Overview

The teachers wanted to explore whether a more culturally responsive approach might be more effective, particularly for Māori and Pasifika students. This would involve engagement with indigenous designers and with community experts, the creation of a new framework and guidelines for scaffolding students through the creative design process, and trialling approaches to technology learning that would engage all learners in projects that had a meaningful connection to the community.

The teachers’ plans were disrupted and required adaptation, first when two of the original three left the school and later, with the Covid-19 national lockdown. It became a partnership, with two teachers trialling the new innovations in two schools. The planned trials were limited to just one that did not have the intended engagement with a community stakeholder.

The new creative design process integrates learning about the importance of integrating narrative, whakapapa, and kaitiakitanga with the technological processes and practices outlined in the New Zealand Curriculum. It is flexible, enabling changes in depth and focus at different stages of the creative process. Further, the introduction of ‘kete builders’ – introductory lessons preparing students with the knowledge and skills necessary to complete their projects, is helping students turn their creative ideas into creative outcomes. While trialling could not happen in the way or to the extent that was intended, this more culturally responsive approach to technology education is resulting in improved engagement and achievement for all students.

A critical feature of this project’s success was in the team’s willingness to seek out and pay respectful attention to indigenous knowledge.

It was essential as Pākehā teachers that we connected not only with our Māori community but also indigenous designers. The designers gave us some understanding of how they engaged in developing projects and how their culture influences their thinking and processes of design. They supported us to develop a way of encouraging our students to use this type of approach in their work. They received our questions openly and were able to articulate their answers and world views in ways that resonated with us. We valued their frank and open conversations that gave us confidence and courage to explore Te Ao Māori in our contexts.

Final project report

The inquiry story

Initially, this project was intended to involve three teachers working within the Technology Faculty at Tawa College, all teaching Design and Materials Technology. However, early in the process, two of the teachers moved to different schools. For one, this was Paraparaumu College. She and the project leader decided to press on and adapt the project to take a school partnership approach. The project’s primary focus was on students taking technology in Year 9, especially those who are Māori and/or Pasifika. Over time, it also involved some older students.

What was the focus?

The project was a response to teachers’ observation of significant underachievement and disengagement in Year 9 technology courses, with few choosing to pursue the subject into Year 10. Student feedback had identified a set of factors that contributed to these issues:

• students felt frustrated by a lack of agency or ownership over their learning
• students felt that the topics chosen for their projects lacked relevance and were of little value.

The teachers in the project team wanted to facilitate opportunities for students to connect with authentic contexts and issues within their local communities that would enable them to experience richer and deeper learning opportunities. Further, the teachers sought to better align their pedagogical approaches with their students’ cultures and to make connections that would help them to see their place in the world and develop the 21st century learning skills needed for success in that world. They hoped these shifts would improve engagement, achievement, and retention for all Year 9 students, but had a particular focus on Māori and Pasifika students.

The teachers had also observed that students were struggling, not only to generate meaningful design ideas, but to develop and make them. For the students to become more independent and confident designers, they needed to build their material and processes knowledge.

What did the teachers try?

There were three intended phases to this year-long project.

The purpose of the first phase was for the teachers to better understand the design and making processes of Māori and Pasifika cultures and how these connected to technological practice as defined within the New Zealand Curriculum. This knowledge-building phase included reaching out to learn about Māori and Pasifika aspirations for their children and how better to connect with whānau and communities. The team undertook a Mātauranga Māori Design consultation day at Indigenous Design and Innovation Aotearoa (IDIA). They also took years 9–11 Māori and Pasifika students to a mentorship day at IDIA where they had the opportunity to look at design through a Te Ao Māori lens. The teachers learned about the importance of narrative and connections when design is approached from this lens, and they learned from colleagues in other schools about what they were doing to be more culturally responsive. The two teachers met in regular hui to discuss and consider the implications of what they had learned. At Tawa College, they also trialed the establishment of a student cultural advisory group. Conversations with this group and with a focus group at Paraparaumu College were guided by protocols recommended by the education consultant for Ngāti Toa.

The purpose of the second phase was to use what had been learned to create a framework and guidance for setting up project-based learning opportunities within local communities that utilise Māori and Pasifika technological processes to enrich student learning of technological practices. The teachers identified themes within the advice they had received from indigenous design experts and their advisers in their community. These included the importance of:

• making strong connections between the tangata (people), whenua (land), and the hua (product) or taiao (space) to be designed
• looking back to understand the whakapapa of a hua or taiao (why the hua or taiao is the way it is and how it got there) before attempting to move forward
• there being a narrative sitting behind every new hua or taiao and a purpose for its existence
• taking a user-centred approach that takes in their previous experiences and the context for use of the hua or taiao
• kaitiakitanga and using sustainable making processes.

The teachers connected what they had learned to the elements of technological practice that are outlined in the New Zealand Curriculum. They then designed a visual to describe the elements of a culturally responsive creative process. The framework they created has the user at its centre. It has six stages representing: the user experience, whakapapa of the hua or taiao, creation of a narrative, thinking and problem solving, kaitiakitanga, making, and user testing. The team placed each symbol upon a tree ring to represent continual growth and to link to the whenua.

The visual was intended to be flexible, so that it could be adapted to different contexts, foci, students, or timeframes. Students were encouraged to use the visual to support conversations about the context of their projects, the narrative behind their designs, and the connections with people, environment, and purpose. The hope was that students would become increasingly familiar with the diagram and the concepts it represents, deepening their understandings about the creative process.

The purpose of the third phase was to trial using the departmental processes and guide to set up and implement three projects for Year 9 students that involved connection and collaboration with the local community and utilised the culturally responsive approach that had been developed to technological practice. This phase was also where the team intended to check the impact on student engagement and achievement.

Traditionally, Year 9 students completed two projects over two terms. The teachers restructured this to commence with a series of ‘kete builders’ – two or three lessons focused on specific materials and processes that provided them with an opportunity to gain some knowledge and experience before moving to their projects. In the two projects that followed, the creative process visual was to be used to scaffold students through their projects. The second project would then enable the students to follow the process again with greater independence.

The Covid-19 lockdown meant that the teachers were not able to run their intended initial trial, which was to involve students at both schools working for a shared external client. However, restructuring the activities created the opportunity to trail the creative process using project based learning within local curriculum contexts. The lockdown also meant that the teachers did not have time to create the written guidance they intended.

What happened as a result of this innovation?

While only one trial could be run and not as intended, it did have promising results. For example:

• students clearly connected what they learned in the kete builders with their development process and used what they learned in their designs
• students were more confident in their design decisions
• teachers could see the narrative in the students’ designs, though students themselves were not always aware of this
• students’ designs were more creative than those produced in previous years
• students were more engaged in their projects
• students were enthusiastic about working on community-based projects and got satisfaction about seeing something they have made being used by others
• student numbers in Tawa College’s Product Design and Manufacturing option grew from 14 in 2020 to 41 in 2021
• one student who was also taking another technology course commented that the visual of the creative process helped her manage her learning in both courses.

Based upon the initial trial, the teachers decided that they would need to make stronger links between the kete builders and the project briefs and do fewer kete builders but in greater depth.

There was a difference in the impact in the two schools. The teacher at Paraparaumu College was in a new school with its own established ways of working. This meant she was alone in developing and trialling the new approaches and it was harder to make the fundamental shifts she sought.

In contrast, teachers at Tawa College trialled the approach at all levels of technology teaching and are considering spreading their use of the visual and the kete builders across all the technology departments. They are also considering implementing more sustainable practices, such as in their choices of material, so that they model an ethical approach to design in all they do.

What did they learn?

The big learning was embodied in the model for the creative design process that unites concepts from te ao Māori and Pasifika cultures with the process and practice of design as it is conceptualised in the New Zealand Curriculum. Such a process places an emphasis on connections, building relationships between the different aspects of the issues before beginning to think of solutions; offering flexible starting points; encouraging cultural exploration; and kaitiakitanga. It involves the construction of community and the enactment of a truly local curriculum through kōrero and talanoa.

The project also offered learning about the constraints of such an approach, not only due to unusual events such as the lockdown, but through the day-to-day realities of the school environment. Solutions include the need to define the local curriculum and its connections to local, national, and global issues; to plan well ahead to accommodate timeframes for schools and external clients; and to build mana-enhancing relationships and connections to ensure mutually beneficial and clearly understood outcomes.

Inquiry team

This project was led by Toni Tippett (Tawa College), alongside Clare Shill (Paraparaumu College).

For further information

If you would like to learn more about this project, please contact the project leader, Toni Tippett, at ttippett@tawacollege.school.nz

The project’s critical friend was Cheryl Pym (Otago University).

External expertise was accessed from several sources, including:

• Bianca Elkington (iwi education coordinator, Ngāti Toa)
• Fa‘alogo Talosaga Va‘ai (Ministry for Pacific Peoples)
• Dr. Johnson Witehira, Miriame Barbarich, John Moore, Hemi Takimoana, and Brendon Dury  (Indigenous Design and Innovation Aotearoa)
• David Hakaraia (Victoria University of Wellington).

Reference list

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Witehira, J., (2013), Tarai Korero Toi: articulating a Māori design language: a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Fine Arts at Massey University, Palmerston North, Aotearoa New Zealand.