Establishing positive learning communities in classrooms where pedagogies are socially
and culturally responsive and centred on shared life experiences is critical for the
revitalisation of minoritised languages such as Irish and Māori, which lack the
dominance and power of the wider languages of government and communication.
Transformative pedagogy and pedagogical re-positioning of teachers are essential to
legitimising and affirming minoritised languages in the classroom. Three small-scale
New Zealand studies of emerging literacy in Māori are introduced, exemplifying a
responsive and transformative pedagogy that enables teachers to position themselves as
socially and culturally responsive participants within classroom contexts. These studies
offer strategies that might facilitate the development of similar transformative pedagogy
in Irish contexts also.
