'It's complicated': reflections on teaching citizenship in Aotearoa New Zealand
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Abstract
The recently redesigned Massey University BA aims to produce responsible, world-conscious graduates who are active citizens, and who demonstrate a critical understanding of the peoples and cultures of 21st century Aotearoa New Zealand and the influences that have shaped them. The suite of compulsory core courses that emerged from this redesign process were developed before the university expressed a commitment to becoming Te Tiriti-led and were not explicitly designed with decolonisation in mind, but they ask questions and provoke reflection that we hope will contribute to decolonisation through the production of a cohort of graduates who have reflected on the multiple factors shaping their own identity, including New Zealand’s colonial past, can locate themselves in relation to global issues, and who have begun to think about questions of and possibilities for agency and action as citizens of ANZ and of the globe. These courses often unsettle indigenous and settler identities and relationships, and challenge student thinking about the rights and responsibilities they have at home and in the wider world. In this paper we reflect on the process of developing and teaching this course as a group of primarily settler / pākehā academics in conversation with Māori colleagues, and on our own learning through teaching. To do this we draw from our experiences and from research undertaken on the teaching of global citizenship in the core to interrogate our roles and responsibilities as academics in relation to decolonisation.