A Retrospective Look at the Reframing of Deficit Thinking into Policy in Aotearoa New Zealand

• In Event: Interrogating Deficit Thinking/Theorizing in Multiple Contexts

Abstract

Deficit beliefs about the Indigenous Māori people in Aotearoa New Zealand, as for many other Indigenous peoples, began by failing to develop “ethical spaces'' in the coming together of peoples from different worldviews (Ermine, 2007). Despite being the visitor in someone else’s territory, the colonizer began this relationship by imposing their own worldview and ways of being, while simultaneously labelling the first people of this land as savages and heathens (Mutu, 2019). An historical legacy of assimilation, cultural erasure and linguicide, predicated on deficit beliefs and practices contained within the 14th century Doctrine of Discovery followed (United Nations, 2012). These deficit discourses have continued to this day, to be imposed through education policies, textbooks and teaching practices.
Objectives or purposes: This paper explores the changing discourses about deficit theorizing in Aotearoa (Shields et al., 2005). What was identified through the voices of young Māori people and their families in 2001 as racism and by their educators as deficit theorizing (Bishop & Berryman, 2006), has now begun to be more specifically understood and responded to by some leaders, educators and policy makers.
Perspective(s) or theoretical framework: The challenge for leaders to become conscientised and able to reform these deeply embedded beliefs is understood against policy and reform initiatives focussed on Māori students enjoying and achieving education success as Māori.
Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry: An historical review of the literature, which shows that policies and practices from last century were aimed at Indigenous assimilation and cultural erasure (McKinley & Smith, 2019) is compared with two decades of policy and school reform aimed at equity and social justice.
Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials: Evidence also comes from a retrospective analysis of educators’ interviews-as-conversations and personal reflections on a blended learning programme aimed at raising consciousness and reforming beliefs and actions. This evidence exemplifies some of the challenges and successes that educators have faced within this policy and reform milieu.
Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view: In August 2020, an Education and Training Act was passed that opened the door for transformative change. Although this Act is well supported by policy, by National Education Learning Priorities and a curriculum refresh, the deeply embedded pathologizing of wider society along with policy sediment that has marginalised or pathologized Indigenous learners previously, leaves us with little confidence for transformative reform.
Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work: By listening to the voices of indigenous and non-indigenous leaders and learners, this session seeks to raise critical consciousness about the nature of power within deficit thinking. It will also advance the conference theme related to truth and truth telling from the perspectives of both the colonizer and the colonized.

Author

• Mere Berryman, University of Waikato
  Presenting Author