Representing the social world: New Zealand's social studies curriculum in change

Abstract

A social studies curriculum better able to support learners to make sense of their rapidly changing social world is urgently required. In negotiating the nature and content of social studies, Massialis and Allen urge that "any reasonable discussion must first seek to make the social outlooks (and assumptions) more explicit" (1996, p5). Although there is considerable disagreement as to the content of a social studies curriculum, the social theories that must necessarily underpin the subject remain unexamined by New Zealand social studies educators. When one examines the assumptions about 'society' implicit in Social Studies in the New Zealand Curriculum (SSiNZC, MOE, 1997), a restrictive view of the social world is revealed; society is represented as static, ordered and predictable. This social theory is unable to accommodate particular aspects of our learners' lived experiences, or the central insights of contemporary sociologists, for whom society is not an entity knowable in a transcendent sense, but fluid, contingent and uncertain. Of concern is that forces shaping the Curriculum/Marautanga Project threaten more useful representations of society - repacking previous conceptions and reducing the field of vision. In order to avoid confining learners to a dusty photo-album of society a reconceived curriculum is called for. Escape from its current strictures can only be made possible through a curriculum that allows learners to explore the fluidity of their social world; welcoming ambiguity, doubt and refutation. Only then can social studies learning be more resonant for our learners and open up participatory space for our rising generations.