February 2006 | August 2005 | June 2005 | April 2005 | March 2005
An extensive literature review on values in the New Zealand curriculum was undertaken between June 2004 and June 2005.
An extensive literature review on values in the curriculum was undertaken between June 2004 and June 2005.
The literature review identified and reported on:
For more information please read:
Recommended statement for values in the New Zealand curriculum, working document, August 2005 (Word, 46 KB)
Values in the New Zealand curriculum: Background, rationale and recommendations (Word, 39 KB)
Early next year an official draft curriculum will be published for wide consultation with schools, employers, and the community. It is expected that a final curriculum will be published early in 2007.
In the meantime if you would like to join the discussion forum and provide feedback, visit Curriculum Project Online.
The Ministry of Education engaged the University of Waikato to carry out consultation with school and community groups in regional centres on values in the New Zealand curriculum between 1 October 2004 and 31 April 2005.
Ten general meetings were held around the country, located in places which would provide opportunity for representatives of Māori, Pasifika, and Asian communities to be involved. A second consideration during the planning of the location of the meetings was to ensure a balance between urban and rural community groups and to achieve good geographic coverage. A conscious decision was made to go beyond the main centres to include smaller centres such as Whangarei, Nelson, New Plymouth, and Gisborne. Meetings were also held in Porirua, Henderson, Hamilton, Rotorua, Christchurch, and Dunedin.
Teachers (40) and principals (37) were the largest groups in the sample. There were also a good number of community representatives (35) and students (29) in the sample. Schools of Education staff (25), senior staff from schools (20), and board of trustee members (12) made up the rest of the sample.
In the first part of the meetings, participants were invited to discuss and record key values and values approaches that were important to the schools and communities they worked in or with. They also discussed and recorded values and values approaches that they saw as important with learning areas and/or fields of knowledge with which they were familiar. In both cases, it was suggested that participants think of these values and approaches as 'bubbling up' and influencing the development of a curriculum statement.
Participants were invited to record key ideas on large sheets of newsprint paper. In addition, the two project team members also moved around the groups and recorded greater detail on the key ideas, points and issues under discussion.
In the second main activity section of the meeting participants read, discussed, and commented on the suggested values statement developed by the National Consultation Group. Again this was completed in small groups, and participants recorded ideas and comments on large sheets of paper. Following this participants were issued with copies of the Australian values education framework, and in later meetings a copy of page 21 of the New Zealand Curriculum Framework (Ministry of Education, 1993). These were discussed and ideas recorded on sheets of paper.
Following these two small group activities all participants gathered back together as a large group for a final plenary session and invited to raise any points, ideas or issues they felt were particularly important.
The newsprint sheets generated by groups were analysed and more than 80 values words were identified. 'Respect' was the most frequently listed word by a clear margin. 'Honesty', 'environment', 'culture' were also commonly listed. The full list of 80 plus values words was further analysed and clustered into like groups.
Five values clusters appear to be regarded as very important. The five in the 'top tier' in order are:
A 'second tier' of values included 'thinking' (34) and 'environment' (33).
A third group of values clusters included 'perseverance' (25), 'justice' (24), 'participation' (23), 'creativity' (23), and 'excellence' (21). 'Responsibility' (12), 'belief/spirituality' (12), and 'reflecting/evaluating' (11) were the least commonly listed values clusters.
Comment sheets were collected from 38 groups over the ten regional meetings held. The full text of all sheets was typed up and a detailed analysis of material from the sheets undertaken. The initial analysis identified four categories of general evaluation from the group sheets. These categories were: 'strongly supportive', 'not supportive', 'supportive with reservations', and 'no judgment evident'.
Ten groups were strongly supportive of the NCG statement but the most numerous reaction was a qualified one, 'supportive with reservations' (12 groups). These groups were positive about the overall thrust of the NCG statement but critical of a number of aspects of the way it was constructed and presented. Eleven groups were quite negative about the statement and did not support it. The text from a small number of groups (5) was non-committal and no overall opinion on the statement was evident.
Just under half of the 34 groups (15) indicated that they were strongly positive about and supportive of the Australian approach. Text from a number of groups (9) indicated a 'supportive with reservations' response. Some of the features of the statement were liked but other aspects were not. One in five groups did not support the Australian statement and its approach. Three groups did not indicate a clear judgment on the merits of the statement. A small number of groups (5) suggested that the New Zealand statement and the Australian statement could be combined to draw on the strengths of both statements.
The next stage in the process is to examine the detailed feedback gained from the regional consultation and work on further draft of a statement that draws on the strengths identified in both the New Zealand and Australian approaches will be crafted.
For example:
The outcomes of the NCG Report and statement and the regional consultation process will now be 'matched up' with the findings from a major literature review. We are now working on the write up of this. All of this material will then be used to write final recommendations about what might go in the New Zealand Curriculum re values in the curriculum. This will be 'contestable advice' to the Ministry of Education who will decide what goes in the draft curriculum due in early 2006. Further consultation on the draft will occur throughout 2006. A 'final' curriculum is not due out until 2007 or 2008.
The New Zealand Curriculum Survey has been developed to enable people who are not able to attend any of the face-to-face consultation.
You may wish to do this as an individual – or you may want to discuss the ideas with others then send in a summary of the group's ideas.
The values team has just completed a busy regional consultation meeting schedule.
These meetings are covering:
Initial online discussions were held. They have now been now discontinued.
National Consultation Group Meetings were held.
The regional consultation meeting process began in late 2004. The first regional meeting was held in Hamilton on 24 November 2004. Meetings are continuing through term 1 of 2005.
Published on: 13 Sep 2007
