Te tupu o te rākau: Stages of Māori medium education

Abstract

Over the past 40 or so years, a small sub-sector of state-funded education has developed in Aotearoa New Zealand, in which the language medium is te reo Māori (the Māori language). Te reo Māori became an endangered language as a result of British colonization and schooling from about 1800 onwards, declining by the mid-1970s to a point where intergenerational transmission had almost completely stopped. Today, Māori medium graduates and their children are growing up as new generations of Māori people, equipped with skills to contribute positively to Māori society and futures and the wider world. The efforts required to support these developments reflect the strong aspirations of Māori people for the survival and restoration of te reo Māori and Māori culture for future generations. This article presents a high-level overview of Māori medium education and its contribution to the revitalization of te reo Māori by focusing on four sequential stages of its growth and evolution: early childhood, school, tertiary, and doctoral studies.

“Whiriwhiria, kia ora ai te tamaiti”: an exploration of mātauranga Māori to support day-to-day learning in five primary schools in regional New Zealand

“…Literacy needs to be considered from an Indigenous perspective, however, there has been no in-depth exploration of what literacy looks like for Māori and mātauranga Māori has largely not been considered. Most literacy initiatives around the world do not consider Indigenous knowledge (Edwards, 2010). A recent initiative, the Better Start Literacy Approach (BSLA), has been implemented in some New Zealand schools with evidence of success for Māori students (Gillon et al, 2023).…”

“…Using literacy in a broad sense, encompassing reading, writing, listening and speaking as an example, Edwards (2010) discussed the nature of traditional literacy for Māori beginning with oral language and Indigenous values as opposed to reading and writing. These findings support those of this study that te reo Māori was a spoken language first and this should be acknowledged as a way that Māori can learn.…”