Cook’s Endeavour as a “death ship”: Why it is hard to teach New Zealand’s sensitive histories of colonisation

Seminar Abstract

Michael’s doctoral research explores how teachers and students engage with New Zealand’s history of colonisation in history and social studies lessons. It is a mixed methods project involving extensive surveying of 300 teachers and over 2000 students and a classroom based critical ethnographic approach. His work focuses on school field trips to sites of colonial violence such as Rangiriri exploring how these trips shape perceptions of place. Drawing on literature on emotional regimes, particularly that of Michalinos Zembylas, he advocates an approach based on critical pedagogies of place and pedagogies of discomfort as two frameworks for teachers and educators to use as they work to develop field trips.