School curriculums for technology, arts: New drafts under fire from teachers

The draft arts and technology documents contain no mention of dance, drama, music, visual arts or design. Photo / Getty Images

Technology and arts teachers are the latest to raise concerns over the contents of the draft new curriculum, saying the “basics are not valued sufficiently”.

The draft science, arts and technology curriculums were sent to a select few teachers for initial feedback, but some were so worried about the contents, they leaked them to others.

Like the science curriculum, the draft arts and technology documents contain no mention of dance, drama, music, visual arts, design and visual communication, digital technology or materials technology.

Instead, the curriculums provide generalised guidelines for what students studying any art form or type of technology should understand, know and do.

The director of the Industrial Information and Control Centre at the AUT School of Engineering, Associate Professor David Wilson, said there was a large focus on the reflection of the study of science or technology which was necessary, but it needed to be balanced with a strong underpinning of the basic fundamentals.

“It appears from a brief overview of this curriculum that the basics are not valued sufficiently and, I would argue that if so, then it is difficult to do good, defendable science,” he said.

He said the technology proposal placed a strong emphasis on stimulating a student’s curiosity and experimentation, which may keep students interested, but they still needed to be taught the more basic underpinning skill sets if they were to progress in the field.

Micheal Fleming, president of the NZ Graphics and Technology Teachers Association, believed the draft was “quite exciting”, although there was work still to be done.

“While the subjects were not specifically outlined, you could see the essence of the different disciplines come through in the documentation, whereas design and visual communication was currently a bit of an outlier,” he said.

“The recognition of the transferrable skills and competencies developed like critical and creative thinking, problem-solving and design is also great to see.”

He believed the progress outcomes needed to change at different stages in a person’s schooling, rather than simply adding levels of difficulty to the same ideas from Years 0 to 13.

Fleming also said he “hoped the one-shoe-fits-all approach to make all the learning areas look the same in a document doesn’t happen at the expense of some subjects losing their richness due to the fundamentally different nature of some subjects”.

An arts teacher said the problem with such a generalised curriculum was that it did not acknowledge each art form had a specific and established history, terminology and skills.

The teacher, who wished to remain anonymous, said the language used in the document was vague and nonsensical and failed to give teachers clear guidance on how it should be implemented.

They worried the “understand, know, do” framework replaced the clear strands and achievement objectives that guided learning in each area.

The current arts curriculum contained statements that clearly outlined the learning that was important and what that looked like for students at each level, the teacher said.

New Zealand Initiative senior fellow Michael Johnston believes the "refreshed" arts and technology curriculums lack detail.

New Zealand Initiative senior fellow Michael Johnston said the documents were “scant” and seemed to contain less detail than the current curriculums, but he acknowledged they were still drafts and could yet be fleshed out.

The fact neither subject was broken down into its specific strands may be less of an issue in secondary schools, where there are specialised teachers, Johnston said. However, he worried that primary teachers would struggle to decipher what was required.

He said his major issue with all parts of the “refreshed curriculum” was that it did not give enough detail or specify the developmental milestones students should be hitting in each subject.

“If you care about kids’ progress in these things, you want to have indicators that tell you how they’re going and when they need more support and so on. I don’t see that emerging from this curriculum, in any subject.”

He said curriculums should set national expectations, and it did not seem to be doing that by providing only generalised guidelines for subjects that covered a number of disciplines.

Ellen MacGregor-Reid, hautū [leader] of the Ministry of Education’s Curriculum Centre, said all core arts and technology subjects would continue to be taught.

She said the ministry agreed that disciplines are the foundation of learning areas.

“This early, high-level draft of the art and technology learning areas will be refined based on feedback from the schools we tested it with earlier this year,” MacGregor-Reid said.

“The disciplines will be more explicit in the next version. The next version will be available for wider sector and public feedback in August.”

Responding to criticism of the draft science curriculum earlier this week, the Ministry of Education said it was still finalising the drafts and was in the process of incorporating feedback from “fast testing”.

“We will then go out for wider sector and public feedback from August to late October this year, with a full draft, and sufficient time for people to give us feedback,” a spokesperson said.

The draft science curriculum made no mention of biology, physics or chemistry, instead replacing them with four contexts - the Earth system; biodiversity; food, energy and water; and infectious diseases.

Outraged teachers feared physics and chemistry could virtually disappear from schools, leading to ill-informed students who did not know the periodic table or what gravity was.

Amy Wiggins is an Auckland-based reporter who covers education. She joined the Herald in 2017 and has worked as a journalist for 12 years.