The changing field of development and global education resource provision in New Zealand

This article examines the nature of resource provision for development and global education in New Zealand through three lenses: (1) the wider educational policy context; (2) the knowledge production processes and practices that have shaped development and global education; and (3) the content of selected educational resources. This threefold analysis reveals an increasingly diffuse environment of educational resource production and consumption, with little evaluation or coordination. Despite this, there are opportunities for development and global education to reposition itself more centrally within the space of educational resource provision, through supporting learners’ critical, active and informed participation in local and global communities. The broader approach provides a new arena that can, if done well, enhance global and development education.


Introduction
Educational media can tell us much about what counts as knowledge.A notable New Zealand illustration of this is the 1964 recall of Washday at the Pa: A bulletin for schools (Westra, 1964) by the then Minister of Education in response to concerns about offensive depictions of Māori rural life.The bulletin's subsequent republication in 2011 says much about the ongoing negotiation of identities and Māori self-determination in New Zealand, as well as the changing and contested representation and construction of social realities through school texts (McDonnell, 2013).A growing body of research spearheaded in particular by the Georg Eckert Institute is informing understandings of how textbooks and related educational media legitimate, produce and transfer cultural knowledge (Lässig, 2009).This field holds potential to shed new light on the space occupied by development education and global education.Recently, for example, attention has turned to textbook research as a monitoring mechanism for goal 4.7 of the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (Bromley et al., 2016;UNESCO, 2016aUNESCO, , 2016b)).This research indicates that some progress has been made towards the inclusion of sustainable development and global citizenship themes in textbooks, but that considerable variability exists in how comprehensively, clearly and fairly concepts associated with these themes are treated.
This paper considers the spaces and opportunities for development and global education within New Zealand's educational media for schools.Our inquiry was stimulated by a visiting global education academic from Japan who asked us to describe the 'state of play' with regards to educational resourcing.We soon realized First lens: New Zealand's education policy context New Zealand's education policy reforms of the 1980s and 1990s introduced farreaching change that was influenced by a range of ideologies, among them New Right discourses such as market efficiency, accountability and choice.In this section, we highlight three threads of these reforms that set much of the context for development and global education in New Zealand today.
A first thread of New Zealand's educational reforms was associated with two key reports commonly referred to as the Picot Report and Tomorrow's Schools The changing field of development and global education resource provision in New Zealand 61 International Journal of Development Education and Global Learning 10 (1) 2018 (Picot, 1988;Lange, 1988) and the 1989 Education Act.These resulted in the administration of the education system undergoing a shift towards decentralization and greater school autonomy (Court and O'Neill, 2011;Openshaw, 2014aOpenshaw, , 2014b;;Wylie, 2009).A raft of administrative changes included the creation of a new Ministry of Education in 1989 from the previous Department of Education, the gradual outsourcing of service delivery functions, and an increasingly contractual and market-led approach to the provision of educational resources for schools.An important example of this was the closure of the School Publications Branch of the Department of Education in 1989 and the formation of the publishing house Learning Media from former branches of the Department.Over time, Learning Media became a state-owned enterprise (2005), and then closed in 2013 after losing its contractual status as the preferred provider to the Ministry of Education.Without further analysis of educational resources published by the Schools Publication Branch, it is difficult to determine whether its closure had a bearing on the presence of global and development themes in educational resources.Global themes were certainly evident in resources produced by Learning Media (see, for example, Ministry of Education, 2007Education, , 2009)).However, what is perhaps more germane is that, in contrast to the situation before 1989, the Ministry of Education exerts far less control over the content of educational resources, now largely produced by commercial companies and NGOs.
A second thread of the reforms pertained to the national curriculum and a fresh direction that sought to provide a more coherent and integrated curriculum structure.Hard on the heels of Tomorrow's Schools, and in contrast to the evolutionary progress that characterized previous curriculum development, The New Zealand Curriculum Framework (Ministry of Education, 1993) ushered in a period of rapid change in which the foundations of the current New Zealand curriculum were laid.The framework established a single overarching and outcomes-led structure for all core subjects, across all levels of the curriculum, and offered flexibility for schools to provide for learning needs of their communities.During a politically contentious period of curriculum development in 1990s and 2000s (see, for example, O'Neill et al., 2004;Adams et al., 2005), the framework was developed into documents for seven learning areas, each of which stipulated achievement objectives that students were to meet over eight curriculum levels.Most recently, and with broad cross-party consensus, these previously separate curricula have been refined and brought together as one document, The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007).The presence of global themes has been characterized as something of a leit motif within this curriculum (Peterson et al., 2018), with little recognition of pressing global issues such as social justice (Thrupp, 2016) and climate change (Abbiss, 2016;Eames, 2017;Hunter, 2007;Snook, 2007).UNESCO (2016aUNESCO ( , 2016b) ) has found that, in terms of the inclusion of issues relating to global citizenship and sustainable development in national curricula frameworks, New Zealand scored low for 'human rights ' and 'global citizenship', and medium for 'sustainable development' between 2005 and 2015.The minimal presence of global and development themes is arguably exacerbated by achievement objectives that do not generally specify topics or contexts to be taught and a curricular ethos of schoolbased curriculum decision-making, in which teaching teams are free to contextualize the achievement objectives in ways that meet the needs of their learners.Further, and despite a curricular commitment to critical thinking, the extent to which New Zealand's curriculum supports critical forms of development, global and citizenship education (Andreotti, 2006;Westheimer and Kahne, 2004) is difficult to determine from the somewhat ambiguous curricular wording (Wood et al., 2013).
International Journal of Development Education and Global Learning 10 (1) 2018 A third thread of policy reform relates to assessment, particularly the establishment of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) for senior secondary learning.Senior geography, for example, which has had a longstanding focus on inequality and development that pre-dates the inception of NCEA, provides achievement standards across three levels that include examining geographic topics at a global scale (New Zealand Qualifications Authority, 2018).As with lower levels of the curriculum, teachers have flexibility over the choice of learning contexts in order to support their students to meet these standards and the related achievement objectives.While such standards appear to provide scope for global and development learning, schools are not required to teach all achievement standards over the three levels of NCEA.Further, findings from research in Auckland secondary schools (Le Heron et al., 2012) revealed that students' geographical imaginaries appear to be constrained, in part from the fracturing and disaggregation of geography across separate standards.
The space we have described thus far appears very open; it is created from the largely outsourced nature of educational resource provision, a policy commitment to school-based curriculum making, and standards-based assessment that emphasizes outcomes rather than topics.This open educational policy environment presents something of a double-edged sword for global and development education in New Zealand.On the one hand, teachers and schools have perhaps enviable curricular freedom with considerable discretion over the choice of learning contexts and educational materials.While the Ministry of Education continues to support the publication of state-approved educational materials on a contractual basis, there is little in the way of state directive.There appears, therefore, few policy impediments to the potential influence of global and development education on teachers' curriculummaking.However, on the other hand, and as we discuss in the next section, the space within which development and global education operates is rather more complex.While an examination of policy and its effects enables some characterization of the global and development education landscape in New Zealand, such an analysis can overlook the contingent nature of knowledge production, to which our discussion now turns.

Second lens: Knowledge production processes and practices
This section initiates an analysis of knowledge production processes and practices that have shaped the vicissitudes of Global Focus Aotearoa (GFA), a quasi-autonomous non-governmental global education provider.For at least 15 years, prior to its closure in 2011, GFA was a leading provider of global and development education resources for the formal education sector (Tallon, 2015).Through an insider perspective (see Notes on contributors), we sought to connect our own experiences in the field to broader theoretical insights.Our analysis was guided by four aspects of knowledge production identified by Sammler and colleagues (2016), that is, the role of (1) authors and authorship; (2) state and interest groups; (3) the political economy and business models; and (4) technological and media change.Each of these aspects is explored in turn in relation to GFA's inner workings and then the subsequent landscape of resource production is discussed.

Global Focus Aotearoa
In line with an international trend, the 1960s to 1980s saw an emphasis on public education among New Zealand NGOs, and many were making inroads into formal education by supplying resources about their work and global issues (Small, 2002).In 1992, an alliance of NGOs successfully lobbied government for a centrally funded resource centre.Funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, under New Zealand's aid programme (NZAID), the Development Resource Centre addressed a key objective set out by the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD -that member countries should educate their citizens about sustainable development.At its peak in the 2000s, the centre (later renamed the Global Education Centre and then Global Focus Aotearoa) employed over a dozen full-time staff working to provide educational resources in both the formal and informal education sector.Writers were often trained teachers or youth workers with a proven record in delivering or publishing education material.GFA was not the only resource provider and by 2008 there were several international NGOs who had dedicated education staff producing a variety of educational media.Their resources tread a fine line between awareness-raising and marketing, and teachers enjoyed the choice available to them.
Authors and authorship: Sammler and colleagues (2016: 6) contend that 'textbooks and their contents are considered not so much the original intellectual product of their author(s), but rather as the portrayal and presentation of knowledge deemed consolidated and relevant by society as a whole'.This arguably holds true for the educational materials produced by the GFA.Public education about sustainable development, rather than fundraising, was deemed relevant by the Labour Government, which oversaw the centre's beginning and encouraged its growth from 1999 to 2008.Further, and while the centre was funded by and accountable to NZAID, there was generally a 'hands-off' approach to the choice of content or tone of resources and GFA was free to pursue its public education resourcing with its own strong editorial line.While staff employed at the GFA tended to be politically left-leaning with shared values concerning human rights and environmental sustainability, by far the greatest influence on authorship were ideas about development education that were underpinned by a Freirean philosophy to which many NGOs ascribed.Under Labour governments, the freedom for GFA to think critically about development education and to develop theoretical underpinnings to their work meant that other NGO educators were exposed to the research literature, ideas and issues in the development education space.
GFA's philosophic orientation was reinforced by informal networks of relationships, for example Vanessa Andreotti's visits in the mid-2000s, and informal and personal relationships with other NGOs, such as UNESCO and Volunteer Service Abroad, who were consulted on projects, and on occasions involved in cross-sector collaborations of resource provision.In many respects, because GFA saw itself as being unattached to a single cause, and as it received reliable funding (90 per cent of funds were from NZAID), it exercised authorial leadership for others in the development education space.GFA provided sector-wide workshops, training manuals and communication, as well as advocating on behalf of NGOs within the formal education sector.One of the distinct features of GFA was that it also administered contestable funds from NZAID that other NGOs could apply to for resource creation.
Despite a commitment to critical pedagogy, in a few instances public debates about accepted knowledge found their way to become editorial disagreements.In one case, geography teachers requested materials to support teaching climate change as an issue involving a range of perspectives, which would have given equal voice to climate change denial.GFA writers were instead strongly encouraged -and in our view wisely -to present climate change as accepted fact.Another tension lay in the effects of the design and layout process on authorship.Rachel recalls designing a poster featuring photographs of indigenous people concerned about environmental International Journal of Development Education and Global Learning 10 (1) 2018 degradation.In initial design mock-ups, the designer had chopped off a small part of the top of a person's head in order to fit the picture into a frame.Following a discussion about the disrespect involved in not showing the full head, the designer had to adjust the layout.In another example, there were considerable debates about whether the Māori script should have equal-sized font.Such discussions over pictures, text and wording are examples of the power relationships that were navigated within GFA's knowledge production practices.That such discussion ensued indicates a deep awareness of different perspectives and pedagogical knowledge.
State and interest groups: The previously described example about climate change points to often competing influences of state and interest groups on GFA's educational materials.A central tension lay between GFA's commitment to development education and pedagogy, and the alignment to New Zealand's curriculum and teachers' expectations.The outcome-led rather than content-led nature of New Zealand's curriculum encouraged GFA and other NGOs to produce educational media that would support a wide range of teacher-selected issues.In this way, teachers and teacher associations were directing production, and issues such as fair trade, sweatshops and climate change gained increasing popularity.If a global issue came to the attention of teachers and, more importantly, their students, then resources were produced by the market to 'fill the demand'.GFA was no exception and regularly sought feedback from teachers as to what issues they would like resources on.World Vision New Zealand was a key leader in providing resources tailored to the specific requirements of achievement standards, and used language to assure teachers that their resources met the curriculum requirements.Resources that stayed on the shelf and did not sell were proof that, despite GFA staff considering an issue or viewpoint important, teachers may not have agreed.Nonetheless, GFA maintained its commitment to providing balance within and across the issues represented in its resources.In particular, GFA made conscious decisions to include marginalized voices and interest groups, in particular those of tangata whenua, the indigenous Māori.This involved training staff in Māori language and customs and providing bilingual translations in sections, or the entirety, of teaching resources.
Political economy: GFA was strongly supported by the Labour Government from 1999 to 2008.However, the incoming National Government in 2008 saw a reduction in funding and the diminishing influence and presence of GFA dissipated after it closed in 2011.There were initial efforts to crowd-source funding from the wider NGO community but, ultimately, GFA was unsustainable as a business model, and public education about global development issues generally was not seen as a worthy investment for other organizations, who preferred instead to advocate for their own international work.As GFA discovered, today's New Zealand school-resourcing landscape is market-driven and the small size of the market means that ventures such as GFA are rarely profitable.
Technology and media: A further aspect for analysis is the influence of technological change on the knowledge production process.From 2000 to 2011, printed resources were gradually phased out in favour of electronic, with most resources being available online by 2010.GFA witnessed teachers' increasing ability to access information and resources about development and global issues via the internet, and it was under pressure to ensure that their online resources were accessible, up to date and free.Nevertheless, GFA saw an important role in supporting busy teachers to compile resources from a range of sources, and to ensure that materials were adjusted for a New Zealand audience.The global and development educational media landscape since 2011 Since GFA's closure in 2011, the field of global and development education resourcing is much more compact.Three NGOs -UNICEF, Trade Aid and World Vision -are the most recognized in the formal education sector and their resources are widely used.Those that were publishing for the classroom a decade ago, such as Volunteer Service Abroad and Save the Children, are either no longer doing so or have a considerably reduced output.For many NGOs, there exists a tension between directing expenditure towards campaigns or towards formal education resources.While many NGOs have a presence in schools through their fundraising campaigns, their level of resourcing for the classroom is limited.This appears to be exacerbated by NGOs whose operations exist largely overseas, and for whom public education in New Zealand may constitute only a small portion of their work.Research carried out by Tallon (2012Tallon ( , 2013)), showed that, with the closure of GFA, teachers felt the loss of an independent voice in development education provision, and adopted a 'wait and see' attitude to how the NGOs might proceed.Since then, World Vision's place in the schools market has strengthened and it competes favourably with for-profit publishers.Other NGOs find it difficult to find resource writers and are affected by a lack of government support to provide resources for schools.In addition, and with the closure of GFA, a key negative outcome for the NGO sector was the loss of professional development and international linkages.
In sum, the seemingly open policy space for resource provision is, at the level of practice, tight and retracting.A previously well-connected network of development NGOs has shrunk in the face of reduced state funding and a competitive environment for educational resource provision.While NGOs see the alignment to the expectations of New Zealand's curriculum as being key to teacher uptake of their resources, the educational media space is also nebulous and anchorless.There is, for example, little in the way of publicly available guidelines to guide the quality of resource development.Moreover, expertise lies in the hands of a few NGOs that are already stretched for resources, and may not be in a position to help other NGOs produce educational materials.In this space, teachers largely appear to have become their own publishers, from a variety of offshore sources.Any inclusion of global citizenship themes is highly dependent on teachers' own interests, backgrounds and personal relationships within global and development learning.
The challenge of business models notwithstanding, in the next section we argue that there exists at least some scope for global development learning to occupy a leading place within the educational media market.In large part, this has to do with the critical and active orientation that global and development education is able to take to educational aims.To explain this, we turn to an analysis of the content of New Zealand educational materials.

Third lens: The content of global and development education resources
This section examines the content of New Zealand's development and global education media.We briefly examine the scope of textbooks available to teachers, and the extent to which global issues form part of their contents.We then report on findings from an independent study that mapped the content of 90 free citizenship education resources produced by government, non-government and informal education organizations in New Zealand.
A brief survey of printed textbooks produced in New Zealand for primary and secondary teachers indicates that commercial publishing firms are commissioning very few texts concerned with global and development issues.Three major publishing companies, and two smaller companies established by ex-teachers, dominate the market.We identified 29 textbooks linked to global and development education, the majority of which are produced by Pearson Education and are primarily textbooks used in New Zealand social studies and social sciences education.By contrast, Pearson has over 1,800 textbooks available to support literacy learning.The search was then narrowed to 20 texts that had contents pages available online.Using search terms identified in the Global Education Monitoring report (UNESCO, 2016a: -gender, human rights, sustainable development, environmental sustainability and globalization -we analysed the contents pages of those 20 textbooks.Only half the books contained global and development themes: globalization was the most frequently referred to (n=7), followed by human rights (n=5), and then issues concerning sustainable development (n=4) and environmental sustainability (n=4).From these findings, we can assume that global and development learning is not a high priority in the textbook market, most likely because there is limited demand.We wonder about the effects of a global shift towards digital educational media, which has meant that printed versions of New Zealand texts have become less available since 2012, with many now having electronic versions or resources online.
As we previously noted in this paper, textbooks do not solely occupy the landscape of educational resource provision in New Zealand.Anecdotally, on the basis of many years of working with social sciences teachers and teams, textbooks have often driven social studies content selection in the past (and, in many cases, units of work have borne the names of textbook titles).However, New Zealand teachers have also long supplemented textbooks with more ephemeral educational materials from for-profit, not-for-profit and government sources.We report here on findings from a desk-based study for the New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage (Tallon, 2016) carried out by Rachel.The mapping study sought to identify the extent of non-textbook resource provision for civics and citizenship education and the outcomes that were emphasized across the resources.This research identified 90 freely available, online educational resources for primary and secondary schools, with a civics and citizenship education focus.Resources for global citizenship education came under this broad scope; of the 90 resources, 30 were produced by NGOs, and 12 had a global focus.
As part of the mapping exercise, a directed content analysis (Hsieh and Shannon, 2005) of 19 resources was undertaken to chart the weighting given to 5 outcomes of civics and citizenship education (derived from: Aitken and Sinnema, 2008;Keown, 1998Keown, , 2000;;Ministry of Education, 2008).Table 1 lists the coding categories that were used for this analysis.Each resource was weighted (with a score from 0 to 4) in terms of how much emphasis was given to each of 5 outcomes and 17 indicators.
There is not the space here to report on all the findings from this study.However, for the purposes of this paper, it is notable that three resources with a global focus were included within the sample of 19.Oxfam, World Vision and UNICEF produced these.It is important to stress that this study was not intended to be an evaluative exercise; it is entirely defensible for resource providers to emphasize some citizenship outcomes over others, and arguably impossible for any single resource to do justice to all five outcomes.However, what particularly stood out was that, in comparison with the other 16 resources, these 3 scored highly for their focus on critical thinking skills and participatory outcomes.Given the critical pedagogy orientation adopted by many NGOs, it is perhaps little surprise that both action and critical reflection were comparative strengths of the three resources.Few other resources in the survey supported students to explore extensively the possibilities for social action (and critically reflect on this action) or engage in social criticism, and we contend that this gap holds considerable potential for development and global education resource providers to enhance their distinct and important contribution to the school education sector.There is currently a growing discourse in New Zealand educational research that concerns young people's critical and active citizenship (see, for example, Harcourt et al., 2016;Wood et al., 2017).This focus is mandated by The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2007) through both cross-curricular competencies of critical thinking and participation and individual learning areas such as the social sciences.Further, the programme of a recent New Zealand social sciences education conference (SocCon17), Developing Global Citizens (SocCon, 2018), is reflective of growing teacher interest in global citizenship themes and participatory outcomes.While active citizenship can be theorized in a range of ways, the three NGO resources included in the Ministry for Culture and Heritage study (Tallon, 2016) suggest that NGO-produced educational materials are already offering a distinctive emphasis in relation to critical and active citizenship that could be further amplified.and in this respect development and global education occupies a space that could arguably be described as mainstream.This is ironically because everything is 'on the margins' and everything competes for teachers' attention.The high autonomy of the classroom teacher, the extensive choice of resources via the internet and the courting of teachers by providers, means that there is considerable discretion over content and pedagogy within schools.Undoubtedly, for NGOs with the necessary capital, the situation is very favourable to them.Their resources can dominate the market, thus allowing them unofficial acceptance in school-based curricula.Nonetheless, those NGOs that do succeed in maintaining a presence and competitive edge in the schools market are operating in an increasingly tight and shrinking space in which other NGOs have not been able to thrive.Thus, market economics applies, so that the bigger the fish, the bigger the catch.However, within the economic constraints, we have argued that at least some openings exist for global and development learning within educational resource provision.In the large absence of external constraints, NGOs have opportunities to exercise content and pedagogical leadership in the schools sector, particularly when they engage with educational research.There appears to be a need for educational resources that not only provide depth of content in relation to development and global issues, but that also support critical thinking and reflective social action.Most recently, for example, Trade Aid New Zealand has produced online resources on trade issues that meet good development education practice and the expectations of New Zealand's curriculum.The resources particularly emphasize critical thinking skills and social action and, while there is some promotion of Trade Aid's global activities, there is no compulsion for teachers to showcase or promote Trade Aid.The shift from 'advocacy' to 'educative' in the broadest sense of the term is both an interesting feature of this resource and also points to tensions in meeting both development and educational goals (Bourn, 2015).While international development NGOs have arguably reframed their messaging over time, they are often still first and foremost campaigners for aid, rather than educators who aim to support students to see the perspectival nature of societal issues.This is often an uneasy schism in many NGOs as it is a brave NGO willing to encourage critical thinking about itself and its operations as part of their education materials.
For those NGOs willing to work with this tension, there are theoretical and practical challenges ahead.While the fields of educational research and development pedagogy research are not mutually exclusive, resource developers in today's market are navigating differences in aims and emphases.It is possible, for example, for a resource to superficially align to the New Zealand curriculum, and yet overlook the curriculum's deeper intent, current educational debates and evidence education, and/or internationally recognized development education pedagogy.It is, however, a sophisticated undertaking to manage educational and organizational expectations and there are few opportunities for NGOs to connect with this literature and with each other to enhance the conceptual underpinnings of their resources.Much greater insight is needed about how internal systems and cross-sector efforts can enhance public education, not just about efforts overseas, but also to understand global and development issues within a broader critical lens.Support for greater communication, professional development, and leadership, from government and from within the NGO sector itself, appear to be important priorities.
Further research could also richly inform a more reflexive orientation to resource provision.In particular, there appears a vital need for the research that includes the voices of resource developers -that is, how New Zealand teachers and NGO workers navigate in the policy and knowledge production landscape.Additionally, further research about how educational materials are enfolded within classroom practice, including students' perspectives, holds considerable potential to enlarge the space of global and development education resourcing in New Zealand.These research priorities would enable much more nuanced understandings not only of the constraints within which global and development education operates in New Zealand, but also of strategies that could be employed to subvert those constraints.Andrea Milligan is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.Andrea has a background in social sciences (geography and social studies) education as a teacher, in-service adviser, and resource developer.She has acted as an education consultant to numerous New Zealand government and non-government organizations, including Global Focus Aotearoa.She researches in a range of areas related to citizenship education, social and environmental justice, and the role of philosophy in education.

Notes on the contributors
The changing field of development and global education resource provision in New Zealand 65 International Journal of Development Education and Global Learning 10 (1) 2018

Rachel
Tallon is an education consultant working part time in social science teacher education and research.She worked at Global Focus Aotearoa as a resource writer from 2005 to 2009, before leaving for further study.Research projects have included research in citizenship resources, museum studies and youth development.Her doctorate focused on representation issues across the global divides and how young people in New Zealand school settings learn about disparities in the world.

Table 1 :
Coding categories for civics and citizenship education outcomes This article has sketched the rough outline of global and development learning's space within New Zealand educational media.Our analysis has revealed an 'opentight-open' landscape of global and development resource provision in New Zealand.Education policy privileges an open, market-driven resource environment.Our case study of the rise, fall and aftermath of the government-funded GFA indicates that global and development education is increasingly being subsumed into this neoliberal educational marketplace.Considerable freedom is a characteristic of this marketplace