Introducing Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories
Aotearoa New Zealand is on a journey to ensure that all ākonga in our schools and kura learn how our histories have shaped our present day lives.
You can find the Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories content in the curriculum content overview section.
The new Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories (ANZH) content is integrated into the refreshed te ao tangata | social sciences learning area in Te Mātaiaho | the refreshed New Zealand curriculum.
There is a requirement for schools and kura to implement the ANZH content at the beginning of 2023. However, the requirement for implementation of the rest of the refreshed curriculum is the beginning of 2027. This means the social sciences content is available for you to explore in the meantime.
Writers talk about the development and key features of ANZH
Bronwyn Houliston, Head of Social Sciences, St Mary’s College speaks to camera
I'm really excited about the opportunity that this curriculum provides to tell stories that haven't been told in our classrooms before.
Dr Mark Sheehan, Adjunct Research Fellow, Education, Victoria University of Wellington speaks to camera
To actually understand where you live and where you come from and what was here in the past is fun.
Michele Whiting, Education Leadership and Curriculum Consultant speaks to camera
Providing an education that broadens everyone’s thinking about how we need to relate to each other and how we need to appreciate those differences.
Dr Nēpia Mahuika, Convenor of History, University of Waikato speaks to camera
You can get up in the morning and feel really impassioned and excited about teaching a curriculum that isn't just about going over the boring dates and things like that but we're teaching a curriculum of transformation and change.
A title screen appears reading, Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories, the journey to be included in the national curriculum
Graeme Aitken, Director of Educational Initiatives, University of Auckland speaks to camera
So the impetus for Aotearoa New Zealand Histories came from a group of young people in the Waikato who were concerned about the lack of visible teaching of the New Zealand wars, from the New Zealand History Teachers Association who began a petition and finally from the statement the Prime Minister made in September 2019 making Aotearoa New Zealand Histories a key part of the New Zealand curriculum.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern presents to government in September 2019
Imagine if across the country our history was passed down not just by kaumātua on the taumata but by our teachers in our classrooms. New Zealand history will become part of our core curriculum in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Graeme Aitken speaks to camera
Aotearoa New Zealand History writers came from throughout the country, primary teachers, secondary teachers, history teacher educators, Māori historians. Our role was to develop a draft of the curriculum that had three key notions behind it. First of all, clarity about what needed to be learned, secondly a balance between what was required for all young people to learn and what was left to local decision making and thirdly deciding at what level particular elements of history were to be learned.
A grandmother and her two mokopuna stand on a balcony looking out onto the Auckland Harbour Bridge. Various shots are shown of Māori, Asian, Pasifika and Muslim families and communities
We need to learn more about our history.
He aha ai?
Yeah, Nana. Why do we have to learn about it?
Because that’s who we are moko! Aotearoa is our home, the land of our tūpuna. But it’s not just us here now. People from all over the world have made Aotearoa their home too.
Graeme Aitken speaks to camera
A really important part of the process was testing the draft curriculum in schools to see how well it integrated with local curriculum, with trialing and classrooms and akomanga, to see how teachers could plan with it and how students would respond to it, and then in a widespread public consultation with over 4,000 submissions and workshops and feedback.
A title screen appears reading: Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories, Understand, Know, Do framing and progressions model
Graeme Aitken speaks to camera, a title screen appears with an infographic of the Understand, Know, Do model. Three separate strands, Understand the big ideas, Know rich contexts for exploring the big ideas and Do practices that bring rigour to learning, all plait together with the title ‘the learning that matters’
The culmination of all this work over the last two years has been the development of the ‘Understand, Know, Do’ framing and progression model.
An infographic appears with three boxes, the first reads ‘Understand, the big ideas’
By ‘Understand’ we're referring to the big ideas, the enduring understandings that stay with children long after the detail has gone, the anchor of their learning, the point of reference for teachers as they develop topics and students as they develop their explorations.
The same infographic appears, the second box reads ‘Know, Rich contexts for exploring the big ideas’
Now the ‘Know’ element of the curriculum brings the big ideas and the ‘understand’ to life through examples, case studies, stories of people, of achievements, of controversies, some of those locally determined by the school in consultation with mana whenua and with its community and some of those nationally prescribed.
The same infographic appears and the final box reads ‘Do, Practices that bring rigour to learning
And then the ‘Do’ element are the practices of critical thinking helping students to make sense of the past and to understand the interpretations and perspectives that are so central to that. So progression is woven throughout this curriculum, years one to three, years four to six, years seven to eight, years nine to ten. The ‘Understand’ element becomes broader and deeper as you go across the levels, the knowledge component enriches those understands at each level and then the practices become increasingly sophisticated as students work from level to level. So that in the end no learning is left to chance.
A title screen appears reading: Understand the big ideas, Māori history is the foundational and continuous history of Aotearoa New Zealand
Dr Nēpia Mahuika speaks to camera
So the first big idea returns New Zealanders to Te Moananui-a-kiwa, to the ocean and to what we know now is the pacific, and to the hundreds and hundreds of years of indigenous iwi hapū experience in Aotearoa, and by Aotearoa I mean not just the whenua, but the moana, we were people of the ocean.
A title screen appears reading: Understand the big ideas, Colonisation and its consequences have been central to Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories for the past 200 years
Graeme Ball, Head of Social Sciences, Northcote College speaks to camera
Big idea two is looking at the role of colonisation in influencing our history and essentially that takes probably a post-1840, a post-treaty approach when we have a colonial government and with that, the other major feature of that period at least into the 20th century but of course beyond as well, is the arrival of large numbers of colonisers primarily from the United Kingdom and how their beliefs, value systems, their institutions, language, ideas about gender and people's roles in societies, all influenced what the New Zealand society that we have today.
A title screen appears reading: Understand the big ideas, The course of Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories has been shaped by the use and misuse of power
Bronwyn Houliston speaks to camera
So big idea three looks at power relations and how who has power and who doesn't have power has influenced both what's happened in the past but also the writing of our history as well and the narratives that we construct around it. So through big idea three we will be teaching students to be critically thinking about the past, about how we engage with it and also how we use the past today as well. For me, I hope it helps students make sense of the world that they're living in and the news that they're consuming and gives them that sort of understanding about how to critically engage with it.
A title screen appears reading: Understand the big ideas, Relationships and connections between people and across boundaries have shaped the course of Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories
Graeme Aitken speaks to camera
Big idea four is about the importance throughout our history of our relationships and connections with the rest of the world. Be that through kinship ties, through voyaging and discovery, through migration, through political, social, cultural and trading links and creative exchanges. And we have adopted and adapted those to develop new technologies, new social and political ideas, and of course as a country we have contributed those to the rest of the world as well.
A title screen appears with the title Know, Rich contexts for exploring the big ideas, national and local. Beneath the title are four bullet points, firstly, whakapapa me te whanaungatanga, culture and identity, secondly, tino rangatiratanga me te kāwanatanga, government and organisation, thirdly, tūrangawaewae me te kaitiakitanga, place and environment, and lastly, kōwhiringa ohaoha me te whai oranga, economic activity
Dr Mark Sheehan speaks to camera
So firstly, we have what are called the prescribed national contexts, those are the contexts that we think all New Zealanders should actually learn about and that we think are important. But sitting alongside that is that New Zealand history there’s a myriad of different responses to national events so the Treaty for example, there’s a very different history of the Treaty in Northland than there is in the South Island, or in Wellington, so what the curriculum will allow for are the case studies and local histories, we see that as being really important, it’s important because it’s something that teachers are really good at doing already, it’s important also secondly, because it’s something that engages young people really strongly if they know this is what happens in their particular area.
Dr Nēpia Mahuika speaks to camera
We've developed a range of different prescribed contexts that deals with everything from the Treaty to New Zealand's participation in international affairs and conflict like the first and second world wars, Vietnam. And one of the things that we've focused on there is belonging in Aotearoa which has been a common sort of refrain in narratives around New Zealand history. How different migrant groups have sought to find a way to belong and built on top of that first big idea that I talked about with Māori history, we can start to talk about things like tūrangawaewae as a place to stand and belong and start to work that really important language into those local and national prescribed contexts for teachers to actually use in the classroom so they get the language, they're also able to sort of navigate how they teach a really interesting local topic you know, relative to belonging and identity or feminist histories in New Zealand or just māori women's histories in New Zealand, or the queer and gay community in Wellington for instance. It gives you an opportunity to look at some of these local contexts and also how it played out on the national stage as well.
A title screen appears reading: Do, practices that bring rigour to learning. This is followed by three bullet points, the first reads, identifying and exploring historical relationships, the second, identifying sources and perspectives, and the third, interpreting past experiences, decisions and actions)
Michele Whiting speaks to camera
Students will be learning how to organise history over time and the impact of events to the present. They’ll also be learning how to evaluate the source of information and also to get that information from a range of sources, identifying who said what at what time and why that was said and the third one, they’re also going to be learning the connections between the past and the present and making those connections for decisions on what need to be made in the future.
Graeme Aitken speaks to camera
For teachers, the greater clarity about what’s to be learned by students and at which level should reduce one of the significant issues teachers face of students saying, ‘we’ve done this before’, the repetition problem. And greater clarity also means greater ease of resourcing,
it’s much easier to know what to invest in and so one outcome should be a much higher quality resource for teachers as they work with this curriculum.
Dr Nēpia Mahuika speaks to camera
We can hopefully get to a point where the next couple of waves of generations of New Zealand students and learners come away from our history curriculum really knowing, really knowing our colonial past so that they can speak with some real authority about it.
Graeme Aitken speaks to camera
The gaps that we've seen in the past in students knowledge will now be richly filled with exciting, engaging and relevant content that brings history to life and their experiences to life.
Bronwyn Houliston, Head of Social Sciences, St Mary’s College speaks to camera
I'm really excited about the opportunity that this curriculum provides to tell stories that haven't been told in our classrooms before.
Dr Mark Sheehan, Adjunct Research Fellow, Education, Victoria University of Wellington speaks to camera
To actually understand where you live and where you come from and what was here in the past is fun.
Michele Whiting, Education Leadership and Curriculum Consultant speaks to camera
Providing an education that broadens everyone’s thinking about how we need to relate to each other and how we need to appreciate those differences.
Dr Nēpia Mahuika, Convenor of History, University of Waikato speaks to camera
You can get up in the morning and feel really impassioned and excited about teaching a curriculum that isn't just about going over the boring dates and things like that but we're teaching a curriculum of transformation and change.
A title screen appears reading, Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories, the journey to be included in the national curriculum
Graeme Aitken, Director of Educational Initiatives, University of Auckland speaks to camera
So the impetus for Aotearoa New Zealand Histories came from a group of young people in the Waikato who were concerned about the lack of visible teaching of the New Zealand wars, from the New Zealand History Teachers Association who began a petition and finally from the statement the Prime Minister made in September 2019 making Aotearoa New Zealand Histories a key part of the New Zealand curriculum.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern presents to government in September 2019
Imagine if across the country our history was passed down not just by kaumātua on the taumata but by our teachers in our classrooms. New Zealand history will become part of our core curriculum in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Graeme Aitken speaks to camera
Aotearoa New Zealand History writers came from throughout the country, primary teachers, secondary teachers, history teacher educators, Māori historians. Our role was to develop a draft of the curriculum that had three key notions behind it. First of all, clarity about what needed to be learned, secondly a balance between what was required for all young people to learn and what was left to local decision making and thirdly deciding at what level particular elements of history were to be learned.
A grandmother and her two mokopuna stand on a balcony looking out onto the Auckland Harbour Bridge. Various shots are shown of Māori, Asian, Pasifika and Muslim families and communities
We need to learn more about our history.
He aha ai?
Yeah, Nana. Why do we have to learn about it?
Because that’s who we are moko! Aotearoa is our home, the land of our tūpuna. But it’s not just us here now. People from all over the world have made Aotearoa their home too.
Graeme Aitken speaks to camera
A really important part of the process was testing the draft curriculum in schools to see how well it integrated with local curriculum, with trialing and classrooms and akomanga, to see how teachers could plan with it and how students would respond to it, and then in a widespread public consultation with over 4,000 submissions and workshops and feedback.
A title screen appears reading: Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories, Understand, Know, Do framing and progressions model
Graeme Aitken speaks to camera, a title screen appears with an infographic of the Understand, Know, Do model. Three separate strands, Understand the big ideas, Know rich contexts for exploring the big ideas and Do practices that bring rigour to learning, all plait together with the title ‘the learning that matters’
The culmination of all this work over the last two years has been the development of the ‘Understand, Know, Do’ framing and progression model.
An infographic appears with three boxes, the first reads ‘Understand, the big ideas’
By ‘Understand’ we're referring to the big ideas, the enduring understandings that stay with children long after the detail has gone, the anchor of their learning, the point of reference for teachers as they develop topics and students as they develop their explorations.
The same infographic appears, the second box reads ‘Know, Rich contexts for exploring the big ideas’
Now the ‘Know’ element of the curriculum brings the big ideas and the ‘understand’ to life through examples, case studies, stories of people, of achievements, of controversies, some of those locally determined by the school in consultation with mana whenua and with its community and some of those nationally prescribed.
The same infographic appears and the final box reads ‘Do, Practices that bring rigour to learning
And then the ‘Do’ element are the practices of critical thinking helping students to make sense of the past and to understand the interpretations and perspectives that are so central to that. So progression is woven throughout this curriculum, years one to three, years four to six, years seven to eight, years nine to ten. The ‘Understand’ element becomes broader and deeper as you go across the levels, the knowledge component enriches those understands at each level and then the practices become increasingly sophisticated as students work from level to level. So that in the end no learning is left to chance.
A title screen appears reading: Understand the big ideas, Māori history is the foundational and continuous history of Aotearoa New Zealand
Dr Nēpia Mahuika speaks to camera
So the first big idea returns New Zealanders to Te Moananui-a-kiwa, to the ocean and to what we know now is the pacific, and to the hundreds and hundreds of years of indigenous iwi hapū experience in Aotearoa, and by Aotearoa I mean not just the whenua, but the moana, we were people of the ocean.
A title screen appears reading: Understand the big ideas, Colonisation and its consequences have been central to Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories for the past 200 years
Graeme Ball, Head of Social Sciences, Northcote College speaks to camera
Big idea two is looking at the role of colonisation in influencing our history and essentially that takes probably a post-1840, a post-treaty approach when we have a colonial government and with that, the other major feature of that period at least into the 20th century but of course beyond as well, is the arrival of large numbers of colonisers primarily from the United Kingdom and how their beliefs, value systems, their institutions, language, ideas about gender and people's roles in societies, all influenced what the New Zealand society that we have today.
A title screen appears reading: Understand the big ideas, The course of Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories has been shaped by the use and misuse of power
Bronwyn Houliston speaks to camera
So big idea three looks at power relations and how who has power and who doesn't have power has influenced both what's happened in the past but also the writing of our history as well and the narratives that we construct around it. So through big idea three we will be teaching students to be critically thinking about the past, about how we engage with it and also how we use the past today as well. For me, I hope it helps students make sense of the world that they're living in and the news that they're consuming and gives them that sort of understanding about how to critically engage with it.
A title screen appears reading: Understand the big ideas, Relationships and connections between people and across boundaries have shaped the course of Aotearoa New Zealand’s histories
Graeme Aitken speaks to camera
Big idea four is about the importance throughout our history of our relationships and connections with the rest of the world. Be that through kinship ties, through voyaging and discovery, through migration, through political, social, cultural and trading links and creative exchanges. And we have adopted and adapted those to develop new technologies, new social and political ideas, and of course as a country we have contributed those to the rest of the world as well.
A title screen appears with the title Know, Rich contexts for exploring the big ideas, national and local. Beneath the title are four bullet points, firstly, whakapapa me te whanaungatanga, culture and identity, secondly, tino rangatiratanga me te kāwanatanga, government and organisation, thirdly, tūrangawaewae me te kaitiakitanga, place and environment, and lastly, kōwhiringa ohaoha me te whai oranga, economic activity
Dr Mark Sheehan speaks to camera
So firstly, we have what are called the prescribed national contexts, those are the contexts that we think all New Zealanders should actually learn about and that we think are important. But sitting alongside that is that New Zealand history there’s a myriad of different responses to national events so the Treaty for example, there’s a very different history of the Treaty in Northland than there is in the South Island, or in Wellington, so what the curriculum will allow for are the case studies and local histories, we see that as being really important, it’s important because it’s something that teachers are really good at doing already, it’s important also secondly, because it’s something that engages young people really strongly if they know this is what happens in their particular area.
Dr Nēpia Mahuika speaks to camera
We've developed a range of different prescribed contexts that deals with everything from the Treaty to New Zealand's participation in international affairs and conflict like the first and second world wars, Vietnam. And one of the things that we've focused on there is belonging in Aotearoa which has been a common sort of refrain in narratives around New Zealand history. How different migrant groups have sought to find a way to belong and built on top of that first big idea that I talked about with Māori history, we can start to talk about things like tūrangawaewae as a place to stand and belong and start to work that really important language into those local and national prescribed contexts for teachers to actually use in the classroom so they get the language, they're also able to sort of navigate how they teach a really interesting local topic you know, relative to belonging and identity or feminist histories in New Zealand or just māori women's histories in New Zealand, or the queer and gay community in Wellington for instance. It gives you an opportunity to look at some of these local contexts and also how it played out on the national stage as well.
A title screen appears reading: Do, practices that bring rigour to learning. This is followed by three bullet points, the first reads, identifying and exploring historical relationships, the second, identifying sources and perspectives, and the third, interpreting past experiences, decisions and actions)
Michele Whiting speaks to camera
Students will be learning how to organise history over time and the impact of events to the present. They’ll also be learning how to evaluate the source of information and also to get that information from a range of sources, identifying who said what at what time and why that was said and the third one, they’re also going to be learning the connections between the past and the present and making those connections for decisions on what need to be made in the future.
Graeme Aitken speaks to camera
For teachers, the greater clarity about what’s to be learned by students and at which level should reduce one of the significant issues teachers face of students saying, ‘we’ve done this before’, the repetition problem. And greater clarity also means greater ease of resourcing,
it’s much easier to know what to invest in and so one outcome should be a much higher quality resource for teachers as they work with this curriculum.
Dr Nēpia Mahuika speaks to camera
We can hopefully get to a point where the next couple of waves of generations of New Zealand students and learners come away from our history curriculum really knowing, really knowing our colonial past so that they can speak with some real authority about it.
Graeme Aitken speaks to camera
The gaps that we've seen in the past in students knowledge will now be richly filled with exciting, engaging and relevant content that brings history to life and their experiences to life.
Find out about the refresh of The New Zealand Curriculum.