Te Kauhua Māori in Mainstream Pilot Project

Overview of pilot

Background

Māori students in the compulsory schooling sector have historically performed less well than their non-Māori counterparts. This trend continues in Aotearoa/New Zealand in the twenty-first century. Research (Alton-Lee, 2002) reveals that teachers in mainstream schooling contexts have lower expectations of Māori students, fail to effectively identify or reflect on how their practice impacts on the educational experiences of these students, and have limited support to address these particular issues.

There is an urgent need to provide innovative and effective teacher professional development that is both supportive and enabling, to reverse the historical trends of Māori student underachievement. Such initiatives are necessary, if we are to:

• facilitate teacher engagement in processes that clearly identify research based evidence about Māori student retention and success rates in the compulsory sector
• interrupt deficit theorising about the causes of the current statistics
• engage in critically reflective practice and subsequently, trial new approaches to teaching and learning (Shortland-Nuku, 2002).

Over the past three years, the Ministry of Education has instigated a range of initiatives with a specific focus on exploring the experiences of Māori students in mainstream school settings. The Māori Mainstream Pilot Project – Te Kauhua (meaning the supports on a waka and used as a metaphor for participants supporting each other on the same journey) was an example of such a Ministry of Education initiative.

Initiated in 2001, the Te Kauhua Māori in Mainstream Pilot Project provided a number of schools the opportunity to explore, trial, and develop innovative models of professional development that will support teacher effectiveness in addressing the underachievement of Māori learners in mainstream education.

The 'Te Kauhua' pilot was an innovative initiative that addressed teacher professional development in schools. The initiative was facilitated, managed, and evaluated in schools, for and by teachers. In this way the professional development activities were contextualised within individual teacher's practice settings. Higgins (2001) suggests that "school policies and structures, student backgrounds ... teacher's pedagogical styles and associated classroom dynamics and the teachers' knowledge of learners ... are features of such a context" (p 52).

Findings from the Te Kauhua pilot suggest that professional development that is contextualised within practice settings, is a critical success factor in determining teachers' receptivity to modification and development of their practice. It is also a key to ensuring the establishment of inclusive school learning communities, and strong participatory leadership of professional development.

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