Ethnographic Edge (E-Journal)
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Tauhivā ako: Engaging Indigenous relationality in school leadership
Full text linkMy article privilege Indigenous relationality within the context of school leadership in Aotearoa. The Pacific concepts of vā, tauhivā and vātamaki are engaged as cultural alternatives to shifting the school system in Aotearoa. School leaders who engage cultural relational approaches in their practice are responsive to raising student outcomes for all students. In order to shift systems of domination and oppression, we must look within the source of Indigenous knowledge systems for solutions and strength to advance Indigenous concerns. My article is a personal and tauhivā reflection of a Tongan school leader who constantly navigates harmonious and disharmonious relations in their practice. It may be useful in thinking about how a cultural approach to leadership through relationality can enhance the theoretical and practical application of leadership practice in schools
Collective Indigenous approaches to centring Pacific voices of leadership for our futures
Full text linkEducation systems in western nations are often built on a long history of centralising the western canon of knowledge and colonial norms. These norms are perpetuated and reinforced via western research which amplifies the voices of the dominant, while working to silence the values, practices, and knowledges of minority groups. As a colonial nation, Aotearoa New Zealand continues to be impacted by its colonial histories, where colonial (read white) ways of being, knowing, and understanding dominate initial teacher education, schools, tertiary institutions, research, and our everyday lives. However, within education and research more generally, Indigenous and Pacific researchers and practitioners have been working hard to carve out space in institutions to challenge colonial hierarchies of knowledge and make space for Indigenous ways of being, knowing, seeing, doing, and feeling. This article contributes to the work being done by Indigenous and Pacific scholars in Aotearoa New Zealand by detailing our collective, relational approach to convening the special issue of Shifting the System for the Ethnographic Edge journal. Convening a special issue is not unique and groups of academics do it regularly across a range of academic journals and fields. However, our experiences of convening this special issue were quite different. Here we share the journey and reflect on how our focus on privileging the often-marginalised voices of Pacific school leaders was underpinned by an Indigenous, collective approach embedded in the pedagogical practice of Indigenous Storywork. Employing collaborative critical autoethnography, we articulate the ways in which our engagement with each other and the authors within this special issue disrupted western power relations often present in interactions between ‘researchers’ within the university and ‘practitioners’ at the coalface. Furthermore, we demonstrate how engaging in relational practices builds a space that encourages the principles of respect, responsibility, reverence, reciprocity, holism, interrelatedness, and synergy
5 W’s and 1H: A reflection on educational leadership through my Pasifika lens
Full text linkThere is a need for greater implementation of culturally aligned leadership in Aotearoa New Zealand. Classrooms in Aotearoa New Zealand have a range of students from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds; therefore, principles of leadership need to be culturally responsive. School charters need to reflect their diverse community and needs, in particular the needs of Tangata Whenua. As educators leading inquiry in our classrooms, we often use the structural framework of what, why, when, where, who and how to explore a topic and gain knowledge. In this manuscript I employ this same framework as a means of inquiring into my own practice as an educator and the experiences that have shaped my own journey to where I am now, as a tumuaki (principal) in Aotearoa, or a Pasifika school principal. Through the process of self-reflection, this article shares my journey as I navigated the space as a tumuaki in Aotearoa, outlining my own experience of culturally aligned leadership and how this influences my leadership as a Pacific principal
Effective teaching for Pasifika learners – know me, teach me!
Full text linkSome Pacific learners are achieving very well in both primary and secondary schooling, but the system is failing many Pacific learners. An area that requires further development, therefore, within the New Zealand education system is for education to be more responsive to the diversity of its learners. That said, for teaching to be effective, teacher practice and pedagogy must be responsive to all learners. This article serves to explore what effective teaching for Pasifika learners looks like using three policy documents to analyse the journey. Employing discourse analysis, I examine the complexities of the policy documents and its nuances regarding Pasifika learners
Crisis Curriculum: Poetic Ethnography Through Crisis, Coping and Community
Full text linkIn the face of the pandemic, Temple University rushed to transition to online or remote-learning. As faculty quickly adjusted their classes to accommodate these unprecedented changes, many of us quickly realized that our students’ needs, likewise, shifted drastically. In response to this new reality, I developed a crisis curriculum that drew upon the best of ethnographic methods coupled with digital technology to turn the gaze on the Poetic Ethnography students themselves and capture a unique look of the COVID-19 crisis
Te Whakatara! – Tangihanga and bereavement COVID-19
Full text linkNew Zealand responded swiftly to the Covid-19 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) to prevent the spread of sickness and prevent unnecessary deaths. The government initiated a four-level social distancing alert system with specified measures at each level to manage and minimise the risk of COVID-19. By late March 2020, Alert Level 4 required people to stay in their homes in their ‘bubbles’ or family units. Social contact was restricted other than for essential personal movement and travel was severely limited. The Ministry of Health (2020) produced tangihanga (funeral rituals) policy guidelines for Māori, requiring the immediate collection of the deceased’s body by a funeral director. Gatherings to do with death and post-death customs were severely restricted and all marae (indigenous gathering places, land, buildings) were closed and burials could only include the immediate family bubble. In this autoethnographic paper, we draw on one Māori family’s experience of the birth and death of a baby with an anticipated life-limiting illness, during the most restrictive lockdown phase, level 4. We describe the impact COVID-19 tangihanga policy restrictions had on the family. The guidelines prevented them from conducting timely customary internment rituals with support from kaumātua (older men and women) and whānau (family including extended family and friends) in accordance with their cultural preferences. To prepare for future pandemics we recommend mana whenua (local Māori who have authority over their lands and marae) have autonomy to plan and manage tangihanga to avoid unnecessary distress, particularly where there is a known palliative condition
Cartography of evidence, ethics and engagement: Researcher decisions in (re)presentation
Full text linkA novice researcher may anticipate that on completion of gathering evidence, the decision-making involved in a project might become more straightforward. Typically, ethics committees and review boards have asked researchers to look ahead in consideration of research design and conduct to the gathering of evidence. However, decisions about representation and presentation of research contain further challenges and tensions. There are researcher decisions in determining what to say, how to say it and to whom. In the field of qualitative inquiry, there are multiple and increasing (re)presentational options and recognition of diverse standpoint epistemologies with implications for these researcher decisions. The core of this article is a written script or ethnodrama, the presentation of research in the form of a play. The dialogue in this play originates from questions, information and reflections recorded in my journals during one project and related to decisions of representation and presentation of research for audiences
Action sports lovers locked down due to COVID – 19
Full text linkWhat is it like for a family of skiers, mountain bikers, climbers, and outdoor lovers to experience a quarantine? Not being able to move in nature gradually led us to think about freedom, the possibility of decision-making, civil society, solidarity, and at the end to the democracy in the Czech Republic. Our experience of Covid-19 quarantine turned from a small social experiment into a dragging confrontation with the wobbliness of the fundamental pillars of democracy in our country. The isolation itself couldn’t go separately from reflecting on the social and political context. With some 7000 cases we may have won the battle against the spreading of the virus. We may count significant losses in the war against the strengthening anti democratic trends in the post communist region. Therefore this text is personally reflective as well as it becomes political in places where the two aspects meet
Black women as compost: An autoethnographic cantata
Full text linkThis performative autoethnography is a restorying of my Black girlhood/Black womanhood journey. The format incorporates Black aesthetics through poetic and musical representations, while inviting the reader to make meaning for themselves. This autoethnographic cantata is a call to Black women everywhere to sing their own melodies and to compose their own songs from girlhood to womanhood. The lack of intext citations is also a purposeful call for readers to connect this work within their own disciplinary contexts and knowledge bases. It is written to be spoken or sung aloud, alone or in groups