Te Kotahitanga: Addressing educational disparities facing Māori students in New Zealand

Abstract

The major challenges facing education in New Zealand today are the continuing social, economic and political disparities within our nation, primarily between the descendants of the European colonisers and the Indigenous Māori people. These disparities are also reflected in educational outcomes. In this paper, an Indigenous Māori Peoples' solution to the problems of educational disparities is detailed. Te Kotahitanga is a research and professional development project that seeks to improve the educational achievement of Māori students in mainstream secondary schools. Students ‘voices’ were used to inform the development of the project in a variety of ways: firstly to identify various discursive positions related to Māori student learning; secondly, to develop professional development activities, and thirdly, to create an Effective Teaching Profile. The paper concludes by identifying how implementing the Effective Teaching Profile addresses educational disparities.