PRINCIPIOS METODOLÓGICOS DE LOS PROYECTOS EDUCATIVOS CON

The overwhelming view of Pacific Peoples in the New Zealand education system is one of underachievement. For example, the executive summary of the 2006 report Pasifika Achievement: Engagement and Choice (Harkess, Murray, Parkin, & Dalgety, 2005, p. 4) opens with findings that are supported by other studies (see Wensvoort, 2009; Wensvoort, 2010), that the tertiary enrolments of Pasifika students are significantly lower than other groups, they are less likely than other students to gain secondary school NCEA in a timely fashion, and less likely to gain University entrance at all. While it is also reported that there is some progress being made in terms of the overall

enrollment levels of Pacific Peoples in tertiary level qualifications, despite small gains, they continue to be situated “at the bottom end” in terms of their enrolment numbers and achievement levels (see Wensvoort, 2010).

Other studies support and reinforce the observation of a lack of a place for Pacific

Peoples in New Zealand’s mainstream education system (see, for example, Nakhid, 2003; Nash, 2000). In response to this situation, the government has developed interventions and action plans (Ministry of Education, 2006, 2009) to target areas of the education system in which problems (and their corresponding solutions) are seen to lie. These action plans focus on targeting the areas in which Pacific Peoples are falling behind other groups, such as rates of numeracy and literacy in primary and secondary schools

(Ministry of Education, 2009) and gaining university entrance in NCEA. The aim is to close the gaps between Pacific Peoples and other groups, by bringing them up to the standard of New Zealand Europeans. Education and Pacific Peoples in New Zealand: Pacific Progress 2010 (Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs, 2010) provides a particularly good overview of how Pacific People’s underachievement is perceived in the mainstream education system, a snapshot of which can be explored here.

The report’s executive summary provides an overview of the Early Childhood Education (ECE), Schooling and Tertiary Education sectors. While the summary begins by

acknowledging the importance of Pacific culture to their educational success, it is not presented as being essential and indeed it is seen as an accessory, or as a barrier, rather than an asset. For example, it is stated that “Cultural appropriateness and cultural connections in ECE” are sidelined as being “also very important for Pacific families” rather than being indispensible, and at the core of ECE for Pacific families (Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs, 2010, p. 10).

Although the report acknowledges that “Pacific parents think educational outcomes are the most important outcomes from participating in ECE”, many Pacific ECE services are criticized as they do not “adequately extend children’s thinking or support questioning” (Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs, 2010, p. 10). What seems to be implied is that the cultural inadequacies of Pacific children are brought to the fore as the reason for their underachievement across all levels of schooling.

In contrast, in its comments of Tertiary Education, the report places responsibility on the tertiary institutions rather than on Pacific students for their low participation and

achievement levels. It states “only half of tertiary education organizations reported that they were developing relationships with Pacific communities [in wider society].” Most of these were focused on attracting more Pacific students and few on understanding and addressing the needs and aspirations of the community” (Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs, 2010, p. 12). This is understandable given that New Zealand universities are being subjected to increasingly market driven and competitive funding models, where the needs and aspirations of a community are necessarily of lower priority than gaining student “clients”. This begs the question of why, in a neoliberal environment, should community educational needs and aspirations be the responsibility of a tertiary

institution at all, when the neoliberal structure and philosophy of the education system, its core values and beliefs, promotes the opposite view, that individuals should have autonomy of choice in these matters.

The tensions and contradictions briefly illustrated in this discussion of the Report’s executive summary indicate that the cultures of Pacific Peoples are not perceived as being advantageous, but rather, as being an obstruction to their educational success. In effect, the prevailing perspective on Pacific educational underachievement is one of cultural deficit, a process tantamount to blaming the victim (Valencia, 1997, p. x)11_,

which impacts upon the opportunities available to Pacific Peoples to better understand how their cultural identities can enable them to succeed in mainstream education.

There is some support within Pacific educational research for front line interventions that attempt to create spaces within which Pacific cultural identity can valued and appreciated as a fundamental avenue towards educational success. Benseman, Coxon, Anderson and Anae (2006, p. 147) state that retaining Pacific students within tertiary education institutions is “a function of the interface between student and institution, and the institution and the community”. Supporting academic success through the provision of mentoring (D. Mara & Marsters, 2009), the creation of Pacific educational strategies (Durie, Tu’itahi, & Finau, 2007) or the accommodations made for Pacific peoples within university strategies (Auckland University of Technology, 2008-2010; Victoria

11 _{Richard Valencia discussed deficit thinking, explaining that “the blame for the problem or injury is located –} by the more powerful party – in the individual person, the victim, rather than in the structural problems of the unit…there is a shift of blame from structural defects…to thealleged disregard, faults and carelessness of the parties, who claim exculpation [sic]” (Valencia, 1997, p. x)

University, 2011) and particular projects such as Starpath12 _{are valuable interventions}

that can open up a greater place for Pacific Peoples within the mainstream.

The question of change for Pacific Peoples is more complex, however, than addressing problems through front-line educational services. Considering where it is that the authority (and responsibility) for change is located is essentially to consider issues of agency13 _{– that is, to consider where the power and capacity of a person to effect change}

lies, and the circumstances that aid or prevent this. The issue of Pacific Peoples’ agency in education in New Zealand requires a more in-depth consideration of the historical social and cultural contexts from which their agency and their education are inseparable, than that which are currently provided for in government reports.

12 _{Starpath is a Partnership for Excellence led by The University of Auckland in partnership with the New Zealand} Government. It aims to address New Zealand’s comparatively high rate of educational inequality with Māori and Pacific Island students, and students from low socio-economic backgrounds showing significant rates of

educational under-achievement compared with their peers.

13 _{Agency is described by Anthony Giddens (1984) as being the basic relation between action and power: “To be} able to ‘act otherwise’ means being able to intervene in the world, or to refrain from such intervention, with the effect of influencing a specific process or state of affairs. This presumes that to be an agent is to be able to deploy (chronically, in the flow of daily life) a range of causal powers, including that of influencing those deployed by others. Action depends upon the capability of the individual to ‘make a difference’ to a pre-existing state of affairs or course of events. An agent ceases to be such if he or she loses the capability to ‘make a difference’, that is, to exercise some sort of power”(Giddens, 1984, p. 14).