Pacific education is an area of priority in Aotearoa New Zealand. It involves the teaching of Pacific students by a workforce that is largely of European origin. Pacific communities value education and have the capability to contribute to the understandings of teachers as they seek to provide the kinds of service that communities want to see. This…

Many theories support the idea that children's literacy learning develops as they learn to make meaning through interactions with others. These assertions are premised on the understanding that childhood literacy serves various social purposes and that these literacies are learned through participating in social contexts. In this position paper,…

Maori aspirations in education have not been served by past national policies. It is hard to extinguish the influence of monoculturalism, whereby schools were used to colonise Maori by enforcing linguistic and cultural assimilation. The history of debate on Innovative Learning Environments (ILE) and Flexible Learning Spaces (FLS) demonstrates the…

From 2022, New Zealand schools are teaching a new compulsory history curriculum that aims to teach diverse New Zealand histories, while foregrounding the centrality of Maori histories and the impacts of colonisation. The new curriculum will upend a long history of 'forgetting' the nation's contentious and conflictual past, and in particular the…

'Indigenous inclusion' has been the most common approach to Maori engagement in university education in Aotearoa-New Zealand. Increasingly, another orientation, based on different premises, which might be called 'indigenisation', is becoming evident. We argue that indigenisation offers more hopeful possibilities for New Zealand universities as…

Educational psychology remains constricted by Westernised science's universalising views. The teaching about emotions and their expression is a critical element at the core of educational psychology, but the underpinning ontology and theories appear to be largely unexamined. The importance of educational psychology was highlighted by the COVID-19…

There is a conflict between the claims of Maori sovereignty and the imposition of State legislation on Maori children. This conflict of interest has been given very little consideration in the public sphere. This research-informed article speculates that despite legislation ensuring that education attendance is fixed as a legal obligation for all…

In this article, we focus on how Pacific family support places success of individuals within a wider narrative of intergenerational family stories, contributing to successful futures for the participating Pacific youth and their families. Guided by Pacific research principles, we used interviews with families and adolescents to explore the role of…

A relational approach focusses on connections between things, assuming that all things exist in relatedness. In this article, attention is given to the relationship between innovative learning environments (ILE) as described in literature, and elements of the field of Pacific education. In order to investigate this relationship, I take a layered…

Transforming practices in initial teacher education and school and early childhood education contexts to support the success of Pasifika students and children can be challenging. Palagi educators, in particular, may find their practices are constrained by bureaucratic systems, processes and professional norms in ways that limit thinking about and…

Marginalised and ousted from the New Zealand education system, 70% of youths apprehended for offending and appearing in a New Zealand Youth Court or Rangatahi Court experiencing complex needs are not engaged in education, employment, or training (Oranga Tamariki, Oranga Tamariki. (2020). Quarterly report - September 2020). This article reports…

The study was a pilot intervention to develop Year 5-8 students' close reading and writing of literary texts using the T-Shape Literacy Model (Wilson and Jesson in Set Res Inf Teach 1:15-22, 2019). Students analysed text sets to explore how different authors use language to engender mood and atmosphere. The study used a single-subject design logic…

Learning stories have been used in Aotearoa New Zealand early learning settings for over two decades to capture children's learning while honouring the intent of "Te Whariki" to nurture children's languages, cultures, and identities. This article provides a brief overview of a listening, dialogic investigation into ways the community of…

Te Whariki, the first bicultural early childhood education curriculum in Aotearoa New Zealand, gained national and international attention. While there was widespread acceptance of its bicultural intent, Te Whariki was not well understood and implemented as a bicultural curriculum. Early childhood education teachers lacked confidence and struggled…

This paper describes the background, methods and key findings from a research project conducted in one Kahui Ako (Community of Learning) in a city in New Zealand. All 12 schools had significant numbers of Indigenous Maori students whose iwi (tribal) ancestry connected to the region over centuries. Using a mixed methods approach, the study…