Editorial: Educational Research and Why It’s Important (original) (raw)
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Ethnic-specifi c equity (ESE) programmes are a common feature in New Zealand universities, aimed at ameliorating the educational disadvantage experienced by Māori and Pacific students at tertiary level. Despite the prevalence of ESE programmes, research has seldom used student voices to critically analyse programme practices. In this study, which conducted focus groups with 90 high-achieving Māori and Pacific students from a New Zealand university, the contribution of ESE programmes to student success is highlighted. Student voices are used to explore how programmes act as a source of support, safety and role modelling for Māori and Pacific students. Participants also provided refl ection on their experiences of ESE programmes, including critiques regarding teaching quality, recruitment and retention, stereotypes, and the heterogeneity of Māori and Pacific identities. Recommendations to universities based on student critiques are offered.
Ethnicity and the reproduction of labour market locations : do Maori students really have a choice?
1988
Maori people are widely represented in the unskilled and low-status, low-paying jobs in New Zealand. Reeent statistics show that 59.1 % of the I\1aori school-leavers who find jobs go into manual oeeupations, and only 5.4% go into rechnical or professional work (Department of Education, 1982). 49% of Maori students become uner:1.ployed on leaving school (Department of Education, 1983). While the reasons for this state of affairs must necessarily embrace a great number of issues whieh analyse how inequality is structured in Aotearoa, attention must also be given to the way monoeultural sehooling enhances the reproduction of specific loeations for Maori students within (or outside) a stratified labour market. This study looks at some of the processes involved in the occupational decision-making of Maori students as observed in two secondary schools in a provincial city in the North Island of New Zealand. Through ethnographic material, an attempt is made to expose some of the internal cultural polities of tne schools in question. highlighting processes of conflict and contestation, negotiation and exchange, resistance and aecommodation. Occupational "choice" by Maori students is seen to be the outcome of a structural process of cultural production and reproduction within an institutional context. By moving away from the idea of schools as a "black box", the ethnographic dara alens us to the possibilities of spaces for cransformation, and shows th., we can explain but not fully predict occupational choice. Research Methodology This article draws from data which the author collected throughout 1986 utilising grounded theory methodology pioneered by Glaser and Snauss (1967) and used in the study of New Zealand education by Battersby (1981) and Ramsay et at (1983). The bulk of the data thus collected was used in a doctoral dissertation
Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 80(2), 2015
Based on ethnographic fieldwork (1997–1998) at a secondary school with a Ma ̄ori2English bilingual unit in Aotearoa/New Zealand, this article examines two different ways students with Ma ̄ori ancestry identified themselves contextually: those in the bilingual unit identified themselves mostly as being Ma ̄ori, while those in mainstream classes identified themselves mostly as Pa ̄keha ̄ (white New Zealander) but occasionally as being Pa ̄keha ̄ but having Ma ̄ori in them. Existing analytical frame- works, such as symbolic ethnicity (Gans 1999) or citizenship (Ong 2003), fail to capture the contextual and dialogic display of these different shades of identification practices. Applying the notion of commitment and its disavowal proposed by Doerr for this special issue (2013), this article analyses these two identification practices as a proactive commitment and a hedging commitment linked to institutional belonging to the bilingual unit and mainstream classes, respectively, and to the wider cultural politics of the official yet tokenistic biculturalism of Aotearoa/New Zealand.