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    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, Maria
    Article 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.
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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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    Creating a community of care in education : the work of a primary school to mitigate social and economic disadvantage in education in New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2016) Read, Christine Lorna
    The failure of education services to ensure equitable outcomes for all groups of children has been an enduring problem for educators and policy makers in New Zealand. More recently, primary schools have become the focus of policy to ensure that children from low income, Maori and Pasifika homes achieve in formal education at levels commensurate with their peers. This research explores the work of a single low-decile primary school and its community in New Zealand as it navigates the choppy waters of political ideology, education policy and the educational needs of its students. This research takes a critical realist perspective, which argues that real consequences attend success or failure in formal schooling for individuals, and these can be described in both qualitative and quantitative terms. However, a critical realist approach is also substantively concerned with uncovering structural conditions that lead to success or failure in education, insisting that this knowledge is vital in achieving transformative change. The research therefore makes use of existing quantitative data and employs a variety of qualitative research methods, to piece together an account of the work of the school. This approach allows the school to be placed within local contexts, which shape its responses to the needs of its school community, while also supporting an examination of the effects of wider systems and institutional practices that structure its operations. Descriptions of the work of the school in this research reveal its intensely relational nature conducted in nested communities of interaction: within the school; within localised communities and neighbourhoods; and within national structures and institutions. Concepts of ideology, social justice and an ethic of care are used as a framework to evaluate the research findings, which in turn coalesce around three issues: attendance; achievement; and behaviour. Crosshatching an issue-based account of the work of one low-decile school with this conceptual framework allows the complexity of the educational project to be revealed. These complexities notwithstanding, the research also opens up possibilities and spaces for action at the level of the school, the family, the community and the state to support the shared goal of redressing educational inequalities.
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    Children's experience of learning : a naturalistic inquiry into the mainstream education of special needs students in New Zealand : a thesis submitted as partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education, Massey University
    (Massey University, 2000) Billington, Pamela
    Current trends in New Zealand schools for the teaching of students with special abilities, learning difficulties, or metacognitive deficits are to retain these 'special needs' students within mainstream classrooms, although schools often supplement regular courses with 'pullout' programmes where necessary. However, mainstream inclusion for 'special needs' students has been criticised on the basis that the structure and organisation of New Zealand schools does not support individual interventions or the planning of flexible programmes. This study contextualises this criticism by providing a qualitative record of the learning experiences of a group of children classed as 'special needs' students. It may stimulate readers to understand the wide range of needs in New Zealand schools. The research sample was composed of 'special needs' children within Auckland schools, as classified by their teachers and parents; it included 'booster class' students who were not achieving to the levels expected for their chronological ages, as well as 'gifted' children from 'extension classes' who had demonstrated advanced academic performance or had the ability to perform. Cognitive research suggests that these special learning needs are not simply innate within each child, but are characterised by either unusually high or low levels of cognitive and metacognitive strategy use, involving a mixture of learned behaviours, beliefs and skills. Research has shown these to be closely related to the learning environment and social context of the classroom. This study aims to discover how a range of 'special needs' students perceive contextual classroom influences that may help or hinder their ability to focus on learning. The data is also analysed in light of goal orientation or motivational theory about the self-perceptions, social goals and constructs that motivate students to engage in classroom tasks and activities. Children develop metacognitive or 'executive decision-making' processes that inform their judgements about where and how to strategically apply effort and skills. The different levels of metacognitive function displayed by sampled 'special needs' students reflect the dynamic interaction between a child's growing knowledge and abilities, and the social context of their learning environment. Self-perception of ability, the confidence to effectively accomplish goals, and attributive beliefs about the causes of success and failure can either motivate interest and effort in academic activities, encouraging further metacognitive development, or conversely reduce motivation and lead to self-defeating behaviours and beliefs, such as task avoidance. Therefore, emotional reactions to the learning environment, such as unhappiness, anxiety, boredom or frustration, can either boost or retard academic learning and performance. The findings of this naturalistic inquiry indicate that children are able to recognise a range of influences on their ability or motivation to engage in school learning activities; their accounts often correspond with issues identified in other educational research, typically in empirical cognitive and developmental studies. The children raise negative factors such as inappropriate levels of language difficulty, degree of challenge in set tasks, anti-social classroom interactions, and problems with noise, interruptions and availability of teacher guidance. However 'special needs' learners also reported that co-operative social interactions, and peer and teacher encouragement assisted their motivation and learning. Therefore it seems that growth of motivation and metacognition in 'special needs' students learning in mainstream classrooms may be achieved by ensuring that language and learning material is both readily accessible and matched to individual learning needs. Moreover since social interaction is shown to be beneficial to achievement in learning, the promotion of classroom climates that foster co-operation and relationship-building goals, in contrast to instrumental dominance objectives, thereby supports adjustment to the school environment and productive involvement in learning tasks. Negotiated interventions based on an understanding of children's fundamental perceptions and goals, within ongoing, mutually communicative social relationships and enriched learning environments, may assist children to improve their motivation, metacognitive abilities and performance.