Reinvigorating middle-years teacher education in Aotearoa New Zealand

One of the purposes of social studies education is to promote learning and exploration about human behaviour in social, political, and cultural contexts with a view to assisting students understand their own and others' identities. This paper examines the way in which that purpose is understood and enacted in the New Zealand context. I propose that the concept of identity is both complex and unexplained in the New Zealand Curriculum and argue that teachers are, therefore, compelled to use personal and social knowledge to interpret curriculum requirements in ways that may not be intended in either the social studies curriculum in particular, or in the New Zealand Curriculum in general. In this paper, I suggest that this creates ambiguity about how identity is understood and leads to the promotion and privilege of a particular view of identity.