Journal article

In a post-quake city with lots of empty spaces and vacant buildings, the small charitable trust Gap Filler has inspired young people to participate, contribute and fill these sites with temporary projects and activities to inspire a new Ōtautahi Christchurch.

Sir Peter Jackson said that New Zealand is not a small country but a large village. Being a villager requires an active form of citizenship that involves collaboration, contribution, interdependence, and reciprocity. These traits are particularly important for New Zealand with its reliance on volunteers, generation after generation, to provide essential services through school boards of trustees, fire brigades, surf life saving clubs, St John’s Ambulance, and jury duty.

Education for sustainable citizenship is vital if we are to strengthen democratic processes and address complex, inescapable and seemingly insolvable “wicked problems”. For the past 4 years, Environment Canterbury’s Youth Engagement team has joined with relevant partners to facilitate 3–6 day experiential education residential hui for 14–15 year olds.

Voter participation by young people has been in long-term decline in New Zealand. Many do not understand what elected representatives do, and assume that politics does not affect them. Voter advice applications (VAAs) are effective design-led tools for addressing these issues by providing game-like experiences that help voters compare their values with the positions of political parties or candidates. By providing an accessible introduction to politics, VAAs engage young people within and beyond the classroom, and help them become informed, confident participants in elections.

This article explores how teachers and students can make the most of citizenship learning opportunities when they visit cultural institutions such as museums, galleries, and memorial parks. It shares insights from 150 Years: 150 Buses, a project that supported school groups to visit two or more of Wellington’s nationally significant institutions in 2015. Taking concept-led and critical-thinking approaches to the pre-visit preparation and post-visit follow-up made a difference to depth of learning that was generated.

How might social-studies teachers enact critical forms of citizenship education in classrooms and what pedagogies support this? This question is explored in relation to literature about critical citizenship and critical literacy. Also, possibilities for practice are considered and two approaches for critical literacy in social studies are presented: a) using critical questions to engage with texts; and b) focusing on media literacy in relation to current events.

This article focuses on how Year 11 secondary students view themselves as political beings, voice political ideas, and think critically about political participation. The research was motivated by the public representation of young citizens disengaged from political processes such as voting, and the authors’ perception of a gap in students’ political ideas that apply to social relations in everyday life. Making sense of what political literacy and connected citizenship involves is explained.

To be active members of a democracy, young people need to develop skills in active citizenship participation. Within New Zealand, there are opportunities to develop such skills within the social-studies curriculum as well as within the personal social-action achievement standards in NCEA (Levels 1–3). Drawing on a 2-year research project with teachers and students in five schools, we identified three strategies which enhanced critical and active citizenship: affective engagement; critically insightful cognitive engagement; and practical democratic skills.

It is debatable whether citizenship education in New Zealand has presented a version of citizenship that resonates with Māori. This article explores the ability of The New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) to meaningfully provide citizenship education for Māori. This article suggests that there needs to a mindshift away from the conventional approach of a generic “New Zealand citizen” to one that more fully acknowledges Māori as tangata whenua.

Who gets to define belonging? The nation state or its citizens? The government or civil society? This article argues that, for Māori, citizenship is and has been contested and conditional. It examines the history of belonging in New Zealand, from the Treaty of Waitangi to the Citizenship Act 1977, and recommends a framework for teaching belonging and citizenship to Māori students. The idea underpinning the framework is that teaching citizenship means teaching history, or the relationship between the postcolonial state and its indigenous citizens.