Hanau ka 'aina, hanau ke ali'i, hanau ke kanaka. This 'olelo no'eau is a Hawaiian proverb that means the land, the chiefs, and the people belong together. This translation suggests that the land and people of Hawai'i are interconnected, both enacting collective values that shape and sustain the other through language and cultural practices. As the…

What would an educational system centered on core Hawaiian values look like? The Office of Hawaiian Education, established by the Hawai'i Department of Education (HIDOE) in 2015, has been exploring this question through a community-based process that differs significantly from typical Western approaches to policymaking. Often, policymakers use a…

A comprehensive inquiry about the experiences of Pacific-Islander students in higher education is sorely wanting. This study uncovered cultural predilections of Pacific-Islander students from the American-affiliated Pacific region related to their experiences in a Western setting. The University of Hawaii at Hilo (UH Hilo) serves as the backdrop…

Central to this study is an exploration of the degree to which higher education is perceived as an individual and/or a collective value. Seminal literature supports the notion that colleges and universities are Western institutions. Throughout the Asia Pacific, higher education is expanding in a hybrid form in collectivist societies. This…

Students attending a Native Hawaiian-serving institution read statements from two hypothetical job candidates. The passages had equivalent meaning, but one incorporated Hawaiian leadership values (HLV) without identifying them as such. Participants judged the HLV candidate to have lower credibility, rationality, and effectiveness, and preferred…

Background: Escalation of youth violence within a large geographic school-complex area in southeastern rural Hawaii became a major problem in 2006. How cultural forces impact the problem was an impetus to examine youth violence from perspectives of adults and children in rural communities. Gathering these data was an essential first step toward…

This qualitative study examined how Native Hawai'ian youths from rural communities utilized cultural practices to promote drug resistance and/or abstinence. Forty-seven students from five different middle schools participated in gender-specific focus groups that focused on the cultural and environmental contexts of drug use for Native Hawai'ian…

Service learning is an effective instructional strategy in preservice teacher education programs for engaging students more actively in the learning process. In spite of the extensive studies on service learning in teacher education programs and courses, few studies are devoted to investigating the implementation of service learning in special…

This article presents findings from research to develop the promotional component of a breast cancer screening program for Native Hawaiian women associated with historically Hawaiian churches in medically underserved communities. The literature on adherence to health recommendations and health promotions marketing guided inquiry on screening…

This study investigated the ways in which family members of students in a Hawaiian language immersion program were involved in their children's education and identified the effects of and barriers to involvement. A sociocultural theoretical approach and Epstein's framework of different types of involvement were applied. Participants included 35…