The need to include indigenous perspectives in curricula is a challenge facing education internationally. In the context of higher education, decolonising practices and processes are the responsibility not just of institutions but also individual academics. Despite individual aspirations to decolonise teaching, it can be difficult to know where to…

Postgraduate research is complex enough, but Indigenous students face unique challenges and additional expectations. For instance, they are often strongly motivated for their tertiary education to support their community's aspirations but distanced from those communities. We are wahine (women) Maori researchers working to restore various local,…

In Aotearoa New Zealand, significant health inequities persist between Maori (the Indigenous people) and non-Maori. These ethnic-based inequities are intrinsically linked to Aotearoa New Zealand's colonial and colonising racist history. Decolonising health systems imbued with racist ideology, and mitigating inequities, is foundational to improving…

Current research into, and definitions of, historical literacy do not adequately acknowledge the cultural backgrounds of indigenous learners across the historical disciplines and levels. Nor do they recognise the vital role of historical literacy in empowering indigenous students. In conversations with teachers of a range of ethnicities and Maori…

Despite increasing representation in higher education, Maori leaders are still seeking to overcome historical inequities and racial discrimination. This study investigates the circumstances of Maori leadership in higher education from a strength-based standpoint, highlighting the critical role Maori academics fulfil in senior leadership positions…

This study investigates Maori (Indigenous people of New Zealand) and Pacific (people living in New Zealand who identify with Pacific Islands heritage) student success in Psychology at The University of Auckland, casting a net around the barriers and facilitators of academic learning to better understand and delineate pathways to transform the…

How are Pacific students redesigning their own learning environments, in response to the cultural distance between Western tertiary education and their needs as Indigenous people? This study explores how Pacific students are applying their cultural values within tertiary learning spaces in which teachers are absent, disrupting educational…

Higher education in Aotearoa New Zealand -- we have a problem. Maori and Pasifika academics are not given time to talk together about Maori and Pasifika student success. Often framed by 'the academy' from a deficit position, initiatives to address the 'problem' of Maori student and Pasifika student success is often ad hoc and disconnected, rarely…

University student perceptions of effective teaching have been explored in previous studies, however, research is lacking regarding how perceptions of teaching efficacy vary by ethnicity and programme of study. In this study, student perceptions of effective teaching are explored between STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and…

As a collective, we reflect on how COVID-19 has impacted Indigenous students at a personal, institutional and national level in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific.

Higher education (HE) research often draws on a range of qualitative research approaches. However, some methods developed in other fields are underutilised in HE research, even though they could be of great use for answering particular kinds of research questions, or for involving students more actively in the research process. In this article, we…

Limited attention has been paid to the experiences of Pacific Early Career Academics (PECA) in utilising their culture-specific systems of knowledge in their pedagogical practice. As a cross-section of PECA employed in a variety of disciplines and faculties, we explore how our Pacific identities infuse our pedagogical approaches in a way that…

Recent provocations by Maori and Pacific/Pasifika academics have called for a collective response to the under-representation of Pacific/Pasifika academics in universities across Aotearoa New Zealand. Drawing from Indigenous concepts and frameworks foregrounds Pacific language and ideas as being central to our worldviews and validates the lived…

There is growing awareness of a mental health 'crisis' among graduate students [Evans, T. M., Bira, L., Gastelum, J. B., Weiss, L. T., & Vanderford, N. L. (2018). Evidence for a mental health crisis in graduate education. Nature Biotechnology, 36(3), 282-284. doi:10.1038/nbt.4089]. Despite a paucity of research exploring potential differences…

Indigenous academics are often faced with a balancing act between the danger and risk of critiquing the institutions within which they reside, and the duty or obligation they feel to do so. As Indigenous Maori academics located within three different business schools across Aotearoa New Zealand, our work in both research and teaching is often…