Whose knowledge counts? The place of knowledge in a high autonomy curriculum

The non-prescriptive New Zealand secondary school history curriculum allows teachers who are intellectually confident in the disciplinary knowledge of their subject the opportunity to develop innovative programmes that address the interests of their students. Knowledge of particular historical events, personalities or themes is not required by the curriculum or the assessment framework. For teachers however who do not have a strong grasp of how the discipline of history operates the absence of knowledge-based content boundaries poses a challenge. The basis for choosing topics or themes may lack coherence, be largely arbitrary and draw on the limited experience of individual teachers rather than the specialist subject knowledge of researchers. This article examines the implications of a high autonomy history curriculum through the lens of knowledge. It argues that if young people are to have access to intellectually powerful ways of understanding the past, historical knowledge needs to be differentiated between disciplinary frameworks of thinking (that fosters a sense of criticality) and knowledge that does not require a critical dimension