A New Dawn: Responding to and Realizing Māori Potential

• In Event: He Māori Ahau: Challenging Dominant Notions of Leadership, Responsiveness, and Effectiveness in Education

Abstract

This presentation investigates culturally responsive pedagogy in relation to a two-year TLRI study of school marae in Aotearoa New Zealand. Three urban secondary schools in the Auckland region were involved in this project that included interviews with students, teachers, whānau and principals. This research focuses on the role of the culture in raising Māori achievement, and seeks to extend on, and illuminate what Bishop et al (2003) refers to as the visible and invisible cultural elements in order to deepen our understanding of the nexus of culture, pedagogy and outcomes.
This presentation seeks to foreground how school marae address Māori educational aspirations that include ‘to live as Māori’ (Durie, 2001), in particular, the potential for school marae to contribute to the popular and complex ideological notion captured in ‘Māori achieving as Māori’. Such an approach not only provides a better understanding of why and how school marae operate, but the impact such a pedagogy makes on Māori educational achievement, which in turn, may contribute to the further development of the culturally responsive pedagogy in New Zealand.

Through the participants’ voice and experiences, Lisa will present what ‘Māori achieving as Māori’ looks like for students and whānau of a school marae located in a large, urban, mainstream secondary school in West Auckland. She will examine the opportunities that this marae offers for them to achieve ‘as Māori’. Despite the mainstream emphasis on the school marae as an institution that will help ‘raise Māori achievement’, the students and whānau this school marae speak of the equally important role that the marae plays in accessing te ao Māori and offering a safe and supportive space to develop a Māori identity.

Author

• Lisa Jane Smith, The University of Auckland