Bicultural Research and Support Programmes for Maori Students, Teachers and Communities

This paper highlights the importance of majority-culture professionals learning to work in contexts where control over educational research, development and training for indigenous people remains under the control of indigenous people, and is located within culturally preferred practices and settings. We describe work undertaken by our bicultural research whanau at the New Zealand Specialist Education Services Poutama Pounamu Education Research Centre, in Tauranga. We discuss processes and outcomes of research which has been undertaken within a research whanau (metaphoric extended family). Our whanau includes Maori elders, Maori members of the New Zealand Specialist Education Services, Maori teachers, as well as Maori students and a non-Maori academic. To date, our research has focussed on developing and trialing learning and behavioural resources for Maori students, and their teachers and families. We present information from five projects; (1) parent- or peer-delivered Maori and English reading tutoring strategies (Tatari Tautoko Tauawhi); (2) a collaborative parent and teacher programme designed to assist Maori students experiencing behavioural difficulties in school, home and community settings (Hei Awhina Matua); (3) a programme for improving students’ learning to write in Maori (Kia Puawai ai Te Reo); (4) a study of the training needs of itinerant Resource Teachers of Guidance and Learning, so they can assist Maori students experiencing behavioural and learning difficulties in mainstream schools; and (5) Mauri Tau, a programme for young Maori who are parents or are becoming parents. Each of the five projects has generated practical and effective resources for sharing with Maori students, teachers and communities. We now seek to establish networks to enable us to deliver our research findings and materials around New Zealand. We conclude this paper by focussing attention onto some of the important cultural principles which have guided our work, and will continue to do so.