Ethnographic Edge (E-Journal)
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TE VAKA POKAIKAI – Voyage to excellence
Full text linkSecondary school teaching is a profession that requires critical reflexivity to bring about change for marginalized communities. Fortunately, this is something we as Pasifika/Pacific leaders often do, with the intent to improve education outcomes for the students we teach, especially the Pasifika/Pacific students we have stewardship over. Everything we have done and continue to do at Tokoroa High School and in our community is intentional. We are intentional in our planning, conversations, and actions. In this paper we intentionally prioritise the use of our own cultural knowledge, values, and practices to enable change; shifting direction towards Cook Islands-inspired patu tuatua (conversations) within the western education system we work within, in Aotearoa-NZ. We often draw from our ancestral knowledge through sources that are not published in western academia but are deeply embedded in our ancestral knowledge systems tied explicitly to our ‘enua - land. Our positioning of patu tuatua stems from being inspired by Indigenous Pasifika/Pacific practices and finding the courage to develop a cultural framework that connects with Cook Islands worldviews from and within the context of education. Our cultural framework – Te Vaka Pokaikai is based on five key components: Orama – vision; Kite – knowledge; Itiki’anga – connections; Piri’anga – relationships; and Te Au Irinaki’anga – values
Conflicts and tensions in dual roles: Conducting research in a non-clinical mental health recovery organisation
Full text linkThose living with mental illness have benefitted from non-clinical recovery organisations, such as the Clubhouse Model of Psychosocial Rehabilitation. Research conducted for a Clubhouse brings many benefits to it. However, the model is governed by cultural practices. These practices create beliefs that influence the conduct of the research despite the benefits it can bring. This autoethnographic account is about my involvement as a member and researcher within a Clubhouse. How cultural practices and beliefs influenced the research is detailed from observation notes and memory work. The conflicts and tensions I experienced were shaped by such cultural factors. This account concludes with reflections on how I felt about the events. It advises other ethnographers to research the mental illness field before attempting a project in it
The equity I see is different for you and me
Full text linkIn our positions as Māori and Pasifika wāhine educators, Matalena Tuiloma (Samoan, Tuvaluan) and Kay-Lee Jones (Te Whānau a Kai, Te Aitanga a Māhaki, Ngāti Porou), we have a range of roles in supporting our families and communities, as well as our work within the education system. These roles can seem, at times, all consuming, yet our sense of purpose towards betterment for our peoples is at the heart of what we do. Pūrākau (storytelling) and talanoa (conversation, sharing of ideas) were the methods used to express our journeys as Māori and Pasifika wāhine navigating the Aotearoa New Zealand education system. We are mothers, teachers and past students. We advocate for equitable outcomes for our ākonga (students) and their families, which often entails being the Māori or Pasifika representative in a range of spheres. What we prioritise and deem important as Māori or Pasifika female educators is often quite different to many of our non-Māori or non-Pasifika counterparts
Shifting the System: Battling uncertainties and activating agentic school leadership practices: Editorial
Full text linkWalking between worlds: Critical reflections on navigating and negotiating change for Pacific within secondary schools in Aotearoa
Full text linkSchools in Aotearoa New Zealand often find it challenging to align Pacific value systems with their own forms of leadership and culture. The education system is being asked to shift its practice when it comes to Pacific learners, families and communities, including the Pacific teaching workforce. This paper aims to offer reflections from two Pacific education leaders who have recently left their schools and are currently working in different areas of the education sector in Aotearoa New Zealand. Specifically, it seeks to outline our experiences, while offering thoughts derived from Pacific epistemologies. Challenging and disrupting the western model that is currently the foundation of how schools operate in this country is critical, particularly as we work to support Pacific teachers and students. As two Cook Islands teachers and researchers located in Waitaha, Canterbury, we have sought to live these shifts in our contexts, focusing on building teacher capacity and changing approaches within the pastoral care system
Telling tales on the tail: One school’s journey towards cultural responsiveness
Full text linkPasifika peoples have long been tellers of tales. It is one of the ways our knowledge and wisdom is passed down from generation to generation. When it comes to the education of Pasifika students in Aotearoa, our tale is often defined by a tail of another sort – ‘the long brown tail’ of underachievement. The ‘tail’ is a reference to how Pacific Islands’ students are over-represented in the bottom of educational statistics in Aotearoa. My masters research completed in 2015 gave voice to the lived experiences of students from above the tail, and in particular gave voice to what they perceived as effective teacher actions and dispositions. Effective teachers nurtured students’ academic and cultural identities and as such were considered culturally responsive. Of particular significance was the manner in which culturally responsive teachers increased their influence on student engagement and achievement. These teachers operated from a strong sense of agency and on a foundational belief that their students also had agency in teaching and learning. Participants did encounter culturally responsive teachers, but it was the exception and not the rule.
This article is a reflection on the findings of the ‘tales from above the tail’ and leading our school journey towards a culturally responsive curriculum and pedagogy. There have been significant culture shifts in the organisation to position our school and teaching staff to deliver a curriculum that is responsive to the identities of our local community. The work towards making cultural responsiveness the rule is definitely a journey. The challenge is to continually question our own deeply seated colonised thinking to give freedom to indigenising what and how we teach.  
The journey: Leadership through relationships
Full text linkWhen we battle through adversity and uncertainties such as Covid, a Pacific lens brings cultural responsiveness where resilience, determination, and grit is evident. The power in ‘talanoa’ and ‘whanaungatanga’ is the driver for deliberate and intentional acts to ‘shifting the system’. A vision of ‘Equity and Excellence’ is achievable when we understand ‘what we do’ and ‘why we do it’ as opposed to ‘what we say’. My talanoa in this article highlights my journey as a Principal in South Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand and how I have drawn on my family and ancestral dispositions to ‘walk the talk’. Importantly, I discuss how my cultural heritage and values empower and influence my leadership as a Pacific Principal in shifting the system
Understanding the performativity of COVID-19: An autoethnography of lockdown experiences in China and the UK
Full text linkSince the COVID-19 outbreak in January 2020, the pandemic has been changing rapidly with shifting social norms. This autoethnography of my lockdown experiences in China and the UK in 2020 illustrates how I adjusted my daily acts to the shifting social norms in different situations and how these adjustments changed me as a self-regulated subject and reshaped my understanding of COVID-19. Drawing on Butler’s theory of performativity, I analyse how acts of self-protection created a physical relationship between my embodied subject self and COVID-19. As these acts kept changing with shifting norms, this relationship was constantly redefined, constituting a fluid subject status in close relation to an equally fluid concept of COVID-19. This study suggests a two-fold performativity of COVID-19: 1) the subject self in the pandemic, 2) the dimension of COVID-19 as a social construct. Both are performatively constructed as individuals practice regulatory norms through repetitive acts in concrete social contexts
El Witral, Como Objeto Estético Cultural: Contribución a La Decolonización De La Educación Artística.
Full text linkEsta investigación titulada “Estrategias didácticas del Witral desde una perspectiva decolonial para profesoras de artes visuales”, promueve la reflexividad intercultural crítica, para avanzar en la decolonización de los saberes en Chile. Para ello, se empleó un objeto estético cultural con carga simbólica del pueblo originario mapuche, denominado Witral (telar). Se intencionó la reflexividad en las prácticas a partir de las lógicas de ausencia, lo que permitió decolonizar la propia práctica desde una orientación deconstructiva. Se evidenció como la hegemonía cultural inivisibiliza manifestaciones culturales y comprensiones de mundo de los pueblos originarios. Se presenta un caso y ejemplos de sus discursos y bitácoras, como evidencia que la decolonización de las prácticas y pensamientos son una tarea diaria de reconstrucción y reflexión. En este diálogo genuino se ponen en juego creencias y valoraciones que responden a lógicas de invisibilización, negación y aniquilación, del otro y su cultura. Constituye un imperativo que profesoras y profesores realicen un proceso de reflexividad para avanzar hacia una mayor justicia social, con reconocimiento de la diversidad cultural y transformación de prácticas, que consideren la educación como un derecho de todos los pueblos
Polyfest–Polysuccess: Collaborative critical autoethnographic reflections of Pacific cultural festivals and the success of Pacific students in Aotearoa New Zealand
Full text linkThis paper connects the collaborative critical autoethnographic (CCAE) reflections of three authors who story and examine their own personal experiences of being part of the organising bodies for secondary school Polyfests across Aotearoa, New Zealand: the ASB Polyfest in Auckland, HuttFest in Lower Hutt and the Canterbury Polyfest in Christchurch. We contend, the Polyfest experience provides a platform for Pacific students to develop and share cultural expertise, exhibit pride in their cultural identities and cultivate leadership skills. As critical spaces and sites of cultural knowledge generation and sharing, communication, and innovation, the three aforementioned polyfests highlight the vibrant nature of Pacific flourishing in Aotearoa New Zealand, which can strengthen educators’ and schools’ appreciation of what matters and is deemed as success in the eyes and stories of Pacific/Pasifika people themselves. When used by teachers and schools for active education, Polyfest as a critical entity and site can provide a lever that encourages Pacific students to engage positively with school and experience improved academic success