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    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-Marie
    This 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.
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    'A movement reconsidered' : an examination of how black civil rights in the USA, 1954-1970 has been taught as a senior subject in New Zealand secondary schools, and whether or not it accurately reflects contemporary scholarship and new trends of interpretation : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy, History, Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2013) Agent, Roydon
    This thesis examines how Black Civil Rights (BCR) in the USA, 1954–1970 has been taught as a senior subject in New Zealand secondary schools since its introduction into the New Zealand History curriculum in 1988. It provides a historical perspective on the political, economic, and social context in which the National History Curriculum Committee (NHCC) made the decision to introduce this topic into the Form 5 (now Year 11) History curriculum. It is also concerned with whether the conceptions of Black Civil Rights history from 1988 to the present (2013), reflects contemporary scholarship and new trends of interpretation. This thesis argues that the continued reliance on a classical/master-narrative approach to the teaching and learning of BCR in the USA, 1954–1970, reflects a historiography that is frozen in time. The result is that teachers are disseminating a conception of BCR history that is politically slanted, conservative, and Eurocentric. It is an approach that perpetuates the myth that there is inevitability about America’s progressive history; that its lofty notions of democracy, justice, and the equality of all people, will in the end triumph. Furthermore, this thesis contends that as one of the two most popular Year 11 History topics, this selective, sanitized approach to teaching BCR deprives students the opportunity to understand that historiography is subject to change, that historical events are open to interpretation, and that history as it is written is not always history as it was. As an alternative, this thesis advocates a counter-narrative approach that draws on recent scholarship and new trends of interpretation. I acknowledge the Massey University Ethics Committee who approved this research on 28 June 2012 as a Low Risk Notification.