Running the Gauntlet: A Gifted Māori Learner's Journey Through Secondary School
Teacher attitudes that disadvantage gifted Māori students
Perhaps the most damaging assault the gifted Māori learner has to face is from negative teacher attitudes in general and low teacher expectation in particular.
The first story to illustrate this concerns a 15-year-old Māori girl who came home from her first 6th form chemistry class to declare to her mother:
It was awful. I'm the only Māori in the class and right through the lesson Mr. X kept staring at me and asking, "Now do you understand this and do you understand that?" I was the only one he asked and then to make things worse, he said we have to buy a chemistry workbook and that it was expensive $40. Then he looked straight at me and said, "but you can pay it off a dollar a week". I felt so shamed!
The chemistry teacher was new to the school. He did not know that the girl in question had received a very high mark for School Certificate science and that her parents earned considerably more than he did!
The second story appeared in Issue 17 of Kokiri Paetae under the heading of "Teacher's put-down proves an inspiration for scholarship winner". After achieving well at college, completing two degrees and establishing a successful career in a leading law firm, Russell Karu won a Fullbright Scholarship and a $55,000 grant to attend Harvard University for post graduate study.
All this from someone who was told by one of his teachers in fourth form to forget about being a lawyer. "I was told to forget about it as a career. I think they saw a boy from a lower working class Māori family, who at best would end up as a labourer", (1998, p. l3).
I don't know whether the remark from Russell's teacher was intended as reverse psychology (I suspect not!) and although it worked for Russell, I do not recommend it as a technique to motivate gifted Māori learners!
The last story was told to me by a mother who rang an 0800 number I had provided for parents of children with special needs to share their experiences with me. Her son was diagnosed as having ADHD. He is at college now but when he was in standard 1 the mother went to see his teacher as she was really concerned about his lack of progress in reading. The teacher told her, "Don't worry. X is actually above average for a Māori child." The mother said the teacher was not concerned about her son's lack of academic progress but his behaviour was always being complained about. Her son is, in fact, a bright boy. Since that incident in standard 1 he has been suspended four times.
I know this story relates to primary school and this is a conference for secondary school teachers but I included it to show you that some gifted Māori learners have been running the gauntlet of low teacher expectation for a very long time.
A further point that should be made is that low teacher expectation is not confined to Pākehā teachers. Unfortunately I have many examples, particularly at secondary school level, of Māori teachers giving Māori students negative messages.
At this stage you may be asking, do these low teacher-expectations really have any effect on a learner's self concept and level of achievement? There is substantial, world-wide research confirming that it does. The classic research is Rosenthal and Jacobson's study, Pygmalion in the Classroom (1968). Fifteen years later Cooper and Good in Pygmalion Grows Up looked at the results of hundreds of studies on "expectancy effects" and they clearly showed that where teachers had genuine high or low expectations of their students, these expectations affected their behaviour towards the students. It also affected the way students felt about themselves and their levels of achievement. Caroline Persell sums it up.
When teachers hold definite expectations and when those expectations are reflected in their behaviour toward children, these expectations are related to student cognitive changes, even when pupil and achievement are controlled. Moreover, negative expectations, which can be observed only in natural settings because it is unethical to induce negative expectations experimentally, appear to have even more powerful consequences than do positive expectation. Moreover, socially vulnerable children (ie younger, lower-class and minority children) seem to be more susceptible to lower teacher expectations (1997, pp. 98–99).
The discussion in this section has concentrated on low teacher expectation and its effects but there are many other negative teacher attitudes that adversely affect the progress of gifted Māori students. We do not have time to discuss all these today but I am going to share with you a few research quotes from principals, teachers, and teacher aides. I would like you to reflect on the effect these attitudes may have on Māori students.
All Māori and Polynesian students should have extra English everyday basic grammar and oral work ... Māori and Pacific Island students should look at sitting external exams in their fourth year not third year – an extra year's tuition. It's a language thing ... they lack life experiences eg mountains, Orana Park – they haven't been there so this needs to be explained, pictures shown etc.
Māori children have scored with stanines less than their Pākehā peers in SATs because they come from families with no formal school education success therefore they're not concerned whether their children do reading at home or not.
There is a high use of drugs prevalent in Māori families. This affects children's behaviour ... It is difficult to get parents on board because they lack parenting skills ... the problems at school are a result of inadequate parenting and dysfunctional families in the first five years of life.
I regard them all as children. The only difference is that Māori children do not get a lot of support from their home so the staff have to give Māori children more to compensate for that.
I'm sensitive to their racial things they would do for example a job in the IEP is to help with eating. My way would be to use a knife and fork but maybe they are not expected to do that at home.
They don't want to be consulted (Māori). If things go well you never see them, but if things go wrong they're on your door.
I am not denying that there are Māori students who are disadvantaged by their home circumstances – just as there are Pākehā students in this situation. However these quotes demonstrate a level of generalisation and stereotyping that is unwarranted, unfair, and prejudicial.