Carry out an inquiry of an historical event or place that is of significance to New Zealanders
Domain 1 (AS 91229) assesses a social inquiry: you plan and carry out an investigation into an event or place significant to New Zealanders, gather and evaluate evidence, and present a conclusion that answers your focusing questions.
What the inquiry must do
- Start with a narrow, answerable question, not a broad topic.
- Use the inquiry cycle: focus, plan, gather, analyse, evaluate, conclude, present.
- Use both primary and secondary sources; record full references.
- Evaluate each source's origin, purpose, context, reliability and usefulness.
- Make a judgement, not a fact dump.
Worked example: 1975 Māori Land March
Question: 'How did the 1975 Māori Land March challenge Māori land loss?' Plan: examine aims, methods and public response. Sources: a 1975 newspaper report, photographs of marchers, an interview with Whina Cooper, a later history and a Waitangi Tribunal report. Evaluate: the newspaper shows public debate but has an editorial slant; oral history gives participant motivation; official files show government response. Conclusion: the march, from Te Hāpua to Parliament in September–October 1975, publicised land loss and helped build pressure for Treaty settlement and Tribunal reform, but it did not stop land alienation.
Traps
- Choosing a topic so wide that evidence cannot be managed.
- Describing events without answering the question.
- Treating a biased source as useless, or an official source as automatically reliable.
- Using quotations without explaining what they prove.
- No references, or references that cannot be checked.