The New Zealand Curriculum: emergent insights and complex renderings

The launch of New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007) brings into question the future of the reforms introduced in the 1999 curriculum, Health and Physical Education in the New Zealand National Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 1999). The aim of this paper is to critique recent physical education curriculum policy in New Zealand and explore some of the discursive dilemmas that work to shape a unique rendering in New Zealand schools. I draw on the concept of complexity thinking as a basis for conceptualising curriculum as an emergent process, resulting from the interplay of many different elements operating at multiple levels of the education system. To illustrate this I discuss how the qualifications framework, socially critical discourse and the recognition of Maori perspectives influence the curriculum practices that emerge. I conclude by suggesting that contemporary curriculum analysis in New Zealand physical education needs a broader focus on the structures that enable and constrain particular ways of doing physical education.

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