Music Education and the Neoliberal Turn in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

In this paper we explore the adoption of a neoliberal turn in New Zealand's education system and its consequences, focusing particularly on secondary school music education. In the 1980s, New Zealand was one of the first states in the Western world to implement comprehensive neoliberal economic policies. Some 35 years later, education in New Zealand is situated in a highly devolved institutional framework that privileges neoliberal objectives. This article outlines the genesis of this socio-political context and the downstream effects of this environment on the secondary school music curriculum. Our central question is this: What have been the results of the "New Zealand Experiment" in terms of the type of music curriculum students now experience? The deeper problematic of the paper, however, concerns the fragmentation and instrumentalization of knowledge. On balance, we conclude that effects of the neoliberal turn within education in New Zealand may have been more detrimental than beneficial, as these agendas have encouraged a break with past more liberal and humanistic aims for education. However, we also argue that the changes have not been the product of any systematic project but rather the result of a confluence of complex and stratified causal mechanisms at work in the socio-political world.

Critiquing the Critique: Postcolonialism, Moral Concerns, and Epistemology: An essay review of The Routledge Handbook to Sociology of Music Education, Part I

“…2 Bowman (2017) describes Allsup's 2016 book as "a 'muddle' … a 'mashup' of rhetorical questions, undefined terms, dubious assertions, oxymorons, and straw men, all wrapped in slippery, postmodern double-speak" (12). 3 For an excellent example of a teacher working with concepts in the context of composition see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ57dB3-VOI 4 See, for example, McPhail and McNeill (2021).…”

Dynamics of implementing mainstream english curriculum at a school for the deaf in Eswatini.

“…Therefore, in this curriculum learners aim to understand the "how" question of teaching and learning in order to achieve learning outcomes (Khoza, 2019). This is echoed by McPhail and McNeill (2021) who describe the outcomes as resulting from a "procedural knowledge or know-how-to process" instead of the "propositional knowledge or knowledge-that".…”

“…The integrated/horizontal curriculum which combines different subjects pays no attention to individual subject boundaries (McPhail & McNeill, 2021;McKernan, 2008;Anderson, 2013).…”

“…Both these descriptions suggest that the rigidity and stereotype in terms of subject focus and content which is a common feature in the performance curriculum is done away with in the learning areas of the competence-based curriculum. Instead, there is now less guidance in the content covered, and the main emphasis is on the competencies that learners possess which are seen through the learning outcomes (McPhail et al, 2021). McKernan (2008) posits that themes are used to organize the learning areas during the formulation of this curriculum.…”

“…The teachers' accounts indicate that they look beyond the subject boundaries of the English Language in search of useful information that enhances the learning process (Hoadley, 2018). As it turns out, such integrated knowledge keeps the learners' learning in check while complementing what they have previously learnt, irrespective of subject area (Ndlovu & Khoza, 2020;McPhail & McNeill, 2021;Khoza & Fomunyam, 2021a;2021b). T1, supported by T2 and T4, explained that some subjects provide more details and vital information on a given topic than is available in the official English Language books.…”