Māori histories in New Zealand’s localised curriculum – at last!

The positive impacts of teaching and learning the local and national histories of Aotearoa New Zealand.

In this seminar, Nicola Bright, a senior researcher at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research and Junior Visiting Research Fellow at Nura Gili will share the findings from a study about early implementation of Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories curriculum content.

Between 2023 and 2026, schools were required to teach Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories in the New Zealand Curriculum and Te Takanga o te Wā in Te Marautanga o Aotearoa. This significant curriculum development followed years of advocacy for better and more consistent teaching of our local and national histories, especially hapū and iwi histories and histories of colonisation (Ball, 2020; L. Bell, 2020; Leaman, 2019).

The study explored experiences, aspirations, and concerns about teaching and learning the histories of Aotearoa New Zealand from the perspectives of more than 50 school leaders and teachers, 52 family members and 92 students. The new curriculum content was seen as long-awaited affirmation of the value of Māori histories in schools. Participants saw the potential of the curriculum to support transformative education that interrogates the impacts of colonisation while supporting hapū and iwi to reclaim the telling of their histories. The positive impacts of this curriculum for students are being seen in their deeper understanding of personal and collective identities and their ability to think critically about the past to help understand the present and plan for the future.