TEU LE VA - Relationships across research and policy in Pasifika education
Publication Details
Teu le va is a tool primarily for educational researchers, to help them plan and implement research that contributes to the development of effective policy and practice in respect of Pasifika students in our schools.
Teu le va emphasises a number of principles or practices, including the need for: researchers to directly involve Pasifika learners, their families, and communities, and teachers as practitioners, in the development of research proposals or plans; ongoing collaboration between researchers and policy-makers; collaboration among researchers from different organisations and groups in order to build a sound knowledge base; ensuring that any research undertaken is relevant for a range of audiences (eg, parents, communities, teachers, policy-makers); all research, development and policy-making in Pasifika education to have a firm focus on student success: realising potential and identifying opportunities.
Author(s): Airini, Melani Anae and Karlo Mila-Schaaf with Eve Coxon, Diane Mara & Kabini Sanga
Date Published: July 2010
Contexts for action
Teu le va: A new va for collaboration between researchers and policy-makers
Teu le va takes a strategic, evidence-based, outcomes-focused, Pasifika success approach.
It links with broader systems-wide planning such as The Pasifika Education Plan 2009-2012, and acknowledges the role, knowledge and influence of Pasifika communities, learners and their families in achieving improved Pasifika education outcomes.
Within these contexts, Teu le va deliberately concentrates on what researchers and policy-makers can do together to contribute to a transformational shift in the performance of the education system for and with Pasifika learners. The Teu le va approach is intentional and essential to providing focus on Pasifika-specific education priorities.
Two interconnected contexts for action feature: the Pasifika success focus across research and policy-making collaborations, using the Teu le va approach; and the ‘translation’ of research into policy, or ensuring research informs policy. Figure 2 illustrates how the two contexts for action interconnect. This means that both need to be taken into account when planning research and policy aimed at improved Pasifika education outcomes.
Figure 2: Action contexts for the new va between researchers and policy-makers
The Pasifika success focus sets the context for the shift in attitudes and practices necessary for researchers and policy-makers to work together for unprecedented levels of Pasifika education success. This approach shifts the focus from concern about problems and individual efforts, to realising potential through collective, strategic effort. It advocates for a shared programme of action aligned with The Pasifika Education Plan 2009-2012. The Pasifika success focus, in the Teu le va approach, embraces the importance of relationships: a range of talented, committed people and groups working together for greater levels of Pasifika student success.
As set out in Table 3, understanding the va and working together requires researchers and policy-makers to make important shifts in focus and make the most of combining expertise in a shared research and policy agenda.
| Before, we focused on… | Now, we should focus on… |
| …explaining the problems with Pasifika achievement and the need to address the ‘tail of underachievement’. | …research, development and policy aimed at realising potential and identifying opportunities. |
| …student support. | …student success — movement towards achievement of pass grades or higher, school retention leading to higher levels of achievement, a sense of accomplishing and fulfilling personally important goals, and participation in ways that provide opportunities for a student to explore and sustain their holistic growth. |
| …seeing diverse Pacific nation communities in Aotearoa-New Zealand as homogeneous and ignoring intra-ethnic considerations. | …recognising inter- and intra-ethnic complexities and tailoring education/opportunities and research to reflect the needs and contexts of the learner (eg, ethnicity, age, gender, sub-group, etc). |
| …coupling Pasifika and Māori achievement. | …recognising the ‘same but different’ principle in which context is integral to identifying where these diverse groups merge, and separate out accordingly in research processes/educational milestones, etc. |
| …research led by individual researchers, organisations, or government, without a sector-wide, coordinated approach linked to the current Pasifika Education Plan. | …research that supports delivery on the goals and actions in the Pasifika Education Plan through the Teu le va approach to knowledge generation. |
| …the relative lack of Pasifika education research from a strong evidence-base. | …integrating best practice and sound Pasifika education research in policy-making and increasing opportunities for quality research. |
| …policy as a government intervention. | …policy that integrates evidence and invests in people and local solutions. |
| …researching and policy-making by taking. | …collaboration and co-constructing, and reciprocal, sharing relationships in the research process. |
| …researching and policy-making as siloed activities. | …working together, combining strengths, towards a shared vision of achieving the goals of the current Pasifika Education Plan and beyond. |
Ensuring research informs policy
Teu le va recognises that neither good research results nor innovation are self-spreading (Pinedo, 2005). The completion of research as a process of building on existing knowledge and making new knowledge is the precondition for knowledge sharing. Advice about dissemination can be found in other research guidelines (Health Research Council, 2004; Anae et al, 2001).
The focus of Teu le va is on synthesis and translation of new knowledge into policy. Getting the ‘message’ right, along with understanding what knowledge matters for what purposes, and working with and through credible messengers to disseminate and pass on knowledge is critical (Lavis, 2005).
Research underpinned by Teu le va is more likely to become evidence-based policy when:
- it fits within the political and institutional limits and pressures of policy-makers (Crewe et al, 2002);
- it has a compelling logic to underpin it, a Minister to drive it, a sector that owns it, research to support it, and connections to grow it (Boyd, 2007);
- researchers and policy-makers share particular kinds of networks and develop chains of legitimacy for particular policy areas (Crewe et al, 2002);
- outputs are based on local involvement and credible evidence and are communicated via the most appropriate people, channels, style, format and timing (ibid).
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