254710 Ruia taitea: Transforming Education

As a primary school teacher for 22 years, I have seen three iterations of curriculum documents. This week, I have delved into the curriculum documents that have existed in my teaching years and how they have addressed or upheld Te Tiriti o Waitangi.  In 2003, my first year of teaching, instruction relied heavily on different coloured curriculum books, as the NZ Curriculum Framework was not yet gazetted. While these documents acknowledged the Treaty of Waitangi, they lacked critical analysis. Furthermore, resources addressing Māori education were grouped alongside gender, special needs, and ESOL, potentially marginalizing Māori as a "special case" rather than recognizing their status as tangata whenua. Though the Social Studies curriculum (MOE, 1997) mentioned the Treaty and encouraged iwi consultation, its discussion of colonization's effects (pg. 23) omitted any mention of inequalities or marginalization. The 2007 New Zealand Curriculum, finally gazetted, incorporated bo...

Week 4 - He Whakaputanga and Te Tiriti Oh my goodness, what a theme for the week: ‘ When cultures collide .’ I am Māori. I am proud to be Māori! I have questioned my entire life, am I Māori enough? I have also wondered about others' perceptions of me calling myself Māori. I grew up Te Ao Pakeha, have an Irish surname, and appear with a rather pale complexion. According to my lens, I don’t look Māori. I did not learn about Te Ao Māori: my culture, identity or language until I was in my early 30’s. So, engaging in this week's learning where I walk in both worlds has been overwhelming to say the least! For many years, I have heard several different narratives around the Treaty of Waitangi. Until only a few years ago, I have used the English name for this context because these dominant narratives serve the dominant culture of Aotearoa - Pākeha. One being that Māori just didn't understand what they were signing and that was essentially a "them" problem. Another being t...

Last year I attended a block course in Auckland for part of my MST training. We had a session facilitated by Louise Fitzgerald who was completing her PHD with a research lens on teaching for social justice which in essence, is about connecting the social sciences into mathematics. This teaching approach is about allowing your students time and an opportunity to see how issues and problems within their communities came to be, rather than reinforcing stereotypes for example, such as racial discrimination. After allowing your students time to consider these issues and problems, mathematizing the issue and engaging in mathematical modelling can be a beginning point for taking further action with these community-based problems.  When I relate this pedagogical approach to my own educational story, and my recent learnings of narrative identity, power, marginalized groups and conscientization, I remind myself about the vast and varied toolkit that teachers need to have. If my students are ...

As Freire (1974) describes, there are three levels of consciousness. The first is magical consciousness, where we accept our lives as we see them in our immediate vicinity and are unaware of the wider socio-economic complications or contradictions. I can relate this to my own narrative. I grew up in a happy and content household: Mum, Dad, and three children living rurally on a farm. My backyard was my playground, a place of happiness and exploration. We had everything we needed: love, shelter, educational opportunities, and protection. This was my daily experience, and I believed everyone also shared this luxury. Through my magical consciousness, I constructed a view of not only my world but the wider world as being the same as what I had encountered. This stage of magical consciousness persisted for a long time, even through university, until I took my first teaching job in a small rural school in Northern Hawke’s Bay. My eyes were abruptly and unapologetically opened. I remember my ...