In the face of land confiscations and other forms of imperialism characteristic of the 19th century in Aotearoa/New Zealand, the second Maori King Tawhiao devised a number of sayings that seem at first glance to be entirely mythical. Highly metaphorical and poetic, they appear to refer, as Bakhtin would have it in his discussion of the epic, to a…

This paper explores the nature of postgraduate research in the broad area of Pacific education completed in New Zealand universities. First, a number of basic trends are identified in terms of institutional affiliation, area of educational research, MA and PhD balance, growth over time, national/ethnic focus and the expected beneficiaries of the…

This paper considers the relationship between a professional development programme designed to bring about changes in teacher practice through iterative cycles of implementation and evaluation and associated changes in Indigenous students' educational performance. The paper does this by documenting the outcomes of the implementation of the Te…

Educational disparities between indigenous Maori students and those of the majority continue to be a major issue in New Zealand. Te Kotahitanga, an iterative research and development programme, which commenced in 2001, supports teachers to implement a relationship-based pedagogy in their classrooms in order to improve Maori students' achievement…

This second research paper on science education in Maori-medium school contexts complements an earlier article published in this journal (Stewart, 2005). Science and science education are related domains in society and in state schooling in which there have always been particularly large discrepancies in participation and achievement by Maori. In…

Te Kotahitanga is a research and professional development project that aims to support teachers to raise the achievement of New Zealand's indigenous Maori students in public/mainstream classrooms. An Effective Teaching Profile, developed from the voices of Maori students, their families, principals and some of their teachers, provides direction…