In 2017, a change to the national curriculum of New Zealand required primary teachers to implement a new component into the Technology area of The New Zealand Curriculum. This was to be fully implemented by the start of the 2020 school year. However, unless this was a personal area of ability, no primary teacher in New Zealand has been trained or prepared for this new addition. This study reports on how one school worked to implement this new requirement into their teaching practice. This study noted that for the participating teachers, teaching an unknown area of the curriculum required emotional work, political work, and pedagogical work. Over the course of the 2019 school year, these teachers in collaborative professional development (PD) sessions explored, experimented with, and enacted digital technology. Results from this study showed that students’ learner was enhanced through teachers’ meaningful and purposeful integration of digital technology in their programs of learning. This study offers insight into how primary teachers were able to work in authentic collaborative relationships to support each other in how to implement a new curriculum requirement that was not supported by any ministerial PD.
Author Biography
Steven S. Sexton, University of Otago, College of Education
Steven Sexton is a Senior Lecturer in the University of Otago's College of Education. After several years as a practicing classroom teacher, he now works in Initial Teacher Education in both the Postgraduate and Undergraduate programmes. His research interest areas are in teacher cognition, science education and heteronormativity.
