The Place of History in The New Zealand Curriculum

Abstract

The implementation of The New Zealand Curriculum has major implications for teaching and learning history both in junior secondary school social studies and in senior history courses. It requires a shift in orientation for both subject communities. Social studies has generally adopted a presentist stance to judging events of the past and seldom required students to prioritise the methodologies and vocabulary of the discipline, namely, historical context, a respect for evidence, argument and historical significance. In senior history, the typically topic-based model of history programmes has borne little resemblance to the dynamic nature of the parent discipline. It is argued that the way to bridge the different orientations of both subject communities is for historical thinking that reflects the key concepts of the discipline of history to be central to both social studies and history programmes so that students are intellectually equipped to make authentic connections between the past and the present.