Social Studies - National Moderator's Report 2024

Insights

91597: Conduct a critical social inquiry

Performance overview:

The standard requires students to undertake a critical inquiry. This involves developing focus questions and reporting their findings. This would include people's points of view, values and perspectives underpinning both their participation and/or action in society, and relating to the focus of the student's inquiry. Students are also required to evaluate their findings and their research process.

Students were successful in meeting the expectations of the standard when different perspectives and ideologies were clearly integrated into the focus question(s). This helped to ensure that their report on findings clearly included a description of people’s points of view, values and perspectives that underpinned their participation and/or action in society as required for Achieved. Doing so helped provide appropriate scaffolding towards meeting the Merit and Excellence criteria.

For example:

• Inquiry focus: Housing affordability
• Inquiry questions:
  • How has the libertarian perspective of the ACT party influenced their proposed solutions and policies to housing affordability in New Zealand?
  • How has a social justice perspective of the Green party influenced their proposed solutions and policies to housing affordability in New Zealand?
  • This further helped to reduce the volume of evidence, as students were only reporting on findings that directly supported them to meet the standard criteria.

Practices that need strengthening:

To achieve the standard, the description of people’s points of view, values and perspectives that underpin their participation and/or action in society must clearly include all four aspects outlined in the criteria.

For the purposes of all Social Studies standards, the terms points of view and perspectives have different meanings and must be addressed separately. Points of view are what people think about something (their opinion or attitude towards an issue, action, or event), whereas perspectives are often the ideologies or ‘big umbrellas’ under which they think a particular way about something – e.g. conservative, feminist, te āo Māori, nationalist.

It is expected that at Level 3 students will be able to distinguish between points of view, values and perspectives and explain the connection between them and how they influence the actions taken by different individuals or groups.

Further support on an approach to scaffolding students to ensure they cover all three aspects can be found in the points of view, values and perspectives clarification document, and in the short online course ‘Points of View’ available on Pūtake.

For Merit, students are required to explain, compare and contrast points of view, values and perspectives. To successfully meet these criteria, the comparison of the viewpoints must be explicit and go beyond merely presenting two contrasting viewpoints on an issue. This is successfully achieved when students are supported through task design to dedicate a separate section of their response towards a comparison. For example, after articulating the different perspectives, values and viewpoints of Zelensky and Putin towards the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a student would explicitly compare the two viewpoints and may identify that while Zelensky’s and Putin’s view towards the Russian invasion is shaped by a nationalist perspective/ideology, the response of Zelensky and the Ukrainian people has also been strongly shaped by a perspective/ideology of patriotism.

91599: Examine personal involvement in a social action(s) that aims to influence policy change(s)

Performance overview:

The standard requires students to carry out and report on personal involvement in social action that aims to influence policy. To achieve the standard, the student must develop a plan for social action which is justified by considering the points of view, values and perspectives of self and others. Students are required to provide evidence of their own participation in the planning and carrying out of the social action. To achieve at higher levels, students need to evaluate their actions by considering strengths, weaknesses, and the effectiveness of their actions, as well as considering real and potential consequences of their actions.

Students were successful if they selected an issue and policy that they had real potential to tangibly influence. While often these were national/global issues, the policy students were aiming to influence would frequently be centred at a regional or local level. Focusing on regional/local policy was successful by enabling students to be highly specific and considered in their planning of the social action, and their selection and justification of the issue would frequently involve them having to find out the points of view, values and perspectives through talking to people in their community who were genuinely affected by the issue and/or policy. Therefore, a clearer link was made between the issues and policy, the viewpoints of self and others, and the selection of appropriate social actions.

Some successful examples included:

• Addressing road safety issues around school pick up times near a local primary school.
• Introduction of civics education within the school’s Yr 13 careers programme.
• Safe staffing numbers at local health services.

Practices that need strengthening:

Ensuring that the social action is targeted at a specific policy will help to make sure students have the appropriate scope to meet the requirements of this standard. The social action should have an explicit and clearly identifiable policy focus, as opposed to being aimed at a broad social issue.

A policy is a rule, a law, a strategy, a procedure or a plan. The selected policy may be international, national, regional or local (i.e. school/sports club, etc).

For example, if a student is passionate about the issue of animal rights related to greyhound racing, examples of suitable policies that would meet the standard could be influencing the government to ban greyhound racing nationally or lobbying their local sports track/bowl to end greyhound racing at that venue. The planning and carrying out of the social action should reflect an understanding of the type of policy they are aiming to influence.

As such, while raising awareness for an issue may be part of the student plan to influence a policy, it should not form the entirety of a social action. At curriculum level 8 it is expected that students select social actions that reflect a more sophisticated understanding of how to influence policy. If raising awareness is part of the overall social action campaign, students should be able to articulate how increased awareness will support their ability to influence their selected policy. For example, the student may explain how a social media account highlighting the treatment of racing greyhounds could address a lack of awareness that people have around the issue, and therefore help gain support for the petition that they would like to present to their local sporting body.

91600: Examine a campaign of social action(s) to influence policy changes(s)

Performance overview:

The key requirement of this standard is for students to examine a campaign of social action(s) focused on influencing specific policy change.

As in 2022, the campaign chosen continues to be essential in helping to ensure students can achieve the standard at each grade. Social action campaigns which clearly have a policy change goal helped students provide the types of evidence required to meet the standard.

Some examples of successful examples included:

• School Strike 4 Climate (ensure New Zealand’s domestic climate policies align with the Paris Agreement 1.5 goal).
• End Conversion Therapy (the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Act 2022).
• Make it 16 (extending the vote to 16- and 17-year-olds).

Practices that need strengthening:

To meet the requirements of the standard, the response must articulate both reasons for individuals’ and or groups involvement in the campaign and individuals’ and/or groups reasons for selecting particular actions within the campaign.

“Reasons for involvement” requires students to identify the different motivations and reasons for why at least two different individuals and/or groups chose to be involved in the social action. For example, if students were exploring ‘Protect Ihumātao - SOUL campaign’ they could explain the different reasons for the involvement of Pania Newton and the Kīngitanga.

“Reasons for actions” requires students to explain what actions were taken by individuals and/or groups, and then explain why these individuals and/or groups selected the actions they did within the campaign. These do not need to necessarily be the same individuals or groups discussed under “reasons for involvement”. For example, the response could explain that as part of the Ihumātao campaign, one of the actions taken by the Kīngitanga was to lead talks with the Crown on behalf of mana whenua and the reason for this particular action is that the Kīngitanga’s position within Māoridom meant he was able to bring together divided groups and help present a united front, which would strengthen mana whenua’s ability to successfully negotiate with the Crown.

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