This document discusses the challenges faced by a new 21st century secondary school in New Zealand that aims to implement a thematic and interdisciplinary curriculum focused on 21st century skills. The school structures learning through hubs, special interest classes, personal time, and interdisciplinary modules. Key challenges identified include developing conceptual progression across projects while maintaining disciplinary depth, aligning mindsets around a growth approach to curriculum development, and ensuring clarity amid the complex curriculum design process. Upcoming research will examine student conceptual progression and coverage as the school works towards national assessments.

1. From aspirations to
reality: challenges for a
new ‘21st Century'
secondary school
Dr Graham McPhail g.mcphail@auckland.ac.nz

2. “stimulating, inclusive learning environment where
learners enjoy innovative personalised learning, engage
through powerful partnerships and are inspired through
deep challenge and inquiry to achieve academic and
personal excellence” (School Website).
The curriculum is conceptualised thematically.

11. research agenda
• What is different about this school is the thematic,
modular and interdisciplinary formats for curriculum
conception and delivery.
• What is the relationship between curriculum design and
the potential for student conceptual progression in a 21st
century school setting?
• How are the aspirational goals of 21st
century learning
actually going to enable learning growth and access to
‘powerful knowledge’ from project to project, from
module to module?
• Could this be a Future 3 school?

12. school structures
• Learning Hubs (17% of curriculum
time)Pastoral and academic tracking
• SPIN (90 minute special interest classes,
students choose three per term, each 1x per
week) (17%)
• My Time (11%)
• SLM (Small Modules) (44%, interdisciplinary,
two teachers, 90 minutes x3 per week)
• (Bombs Away, The Science of Delicious, The Mechanics of Me,
Welcome to the Danger Zone, Collision Course, Horror in Hotel)
• Big Projects (11%, 1 extended block per
week)

13. The NZ vision – six principles
Supporting future-oriented
learning & teaching —
a New Zealand perspective
Report to the Ministry of Education
R Bolstad & J Gilbert
with S McDowall, A Bull, S Boyd & R Hipkins
New Zealand Council for Educational Research

14. The NZ vision – six principles
• (i) personalising learning
• (ii) equity, diversity, and inclusivity
• (iii) using knowledge to develop learning
capacity
– “Knowledge is the process of creating new
knowledge. It is a product of “networks and flows”
coming into being through interactions and
intersections on a “just-in-time” basis to solve
specific problems as they emerge.” (Bolstad et al.,
2012, p. 13)

15. The NZ vision – six principles
• (iv) rethinking learners’ and teachers’ roles
• (v) a culture of continuous learning for
teachers and educational leaders
• (vi) new kinds of partnerships and
relationships: schools no longer siloed from
the community.

16. The research draws on SR theory
in theorising a
Progressive Knowledge Approach
drawing on key ideas such as
Knowledge differentiation (powerful knowledge)
The curricular implications of knowledge structures
The curriculum pedagogy distinction
Conceptual Progression

17. some methodological procedures
and the initial data analysis
• Sociological concepts for analysis –
– regulative/instructional discourse (Bernstein)
– faith, stuttering, and awkwardness (Lourie & Rata)
as indicators of alignment/misalignment and
clarity/contradiction
– we settled on the key concepts of clarity and
contradiction, alignment and misalignment, and
dissonance as analytical tools

18. Alignment and misalignment:
Mindset and teacher development
• Mindset (Dweck, 2006)– the regulative discourse
• “a willingness to be innovative, a willingness to expose your
practice to critique, a willingness to be happy in an
environment where you’re always looking and testing to see if
what you’re doing was the right way and perhaps look for
other ways to do it, to be content in a state of unknown”
(Principal Interview 1).

19. Alignment and misalignment:
Mindset and teacher development
• “If you are critical of a particular aspect of the school I
think you are seen as not really buying into it. You don’t
have a growth mindset …whereas I would have thought
that actually is the very definition of a growth mindset;
the questioning and challenging” (Teacher D, I1).
• “I think we all took different times to go through that
and come back out and I think it’s something that
obviously we’ve got to look out for this year and forever
onwards as new staff come in and try to find their place
within things” (Teacher C, I1).

20. Clarity and contradiction:
challenges in the curriculum design process
• “I don’t know of a school that can tell me that it’s
tracking, say Year 9 kids through the curriculum -
developing kids’ teamwork, their interpersonal skills and
their problem solving as well as their reading, writing,
arithmetic. And I don’t think the traditional school
model is doing that” (P,I1).

22. Clarity and contradiction:
challenges in the curriculum design process
• Identity, Place and Space, Citizenship, Systems – How things
work.
• “We need to develop in kids for the world that is theirs now
and in the future, their ability to critically search for
information and critically analyse it so they can help create
some knowledge to work with others who are doing something
similar to solve a problem. That’s what we need. And school
has got to prepare people for that. And I don’t think you’d
do that by looking at disciplines as separated” (PI1).

23. Dissonance: Thematic curriculum and cognitive
increase
• Teachers’ strong disciplinary identities can create a tension
apparent in this first set of teacher interview data between
retaining what could be described as a ‘conceptual core’ (what
one teacher described as ‘cognitive ascent’) within the
thematic-based learning approach. How are the aspirational
and feel-good goals of 21st
century learning actually going to
enable learning growth from project to project, from module
to module?
• It is telling that by the middle of the year a unified and
meaningful tracking system had not been developed
suggesting the schools priorities lay elsewhere.

24. next steps
• In the next stage of the research we are going to look in more
detail at the curriculum coverage and delivery in the hope of
find conceptual progression. The students are now in their
second year and are moving towards national assessments for
qualifications in 2016.
• The Principal and staff display a courageous approach to their
work and an open approach to sharing their experiences. As
this research evolves we aim to continue to critically engage
with that vision for the benefit of the teachers, students and
their families, and those watching with interest as this school
enacts its vision.

25. references
• Bolstad, R., & Gilbert, J., with McDowall, S., Bull, A., Boyd, S., &
Hipkins, R. (2012). Supporting future-oriented learning & teaching – A
New Zealand perspective. NZ: Ministry of Education. Retrieved from
http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/schooling/109306
• Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New
York: Random House.
• Lourie, M. (2013). Symbolic policy: a study of biculturalism and Maorī
language education in New Zealand. (Unpublished doctoral thesis).
University of Auckland, New Zealand.
• Lourie, M. & Rata, E. (forthcoming). Developing a Realist Research
Methodology.