In order to better understand the present trends in New Zealand's schooling contexts, there is a clarion call for educators to develop sensitivity and sensibility towards the cultural backgrounds and experiences of Ma -ori students. This paper reports on the work of four scholars who share research that has been undertaken in educational settings with high numbers of Ma -ori students, and discusses the importance of creating culturally-safe schools -places that allow and enable students to be who and what they are. The theoretical frameworks drawn on are based on both a life partnership analogy as well as on a socio-cultural perspective on human development and learning. The Ma -ori worldview presented in this paper is connected to the Treaty of Waitangi, The Educultural Wheel and the Hikairo Rationale. Data were collected from two ethnographic case studies and analysed through these frameworks. Practical suggestions are then made for using restorative practices and creating reciprocal relationships in classrooms within an environment of care. The paper reports on an evidence-based approach to creating culturally-safe schools for Ma -ori students.

In this article, a group of four indigenous Māori educators and one non-Māori educator comment on a proposed amendment to the New Zealand National Curriculum Framework to replace the current separate sets of skills, values and attitudes with five generic performance-based key competencies. The paper discusses important parallels between western/European sociocultural theorizing on human development and learning (on which the key competencies seemed to be based), and the values, beliefs and preferred practices that are embodied within an indigenous Māori cultural worldview ( Te Ao Māori). A Māori worldview is characterized by an abiding concern for the quality of human relationships that need to be established and maintained if learning contexts are to be effective for Māori students, and for these relationships to balance individual learning and achievement against responsibilities for the well-being and achievement of the group. Within such a worldview, education is understood as holistic, collective, experiential and dependent upon a free exchanging of teaching and learning roles. The article describes five specific cultural constructs within this worldview that highlight Māori traditional understandings of human development and learning and teaching, and aligns and compares these constructs with the five key competencies proposed. The article argues that the worldviews of Māori people in New Zealand provide an extensive and coherent framework for theorizing about human development and education, and are able to contribute strongly and positively to the development of a national school curriculum for the benefit all students. Implications for other contexts can also be drawn.

This paper illustrates how important changes can occur in science learning and teaching if teachers take the trouble to understand and respect the cultural worlds of Indigenous students, and incorporate something of this understanding within their teaching practice. Ten teachers participated in a specially-designed one-year university postgraduate course, which encouraged them to incorporate into their classroom learning two Māori pedagogical principles, ako and whakawhanaungatanga. Ako is a responsive and reciprocal process, through which both teaching and learning roles are shared. Whakawhanaungatanga is the process of constructing relationships in the classroom between people, between students' cultural knowledge and domain knowledge. This paper draws on co-constructed narratives from four of the teachers, two Māori and two Pākehā (New Zealanders of European descent). The teachers built trusting and respectful relationships with their Māori students by facilitating connections between Western and Māori worldviews of science. They shared their teaching role with Māori elders (kaumātua) and members of the extended family of their students (whānau). The teachers learned a great deal from their Māori students who became highly engaged and agentic in their science learning. Students took collaborative responsibility for asking learning questions, and sought information on science topics from both Western and Māori worldviews.

How might researchers 'listen to culture' in their quest for knowledge that involves Indigenous populations? Many Indigenous groups may argue that the hidden drivers of research activities remain anchored to Western oriented values, processes and motivations. In Aotearoa New Zealand, it is clear that adopting a partnership approach to research is now becoming more of the 'norm'. As Aotearoa New Zealand approaches the third decade of the twenty-first century, culturally relevant and inclusive approaches to research need to be the policy of choice and must be the policy of necessity. Equitable research approaches to research must be at the core in the quest for scientific inquiry, social coherence and economic growth. This chapter explores some of the historical realities and a vision moving forward. To guide authentic and grounded approaches to power-sharing research endeavours, culturally grounded frameworks are also shared.

This study investigated the feasibility of a teacher implemented intervention to accelerate phonological awareness, letter, and vocabulary knowledge in 141 children (mean age 5 years, 4 months) who entered school with lower levels of oral language ability. The children attended schools in low socioeconomic communities where additional stress was still evident 6 years after the devastating earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2011. The teachers implemented the intervention at the class or large group level for 20 h (four 30-min sessions per week for 10 weeks). A stepped wedge research design was used to evaluate intervention effects. Children with lower oral language ability made significantly more progress in both their phonological awareness and targeted vocabulary knowledge when the teachers implemented the intervention compared to progress made when teachers implemented their usual literacy curriculum. Importantly, the intervention accelerated children's ability to use improved phonological awareness skills when decoding novel words (treatment effect size d = 0.88). Boys responded to the intervention as well as girls and the skills of children who identified as Māori or Pacific Islands (45.5% of the cohort) improved in similar ways to children who identified as New Zealand European. The findings have important implications for designing successful teacherimplemented interventions, within a multi-tier approach, to support children who enter school with known challenges for their literacy learning.