Equity for Indigenous Students: Resisting the Political Blurring of Education Policy and Research

• In Event: Alternative Facts, Fake News, and Educational Research: Reconsidering Qualitative Methodologies in the Age of Trump

Abstract

The session’s final paper will put what has been happening in United States politics in recent years in perspective by suggesting that the phenomenon is neither all that recent nor exclusively limited to the United States. Rather, the author will interpret recent fake news/alternative facts rhetoric as artifacts of the global phenomenon of neoliberalism. The author will use New Zealand as a case in point and focus, specifically, on the impact of neoliberalism on New Zealand’s Indigenous Māori population in an effort to demonstrate the need for qualitative researchers who employ Indigenous methods to remain true to their ways of doing research.

Objectives

This paper has a twofold purpose:
• To understand some of the political and social ramifications of disrupting an historical, colonial education system that continues, through policies and praxis, to adversely affect the lives of Māori students.
• To examine the implications of these findings for other marginalized groups.

Perspective

This paper uses the emerging concept of political blur to structure the discussion. That concept refers to what happens when narrowly defined evidence, rather than systematically generated and critically informed research, are used to influence the political agenda. The paper’s author will demonstrate how the political blur promoted by neoliberal ideology has provided a justification for further underserving already underserved groups of students in New Zealand and across the globe.

Methods

Quantitative data about Maori students’ school achievement generated by the government will be presented. Also, interview data generated from secondary students by using culturally responsive methodologies (Author, et al., 2013) that draw on both Kaupapa Māori and critical theories will be presented in the paper and juxtaposed with the government’s data.

Data Sources

Government-generated quantitative data about Māori students’ success will be used to demonstrate the extant institutional narrative about Māori students and the political blur this narrative promotes. The voices of senior Māori students generated through conversational interviewing consistent with Indigenous qualitative methods will be used to construct an alternative Indigenous-grounded narrative about how educational policies are understood and the implications for Māori students and their teachers.

Results

The different data sets tell different stories. National data reveal a depressing picture of a group’s school achievement (or lack thereof). The voices of Māori students, however, challenge us to ensure schools are places where what Ballard (2016) characterizes as underserved rather than failing students can experience equity, excellence and belonging. Among other ways, the students suggest these goals can be accomplished by creating simultaneous success trajectories that allow students to both learn and achieve for the future, but also have their cultural identity strengthened.

Significance

While other authors in this session will propose various methodological modifications in response to recent fake news/alternative facts rhetoric, the author of this paper argues for staying true to traditional qualitative methods, especially if those methods reflect an Indigenous sensibility. All knowledge is inevitably political, this author argues; consequently, researchers cannot—and should not—avoid taking a political stance, especially when their methods can bring previously unheard voices into the policy-making arena.

Author

• Mere Berryman, University of Waikato