Ua Aoina le Manogi o le Lolo: Pasifika Schooling Improvement Research - Final Report

1. Introduction

The academic achievement of children in New Zealand is relatively high compared to other countries (Sturrock & May, 2002). This is good news for New Zealand and for the majority of students. However, achievement is not high for all, particularly for those students who speak a language other than English and have a culture which is not of the majority. These students, mostly of Māori (indigenous) and Pasifika communities (immigrants from the Pacific Islands) descent, are not achieving at the same level as other students. Many hail from communities in the Southern part of Auckland, New Zealand, classified as ‘low socio-economic’ communities and who mostly attend low decile¹ schools serving these economically poor communities (McNaughton, MacDonald, Amituanai-Toloa, Lai, & Farry, 2006). Note that by ‘poor communities’ we mean in real economic terms, and by no means do we intend to denigrate other areas in which Māori and Pasifika people might be abundantly rich.

1.1 Pasifika Peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand

Pasifika people in Aotearoa New Zealand make up 6.9% of the total New Zealand population, and those identifying with the Pasifika peoples ethnic group had the second largest increase from the 2001 Census (231,801), up 15% to total 265,974 in 2006. Over 9 in 10 Pasifika peoples (93%) living in New Zealand in 2006 lived in the North Island. Two-thirds of Pasifika peoples live in the Auckland region. The Pasifika group had the highest proportion of children (people aged 0 to 14 years) of all the major ethnic groups, at 38% (Statistics New Zealand, 2007).

In the case of Pasifika students, the educational system faces an increasingly significant challenge with the low academic achievement of its Pasifika group. At all levels of education Pasifika achievement has been prioritised, along with Māori, by government policy and strategy, and operationalised on the basis of meeting identified needs.

1.2 Pasifika Students and Achievement in New Zealand Schools

Closing the achievement gap between Pasifika and other students is one of the current Minister of Education’s goals and is a key focus for the Ministry of Education. In 2001 the then Government’s plan for education resulted in the Pasifika Education Plan (PEP) which underpinned the Government’s goals for Pasifika education. Since its implementation, there have been several projects which have examined the progress of Pasifika students, and there have been positive results in some areas. For example, the National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP) findings in the primary school sector show that overall, Year 4 and Year 8 Pasifika students are generally performing below national norms but in recent years the difference in results between Pasifika results and all students has reduced in some areas (Crooks & Flockton, 2005b). In 2004, results for music, for example, showed there was very little difference between the performance of Pasifika students and other students, which is an improvement since 2001 (Crooks & Flockton, 2005a). Year 4 reading results, especially in accuracy, also showed an improvement for Pasifika students between 2001 and 2004, although Pasifika are still, on average, performing below the national mean in reading (Crooks & Flockton, 2005b).

Recent studies in the same sector (McNaughton et al., 2006; McNaughton, Lai, Amituanai-Toloa & Farry, 2007) show that achievement for Pasifika students can be raised. In these studies the achievement of Pasifika students from Years 4 - 8 in reading comprehension at baseline was shown to be about two years below average, with a stanine rating of around 3. After a systematic intervention, student achievement improved by almost one staninedecile² in addition to normal progress. There is evidence to indicate that these are beginning to be sustained with some students currently achieving higher than national norms (Lai, McNaughton, Amituanai-Toloa, Turner, & Hsiao, 2009).

In the secondary school sector, in 2008, 48% of Year 11 Pasifika students achieved NCEA Level 1, compared with 70% of all students. 54% of Year 12 Pasifika students gained NCEA Level 2 in 2008 (compared with 75% of all) and 41% of Year 13 students gained NCEA Level 3 (compared with 705 of all). In 2007, 6% of Pasifika students left school with little or no formal attainment. This was a decrease from 2006, when 12% of Pasifika students left school with little or no formal attainment. The percentage of Pasifika students leaving school with little or no formal qualification has been declining since 2002. The University Entrance results showed that in 2007 the proportion of Pasifika students leaving school with this qualification or higher was 20%, compared with 39% of all school leavers. This was substantially higher than 2004 where only 15 percent of Pasifika students left school with at least University Entrance (Ministry of Education, 2009; New Zealand Qualifications Authority, 2009).

Pasifika students make up a large and growing proportion of the school population in New Zealand. On 1 July 2008, Pasifika students made up 9.5% of students in New Zealand schools. This proportion was highest in the Auckland region where 20% of students were Pasifika (Ministry of Education, 2004a)decile³. 73% of all Pasifika students in New Zealand attend schools in Auckland or Northland. In the tertiary sector, Pasifika students in 2008 made up 7% of all domestic students compared with 6% in 2003, representing 5,148 more students (Ministry of Education, 2009).

Despite the gains noted above, and although some Pasifika students achieve at a very high level, they achieve, on average, less well than their Pakeha and Asian peers (Satherly, 2006). Compared to the general population of students, Pasifika students are over-represented in the statistics for those leaving school either without assessment results or with lower level assessment results decile⁴and are over-represented in suspension and stand-down figures (Education Review Office, 2004; Ministry of Education, 2004b; New Zealand Qualifications Authority, 2009).

The challenge of low achievement has been identified for a long time (e.g., Ramsay, Sneddon, Grenfell, & Ford, 1981). Like other countries, New Zealand has been concerned with the disparities in literacy achievement between its cultural groups. New Zealand’s and other countries’ response to this enduring ‘education debt’ (Ladson-Billings, 2006) has included programmes of Schooling Improvementdecile⁵ and reform, at local, district and even national levels.

Schooling Improvement intervention programmes for culturally and linguistically diverse students from poorer communities need to help solve a set of issues relating to more effective literacy and numeracy instruction at all levels. The need to meet these issues is pressing in New Zealand where, on average, students in the middle years of school have high levels of reading comprehension judged by the international comparisons but where there are large disparities within the distribution of achievement (Alton-Lee, 2004). Like the general picture, these disparities are between children from both Māori (indigenous) and Pasifika communities (immigrants from the Pacific Islands) in urban schools with the lowest employment and income levels, and other children. Since at least the 1950s numerous reports have identified these disparities (e.g., Openshaw, Lee & Lee, 1993) with one in 1981 calling them a crisis urgently in need of a solution (Ramsay et al., 1981).

The evidence indicates that there has been limited impact from Year 4 of schooling, especially in the case of reading comprehension. Indeed it appears that the gaps in reading comprehension have increased nationally (Crooks & Flockton, 2005b). Much of the knowledge and skills required for early fluency and accuracy in reading, the areas where gains have occurred, come from acquiring discrete bodies of knowledge. Paris calls these ‘constrained’ skills which he claimed are relatively easily learned (Paris, 2005). The more language-based and content-dependent nature of comprehension requires ‘unconstrained’ skills which are more difficult both to teach and learn. In developmental terms, becoming a good decoder is a necessary but not sufficient condition for good comprehension. This means that effective instruction in Years 1 - 3 does not act as an inoculation for later development after Year 4 (McNaughton, 2002). The educational challenge is to continue to be effective for all population groups achieving at successive levels.

The challenge to provide more effective schooling for poorer schools serving culturally and linguistically diverse populations has been present in a number of countries (Snow, Burns, & Griffen, 1998). Whilst there has been recent evidence of improvements for these students, the evidence for this is moderate. In the United States, Borman (2005) showed that national reforms of schools to boost the achievement of children in low performing schools serving the poorest communities have produced small gains in the short term with effect sizes in the order of less than 0.20. For those few schools that sustain reforms over a longer period of around seven years, the effects increase (estimated to be effect sizes in the order of about 0.50). When considered nationally, Borman concludes that while some achievement gains have occurred, they have typically been low and need to be accumulated over long periods of time. At a more specific level, there are individual studies from the United States that have shown that clusters of schools serving ‘minority’ children have been able to make differences to the achievement of children in reading comprehension. In one set of studies, Taylor, Pearson, Peterson, & Rodriguez (2005) intervened in high poverty schools with carefully designed professional development, and reported small cumulative gains across two years.

From international studies, we know there is little research on the impact of Schooling Improvement interventions on ‘sub groups’ (Borman, 2005). We do know that different types of programmes can be differentially effective with the age or level of the student (Correnti, Rowan, & Camburn, 2003). This might suggest that in a highly prescribed intervention some students would benefit more than others, or that some students would learn less than others. For example, more advanced students might benefit from a programme that had more advanced instructional elements in which they were able to focus more on developing ‘unconstrained’ skills, but they may be limited by a programme that focused more on ‘constrained’ skills (Paris, 2005). Differential effects are not inevitable. In one study (McNaughton et al., 2007), the intervention was built on local profiles and was, through a process of development with the schools, specific to identified learning needs. The process, which led to a controlled ‘fine tuning’ of existing instruction, was predicted to be both generic and adaptable enough to serve the needs of the subgroups, and the evidence suggested that this was the case.

As noted above, Schooling Improvement programmes generally show evidence of varying degrees of effectiveness. From analyses such as those described previously (Borman, 2005), we can derive generalisable principles of effectiveness, for example, about the role of programme specificity or the role of professional learning communities. More needs to be known about specific components, and where available the evidence linking success to the level and quality of implementation, the relationships between the developer and the local school and school district, and the coordination and fit of the model to local circumstances (McNaughton et al., 2007).

1.3 Effective School-Based Intervention

1.3.1 A focus on connections and partnership

The picture for Pasifika students in New Zealand has been formed by a small, albeit growing, number of studies focused on the disparities between Pasifika students and those from other ethnic groups (e.g., McNaughton, et al., 2006; McNaughton et al., 2007). But there are few studies that demonstrate statistically significant improvements for Pasifika students. In Annan’s (2007) review of Schooling Improvement initiatives nationally, he found only one Schooling Improvement project nationally that had strong evidence of verified improvements in achievement. Research in that initiative showed improvements for Pasifika students which have reduced the gaps between their achievement and other ethnic groups nationally (e.g., Lai, McNaughton, Amituanai-Toloa et al., 2009; McNaughton et al., 2007; Phillips, McNaughton & MacDonald, 2001).

Whilst these results are positive, there have been very few targeted research studies examining disparities between different Pasifika groups within and between schools. Although some Schooling Improvement initiatives analyse their data according to the different Pasifika groups, these are rarely focused on or reported in research publications.

Previous reviews of general research are provided by the New Zealand Best Evidence Synthesis (BES) Quality Teaching for Diverse Students (Alton-Lee, 2003) which indicates the 10 dimensions of quality teaching for diverse students including Pasifika students. The review here is focused primarily on the evidence from interventions for Pasifika students. It largely draws on and is consistent with the principles in the BES. Among the BES dimensions that were derived from research across the curriculum and for students across the range of schooling years in New Zealand (from age five to eighteen), is that quality teaching is dependent on effective links being created between school and other cultural contexts.

In order to improve achievement, Annan (1999) suggests that schools should have an ‘active’ working relationship with their communities including families, community-based agencies and organisations. The initiatives that have raised student achievement have involved partnerships between researchers, policy-makers, community and schools (Annan, 2007). However, not all working partnerships are useful for producing the kinds of changes that can improve student achievement. In an early evaluation of a Schooling Improvement initiative, Timperley, Robinson, & Bullard (1999) found that partnerships between local communities, schools and government were highly problematic for reasons such as blaming another partner for the educational “failures”, rather than attempting to learn together how best to raise achievement. This led the researchers to argue that educational partnerships should be founded on the following: empathy for the theories of those involved; the ability to offer resources that have the potential to challenge and change the understanding and thinking of those who control the relevant practices and policies; engagement in mutual critique so theories are made explicit for critique; and the fostering of responsibility and commitment by making all parties aware of the possible consequences of choices whilst allowing them the freedom to accept or reject those choices.

It is argued that the improvements could be enhanced by the involvement of communities. For example, an issue facing schools in Schooling Improvement initiatives is the presence of summer effects where there is differential growth, or even drops, in learning over the months when schools are closed (Cooper, Charlton, Valentine, & Muhlenbruck, 2000; Entwisle, Alexander, & Olson, 1997). Students from poorer communities and minority students make less growth and/or are more likely than other students to experience a drop in achievement over this period contributing to a widening gap in achievement.

In Heyns’ (1978) study, Year 6 low income African American students lost almost a quarter of a grade on the word knowledge test of the Metropolitan Achievement test, and lowest income white students made almost no gains. She showed that between half and two thirds of the annual learning gap between white children from high income homes and the poorest black children accrued during the summer months. The gains over the school year were much closer for all groups. One possible explanation for this effect is related to family, social and cultural practices that provide differential exposure to school-related literacy activities over the summer.

When researchers in New Zealand examined the summer effect as part of statistically modelling growth over time, achievement plateaued rather than dropped over summer (Lai, McNaughton, Amituanai-Toloa et al., 2009). Anecdotal reports from these schools implicated the importance of working with the community such as local community libraries and parents and developing students’ love of recreational reading as factors that were influential over summer. As such, the intervention gains in that intervention may have been sustained in part because of the links to the community and parents’ especially positive relationships with them.

1.3.2 Inquiry focus

Recent research has expanded on how to partner in ways that maintain the relationship between partners while having open, honest discussion and resolution of the issues of raising student achievement. One way is to adopt research methodologies that deliberately incorporate relationships as part of their central tenets. For example, Problem-Based Methodology, which was designed to improve education practices and has as its central core a research relationship based on learning conversations, has been used successfully as a framework by different partners to raise achievement (Robinson & Lai, 2006). In this framework, the authors suggest that all partners’ theories, for example teachers’ theories, need to be engaged alongside researchers’ theories, but that any theory competition needs be resolved without privileging either theory. The process increases the validity of the emerging theories by allowing for disconfirming evidence from all parties to be treated and tested equally, rather than privileging researchers or teachers’ theories. This is also more likely to lead to a greater power-sharing between researchers and teachers, resulting in greater acceptance of any changes to current practice. Robinson and Lai (2006) further provide the framework by which different theories can be examined using four standards of theory evaluation. The standards are accuracy (empirical claims about practice are well founded in evidence), effectiveness (theories meet the goals and values of those who hold them), coherence (competing theories from outside perspectives are considered) and improvability (theories and solutions can be adapted to meet changing needs or incorporate new goals, values and contextual constraints). In their example of using the framework, researchers and school leaders (using the standard of accuracy) were able to adjudicate between two opposing theories of the causes of low student achievement by carefully examining profiles of students’ needs to test the opposing theories (Robinson & Lai, 2006). The profiles indicated that students were high decoders but weak in other aspects of reading comprehension, thereby ruling out one of the opposing theories, and ruling in the other, that students could decode but not comprehend texts. The teachers therefore focused less on decoding and more on other aspects of comprehension, which was followed by improvements in reading achievement.

1.3.3 A focus on instruction and culturally responsive pedagogy

Further dimensions in the BES emphasise responsive instruction, pedagogical practices that are enabling and that promote learning orientations, and an unrelenting focus on achievement. Recent Schooling Improvement initiatives have had a focus on improving classroom practice, in line with the evidence in the BES suggesting that teachers contribute to a significant proportion of the observed difference in achievement levels among students (Alton-Lee, 2004). Recent initiatives which have raised and sustained achievement have focused on improving classroom practices through targeted interventions with teachers in professional learning communities (e.g., McNaughton et al., 2006; Lai, Timperley, & McNaughton, 2008).

The effectiveness of instruction is likely to be determined by how culturally responsive the general pedagogy in the classroom is. The evidence from the Achivement in Multicultural High Schools (AIMHI) project (Hill & Hawk, 2000) and from the Te Kotahitanga project with Māori students shows relationships to be a crucial component in learning (Bishop et al., 2003). Whilst previous research foci have been on academic achievement per se, Bishop’s study played a vital and important role in shifting the lens. The Te Kotahitanga intervention is a complex multi-component model for secondary schools. At its core is a concern for Māori students’ voices and a process that enables the student’s awareness and ideas about teaching and learning to be incorporated into the school’s culture. The holistic approach also adopts an instructional framework which balances cultural practices with an inquiry or dialogic pedagogy. This emphasis on a culturally responsive and pedagogically advanced teaching may provide an important framework to consider effective instruction for Pasifika students. The effect sizes reported for asTTle numeracy in the Te Kotahitanga schools have been large, in the order of 0.79 (Bishop, Berryman, Cavanagh, & Teddy, 2007).

1.3.4 Students’ beliefs and values

Student voices added important evidence in the Hill and Hawk (2000) study of the AIMHI project to raise student achievement for Māori and Pasifika students in eight low decile secondary schools. The students indicated in this study several areas where teachers needed to improve their practice. From this, the project team planned professional development for teachers in such areas as: differentiated learning, including both differentiated ways of learning and differentiated teaching for abilities; teaching and language; direct instruction in a purposefully structured way; skills in questioning and giving explanations; cooperative learning techniques to encourage deep thinking; formative assessment and in particular the skills of giving verbal and written feedback; professional development on relationship and cultural awareness; and aspects of lesson structure and organisation.

The most important conclusion that came out of this study was that students were very aware of teacher effectiveness and skilled in identifying patterns of teaching and learning. In secondary schools, the students are an important contributor to effective teaching and learning through their beliefs and ideas. The AIMHI research, like Te Kotahitanga, shows that students can be very knowledgeable and articulate about their needs and how well these are being met. Pasifika learners express high motivation to learn and succeed. They identify a need to be taught by teachers who know and respect them. An additional finding was that effective teachers were also accurate in their perceptions of their performance.

Echoing the first focus noted above, the AIMHI research underlines the need for closer relationships between schools and their communities. Thus, Annan’s (1999) suggestion of alignment of community expectations and practices to ‘best practice’ is therefore just that and a ‘fit’ of any model to local circumstances including community circumstances is emerging as an important criterion for effectiveness.

1.3.5 Bilingual and biliteracy – Pasifika languages and knowledge within Schooling Improvement

Although it is not often considered under the rubric of Schooling Improvement, there is also the issue of bilingual education. It is important to note that bilingual students are not just those in bilingual contexts who speak a language other than English. Rather, it also includes those students in mainstream contexts who also speak a language other than English. Students in formal bilingual contexts are taught using two languages for instruction. For example, research by Tuioti and Kolhase (2001) has described Samoan bilingual classes in which English/Samoan delivery ranges between 10/90, 60/40 and 50/50 percent of the time each day. However, despite provisions for setting up bilingual classes in schools, schools themselves have different rationales for the variety of formal setup, drawing mostly from parent demand (Amituanai-Toloa, 2007b).

The global trend in examining bilingual education and the rigour in which it is conducted comes at a pivotal time given projections of ethnic population growth. In the United States, for example, the National Assessment of Educational Progress results showed that there have been increasing numbers of English language learners in classrooms, especially Hispanic students (Snyder, Dillow, & Hoffman, 2009). There is a similar trend in New Zealand for the Pasifika group. The rapid growth rate of the Pasifika young and adolescent population (Statistics New Zealand, 2007) is becoming more and more noticeable in school settings. Consistent with findings in the USA, Pasifika achievement in New Zealand is below that of their peers in academic achievement in the middle school years and beyond, with scores well below those of national norms (Foorman & Schatschneider, 2003; McNaughton et al., 2006).

The advocacy from global and local research for bilingual education and its benefits is not new (Tabors & Snow, 2001; Perez, 2004; May & Hill, 2004). But despite indications of benefits, there are also those who advocate monolingualism in mainstream education. This position is sustained by the lack of extensive evidence on the functions and effects of bilingual education in relation to English language achievement for the New Zealand context.

What is known is that for students who have knowledge in a language other than English, good grounding in that first language (L1) can lead to a transfer of skills from that language to the second (L2) (Tabors & Snow, 2001). There is, however, a lack of research in New Zealand into L1 and L2 language development and a shortage of evidence to indicate what can be transferred and how that transfer might occur. In addition, we know little about the differences between younger and older bilingual students and the different degrees of variability in oral proficiency in both languages which, Garcia (2003) noted in his review, impact on their reading proficiency.

In this report we examine, where possible, the relationships between language status and achievement in the initiatives.

1.3.6 The overall ‘fit’ of Schooling Improvement for Pasifika

The fit of an intervention model to local circumstances, and how that fit is coordinated for the Pasifika group within schools and outside schools, needs to be known. There is an implication from the coordination and fit of a model that when it relates to local contexts, schools that are inclusive of their communities and their students are more effective. The point, however, for this research finding and others reviewed thus far, is that specific components of these generalisable principles of effectiveness need to be known for their effectiveness with Pasifika students. The most important issue emerging from this review is whether the generalisable effective principles, such as the ‘fit’ of an intervention, are defined and coordinated from the lens of a Pasifika viewpoint of local circumstance or from the outsider lens of a developer’s perspective of local circumstance. When these have not been fully and contextually defined, taking into consideration the culture of communities in which schools are located, it is likely that the effectiveness of an intervention will be limited. This is the implication from the BES principles.

The issue raised in several international reviews of Schooling Improvement has been the question of local adaptation. For example, Datnow & Springfield (2000) find that implementation ‘falters’, as they put it, when the adoption of the reform has not been preceded by careful consideration of each school’s specific needs and adaptations such as the amount of curriculum time devoted to the design or selective use of instruction that take place. Interestingly, although the phenomenon is well known there is not much research on how designs change over time through this process and what happens when designs do not fit.

In addition, careful consideration of particular ethnic groups which make up a school (especially for schools in this report) might not have occurred in the adaptation process and in the fitting of a programme to local conditions as its corollary. In the case of Pasifika students, their needs might not have been initially addressed and considered fully before any implementation of Schooling Improvement initiatives had begun. If they were considered, they generally come under the auspices of achievement for students of minority groups of which the Pasifika group is one, or general achievement of all students including Pasifika students. But the above evidence suggests that explicit consideration of ethnic groups can have achievement benefits. More specifically, when Pasifika needs are taken into account, achievement can be further accelerated. A recent project, which as part of its methodology adapted the programme to fit the local needs of its students, showed significant improvements which were similar across the ethnic groups, gender and year levels (Lai et al., 2008), although it has not yet succeeded in fully closing the gap between Pasifika students and others.

The need for the fidelity or integrity of any programme implementation can be seen as a fundamental challenge to this argument about contextual adaptation. But from the point of view of explaining ‘failures’, Cohen & Ball (2007) identify the pre-existing pedagogical content knowledge of teachers and the degree to which the reform programme is articulated as conditions which determine how the design as conceived is actually implemented. This concern, as well as stage models of the development of professional learning communities, predict the need to consider local fit in terms of ‘readiness’ for the process, or the capabilities of schools to engage in reform (Raphael, Goldman, Au, & Hirata, 2006).

Additionally, while we need to know how intervention effectiveness is determined by local conditions, adaptation can also be seen as an inherent property of schools as communities and thus a critical component in the development of research–practice collaborations to reform schools (McDonald, Keesler, Kaufman, & Schneider, 2006). This view suggests that adaptation is needed so that the local school is gradually introduced and capacity is built to fully engage with the required and already specified implementation. But additionally, as was argued above, implementations need to be constructed on the ground as contextually appropriate. This view requires a reconsideration of the concept of programme fidelity on the one hand, and on the other hand it may also enable us to understand more about the nature of pedagogy in different socio-cultural contexts.

Recent Schooling Improvement projects in New Zealand provide evidence for the significance of local contexts in this sense (Lai, McNaughton & Amituanai-Toloa, 2009; Parr, Timperley, Reddish, Jesson, & Adams, 2007). This evidence comes partly from how local patterns of achievement and instruction create specific needs in the content of Schooling Improvement. The evidence suggests that generic programmes of Schooling Improvement that have highly specify content may not necessarily provide the best fit with local conditions at the level of learning and instructional needs and particularly with Pasifika students for several reasons.

A further reason for the need to contextualise is that the word ‘Pasifika’ is a heterogeneous term and it does not explicitly identify the different ethnic groups within this term. As discussed elsewhere (for example, Airini, McNaughton, Langley, & Sauni, 2007), ‘Pasifika’ means people of a Pacific nation heritage living in New Zealand. This is a heterogeneous group made up of peoples who have recently emigrated from many different Pacific nations to New Zealand as well as those who have been New Zealand residents over several generations. In this way ‘Pasifika’ is a diverse term – by way of nation groups that students affiliate with, as well as internally – so that within any one Pacific nation group there may be differences in cultural practices and beliefs.

A further sense of contextualising research into Pasifika achievement is to recognise the range of achievement patterns amongst those groups making up ‘Pasifika’ (Otunuku & Brown, 2007). The range can be by heritage group (e.g., distinguishing between Tongan and Samoan achievement), gender (e.g., differences in male and female achievement), or even region and city (e.g., exploring Pasifika achievement in Manukau City and Waitakere City). Compounding factors include students’ abilities (Hattie, 2003), socio-economic status, early childhood education (Wylie & Hodgen, 2007), bilingual expertise (Amituanai-Toloa, 2007b), language in the home (Satherly, 2006), and factors influencing competency to achieve in the New Zealand curriculum (e.g., exposure to books and libraries, secondary and tertiary qualifications of the mother; Wylie & Hipkins, 2006).

A challenge facing Schooling Improvement, which is designed to improve Pasifika achievement, is the scaling up of those research initiatives found to be effective. Scaling up research and development programmes for Pasifika achievement needs to identify unique socio-cultural dimensions of Pasifika peoples both as a collective and individually. Scaling up involves researching larger numbers across a broader area, and in some cases this involves institutionalising effective programmes. Interventions will need to consider the varieties of conditions and circumstances of identity in different regions. Research and development programmes will need to interrogate how accelerated gains for Pasifika students can be spread within schools and across schools.

Suggested principles for scaling up include:

• effective programmes intended for scaling up need ongoing evaluation to determine how they are generalisable and the properties of expansion, given the arguments for local adaptation noted above;
• Pasifika research methodology approaches should be applied to gathering information about programmes proposed for scaling up;
• scaling up planning should include a sustainability framework utilising and expanding Pasifika research, development and teaching capability and capacity;
• scaling up should come with adequate resourcing and a robust policy framework (Airini et al., 2007); and
• scaling up should have a strategic relevance. Scaling up should link directly with the government’s Pasifika Education Plan (Ministry of Education, 2008b).

Finally, needs to contextualise may derive from methodological concerns. The research literature signals a growing awareness that to be effective, research into Pasifika achievement should utilise Pasifika research methodologies and methods. There are Pasifika approaches to research into Pasifika achievement. Researchers with expertise in Pasifika research and methodologies, that encourage Pasifika approaches to knowledge creation, offer insights that may enhance the validity and reliability of research into Pasifika achievement. Consequently, Pasifika research methodologies have been developed (Anae, Coxon, Mara, Wendt-Samu, & Finau, 2001; Health Research Council, 2004) and applied increasingly to research ethics and research projects. These approaches identify ethical principles and actions for effective research with Pasifika peoples (Health Research Council, 2004), including:

• meaningful engagement
• cultural competency
• capacity building
• reciprocity
• utility.

1.4 The Report: Schooling Improvement Initiatives for Pasifika Students

The current project focuses on the effectiveness of Schooling Improvement initiatives for Pasifika. It stemmed from a concern which originated in international studies starting more than a decade ago with evidence of Pasifika student underachievement in New Zealand (Sturrock & May, 2002). The current study addresses reform through researching specific initiatives and through tapping into the most important resource to have on side: the community. There is an assumption that implementing Schooling Improvement initiatives to raise achievement for students generally in schools would automatically do the same for Pasifika students. Whilst there may be a degree of truth in this assumption, the evidence is that the majority of Pasifika students nationally are yet to achieve national norms despite increases in some areas of reading (Crooks & Flockton, 2005b).

In addition, analyses of Pasifika Schooling Improvement have the potential to be a source of innovation contributing knowledge about how effective Schooling Improvement initiatives have been, or could be. As a policy developer and coordinator and therefore overall leader of initiatives in schools, Schooling Improvement is expected to lead schools within its jurisdiction under five main leadership dimensions known to be effective in raising achievement. According to Robinson (2007), student achievement is very much dependent on leadership, including all aspects of leadership. While this is particular to school principals, the relevance of this claim is also pertinent to Ministry policy in terms of the dimensions, especially those that Robinson derived from her meta-analyses of effective leadership on student outcomes. These are: establishing goals and expectations; strategic resourcing; planning; coordinating and evaluating teaching and the curriculum; promoting and participating in teaching learning and development; and ensuring an orderly and supportive environment. An important consideration is whether programmes implemented by Schooling Improvement have taken the leadership dimensions and focused them on the needs of far more effective instruction for Pasifika students and how different adaptations by leaders relate to the fidelity of Schooling Improvement initiatives for Pasifika learners.

1.4.1 Pasifika ‘achievement’ and ‘success’

The level of Pasifika student academic achievement arguably is the ultimate measure of how effectively schools are responding to the needs of Pasifika students (Education Review Office, 2006). But achievement is one aspect of broader understandings and aspirations for Pasifika ‘success’ (Airini & Sauni, 2004; Amituanai-Toloa, 2007b; Fuamatu, 2009). In this way, personal attributes, community service, mental and spiritual well-being, cultural competence and identity are seen as vital aspects of education, this being an education for life, and service. Thus, the purpose of education for Pasifika is viewed holistically. Consequently, the route to Pasifika student achievement is also holistic (Samu, 1998, as cited in Anae, 2007; Sauni, 2006). Research is beginning to explore who and where within formal school, community, family and the individual lies the responsibility for each aspect of the learner’s journey towards success. Greater emphasis is being placed on research that supports improved learners’ outcomes (for example, the Best Evidence research), and the role of teaching in improved outcomes (Alton-Lee, 2003; Hattie, 2003). While the research reported here does not explore directly these wider perspectives, it is important to note that these may be included in the goals of Schooling Improvement, and are not inconsistent given appropriate consideration with an unrelenting focus on achievement.

1.4.2 The evidence needed

The emerging best model for Schooling Improvement intervention relies on contextualised, reliable and valid information not only about achievement and instruction, but also on the range of Pasifika groups. Analysis of achievement data is one component of this, and the degree to which schools and clusters of schools have the capability and capacity to collect, manage, analyse and interpret longitudinal data becomes a constraint on their effectiveness. A commentary paper accompanying this report describes how widespread this constraint is and what might be needed to overcome it (Lai, McNaughton & Amituanai-Toloa, 2009). Currently the evidence is for mixed capability and capacity. The 2004 Education Review Office (ERO) report on Pasifika students in Auckland schools found that schools in the Auckland and Northland area were analysing assessment results in some subject areas (usually through PATsdecile⁶ in primary schools and national assessment results in secondary schools). Most schools that were able to comment on or report achievement levels noted that levels were lower for Pasifika students than for non-Pasifika students (Education Review Office, 2004).

In addition, however, the ERO evaluation (Education Review Office, 2004) proposed five key areas for schools, which they identified from the literature as supporting enhanced Pasifika outcomes in education and hence improving Pacific student achievement. These are:

• collecting and analysing Pasifika student achievement data
• Pasifika student achievement initiatives
• attendance and suspension information
• teacher engagement of Pasifika students in learning
• school engagement with their Pasifika families and communities.

It is noteworthy that research into teacher engagement for improved Pasifika outcomes tends to focus on in-service professional development. The role of pre-service teacher education, including an awareness of students’ languages and knowledge in preparing teachers for better Pasifika education outcomes, is yet to be fully researched. What is crucial for this list and would be predicted to be crucial in effective Schooling Improvement interventions is the process of gathering information on classroom instruction and relating this to the observed patterns of achievement. This is seldom done internationally but effective local research and development programmes have done this (Bishop et al., 2003; Phillips, McNaughton, & MacDonald, 2004; McNaughton, Amituanai-Toloa, Lai, MacDonald, & Farry, 2005), resulting in acceleration and sustainability of students academic achievement (Lai, McNaughton, Timperley, & Hsiao, 2009).

As noted above, whilst bilingualism and biliteracy are not often considered under the rubric of Schooling Improvement, it is nevertheless crucial to recognise expertise in Pasifika languages and knowledge as important components firstly for Pasifika holistically, and secondly for English academic achievement (Tabors & Snow, 2001; Perez, 2004; May & Hill, 2004). There is, therefore, an issue about the relative benefits of monolingualism in mainstream education and the effects of bilingualism and bilingual education. There is evidence to suggest that understanding how language develops for bilingual students can add to conceptualisation of bilingual education and its benefits (Amituanai-Toloa & McNaughton, 2008).

1.5 The Purpose of the Study: Aims and Research Questions

1.5.1 Purposes

• to identify the practices that work to raise achievement and close the gaps for Pasifika students especially at the classroom, school and cluster levels
• to find out how effective existing Schooling Improvement initiatives are in raising achievement for Pasifika students
• to provide information to help existing and new initiatives to improve their effectiveness for Pasifika students.

1.5.2 The research questions

The overarching research questions are:

1. What works in schools for Pasifika students and under what conditions?
2. What are the barriers to schools achieving positive learning outcomes for Pasifika students?

The Schooling Improvement specific research questions are:

1. Are the nine existing Schooling Improvement initiatives with significant numbers of Pasifika students bringing about significant gains in achievement for Pasifika students, and if so, what are the gains from each initiative and each school within the initiatives?
2. What, if any, are the differences between the gains seen in the Schooling Improvement initiatives for different student groups within Pasifika (ethnicity, gender, generation in New Zealand, language)?
3. If there were any significant positive gains identified in response to the questions above, what appears to have contributed to those gains?

1.5.3 What this report covers

In this report we evaluate the initiatives using a three step process. First we summarise the general achievement data across nine interventions that have high numbers of Pasifika students. This is followed by a close analysis of a Focus Cluster, in which we use detailed statistical procedures to examine features of students such as language status, gender and ethnicity to answer questions about the patterns of effects for Pasifika students. Essentially this section provides some insights into the question of whether interventions are meeting the needs generally of Pasifika students or if there are limited areas of effects.

This is followed by systematic case studies that provide quantitative and qualitative data on several general hypotheses at the level of school effects. These are that schools that are more connected with their communities will generally be more effective; that schools that have well embedded inquiry practices and have heightened sense of collective efficacy will be more effective; that schools in which instruction has specific features of quality and is culturally responsive (developing distinctive approaches for Pasifika learners) will be more effective; and lastly that there will be some attributes of students which are associated with greater gains and levels of achievement, probably relating to language status and familiarity with the New Zealand educational system. Also, that community beliefs and values relating to teaching and learning will provide further evidence of the features of schools that are likely to be more effective. In this last section we add the voices of students, their parents, teacher and Principals to provide rich and integrated tests of these hypotheses.

In addition to the above, because we were able to survey students from two clusters, we also have general descriptions of features of language status across schools, aspects of leadership patterns across schools and aspects of teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge across schools.

1.6 Theoretical Approach

Improved Pasifika achievement does not come from accepting the status quo in instruction (Airini et al., 2007). Nor does it come from only improving some parts of the system, which includes schools, policy makers and researchers (Fullan, 1993). Better outcomes come from the kind of change that is dynamic; a force that creates deep and wide change for all those taking part in a project of national importance. These are the kinds of changes that bring about improvements in schooling necessary for better Pasifika student outcomes. In combination they signal key components essential to getting large scale high-quality school education cultures and practices geared towards Pasifika student success (Airini & Amituanai-Toloa, 2008).

1.6.1 Components of improved research for Pasifika achievement

Clearly, multiple components are needed in Schooling Improvement programmes. While this report provides more research evidence on what components are likely to be associated with greater effectiveness, more research is obviously required. As we noted above, there are several components needed to improve the quality of research examining Pasifika student achievement. The first is to develop an understanding of Pasifika peoples in Aoteroa New Zealand and detailed patterns of achievement in school. The second is to apply rigourous models and methodologies for researching Pasifika achievement that incorporate Pasifika methodologies. Thirdly is to adopt a principled approach to scaling up research into Pasifika achievement, including ensuring there is a policy and strategic context for research into Pasifika education outcomes. Lastly, a link with Pasifika understandings of ‘achievement’ and ‘success’ must be made.

1.6.2 Components of Schooling Improvement

The review suggests several features that are likely to be present in effective Schooling Improvement for Pasifika students. We plot the general theoretical basis for these here, and then in the final section we outline key theoretical predictions. Interventions need to be based on the development of professional learning communities in schools. Such communities have several features. One is shared ideas, beliefs and goals. This means being very knowledgeable about the target domain (such as areas of literacy or numeracy), but it also entails detailed understanding of the nature of teaching and learning related to that domain. It also means having realistic (and not low) expectations about children and their learning (Timperley, 2003). A second feature of an effective learning community is that their goals and practices are based on evidence. That evidence should draw on close descriptions of children’s learning as well as descriptions of patterns of teaching. This requires an analytical approach to the collection and use of evidence and critical reflection on practice rather than a comfortable collaboration in which ideas are simply shared (Ball & Cohen, 1999; Toole & Seashore, 2002). Yet another feature is that the researchers’ and teachers’ ideas and practices need to be culturally located. That is, ideas and practices that are developed and tested need to entail an understanding of children’s language, literacy and numeracy practices as these reflect children’s local and more international cultural identities. Importantly, this means knowing how these practices relate (or do not relate) to classroom practices and what ‘funds of knowledge’ they bring to the classroom (New London Group, 1996).

Recent international reviews of educational change suggest that when educators come to their planning and decision-making with an inquiry habit of mind, they consider the evidence informing their theories and engage in learning conversations, and powerful learning and sustainable improvement take place (Earl & Timperley, 2008). For example, in New Zealand, researchers have found that schools that regularly engage in critical discussions of student achievement data to improve teaching practices were more likely to sustain and improve on their current levels of achievement (Lai, McNaughton, Timperley et al., 2009; McNaughton & Lai, 2009; Timperley, Wilson, Barrar, & Fung, 2007). The research, therefore, shows that teachers should focus on what is ‘good’ or ‘effective practice’ rather than ‘best practice’. Good practice requires the ability to interrupt automatic classroom and institutional routines in order to inquire in a sufficiently rigorous way about the nature of students’ needs and how to meet them (Robinson & Lai, 2006). Best practice implies that teachers use an established teaching approach that has a reputation for being ‘the best’, the title of which can reflect either well-designed and conducted evaluations or nothing more than the popularity of the approach.

The most effective interventions are likely to be focused on classroom instruction as well as the relationship between the community and the school. The latter relationship is important not just for building practices that are complementary and mutually respectful but also so that students and families feel that the school reflects and constructs their identities and expertise in culturally appropriate ways.

1.7 Hypotheses

1.7.1 Connections

We have merged two perspectives to develop predictions about teaching, learning and schooling in the Schooling Improvement initiatives. One perspective draws on the Pasifika model of problem solving, and the other on the Western model of the ecology of human development. The Coconut model is a problem solving model adopted by Amituanai-Toloa (2005) with which to ‘look across’ the main influential players of the education sector in the different systems. These players include the researcher, the government, the Ministry of Education as its representative, the initiatives, clusters and schools, teachers, classrooms, students and parents. The model and its different layers enable us to identify the stakeholders and their influences and/or effectiveness in raising Pasifika student academic achievement.

While this Pasifika model enables us to ‘look across’, from the outside in, the other model, developed by developmentalist Uri Bronfenbrenner (1979) was adopted to look from inside out. Bronfenbrenner’s original model used the analogy of Russian dolls and proposed that the immediate unit for development was the parent and child who constitute a ‘microsystem’. In the case of schools a microsystem is formed by the teacher and student interacting together over time. The establishment of this microsystem creates the primary developmental vehicle in and through which developmental processes are constructed and learning occurs. For example, the attachment between a baby and its caregiver develops from the characteristics of the interactions co-constructed in this microsystem.

Bronfenbrenner’s insight when he proposed this model was to understand that this system exists and is in turn constituted within other systems. This moved thinking away from the dominant models of development which located the development within the child constructing ideas from the immediate physical and social world. Moreover, the functioning and wellbeing of the microsystem is dependent on relationships with significant others and other microsystems within the next wider system.

He called the system of microsystems a ‘mesosystem’ and proposed a set of operating principles about how development is enhanced by the relationships within that system. These include the degree to which information flows between microsystems and the degree to which there is mutual articulation between the activities and features of guidance operating across microsystems. The two immediate microsystems that constitute a mesosystem for the students are the parent microsystems and the teacher microsystem.

Mesosystems are in turn embedded in the world of the local neighbourhood and the community. This next widest system, the ‘exosystem’, contains resources and institutions that impact on the mesosystem and microsystems. In schools it is the presence of high quality resources for teachers, and the coherence and other properties associated with a dynamic and effective professional learning community. From the community side, the presence of good public transport and community libraries, for example, would make a difference to whether families could access books to read during summer. Furthermore, the degree to which the selection and use of books and the guidance and forms of reading having similar properties to the activities of school reading would in turn impact on the child’s development at school.

The theoretical prediction from the two views at the level of the community and its school is that an effective school (or cluster of schools) would have well developed connections with communities and families. The connections would be two way with a considerable flow of information both ways.

In addition, general models of parent ‘involvement’ distinguish between a range of types of involvement, from volunteering to participating with varied influence on students’ achievement (Pomerantz, Moorman, & Litwack, 2007). One broad distinction is between involvement based at school and involvement based at home. School-based involvement includes those practices in which parents are in actual contact and include such things as attendance at school meetings, talking with teachers, volunteering, and teacher aides. Home-based involvement takes two forms. The first is directly related to school, including assisting with school related tasks such as homework and course selection, and responding to academic endeavours. The second and less direct form involves academic related activities such as reading books to children and taking them to settings in which knowledge related to success at school can be acquired (e.g., museums).

Two models have been proposed for how this involvement impacts upon achievement. One is a skill development model which predicts that parents’ involvement improves children’s achievement through the skill-related resources provided. The second is a motivational development model which predicts that involvement provides children with a variety of motivational resources (such as intrinsic reasons for pursuing school academic goals, self efficacy and autonomy, and positive perceptions of school). These models are not mutually exclusive and it is likely that parents’ involvement enhances achievement through both skill and motivational development (Pomerantz et al., 2007).

As Pomerantz et al. (2007) point out, while there is a large descriptive and correlational research base on these types and possible outcomes, there are limited experimental studies in either area. In general the literature tends to support the effects for school-based involvement on children’s achievement, but the results are mixed for the effects of directly linked home-based involvement. The reason for the latter include how the manner (and content) of involvement at home can vary in terms of what parents actually do, but also in terms of with whom they are doing it.

A recent research synthesis of parent involvement in homework illustrates the issues (Patall, Cooper, & Robinson, 2008). One of the problems is that more involvement may occur with lower achieving students and hence concurrent correlations can show a negative relationship. The overall effect of parent involvement in homework is small and not consistent, varying among other things with age of the student. In terms of age, the greatest effects are for primary students in the elementary grades (Years 2 - 5) and for secondary students. The relationships are less strong for students in the middle school years. Important moderators include the type of homework set (reading and language are generally stronger relationships) and type of involvement (setting rules and direct guidance).

The international reviews do not examine two well-known forms of parent involvement in New Zealand; sending books home to read in the first years and direct tutoring such as Pause Prompt and Praise. The experimental literature on these is consistent with the above conclusions (McNaughton, 1995). That is, the more that appropriate resources are provided (such appropriate level texts) and especially the more information and direct guidance for how to carry out the practice is provided, the greater the impact. It is also the case that these effects have been demonstrated with Māori students, but less so with Pasifika students.

1.7.2 Inquiry and collective efficacy

Our hypothesis is that greater improvements in student outcomes through Schooling Improvement (and greater sustainability of any improvements) are associated with school and teacher inquiry. The process of inquiry requires not just examining what students need to know, but also what teachers and leaders need to learn to support their students (Timperley et al., 2007).

Inquiry is important because low progress could be associated with a variety of teaching and learning needs. Take for example the domain of reading comprehension. If a student obtains a poor score in a reading comprehension test, there could be a variety of reasons for the poor performance on the test. According to Block and Pressley (2002), to comprehend written text, a reader needs to be able to decode accurately and fluently and to have a wide and appropriate vocabulary, appropriate and expanding topic and world knowledge, active comprehension strategies and active monitoring and fix-up strategies. In addition, researchers have also identified the teacher’s role in incorporating cultural resources including event knowledge  (McNaughton, 2002) and in building students’ sense of self-efficacy and more general engagement and motivation (Wang & Guthrie, 2004).

Out of this array of teaching and learning needs, those for students and teachers in any particular instructional context may therefore have a context-specific profile. While our research-based knowledge means there are well-established relationships, the patterns of these relationships in specific contexts may vary. A simple example might be whether the groups of students who make relatively low progress in a particular context, say in a cluster of similar schools serving similar communities, have difficulties associated with decoding or using comprehension strategies or both, and how the teaching that occurs in those schools is related to those difficulties. Riddle Buly and Valencia (2002) provided a case study from a policy perspective on the importance of basing any intervention on specific profiles, rather than on assumptions about what children need (and what instruction should look like). In that study, a policy mandating phonics instruction for all students in the state of Washington who fell below literacy proficiency levels was shown to have missed the needs of the majority of students, whose decoding was strong but who struggled with comprehension or language requirements for the tests.

Recent research has implicated school and teacher inquiry in the raising and sustaining of achievement gains, particularly in literacy (Campbell & Levin, 2009; Lai, McNaughton, Amituanai-Toloa, et al., 2009; Lai, McNaughton, Timperley et al., 2009; Taylor, et al., 2005; Timperley et al., 2007). For example, in a local study, Lai, McNaughton, Amituanai-Toloa et al. (2009) found that a research-development approach based on inquiry to contextualise effective practices to the local needs resulted in an average achievement gain across cohorts followed longitudinally of 1 year’s progress in addition to expected progress over that period with stanine effect sizes of d = 0.62. The size of the effect was higher than those reported internationally. Borman (2005) showed that national reforms of schools to boost the achievement of children in low-performing schools serving the poorest communities have produced small gains in the short term, with effect sizes on the order of less than 0.20. The inquiry processes used in the study was the ongoing and collaborative analysis and use of achievement data matched to teaching observations, which was used to alter teaching practices. The collaborations involved teachers, school leaders, researchers and Ministry of Education officials. The achievement gains made in this intervention were sustained one year after the intervention with statistical modelling showing that the accelerations in achievement were sustained at the same rate as that of the intervention (Lai, McNaughton, Amituanai-Toloa et al., 2009). Once again, inquiry was implicated in the sustaining of the achievement gains, with schools continuing the collaborative inquiry into their own practices to improve achievement outcomes. Case studies of higher achieving schools suggested that the teachers functioned as ‘adaptive experts’ (a sophisticated form of teacher inquiry), where the teachers integrated several forms of knowledge flexibly to solve the problems at hand.

The Lai et al. studies (Lai, McNaughton, & Amituanai-Toloa 2009; Lai, McNaughton, Amituanai-Toloa et al., 2009; Lai, McNaughton, Timperley et al., 2009) suggest the importance of collaborative inquiry, i.e., the role of professional learning communities in inquiring into their own data. However, it must be emphasised that not all communities are useful for developing collective inquiry. Rather the types of communities which are ideal for inquiring into data have the following features: accessing and testing multiple sources of knowledge and skills; critical reflection on the ideas shared in the professional learning community; developing shared understandings; building collective efficacy; and building collective responsibility and collegial accountability.

A second but related hypothesis is that collective efficacy, or in other words, the collective belief that the school community can achieve its desired outcomes, is important in raising achievement. Strong collective efficacy in schools is important because it is a predictor of student achievement (Bandura, 1995). This is because collective efficacy helps members of the community to feel efficacious, making them more likely to seek solutions to problems they are encountering, more open to adopting new ideas and the like (McNaughton, 2002).

Implicit in the studies that used inquiry to raise achievement is the sense of collective efficacy. Teachers and schools developed innovative ways to change achievement patterns because there was a belief that those patterns could be changed by their actions. This is seen most clearly in the sustainability study, which showed that higher achieving schools reframed issues as problems to be solved rather than leaving them as explanations of the current situation (Lai, McNaughton, Timperley et al., 2009). This approach applied to problems that others might view as beyond the school’s control such as teacher turnover.

1.7.3 Instruction and culturally responsive pedagogy

The theoretical framework related to specific instruction activities in the classroom adopted for this project has two major assumptions. The first is that effective instruction has generic properties that are known to be effective. The second is that one generic feature is that effective instruction is culturally responsive. The framework is outlined here. It has ten dimensions systematically identified in research integrations, syntheses and meta-analyses relating to effective instruction and teaching. Our theoretical prediction is that elements of these ten features (and the more holistic features of classrooms noted below) will be present in the Schooling Improvement schools in general, but also that greater presence would be associated with greater effectiveness.

1. Academic engaged time: A major determinant of the extent of learning and transfer in the classroom across domains (literacy, numeracy etc.) is the amount of actual time engaged in the subject matter and practice effects. More effective teachers promote and maintain extensive practice (see Bransford, Derry, Berliner & Hammerness, 2005; Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005).
2. Strategy instruction: Across domains (literacy, numeracy etc.) the developmental significance of strategies and the critical role of strategies in effective learning of academic skills/complex thinking are recognised. Domain-specific strategy instruction has become a well researched component of effective instructional practice (Bransford et al., 2005; Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005; Seidel & Shavelson, 2007).
3. Core knowledge: Across domains it is recognised that students need to develop an extensive and articulated base of knowledge appropriate to that domain. Domain-specific content knowledge is critical to effective learning (see Bransford et al., 2005; Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005; Seidel & Shavelson, 2007).
4. Vocabulary instruction: The significance of acquiring domain-specific vocabulary and an understanding of the way lexical items are used and language more generally across subject area is very important. In general, the more vocabulary (of particular sorts) a student has, the more vocabulary they are able to learn, and the more they are able to cope with and learn from complex academic tasks in literacy and numeracy (Hiebert & Kamil, 2005; Baumann & Kame’enui, 2004).
5. High level talk: Classroom discourse studies and language studies show the significance of elaborated or extended or non-immediate talk to student learning and to students’ developing more elaborated knowledge and awareness (Cazden, 2001). The emphasis on inquiry at dialogic pedagogy in successful interventions reinforces this.
6. Feedback: Feedback in general, but in contemporary analyses, domain-specific feedback, is known to be a very significant component of effective instruction (Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Seidel & Shavelson, 2007).
7. Student awareness: The role of awareness, conceived in terms of both control and reflection, is a feature of newer models of complex cognitive development and student learning and figures significantly in the planning for strategy instruction (Bransford et al., 2005; Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005; McNaughton, 2002).
8. Differentiated instruction: The need to be able to tailor instruction to current levels of expertise is a fundamental principle in effective instruction. Just how this differentiation happens and how side effects such as Matthew effects in which the ‘rich get richer’ are avoided is still a research issue (Alton-Lee, 2003; Cazden, 2001; McNaughton, 2002).
9. Cultural responsiveness: The dimension of differentiation is allied to a second dimension, responsiveness based on the cultural and linguistic resources of students. Matthew effects are especially significant in the context of cultural and linguistically diverse students. But the recent research in New Zealand and elsewhere indicates that responsiveness, specifically with culturally and linguistically diverse students who find schools risky places, is especially significant and has pedagogical, cultural and affective properties (Bishop, et al., 2003; McNaughton, 2002). These do overlap with properties listed above (and below) but in principle need to be understood specially as forms of responsiveness to particular cultural contexts. The pedagogical properties, when examined in terms of instruction processes can be described as ‘incorporation’ and ‘building awareness’ (McNaughton, 2002). Incorporation includes use of cultural and linguistic resources or ‘funds of knowledge’ that children bring to school. In practice this means teachers draw on students’ background and event knowledge, and they design and implement practices that build on preferred values and beliefs as well as use familiar discourse patterns. Building awareness includes those instructional practices which unlock unfamiliar tasks, texts, discourse features and pedagogical practices in ways that enable students to be as aware as possible of needs and requirements for effective learning. This means on the ground inquiry and critical thinking patterns (for example as built into the Te Kotahitanga project, Bishop et al., 2003) and high level talk by students as well as teachers, as well as highly informative and supportive feedback. The affective features cover areas such as respect by teachers, positive affect in which students feel valued as well the high expectations constructed in a context of emotional security. We would not expect a simple ‘cover all’ Pasifika pedagogy which homogenised this diverse group to be present in effective classrooms. Rather, we would expect adaptations which may look different for different groups with considerable differentiation to personalise instruction using generic knowledge of cultural and linguistic resources in Pasifika groups.
10. Expectations: The role of expectations is contentious and needs to be carefully operationalised. But teacher expectations when actualised in terms of task levels and forms of differentiated instruction clearly can create constraints for some learners, and both the individual and collective ‘self efficacy’ come to influence the commitment and effectiveness of teachers especially with culturally and linguistically diverse students (Alton-Lee, 2003; McNaughton, 2002). In general, we would expect to see instruction in effective schools (or clusters) conveying high but achievable expectations.

In addition, we would expect some more holistic features of classrooms to be related to greater effectiveness. These include classroom resources, management and planning. Classroom effectiveness also includes aspects of the ambient environment (the resources and artefacts on walls and available to students within the classroom) as well as aspects of management and structure which partly determine ‘engaged time’ (Bransford et al., 2005). Previous research has attempted to capture these aspects too (e.g., Lai, McNaughton, Amituanai-Toloa et al., 2009; Parr, Timperley, reddish, Jesson, & Adams, 2006).

1.7.4 The student as a learner

Pasifika students themselves contribute to the effectiveness of Schooling Improvement interventions in schools. While Hattie (2009) calculated that up to 30% of the variance in achievement is attributable to teachers, he also noted from his meta-analyses that students bring 50% of the variance in achievement to the table. Their contribution is substantial and multifaceted.

There is the contribution of prior achievement and levels of knowledge. There are the metacognitive and personal regulation aspects of learning. There are motivational contributions and other psychological properties of being a learner, including beliefs and values about the nature of learning and the instruction or extrinsic reasons for success (Paris & McNaughton, in press). In addition, in this context there are attributes of language and familiarity with the New Zealand school system.

We held very open hypotheses about students. In the preceding literature review there is evidence that generally speaking the goals and motivations to achieve by Pasifika learners are high and we would expect the motivations of students in the project to be consistent with that evidence. The wider international literature suggests that intrinsic motivation and goals associated with self-regulated learning, while initially increasing across primary school, decrease at secondary school (Paris & McNaughton, in press) and the general expectation would be for that to be true in New Zealand also. The important finding from previous research is that accessing and understanding student voices provides very important insights from the students regarding all features of schooling including what works from their perspective. We would expect to find articulate and understandable insights in this project too. In addition, their voices provide important evidence for the planning of interventions.

There are open questions about the role of the learner’s language and languages on achievement. There is little New Zealand research that can provide direct hypotheses. In general, as noted earlier, good grounding in an L1 can mean greater transfer from that language to a second (Tabors & Snow, 2001). Good grounding here includes well developed abstract or ‘academic’/‘decontextualised’ language forms as well as a wide vocabulary. We did not measure these aspects of language, however, weak proxies for them might be found in the presence of an L1 or both an L1 and L2 at home and in the language first used by students. Similarly, being longer in the New Zealand system might be associated with higher achievement on an argument of increased familiarity with a system. But at best this would be a weak and highly contingent relationship (i.e., dependent on other attributes such as language and previous achievement).