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Item Children’s participation in curriculum decision-making : supporting their rights to be self-determining : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Education at Massey University, Manawatū, Aotearoa New Zealand(Massey University, 2025-05-30) Dacre, MariaArticle 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989; United Nations, n.d.) gives all children the right to participate in decisions on matters of interest to them. Although children spend a significant part of their childhood in school, research demonstrates that children’s participation rights in education are often approached in paternalistic or tokenistic ways by adults. This research study explored how children in a Year 5/6 classroom in Aotearoa New Zealand participated and influenced curriculum decision-making, and specifically how children influence their learning in the classroom. Instigating youth participatory action research (YPAR), I worked alongside children and their teacher in their classroom over three school terms. The children’s experiences were documented and analysed, resulting in a case study that includes three case narratives: (i) curriculum-based learning, (ii) teacher-initiated inquiry, and (iii) child-initiated inquiry. The findings showed the multiple roles children and teacher played in curriculum decision-making, and illustrated how children can be enabled to have active participation in their own learning within the classroom. Using Rogoff’s planes of analysis, the results demonstrated how children engaged in the learning and classroom life through the community, interpersonal, and personal planes. This showcased the role of classroom structures, routines, and peers in how children learn. Through these classroom interactions with peers and teachers, children appropriated new knowledge, skills, and understandings about themselves and their peers. This research demonstrates that children developed self-determining ways of being through their collaborations in learning. A key factor for children’s active participation and influence in curriculum decision-making was their sociocultural participation in classroom activities and events that fostered a collaborative community of practice, connecting to the children’s cultural identity, whānau, prior knowledge, and interests. Autonomy-supportive teaching as a pedagogical approach was evident, highlighting benefits for both children and teacher in supporting children to participate and influence curriculum decision-making. The research offers practical examples of how teachers can engage in a pedagogical partnership with children that gives children opportunities to be self-determining and active agents in their learning, relationships, and school life.Item A genealogical examination of curriculum-assessment as governmentality in Aotearoa New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Education at Massey University, Manawatū Campus New Zealand(Massey University, 2020) O'Neill, Anne-MarieThis doctoral thesis with four publications examines the implementation of curriculum and assessment, as globally-driven standards-based reform (SBR) in Aotearoa New Zealand (ANZ). Drawing on Michel Foucault’s ‘toolbox’ and his genealogical methodology, it traces and contextualises the discursive basis of curriculum-assessment as neoliberal governmentality policies. From 1989, a policy chronology spanning three governments, analyses how governmentality inserts economics into the management of people, society and governance. As a rationalisation regime, curriculum-assessment facilitated economic efficiencies and the achievement of official objectives by enabling ‘things’, people and the future to be steered in certain ways. Governmentality policies also nurture the making of particular kinds of people who will to support official objectives. Comprising four key chapters, the thesis details the discursive ‘beginnings’ and emergence of an assessment-driven curriculum intended to boost ANZ’s global competitiveness. The failure of teacher-implemented national standards to produce reliable measurement by 1999, enabled the implementation of highly interventionist policies during the 2000s. A standardised curriculum and data-driven teaching strengthened schools as centres of calculation. The genealogy then examines two curriculum programmes designed to increase achievement and make people more self-governing and responsible. A school-parent literacy partnership (2004) taught parent-teachers to boost children’s learning through home activities. Similarly, assessment change through National Standards (2011) nurtured responsible, future-focused and calculative learners and parents. Increasing the educational outcomes of the population was part of increasing its overall health, welfare and productivity. The study illustrates how personal responsibility is now the main technique for developing more enterprising, self-governing and calculative individuals under governmentality. These biopolitical programmes, nurture desire in people to ‘freely’ re-make their bodies, skills, aspirations, emotions and living practices aligned to preferred models of the individual, culture and social relations. This involves re-moralising one’s inner life, and changing relationships with selves, families and the state. The study maps how governmentality commodifies and economises bodies and minds in the service of economic government. It confirms the usefulness of genealogically examining governmentality through this deeper, multidimensional lens and its ‘interpretative analytics’. This approach enables the uncovering of the politico-economic and cultural-socio purposes of education policy under neoliberalism.