downgraded curriculum? An analysis of knowledge in new curricula in Scotland and New Zealand. Curriculum Journal, 25(1), 50–75. Rata, E. (2019). Knowledge-rich teaching: A model of curriculum design coherence. British Educational Research Journal. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3520 Regelski, T. (1998). The Aristotelian bases of praxis for music and music education as praxis. Philosophy of Music Education Review, 6(1), 22–59. Riley, B. (2014). Science, data and decisions in New Zealand’s education system. Fulbright report, Wellington, New Zealand. Robertson, S. (2016). The global governance of teachers’ work. In K. Mundy, A. Green, B. Lingard, & A. Verger (Eds.), The handbook of global education (pp. 275–290). Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell. Sinnema, C., & Aitken, G. (2013). Emerging international trends in curriculum. In M. Priestley & G. Biesta (Eds.), Reinventing the curriculum: New trends in curriculum policy and practice (pp. 141–163). London, UK: Bloomsbury. Siteine, A. (2017). Recognising ethnic identity in the classroom: A New Zealand study. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 26(4), 393–407.

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Sweller, J., van Merriënboer, J. J. G., & Paas, F. (2019). Cognitive architecture and instructional design: 20 years later. Educational Psychology Review, 31, 261–292. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10 648-019-09465-5 Taylor, A. (2014). Students’ search for identity as credit hunters or science students (Unpublished master s thesis). The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand. Voogt, J., & Roblin, N. (2012). A comparative analysis of international frameworks for 21st century competences: Implications for national curriculum policies. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 44(3), 299–321. Willingham, D. T. (2009). Why don’t students like school?: A cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Winch, C. (2017). Teachers know how: A philosophical investigation. Oxford, Wiley Blackwell. Young, M., & Muller, J. (2010). Three Educational Scenarios for the Future: Lessons from the sociology of knowledge. European Journal of Education, 45(1), 11–27.

Chapter 3

Curriculum Coherence and the CDC Model: A History Example Elizabeth Rata

This chapter is about how to design a topic using the Curriculum Design Coherence Model (CDC) to achieve the logical coherence found in an epistemic structure. I have chosen the historical topic ‘the history of Ngati Kuri’, an iwi (tribe) in New Zealand’s Far North, as the example for two reasons. Firstly, it enables me to illustrate the problematic nature concerning who selects what curriculum knowledge and why; that initial curriculum-selection process which precedes design. Secondly, I want to demonstrate the crucial role of Element 2 of the CDC Model’s four elements. This Element is about the connection between a topic’s concepts and the content chosen to express those concepts. My purpose in devoting much of the chapter to this Element is to emphasise the importance of the concept-content connection in the CDC Model’s design (McPhail, 2020; Rata, 2019).

Curriculum Selection Despite the localised nature of the New Zealand curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2020) and the absence of any prescription, the government plans to introduce New Zealand history into the curriculum from 2022. In countries with prescribed curricula, the various subject concepts and content are chosen by specialists to ensure the epistemic integrity of the knowledge as it is altered to become a school subject (Bernstein, 2000). The use of disciplinary specialists recognises that curriculum selection often requires different expertise from teaching. The role of disciplinary expertise is to ensure a subject’s epistemic integrity by selecting knowledge according to accepted scholarly procedures; ensuring what I refer to as ‘scholarly integrity’. E. Rata (B) University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. Lourie and G. McPhail (eds.), Perspectives on the Knowledge Problem in New Zealand Education, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2908-2_3

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This is especially the case for subjects such as history where content may exist only in primary sources or be contradictory and contested. Such material requires accurate and detailed source attribution, peer-reviewed critique, and justifying rationales, the preparation that is normally beyond that possible for teacher’s but that is required if teachers are to have confidence in the veracity of the knowledge they are to design and teach. The Ngati Kuri topic provided below is a useful illustration of the need for specialist curriculum selection and of the limitations of ‘localised’ selection (see Chap. 1). It is a topic containing contradictory, contested, and changing material, and content selection is required from a range of sources (M¯aori and European, oral and written), and detailed source attribution. In addition to this scholarly integrity, the topic illustration below also demonstrates epistemic integrity. Such integrity is established by the use of the CDC Model. The model establishes coherence within the concepts chosen for the topic (Element 1 of the model) and by the coherence between those concepts and the chosen content (Element 2). This combination of concepts and content makes up the ‘knowledge-that’(subject concepts and content) required for the CDC Model’s design methods.

The Curriculum Design Coherence Model The CDC Model’s key design principle is epistemic structure. The CDC Model identifies the constituent elements of the epistemic structure as: (i) a proposition which states (i.e. proposes) and summarises the focus for a subject’s topic, course, or programme including the key ‘meta’ concepts for the topic, course, or programme; (ii) subject concepts which ‘build’ the meaning into a coherent system of integrated ideas; (iii) content which particularises the abstract concepts, and (iv) subject competencies or skills which are used to apply the subject concepts and content. These constituent parts have been categorised and named as ‘CDC Model Elements’. The proposition, subject concepts, and content are classified as ‘knowledge-that’. The term ‘knowhow-to’ is used for the application of ‘knowledge-that’. The Elements are, in order of design direction: 1. ‘Select and sequence subject concepts from a subject proposition’; 2. ‘Connect subject concepts to subject content’; 3. ‘Connect Knowledge-that to Know-how-to’; and 4. Evaluate ‘Knowledge-that and Know-how-to’ (see Fig. 3.1).

CDC Model Element 1 The first and determining CDC Element requires the designer to devise a subject proposition and select the subject concepts which make up the proposition. The topic’s proposition states the concepts in order for the relationship between the proposed concepts to be made explicit and for the connection of the concepts to

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Fig. 3.1 The curriculum design coherence model

the content to be justified. The proposition sets in motion the process of design coherence by first stating what the topic is by using the key concepts.1 The proposition statement for the topic ‘The History of Ngati Kuri Iwi’ might be ‘Ngati Kuri has experienced settlement, displacement, and revival’ with ‘settlement’, ‘displacement’, and ‘revival’ serving as the subject concepts that the teacher wants students to understand. The matter of the knowledge’s integrity (what I call ‘epistemic integrity’ above) surfaces at this point in that the content must substantiate the proposition that Ngati Kuri has actually experienced what is claimed in the proposition. All propositional knowledge is open to scrutiny, critique, and change. If the concepts and content do not in fact provide sufficient evidence of the proposition that ‘Ngati Kuri has experienced settlement, displacement, and revival then the topic cannot be justified for inclusion in the curriculum or the proposition needs modification. The subject concept(s) which are stated in the proposition should appear in all the Model’s Elements in order to provide the design coherence. The Ngati Kuri topic’s three main concepts serve to integrate the content across each historical period of settlement, displacement, and revival thereby creating coherence. Once the key subject concepts have been selected, further subordinate subject concepts may be drawn (inferred) from the key subject concept(s). For example, subordinate concepts for the key subject concept ‘revival’ in this topic may include ‘identity’, ‘re-settlement’, and ‘belonging’. The difference between concepts and content is those subject concepts are generalisable to many ‘content objects’ whereas 1

The concepts identified in this chapter, for example settlement, displacement and revival, are substantive concepts applicable to a range of social sciences and humanities disciplines including History. These are concepts which are applicable to different eras, places, and communities.

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‘content’ is not generalisable because it is itself the ‘specific object’ that the subject concept is being applied to. To complicate matters, sometimes the subject concept and subject content use the same word. For example, the key concept ‘displacement’ in the Ngati Kuri topic is generalisable to many societies but the specific object of displacement is the actual dispersal from the Far North which occurred during the first half of the nineteenth century. In selecting the subject concepts, the teacher will be aware that at the pedagogy stage which follows the design stage, teaching methods and learning activities will be chosen which focus on helping students to understand these concepts. The fact that the teacher has had to think about the concepts first and connect them to the content in Element 2 makes it more likely that the learning activities will help the students to grasp the meaning. The concepts at the beginning of the topic design provide the foundation for the selection of content in Element 2.

CDC Model Element 2 The discussion of the Model’s Element 2 which follows is a lengthy one and as mentioned above contains a considerable amount of content from the Ngati Kuri example. My purpose in focusing on Element 2 is to highlight that ‘knowledgethat’ (i.e. propositional knowledge) contains both concepts and content in an interdependent relationship. A concept-only curriculum is merely a list of ideas and a content-only curriculum is merely a list of information. It is in the connection of content to concepts that the relationship of ideas to the real world is made. Subject content is a deliberate selection of material, justified according to three criteria described in the Model’s Element 2. Each of these criteria are discussed below with the emphasis given to the first criterion to show its importance to the Model’s design process.

Element 2, Criterion One This is the primary and determining criterion for selecting the subject content for the topic or programme—does this material best capture the meaning of the subject concepts? Connecting the CDC Model’s Element 2 content to Element 1’s subject concepts usually involves a to-ing and fro-ing between the concepts and content in order to get a ‘best fit’ and to achieve coherence. The first criterion is the primary and determining criterion for selecting the subject content for the topic or programme. The topic’s content in Element 2 must illustrate the meaning of the subject concepts. For the Ngati Kuri topic, four historical periods were selected because they express the key concepts of settlement, displacement, and revival with support from inferred subordinate concepts, such as ‘dispersal’ and ‘identity’. The four historical periods selected are: (i) initial settlement in the Far North pre-1800, (ii) displacement and

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dispersal early 1800s–1850s, (iii) identity loss, 1830s–1970s, and (iv) identity revival, from the 1980s. The specific content to express the first key concept ‘settlement’ includes a range of oral sources that are difficult to verify because they refer to the period before 1800 and were written following the recorded events. They include detailed genealogies held in the Himiora Kaamira Manuscripts (Kaamira Mss) which refer to founding canoes and ancestors. Contradictory accounts of the origin of the name ‘Ngati Kuri’ from both oral and written sources may also be chosen to express ‘settlement’. Although the accounts of the name origin are contradictory they all refer to the same region which had been settled. One account is from Niki Kanara, a Te Aupouri elder and expert in the iwi’s genealogy and was recorded in 1984 with his permission by this author (personal records). “Ihutara as the founder of Ngati Kuri. When he died a slave [he]was sacrified but this was not considered sufficient and a number of dogs were sacrificed as well. This, the tribe became Ngati Kuri”. This account differs markedly for one published in the Journal of the Polynesian Society in 1895 (Maxwell, 1895), an account supported by tribal leaders of that time. Pre-nineteenth century European accounts which support the ‘settlement’ concept include the 16423 Isaac Gilsemans’ painting ‘Thus appears the Three Kings Island from the northwest side, as you are at 40 fathoms’ (Gilsemans, 1726). Seen from Abel Tasman ships, the Zeehaen and Heemskerck, the huge size of the two men depicted on Manawatawi or Three Kings Island led to beliefs in Europe that the land was inhabited by giants. Another account is from James Cook’s 1773 Voyage to New Zealand (Beaglehole, 1961) which notes that the Far North was well-inhabited. There are considerably more resources to provide content for the second identified historical period (1800s–1850s), the period of ‘displacement’, with inferred subordinate subject concepts of ‘identity loss’ and ‘dispersal’. Maxwell’s, 1895 account describes how Ngati Kuri was absorbed into Rawara and Te Aupouri following the wars of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These accounts are supported by the Himiora Kaamira Manuscripts which show both large gaps in the genealogies preceding those and showing new connections between Ngati Kuri, Te Aupouri, and Rawara from the mid-nineteenth century. By the 1830s, Ngati Kuri’s decimation by Rawara under the leadership of Pane Kareao completed the displacement. The enslavement of survivors and severe depopulation of the Far North was recorded by travellers, Polack in 1838, and Ernest Dieffenbach in 1841. While Polack (1838) noted how the destructive effects of continual wars “have unpeopled this part of the country” he also describes how some “crossed over to Manawatawi or Three Kings’ Islands carrying with them seed potatoes etc.” This content becomes significant when linked to both the earlier period of ‘settlement’ (the 1642 Tasman sighting) and to the third subject concept, ‘revival’. It is in the post-1970s’ revival period that Ngati Kuri established its claim to Manawatawi and the surrounding area. The 2014 Waitangi Deed of Settlement (Deed of Settlement, 2014) recognised that the Ngati Kuri rohe includes the Kermedec Islands, Three Kings Islands, Cape Rerenga, Ninety Mile Beach, Parengarenga Harbour, Te Kao, and Houhora. In this way, the key concepts of settlement, displacement, and revival

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identified at the beginning of the topic design provide the framework for concept and content coherence. The displacement and dispersal in the first half of the nineteenth century were reversed as people began returning to the Far North from the mid-nineteenth century period with genealogies showing the process of re-population taking place as gumdigging began in the 1850s. However the loss of a tribal identity which resulted from the displacement is a recurring theme in most, but not all sources, until the revival in the 1980s. The sources which do refer to Ngati Kuri include the earliest written reference in a 1869 Return to the Order of the House of Representatives locating the tribe to the south of Parengarenga, in the Rarawa region (Rata, 1996). Book 5 of the Kaamira Manuscripts, written in 1910 also refers to Ngati Kuri in an account by Okena who was born in 1851. “Koutou te hapu o Hapakuku tini awa. E matau ana ahau e tu ana a Hapakuku ki to kooti. Ko taua hapu mo Herekino ko Ngati Kuri. Ko Ngati Kuri (word illegible) I te Aupouri nga ingoa Hapu o taku matua.’ (Kaamira, 1910). However Book 1 of the Kaamira Manuscripts (1937), refers to Ngapuhi, Ngati Whatua, Rawara, and Aupouri as northern tribes in 1856, 1860, 1872, and 1884 but omits Ngati Kuri. Other source materials written prior to the revival about the nineteenth century demonstrate support for the concepts of ‘identity loss’ following ‘displacement’. Lee (1983) provides an exhaustive list of Northern iwi and hapu of 1800 but with no mention of Ngati Kuri in the list or in the index. McRae’s (1981) extensive catalogue of manuscripts, printed and published material in the Maori language relating to the history and traditions of tribes in Tai Tokerau refers to Te Aupouri, Te Rawara, Ngati Kahu, Ngapuhi, and Ngati Whatua but not to Ngati Kuri. Similarly, Matire Kereama’s, 1968 account of the “wandering, war and strife” of Aupouri and the Northern tribes does not mention Ngati Kuri. Sources from the immediate pre-revival decade in the 1970s show that the revival had not yet begun. The Maori Land Court Minutes, Kaitaia Minute Book 9 (Folios 265–270 Whangarei 5 February 1976) confirmed the application from the Aupouri Trust Board that “the Aupouri tribe comprehended the whole of the people whose tribal or sub-tribal origins derive from the area of the Aupouri Tribal district, i.e. from the area extending from the Awanui River in the south to Te Rerenga Wairua and Murimotu in the north.” The Court Minutes record tribal leader, Vivian Gregory, stating that “In 1890—Ngati Kuri more scattered and have since resided elsewhere and are not owners in Te Hapua or Parengarenga.” However, content chosen for the third key concept ‘revival’ shows that by the mid1980s Ngati Kuri’s revival in Te Hapua and Parengarenga and the re-establishment of a distinctive identity are underway. Evidence can be found in the shift in the name from the ‘Aupouri Peninsula’ to ‘Muriwhenua” in 1985. The new Muriwhenua grouping of five distinctive tribes in the region (from 1986) shows the separation of Ngati Kuri from Aupouri, a distinction consolidated in the 1988 Waitangi Tribunal Muriwhenua Fishing report with its numerous references to Ngati Kuri. The 1992 Muriwhenua Claim (Wai 321) (Waitangi Tribunal, 1992) made in the names of five tribes was another significant event in the recovery of the Ngati Kuri name.

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Supporting material for the strength and speed of the revival can be found in unpublished papers written for a hui of descendants held in Te Hapua in 1995 (Muru & Norman, 1995) as well as in the 1997 ‘Muriwhenua News’, in the ‘Ngati Kuri Network News’ of 1998 (personal records). Considerably more material, mainly from official sources, is available from the period preceding and subsequent to the 2014 Waitangi Deed of Settlement (Ngati Kuri Claims Settlement Act, 2014) which established the tribe’s Trust Board. In 1995, members of Ngati Kuri had created a map of Ngati Kuri lands entitled Ko Ngati Kuri te iwi te tangatawhenua I te Hiku o te Ika Muriwhenua’ (Ngati Kuri, the indigenous tribe of the tail of the fish, land’s end’). This map has significance in the revival period because it replaced a longstanding and highly influential map which had contributed to the iwi’s exclusion from written records from the 1790s to the mid-1990s. The early map was used regularly in government material and by writers including “Arrowsmith, 1853; the Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1870; the Native Land Laws Commission, 1891; Cowan, 1910; Firth, 1929; Department of Maori Affairs, 1956, 1964; Metge, 1964; Kawharu, 1975, Walker, 1990; Orange, 1987; and Correspondence School Certificate Maori course material, 1996” (Rata, 2000, pp. 168–172). Content about the two maps (1790s to 1995 one) would not only support the concepts of ‘displacement’ and ‘revival’ separately but would also provide a historical frame to unify the concepts within the topic.

Element 2, Criterion 2 Much of the content I have described above as criterion one’s justification for content selection can also be used to meet criteria two and three (CDC Model, Element 2). Criterion two addresses the provisional nature of disciplinary concepts. If relevant to a topic, content should be selected to show the history of intellectual ideas. The purpose of criterion two is to show students that propositional knowledge is not fixed as ‘truth’ but is ‘truth-seeking’. ‘Truth’ is developed across time by individuals or communities of scholars and scientists using procedures that allow for criticism and change. This criterion when applied to designing the Ngati Kuri topic would ask: Does the selected content capture the historical, provisional, and disputed/settled nature of the accounts of settlement, displacement, and revival? In fact, the selection of content from the pre-European period and from a range of sources does meet this criterion and in doing so contributes to the development of students’ historical consciousness. This is an understanding of history as the search for the most complete and justified account of the past that is possible, an account compiled according to rigorous scholarly procedures of scrutiny and critique rather than a version selected for ideological purposes.

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Element 2, Criterion 3 Element 2’s first two criteria for content selection criteria are epistemic justifications. However, a national curriculum is a political document and the CDC Model recognises that the role of a public education system in a democracy is to create and reproduce the collective representations that each generation has of its country’s identity (Rata, 2018). Therefore Element 2’s third criterion is deliberately social and/or political. It is informed by the question: is this subject content that we, as a society, want the next generation of citizens to know? Responding to this question acknowledges the context within which knowledge is selected and applied. It addresses the socio-political context, the changing nature of society’s norms and values, and the contested or inaccurate nature of some content. While the task of academic specialists is to ensure the scholarly and epistemic integrity of the knowledge, a democratic nation as a whole has an obligation to contribute to discussions about the curriculum for a public education system. The widespread public discussion of (leading to support for) the current government’s decision to prescribe New Zealand history as a curriculum subject exemplifies the enactment of this responsibility. My purpose in including such a wide range of content about Ngati Kuri is to show that, for a nation like New Zealand which is seeking to understand the relationship between Maori and settler-descendants, the inclusion of the topic can be justified according to all of Element 2’s three criteria. The topic expresses the concepts of settlement, displacement, identity, and revival in the specific content but the concepts can be generalised to other topics about other groups, both M¯aori and non-M¯aori which contain the same important historical concepts (Element 2, Criterion one). It shows how scholarship about the topic is based on evidence that is continually being added to and which is available for contestation. (Element 2, Criterion two). And the topic meets criterion three, the ‘socio-political’ one, in that it contains content about the first ‘contact’ (albeit by sight only in 1642) between M¯aori and Europeans. Of course, there are many other significant events that may stake a claim for inclusion in a national curriculum. Indeed the very discussion about which topics should be selected has its own valuable purpose by making those events widely known.

Element 3 The Model’s Element 3 introduces what we call ‘know-how-to’. These are the subject competencies, techniques, and skills which apply the subject concepts and content of the first two ‘knowledge-that’ Elements. The first type of two ‘know-how-to’ competencies are performance competencies which refer to the techniques and skills that students will need to acquire in order to show their knowledge of the concepts and content. An example of performance competencies for the Ngati Kuri topic

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may include ‘identify the changes to Ngati Kuri identity in the four selected historical periods’. The competency may also include requiring the use of the correct language (M¯aori and English, written and spoken) in the learning activities. The learning activities in which the students will practise these performance competencies should be age-appropriate. They may include drawing maps of the Far North showing the changing names or undertaking research about changing place names (Aupouri Peninsula/Muriwhenua/Te Hiku o te Ika). The second type of ‘know-how-to’ competencies is judgement competencies. These are more sophisticated than performance competencies and refer to the degree of understanding in using subject concepts from Element 1 with students being able to explain why something is the case (intelligent knowing-why). For example, students would be able to explain the reasons, using economic analysis and with supporting evidence from the content, for the displacement and subsequent revival of Ngati Kuri identity.

Element 4 The CDC Model’s final element is Element 4: Evaluating knowledge-that and knowhow-to. Its purpose is to measure how the students’ mastery of know-how-to demonstrates their understanding of knowledge-that’s concepts and content. The evaluation system includes assessment and feedback for three types of competency. Competency one is content to recall and recognises the importance of memorisation in the knowledge acquisition process (Sweller, Merrienboer, & Paas, 2019). In the Ngati Kuri topic, for example, students would be required to recall the historical periods associated with the three concepts. The second competency assesses a student’s degree of performance mastery in using specific skills and techniques to apply procedural rules to the subject concepts and content. For the Ngati Kuri topic, students would need to draw a map of New Zealand’s Far North and locate the relevant places on the map. The third competency evaluates the extent to which students can use subject concepts to explain and justify why they use a particular skill or technical procedure for a particular purpose. Do they show understanding of the subject concepts as they apply the subject concepts in their know-how-to activities? Although evaluation measures know-how-to in the first instance, that know-how-to must be informed by the underpinning concepts and supported by the best content. Students who study the Ngati Kuri topic would be asked to explain the reasons for (say) the period of displacement or the period of revival.

Conclusion The Curriculum Design Coherence Model was introduced as an effective way to design a coherent curriculum with the Ngati Kuri topic used to demonstrate how the

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design works. In Chap. 1, I referred to fundamental disagreements amongst educationalists about whether academic knowledge offers an opportunity or perpetuates inequality. This chapter has made the case for ‘opportunity’ but with the rider that the knowledge provided to students is selected for its scholarly veracity and designed for its epistemic integrity. Providing such subject knowledge will be the key task in rebuilding New Zealand’s national curriculum.

References Beaglehole, J. (Ed.) (1961). The voyage of the resolution and adventure, 1772–1775. Journals of captain cook (23 May 1773), (Vol. 2) Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 186, Footnote 4: Robson. Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research, critique (Rev). New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Gilsemans, Isaac: Aldus vertoont zich het Drie Koningen Eyland, als gy het aen de Noort west Zyde op 40 Vaedemen van uw heeft. F. Ottens fec. direxit. [Amsterdam, 1726]. Retreived June 16, 2020, from https://natlib.govt.nz/records/23181947?search%5Bi%5D%5Bname_authority_ id%5D=-137216&search%5Bpath%5D=items. Kaamira Manuscripts, Book 1 (1937) Book 5 (1910). Auckland War Memorial Museum. Kereama, M. (1968). The tail of the fish: Maori memories of the far north, Published privately. Lee, J. (1983). I have named it the Bay of Islands. Penguin. Maori Land Court. (1976). Kaitaia minute book 9, Folios 265–270 Whangarei 5 February. Department of Justice. Maxwell, C. F. (1895). The Origin of the Tribal Name Ngati Kuri of Whangape etc. Journal of the Polynesian Society, 4(2), 183–184. McPhail, G. (2020). The Search for deep learning: A curriculum coherence model. Journal of Curriculum Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2020.1748231. McRae, J. (1981). Nga Iwi o Te Tai Tokerau. Tari Maori, Whangarei. Ministry of Education. (2020). Strengthening local curriculum. The New Zealand Curriculum online. Accessed June 25, 2020, from https://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Strengthening-local-curric ulum/Leading-local-curriculum-guide-series (updated 11 February). Muru, H., & Norman, W. (1995). Project Marae, Ko Ngati Kuri to iwi te tangatawhenua I te Hiku o te Ika Muriwhenua, A collection of papers prepared for the hui at e Reo Mihi Marae, Te Hapua, November. Unpublished. Polack, J. S. (1838). New Zealand, being a narrative of travels and adventures during a residence in that country between the years 1831 and 1837. London: Richard Bentley (republished 1974 Christchurch: Capper press). Rata, E. (1996). The emergence of tribal capitalism. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Auckland. Rata, E. (2000). The Ngati Kuri tribe. In. A political economy of neotribal capitalism (pp. 155–180). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Rata, E. (2018). Connecting knowledge to democracy. In B. Barrett, U. Hoadley & J. Morgan (Eds.), Knowledge, curriculum and equity: Social realist perspectives (pp. 19–32). London: Routledge. Rata, E. (2019). Knowledge-rich teaching: A model of curriculum design coherence. British Educational Research Journal, 45(4), 681–697. Sweller, J., Merrienboer, J., & Paas, F. (2019). Cognitive architecture and instructional design: 20 years later. Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09465-5. Treaty of Waitangi (Ngati Kuri Claim) Settlement Act, 2014. Waitangi Tribunal. (1992). Muriwhenua claim (Wai 321). Wellington: Department of Justice.

Part II

A Closer Look at Schooling Practices

Chapter 4

Knowledge Marginalisation in Curriculum and Practice: Walking the Tightrope Between Curricula Freedom and Accountability Barbara Ormond

Introduction Knowledge occupies a precarious position in twenty-first century education. Educational policy and curricula reform in many nations has shifted towards prioritising critical thinking skills and learning how to learn ahead of knowledge per se. While there is an underlying assumption in the design of competency and outcomes focussed curricula that knowledge will underpin the implementation of these understated curricular objectives, in practice there is the potential for the marginalisation of knowledge. Where curricula offer teachers and learners opportunities to exercise considerable autonomy over their curricula choices this freedom is also often tempered by a top-down approach to monitoring outcomes. In New Zealand, the ways in which assessment of senior secondary school students has constrained teachers’ curricular choices, shifted their conceptions of knowledge and impacted upon the range and breadth of the knowledge taught to students, can be attributed to the forces of accountability which drive performativity. This chapter focusses on subjects within the social sciences and humanities and illustrates how knowledge can be fragmented and reduced when decisions are made according to what best suits maximising assessment outcomes.

Relative Autonomy The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007) identifies knowledge requirements through achievement objectives. In this chapter, the focus is on the B. Ormond (B) University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. Lourie and G. McPhail (eds.), Perspectives on the Knowledge Problem in New Zealand Education, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2908-2_4

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senior secondary level where, for example, Level 1 History (15–16 years of age) and Level 1 Social Studies each have just two achievement objectives that teachers must address. Teachers are therefore guided in the Curriculum by a total of 38 words for History at Level 1 and 27 words for Social Studies at Level 1. The brevity of the Curriculum achievement objectives and the absence of some subjects from The New Zealand Curriculum (e.g. Classical Studies) means that ‘assessment’ has become the key driver for what teachers do. Assessment is, in practical terms, the default curriculum. However, while there are elements that guide the selection of knowledge in the Achievement Standards for the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) qualification, they are commonly, as with the Curriculum, not specific about what knowledge—concepts and content—should be taught. Instead, in the humanities subjects, the Achievement Standards often identify the core skills, for example the use of primary sources of evidence in classical studies, or specific disciplinary concepts, for example understanding different perspectives in the study of history. The teacher then determines what subject content is relevant to address the Achievement Standards.

Input and Output Controls The tensions between control over outputs (for example, through moderation, monitoring of results, setting the examinations for the NCEA qualification) alongside a less regulatory approach to inputs (that is, the broad Curriculum and relative autonomy to determine what knowledge is taught) is a well-recognised pattern in contemporary education (Biesta, 2004, 2009; Erss, 2018; Nieveen & Kuiper, 2012; Priestley & Philippou, 2018). In the case of New Zealand, we see a combination of centrally set outcomes and school responsibility for finding the means to achieve the outcomes. Karlsen (2000) refers to this as decentralised centralism where decentralisation is linked to the marketisation of education to meet the needs of local consumers while central authorities oversee implementation and monitoring of national education policy. Such an approach allows governments to monitor schools and, by inference, teachers’ performance. As Bernstein (2000) points out ‘the market may have greater autonomy, but the devices of symbolic control are increasingly state regulated and monitored through the new techniques of de-centred centralization’ (p. xxvi). However, while performativity and output control influence teachers’ actions across the globe and are evident both in heavily prescribed and in more autonomous curricula circumstances, the ways performativity impacts knowledge varies depending on the context. Teachers often complain that the prescription they have to teach is too large which can lead to transmission-mode delivery in order to get through the required quantity of content. On the other hand, in New Zealand where the extent of coverage can be largely teacher-determined, a culture of accountability in schools and nationally has gradually shifted teachers’ practices towards a reduced and segmented approach to knowledge—knowledge which neatly fits the requirements of the Achievement Standards and rewards focused yet limited knowledge

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encounters. Teachers have learned over time to play the NCEA game better and better, but it often comes at the cost of knowledge breadth and coherence. A balance needs to be struck to avoid the pitfalls and extremes of either an excessive amount of prescription or a minimal curriculum that provides little guidance or surety over what is to be learned. Policy direction in New Zealand and elsewhere is also influenced by international comparative benchmarking of educational outcomes in tests such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). A government treasury paper entitled ‘Treasury’s Advice on Lifting Student Achievement in New Zealand: Evidence Brief ’ (The Treasury, 2012) is one such example where PISA results are cited as a basis for considering reforms. To improve international rankings in these evaluations governments seek ways to raise student achievement through curricula reform and through imposing greater accountability for student outcomes. The focus upon measuring outcomes and steering the types of educational achievement which are regarded as beneficial is also associated with neo-liberalist governance and new managerialism (Lynch, 2014; Robertson & Sorenson, 2017). In New Zealand, school performance is evaluated through audits and through data on student achievement. The data is gathered and compared at the national level and published annually (New Zealand Qualifications Authority Annual Reports on NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship Data and Statistics). With education increasingly being moulded to serve the perceived needs of the economic well-being of countries, and marketisation of education developed out of the neo-liberal belief that competition maximises the performance of schools, each school board seeks to outperform their neighbouring school and attain or exceed government targets; for example the Ministry of Education’s 85% target rate for NCEA Level 2 to be achieved by 2017 (Ministry of Education, 2014). While the long-held belief in the desirability of equity in education for all New Zealand children advanced since the first Education Act in 1877 is being upheld in the discourse of raising achievement for all, this discourse is, at the same time, challenged by competitive forces. League tables which publicise the NCEA results and compare schools, influence consumer choice in education leading to some schools becoming ‘over-subscribed and “sink” schools struggle to maintain their numbers’ (Lynch, 2014, p. 7). Schools are encouraged to place a premium on results in national assessment, but this is sometimes at the expense of equitable access to important academic knowledge. In New Zealand ‘credits’ for the NCEA qualification can be made up of any combination of academic, vocational, or alternative courses so the competitive agenda can persuade schools and students to select pathways which, while providing sufficient credits, may be a ‘disruption to an epistemically coherent’ learning experience (Rata & Taylor, 2015, p. 225) and hence reduce access to ‘powerful knowledge’. The link between the marketability of schools and success in national qualifications can therefore have a significant influence over what is offered and taught. As Crawshaw (2000) notes:

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B. Ormond As is the case with secondary schools, it is a natural tendency of schools … to structure teaching more directly to improve the students’ success in examinations, rather than teaching in order to meet their real needs. Assessment of learning through quantifiable forms of examination not only approximates the analysis of real knowledge, it also changes and abstracts the focus of teaching. In order for schools to attract students, they will, by necessity, have to devise strategies that ensure that students have their chances of exam success maximised (p. 12).

While the form of assessment has changed since the time this view was advanced to include school-based assessments alongside external examinations for the NCEA, the high priority placed on assessment results as a means of measuring school performance has become even more pronounced over the past two decades. Performativity is now a significant factor in contributing to the changes in the way knowledge is conceived by teachers and experienced by students. The impacts upon knowledge have largely been unintended consequences of policies and decisions concerning assessment which have been aimed at improving the reliability and validity of the assessment system, rather than a deliberate means to downgrade knowledge. Nevertheless, teachers in New Zealand have responded to these accountability drivers since the inception of the NCEA in 2002 in ways that have fundamentally altered the design of their programmes and the ways in which knowledge is regarded and delivered.

Shifts in Teaching Knowledge With performativity and accountability at the heart of teachers’ decisions (Ball, 2003; Biesta, 2009; Singh, Heimans, & Glasswell, 2014), the manner in which the Achievement Standards are assessed heavily influences the form and extent of the knowledge being taught. For many social sciences and humanities subjects, the most prominent outcome of assessment-led decisions is first, that knowledge is commonly selected on the basis of, or reduced to, only the knowledge required to address the assessable features of the Achievement Standards. Secondly, learning is reduced to fewer ‘bites’ of knowledge in yearly programmes and minimised through non-engagement with some of the Standards. Thirdly, knowledge of important ideas, concepts, or skills is often limited to being addressed at just one point in a year’s programme. Once the concept or skill has been assessed it is not revisited.

Just Enough Knowledge for Assessment Purposes As with The New Zealand Curriculum the Achievement Standards are broad and appear to offer opportunities for teachers to select the content that has the potential to be ‘powerful knowledge’—knowledge that facilitates broad conceptual understandings and enables students to make connections with other related bodies of knowledge. However, despite a high level of autonomy in which teachers select the

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contexts for addressing the Standards, the predominant response has been to narrow the field of knowledge in order to focus on a portion of content that is just sufficient to meet assessment requirements. Knowledge has commonly been reduced to discrete portions of what might have formerly (when knowledge was prescribed) been a broader recognisable ‘topic’ (see Ormond, 2017). The focus on a well-defined but limited construct of knowledge is beneficial from a performance standpoint because students can learn in greater depth and pre-prepare answers to address examinations and in doing so, have greater opportunities to gain the highest grades, known as Excellence grades. For example in addressing the Achievement Standard 91438 Analyse the causes and consequences of a significant historical event for Level 3 History (for students aged 17–18 years) a teacher choosing to teach about the New Zealand Land Wars can narrow the study to a more specific aspect such as the Waikato Wars, or to a specific battle, such as the Battle at Rangiriri within the Waikato Wars. Therefore, rather than teaching about the range of issues and circumstances which played out in the various theatres of war—the Northern War, Wellington, Whanganui, disputes in Taranaki, other sites of battle in the Waikato, Tauranga, etc., the focus on a single event narrows the learning. In this example, aside from giving a brief overview of the Land Wars for contextual purposes, the teaching is likely to concentrate on enabling students to display depth of knowledge about the Waikato Wars or the Battle of Rangiriri. While there are undoubtedly benefits to in-depth learning, in New Zealand the consistency with which this comes at the expense of breadth, rather than achieving a balance between breadth and depth, is a hallmark feature resulting from the particulars of the standards-based NCEA assessment (see Ormond, 2019). One example of the ‘depth’ is students writing lengthy, but largely pre-prepared answers in response to examination questions for History. The questions, which are based very closely on the Achievement Standard criteria, are formulaic generic questions because, in an environment where teachers have autonomy over topic choice, students have to be able to answer using any choice of historical topic. The essay has got so big and unwieldy in the current generic structure (that) I’m not surprised students are choosing to abandon it altogether and go for 15 credits from the internally assessed standards (Comment 9, p. 10, New Zealand History Teachers’ Association, 2016). They are writing over 3,000 words in an essay and then of course because they do write long essays, they end up hammering their way to Excellence in the end. But it is not elegant. They are kind of like, they have pounded you to death really (Research participant, interviewed by Ormond, 2017).

The incentives to narrow the range of knowledge learned in favour of depth and practicing for perfection are also evident in other subjects, particularly where there is a high level of predictability in the examinations. In Classical Studies, for example, the relatively recent abandonment of text extracts of Classical literature and images of Classical artworks in the examinations and their replacement with themes has similarly led to a reduction in knowledge. A leading Classical Studies teacher commented that The content coverage of each topic has reduced significantly. Some teachers only do about four art works for the art Achievement Standard, focusing entirely on the ones which they

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B. Ormond predict will give the greatest scope for answering a generic exam question. Likewise, the amount of text studied in the Odyssey for example, can also be reduced significantly to focus simply on the themes in the assessment specifications. I abhor these tendencies because I think it compromises a student’s all-round classical knowledge and education. But I know that it is widespread practice. Many Classics courses are extremely ‘light-weight’ as a result. I suspect that there is a lot of time spent practicing the perfect answer. The fault lies in the new Achievement Standards and the examinations (e-mail from an Auckland teacher, anonymity protected, 13 April 2018).

The genericism of some of the examination papers also motivates teachers to provide intensive preparation of students. In a survey, a history teacher argued that ‘At the moment the students getting Excellence are a select bunch who have either prepared exactly what the question asked for or have prepared a cloned essay from their teacher’ (Comment 48, p. 23, New Zealand History Teachers’ Association, 2014b). Another respondent to the survey commented that The questions need to be more varied each year! Having the same question for years in a row is NOT an appropriate way to assess learning. Schools are teaching their students to rote learn essays which in some cases the teacher has written. This is not a fair assessment for those schools who encourage independent thought (Comment 21, p. 57, New Zealand History Teachers’ Association, 2014a).

Therefore, the learning emerging from these processes may not be powerful knowledge. Powerful knowledge is the knowledge that is able to be reflected on and applied as transferrable knowledge to go beyond the limits of that context to make connections with new knowledge. Sadler (2007) argues that this focus on ‘short-term objectives’ and ‘accumulation of credits like grains of sand’ (is) ‘a long call from the production of truly integrated knowledge and skill’ and is ‘insufficient evidence that a student is capable’ (p. 392). The type of knowledge teachers select is also impacted in this high-trust model where teachers’ decisions are also conditioned by accountability. In a recent study of English teachers’ choices of texts, it was found that NCEA assessments played a key role in determining text selection. Hughson (2020) asked the question ‘what kinds of texts (do) NCEA assessments incentivise – are they encouraging the teaching of complex, interesting, powerful texts?’ (p. 69). While some teachers in Hughson’s study suggested that students were better off with complex texts to provide the depth needed to gain an Excellence grade (p. 71), five of Hughson’s eight participants indicated that they avoided complex texts, one citing her decision not continue teaching Othello because it made it difficult for the students to succeed in NCEA. She felt that a simpler, more accessible text was better suited to success (p. 70). This finding is supported by Rozas Gómez (2020) who records that an external reviewer, who was brought into an English Department to review the school’s programme, advocated that the school ‘abandon Shakespeare and instead focus on texts that were simpler ... magazines were suggested as a better alternative’ (p. 107). However, Rozas Gómez’s research also revealed instances where teachers actively resisted the ‘accountability culture and its effects in narrowing curriculum content’ (p. 107). These teachers were concerned that student success in assessment came with the corollary that

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they had to ‘shut down some of their students’ critical thinking’ (research participant cited, p. 107). Furthermore, Wilson, Madjar, and McNaughton (2016) examined participation rates for two Achievement Standards assessing disciplinary literacy and found that opportunities to read complex written texts were much lower in schools serving lower socio-economic communities than in those of mid or higher ranking. Students’ opportunities to learn are therefore impacted through inequities in access to the types of knowledge required to progress to more advanced levels. While differences in approach are evident among English teachers this nevertheless points to the influence of assessment on what knowledge students are being taught.

Limited Range of Knowledge Performativity plays its part in determining which Achievement Standards and how many Standards are undertaken each year. The perception is that higher grades can be achieved if students engage with fewer Standards since teachers and students can then put more time into the selected Standards. Each Achievement Standard is individually assessable through either an examination or a school-based assignment, and not all the Standards for each subject need to be addressed so in the past decade the trend has been for schools to reduce the number of Standards they enter students in. A history teacher observed that ‘now that students are doing fewer papers they have more time to write ‘super essays’ (Comment 9, p. 14, New Zealand History Teachers’ Association, 2016). Teachers, however, do not see this as desirable. Furthermore, the decision at the time when the NCEA was introduced in 2002, to hold three-hour examinations regardless of how many Standards are attempted by a student in that time means that students have more time to provide in-depth answers if they address a limited number of Standards in that timeframe. In social sciences and humanities, this is normally one or two of the Achievement Standards assessed through examination. For example, for History at Levels 1 and 2 (Years 11 and 12) the Standard which assesses ‘how a significant historical event affected New Zealand society’ is the most frequently dropped Standard. In 2019 only 23% of Level 1 students and 22% of Level 2 students sat this Achievement Standard. Similarly, while the examination of the skill of interpreting sources, has much higher numbers than the aforementioned, approximately 30 percent of students did not sit this examination (NZQA, 2020). This means that core disciplinary skills or critical knowledge may get little or no attention. A system of endorsement for the National Certificate of Educational Achievement gives impetus to the reductive effect on knowledge. Students can receive an endorsement of their certificate for their overall year’s achievement, or can gain endorsement for an individual subject, at either Excellence or Merit level. To achieve these endorsements it is better to do fewer Achievement Standards but do them well. Endorsement, therefore, disincentivises students from applying themselves to a full complement of Standards and rewards reduced knowledge.

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B. Ormond Students are opting to do one paper, at each level, as the best chance for Excellence endorsement. Does this really reflect a whole year’s learning programme? Grade harvesting has become a game for teachers and students. Teachers who once enrolled students for three Achievement Standards, now accept them sitting two or even one NCEA external (NZHTA Exam Survey Report, 2020, p. 3).

This endorsement mechanism pulls teachers in a direction that may run counter to their professional judgements of what students should experience in their subject. It also shifts teachers’ and students’ conceptions of knowledge towards equating learning with what counts for assessment. Course endorsement has forced another shift in thinking towards manipulating the internal and external standards in order to get a higher percentage of endorsements hence not doing resource interpretation [i.e. not doing the history Achievement Standard which assesses source interpretation] (Karen, history teacher and research participant, 2017). It is difficult for a student aiming for a merit or excellence endorsement to write on all three of the external Standards. I have thus found students choosing to do two essays (but) I think the preparation for the resource papers is useful for students going on to tertiary education (Comment 30, p. 22, New Zealand History Teachers’ Association, 2014b).

Therefore while a complete set of Standards in any subject may provide a valuable range of disciplinary knowledge, the non-engagement with Standards can result in piecemeal knowledge where critical learning in a subject is left out of yearly programmes. The reduction in Standards can mean that core disciplinary skills, concepts, or substantive knowledge are left out of programmes entirely, or that fewer topics are addressed. Teachers and/or students decide which standards they will complete. At the end of the day I think what the school is looking for is for those high grades - Merits and Excellences. I’m seeing a more significant weight being put on internal assessment in order to get them across to that line… It wouldn’t be so bad perhaps if you were going to be offering all your Standards in one form or another so it was a more cohesive programme, but instead what we are looking at now is reducing those Standards in order to get the best academic record for their students… I think it has shifted the balance the wrong way (Research participant, 2017).

Comparing how many topics are commonly taught in a years’ programme for history, classical studies, and art history provides some evidence of the reduction in knowledge over time (see Table 4.1). Art History provides a clear example of this reduction. In the early 1990s Year 13 students, needed to study four art periods from a prescribed set of twelve topics so students might learn about The High Renaissance and Mannerism, The Renaissance in Northern Europe, American Art Since 1945, and Aspects of Modern New Zealand Art. From 2012 only one topic has been required to address the examination so teachers might, for example, choose the Late Renaissance and students can spend the entire year looking at that topic. While many teachers use a different topic for students to undertake research for the internally assessed standards, the reduction overall is significant and it means that students are likely to leave school with in-depth knowledge of one period of art but very little knowledge of the history of art beyond that period. At the present time art history differs from

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Table 4.1 Year programmes—reduction in knowledge. The number of topics typically studied in a year programme for history, classical studies and art history in the period prior to the introduction of the NCEA (Pre 2002) to 2020 Year programmes—reduction in knowledge Pre-NCEA

2002–4 Early NCEA

2020

History Year 11 Level 1 NCEA

6 exam topics + 1 or more internally assessed assignments = 7

3 exam topics + 1 internally assessed standard = 4

1 or 2 exam topics + 2 internally assessed = 3 or 4

Classical Studies Year 12 Level 2 NCEA

5 exam topics = 5

3 exam topics + 1 internally assessed =4

1 or 2 exam topics + 1 internally assessed = 2 or 3

Art History Year 13 Level 3 NCEA

4 exam topics + 2 or more internally assessed assignments = 5 or 6

2 exam topics + 2 internally assessed =4

1 exam topic + 1 or 2 internally assessed = 3

Note The number of ‘topics’ does not equate to the number of Achievement Standards undertaken as students can use the same topic for more than one standard e.g. History Year 11—most teachers use the same topic for AS91001 Carry out an investigation of an historical event, or place, of significance to New Zealanders and AS91002 Demonstrate understanding of an historical event, or place, of significance to New Zealanders

other similar subjects such as history, classical studies, social studies, and English in that topics are still prescribed for the Standards which are assessed by examination. There are six topics available. The chart illustrates the reduction in knowledge encounters with about half the number of topics being taught in these humanities subjects today when compared with the pre-NCEA period. It should be noted, however, that the table is indicative only as there is variability across schools and the depth and breadth of the knowledge are not easily conveyed in numerical terms. This phenomenon is common across all subjects and over the years of senior schooling, so when added up there has been a concerning reduction in students’ access to wide knowledge. When coupled with the fragmentation that Achievement Standards can produce, this has had a major overall effect on the range of knowledge in programmes. While the specifics of endorsement, ability to pick up or drop Achievement Standards, and the combination of internal and external assessment are not necessarily a feature of systems in other jurisdictions, the New Zealand example illustrates how critical it is for every piece of the curriculum and assessment package to be thought through so the system does not encourage behaviours which are detrimental to students access to knowledge. Sadler begins his article ‘Perils in the meticulous specification of goals and assessment criteria’ with the statement ‘The implementation of assessment policies can sometimes achieve almost the reverse of what was originally intended’ (2007, p. 387) and this is evident in New Zealand. The openended curriculum and leaving knowledge unstated in the Achievement Standards

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were designed to enable teachers to provide rich opportunities for learning appropriate for the particular students they were teaching in any year. However, the unexpected evolution of the NCEA system to include mechanisms such as endorsement, statistical measures to control the allocation of grades in order to retain consistency from year to year for examinations (Profiles of Expected Performance), and the decision to provide a three-hour examination regardless of how many Standards are attempted in that time, are examples of the many features of the NCEA which have been introduced and led teachers and students to select fewer Achievement Standards and narrow their content in favour of depth. Teachers have learned to ‘play the game’ in their attempts to provide students with opportunities to gain Excellence awards. You are trying to play that game to help your students as much as possible and give them advantages. You are trying to like also deal with all the other stuff - the strategizing, the getting your kids their subject endorsement or dealing with a heavy Level 2 programme. You are weighing up all of those other factors and all of those other factors are not actually really very good factors in terms of deciding your programme really, you know, in terms of what is it history teachers should be teaching their students. So it is a dilemma (Research participant, interviewed by Ormond, 2017).

A review of the NCEA is currently underway and in an initial document produced by the Ministry of Education, there was some recognition of the problems. NCEA’s current structure can be a barrier to rich learning. By breaking learning up into standards, NCEA can fragment teaching and learning. This discourages coherence and linking learning across courses. Support is focused on standards rather than the curriculum, so teachers often have to resort to building courses starting with assessment, which means rich learning can be lost (Ministry of Education, 2018, p. 11).

Building Knowledge A focus on particular outcomes rather than curriculum has a further downside. It is difficult to build knowledge and capability if, through the fragmentation of a subject into assessable standards (or outcomes), students are only required to engage with particular concepts, content, or skills just once in a year’s programme. Having ‘achieved’ the relevant Achievement Standard the student moves on to the next bite of knowledge or disciplinary skill. ‘The ability of students to see the essay as “done and dusted” when they have prepared ahead of time is problematic’ (Comment 1, p. 13, New Zealand History Teachers’ Association, 2016). While this comment refers to history essays, the practice is widespread so for example in Art History students might successfully demonstrate their knowledge of the effects created by impasto paint application in Impressionist artworks for an assignment addressing the internally assessed standard AS91183 Examine how media are used to create effects in art works, but that knowledge will not necessarily be built upon through giving consideration to the effects of media in other art movements as their year progresses, despite this being an aspect at the heart of all art historical study. Instead, teachers and students are encouraged to shift their focus to concentrate on a different

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aspect of knowledge to address other Achievement Standards, such as the meanings of artworks e.g. AS91181 Examine the meanings conveyed by art works, or the contexts of art works e.g. AS91182 Examine the influence of context(s) on art works (NZQA, n.d.). There is little encouragement in a standards-based assessment system for students to take notice of relationships between aspects of knowledge or for students to consider similarities and differences to gain a ‘big picture’ understanding. Only the knowledge and relationships necessary for internal consistency in the knowledge being assessed for a particular single Standard are considered to be worthy. Therefore to build knowledge over an extended period or to make links between knowledge learned at various points in the year, can be difficult for a teacher to manage and encourage when knowledge is equated with achievement of the Standards. As a result of the intense focus at particular times during a school programme on a specific aspect of a discipline, or a specific skill, some teachers’ conceptions of what critical knowledge is has also changed incrementally over time so that depth is favoured over breadth, and disciplinary skills are given higher prominence than substantive knowledge. Sadler argues that ‘so well accepted has the accumulation of fragments become that the collection provides the functional definition of knowledge, skill or competence … (This is) self-reinforcing, self-legitimating and perceived as quite unproblematic’ (2007, p. 390).

Powerful Knowledge The concept of powerful knowledge refers to the idea that some forms of knowledge have greater potential than others to enable abstracted, extended, and meaningful thinking. The value of powerful knowledge is its concerted focus ‘on the knowledge itself, its structure, what it can do and how it is organised for both the production of new knowledge and the acquisition of existing knowledge which is new to the student’ (Young, 2010). Powerful knowledge in the humanities and social sciences is knowledge that is studied in sufficient depth and breadth for students to be able to understand its significance and relevance (Ormond, 2014). A case can also be made for big picture overviews or frameworks of knowledge (Gibson, 2018; Rogers, 2016; Shemilt & Howson, 2017) which provide students with the overarching schema of key ideas, concepts, and core knowledge upon which to hang newly acquired knowledge. This knowledge helps students ascertain the significance of what they are learning. However, when such frameworks are not directly assessed they may be seen as peripheral, by either the teacher or student. The stronger forces of time pressures and accountability may in these circumstances mean that building frameworks of knowledge take a backseat. Students undertaking the NCEA qualification in New Zealand frequently ask their teachers to justify what is taught asking “Sir, is this for credits”. ‘Students become very focused on only what is required for the exam’ (Comment 13, p. 38, New Zealand History Teachers’ Association, 2015). If the teacher responds that it is valuable learning but will not be

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in an assessment, then it is likely to be quickly disregarded. This is common for both circumstances where knowledge is localised and for more prescribed circumstances when performativity is emphasised. For example in New Zealand where art history topics are prescribed, knowing that certain artists are listed as required knowledge for an examination means that students are likely to attend to those artists while learning about other closely associated artists who are not directly examinable, is likely to be ignored. Bernstein’s (2000) theories of recontextualization are also relevant to the discussion of powerful knowledge since any evaluation of whether particular knowledge is powerful, is impacted by the ways in which disciplinary knowledge, deriving from an environment of robust testing and critique, is then recontextualised for use in school classrooms. The additional weight of accountability further constrains the ways teachers recontextualize knowledge, and it is argued here that for assessment purposes the recontextualization takes a more narrowed form of knowledge for assessment purposes. This narrowing of knowledge places the attainment of powerful knowledge in a precarious position.

Conclusion—Walking the Tightrope While the phenomenon of accountability in education is well-known, its effects differ in relation to the educational context. In some countries, the push for higher and higher grades has led to limitations on the range of pedagogies used as teachers shift into transmission mode in order to get through over-burdensome prescriptions. In New Zealand, the effects have been to drastically reduce the amount of knowledge taught in order to give time for an in-depth study of narrowly confined knowledge which is perceived as enhancing the likelihood of success in assessment. Positioning skills, learning to learn, and generic competencies at the forefront of curricula design have also led to marginalisation of knowledge in both policy and practice over the past decade in New Zealand. While a parallel development of greater teacher autonomy and flexibility has come to the fore and has the potential to address students’ immediate needs and address diversity in school communities, it is by no means certain that equitable access to powerful knowledge for students has been achieved through this approach. Walking the tightrope between curricula freedom and performativity is difficult and can create uncertainties and inequities in opportunities to engage with powerful knowledge. In New Zealand, when factoring in the accountability imperatives in a high-stakes assessment and competitive school environment, the result, albeit uneven across subjects, has been an overall reduction of students’ access to knowledge and teachers’ attention to knowledge.

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References Ball, S. (2003). The teacher’s soul and performativity. Journal of Education Policy, 18(2), 215–228. Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research, critique. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. Biesta, G. (2004). Education, accountability, and the ethical demand: Can the democratic potential of accountability be regained? Educational Theory, 54(3), 233–250. Biesta, G. (2009). Good education in the age of measurement: On the need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education. Educational Assessment, Evaluation & Accountability, 21(1), 33–46. Crawshaw, M. (2000). Neo-liberalism in New Zealand Education: A critique. ACE Papers, 6, 7– 19. Retrieved May 16, from https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/handle/2292/25032/browse? value=Crawshaw%2C+Mike&type=author. Erss, M. (2018). ‘Complete freedom to choose within limits’—Teachers’ views of curricular autonomy, agency and control in Estonia, Finland and Germany. The Curriculum Journal, 29(2), 238–256. Gibson, L. (2018, 13 September). Frameworks of knowledge and the ‘big picture’. Public History Weekly: The International Blog Journal. Retrieved April 12, 2019, from https://public-historyweekly.degruyter.com/6-2018-27/frameworks-knowledge-big-picture/. Hughson, T. A. (2020). Preference, passing and fresh perspectives: Text selection by secondary school English teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand. Unpublished Master of Education dissertation, Victoria University, New Zealand. Karlsen, G. E. (2000). Decentralized centralism: Framework for a better understanding of governance in the field of education. Journal of Education Policy, 15(5), 525–538. Lynch, K. (2014). New managerialism: The impact on education. Concept: The Journal of Contemporary Community Education Practice Theory, 5(3), 1–11. Ministry of Education. (2007). The New Zealand curriculum. Wellington, New Zealand: Learning Media. Ministry of Education. (2014). Statement of intent 2014–2018. Retrieved April 23, 2019, from https://www.education.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Ministry/Publications/Statements-of-int ent/2014SOI.pdf. Ministry of Education. (2018). NCEA review: Discussion document—Big opportunities. Report by the Ministerial Advisory Group. Retrieved May 19, 2019, from https://conversation-space.s3.apsoutheast-2.amazonaws.com/NCEA%20Review%20Discussion%20Document%20MAG% 20Big%20Opps_WEB.pdf/NCEA%20Review%20Discussion%20Document%20MAG% 20Big%20Opps_WEB.pdf. New Zealand History Teachers’ Association. (2014a). NZHTA survey 2014 externals 1: The papers. Retrieved August 17, 2016. from http://members.nzhta.org.nz/2015/05/11/survey-results/. New Zealand History Teachers’ Association. (2014b). NZHTA survey 2: 2014 externals: The results. Retrieved August 17, 2016, from http://members.nzhta.org.nz/2015/05/11/survey-results/. New Zealand History Teachers’ Association. (2015). NZHTA history department survey, 2015. E-mail to NZHTA members. New Zealand History Teachers’ Association. (2016). NZHTA history matrix review (NCEA)—Initial questionnaire, April 2016. E-mail to NZHTA members. New Zealand History Teachers’ Association. (2020). NZHTA survey: Exam concerns action plan, 2020. E-mail to NZHTA members. New Zealand Qualifications Authority. (n.d.). Art history achievement standards, Level 2. https://www.nzqa.govt.nz/ncea/assessment/search.do?query=Art+history&view=achieveme nts&level=02. New Zealand Qualifications Authority. (2020). Annual report on NCEA & New Zealand scholarship data & statistics (2019). Retrieved July 29, 2020, from http://www.nzqa.govt.nz/assets/Aboutus/Publications/stats-reports/ncea-annualreport-2016.pdf.

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Nieveen, N., & Kuiper, W. (2012). Balancing curriculum freedom and regulation in the Netherlands. European Education Research Journal, 11(3), 357–368. Ormond, B. M. (2014). Powerful knowledge in history—Disciplinary strength or weakened episteme? In B. Barrett & E. Rata (Eds.), Knowledge and the future of the curriculum: International studies in social realism (pp. 153–166). Basingstoke, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan. Ormond, B. M. (2017). Curriculum decisions—The challenges of teacher autonomy over knowledge selection for history. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 49(5), 599–619. Ormond, B. M. (2019). The impact of standards-based assessment on knowledge for history education in New Zealand. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 26(2), 143–165. Priestley, M., & Philippou, S. (2018). Curriculum making as social practice: Complex webs of enactment. The Curriculum Journal, 29(2), 151–158. Rata, E., & Taylor, A. (2015). Knowledge equivalence discourse in New Zealand secondary school science. New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies, 50, 223–238. Robertson, S. L., & Sorensen, T. (2017). Global transformations of the state, governance and teachers’ labour: Putting Bernstein’s conceptual grammar to work. European Educational Research Journal, 17(4), 470–488. Rogers, R. (2016). Frameworks for big history: Teaching history at its lower resolutions. In C. Counsell, K. Burn, & A. Chapman (Eds.), Masterclass in history education: Transforming teaching and learning (pp. 59–76). London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury. Rozas Gómez, C. (2020). Risky choices—Autonomy and surveillance in Secondary English classrooms in Recasting the subject: Curriculum, equity, and the educated ideal in Secondary English classrooms. Unpublished PhD Thesis, The University of Auckland, New Zealand. Sadler, D. R. (2007). Perils in the meticulous specification of goals and assessment criteria. Assessment in Education, 14(3), 387–392. Shemilt, D., & Howson, J. (2017). Frameworks of knowledge: dilemmas and debates. In I. Davies (Ed.), Debates in history teaching (pp. 66–79). New York: Routledge. Singh, P., Heimans, S., & Glasswell, K. (2014). Policy enactment, context and performativity: Ontological politics and researching Australian National Partnership policies. Journal of Education Policy, 29(6), 826–844. The Treasury. (2012). Treasury’s advice on lifting student achievement in New Zealand: Evidence brief. Retrieved April 23, 2019, from https://treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2012-03/sanz-evi dence-mar12.pdf. Wilson, A., Madjar, I., & McNaughton, S. (2016). Opportunity to learn about disciplinary literacy in senior secondary English classrooms in New Zealand. The Curriculum Journal, 27(2), 204–228. Young, M. F. D. (2010). Educational policies for a knowledge society: Reflections from a sociology of knowledge perspective. Keynote Introductory lecture to a meeting of the Governance of Educational Trajectories in Europe (Goethe) Project. University of Tübingen, 29 January. Retrieved April 23, 2019, from http://www.goete.eu/news/events/101-reflection-keynote-lectureat-the-goete-kick-off-meeting-by-michael-young.

Chapter 5

Knowledge and Student Identity Alexis Siteine

Introduction In this second chapter that considers how teachers put curriculum ideas into practice, the concept of identity as a dimension of the curriculum is explored. This chapter engages with a broader discussion about the purpose of schools by asking whether the primary role of the school is to develop a student’s identity as a learner or their identity as a member of their social group. The purpose of the chapter is to suggest a way in which both identities can be promoted as the student’s rights to subject knowledge is acknowledged as the central role of schooling. I propose that a relationship exists between the type of identity that is acknowledged and promoted at school and the type of knowledge to which students have access in the school curriculum. What students learn at school is a perennial question that is often presented as a matter of educational rights. It has been influenced at different points in educational history by ideas such as universalism, individualism, socialisation, culturalism, and so on. Each generation will continue to grapple with this question as educational ideas and society’s expectations of schools change. The central question, however, remains unchanged: how do schools balance the multiple imperatives of passing on, developing, and creating valued forms of knowledge with the idea of affirming students’ social and cultural background? In most modern societies from the midnineteenth century, knowledge transmission has been an expected role of schools. This task has been operationalised differently at various points of our educational history depending on the dominant discourse of the day. Up until the mid-twentieth century, a strong demarcation existed between what children learned at school and what they learned about at home or in their communities. More recently, however, a concern about the distance between home and schools has been raised and is A. Siteine (B) University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. Lourie and G. McPhail (eds.), Perspectives on the Knowledge Problem in New Zealand Education, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2908-2_5

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used as an explanation for the lower achievement levels of non-dominant groups in society (for example, Maori and Pasifika students in Aotearoa New Zealand). The need to reconnect learners to their sociocultural groups has been taken up as the role of schools and as a way of addressing disparity in educational achievement. This imperative appears in policy, teacher guidelines, and strategic plans. In all of these, reconnection with students’ sociocultural groups is seen in the promotion of culturally relevant curricula and pedagogies and the recognition of a student’s ethnic identity. In this chapter, I pose the question: is the purpose of schooling served best by affirming students ethnic identity by establishing a strong connection to their sociocultural group and the social knowledge of that group; or, by developing students academic identity by providing students with access to school subject knowledge drawn from the subject disciplines?

Academic Identity and a Knowledge-Rich Approach to Curriculum The purposes of education mentioned above suggest two different approaches to schooling: the first I refer to as a knowledge-rich approach, the second a student-focused approach. The characteristics of knowledge-rich approach have been discussed in detail earlier in this book (see Rata’s description of a progressive subject curriculum, Chap. 1). I propose that a knowledge-rich approach provides students with universal access to subject knowledge which, in turn, allows them to develop an academic identity. Subject knowledge is created in the disciplines and drawn upon or, using Bernstein’s (2000) term, recontextualised as school subject knowledge. For example, disciplinary knowledge from the humanities is drawn upon and recontextualised as school subject knowledge in subjects such as English, Music, and Classics. This type of knowledge is propositional in nature, meaning it is objective and claim-based. This knowledge sits outside the learner and is acquired, as objective knowledge which provides students with the means to critique, question, and use evidence to justify claims about the topic being studied. For example, in literacy learning, children often begin learning how to write by recording what they already know how to speak. Knowledge of symbols and of the rules of punctuation and sentence structure allow children to question whether their complete thought is captured in a sentence structure that follows the basic subject-verb-object pattern, whether it is punctuated correctly with a capital letter at the beginning and a full stop at the end, and whether their choices of alphabetic symbols are arranged in the right order. In other words, whether they have spelt the words in their sentence correctly. There are two different types of knowledge at play here: sociocultural knowledge learned from experience and from the social groups to which children belong—often providing the content for their writing—and subject knowledge—the rules of grammar and syntax that are a part of written communication and which is generally acquired at school.

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Subject knowledge allows students to use their experience, but it takes them beyond their experience because it develops in the mind. The subject-verb-object sentence pattern is a matter of thought rather than experience. But why does this matter? I propose that subject knowledge matters for reasons that are matters of social justice. First, subject knowledge offers freedom in ways described by Bailey (1984); it offers knowledge beyond the self, and freedom from that which one only knows from experience. That is not to say that experience is not an important part of what it means to be an educated individual. A New Zealand student in the twenty-first century, for example, will never experience a world without print, but they can learn in their minds about the impact of the printing press on a world where books were only available to very few. Nor are they able to experience the process of photosynthesis, but they can learn in their minds about how green plants capture and convert light energy into oxygen. As students develop their mastery of this type of knowledge, their academic identity is developed. Second, the development of subject knowledge increases the chances for individuals to freely take up life’s opportunities by increasing the ways that they can engage with the world. This approach acknowledges the universal right of all children, whatever their background or circumstances, to access this type of knowledge that develops critical understanding and is not dependent upon who they are seen to be. This approach is not without its vulnerabilities. In order for students to be provided with access to subject knowledge, teachers must be more than ‘facilitators of learning’ but ‘pedagogic authorities in whatever field they have specialized in’ (Young, 2013, p. 102). This recognition often leads to the misunderstanding of a knowledge-rich approach as one where the teacher is a transmitter of a pre-determined list of informational facts where rote learning is prioritized over a more meaningful understanding of deeper knowledge (see Introduction and Chap. 2).

Ethnic Identity and a Student-Focussed Approach to Curriculum In the previous section, I described how a focus on subject knowledge leads to the development of an academic identity. In this section, I will start with the concept of identity in the curriculum and explain what impact that has on knowledge. I begin with identity because a student-focussed approach, as the name implies, places students at the centre of learning. In Aotearoa New Zealand it also includes recognising, affirming, and developing a student’s ethnic identity (Ministry of Education, 2007). A curriculum that supports such goals is one of cultural relevance and is enacted using culturally responsive pedagogies. I use the New Zealand context to illustrate two reasons used to justify a focus on student identity. The first is the shift to a more culturally relevant curriculum and on recognising a student’s ethnic identity which began as a response to the concern

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about the educational underachievement of M¯aori and Pasifika students (Bishop, Berryman, Cavanagh, & Teddy, 2009). As a result of these concerns, initiatives for M¯aori and Pasifika students called for a stronger emphasis on their cultural identity (Ministry of Education, 2013). The Pasifika Education Plan 2013–2017 (Ministry of Education, 2012), for example, was developed specifically to improve the educational outcomes of Pasifika students. Successful students are characterised as: ‘demanding, vibrant, dynamic, successful Pasifika learners, secure and confident in their identities, languages and cultures, navigating through all curriculum areas’ (Ministry of Education, 2012, ‘Pasifika Success’ para. 2). The popularity of this approach is evidenced by the support of Pasifika researchers and educators in the development and use of Pasifika pedagogies (for example, Allen, Taleni, & Robertson, 2009; Hunter & Anthony, 2011; Sìilata, 2014). Similarly, Ka Hikitia—Managing for Success (Ministry of Education, 2009) was introduced as strategy emphasising ‘Maori enjoying education success as Maori’ (p. 18), and, as such, successful M¯aori students were positioned as having a ‘strong sense of cultural identity’ (p. 18). For M¯aori, the current disparities in education are explained as the school curriculum failing to recognise M¯aori worldviews, and the use of teaching styles not suited to M¯aori (Bishop et al., 2009). Marie, Fergusson, and Boden (2008) note that, ‘the result of this failure, it is claimed, has been a loss of cultural esteem and, by direct association, Maori identity, which has led to current disparities between Maori and non-Maori in education’ (p. 184). This approach has a well-established history. Ranginui Walker, M¯aori academic and longtime activist and advocate for M¯aori education, argued, almost 40 years ago, that ignoring Maori identity was ‘the most important single factor within the school situation that incapacitates the child’s ability to relate himself to the school’ (Walker, 1973, p. 113). Most significantly, the affirmation and recognition of students’ ethnic identity have had implications for what students learn at school; at the micro-level of the classroom. Curriculum content is now often drawn from students’ ‘funds of knowledge’ (Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005), that is, the skills and knowledge that students bring to their school learning from their home, culture, and community. The funds of knowledge encompass knowledge about a student’s experience which is relevant to who they are. When selecting curriculum content, teachers explicitly select topics related to students’ funds of knowledge and to their ethnic identities with the aim of making the curriculum more relevant to them. I have documented this preference in an earlier study (Siteine, 2017) where teachers explained, Whenever we get the chance we bring in [the children’s culture]. We make sure we have lots of resources here in different cultures … we make sure it’s balanced through art, through reading, through writing, topic … I strongly believe our culture is our identity. (Teacher participant 1) Awareness of identity is important … When we select our topics for our yearly programme we obviously want topics that the children are going to be interested in. So, ethnicity comes into that quite a lot … When we choose our topics … we look for links to M¯aori, Pasifika … how we can acknowledge the M¯aori, Pasifika children in this topic. (Teacher participant 2)

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However, this approach does have the potential for detrimental implications for ethnic minorities, if it narrows the content of their class curriculum. Furthermore, it often degenerates into a limited view of diversity, where what minority students learn at school is connected to their ethnic heritage and experienced in the way that a tourist might. For example, We are affirming their identity … through celebrations, for M¯aori kids we had the hangi … we visit the marae and we do all the hangi and stuff… So that’s affirming that. We have M¯aori kids here so we are acknowledging their presence… And we have a unit of topic which is called Pasifika. So, we study the Pacific Islands, the islands that the kids come from in different ways and we celebrate with the feed and stuff. (Teacher participant 3).

As students engage in this type of knowledge within their school context, they may gain a stronger sense of their cultural or ethnic identity. However, any benefits must be weighed against the limitations that are inherent if this is the extent of the knowledge that students are offered at school. The second, but lesser-known reason for a focus on student identity is related to a view of curriculum ‘as a tool for shaping identity’ (Bolstad, 2004, p. 85). Hipkins (2006) has argued against the practice of teaching content in favour of helping students to ‘become the people they aspire to be—to develop identities that last well beyond school’ (p. 53). The development of identity, thus, gains prominence as the knower’s experiences are prioritised over knowledge in curriculum. Curriculum as a ‘tool for shaping identity’ and for addressing the underachievement of ethnic minorities, has led to a refocusing curriculum on the experiences of learners. The implications for curriculum have been described as an ‘evacuation of content’ (Young, 2010, p. 21) as a dislodging or side-lining of powerful knowledge from the New Zealand Curriculum (Wood & Sheehan, 2012). There is a risk in the shifting of focus to ‘knowers’ that opportunities for students to acquire subject knowledge are potentially reduced. Students become ‘more of themselves’ and opportunities for them to move beyond their social identities are limited. This has the potential effect of trapping them within their experiences (Bailey, 1984) and limiting their learning to that which they already know or already have access to outside of the school.

Developing Academic Identity as Well as Affirming Ethnic Identity Teachers need not choose between either affirming their students’ ethnic identity or development an academic identity. The role of schools, I suggest, is to go beyond what can be achieved by addressing just one of these identities alone, but by drawing on both a knowledge-rich and a student-focused approach. A knowledgerich approach informs curriculum and develops students’ academic identity, while a student-focussed approach informs pedagogy and affirms students’ developing sense of themselves and self-efficacy. From the knowledge-rich approach, students can access the kinds of knowledge that are not available from their experiences so

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that they are able to transcend the limitations of their ‘present and particular’ (Bailey, 1984, p. 20). Using a student-focussed approach allows teachers to affirm, motivate, and engage students by helping them connect what they already know in their sociocultural lives with that which they learn at school. Young, Lambert, Robert, and Roberts (2014) explain this relationship in their description of the purpose of the curriculum. The curriculum needs to be seen as having a purpose of its own: the intellectual development of students. It should not be treated as a means for motivating students or for solving social problems … The curriculum should exclude the everyday knowledge of students, whereas that knowledge is a resource for the pedagogic work of teachers. Students do not come to school to learn what they already know. (pp. 96–97)

As a pedagogical resource, responding to and sustaining students’ cultural or ethnic identity has proven not to be an end in itself, rather, it provides a bridge to further learning beyond the students’ experiences and knowledge. Thrupp (2010), explains ‘there is evidence that low decile schools make the best progress when they fully acknowledge and respond to cultural backgrounds from which their students come’ (p. 40). Similarly, at a UNESCO regional meeting about music in the Pacific, scholars stated, from the depth of understanding and value of traditional forms [of knowledge] students will gain a strong sense of cultural identity and an understanding of who they are … This will provide a foundation for the development of further skills and knowledge bases, contexts and understandings for life in the twenty-first century. (UNESCO, 2002, p. 3, cited in FairburnDunlop, 2014, p. 875)

Fairbairn-Dunlop’s (2014) study of Samoan males’ participation in ‘Poly Club1 ’ at a New Zealand secondary school, described how participation in cultural groups and activities developed students’ cultural, and in this case, ethnic identity as well as feelings of confidence and self-esteem. Fairbairn-Dunlop (2014) describes the Poly Club as a ‘cultural education supplementary site’ (p. 874), a space that is an addition to the school space rather than an alternative to the schooling space. The two spaces complement each other. In the Poly Club space, students not only connect with each other in a way that acknowledges and affirms their ethnic identity in a space of ‘extensive cultural security’, but Poly Club also provides a conduit whereby students can connect with ‘other experiences and opportunities’ within the academic school environment (p. 890). The school in this study showed ‘Poly members gained a higher number of credits in national exams (75.3% compared to 51.4%) and registered a higher success rate in national credits attempted and credits gained than Pacific students who did not belong to Poly’ (p. 891). The cultural education supplementary site worked as a pedagogical mechanism to provide access to or, in Fairburn-Dunlop’s words ‘an interface between’ students’ inner cultural identity and the external measures of educational outcomes. Culture was not viewed in terms of the material for curriculum, but as an ‘enabler and a transformer’ (p. 889). 1

School Polynesian Clubs are commonly referred to as ‘Poly Club’ where Pacific cultural activities (such as songs, dance, protocols) and languages are taught, reinforced, and showcased generally for cultural performances.

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Similar claims were made for M¯aori students some years earlier in the Administering for Excellence report, which heralded many of the significant educational reforms of the 1990s: It is clear from the submissions made to us that the M¯aori people attach high priority to the revitalisation of the language and culture and that they are looking to the education system to assist them in the task. It is also clear that the revival of the M¯aori language and culture is not seen as an end in itself, but as the key of lifting the educational performance of M¯aori children. (Taskforce to Review Education Administration, 1988, p. 65, emphasis added)

I share these examples here to show that, the purpose of this student-focussed approach is not to solely develop a students’ sense of an ethnic identity, but to develop what Sheets (1999) describes as ‘student competence, defined as positive ethnic identity development’ which will lead to ‘accelerated achievement in school work’ (p. 157).

Conclusion The purpose of this chapter has been to support the case made throughout this book that subject knowledge should be made equally available to all New Zealand students. I have proposed that the recognition of a student’s sociocultural or ethnic identity has led to some unintended outcomes, most particularly limiting opportunities to develop an academic identity that comes from school subject knowledge. New Zealand education was founded on beliefs about the universal access to education. That education recognised the importance of academic and sociocultural identities. Durkheim (1971) explains how this duality exists within education in his description of how education develops the individual and the social being. Education, far from having as its unique or principle object the individual and his [sic] interests, is above all the means by which society perpetually recreates the conditions of its very existence … In each of us, it may be said, there exist two beings which, while inseparable except by abstraction, remain distinct. One is made up of all the mental states which apply only to ourselves and to the events of our personal lives. This is what might be called the individual being. The other is a system of ideas, sentiments and practices which express in us, not our personality, but the group or different groups of which we are part; these are religious beliefs, moral beliefs and practices, national or occupational traditions collective opinions of every kind. Their totality forms the social being. To constitute this being in each of us is the end of education. (pp. 79–80, emphasis added)

Both identity types and knowledge types are implicated in Durkheim’s explanation. My purpose has been to argue that the process of identification that focuses solely on either an individual’s academic identity or their identity as a member of a sociocultural group does not fully realise the promise of education. That promise cannot be fully realised if access to knowledge is limited to either that which is relevant to the learner by virtue of membership in a social group or if knowledge does not provide access to the sort of knowledge found in subjects that provides a way to imagine the world beyond that which has been experienced.

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References Allen, P., Taleni, L. T., & Robertson, J. (2009). ‘In order to teach you, I must know you’: The Pasifika initiative: A professional development project for teachers. New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies, 44, 47–62. Bailey, C. (1984). Beyond the present and particular: A theory of liberal education. London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control, and identity: Theory, research, critique (Rev. ed.). Oxford, UK: Rowman & Littlefield. Bishop, R., Berryman, M., Cavanagh, T., & Teddy, L. (2009). Te Kotahitanga: Addressing educational disparities facing M¯aori students in New Zealand. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25, 734–742. Bolstad, R. (2004). School-based curriculum development: Principles, processes, and practices. A background paper on school-based curriculum for the New Zealand curriculum project. Wellington, NZ: New Zealand Council for Educational Research. Durkheim, E. (1971). Pedagogy and sociology. In B. R. Cosin, I. R. Dale, G. M. Esland, D. Mackinnon, & D. F. Swift (Eds.), School and society: A sociological reader. London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Fairbairn-Dunlop, P. (2014). The interface of Pacific and other knowledges in a supplementary education site. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 44(6), 874–894. González, N., Moll, L. C., & Amanti, C. (Eds.). (2005). Funds of knowledge (1st ed., Vol. 2009 Reprint). New York: Routledge. Hipkins, R. (2006). The nature of the key competencies. Wellington, NZ: New Zealand Council for Educational Research. Hunter, R., & Anthony, G. (2011). Forging mathematical relationships in inquiry-based classrooms with Pasifika students. Journal of Urban Mathematics Education, 4, 98–119. Marie, D., Fergusson, D. M., & Boden, J. M. (2008). Educational achievement in M¯aori: The roles of cultural identity and social disadvantage. Australian Journal of Education, 52, 183–196. Ministry of Education. (2007). The New Zealand Curriculum. Wellington, NZ: Learning Media. Ministry of Education. (2009). Ka hikitia—Managing for success. Wellington, NZ: Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education. (2012). Pasifika education plan 2013–2017. Retrieved from www.education.govt.nz>assets>Strategies-and-policies. Ministry of Education. (2013). Ka hikitia—Accelerating success 2013–2017. Wellington, NZ: Ministry of Education. Sheets, H. R. (1999). Relating competence in an urban classroom to ethnic identity development. In R. H. Sheets & E. R. Hollins (Eds.), Racial and ethnic identity in school practices: Aspects of human development. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com. Sìilata, R. (2014). Va’a tele: Pasifika learners riding the success wave on linguistically and culturally responsive pedagogies (Unpublished doctoral thesis). Auckland: The University of Auckland. Siteine, A. (2017). Recognising ethnic identity in the classroom: A New Zealand study. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 26(4), 393–407. Taskforce to Review Education Administration. (1988). Administering for excellence: Effective administration in education: Report of the taskforce to review education administration. Wellington, NZ: The Taskforce. Thrupp, M. (2010). Emerging school-level education policy under National 2008–9. New Zealand Annual Review of Education, 19, 30–51. Walker, R. (1973). Biculturalism in education. Polynesian and P¯akeh¯a in New Zealand Education: THe Sharing of Cultures, 1, 110–125. Wood, B., & Sheehan, M. (2012). Dislodging knowledge? The New Zealand curriculum in the 21st century. Pacific-Asian Education, 24(1), 17–30. Young, M. (2010). Why educators must differentiate knowledge from experience. Pacific Asian Education, 22(1), 21–32.

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Young, M. (2013). Overcoming the crisis in curriculum theory: A knowledge-based approach. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 45(2), 101–118. Young, M., Lambert, D., Roberts, C., & Roberts, M. (2014). Knowledge and the future school: Curriculum and social justice. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Chapter 6

The TAP/CDC Combination for Bi/Multilingual Students to Acquire the Academic Language Required for Subject Knowledge Sophie Tauwehe Tamati

Introduction In this chapter, TransAcquisition (Tamati, 2011, 2016) is introduced as a bilingual/biliterate pedagogical approach that promotes subject knowledge acquisition and accelerates biliterate development in bi/multilingual students. TransAcquisition Pedagogy (TAP) achieves this by engaging bi/multilingual students in the Readto-Retell-to-Revoice-to-Rewrite stages of transacquisitional tasking. The Read-toRetell-to-Revoice-to-Rewrite stages are outlined more fully below. In brief, the stages involve students in skim reading for general comprehension, retelling in the language of the target text, revoicing their retell in their ‘other’ language to then rewrite their oral revoice in one or more of their languages as a chosen text type. The sequential stages of the TAP tasking process provide cognitive and linguistic coherence to scaffold the students’ progression from lower to higher-order thinking as they advance through the tasking sequence. I describe how the combined use of TransAcquisition Pedagogy with the Curriculum Design Coherence model (McPhail, 2020; Rata, 2019) supports bi/multilingual students to acquire the academic language required for subject knowledge. This combination provides in the first instance, cognitive and linguistic coherence for the students as they draw on all their languages to build ‘knowledge-that’ (via TAP) and secondly, curriculum coherence for them to ‘knowhow-to’ apply their knowledge in their school work (via CDC). This chapter unpacks the TAP/CDC combination to reveal how the underpinning theories in knowledge and language acquisition work together to enable bi/multilingual students to acquire This chapter is adapted from the author’s doctoral thesis. Tamati, S. T. (2016). Transacquisition pedagogy for bilingual education: A study in kura kaupapa M¯aori. (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Auckland, Auckland. S. T. Tamati (B) University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. Lourie and G. McPhail (eds.), Perspectives on the Knowledge Problem in New Zealand Education, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2908-2_6

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‘knowledge-that’ (conceptual knowledge) and use ‘know-how-to’ (knowing how to apply conceptual knowledge) to improve their academic achievement at school.

TransAquisition Pedagogy TransAcquisition Pedagogy (TAP) was theorised, developed, and trialled, and its effectiveness evaluated in developing reading accuracy and comprehension in the subject of English with Year 7 and 8 students in Kura Kaupapa M¯aori (hereafter referred to as ‘kura’) (Tamati, 2016). The main language of communication and curriculum instruction in kura is te reo M¯aori1 even though English is the home language of most kura students (Bauer, 2008; May & Hill, 2004). The dichotomy between ‘home language’ and ‘school language’ has prompted the view that English is competing against te reo M¯aori resulting in the current kura practice of delaying English instruction until Years 7 and 8 to establish te reo M¯aori as the stronger language (Hill, 2015). This means that the kura students’ exposure to the academic language of English is limited. Schleppegrell (2012) describes ‘academic language’ as a set of registers by which children are expected to learn and use to accomplish their work at school. Without explicit instruction in English, kura students are illequipped to bridge what Bernstein (2000) terms the ‘discursive gap’ (p. 30) between their social English spoken at home and academic English of curriculum texts at school. Bernstein’s (2000) research into the relationship between social class and ‘academic language’ led him to conclude that children who lack exposure to ‘academic language’ face the challenge of crossing the discursive gap to deal symbolically with new ideas they encounter at school (Bernstein, 2000, p. 30). Resolving this challenge for kura students underpins the creation of TransAcquisition Pedagogy. TAP was designed to enable the kura students to bridge the ‘discursive gap’ between their English social language use at home and the ‘academic language’ used at school for reading and comprehension in English. While the notion of language interdependence is theoretically justified by Cummins (1981a, b, 2001), TransAcquisition goes further to re-conceptualise the centralised metalinguistic thinking system that underpins Cummins’ (1984) Common Underlying Proficiency model as an Interrelational Translingual Network (ITN). The ITN re-conceptualisation uses the entangled, entwined root system of kahikatea2 trees to symbolise the bi/multilingual student’s metacognitive and metalinguistic processes. The kahikatea metaphor depicts the ITN as a web of linguistic and conceptual interrelationships between the syntactic instructions and semantic meanings that are intrinsic to each of the bi/multilingual student’s languages. In its form and function, the ITN is conceptualised as an evolving organic web of complex interconnected linguistic and conceptual interrelationships that expands when a new language 1 2

M¯aori language. Dacrycarpus dacrydioides.

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is being learned. It is via the ITN facility, that the centralised processing system in Cummins’ (1984, 2001) CUP model is pedagogically operationalised in the biliterate teaching of academic language and knowledge. As a multifaceted web of translingual interrelationships, the ITN facility allows bi/multilingual students to maximise the benefits of linguistic independence and interdependence in the language and literacy learning process. The ITN is activated when students engage in cross-linguistic analysis to identify linguistic and conceptual interrelationships at each stage of the Read-to-Retell-to-Revoice-to-Rewrite TransAcquisition (TAP) tasking sequence. This form of transacquisitional crosslinguistic analysis allows new knowledge to be integrated with previously acquired schemas to form new schemas in the biliterate learning process. The TAP tasking process provides multiple opportunities to engage the ITN facility and habitualises the transacquisitional processing of schemas. TAP tasking maximises the pedagogical value of engaging the bi/multilingual student’s ITN to accelerate bilingual and biliterate development. It is via the ITN facility that bi/multilingual students are able to use their socio-cultural language and knowledge to develop their academic language and build their ‘knowledge-that’ (conceptual knowledge) which they need to understand the ‘disciplinary knowledge’ taught in schools (Bernstein, 2000; Rata, 2012, 2016, 2017, 2019).

The TransAcquisition Cognitive Linguistic Principles The TransAcquisition language and literacy learning approach is conceptualised as an organic process underpinned by the language and cognition principles of ‘linguistic fluidity’, ‘relational transfer’, and ‘metashuttling’ (see below). These principles engage bi/multilingual students in flexible bilingualism (Creese & Blackledge, 2010) to use their languages interdependently in mutually supportive ways to acquire academic language through which academic knowledge is expressed.

Linguistic Fluidity The principle of ‘linguistic fluidity’ aligns with what Creese and Blackledge (2010) describe as ‘permeable boundaries between languages’ when bi/multilingual students engage in flexible bilingualism. Linguistic fluidity is the natural, unconscious, cognitive interflow of linguistic symbols and concepts between the languages of the bi/multilingual student. This cognitive interflow represents the complex meanings associated with the academic language required for the acquisition of the academic knowledge taught in schools. Central to the TransAcquisition approach is the idea that this cognitive interflow remains untapped and under-utilised without explicit pedagogical intervention using the TAP tasking process.

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Relational Transfer The principle of ‘relational transfer’ refers to what occurs when the bi/multilingual student’s metalinguistic processes are focused on translingual relationships. It is synonymous with pedagogies that emphasise the overlapping of languages rather than the separation of languages (see Centeno-Cortés & Jimenez, 2004; García, 2011; García & Leiva, 2014). Relational transfer is activated when linguistic fluidity is pedagogically utilised in the Read-to-Retell-to-Revoice-to-Rewrite TAP tasking sequence. TAP tasking is used in the TransAcquisition approach to expand vocabulary, deepen reading comprehension, and accelerate bilingual/biliterate development. The significance of relational transfer is justified by mounting evidence which confirms that transfer between languages and literacies accelerates development across all the languages of the bi/multilingual student (see Cummins, 2008; Lowman, Fitzgerald, Rapira, & Clark, 2007; McCaffery, Villers, & Lowman, 2008). TransAcquisition Pedagogy uses the TAP tasking process to systematise the pedagogic use of ‘linguistic fluidity’ to optimise ‘relational transfer’ for accelerated bilingual and biliterate development.

Metashuttling The principle of ‘metashuttling’ describes the ability of bi/multilingual students to think about their thinking while moving their thoughts back and forth between their languages. Metashuttling prompts students to focus on the reciprocal translingual interflow of concepts between their languages. While engaged in metashuttling, students use the intralingual and interlingual relationships in their linguistic repertoire to promote mutual language and literacy development. Intralingual relationships refer to the interconnected linguistic relationships within a language, while interlingual relationships refer to the interconnected linguistic relationships between languages. Not only does metashuttling enrich conceptual understanding, but it also supports progressive conceptual development when students use it to compare, contrast, and clarify their conceptual understanding (Rata, 2016, 2017). The TAP tasking sequence of TransAcquisition Pedagogy uses ‘metashuttling’ to engage bi/multilingual students in cross-linguistic meaning-making and conceptual knowledge building. In this way, TransAcquisition Pedagogy aligns with Vygotsky’s (1962) claim that concept formation is ‘always part of a system of relationships, systematically built up over time to form hierarchical knowledge’ (cited in Howe, 1996, p. 38). The TransAcquisition Read-to-Retell-to-Revoice-to-Rewrite tasking process activates the bi/multilingual student’s ITN in the use of linguistic fluidity, relational transfer, and metashuttling for bilingual and biliterate development. In the staged sequence of TAP tasking, these principles underpin the conceptual interrelationships between the languages when bi/multilingual students engage in cross-linguistic

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meaning-making and conceptual knowledge building. In the structured, sequential approach of TransAcquisition Pedagogy, these principles underpin the reciprocal transfer of semantic knowledge between the languages to promote greater understanding of the meaning messages in the languages. These TAP principles enable bi/multilingual students to link their socio-cultural language and knowledge to the academic language of school in order to express their ‘knowledge-that’ (conceptual knowledge) in their curriculum subjects.

Transacquisitional Tasking (TAP Tasking) Transacquisitional (TAP) tasking involves the Read-to-Retell-to-Revoice-to-Rewrite instructional sequence. During the Read-tostage, students use word-surfing and three-on-three mapping while skim reading a target text at their respective reading levels. In skim reading, the student only looks for the general or main ideas that Urquhart and Weir (1998) define as ‘reading for gist’ (p. 102). Skimming enables the students to familiarise themselves with the author’s intention and the general meaning of a target text. It also helps them to remember the structure of the text with respect to the organisation and sequencing of ideas. Word-surfing exemplifies what Long (2006) describes as a ‘focus on form’ to use grammar for ‘noticing’, which Schmidt (2010) describes as necessary for acquisition to take place. The pedagogical focus of three-on-three mapping is conceptual mapping which Willis and Willis (1996, 2007) describe as the type of cognitive mapping that prompts learners to focus primarily on the exchange of conceptual meaning. While skim reading engages the students in word-surfing, three-on-three mapping engages the students in the process of recording new and unknown words/phrases. Each word/phrase is then restated as three synonyms in the bi/multilingual student’s other language(s). In the Retelltostage, the bi/multilingual student retells the target text in the language of the target text to personalise the story content. The Revoice-tostage requires the students to restate their retell as a code-switched revoice. In the context of the TransAcquisition intervention study, the kura students produced a M¯aori language revoicing of their own English retelling of an English target text (Tamati, 2016). In the Rewrite stage, students rewrite their oral revoice in one or more of their languages as a chosen text type. TAP tasking aligns to Hornberger’s (2004) ecological linguistic framework which depicts language learning as an organic process, whereby one language and literacy develops in relation to one or more of the bi/multilingual student’s other languages and literacies. The tasking process allows the students to draw on all their linguistic resources to make connections between the knowledge of the target text and their prior knowledge and experience, aligning with Hopewell’s (2011) research. The design of the tasking sequence provides multiple opportunities for bi/multilingual students to function in all their languages for cross-linguistic meaning-making and knowledge building. The staged sequence of the TAP tasking sequence helps students to overcome a phenomenon I describe as the ‘language silo effect’. This phenomenon

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is the result of pedagogical practices that prevent bi/multilingual students from using their home/heritage language(s) at school to interpret, express, and negotiate meaning in all their languages. The TransAcquisition approach can also assist with the systematic development ‘epistemic ascent’ (Winch, 2013) and ‘conceptual progression’ (Rata, 2016, 2017) by using the bi/multilingual student’s linguistic resources with the explicit teaching of concepts from lower to higher-order meanings. It is here that the combined use of the TAP process and CDC model supports the development of ‘cognitive schema which are subsequently utilized in interaction with domain specific concepts to develop understanding and abstract thinking’ (McPhail, 2020, p. 2). First, the Read-to-Retellto-Revoice-to-Rewrite design of the TAP tasking instructional sequence provides coherence for ‘epistemic ascent’ (Winch, 2013) in the progression from lower to higher-order concepts required for the acquisition of academic knowledge. Secondly, the TAP tasking design provides a coherent framework for ‘conceptual progression’ (Rata, 2016, 2017) when concepts already understood are brought into new relations of abstraction and generality as further concepts are acquired and integrated into the student’s schema of understanding. Progressive conceptual development occurs naturally as the students shuttle between their languages to compare, contrast, and clarify their conceptual understanding. This allows the students to express their conceptual understanding in multiple ways through the respective and collective lenses of their languages and literacies. The sequenced arrangement of the TAP tasking stages denotes ascending layers of cognitive and linguistic complexity. The consecutive staging of the Read-to-Retellto-Revoice-to-Rewrite tasking process also provides the cognitive and linguistic coherence for bi/multilingual students to utilise their complete linguistic repertoire to build their ‘knowledge-that’ (conceptual knowledge). This tasking sequence forms a systematised pedagogical scaffolding process that supports the students while they are using their languages independently and interdependently. This scaffolding process develops the academic registers in the bi/multilingual student’s minority language(s) while improving reading comprehension and accuracy in the target language of the school. When used in conjunction with the Curriculum Design Coherence model, the Read-to-Retell-to-Revoice process is an effective pedagogical approach for bi/multilingual students to build their ‘knowledge-that’ and apply their ‘know-how-to’ across all the curriculum areas. In this way, transacquisitional tasking not only promotes increased language capacity but also increased academic understanding.

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The TAP Stages in the TransAcquisition Intervention Study: Some Examples The Reading-to Stage Urquhart and Weir (1998) define skim reading as ‘reading for gist’ (p. 102) where students focus only on the main ideas of the target text. The following comments from kura students in the intervention study (Tamati, 2016) show how skim reading in the first Read-to stage of TAP tasking can help bi/multilingual students to develop two significant abilities. First, it helps them to retain the main ideas and second, it enables them to retain the narrative sequence of a text. Remembering the order of sequential events in a text is an important cognitive function. It appears that skim reading plays an important role in developing sequential thinking. It does this by helping students to remove the ‘clutter’ of less important details while attending to the order of the main ideas which are then stored in their long-term memory. For this reason, skim reading offers more than the ability to summarise—it also contributes to the cognitively important process of ordering information in sequence.

Te Ata In her comment below, Te Ata instinctively recognises that trying to remember too much information ‘clutters’ her mind. This contributes to ‘cognitive overload’ as a major barrier to learning. Skim reading helps you to write the main things in order so you don’t have to remember the whole story otherwise your head would get cluttered.

Te Ata’s description has prompted me to coin the term ‘cognitive clutter’ to describe the irrelevant and unimportant information that can inhibit working memory and clutter the brain’s storage capacity. According to Baddeley (1992), working memory is ‘a brain system that provides temporary storage and manipulation of the information necessary for such complex cognitive tasks as language comprehension, learning and reasoning’ (p. 556). The Read-to stage in the TAP tasking process enables bi/multilingual students to clear away the cognitive clutter that can overburden their cognitive capacity in working memory. This enables the students to maximise the use of their working memory to avoid what de Jong (2010) defines as cognitive load (sometimes referred to as ‘learning burden’). Reducing the cognitive load enables the students to focus on conceptual understanding and allows the language and literacy learning processes to proceed with minimal effort.

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The Retell-to Stage Retelling promotes the development of reading comprehension by requiring learners to focus their attention on the genre, language structures, and meaning of the text while organising their thoughts in the retelling process (Morrow, 2005). The following student comments focus on the Retell-to stage of transacquisitional tasking to show how the tasking process cognitively engages bi/multilingual students to develop their academic language for academic knowledge acquisition.

Aroha Aroha’s comment confirms that the Retell-to stage in the tasking sequence was an effective strategy to strengthen the kura students’ reading comprehension skills in English. It’s kinda hard but it’s pretty cool telling it in your own words so you don’t have to remember everything … I think it’s easier doing my own words for the meaning ‘cause you know what you’re talking about ... you don’t have to remember everything … just the sequence.

Aroha’s comment shows that using ‘her own words’ not only made it easier for her to make meaning of the text, but it also made it possible for her to take charge of her language and literacy learning. In their study to investigate the relationship between self-efficacy beliefs, reading strategy use, and reading comprehension, Naseri and Zaferanieh (2012) found a significant correlation between self-efficacy beliefs and reading comprehension. Aroha intuitively recognised retelling as an effective strategy for eliminating cognitive clutter to remember the target text structure. This is a clear learning goal with a clear idea of how to achieve it, which for Aroha, indicates a disposition of high self-efficacy.

Mihi Mihi’s comment confirms that she accessed and used both her languages simultaneously in mutually supportive ways while engaged in the transacquisitional retelling of a target story text. To help me remember how to retell the story [in English] … I use M¯aori … so I can understand the story better.

Mihi’s ability to use her M¯aori and English languages simultaneously while retelling the text in English aligns with the claim of Bialystok, Craik, Klein, and Viswanathan (2004) that ‘the two languages of a bilingual remain constantly active while processing is carried out in one of them’ (p. 291). The Retell-to stage prompts

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bi/multilingual students to use all their languages to achieve the task. This idea is also supported by Hopewell (2011) who makes the following claim: When language environments are planned so that all languages are understood to be resources that can be accessed and invoked strategically in the service of language and literacy acquisition, the learning burden is decreased resulting in an acceleration of the overall language and literacy acquisition (p. 607).

The Retell-to stage in transacquisitional tasking prompted each kura student to take ownership of their English language and literacy learning. This resulted in their experiencing higher levels of self-efficacy which has been found to correlate with improved reading comprehension and higher academic achievement. The Retell-to stage helped them to eliminate cognitive clutter and thereby reduce the cognitive load to optimise their working memory for the accelerated development of reading comprehension. Engaging in the Retell-to stage allowed the kura students to access and use both their languages simultaneously in mutually supportive ways. This enabled them to draw on all their metacognitive and metalinguistic resources to develop and refine their academic and linguistic skills in English.

The Revoice-to Stage Revoicing, which is the focus of the third stage of the TAP tasking sequence, is aligned to Vygotsky’s (1962) claim that the bi/multilingual student has the ability to transfer to a new language the system of meaning, that she/he is already familiar with. This is because revoicing requires the bi/multilingual student to produce a code-switched revoice of the retell that he/she created in the Retell-to stage of the TAP tasking sequence. By way of example, revoicing engaged the kura students in producing a M¯aori language revoice of their English retell of their respective graded English target text. Revoicing activates cross-linguistic influence which naturally occurs between the bi/multilingual student’s languages while he/she engages in the revoicing process. Revoicing is supported by Kroll, Dussias, Bogulski, and Kroff (2012) who state that ‘the presence of activity among both languages when only one language is required suggests that proficient bilinguals have the cognitive skill that allows them to juggle the two languages with ease’ (p. 229). The revoicing process prompts students to use their languages interdependently to enrich conceptual understanding and build new knowledge. This aligns with Hopewell’s (2011) recommendation that ‘teachers must engage students in dialogues and learning activities that explicitly leverage cross-language connections to lighten students’ learning burdens in ways that would accelerate the language and literacy development’ (p. 606). The following student comments illustrate the pedagogical benefits of the Revoice-to stage. The comments show how revoicing acts as a conduit between the student’s knowledge of words and their understanding of the meaning of those words across their languages. The

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following transcript shows how revoicing increases students’ metacognitive awareness to prompt their use of visualisation as an effective strategy to complete the Revoice-to stage of a fictional text.

Marama: ‘The Book In My Head’ Researcher: Marama:

Researcher: Marama: Researcher: Marama:

I a koe e whakareo an¯o ana, p¯ehea t¯er¯a ki a koe? What was it like revoicing? I just keep on looking at the page and then remembering the picture and then go down to the words and the words I can remember I just put in my story. Engari, k¯ıhai i a koe te pukapuka i a koe e whakareo an¯o ana. But you didn’t have the book in front of you when you were revoicing it. It was a flashback to the words. N¯a, e k¯ı ana koe, ka kitea … So you’re saying that you could see … … the book in my head.

Initially it was assumed that Marama’s visualising strategy was her very own selfinvented revoicing strategy. However, other students reported using the same visualisation strategy. This suggests that visualisation is an important cognitive capability triggered by the code-switching function of the revoicing process. Marama’s use of the phrase, ‘the book in my head’ is a fascinating description of visualisation as an important cognitive strategy in the revoicing process. The visualisation strategy used by Marama and her peers, along with all the other cognitive strategies used in the TransAcquisition tasking sequence, are supported by Ness’ (2011), who found that reading comprehension ‘involves recalling information from text, extracting themes, engaging in higher order thinking skills, constructing a mental picture of text, and understanding text structure’ (p. 98).

H¯ıria and Waiora Like Marama, who talked about ‘the book in her head’, Hiria referred to ‘pictures in her head’ but went further to describe how she would place herself in the story as a character. These self-invented cognitive strategies to remember the sequence of events in the plot are examples of how revoicing triggered a flurry of complex cognitive processes. Hiria: Waiora: Hiria:

How do you use your thinking processes in English and M¯aori to make meaning in revoicing? I used personal experience to remember words. How do you use your thinking processes in English and M¯aori in revoicing?

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I see pictures in my head that helps me remember the story … I wanted to be the character to help me remember how the story went.

The students’ comments align with the literature that supports the use of codeswitched story retelling to develop the bilingual students’ critical biliteracy skills (Becker, 2001). The Revoice-to stage is the pivotal stage in the transacquisitional tasking sequence that promotes the development of critical biliteracy skills. This stage provided the kura students with opportunities to behave as ‘language users’ rather than ‘language learners’. Engaging in the Revoice-to stage accelerated the development of critical biliteracy skills by allowing the students to use all their linguistic resources (Soares & Wood, 2010). This deepened their reading comprehension in English and extended their knowledge about both languages.

The Rewrite Stage In this stage, students imagine themselves as a character in their oral revoice to rewrite their revoice as a chosen text type. This rewriting process was inspired by Hiria’s self-invented strategy of in-character imagining. The use of imagination in this way encourages the students to expand their ideas as they transfer the plot of their revoice to create new characters, new settings and new stories to tell.

Conclusion In the Kura Kaupapa M¯aori context, TransAcquisition has been shown to accelerate students’ biliterate development in English while enhancing their pre-existing language/literacy in3 te reo M¯aori (Tamati, 2016). The positive effect of TransAcquisition Pedagogy can be attributed to the cumulative influence of the Read-toRetell-to-Revoice-to-Rewrite TAP tasking process on the cognitive and linguistic processes of the students’ Interrelational Translingual Network (ITN). I call this the ‘TAP effect’ which enables bi/multilingual students to use their languages in mutually supportive ways for accelerated acquisition of academic subject language while deepening their understanding of subject knowledge. It is here that the TAP approach provides a pedagogical framework for students to use all their languages while the CDC model helps teachers to provide planned access to the academic concepts of epistemically structured knowledge. The TAP Interrelational Translingual Network functions as a scaffolding facility for the students to build their ‘knowledge-that’ (conceptual knowledge) while engaging in the elements of the CDC model. When used in conjunction with the CDC model, the TAP principles are pedagogically activated in the staged, sequential process of TAP tasking to assist students to express their understanding of the disciplinary knowledge aligned to 3

The M¯aori language.

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the CDC elements. The synergies between the TAP approach and the CDC model can assist bi/multilinguals to develop the cognitive architecture upon which to hang their ‘knowledge-that’ (conceptual knowledge) and within which, to apply their ‘know-how-to’ knowledge in their curriculum subjects.

References Baddeley, A. (1992). Working memory. Science, 255(5044), 556–559. Bauer, W. (2008). Is the health of te reo M¯aori improving? Te Reo, 51, 33–73. Becker, R. (2001). Spanish-English code switching in a bilingual academic context. Reading Horizons, 42(2), 99–115. Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control, and identity: Theory, research, critique. (Rev. ed.). Rowman and Littlefield. Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I. M., Klein, R., & Viswanathan, M. (2004). Bilingualism, aging, and cognitive control: Evidence from the Simon Task. Psychology and Aging, 19(2), 290–303. Centeno-Cortés, B., & Jiménez, A. (2004). Problem-solving tasks in a foreign language: The importance of the L1 in private verbal thinking. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 14(1), 7–35. Creese, A., & Blackledge, A. J. (2010). Translanguaging in the bilingual classroom: A pedagogy for learning and teaching? The Modern Language Journal, 94(1), 103–115. Cummins, J. (1981a). Bilingualism and minority language children. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Cummins, J. (1981b). The role of primary language development in promoting educational success for language minority students. In P. Dolson (Ed.), Schooling and language minority students: A theoretical framework (pp. 16–62). Los Angeles, CA: State Department of Education. Cummins, J. (1984). Bilingualism and special education: Issues in assessment and pedagogy. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Cummins, J. (2001). Negotiating identities: Education for empowerment in a diverse society (2nd ed.). Los Angeles, CA: California Association for Bilingual Education. Cummins, J. (2008). Teaching for transfer: Challenging the two solitudes assumption in bilingual education. In J. Cummins & N. H. Hornberger (Eds.), Encyclopedia of language and education (2nd ed., Vol. 5, pp. 65–76). New York, NY: Springer. de Jong, T. (2010). Cognitive load theory, educational research and instructional design: Some food for thought. Instructional Science, 38(2), 105–134. García, O., & Leiva, C. (2014). Theorizing and enacting translanguaging for social justice. In A. Creese & A. Blackledge (Eds.), Heteroglossia as practice and pedagogy (pp. 199–216). New York, NY: Springer. Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Aldine. Good, T., & Nichols, S. (2001). Expectancy effects in the classroom: A special focus on improving the reading performance of minority students in first-grade classrooms. Educational Psychologist, 36(2), 113–126. Gorter, D. (2006). Introduction: The study of the linguistic landscape as a new approach to multilingualism. In D. Gorter (Ed.), Linguistic landscape (pp. 1–6). Clevedon, London: Multilingual Matters. Hill, R. K. (2011). Rethinking English in M¯aori-medium education. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 14(6), 719–732. Hill, R. K. (2015). Transitioning from M¯aori-medium to English: Pursuing biliteracy. New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40841-015-0034-8..

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Hill, R. K. (2017). Level 2 M¯aori medium programmes: What are the perceptions of parents and students on this form of education? NZ Journal Education Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40 841-017-0088-x. Hopewell, S. (2011). Leveraging bilingualism to accelerate English reading comprehension. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 14(5), 603–620. Hornberger, N. H. (2004). The continua of biliteracy and the bilingual educator: Educational linguistics in practice. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 7(2–3), 155–171. Howe, A. C. (1996). Development of science concepts within a Vygotskian framework. Science Education, 80(1), 35–51. Kroll, J. F., Dussias, P. E., Bogulski, C. A., Kroff, J. R. V. (2012). Juggling two languages in one mind: What bilinguals tell us about language processing and its consequences for cognition. Psychology of Learning and Motivation—Advances in Research and Theory, 56, 229–262. https:// doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-394393-4.00007-8. Long, M. (2006). Problems in SLA. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Lowman, C., Fitzgerald, T., Rapira, P., & Clark, R. (2007). First language literacy skill transfer in a second language learning environment: Strategies for biliteracy. Set, 2, 24–28. May, S., & Hill, R. K. (2004). M¯aori-medium education: Current issues and future prospects. In Proceedings of the Language Acquisition Research Forum (pp. 5–37). Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education. McCaffery, J., Villers, H., & Lowman, C. (2008). Biliteracy: Finding the words to write in two languages within a diverse school setting. Paper presented at the 2nd Language Education and Diversity Conference, Hamilton, New Zealand. McPhail, G. (2020). The search for deep learning: A curriculum coherence model. Journal of Curriculum Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2020.1748231. Morrow, L. M. (2005). Literacy development in the early years: Helping children read and write. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Naseri, M., & Zaferanieh, E. (2012). The relationship between reading self-efficacy beliefs, reading strategy use and reading comprehension level of Iranian EFL learners. World Journal of Education, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.5430/wje.v2n2p64. Ness, M. (2011). Explicit reading comprehension instruction in elementary classrooms: Teacher use of reading comprehension strategies. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 25(1), 98–117. Rata, E. (2012). the politics of knowledge in education. London & New York: Routledge. Rata, E. (2016). A pedagogy of conceptual progression and the case for academic knowledge. British Educational Research Journal, 42(1), 168–184. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3195. Rata, E. (2017). Knowledge and teaching. British Educational Research Journal. https://doi.org/ 10.1002/berj.330. Rata, E. (2019). Knowledge-rich teaching: A model of curriculum design coherence. British Educational Research Journal, 45(4), 681–697. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3520. Schleppegrell, M. J. (2012). Academic language in teaching and learning: Introduction to the special issue. The Elementary School Journal, 112(3), 409–418. Schmidt, R. (2010, December). Attention, awareness, and individual differences in language learning. In W. M. Chan, S. Chi, K. N. Cin, J. Istanto, M. Nagami, J. W. Sew, T. Suthiwan, & I. Walker, Proceedings of CLaSIC 2010 (pp. 721–737). Singapore: National University of Singapore, Centre for Language Studies. Soares, L. B., & Wood, K. (2010). A critical literacy perspective for teaching and learning social studies. The Reading Teacher, 63(6), 486–494. Tamati, S. T. (2011). The trans-acquisitional approach: A bridge to English in kura kaupapa M¯aori. Pacific-Asian Education, 23(1), 91–102. Tamati, S. T. (2016). Transacquisition pedagogy for bilingual education: A study in kura kaupapa M¯aori. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Auckland, Auckland.

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Urquhart, S., & Weir, C. (1998). Reading in a second language: Process, product and practice. London, UK: Longman. Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Willis, D., & Willis, J. (1996). Consciousness-raising activities. In J. Willis & D. Willis (Eds.), Challenge and change in language teaching (pp. 63–76). Oxford, UK: Heinemann. Willis, D., & Willis, J. (2007). Doing task-based teaching. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Winch, C. (2013). Curriculum design and epistemic ascent. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 47(1), 128–146.

Part III

Knowledge and Curriculum in Cultural, Political, and Economic Contexts

Chapter 7

Subject Knowledge in New Zealand Education Policy Megan Lourie

Introduction My grandmother was a weaver who worked predominantly with wool fibre. As a child, I remember watching her work at her loom in the basement of her house, the distinctive wooden structure and the smell of wool filling the space. While weaving might be considered an overused metaphor, it continues to provide me with an effective visual image of the complex mix of factors or ‘strands’ that could be included in any discussion of the curriculum. It is also a useful reminder that, in both weaving and curriculum, the strands which comprise the whole are positioned intentionally with the aim of creating a particular outcome. Drawing on this metaphor I describe the knowledge-that component of subject knowledge as having been moved to the background of curriculum design in New Zealand. In this book, we argue that it needs to be in the foreground if we are to equitably prepare young people for an unknown future. Throughout this book, the authors have identified factors that influence the way knowledge might be thought about and used to inform practice in schools. Their discussions have included the strands of pedagogy, identity, and national assessment practices, as well as the structure of knowledge itself. This chapter weaves these stands together with a discussion of three significant characteristics of contemporary education in New Zealand within the context of our changing education policy landscape over the past 30 years. These are: (i) a national curriculum that is outcomes-based and intended to be locally designed, (ii) the increasing emphasis on acknowledging the cultural identity of students, particularly M¯aori students, as part of education’s commitment to honouring the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and (iii) the more recent emergence of what are sometimes referred to as twenty-first century M. Lourie (B) Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. Lourie and G. McPhail (eds.), Perspectives on the Knowledge Problem in New Zealand Education, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2908-2_7

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learning and teaching practices (Bolstad, Gilbert, McDowall, Bull, Boyd, & Hipkins, 2012). I focus on tracing the development of policy relating to these characteristics which allows us to see how perspectives about the educational purpose associated with different forms of knowledge have changed over time. This has resulted in a diminishing emphasis on subject knowledge and an increasing focus on the development of skills and competencies. It has also resulted in an increasing confusion between curriculum and pedagogy in both policy and practice.

The National Curriculum—Outcomes-Based and Locally Designed A concern shared by the authors of this book is that New Zealand has a national curriculum that comprises broad achievement objectives rather than identifying subject-specific concepts and content. It is self-described as ‘a framework rather than a detailed plan’ and while every school curriculum must be aligned with the intent of the NZC, ‘schools have considerable flexibility when determining the detail’ of their own curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 37). This section considers some of the factors which have influenced the emergence of a locally-designed, outcomes-based curriculum, identifying the challenges that this type of curriculum presents. Prior to 1993 when the New Zealand Curriculum Framework (NZCF) was published, the New Zealand curriculum was specified through more than a dozen syllabi and guidelines. These were predominantly framed in terms of ‘what students ought to know’ (Bolstad et al., 2012, p. 11, italics in original). The emergence of the NZCF represented a significant shift in curriculum policy. It was an outcomes-based curriculum and included fifty-seven essential skills that students were to develop. There was no longer an emphasis on describing what students ought to know, but rather, ‘knowing how to do things’ (Marshall, 2000, p. 194, italics in original). The shift in curriculum policy at this time reflects the effect of neoliberal economic policies on education. It was, in part, a response to pressure on the government to account for its investment in education by being able to demonstrate what students had achieved during their schooling (Ministry of Education, 2002). The New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) (Ministry of Education, 2007), which followed the NZCF, is also an outcomes-based curriculum. In this curriculum, the term ‘skills’ continues to appear frequently, but is intended to be understood as a constituent of the more complex concept of competency (Hipkins, 2018). Both the NZCF and the NZC reflect changes in international thinking about the purpose of knowledge in education at the dawn of the twenty-first century, influenced by an emerging global knowledge economy discourse (Lourie, 2020). The term ‘knowledge economy’ assumes that knowledge is the driver of economic growth. The education sector is therefore very important because of its capability to produce potential human resources for the knowledge economy (Robertson, 2016). However,

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the form of knowledge required by the knowledge economy is assumed to be much more complex than the knowledge taught in schools, which is associated with the ability to recall facts. The increasing emphasis on first, skills in the NZCF, and then skills and competencies in the NZC reflects an international move to expand this narrow view of knowledge. The Key Competencies (KCs) included in the NZC drew heavily from the OECD DeSeCo competency framework. The OECD concept of competency was based on the idea that knowledge recall was insufficient for coping with many of the complex demands of modern life (Rutherford, 2005). Competencies are viewed as a more expansive and integrating concept, and refer to knowledge, skills, dispositions, and values. They are seen as necessary for both economic success and citizenship, as noted by Sahlberg (2006): Many recent large-scale education reforms have been justified by the urgent need to increase labor productivity and promote economic development and growth through expanded and improved education. It is generally assumed that to increase economic competitiveness, citizens must acquire knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary for civic success and the knowledge-based economy (p. 259).

The absence of detail in the NZC about what subject knowledge should be taught, and the increased emphasis on developing skills and competencies were thought to contribute to a different kind of education for young people, an education that would better prepare young people to contribute to both the knowledge economy (Lourie, 2020) and to a well-functioning society (Rutherford, 2005). However, understanding and enacting the NZC has not been without its challenges for teachers. For example, while it was intended that the KCs were integrated into the Learning Areas, research reports that some schools and teachers struggled with this aspect of curriculum design (McDowell & Hipkins, 2018). It seems that the decision to separate Key Competencies from the Learning Areas, was confusing, despite a very clear statement in the NZC stating the KCs are not stand-alone and are ‘the key to learning in every learning area’ (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 12). In Chap. 2, Graham McPhail points our attention to the fact that skills and competencies need to be developed within a subject, and this is also the guidance given in the NZC. A concern raised in this book is that unless teachers have a strong theory of knowledge, they may struggle to find an effective balance in their curriculum design. An outcomes-based curriculum assumes that curriculum designers, (who are for the most part classroom teachers) are able to draw on their subject knowledge and trace backwards, identifying the different things students need to know, to enable their ‘know-how-to’, if a particular outcome is to be achieved. The challenge here in terms of achieving equitable outcomes for all students is that every school and every teacher in New Zealand is responsible for curriculum design to one degree or another. Decisions about what is to be taught in a particular school are made at the school level, sometimes in consultation with the local community. This was intended to be an equity initiative so that schools were able to decide ‘how to give effect to the national curriculum in ways ways that best address the particular needs, interests, and circumstances of the school’s students and community’

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(Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 37). Teachers themselves also have considerable autonomy about what they do or don’t include in their individual classrooms. While Muller (2006) points out that curriculum localisation aligns with a positive view of teacher professionalism, teachers may not always be well equipped to make decisions about curriculum design. The NZC offers teachers extraordinary freedom but also presents significant challenges. As argued in this book, the progressive value of equity for all students depends upon access to expertly selected and well-designed subject knowledge, combined with pedagogical expertise.

The Commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi One of the unique characteristics of education in New Zealand is the commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi embedded in education policy. This is often referred to as biculturalism, a term which refers to the conceptualisation of two ethnically and culturally different peoples (M¯aori and P¯akeh¯a/European) in a relationship of social and political partnership. This relationship was established when representatives of each group signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. Bicultural policies were first developed by the Fourth Labour Government elected in 1984 and were an acknowledgement of, and response to, the historical injustices suffered by M¯aori people as a consequence of colonisation. The adoption of biculturalism in education under the Fourth Labour Government of New Zealand was a progressive project, heavily informed by social justice rhetoric (Renwick, 1986). Biculturalism marked a shift from previously monocultural government policies which included at various times a mixture of assimilation, integration, and separatism of M¯aori people. Throughout the 1970s there were increasing calls for the government to deal more effectively with ethnic equality in education which was reflected in lower school achievement rates, and low school-leaving ages among M¯aori students. Both academics and officials attributed the problem of academic underachievement to the social alienation of Maori people due to the loss of their cultural identity. There was increasing recognition of the role M¯aori language and culture could play a role in education as a means of improving M¯aori educational achievement. This thinking was evident in the influential report Administering for Excellence (Taskforce to Review Education Administration, 1988): It is clear from the submissions made to us that the M¯aori people attach high priority to the revitalisation of the language and culture and that they are looking to the education system to assist them in the task. It is also clear that the revival of the M¯aori language and culture is not seen as an end in itself, but as the key of lifting the educational performance of M¯aori children. (p. 65).

Biculturalism has been firmly embedded in education policy since the 1980s. The NZC, for example, is expected to ‘give effect to the partnership that is at the core of our nation’s founding document, Te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi’ (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 6). However, figuring out just how to give effect to that

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partnership has not been a straightforward process for educators. In Chap. 5, Alexis Siteine identifies some of the education initiatives and strategies which have emerged over recent years have attempted to address the persistent disparity in educational outcomes. These initiatives have focused on affirming and strengthening the identity, language, and culture of M¯aori learners. The assumption implicit in these initiatives and strategies is that there is a causal link between identity, language and culture, and educational achievement. More recently, the goal of ‘M¯aori achieving as M¯aori’ has begun to appear in M¯aori education strategy documents, giving additional momentum to the goal of strengthening the identity, language, and culture of M¯aori students. The M¯aori Education Strategy illustrates this approach, stating that the role of the government is to support ‘the identity, language and culture of M¯aori learners and their whanau to strengthen belonging, engagement and achievement as M¯aori so that M¯aori learners can actively participate in te ao M¯aori, Aotearoa and the wider world’ (Ministry of Education, 2020a). One of the challenges for educators when presented with statements such as this one, is that it can be difficult to interpret what this means in practice. Does it point to a need to rethink curriculum, that is, what subject knowledge to teach? Or is it a reminder of the importance of pedagogy, for example, what content to select to exemplify key structuring concepts, or the design of culturally relevant learning activities? Or does the goal of supporting the identity, language and culture of M¯aori learners require rethinking both curriculum design and pedagogical approaches? The goals of the M¯aori Education Strategy are reflected in a recent renewed focus on the development of local curricula. At the time of writing, new national priorities for Professional Learning and Development (PLD) in English medium settings have just come into effect and include; cultural capability, local curriculum design, and assessment for learning. It is intended that these new priorities ‘will support teachers and leaders to make sure every student experiences opportunities to learn and progress through a curriculum that values their identity, language and culture, their strengths and aspirations, and those of their whanau’ (K¯orero M¯atauranga, 2020, n.p). Although it is early days as far as the renewed focus on developing local curriculum goes, government website material appears to suggest that it is an initiative intended to enhance engagement with communities and in particular, with M¯aori communities. Strong local curriculum design responds to a¯ konga and wh¯anau needs and aspirations, facilitates learning connections and strengthens partnerships with wh¯anau, hap¯u, Iwi and community. It includes opportunities for a¯ konga to learn in and with their community and to contribute to it in ways that build on, and strengthen both community and a¯ konga capabilities (Ministry of Education, 2020b, n.p).

What is less clear is the extent to which local communities, and in particular whanau, hap¯u, and iwi partners could or should influence local curriculum design. There is considerable difference between adapting a local curriculum to facilitate connections with the local community, and making decisions about what subject knowledge to include in the curriculum. The emphasis on partnerships in education with M¯aori communities has become more salient in recent education policy. For example, The Teaching Council

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of Aotearoa/New Zealand, the body responsible for registering teachers and for approving Initial Teacher Education programmes, makes the expectation of commitment to partnership explicit in Our Code, Our Standards.1 Teachers are required to demonstrate ‘commitment to tangata whenuatanga and Te Tiriti o Waitangi partnership in Aotearoa New Zealand’ (Education Council, 2017, p. 18). The latest Ministry of Education Statement of Intent also includes a statement outlining its responsibilities as one of the Treaty of Waitangi partners. Under the Treaty of Waitangi | Te Tiriti o Waitangi, we have joint responsibility with iwi, hap¯u and wh¯anau to help ensure the education system supports and sustains the M¯aori language and M¯aori culture. We want the education system to be a major contributor to cultural participation and wellbeing (Ministry of Education, 2018a, b, p. 6).

The commitment in education to honouring the Treaty of Waitangi partnership sits fairly comfortably with New Zealand’s predominantly progressive approach to education. For many educators, the idea that affirming language and culture as part of a student’s identity is likely to lead to an improvement in engagement with education, and therefore educational achievement, might seem like common sense. However, it is much more difficult to make the case for, let alone agree, that all students, including M¯aori students, should have access to the same subject knowledge, given the colonial history of New Zealand, and the commitment to honouring the Treaty partnership. Not only does subject or ‘academic’ knowledge have elitist and exclusive connotations for some, but it may also be seen as part of the colonising mechanism. From this perspective, the commitment to honouring the Treaty partnership seems to necessitate a rejection of ‘western’ subject knowledge. In addition to this uncertainty about whether subject knowledge (as the product of a particular group of the powerful) is in fact good for all students, it is easy to conflate curriculum and pedagogy when trying to design learning experiences that include and respond to the cultural identities of students. One of the aspects of effective pedagogy is a teacher’s ability to select learning contexts that might engage a group of learners. For example, the selection of a particular text, or image, or problem to explore is often made based on a teacher’s knowledge of the interests of his or her learners. However, this does not mean that subject concepts themselves (which is a curriculum matter) need to be abandoned because they do not appear to reflect the cultural background of students. In doing this, perhaps for very well-intentioned reasons, we run the risk of further exacerbating the educational inequalities we might assume we are addressing (Wilson, Madjar, & McNaughton, 2016). Thirty years of bicultural education policy and a succession of initiatives aimed at improving outcomes for M¯aori have not yet successfully addressed the persistent problem of the educational underachievement of M¯aori students in the compulsory school sector. Progress has been made in terms of understanding the complexity of factors that influence achievement. For example, there is a much greater acceptance among educators of the value in affirming and strengthening M¯aori students’ cultural identity, and teachers are challenged to think carefully about the ways they can be 1

This document describes the expectations of behaviour and effective teaching practice for all teachers.

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more culturally responsive and inclusive in their practice. However, the dominant discourse in the compulsory education sector continues to frame the issue of M¯aori underachievement primarily as a ‘cultural’ problem and this tends to discourage other ways of thinking about the issue (Lourie, 2016). The fact that significant underachievement still exists suggests that we need to consider the range of factors that contribute to the phenomenon, in addition to thinking about the cultural aspects of underachievement. Here it seems appropriate to reiterate the argument in chapter five; teachers do not have to choose between either affirming students’ ethnic identity or the development of an academic identity, they are able do both.

Twenty-First Century Learning and Teaching Practices For the last decade at least, New Zealand education policy statements and initiatives have consistently reflected an intention of embedding twenty-first century learning and teaching practices in schools (Lourie, 2018). It has been less clear what this might look like in practice which is understandable given that twenty-first century learning does not signify any one theory, or set of agreed upon ideas and related practices. The authors of an influential report commissioned by the Ministry of Education in 2011 to develop a vision of what future learning for New Zealand students might look like, note twenty-first century learning is more usefully understood as a ‘cluster of new ideas, beliefs, knowledge, theories and practices’ (Bolstad et al., 2012, p. 1). However, some aspects of this ‘cluster’ have been more of a focus than others in New Zealand education. One particularly dominant objective in education policy has been to strengthen student access to digital learning opportunities (Lourie, 2018). While twenty-first century learning and teaching involve much more than the increased use of digital technologies, ICT (and more recently, digital technology) is often co-located with references to twenty-first century learning and/or skills in New Zealand education policy statements over the last decade. The Ministry of Education’s 2014–2018 strategic intention statement exemplifies the type of statements that can be found in these documents, claiming that ‘learning with digital technologies helps equip children and students with the range of skills they need to participate in a modern, future-focused economy’ (Ministry of Education, 2014, p. 22). The emphasis on ICT/digital technologies in New Zealand education policy is better understood by having a sense of New Zealand’s changing economic context. After the downturn of the 1970s, the economy underwent significant changes. While a large part of the workforce had previously been involved in agriculture and manufacturing, by 1994 two-thirds of the workforce were employed in the services sector (Roper, 1997). A view of information handling and processing as a core skill began to emerge as a result (Stephenson, 2003). The co-location in New Zealand education policy of technological change and the need to develop a highly skilled workforce first appeared in the 1993 NZCF: ‘As we move towards the twenty-first century, with

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all the rapid technological change which is taking place, we need a work-force which is increasingly highly skilled and adaptable…’ (Ministry of Education, 1993, p. 1). A concern with the need for New Zealand’s workforce to be able to respond to rapid technological change has been a consistent feature of the Ministry of Education’s strategic intention statements since that time. In 2018, it was announced that compulsory digital technologies content was being added to the Technology learning area of the NZC to address the needs of the workforce. Our economy needs workers with specific technological skills to enable innovation and support the infrastructure that firms, governments, commerce and users rely on… The Information Communication Technologies industry faces significant challenges recruiting people with the right skills to drive digital innovation and strengthen New Zealand’s potential for economic growth (Ministry of Education, 2018a).

Alongside a strong focus on developing ICT/digital technology skills in schools, the Ministry of Education’s strategic intention statements have also emphasised the physical environment itself in reference to twenty-first century learning. The assumption implicit in these statements is that changes made to teachers’ physical environments can bring about the pedagogical changes thought to be needed to teach effectively in the twenty-first century (Benade, 2017). More recent school building projects (which include both renovations and new builds) have seen the emergence of flexible learning spaces (FLS) in some schools, an initiative that is often justified by referencing the OECD Innovative Learning Environments project (OECD, 2013). The ERO report Leading Innovative Learning in New Zealand Schools (Education Review Office, 2018) cites the OECD ILE project and makes links between the principles of learning identified in the OECD literature and the NZC. These are: • • • • • • •

Learners at the centre The social nature of learning Emotions are integral to learning Recognising individual differences Stretching all students Assessment for learning Building horizontal connections.

The report adds that the foremost of the ILEs seven principles is ‘learners at the centre’ (Education Review Office, 2018, p. 11), an idea that has clearly been picked up in the New Zealand context. The current Ministry of Education Statement of Intent, for example, has ‘Learners at the centre’ (Ministry of Education, 2018b, p. 12) as one of its five objectives for the education portfolio. The discourse which places learners at the centre by necessity moves teachers and their specialised knowledge to the edges where they are increasingly encouraged to see themselves as facilitators. It also seems to add to confusion about the difference between curriculum and pedagogy. As described in Graham McPhail’s chapter, the teacher as facilitator model overlooks the need for students to have new knowledge scaffolded for them by teachers using structuring concepts so that there is a reduced risk of cognitive overload. The teacher as facilitator might be very good at using

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a pedagogical approach which places learners at the centre, for example, the use of inquiry, but in order to be successful in researching an area of interest, students first need an overview of that area of interest. This is a curriculum design matter. What do students need to know about a topic in order to be able to organise, categorise, and make sense of the information they find as they undertake an inquiry project? The point I am making here is that developments in approaches to pedagogy do not by necessity require changes to what is to be taught. In terms of curriculum design, or more explicitly, the subject knowledge that is to be taught, there is an absence of detail in both policy and education initiative documents. The NZC, containing only the broadest of Achievement Objectives, is currently operationalised alongside a plethora of initiatives and supporting literature concerned with pedagogy, however, a distinction between curriculum and pedagogy is rarely, if ever, made. Consequently, there is a tendency to confuse curriculum and pedagogy to the point where they sometimes appear conflated. This is nicely illustrated in the ERO report Leading Innovative Learning in New Zealand Schools: FLSs facilitate, indeed necessitate, changes in the curriculum and pedagogy. In an FLS, teachers are better able to share responsibility for learners and collaboratively identify and respond to the needs of individual learners. Learners in an FLS are often able to make choices about where they work, with whom, and what furniture and resources they will use (Education Review Office, 2018, p. 15).

It is easy to see that a change in the physical environment which might include working with other teachers in larger spaces with break-out rooms, would necessarily require changes in pedagogy. The same could be said if schools want to focus on students working collaboratively, developing their inquiry skills, and using technology to enrich and extend their learning, all ideas loosely associated with twentyfirst century learning. What is less clear, and in fact, not clearly articulated in policy or education initiatives is why either of these things necessitate a change in what is to be taught in terms of content. Unfortunately, things don’t look to be set to change in terms of the confusion that has arisen as a result of the reframing of knowledge, skills, and competencies in education policy documents both internationally and locally. At the global policy level, there are some hints of recognition that the balance of knowledge, skills, and competencies may be in need of some recalibration so that subject knowledge isn’t overlooked entirely. For example, the 2018 OECD publication The Future of Education and Skills: Education 2030 states that ‘Disciplinary knowledge will continue to be important, as the raw material from which new knowledge is developed’ (OECD, 2018, p. 5). In contrast, the current Ministry of Education Statement of Intent appears to continue to prioritise skills in its objectives in relation to twenty-first century learning. The document states that the government will be, Focusing on learning that is relevant to the lives that New Zealanders are living today, the technology they will interact with, and the types of skills that will provide them with the opportunities to thrive in all aspects of their lives. We also need to reconsider whether there are practical life skills that aren’t currently being taught within schools but should be (Ministry of Education, 2018b, p. 12).

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The quote above is a reminder of the continued salience of references to skills in education policy statements over the past 30 years which reflects an enduring concern that education should contribute to the development of New Zealand’s economy. The message frequently repeated from the time it first appeared in the 1993 NZQF, is that the curriculum must keep pace with rapidly changing demands and the skills needed for the future. Skills, competencies, and subject knowledge have been reframed in New Zealand education policy but it remains to be seen whether the current balance between the three will enable the future achievement of economic goals.

Conclusion ‘All of our work is designed to deliver equitable and excellent outcomes, contributing to social and cultural participation and wellbeing, and economic prosperity and growth’ (Ministry of Education, 2018b, p. 16). This chapter has explored how and why the knowledge-that component of subject knowledge has been moved to the background of curriculum design in New Zealand. The change in education policy from an emphasis on subject knowledge to an emphasis on the development of skills and competencies—both subject skills and competencies and more generic ones—can be more easily understood by considering New Zealand’s interest in developing young people who can contribute to a future economy that might be less reliant on agriculture and manufacturing. New Zealand’s unique cultural context is also an important factor to consider, both as a democracy with a progressive tradition (Mutch, 2013), and as a bicultural nationstate still facing challenges associated with its colonial history, and its commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi partnership. One consequence of the shift in balance towards the development of skills and competencies has been increasing confusion between curriculum and pedagogy in policy and practice, and it is perhaps this, more than anything, which has led to a nagging feeling that we may have thrown the knowledge baby out with the bath water. The theory of knowledge utilised in this book provides a means to solve this knowledge problem. By differentiating between what is to be taught (the curriculum—subject concepts, content, skills and competencies) and how (pedagogy) both dimensions can fulfil their intended function in a knowledge-rich curriculum carried by progressive, student-centred pedagogies. New Zealand education policy and initiatives often include goal statements about achieving socially just outcomes for all students as illustrated by the quote at the beginning of this section. Despite the best of intentions, there has been a steady decline in New Zealand’s international educational rankings since 2000 (Walters, 2019), and a persistent achievement gap remains between M¯aori and Pacific students, and other ethnic groups. The authors of this book have focused on different aspects of the knowledge problem in New Zealand education, but we share a common view. That is, in order for more socially just outcomes to be achieved, students must have equal access to the benefits of epistemic knowledge. We argue that a curriculum that carefully balances content (knowledge-that) and skills (knowledge-how-to), and that

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supports a clear distinction between curriculum and pedagogy may better prepare students for work and life, than the current over emphasis on knowledge-how-to. We acknowledge the strengths that already exist in our education system as a result of our long history of progressivism, for example, the development of culturally responsive pedagogy, but argue that we need to build on those strengths by providing students with equitable access to powerful knowledge. As noted in the introduction of this book, Bernstein’s (2000) pedagogic rights underpin the educational and social justice aims of this argument. These rights acknowledge the need to recognise students as culturally and socially located individuals, and this is strongly emphasised in New Zealand education. However, the recognition of the ‘epistemic self’ (McPhail, 2014; Lynch & Rata, 2017) for all students is equally as important if social justice aims are ever to be achieved.

References Benade, L. (2017). The evolution of policy: A critical examination of school property under the National-led Government. Waikato Journal of Education, 22(1), 97–112. Bolstad, R., Gilbert, J., McDowall, S., Bull, A., Boyd, S. & Hipkins, R. (2012). Supporting futureoriented learning and teaching—A New Zealand perspective. Ministry of Education commissioned report from NZCER. Retrieved October 26, 2020, from http://www.educationcounts.govt. nz/publications/schooling/109306. Education Council. (2017). Our Code, Our Standards: Code of professional responsibility and standards for the profession. Education Council. Education Review Office. (2018). Leading innovative learning in New Zealand schools. Retrieved October 26, 2020, from https://www.ero.govt.nz/publications/leading-innovative-learning-innew-zealand-schools-april-2018/. Hipkins, R. (2018). How the key competencies were developed: The evidence base. Retrieved October 2, 2020, from https://www.nzcer.org.nz/research/publications/1-how-key-competencieswere-developed-evidence-base. K¯orero M¯atauranga. (2020). National priorities for professional learning and development. Retrieved September 20, 2020, from https://conversation.education.govt.nz/conversations/cur riculum-progress-and-achievement/national-priorities-for-professional-learning-and-developme nt/. Lourie, M. (2016). Bicultural education policy in New Zealand. Journal of Education Policy, 31(5), 637–650. Lourie, M. (2018). ‘21st century practice in teaching and learning’ in New Zealand education: Strategic intention statements 2010–2016. Pacific-Asian Education, 30, 21–32. Lourie, M. (2020). Recontextualising twenty-first century learning in New Zealand Education policy: The reframing of knowledge, skills and competencies. New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40841-020-00158. Lynch, C. & Rata, E. (2017). Culturally responsive pedagogy: A New Zealand case study. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 27(4), 391–408. Marshall, J. (2000). Bright futures and the knowledge society. In J. Marshall (Ed.), Politics, policy, pedagogy: Education in Aotearoa/New Zealand (pp. 187–215). Dunmore Press. McDowall, S., & Hipkins, R. (2018). How the key competencies evolved over time: Insights from the research. Retrieved October 26, 2020, from https://www.nzcer.org.nz/research/publications/ key-competencies-insights.

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McPhail, G. J. (2014). The right to enhancement: Students talking about music knowledge in the secondary curriculum. Curriculum Journal, 25(3), 306–325. doi:10.1080/09585176.2014. 913493 Ministry of Education. (1993). The New Zealand curriculum framework. Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education. (2002). Curriculum Stocktake report to the Minister of Education September 2002. Retrieved July 16, 2020, from https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/curric ulum/5815. Ministry of Education. (2007). The New Zealand curriculum. Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education. (2014). Statement of intent 2014–2018. Retrieved October 5, 2020, from https://www.education.govt.nz/our-work/publications/statement-of-intent/. Ministry of Education. (2018b). Statement of intent 2018–23. Retrieved October 5, 2020, from https://www.education.govt.nz/our-work/publications/statement-of-intent/. Ministry of Education. (2018a). More information on the curriculum change. Retrieved September 2, 2020, from https://www.education.govt.nz/our-work/changes-in-education/digital-technolog ies-and-hangarau-matihiko-learning/more-information-on-the-curriculum-change/. Ministry of Education. (2020a). Ka Hikitia—Ka H¯apaitia [The M¯aori Education Strategy (English)]. Retrieved September 5, 2020, from https://www.education.govt.nz/our-work/overall-strategiesand-policies/ka-hikitia-ka-hapaitia/ka-hikitia-ka-hapaitia-the-maori-education-strategy/. Ministry of Education. (2020b). PLD priorities. Retrieved September 28, 2020, from https://pld. education.govt.nz/regionally-allocated-pld/pld-priorities/. Muller, J. (2006). Differentiation and progression in the curriculum. In M. Young & J. Gamble (Eds.), Knowledge, curriculum and qualifications for South African further education (pp. 66–86). Human Sciences Research Council. Mutch, C. (2013). Progressive education in New Zealand: A revered past, a contested present and an uncertain future. International Journal of Progressive Education, 9(2), 98–116. OECD. (2013). Innovative learning environments. OECD. OECD. (2018). The future of education and skills, education 2030. Retrieved September 28, 2020, from https://www.oecd.org/education/2030/E2030%20Position%20Paper%20(05.04.2018).pdf. Renwick, W. L. (1986). Moving targets: Six essays on educational policy. New Zealand Council for Educational Research. Robertson, S. L. (2016). The global governance of teachers’ work. In K. Mundy, A. Green, B. Lingard, & A, Verger (Eds.), The handbook of global education policy (pp. 275–290). Wiley Blackwell. Roper, B. (1997). The changing class structure. In C. Rudd & B. Roper (Eds.), The political economy of New Zealand (pp. 79–99). Oxford University Press. Rutherford, J. (2005). Key competencies in the New Zealand curriculum: Devlopment through consultation. Curriculum Matters, 1, 210–227. Sahlberg, P. (2006). Education reform for raising economic competitiveness. Journal of Educational Change, 7, 259–287. Stephenson, I. (2003). Techno-futurism and the knowledge economy in New Zealand. Master’s thesis, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand. Retrieved from https://ope nrepository.aut.ac.nz/handle/10292/56. Taskforce to Review Education Administration. (1988). Administering for excellence: Effective administration in education: Report of the taskforce to review education administration. Department of Education. Walters, l. (2019). Education report makes for grim reading. Retrieved September 17, 2020, from https://www.newsroom.co.nz/grim-report-on-education-on-how-students-are-faring. Wilson, A., Madjar, I., & McNaughton, S. (2016). Opportunity to learn about disciplinary literacy in senior secondary english classrooms in New Zealand. The Curriculum Journal, 27(2), 204–228.

Chapter 8

Why We Still Need a Political Theory of the Curriculum John Morgan

It is a truth much forgotten that the point of education is to help ensure that the society which is home to us all is capable of carrying on and will continue into a recognisable future. Schools, universities, colleges; classes, seminars, libraries, computers; teachers, students, professors, technicians, cleaners, dinner ladies; books, essays, examinations, question-andanswer sessions, homework; the whole vast institution, sometimes crazy, sometimes dreary, often exhilarating, frequently boring, is intended to teach children, and the young men and women they become, how to keep the colossal show of a society on the historical road (Inglis, 2004, p. 23).

The curriculum—the knowledge, understanding, and skills to be transmitted from one generation to the next—is part of this work of keeping ‘the colossal show of a society on the historical road’. In the midst of a global health pandemic that effectively closed borders to travel, confined whole populations to staying at home, and provoked a precipitous drop in economic activity, it should be all too apparent that the question of what is to be taught, is of paramount importance. If we hadn’t grasped it before, it is now clear; the question of who is to take ownership of the curriculum is not easily resolved. The curriculum is a reflection, and part of the production, of culture, and wherever there is a culture there is politics. The task, noble and urgent, of educators is to grapple with the question of what we should teach to ensure we all stay on ‘the historical road’. This chapter takes an expansive approach to curriculum thinking. There are people who call themselves curriculum experts or curriculum theorists, but I do not claim to be one of them. I do have an intense interest in the curriculum though, which stems from my experience as a teacher, as a parent, as someone who works in a university department of education, and as a citizen. I want to think about where we have been, where we are now, and where we are going. My guides as I start this journey are Fred Inglis (cited above) and the educational social historian Silver (1980) who reminds us that: J. Morgan (B) University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 M. Lourie and G. McPhail (eds.), Perspectives on the Knowledge Problem in New Zealand Education, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2908-2_8

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J. Morgan The most persistent dilemmas in educational debate in this [20th century] century have been concerned with kinds of knowledge. In terms of school or university curricula, in relation to reorganisation and democratisation of provision, in connection with the educational ideas of every variety, there has emerged the question of access to knowledge, to the most appropriate knowledge, to one curriculum or another… The school curriculum has been seen, rightly, as a vital battlefield on which competing social and cultural ideals wage war (p. 109)

This ‘battlefield’ is the subject of this chapter. As we start out as teachers, we see the curriculum as something to be covered, ‘got through’, or delivered. But as we clock up hours, days, and years in schools and classrooms, it becomes clearer that the sometimes tense struggles and arguments about what to teach, to which groups of students, in what forms, and by whom, are intertwined with culture, politics, and economy. I illustrate this with reference to Britain, though a similar exercise could be applied to other nations, and readers of this volume may want to reflect on how far what they have read in this book resonates with the argument of this chapter.

Culture with a Capital ‘C’ It is a truth universally acknowledged that, in Britain, it is impossible to discuss the curriculum without reference to class. That point is readily explained; Britain was the first nation to undertake the Industrial Revolution, and the struggles overproduction gave rise to a series of regional and class cultures that, although subject to erosion and change, remain important. In response to industrialization and the growth of cities, compulsory elementary schooling was introduced, increasing at once workingclass access to education. Concurrently, the rapid growth and consolidation of the organised labour movement focused the attention of both liberal and socialist thinkers on the question of how to provide working-class access to culture. Influential liberal humanist thinkers saw a shared common culture as an antidote to class tensions, whilst representatives of the labour movement regarded access to culture as a basic workers’ right, because working class exclusion from culture was a source of spiritual and intellectual impoverishment. Liberals and socialists thus had a shared understanding of culture: Culture in the singular and with a capital ‘C’. This was Culture as envisaged by Matthew Arnold as ‘the best that has been thought and known’. Access to Culture was the source of struggle in the interwar period. At a time when British society was riven by deep class divisions, the democratic impulse to provide education to the masses was powerful and appealing. For many working-class people gaining access to education reflected a desire to ‘better themselves’, and, although their experience, when confronted with the Great Tradition of literature, may at times been one of alienation, literature classes remained popular. The working classes became active consumers of bourgeois culture. Up until 1945, calls for autonomous, class-conscious working-class cultural production were rare; the important issue was how to bring working-class people to culture rather than to encourage them to produce art and literature themselves.

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Most Marxists accepted this. Whilst it was recognised that bourgeois culture was the product of class societies and reflected the social relations of the societies in which it was produced, learning and reading about bourgeois culture was important because it provided the resources to allow working-class people to read differently, to see culture as a reflection of class society and the process of history. Art and literature could help working-class people to understand capitalist social relations and the mechanisms of social and revolutionary change. The Second World War provided a challenge to this, and the struggle for the curriculum became more intense in the years after 1945.

Culture and Curriculum in a Changing World War had a dramatic effect on British politics and society. The balance of power between capital and labour shifted, and as labour won concessions, it was widely accepted that after the war, the prospects for working people must improve. The 1944 Education Act marked the point at which ‘the people’, who had previously been excluded from many of the ‘good things’ in life were to be fully incorporated into a decent society, represented politically by a Labour government committed to reform, the construction of the welfare state and welfare capitalism. Education was one part of a wider set of social policies aimed at overcoming working class disadvantage and an important means of building a better world. It is worth expanding a little more on the wider transformations that shaped what historian Kynaston (2010) calls ‘Modernity Britain’, a time of great economic, social, and cultural change. The establishment of the Keynesian post-war settlement, the rapid growth of economic output, the rise of the consumer society, and the associated changes in industrial structure and organisation, served to undermine the assumptions of how life was lived and had been established in the making of an industrial society. For instance, one of the most important changes was in the experiences of girls and women as the post-war settlement sought to find an answer to the challenges of increased consumerism and change patterns of working. In addition, the late 1950s saw the invention of the ‘teenager’ in a distinctive youth culture made possible by the relative availability of work and thus disposable income for working-class youths. The visibility of distinctive subcultures within the affluent society offered the first signs of cracks in the consensus. With physical changes in the landscape because of slum clearance and the building of new towns, there was a sense of a modern Britain quite different from that of the first half of the twentieth century. In this context of the ‘redistribution of esteem’ from the middle-class to the working-class, educational debate focused not only on the question of access but also to the question of whose culture should be represented in the curriculum. Educational expansion inevitably raised the question of whether all children be expected to grasp the same knowledge. As early as 1948, in Notes towards a definition of culture, the conservative cultural critic T. S. Eliot bemoaned the effects of ‘the headlong rush to educate everyone’, which, he feared, was leading to the deterioration and lowering

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of standards of the Culture as a whole. Eliot was swimming against the tide. The democratisation of society and culture that accompanied the expansion of education after the war gave rise to an expanded notion of culture as a way of life. Against the Cambridge literary critic F. R. Leavis’s insistence that Culture resided in a small but Great Tradition of canonical literature, his pupil, Raymond Williams, set out to document a rich and vibrant seam of cultural tradition within the working classes. Far from the possession of a narrow elite, Williams (1958) argued that ‘Culture is ordinary’: The bus stop was outside the cathedral. I had been looking at the Mappa Mundi, with its rivers out of Paradise, and at the chained library, where a party of clergymen had got in easily, but where I had waited an hour and cajoled a verger before I even saw the chains. Now, across the street, a cinema advertised the Six-Five Special and a cartoon version of Gulliver’s Travels. The bus arrived, with a driver and conductress deeply absorbed in each other. We went out of the city, over the old bridge, and on through the orchards and the green meadows and the fields red under the plough. Ahead were the Black Mountains, and we climbed among them, watching the steep fields end at the grey walls, beyond which the bracken and heather and whin had not yet been driven back. To the east, along the ridge, stood the line of grey Norman castles; to the west, the fortress walls of the mountains. Then, as we still climbed, the rock changed under us. Here, now, was limestone, and the line of the early iron workings along the scarp. The farming valleys, with their scattered white houses, fell away behind. Ahead of us were the narrower valleys: the steel-rolling mill, the gasworks, the grey terraces, the pitheads. The bus stopped, and the driver and conductress got out, still absorbed. They had done this journey so often, and seen all its stages. It is a journey, in fact, that in one form or another we have all made (p. 3).

This passage encapsulates the complex and varied ways in which culture has been thought of in post-war society and education. Thus, there is the idea of culture as ‘a general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development’, as referenced by the cathedral, the Mappa Mundi, and the chained library. In the very first line, Williams references the process in which an individual seeks to acquire culture, to become ‘cultivated’, and at the same time draws attention to the almost matter of fact processes of exclusion from culture (the fact that there are ‘gate-keepers’, that some are seen by right to have access, whilst others have to wait their turn). Even to make the journey to the cathedral signals a desire to acquire the right books and proper tastes. Williams juxtaposes this high culture with the low or popular culture made available through the cinema, the Six Five Special and the cartoon version of Gulliver’s Travels. Here is a culture in a wider sense, as the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity. In the city, which brings together ancient and modern, we have the mixing of the high and the low, the sacred and the profane. Going further, Williams’ bus journey from the city to the country—the former as a site of cultivation and the latter as a cultivated place—references the idea of culture as ‘a particular way of life, whether of a people, a period or a group – and as the development of a society and the growth of an industrial culture and ways of life’ (Williams, 1976, p. x). Perhaps, in the end, it is the notion of the journey that comes through most strongly, since it points to mobility and cultural change. As Williams was so aware, when we become mobile we gain some things and lose others. Education is a means of social

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mobility; it is a journey that, ‘in one form or another, we have all made’. Here, in 1958, Williams set out the ‘battlefield’ that has been fought over, to this day, in English schools, just as the older shackles of Culture with a capital ‘C’ were being shaken. Williams’ essay pointed to an expansive notion of cultural production that had implications for how to think about the curriculum, about whose knowledge is of most worth.

From Modern to Postmodern Curriculum Studies The modern society Williams was intuiting required a modern curriculum. The old subjects would have to change, and some of them would have to go. The modernisation of the curriculum reflected rational processes—flow charts, boxes, and arrows. Textbooks written to support the newly established teacher education courses reflected the optimism of post-war expansion and the challenge of incorporating previously excluded groups of students. Schools experimented with different patterns of pupil grouping, with the common core, and different models of subject choices; they developed the pastoral curriculum to complement the academic curriculum. They adopted streaming, experimented with new teaching styles and sought to develop relevant, often integrated curricula. The 1960s saw the growth of a wide range of educational innovations that still resonate. These included new learning technologies, for example computer-assisted learning, language, educational psychology, school-based curriculum development, new examinations, in-service training, and teachers’ centres. In looking back at this period of educational innovation, it is easy to be caught in the mire of technical detail, and to lose sight of the fact that such innovations sought to solve particular problems. These were: how to manage a complex modern society, one that sought to prepare young people for a post-industrial economy, and at the same time promote social mobility as part of the ‘classless society’. Curriculum Studies was part of this. It is telling that the very first issue of the Journal of Curriculum Studies (established in 1969) ran with a paper entitled ‘How does the curriculum change?’ It gave rise to a new breed of pedagogues and curriculum technicians. Their efforts, though, were marred by the limits of the ‘stagnant society’, one in which organization theory would produce equilibrium levels of production and consumption, and inevitable problems of everyday life—marriages, relationships, diet and health would be amenable to a solution with the application of functional sociology and psychology. Though the curriculum planners did not go so far as to don white coats, the coherent curriculum designs they came up with produced individuals who would know and accept their place in a regulated and ordered society. Modern curriculum planning was, in the end, undermined by the forces that were set in accelerated motion by the engines of economic growth, the consumer revolution, and the advent of modern communications. These led, eventually, to what came, in the 1980s and 1990s, to be called ‘postmodernism’. The first set of changes

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occurred in the development of knowledge, where the story of science as an empirical description of the world, along with its promise of prediction, came to be challenged, notably through Kuhn’s (1962) Structure of Scientific Revolutions. After this, ‘Science’ was regarded as just one story among a range of possibilities (albeit the dominant story). In this context, the social basis of knowledge was revealed as a sociological problem to be investigated, as evidenced through Berger and Luckmann’s (1966) The social construction of reality. This was part of a wider set of cultural changes related to the growth of feminism, the effect of migration, and the rise of the mass media and consumerism. These seemed to undermine, or at least erode the edges of the monolithic structures that constrained people. Suddenly, it seemed (even if this was over-optimistic) anything was possible. Basil Bernstein was one of the first to formulate this, noting that Western societies have been marked by a constant struggle between structure and flow, or between forms of life that are governed by rules and order and those that seek to undo or challenge order. Building on Bernstein’s insight, Martin (1981) demonstrated how the 1960s saw the emergence of a counterculture, which drew upon themes and motifs of Romanticism that suffused British culture. The counterculture emphasised the Dionysian dismantling of arbitrary socially constructed categories and boundaries. Although this counterculture had lost much of its momentum by the 1970s, Martin argues that it had an afterlife that continued to inform the mood of the wider society. There was a sense in which people were encouraged to get loose and express themselves. Significantly, this ‘expressive revolution’ took place in the professions, including the clergy, social work, and education. In education, there were moves towards progressive and childcentred education, the relaxation of the formality between teachers and pupils, less concern with uniform and rules, a focus on constructivist pedagogy that regarded children’s experiences as valid, and recognition that the curriculum and its subjects could readily be replaced by integrated studies and project work. All told, the effect of these developments was to render it common sense that Knowledge was not timeless and natural, but reflected the interests and values of those who produce it (see Chap. 1). It took only a short step to conclude that the knowledge found in the school curriculum was ‘arbitrary’, a selection from the culture, and, from there, to surmise that if knowledge is a social construction, then surely the teachers charged with its transmission might reconstruct it in ways that are in the interests of students in schools. These hypotheses provided the basis for the ‘new sociology of education’, inaugurated by two books that emerged from the Proceedings of the British Sociological Association conference in 1968. The most successful of these— Knowledge and Control—prompted a revolution in the field (Young, 1971). The fact that its message dovetailed with the arguments of the New Left about the need to go beyond critique and understand school knowledge as part of a wider political struggle, meant that the struggles of the women’s movement and the urban new left were incorporated into the curriculum debates. By the time Whitty and Young completed a successor volume, the economic and political climate had shifted to the right, and public sector professionalism, underpinned by a liberal humanism nurtured by welfare capitalism, inevitably became the object of new right derision

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and opprobrium as economic optimism faded and the social democratic settlement crumbled (Whitty & Young, 1977; CCCS, 1981). With hindsight, what is striking about the 1980s and early 1990s is how quickly any residual faith in socialism as a radical possibility evaporated. Large sections of the educational left were drawn to post-Marxist accounts of the so-called ‘new times’, and subsequently educational postmodernism. As Eagleton (2003) later wrote: Dreams of ambitious social change were denounced as illicit ‘grand narratives’, more likely to lead to totalitarianism than to liberty. From Sydney to San Diego, Cape Town to Tromso, everyone was thinking small. Micro-politics broke out on a global scale. A new epic fable of the end of epic fables unfurled across the globe. From one end of a diseased planet to the other, there were calls to abandon planetary thinking. Whatever linked us – whatever was the same – was noxious. Difference was the new catch-cry, in a world increasingly subject to the same indignities of starvation and disease, cloned cities, deadly weapons and CNN television (pp. 45–46).

Postmodernism and Education If neo-Conservativism was one well-documented response to the rise of cultural diversity and a widespread acceptance that knowledge is relative, postmodernism offered other possibilities for those educators who recognised the challenge that the collapse in the belief in grand narratives such as socialism represented. After all, the world did seem to be changing. The old industrial regions were in decline, taking with them the male, industrial working-class, and leaving the old factories to be demolished or to rise, Phoenix-like, as gentrified apartments, pleasure palaces, bars and cafes. There was a reaction against the ‘Brutalist’ architecture associated, right or wrong, with municipal socialism. The economic recovery embedded the consumer society, one where signs were as important to adding economic value to commodities as much as their use-value. Older ways of thinking and being—identities—seemed in flux. Lifestyle was a choice. As Benko (1997) summarised it, postmodernism: …combines a cultural logic which favours relativism and diversity, a set of intellectual processes which provide extremely fluid and dynamic structures of meaning to the world, and lastly a configuration of social traits which signifies the development of a movement of fundamental change within the modern condition (crisis of productive systems and rise in unemployment, demise of historicity before the atemporality of the ephemeral, crisis of modern individualism and omnipresence of narcissistic mass culture etc) (p. 30).

The thing to say about these postmodern logics is that they are observable sociological developments that together comprise the ‘condition of postmodernity’. In terms of education, postmodernism in its ‘progressive’ mode seemed, to many on the educational left, to compensate for the disappointments of modernity and the collapse of the social-democratic settlement. It promised to: (1) (2)

open the doors to different voices and different forms of knowledge; lead away from a censorious view of the media and consumer culture to one that celebrated, or at least recognised the pleasures and playfulness of ‘readers’ or ‘audiences’, who were able to make meaning out of what they made;

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dissolve institutional boundaries, so that learning could happen ‘anytime, anyplace, anywhere’.

Most importantly, the grey, monolithic centres of the culture were cracked open, as the fact that knowledge was multiple and plural became a cause for celebration. Anything that smacked of canonicity was out. The masculinist and Eurocentric pretensions of Science were undermined by alternative world-views and the attempts to explain the social construction of scientific knowledge. In History, there was a move towards social and cultural history, and history from below, whilst in Geography the move from Geography with a capital G to ‘multiple geographies’. As Neil Smith memorably put it: ‘The Enlightenment is dead, Marxism is dead, the working class movement is dead…and the author does not feel very well either’ (cited in Harvey, 1989, p. 323). These moves have accelerated, especially with the move from ‘read only’ literacy to ‘read and write’ literacies. All of these trends have continued well after postmodernism was considered passé. In 1997, Parker’s manifesto for education in postmodernity was strident in its assertion that, ‘as for the curriculum, get rid of it’: Postmodern schools will jettison the model of knowledge which curriculum carries: universally respectable categories of belief and opinion; necessarily worthwhile pursuits independent of situation or local interests; absolute and invariant steeping stones to citizenship and maturity...organization around age-range categories which match children to content under universalised age-knowledge imperatives (p. 151).

Though this was written during ‘peak postmodernism’, everything that Parker rages against in the curriculum—universal knowledge, traditional subjects, examinations, age divisions—is still advocated by ‘progressives’ and ‘disruptive’ educators. Postmodernism is not dead, but lives on in the culture.

Social Realism and the Knowledge Turn Post-modern approaches to curriculum knowledge invariably produced a counterreaction. The last two decades have seen growing criticism of approaches to teaching and learning that seemed to downgrade the importance of knowledge. As Young and Lambert (2014) state: Knowledge is an uncomfortable word for many in education today. For some teachers, knowledge has ‘elitist and exclusive connotations’. School subjects are regarded as suspicious because they are associated with ‘authority’ and can seem irrelevant to the lives of students growing up in a fast-changing world. In addition, the focus on raising attainment and demonstrating ‘value-added’ can mean there is a tendency to prioritise the how of teaching over the what of teaching (p. 12).

Young and Lambert’s book is an attempt to popularise Social Realism, a sociological theory that can be traced back to Moore’s (1996) article ‘Back to the future’. Moore’s early work grappled with questions of access to knowledge in the context

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of social and economic change, and addressed the question of the correspondence between education and the economy. He was increasingly convinced that there was no necessary relationship. Moore’s paper attracted the attention of Michael Young, who, as has been mentioned, was a key figure in the new sociology of education. Whereas in the 1970s Young had pioneered the argument that knowledge is a social construction that reflects the world-views of the powerful—‘knowledge of the powerful’, his 2008 book Bringing knowledge back in performed a dramatic volte face, so that the concern now was to ensure that all students gained access to ‘powerful knowledge’ (see Chap. 1 and foreword). Viewed with a wider lens, we can see that Social Realism grew out of a dissatisfaction with the fact that, despite claims that we live in a knowledge society, teachers and educators paid little attention to the curriculum, focusing their energies on pedagogy and assessment. Standing back even farther, it is becoming clear that it is a reaction to the lack of concern for Truth in society. The ‘trick’ of Social Realism is to accept that knowledge is a social production, and thus is shaped by the conditions of the society that shaped it, but reject the idea that knowledge can be reduced to the standpoint of its producers. Knowledge has an ‘after-life’ of its own, which stems from it being produced in specialist communities of interest where claims and counter-claims are debated and clarified. Hence the shift from the idea that knowledge reflects the interests and world-view of the powerful to the idea that knowledge itself is powerful. It is important to note that whilst Young himself has always recognised that knowledge does have the potential to carry a political charge, others have tended to look to the task of taking knowledge and working out how it can be structured so as to develop rational and coherent curriculum choices, freed from troublesome questions of ‘whose knowledge’ or ideology. Whilst stressing the sanctity of knowledge is a welcome corrective to the cruder attempts to relate knowledge to the standpoint of those who produce it, it would be a tragedy if the lessons of the assiduous work of a scholar such as Anderson (1968), who has provided detailed social and historical analyses of intellectual formations, was lost for educators, since this has driven curriculum debate and innovation over the past seventy years. The growing movement of self-nominated ‘knowledge-rich’ schools appears to rely on a misunderstanding of Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of ‘cultural capital’. Here, the argument goes, not all students come from homes that give them the required language, experience, and consumption choices that are necessary to take one’s place in a ‘cultured’ society (a trip to Covent Garden trumping anything that can be gained by listening to Stormzy’s modern opera). At its extreme, this is a kind of ‘militant culturalism’ that denies that young people bring anything of value into the classroom and sets schools up as oases of urbanity in a problem-strewn desert (see Kulz’s (2017) study of Dreamfield’s Academy for a dramatic account of this tendency).

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How We Live Now Once upon a time, it may have seemed revolutionary to declare that knowledge (and school subjects) are social constructions. Later, it could be counter-revolutionary to reverse the terms and assert that knowledge describes social reality. But all this could be done without much reference to the fact that the forces of production are ripping the planet to pieces at a faster rate than before, that the very processes that keep the Earth moving are being re-ordered by human action, that the economic models and ideas of progress that have kept society on the historical road no longer seem to work for 99% of the world’s population, and that technology itself is redefining what it means to be human, and being used to challenge political systems that prided themselves on some semblance of democracy. A more critical gesture, it seems, would be to recognise that the social is reality constructed, and proceed with our curriculum thinking from there. If that sounds a little obscure, what I mean is that we should start from the realisation that how we think about society is increasingly shaped and determined by a world in which everything can collapse (Servigne & Stevens, 2020). I am conscious that this is an enormous challenge and, as the old joke has it, we probably wouldn’t start from here. But this is how we live now: the coronavirus pandemic has revealed the triple crisis of economy, sustainability, and social reproduction. Many teachers and students will return to school with a degree of uncertainty about what it all means, and though they will be met by an army of paid technocrats, ready with Gantt charts, and plans to ensure the required number of exam passes and levels are met, the real challenge will be to collectively rethink what a curriculum that can keep us on the road will look like.

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Moore, R. (1996). Back to the future: The problem of change and the possibilities of advance in the sociology of education. British Journal of the Sociology of Education, 17(2), 145–161. Parker, S. (1997). Reflective teaching in the postmodern world: A manifesto for education in postmodernity. Buckingham: Open University Press. Servigne, R., & Stevens, R. (2020). How everything can collapse: A manual for our times. Cambridge: Polity. Silver, H. (1980). Education and the social condition. London: Methuen. Whitty, G., & Young, M. (Eds.). (1977). Society, state and schooling. Brighton: The Falmer Press. Williams, R. (1958/1993). Culture is ordinary. In R. Williams (Ed.), Resources of hope (pp. 3–18). London: Verso. Williams, R. (1976). Keywords. London: Fontana. Young, M. (Ed.). (1971). Knowledge and control. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Young, M. (2008). Bringing knowledge back in. London: Routledge. Young, M., & Lambert, D. (2014). Knowledge and the future school. London: Bloomsbury.