Key Findings

All participating kaiwhakaako concluded that they had been greatly influenced by their participation in the PPBL.

Four main themes thematically emerged in relation to how their underlying cultural beliefs and attitudes had changed.

Theme 1: Changing power relations through the professional and ethical parameters of teaching and learning

The overwhelming response to participating in or receiving from the PPBL was a shift in power relations.  Kaiwhakaako reported that they were challenged to move from being, as one participant described, a place of “chalk and talk” into a position of being a learner alongside their colleagues and students. 

Theme 2: Continuing to deepen understandings of equity through cultural and relational pedagogy that is responsive and builds from what learners already know

Participants all expressed how, through PPBL, their underlying philosophical beliefs about pedagogy and practice had expanded and were continuing to change.  They could no longer view students as passive recipients of knowledge as they needed to make cultural connections with them to ensure their pedagogy was responsive to their learners’ own prior knowledge and experiences. 

Theme 3: Understanding the history of our nation’s past and the implications for our future

The need for all those involved in tertiary educational provision to understand and acknowledge the shared history of our nation and the silenced pervasiveness of colonisation.

Theme 4: Being the best that we can be.

Knowing our history was an essential part of being the best we can be, as educators preparing this generation of learners to be respectful of each other’s culture, and as tomorrow’s leaders of this nation under Te Tiriti o Waitangi.  This could mean that we need to understand Te Tiriti and model the relationships envisioned through the principles of this document. Te Tiriti provided the basis for the transformation needed to ensure our tertiary institutions did not perpetuate the harm and inequities that understanding our history has revealed.  Instead, through Te Tiriti, we can build our reform on mutual understanding, responsibilities and benefits, with all parties, Māori and non-Māori; lecturer and student; leadership and staff.

Conclusions

The four emergent themes:

1. Changing power relations through the professional and ethical parameters of teaching and learning
2. Continuing to deepen understandings of equity through cultural and relational pedagogy that is responsive and builds from what learners already know
3. Understanding the history of our nation’s past and the implications for our future
4. Being the best that we can be

...work interdependently and become most influential when they are collectively applied with others in a mutually evolving cycle to bring about change.

This research shows that the PPBL provides a clear learning pathway and curated resources for very determined acts of learning, where equity and social justice is possible.

The evidence, throughout this research, suggests that being the best educator we can be, is about our professional responsibility to increase equity by changing power relations. We can do this by utilising our professional, adaptive expertise to ensure our pedagogical responses are culturally and relationally grounded in what learners bring to this context, no matter their age or ethnicity.

The evidence also suggests that this professional responsibility brings with it a moral imperative to understand the history of unequal power-relations that our nation was and continues to be built on, and to disrupt these contexts in ways that are respectful but ‘aggressively helpful’.

If we are to take a more meaningful role as educators in Aotearoa there is work for us all, and while individually our contribution may be insignificant, collectively we can be influential.