Theme-based approaches

What is a theme?

A theme can be thought of as the pervasive existence of common ideas and movements across multiple historical contexts, for example, terrorism, colonisation, revolution, or migration. Historians identify and use themes to establish relationships between events and to structure their inquiry.

A theme-based approach involves choosing a theme of significance to New Zealanders and selecting contexts, including one or more New Zealand-based contexts, that illustrate the theme.

A theme-based approach can be New Zealand focused, placing New Zealand events and individuals in a wider international context.

The Curriculum does not prescribe topics (specific contexts for study). Teachers and students have the freedom to explore historical events, forces, movements, and trends that engage and challenge them. Students develop an understanding of the complexities of human interaction by drawing on a variety of perspectives, interpretations, and evidence.

Choose a context or contexts

Approach the selected theme by choosing a selection of contexts that illustrate its breadth and depth. How much breadth and depth depends on your knowledge base, your interests and those of your students, what resources you can access, and the priorities of the school and the wider community.

Example 1: Possible contexts for a theme of intolerance

• fascism in Europe
• the eugenics movement
• religious fundamentalism
• social conformity in 1950s New Zealand
• the legacies of slavery in the US
• the Scopes trial
• Chinese and Indian immigration in New Zealand
• discrimination against homosexuality
• gender issues – suffrage, employment, housework, education
• religion vs secularism

Example 2: Possible contexts for the theme of justice

• apartheid
• women’s suffrage
• civil rights in the United States
• the quest for Māori (and/or Aboriginal) autonomy
• Chinese in New Zealand
• equal pay
• the trade union movement
• anti-Catholic discrimination in the United Kingdom, for example, Guy Fawkes
• class and social opportunity, for example, Tonga, China, Russia
• Palestine
• war crime trials in Cambodia

TOP

Sample plans

Example 1: A one-year programme, exploring the theme of intolerance in depth

Possible context: fascism in Europe (for example, Germany, England, Spain, France)

Examples include:

• causes of fascism
• fascist ideology
• the impact of fascism on victims and supporters.

Duration: one term

Possible context: eugenics (example, New Zealand, Australia, North America, Europe, Japan)

Examples include:

• Truby King (mothering and nutritional programmes)
• health camps
• concerns about miscegenation (‘race contamination’ debates)
• scouting
• groups such as the White New Zealand League.

Duration: one term

Possible context: the legacies of slavery in the United States

Examples include:

• Jim Crow/Ku Klux Klan/Martin Luther King, Jr.
• the American Civil War
• share cropping
• the tripartite system of domination
• the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union
• Mildred Loving
• NAACP, National Urban League.

Duration: four weeks

Possible context: discrimination against homosexuality in New Zealand

Examples include:

• the concept of mateship and the Kiwi male
• the murder of Charles Aberhart
• the campaign against homosexual law reform
• the experience of Marilyn Waring as an MP
• the Parker–Hulme trial; the Eric Mareo trial.

Duration: four weeks

Possible context: social conformity in New Zealand in the 1950s and early 1960s

Examples include:

• the 1951 waterfront dispute
• the Mazengarb report
• the Parker–Hulme case
• expectations of motherhood and fatherhood
• rugby
• the ‘six o’clock swill’
• the ‘quarter-acre pavlova paradise’
• domestic violence
• fear of communism
• clothing and conformity
• tribalism and urbanisation
• Washday at the Pa
• the Hunn report.

Duration: four weeks

The sample one-year programme above is available as a PDF table.

TOP

Example 2: A one-term programme, introducing the theme of intolerance

Contexts:

• fascism in Germany (4 weeks)
• eugenics in New Zealand (2 weeks)
• the legacies of slavery in the United States (2 weeks)
• discrimination against Chinese immigrants in New Zealand (2 weeks).

Shorter programmes can be combined with other approaches as part of a one-year programme.

Theme-based planning with a New Zealand focus

This approach places New Zealand at the centre of the programme and encourages students to place the New Zealand events and individuals into a wider international context.

Possible contexts:

• indigenous autonomy: Māori New Zealand/Aboriginal Australia
• the social impact of the 1930s depression in New Zealand, the United States, and Germany
• migration to and between New Zealand and Australia
• the impact of World War I: New Zealand and the world, for example, Turkey, Russia, Germany, Sāmoa, France
• the emergence of youth culture in New Zealand, England, and the United States
• gender issues in New Zealand and the world, for example, Australia, Asia, the ‘Muslim world’
• colonisation in Asia and the Pacific
• dealing with crises: the influenza epidemic in New Zealand and the world
• the influence of music and dance in New Zealand and the world
• clothing and food influences in New Zealand and the world.

Last updated August 24, 2012

TOP