Progressive veneer or neoliberal reality? Subject English in the New Zealand Curriculum

Abstract

English is a nebulous subject. Its aims, content and purposes vary, and are not fixed. Nor is it a neutral area of study. This thesis seeks to answer the question ‘In what ways has subject English been framed in the curriculum, and what implications does this have for students and teachers?’. This question is an important and significant one to ask. As well as subject English having multiple ‘versions’, it is also a subject privileged within school timetables and curricula. It often serves as a gatekeeper for higher education, and acts as a measuring stick for nation states to compare their performance. While overseas curriculum documents for English, and, to an extent, earlier iterations of the New Zealand documents, have received their share of analysis, little to date has been done for the current New Zealand equivalents. Working within a critical, post-structural paradigm more broadly, Fairclough’s critical social reality framework is used to understand how different discourses frame English as a subject. Content analysis, the Flesch Reading Ease test and Critical Discourse Analysis are used to analyse the New Zealand Curriculum (MoE, 2007), the current NCEA achievement standards for English, and the Curriculum Guide: Senior Secondary (English). Through this analysis it becomes clear that although the curriculum documents for English retain a progressive veneer, in reality they entrench a very neoliberal view of education, in particular the commodification of learning, the devaluing of teachers, the confusion of stakeholders, and the reinforcement of inequalities amongst students. These ideas give rise to the need for careful reflection, not only by English teachers and academics, but all teachers and those involved with education more broadly. This thesis stands as a reminder to all involved in education to consider the origin of educational ideas and the way in which discourses serve certain philosophies.