Evolution Education in New Zealand

Abstract

The teaching of evolution in New Zealand has followed its own ‘evolutionary’ trajectory, from being taught only on the university stage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to inclusion in the senior curriculum only in secondary schools, to the point where the subject is now a unifying theme throughout the national school science curriculum. The move to this thematic structure of the curriculum was effectively paralleled by changes in how student learning was assessed, which in turn has had impacts on teacher education and the need for resources and ongoing professional development. This series of curriculum modifications was not achieved without some resistance from those opposed to teaching evolutionary biology on both religious and cultural grounds. Even today, while the majority of New Zealand students gain an understanding of the subject, those educated at ‘special character’ schools rather than within the state school system can still be taught a curriculum based on a creationist world-view. It is also possible, in a system where schools are sensitive to the needs of their local communities, for the relevant sections of the senior curriculum to become ‘the part we don’t teach’. Thus, in education as in actual biological systems, there is always the potential for further change and adaptation.