Curriculum for minority Indigenous communities: social justice challenges

ABSTRACT

The development of state/federal mandated curricula for schooling is a highly politicised process, and even more so for marginalised Indigenous groups who are simultaneously attempting to revitalise their traditional language and knowledge. An example of this is the ongoing struggles between the New Zealand State and Māori to develop curricula for Māori-medium schooling over the past 25 years.

While state funding was provided to support the inaugural Māori-medium curriculum development in the 1990s, it had to mirror the hegemonic English version, a continuation of the past 100 years of assimilationist practice. In the subsequent revision of the Māori-medium curriculum 2007–2008, the State was more accepting of difference and the capacity to develop Māori-medium curriculum had significantly expanded. In 2013, the state agreed to fund the development and implementation of localised school curriculum for one of the more highly politised Māori-medium sectors – kura kaupapa Māori. We draw on Fraser’s (2005. Reframing justice in a globalizing world. New Left Review, 36(Nov–Dec), 69–88) social justice tripartite of distribution, recognition and representation to critique and examine the tensions, and in many cases, unresolved issues in curriculum developments for Māori-medium schooling.

KEYWORDS:

• Social justice
• language in education
• Indigenous curriculum development
• politics of curriculum development
• indigenous language revitalisation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).