Making It Personal: Connecting With Maori Students and Their Families

• In Event: 49.032 - Indigenous Issues in Education and Research

Abstract

In order to better understand the factors impacting the academic engagement of indigenous (Māori) students in New Zealand’s schooling contexts, there is a urgent call to action for educators to support academic pathways through coaching and mentoring to help Māori students to make the connection between their ongoing academic progress at school and their long term aspirations. This presentation reports on the work of a longitudinal research and development project (the Starpath Project) and discusses the importance of two-way academic counselling models to support Maori student success and three-way academic conferencing to increase Maori parent engagement with the school.

Starpath is a collaborative project that aims to enhance the participation and success in tertiary education of students from groups that are currently under represented in degree level studies. Working in partnership with 39 secondary schools, Starpath aims to deliver a detailed understanding of the barriers to tertiary success for students, particularly those from low socio-economic school contexts. Starpath has developed a strategic, evidence–based, outcomes-focused approach to enhancing educational achievement in New Zealand. Academic counselling has been identified as a strategy important to enhancing the academic, social, personal and post-secondary school outcomes for all students. In the Starpath Project, academic counselling refers to teachers building and sustaining strong academic relationships with Maori students, and their parents and caregivers, that focus on detailed and collaborative academic planning, regular goal-setting, and strategic course-taking based on long term post-secondary aspirations. Starpath schools provide academic counselling to students and parents/caregivers as a means of sharing academic information in ways that encourages collaborative educational planning.

In this presentation we discuss two sets of data that illustrate the powerful effect of academic counselling on Maori student engagement and Maori parents/caregivers engagement in three-way academic conferencing. Firstly, we present findings on parental engagement in three-way academic conferencing sessions over time. Secondly, we present findings from qualitative student focus group data, which was collected from Year 11 and 12 (aged 15-17 years) Maori students (n=116) from Starpath partner schools.

Two- and three-way academic counselling is a significant educational innovation in New Zealand through which student learning progress and achievement can be discussed, monitored and reviewed with all stakeholders. The two sets of data make it clear that there is strong support for this programme from Maori students and their parents and caregivers. Key findings include:
• The three-way academic counselling conferencing meetings resulted in dramatically increased parent/caregiver attendance at school meetings
• Maori students perceived that their relationships with their teachers (who were the Academic Counsellors) became more positive and focused on achievement rather than behaviour.
• Maori students perceived that parent-student-teacher relationships had improved because their parents/caregivers could identify one constant point of contact in the school that was able to give them a personalised and in-depth assessment of their child’s academic performance.
• Maori students reported that regular access to their academic achievement information was useful and reported an increased awareness of, and appreciation for, educational planning.

Authors

• Elizabeth McKinley, University of Melbourne

• Melinda Webber, The University of Auckland