Kete 3: Considering the teacher's role
The role of education
Explore the following content. While colonisation has constructed Māori largely in deficit terms, what is the potential of education and educators to restore a more equitable power dynamic?
Visit this online area
In the Poutama Pounamu website, find the Student Voice section and familiarise yourself with its five subsections. These students self-identified as having enjoyed and achieved education success as Māori. They will likely be on their way to tertiary study.
Open the Understanding the Implications subsection and read the background, process and analysis sections.
Then explore the section Student Voices collated in themes and see what students had to say about their experiences, and what schools and teachers can do to enhance that experience.
Look particularly at the first theme Being able to resist the negative stereotypes about being Māori and answer the questions below.
Read this report
It is also important to understand what effective learning looks like for those who continue on into tertiary study.
A recent report - Kaikaikaroro - Enhancing Student Success - the Learnings from Wānanga (Simmonds, 2021) - helps us to understand this from the perspective of Māori students “where the importance of connection to one another, one’s own identity, or whakapapa, and the wider communities supports the notion of a learning journey focussed on the collective rather than the individual.” (Simmonds, 2021, p.6).
In particular look at the Executive Summary and Main Findings.
Look at these videos
Within the Resources section of the Poutama Pounamu website, find the Deliberate Acts of Teaching and Realising Academic Potential videos. (They are videos 3 and 4 in the Cultural Relationships for Responsive Pedagogy kete.)
Watch this video: Responding to Potential
In this video, a school evolves practices, pedagogy and curriculum so that students have ownership in the process of developing personal confidence and capability.