Drama New Zealand

Questioning The New Zealand Curriculum (2007):

Looking Backwards to Clarify the Future

A response to Janet Jennings

Trevor Thwaites. Faculty of Education, The University of Auckland.

t.thwaites@auckland.ac.nz

I welcome Janet Jennings’, Senior Advisor Arts, Ministry of Education, response to a small portion of my paper Music Education in a New Key: The Dissonance of Competence, Connectedness, Culture and Curriculum; I will now continue the conversation by explaining my concerns with regard to The New Zealand Curriculum (2007) document.

Those of us engaged in classroom research, or who listen to staffroom conversations, may have lost count of the many times we have heard teachers say: “Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it”. This reflects a simple surrender to change by some teachers, no matter what the potential impact might be on their knowledge, programmes or demonstrated success. Of course this does not mean that change to improve practice should not occur, but top down change imposed before the implications or implementation strategies have even been considered (let alone put effectively in place) can only result in teacher stress and confused efforts. This, I suggest, is likely to be the case with The New Zealand Curriculum (2007).

Let me state quite clearly that I agree with the concept of teaching across curriculum/learning areas in a (w)holistic way. Most teachers have asked for this for years and in many primary and early childhood contexts this often occurs quite naturally. My real concern is with the additional layers that have been placed on top of day to day classroom practices by the new curriculum, such as key competencies and values, and I will address these concerns at various stages of this response. First, I will discuss some of the background to the development of the document, which I hope will clarify my concerns.

The knowledge-economy, the OECD, and The New Zealand Curriculum (2007)

The past two decades have seen an acceleration in the drive towards performativity—the optimising of our overall performance—and this has now become a dominating force in education, for both teachers and students. Performativity not only requires that we should sustain our learning, but that we also effectively participate in society for our whole lifespan. People now have a lifetime value (what politicians refer to as a ‘lifelong education’), and this is a theoretical measure of how much a person is worth commercially from birth to death. This means that inevitably the curriculum must be seen as a form of social contract between schools, communities and the state. It means that despite the claimed freedom of interpretation, schools and communities must conform to key requirements such as prioritising functional literacy and numeracy, which are seen as the key foundations of a knowledge-economy.

The New Zealand Curriculum Framework (NZCF) (1993) placed Essential Skills at the centre of learning, although in practice this rarely happened. It was intended that “all students have the opportunity to develop the full range of essential skills to the best of their ability” (NZCF, 1993, p. 17). Fourteen years later The New Zealand Curriculum (2007) (NZC) has abandoned essential skills and replaced these with key competencies. These are defined as “capabilities for living and lifelong learning” and are made central to programme planning in schools because they “are critical to sustained learning and effective participation in society and…underline the emphasis on lifelong learning” (NZC p. 12). When comparing the 1993 curriculum framework with the 2007 curriculum document, we can see a shift from encouraging students to achieve to the best of their ability to the critical role schools must play in training students for relentless lifelong learning and acceptable participation in society.

In late 1997 a project was launched by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) called Definition and Selection of Competencies: Theoretical and Conceptual Foundations—DeSeCo for short. The thirty-seven OECD member states all subscribe to the notion of the free market economy (with China and Russia being at this point observers only). The key competencies have grown out of a desire to recognize the importance of flexibility, adaptability, and mobility in the global economy (Rychen & Salganik, 2003). Clearly a new form of citizen is necessary to sustain the ideologies of the ‘free market’ despite the present evidence of the follies of the free market in the global economic downturn. A competence is defined as “the ability to successfully meet complex demands in a particular context through the mobilization of psychosocial prerequisites” (ibid, p. 49). The term ‘psychosocial’ is used here to describe the unique internal processes in relation to the physical, emotional, and/or cognitive deemed necessary for the individual to perform effectively in society. It also implies systems of intervention where there is a perceived dysfunction in terms of the needs of the OECD and its member states.

Key competencies in education are intended to bring about a broadening of general and vocational education and a reforming of education for social renewal. The OECD recognizes that new forms of business and job organisation are impacting on economies. A competence is more than a domain-based “skill” and must involve self regulation, monitoring and initiative-taking; it should also incorporate adaptation (Rychen & Salganik, 2001). Key competencies can now be seen as bearing all the hallmarks of an excellent citizen and employee, those who have them are ready to play their role in a global marketplace. In the New Zealand Curriculum (2007) it seems to me that the key competencies subtitle of “capabilities” is a more realistic definition, otherwise we are left with the assumption that key competencies are intended to help define what sort of citizens New Zealanders must be.

In late July 2006 The New Zealand Curriculum was sent to educational institutions as a Draft for Consultation. The booklet, by implication, repeatedly presents the message of educating for a ‘knowledge economy’ and a ‘knowledge-society’, as does the accompanying letter from the then Minister of Education, Steve Maharey. The letter opens with the statement, “A key government goal is the transformation of New Zealand into a knowledge-based economy and society” and sets the tone for what is contained in the draft.

This notion of a knowledge-based economy is not new to New Zealand and in a 1999 submission to the New Zealand Government by the Minister for Information Technology’s IT Advisory Group (supported by the international professional services organisation – Ernst & Young) the government was urged to “take the next important step and transform New Zealand from a pastoral economy into a knowledge-driven economy”. Such a concept not only rejects New Zealand’s farming industry, but sees education as a business product that can be exported for high value return and as an outcome of computer networking and connectivity, information and knowledge intensification and globalisation. The message seems to be that when knowledge (as information) is produced it becomes a form of property and this belief is supported in the 2007 final curriculum document by the statement that students are now expected to make a contribution to “economic environments” (NZC, 2007, p. 13).

Ironically, in the OECD publication Think Scenarios, Rethink Education (2006) Jay Ogilvy, co-founder of the Global Business network, draws parallels between school decision-making and precision farming—the pastoral apparently still having some use after all. Despite this, the terms “strategies” and “scenarios” come through as key aspects of a document that urges educators to move from the ‘industrial’ and ‘agricultural ages’ that formed education into the ‘Information Age’ which will need practitioner-based system thinkers. Ogilvy’s paper (2006) is titled Education in the Information Age: Scenarios, Equity and Equality and in his critique of education Ogilvy claims that business people are “action oriented” while educators are “talk oriented”. He urges for market principles to be applied in education as opposed to excessive bureaucracy which “stifles innovation”. Believing that education has been input driven for too long, Ogilvy dreams of tools that will diagnose each individual student in ways that permit the treatment of each student, individually, every hour of the day. We already have examples of these in some computer games and diagnostic educational measurement tools (such as asTTle). The proposition is that education uses technology to nourish students in the same way that precision farming uses it to nourish crops. Ogilvy believes the information age will put an end to ignorance and promote equity, but equity is not at issue here, for achievement has become a requirement and achievement is, by its very nature, always unequal.

I believe that a knowledge-economy guarantees social fragmentation in its aspiration to meet unified economic goals. This contrasts with notions of a community for economic self-determination that must be based on a common mutual interdependence. Modern economic developments seem to sideline communities and even nation states as they press ‘educated’ and atomized individuals into service. But this climate of heteronomy that sees the free, spontaneous human operating according to individual aims and principles cannot operate for long in isolation, for choice can become a constraint. The requirement, in the curriculum document (2007), that students interconnect, becomes an additional layer—a backstop if you like. This is reflected in the fourth and fifth key competencies in The New Zealand Curriculum (2007)—relating to others and participating and contributing—which require students to demonstrate their centrality and connectedness. This does not mean that these are not already embedded in the performing arts, but I suggest we teachers of the performing arts deceive ourselves if we believe that this will be enough.

A direct response to Jennings (2008)

Jennings’ paper The New Zealand Curriculum (2007): Identifying Concerns Accurately and Clearly (2008) begins by stating that those who have not read the document closely will be misled by many of my comments. I suggest that a close reading will only provide a superficial understanding of the psychological and economic theories behind the document and so will mislead even further. I do, however, accept that my interpretation of “connected” is somewhat flexible, but remind Jennings that in contemporary parlance “connected” generally means technologically connected or wired. Why not use “interconnectedness”—a much more common term for what Jennings claims is the intent of the document. I wonder if this really was the original intent in the 2006 draft document where technology was prioritized just behind literacy and numeracy. Significantly, the draft also failed to include any mention of connectedness to Māori—the tangata whenua consigned to artefact status to be displayed when needed as part of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s bicultural commitment—which simply reinforces my claim that a close reading is nowhere near the whole picture.

I suggested that the while the document appears to give curriculum power to schools, in reality schools may be left with little choice at all. I based this on the notion that too much choice inevitably means that no choice can be made, for indecision tends to take over. Of course, philosophically, not making a choice is in itself a form of choice, but if the inability to choose stems from wanting to ‘do the right thing for your students’ then this calls into question the whole construct of freedom to choose that grounds the document. Jennings confirms the potential constraints of this when she says that implementing the document has “created an environment that encourages teachers to exercise almost unlimited choice in developing programmes”. I refer the reader to Sartre’s comment in Being and Nothingness (1943) where he suggests that people are “condemned to be free”, a condition brought about by being in a world where we are confronted by choices.

Jennings criticizes my paper for suggesting the autonomy the document implies could simply become, in practice, a fiction. By this I take it that Jennings is under the impression that the New Zealand state education system imposes no systems of control upon its schools. Indeed, she even rejects the suggestion that the Education Review Office (ERO) have the power to recommend school closure, despite strong evidence of this occurring over the past few years based on ERO reports. It may not be the intention to exercise a network of surveillance over curriculum implementation in schools, but schooling, I suggest, is under no illusion that this will occur.

Autonomy has become a metaphor for a response to the stimulus created by the knowledge-economy and suggests quite a different value from the autonomy of a school-based curriculum. Autonomy brings into question notions of ownership and in a knowledge-economy property may not be tangible objects and pockets of land, but what is sometimes called intellectual property. This is a property that the knowledge economy promotes but which must also, at the same time, reject, for the ownership of knowledge is only useful as a commodity to be on-sold. Intellectual property, like all property, is open to theft and abuse. The theft of intellectual property, for example, through computer crime or corporate mis-dealings, under a market economy, might still be regarded as expressions of freedom of choice by those who stand to gain.

To my question about the disappearance of the descriptor ‘Essential Learning Areas’ Jennings responds that this is because at least one—Learning Languages (other than English)—is not essential. This, I’m sure, will be of deep interest to both Māori and Pasifika peoples, as well as others whose first language is not English. I do understand that these statements should “be the starting point for developing programmes of learning suited to students’ needs and interests” as Jennings claims, but how will these needs and interests be ascertained? Generalist teachers will have difficulty due to the constraints placed on their knowledge and skills in the arts as a result of limited training and I suggest that this issue should have been addressed prior to the document’s release. A lack of confidence to teach the arts is likely to remove them as a choice and the notion of ‘unlimited’ demonstrates serious limitations.

I am concerned that extra layers of change are likely to be imposed on the curriculum post 2010. There is already a hint of national testing at various points in schooling should there be a change of government in the coming elections. We cannot assume integrity simply because we are New Zealanders. The set of values and competencies that overlay the Learning Areas will form part of a citizen’s CV and these suggest that forms of social engineering will occur. After all, it is only a little over a hundred years since government dictated that Māori males should be trained to be good farmers and their female counterparts should be trained to be good farmers’ wives. Within a globalized culture, the dictates could be even more divisive.

I have already outlined a brief history of key competencies, but in referring to Jennings’ defence of these as she states that “key competencies are not new—quite the reverse: learning has never occurred without them” (p. 4). Because of this I sense the potential for complacency among performing arts teachers—that their subject has this covered—so the scope of competencies is already being constrained. I note that in the recently released Māori-medium curriculum document Te Marautanga o Aotearoa (2008) key competencies are a part of the achievement objectives—precisely where they should be. This gets to the essence of my questioning. If key competencies already occur in every learning situation, then why on earth does the Ministry feel the need to impose these as an additional layer on a teacher’s work?

The inclusion of Values smacks of good old-fashioned behaviourism and these could become a form of conditioning in school programmes from 2010. It is commonly believed that when countries feel under threat they impose values—such has been the case in most Western nations since 9/11. We live in a ‘risk society’ and the television news promotes danger and risk, as do politicians at election time. We no longer need to be reliably informed—just insured. The result is a sort of moral panic that becomes a means of dealing with the risk society via appeals to “values”. Australia courted with the notion of values but has since shelved the idea. Jennings refutes my implication that through key competencies and values we are simply establishing a form of ‘quality assurance’ on a set of products commonly called students. My suggestion is that no matter how idealistic these may seem, inevitably they will come to be used to categorize students. Who among us feels capable of making such judgements?

Concluding discussion

In critiquing the curriculum document it would be remiss of me to offer nothing but caution over the implementation of The New Zealand Curriculum (2007) and so I will add some thoughts with regard to its sensible application and propose some options that teachers of the performance-based arts may wish to consider.

In my original paper I referred to embodied knowing and understanding as practical ways of engaging with knowledge in the world, and these should reveal entirely different perspectives from those narrow positions that merely observe from a distance. This is something that arts educators do so well. Many educational practices silence, conceal and/or limit bodies and in implementing the new document we need to consider the relationships between the curriculum and our physical/cultural bodies. In this way a bodied curriculum would attend to the relational, social and ethical implications of being with others (as other bodies) and to the different forms of knowledge these bodily encounters would produce.

The curriculum might be seen as a dynamic and evolving form and I am sure that The New Zealand Curriculum (2007) was originally conceived with the highest aspirations in mind. When a curriculum takes shape or is realized, it moves into our actions and becomes part of our situation. The body, then, should become central to our inquiry, not in opposition to the mind, but in the form of a porous relationship between action and reflection. Our learning thus becomes situated in time and place, moving beyond the limits of inquiry-based learning (as currently promoted by the Ministry’s problem-solvers) to an embodied engagement with the complexities of The New Zealand Curriculum (2007).

Inquiry learning grew out of the 1960s (for example, Bruner) and is a form of action learning. It is based around student questions, but my proposition is that these questions should arise from embodied experience. Traditionally, teaching within the inquiry paradigm means the teacher does not communicate knowledge but works alongside students, giving assistance. By incorporating embodied discovery and understanding we can see how both the student’s and the teacher’s embodied experiences can point to new problems and possible solutions in co-constructivist ways. This would alleviate one of my serious concerns about the potential growth of commercially available convenience products under the guise of ‘teaching packages’ that will undoubtedly flood this new educational market. Teacher practices in this setting are generally limited to purchasing pre-set lessons only—consumerism consuming pedagogy.

Education could require teachers to develop individual pedagogies with an instinctive organic quality that represents life and not just theories or ‘correct’ ways of doing things. This requires patience in a teacher who has the wisdom to “listen, watch and wait until the student’s individual line of thought becomes apparent” (H. Read, in the preface to Ashton-Warner, 1980, p. 12). This way we can celebrate difference rather than the compliant sameness that values and key competencies suggest. We can ‘lift the lid off’ and let the individual student strengths come through in natural ways.

Developing Ideas in the arts can be an organic process, for only the individual knows the idea they will use. From the idea come the choices or possibilities we can see as we develop the idea in as many ways as we wish, until finally we decide to select those that best suit our musical/dramatic/choreographed story at a given time. This process also encourages the children to invent their own notations or representations as they move from sound, gesture or action to symbol.

For the organic performer, their actions are a form of knowing. Performance requires cultural or sub-cultural actions; it requires us to make personal judgements in action. As we get better at performing we often look to rehearse to improve our originally ‘spontaneous’ performance and we may even reflect on this as a form of preparation. Performance not only requires reflecting-in-action it is also a form of knowing-in- action. Both performance and developing ideas require many forms of thinking and knowing, from practical to abstract. They engage our consciousness, take our attention, make us aware, touch our emotions, make us think, encourage us to remember and reflect, and we carry these out with intention. Therefore, knowing-in- action is a dynamic process drawing on the abstract through organic processes. The imposition of key competencies will only disrupt this process.

The potential for the arts to improve literacy and numeracy teaching is obvious. Literacy and numeracy now need to be conceptualized within broader social constructs that acknowledge communicative practices and representations relevant to the present age. These practices must now take account of the numeracy and literacy practices associated with, for example, the arts, and recognize that print-based reading, writing and calculating are now only part of what people have to practice in order to be literate or numerate. This can only happen if the essences of the arts disciplines are allowed to develop and this is not only diminishing in schools, but is sadly unconvincing in web-based exemplars. More than any other Learning Area, key competence or value, the arts define a society, its achievements, beliefs and aspirations. They consolidate the past and project into a future of possibilities, beyond the market-place and ‘official’ documentation, into a world where perception, representation and knowledge are the achievement of the whole body. We should heed the words of Sylvia Ashton-Warner (1980, p. 23) who insisted, “art must crash through or perish”.

References

Ashton-Warner, S. (1980). Teacher. London: Virago.

Jennings, J. (2008). The New Zealand Curriculum (2007): Identifying Concerns Accurately and Clearly. Drama New Zealand website.

Ministry of Education. (1993). The New Zealand Curriculum Framework. Wellington: Learning Media.

Ministry of Education. (2006). The New Zealand Curriculum: Draft for Consultation. Wellington: Learning Media Ltd.

Ministry of Education. (2007). The New Zealand Curriculum: for English-medium teaching and learning in years 1-13. Wellington: Learning Media Ltd.

Ministry of Education. (2008). Te Marautanga o Aotearoa Wellington: Learning Media Ltd.

Ogilvy, J. (2006) Education in the Information Age: Scenarios, Equity and Equality in Think Scenarios, Rethink Education. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Rychen, D., & Salganik, L. (Eds). (2001). Defining and selecting key competencies. Göttingen: Hogrefe & Huber.

Rychen, D., & Salganik, L. (Eds). (2003). Key competencies for a successful life and a well-functioning society. Göttingen: Hogrefe & Huber.

Sartre, J-P. (1998). Being and nothingness (7^th ed). (H.E. Barnes, Trans). London: Routledge. (Original work published 1943).

Thwaites, T. (2008) Music Education in a New Key: The Dissonance of Competence, Connectedness, Culture and Curriculum in New Zealand Journal of Research in Performing Arts and Education: Nga Mahi a Rehia (1).