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2017

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holiday reading

Some summer holiday reading

Posted on December 20, 2017 by Paula Eskett

This is the time of year when projects and work streams wind up in preparation for the fabulous Kiwi summer holiday. Yet, for many of us, it can also be a time for reflection and thinking ahead to ways we can bring to life our goals and aspirations for 2018.

CORE whānau are ferocious readers with their fingers on the pulse of the latest national and international titles and best sellers. Our personalised reviews — with a uniquely Aotearoa — lens may support and inspire your thinking and teaching practice.

Enjoy a selection of reviews of the great reads from 2017.

Schools who are interested in subscribing to the CORE Library can contact Paula Eskett for details.

 

A Learner’s Paradise — a guidebook for parents and educators everywhere.
Wells, R. (2016).
EdtechTeam Press.
Reviewed by: Jacky Young

A Learner's Paradise Richard Wells (@EduWells) writes in a conversational style, which made this a quick and easy read for me. I also enjoyed the web links contained in footnotes allowing me to explore further. He made me realise that we do have a great education system, something those of us who were part of the evolutionary process as The New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) document took shape often take for granted.

As a past CORE Education e-Fellow, he explored how the NZC has been interpreted by a wide range of schools throughout NZ. Many parts of it are well worth sharing with others, especially if you are working as a facilitator in schools. His key focus is on the amazing nature of where education is at in NZ, and the possibilities of its future due to the innovative and flexible opportunities inherent in the NZC as our guiding document. He came to NZ in 2006 after having taught in a very constricting and rigid education system in England. Based on his prior experiences, he calls our curriculum the ‘empty’ curriculum because of its lack of content, driven by key competencies and values allowing it to be interpreted in diverse ways to best meet the needs of learners and school context. He frequently refers to NZ’s high trust model, which means that teachers are treated as professionals capable of making good decisions about what and how they teach.

This book is not just targeted at New Zealand readers and has received accolades worldwide for his reflections on the ideas and possibilities that are embedded within our national education system.

In the words of our colleague Philippa Nicoll Antipas, as quoted on the cover:
“A Learner’s Paradise offers a fresh and engaging overview of the New Zealand education system with provocations and practical suggestions for the classroom teacher… This is a highly enjoyable and thought-provoking read.”


 

Moving the Rock: Seven Levers We Can Press to Transform Education.
Lichtman, Grant (2017).
Jossey-Bass.
Reviewed by: Rebbecca Sweeney

Moving the Rock Grant Lichtman’s #EdJourney is the precursor to his latest book, Moving the Rock. He has searched far and wide for examples of innovation and real change in education, and has shared these in #EdJourney and on his blog. Now, with Moving the Rock, Grant presents his thoughts on exactly how we should achieve the changes needed to shift education dramatically. He shares seven “Levers” for transforming education:
1. Create the demand for better schools
2. Building school-community learning laboratories
3. Encourage open access to knowledge
4. Fix how we measure student success and admit students to college (university)
5. Teach the teachers what they really need to know
6. Connect, flow, and rethink “school”
7. Lead change from where you are

I loved so much about this book and wish I could share it all in this review! While Grant writes from an American perspective, many of his ideas and much of his take on the state of education can be aligned to our New Zealand view. You can happily skip the descriptions of the American policy scene and read about each “Lever” to get some amazing ideas on what you can do right now to influence change from where you’re at — whether you’re a learner, a parent, a teacher, a leader, or a facilitator.

A few snippets I liked a lot include:

Lever 1: Creating the demand for better schools can involve starting small from wherever you are through things like having open community conversations, inspiring our communities by watching films such as Most Likely to Succeed, by piloting new programmes, and by showing off our successes, our pilots, our passionate, and engaged learners!

Lever 6: Online technologies and learning spaces (like MOOCs) may have opened up all kinds of “transactional access to learning but they largely ignore the critical importance of relational learning” — Virtual Reality has potential here, if we can develop a relational pedagogy to go along with relationable VR and Augmented Reality technologies. Exciting!

Lever 7: We need to consider the human side of school change and consider the role of leadership by classroom teachers, families, and communities, too. “Leading from where you are” is important in order for significant change in education. How might we provide opportunities for “early adopters” to engage in leadership learning and then in leading transformational change? How much leadership mentoring and training have school leaders had? How do they enable distributed leadership in their schools?


 

Disobedient Teaching : Surviving and Creating Change in Education.
Ings, Welby (2017).
Otago University Press.
Reviewed by Anne Kenneally

Disobedient Teaching What a pleasure and a privilege to get to review this book. Earlier this year, the title piqued my interest, I’ve been following the social media hype, and have been thoroughly looking forward to diving into it. Welby is a learner, an educator, professor, award-winning academic, designer, film-maker, and author.

Opening the book, I immediately found myself immersed in a thoroughly engaging and easy read that grabbed and embraced me in positive hope and positive disobedience. Perhaps the most poignant for me is the need for absolute belief in the preciousness of every learner. Belief that all flowers bloom when they are ready given the right environment.

The notion of ‘social editor’ is a new one to me. That ‘editor’ who causes us to be wary of standing out, of being disruptive. I am wondering how powerful the ‘social editor’ is in those youth who have incredibly creative ideas, thoughts, and processes. What if they are filled with creativity that they are simply unable to share because of the force of the ‘social editor’?

As I read voraciously, I reflected on a couple of things that I think are worth noting:

  1. As a young learner, I would have died rather than stand out for my ideas.
  2. As an adult, I am increasingly aware of the ‘lack of real creativity’ in my current work life.
  3. I am continually reflecting on the explicit inclusion of creativity in some aspects of my adult life, especially in times of creative questioning and reflecting.
  4. I am acutely aware all over again of the true power and need for Story Hui as a tool for capturing a success story.

This book is full of ‘real’ stories, practical examples, big questions, and a whole lot of hope.

BIG QUESTIONS examples:

  1. How do we give learners ‘permission to disobey conventional thinking and the protestations of their social editor’?
  2. How do we foster creativity? (Question, take risks, have unrelenting courage)
  3. How do we rely on ‘the transformative power of productive disobedience’?
  4. What are we doing to address the conflict with measurement causing dependence?
  5. What do I really and truly know about the way I learn?

Last week I had the pleasure of listening to Welby, at the University of Otago. And we are privileged to have him sharing at uLearn18.

If there is one book to read this summer, this is it! Get positively disobedient!


 

Collective Genius: The art and practice of leading innovation.
Hill, Linda A. (2014).
Harvard Business Review Press.
Reviewed by Oceane Imber

Collective Genius When we think about innovation, our imagination usually pictures creative and charismatic individuals such as Marie Curie, Steve Jobs, or Mark Zuckerberg. We can be set with the idea that the capacity to change our world and be innovative only lies in the hands of a genius with the one revolutionary idea.

In Collective Genius, the authors, Linda A. Hill, Greg Brandeau, Emily Truelove, and Kent Lineback, uncover what it takes to be an innovative company and dismantle the myth of an individualistic innovator.

Through in-depth research, case studies, and interviews this book demonstrates that the reality behind the success of innovative companies lies in the diversity of people working together to achieve a common dream. Innovation takes place when a melting pot of ideas and people work together supported by innovation-oriented leadership. The importance of the right type of leadership cannot be underestimated. A leader of innovation aims to create the right culture of innovation to give space for the collective genius to thrive. Just like it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to bring innovation to life.

Not only does “Creative Genius” give us more realistic perspective on what the buzz word “innovation” hides, but it also gives examples and guidance on how to lead innovation and bring this into the norm in our own environment.

“Every person in your group, whether that’s a small team or a large corporation, contains a slice of genius. Your task as leader is to create a place where all those slices can be elicited, combined, and converted into collective genius.” (Hill et al, 2014, p.7).


 

Reduce Change to Increase Improvement.
Robinson, Viviane (2017).
Thousand Oaks
Reviewed by : Chris McLean

Reduce Change to Increase Improvement Don’t be put off by the cover. You certainly won’t regret spending three hours reading this little taonga of a book. Every school leader should have this in their Christmas stocking to reduce stress levels in the year ahead.

We’re under pressure in education to improve outcomes for all learners, and with good reason. However, this expectation often pushes us to make changes without clearly understanding the why and the how before we embark on yet another journey of change. Robinson unpacks some key steps for leaders, facilitators, or coaches, to take to ensure everyone is on board from the outset, using her ‘bypass’ and ‘engage’ approaches to leading improvement. You’ll love the examples. They’re real and make perfect sense.


 

Essentialism : The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.
McKeown, Greg (2014)
Virgin Books.
Reviewed by Joanne Robson (#ProfReading)

essentialism This year’s pick was originally recommended to me by Derek Wenmoth, CORE Education. For me, an outstanding professional reading is one that challenges my thinking, is underpinned by sound principles/research, and offers practical approaches to achieving the desired life — work balance we crave.

Moving from a non-essentialist to an essentialist mindset requires a shift in thinking, doing and getting in order to live a fulfilled life. McKeown, emphasises one of my mantras, “Less, Better” (note the placement of the comma), so I was encouraged to read on.

Each chapter: Essence, Explore, Eliminate, and Execute encourages us to discern what is truly important, remove the distractions, and ultimately effectively focusing on less but better. The principles can be easily applied to teams, organisations, leaders — starting with you!

In summary, this book reminds us to be mindful of everything we choose to undertake. By creating new triggers to develop healthy habits, we will be able to BE living essentialism — the disciplined pursuit of less. Being equipped with the powerful “slow yes, and quick no! Go on, dare you to pursue this. Ask yourself, “what is essential?” and eliminate everything else.

“If it isn’t a clear yes, then it’s a clear no.”


 

Late Love: Sometimes Doctors Need Saving as Much as Their Patients.
Glenn Colquhoun 2016)
Bridget Williams Books
Reviewed by Carolyn English

late love You may know and love Glenn Colquhoun’s poetry — Playing God, the Fine Art of Walking Upright — now he has used his poetical skills to tell us about his life as a local GP/youth worker in Levin and what needs to change to reconnect our health system with the more vulnerable and less resourced parts of our society.

“I noticed that in consultations after that my head would calm …. wrinkles began to shimmy on the faces of my patients. Parrots or bellbirds or fantails would appear on their shoulders and dead people shuffle shyly out from behind them. Some would hide beneath their skirts or behind their trousers and others would trail warily after. Some would haunt and others would protect.”

This essay is part of the Bridget Williams Books (BWB) series — short books on big subjects by great New Zealand writers. It’s not just the health system that needs changing Colquhoun also describes his views on the role of teachers and education to reduce the poverty divide in our country. A very thought-provoking and visual text.


 

Gamify – How gamification motivates people to do extraordinary things.
Burke, Brian (2014).
Bibliomotion Books and Media.
Review by Fionna Wright

Gamify
Gamify written by Brian Burke, presents the value of gamification and ideas on how to design a gamified experience. Burke is a prominent researcher in the areas of business/IT strategies, disruptive technologies, and gamification. He argues that gamification can address three key elements of motivation:

  1. Autonomy – allowing for choice and agency.
  2. Mastery – providing challenge and feedback to motivate participants.
  3. Purpose – engaging people at an emotional level, in a meaningful way.

 

At the heart of the book, Gamify is about creating an environment that motivates participants to achieve their own goals. The implication for businesses and organisations is, as Burke states,
“If the player’s goals are aligned with the organisation’s goals, then the organizational goals will be realised as a consequence of the player achieving her goals”.

Gamify highlights that workplaces don’t have to be boring, or disconnected from employees’ personal lives. Work can be fun, personally meaningful, and allow people to set and reach goals that also support the organisation they work for.

In schools, gamification is fundamentally about rethinking learning. This book encouraged me to ponder:

  1. Why learning should ever be boring, or personally meaningless?
  2. How gamification could help educators provide more choice, personal meaning and a real sense of purpose to learning?
  3. How gamification could help school leaders provide more choice, personal meaning and a real sense of purpose in their workplace for their staff?

A good read for people considering how to motivate others to learn and work in different, engaging, and purposeful ways.


 

The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die.
Payne, Keith (2017).
Penguin Random House.
Reviewed by: Nick Billowes

The Broken Ladder I really enjoy books that take a multidimensional view of complex problems and bring coherence to the chaos through clever storytelling, analysis, and the integration of frameworks from the work of others.

Is The Broken Ladder this kind of read? Absolutely it is! Keith Payne knits a clever writing style together with his unique experiences to provide deep thinking around the genesis of and approaches to dealing with inequity. He answers the questions around this topic that you have often asked yourself. As well, he challenges your thinking about the social and moral milieu that is leading to its increase.

Inequity is undeniably on the rise as a major global issue, affecting not just financial disparity but also access to opportunity, access to a quality lifestyle and access to a fair and free society. Payne takes a storyteller’s view of the issues and our reactions to and ways of coping with the challenges of inequity. He provides a mirror on the societies in which we live, questioning what we see around us at a societal level, and noting our responses and their consequences. Inequality divides us at a fundamental level, consigning us to lifestyles that are reflective of our opportunities, our health, and our consequential attitudes. Payne brings this sharply into focus.

Through the clever use of research, theory, and the insights of others, The Broken Ladder takes us on a journey where both our actual economic, social, employment, and community standing and our perception of the fairness, justness or otherwise of these, affect our future potential. In other words, it is not just how we are, but also how we accept where we are that defines inequality and how we deal with it. The ways we think and respond deeply change our prospects and, thus, our social and economic status and opportunity.

This book will help you make sense of social dislocation brought about through the impact of inequity, how it affects individuals, and how thinking about its genesis can help us all learn to address ways that we might mitigate its impact.


Image Credit (Feature image): Photo by Bethany Laird on Unsplash

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old classroom

The four most significant shifts in modern pedagogy

Posted on December 7, 2017 by Nikki Urlich

We are at a stage in the teaching profession where it is an overwhelming task to know we are getting it right, for every child, every day. Yet what we know without a doubt is this: we want to get up, get it right that day, for those children who we have the chance to impact.

With movements to integrated, connected, and multidisciplinary curriculum that focusses on growth mindset, along with problem-solving and emotional intelligence, and ensuring that metacognition, student agency, and authentic experiences are at the heart of learning — no wonder we are overwhelmed!

Grant Lichtman, in his book Ed Journey 1, sums it up beautifully when he says, we are “perched on the cusp of two fundamentally different learning systems”. He goes on to discuss the frustration educators are experiencing as we try to tweak the industrial age model we have experienced for the last 150 years, to a new ecosystem model that reflects our wants of what we know is good teaching practice.

Recently, at a conference around future-focused education, I ran a workshop that summarised these shifts in education into four categories. I did so, in a hope that for an hour, I would give educators a chance to stop, take a breath, and clearly see what they could celebrate in their current practice, and hopefully give them some knowledge of where to head in their own professional development journey.

When I started the discussion, I talked about my own experience of primary school in the 80s and how, generally, the students that succeeded tended to be the girls, who listened well and finished their tasks quietly. I asked the group, if they were to summarise the four most significant shifts in pedagogy over the last few decades, what would they be? After their predictions, I countered that technology was not one of my main four, as I believe technology has always been present and impacted on pedagogy — the biggest shift has been the rate of changes in technology and keeping up with it!

So, I shared what I believe from my experience, research, and leadership in education to be the four most significant shifts in modern pedagogy.

four significant practices in pedagogy

1. Accessible, meaningful experiences for all as a focus. Gone are the days where a syllabus is one size fits all.

2. A move to visible teaching and learning. No longer are the mysteries of learning and progress held in the teacher’s head, with students ready to be spoon fed next steps on Monday morning at 9am.

3. Agency. Not just learner agency, but agentic teachers and schools building their own agency in teaching processes.

4. The move to flexible environments and systems. We see the new type of collaborative, flexible learning spaces being created and schools are challenging the old notion of ‘cells and bells’ and fixed timetables.

Over the next few months, I will unpack each of these four pedagogical shifts on this blog, with a hope that you will read it and celebrate the success you have accomplished within these movements. Hopefully too, the discussion of these shifts will give you a clear, less overwhelming focus on something you can put in place next. So that you can wake up, go to work, and know that you are doing your best in today’s challenging time of being a teacher.

Can I finish by saying, “Thank you, teachers, for all that you do’. You probably don’t get thanked enough, but thank you, because, if you are a teacher who is doing the best you can, reading educational blogs and waking up every day with a mindset to do the best for your learners, then those children are lucky. So, thanks.

 


1 Lichtman, G. (2014) #Ed Journey: A Roadmap to the Future of Education. Jossey-Bass San Francisco.

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collaboration-feature

Building Collaboration — chicken or egg?

Posted on November 16, 2017 by Greg Carroll

Kia ora everyone

Collaboration and how groups work together fascinates me! What is it that makes it work in some contexts and not in others? Why do some relationships and situations result in highly effective and worthwhile collaborative teams developing and flourishing, when seemingly identical ones don’t? Collaboration sometimes appears to develop in a mysterious, uncertain, and ad-hoc way. Leaders can actively build the conditions for collaboration to develop and it doesn’t; then conversely, highly effective collaborative relationships pop up in the most unexpected places in an organisation. Why does this happen?

Patrick Lencioni, in his Five Dysfunctions of a Team (2012), highlights the fundamental importance of trust in any team environment. Collaboration, I believe, can only evolve and work well in teams that also work effectively. The rest of the characteristics he identifies are built on the assumption that there is a highly trusting and strong relationship developed that is robust enough to support healthy and positive conflict and accountability. These processes also ensure a developing commitment to the goals and outcomes of the organisation as well as the people in it. The illustration below of Lencioni’s framework is based on a blog post where the author describes in detail a highly dysfunctional team.

dysfunctional team

In this video below, Lencioni expands on his thinking to discriminate between ‘predictive trust’, where you know someone well enough to be able to predict their actions and what they will do in any given situation, and ‘vulnerability-based trust’, where you are able to admit you don’t know or understand and able to be vulnerable in front of and with each other.

Patrick Lecoioni Trust

Click on the image will take you to YouTube

The challenge for change leaders in any context is the chicken-and-egg conundrum here. Doing the work and building the collaborative environment in some ways is often dependent on trust and collaboration already being in place. The difficult thing can simply be getting things underway — how to get people to begin working together and ‘suspend their disbelief’ about a process or the benefit of a change initiative long enough to get things started.

I see that strong processes and expert facilitation/leadership can be key here. It can be easier to get people to trust a process than to trust a person or leader. Engaging in the processes (like the protocols in the Learning Talk books for example) can then show people a way forward and lead to developing relationships and trust in leadership. These issues apply to all leaders, whether in formal leadership positions or not, in big contexts, or simply working with one other person.

All this is super messy. It is one of the key challenges of establishing new teams. It is also one of the exciting and hugely satisfying parts of being a leader. These skills and capacities for building trust and developing collaboration are ones that you can learn and engage with regardless of whether you are in a position of leading change in your context, in a formal or informal leadership position, or you are someone preparing yourself for leadership in the future.

So, what things have you found successful in building a team from the beginning? How have you ‘scaffolded’ people into trusting and collaborating sufficiently to begin ‘getting the job done’? How have you continued to build trust beyond the predictive into vulnerability?

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ulearn-thinking-feature

Change, beliefs, and the ‘F’ words

Posted on October 31, 2017 by Derek Wenmoth

ulearn education conference

The annual uLearn conference is over for another year, and as the new term begins it’s worth taking a little time to reflect on the ‘big ideas’ we came away with — the overarching themes and messages that persisted through the various keynote, spotlight, and workshop presentations. I had the privilege of doing a quick summary at the end of this year’s conference, and want to share that in this blog post as an ‘aide memoire’ for those who are interested.

For me, there were three ‘big ideas’ that kept surfacing (four if you count my two “F” words) which are expanded on below:

Change

“Do not raise your children the way [your] parents raised you, they were born for a different time.”
― Ali ibn Abi Talib

The theme of change was overwhelmingly present in all of the keynote presentations. And not just any change — we’re talking exponential change. Change of such unprecedented proportion that it is becoming impossible to predict the future with any certainty at all, and where our ability to cope is severely challenged. The message was clear, we need to do more to understand the significance of this exponential change for our schools, our learners, and our society. It is time to recognise that our linear ways of dealing with change in the past are simply inadequate when it comes to preparing our young people for their future.

As educational leaders, we are extremely well-versed in the linear approaches to change and change management. We settle in for months, and sometimes years, of sequential interventions designed to help us adapt to the latest change in curriculum, assessment, or pedagogical approach. The problem is that we’re constantly feeling like we’re ‘behind the eight ball’ and never achieving anything before the next wave of change is upon us. This is what happens when we attempt to respond to exponential change in a linear way.

If there was one key message from each of our presenters, it was that we need to set aside many of our traditional approaches to change, particularly if we see ourselves as leading the change, or worse, managing it (now there’s an oxymoron). Linear approaches to change are premised on the notion of certainty — that by doing x and y in sequence we’ll end up in the changed state of z. The problem is, the world of exponential change is characterised by uncertainty — and that is a state that is almost impossible to manage in the traditional sense.

Coping with uncertainty requires everyone involved to accept that they may not have the answers, and more importantly, to realise that the answer is more likely to reside with the collective rather than in the mind of a single individual (i.e., the leader).

As educators, we need to move beyond seeing ourselves as the ones who are passing on our knowledge to our students, or even, facilitating them to discover that knowledge for themselves. We don’t have all of the answers, and the uncertain future our learners will face will present them with challenges that only they will be in a position to solve. This requires a level of humility in our actions as educators, and a growing emphasis on the development of competencies as distinct from domains of knowledge. As one of our keynotes observed; “I want my students to stand on my shoulders, to solve problems I/we can’t yet solve”.

Beliefs

“Focus on changing beliefs – it’s the only thing that matters”
– Eric Mazur

Through the conference we were repeatedly reminded to ask the ‘why’ question — to examine the beliefs that lie behind our actions, be they the things we do as individual educators, or the systems, structures, and processes we adhere to and defend with such vigor.

Understanding how our beliefs shape behaviour is central to understanding how we can respond to change. We see the impact of change in practice without the change in belief all too frequently in our current system — be that the move from single-cell classrooms into open, flexible learning spaces, or the adoption of new forms of assessment. Unless they are underpinned by a fundamental change in belief on the part of the educators involved, the change to some of these things will, just as quickly, be followed by a change back — ending up in the proverbial ‘ping pong’ we see in so many situations – from the school level through to the political level.

Most importantly, we need to consider the notion of coherence — from our beliefs at the centre, the expression of these in terms of the values we espouse, to the practices that we engage in on a daily basis. If there is any inconsistency across these three ‘layers’, then we discover the fragility of any initiative we might engage in – however well intentioned it may be. This is where asking the ‘why’ question becomes so important. We need to be constantly reflecting on the beliefs that underpin our actions, as this is the only way we will build a unified view of the purpose and value of what we are seeking to achieve in our schools, our Kāhui Ako, and our system.

The “F” words

“Fail Fast, Fix Fast, Learn Fast’ is a leadership maxim I advocate”
— Kevin Roberts

If there’s one thing our education system isn’t easily disposed to embracing, it’s the notion of failure. We simply don’t have time for it. Having to deal with failure will simply hold us back from ‘covering’ everything we need to get through, or cause too big a gap to emerge between those who can and those who can’t.

The big issue here is that we live in a time where innovation is being celebrated as something we need more of in our education system – we’re constantly being told how we need to encourage innovators and entrepreneurs in our schools, and yet, for these people, the one thing they have in common is failure. More than that, they have learned through failure. They understand how to confront failure and to learn from their mistakes.

The secret is to heed the advice of ex-Saachi and Saachi CEO, Kevin Roberts, whose maxim is to ‘fail fast, fix fast, and learn fast’. In other words, don’t despair when things go wrong — use the opportunity to find a solution, and to ensure you learn from that so that you can avoid the same mistake in the future. If we are to succeed in coping with change in this exponential future, we need to make sure that our teachers and our learners are given permission to fail, and from that failure come to a position when they gain both success and insight as they turn their failure into an opportunity for learning.

Finally – one more “F” word that was prevalent in our conference – FUN!! As educators, we can become overly serious at times – to the point of being morose, at times. Amid the excitement, the learning, the challenges of the conference, it was good to see people simply having fun! This is something we do well to recall as we return to the work we do on a day-to-day basis in whatever context we come from. If we lose the sense of fun, we lose an important ingredient in what motivates us to do what we do, and what attracts others to work and learn alongside us.

derek wenmoth

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pasifika leaders' forum

Pasifika Language Weeks – Why should we celebrate them?

Posted on October 26, 2017 by Aiono Manu Faaea-Semeatu

The last New Zealand Census conducted in 2013 recorded the following information for the most common languages spoken by multilingual people. There are distinct regional differences and the rise of European and Asian languages. Despite more French-speaking people in Wellington and Christchurch, Hindi has replaced French as the 4th most spoken language.

language stats new zealand

Source: Statistics New Zealand.

The most commonly spoken languages in New Zealand are:

  • English – spoken by 3,819,972 people (96.1 percent of people who stated at least one language)
  • te reo Māori – 148,395 people (3.7 percent)
  • Samoan – 86,403 people (2.2 percent)
  • Hindi – 66,309 people (1.7 percent)
  • Northern Chinese (including Mandarin) – 52,263 people (1.3 percent)
  • French – 49,125 people (1.2 percent).

Every year the Ministry of Pacific Peoples launches various language weeks from the Pacific. The reason for this may not be clear in terms of the origins of these weeks. You would be correct in guessing that the language weeks celebrate the different indigenous or heritage languages of those Pacific nations who have made their home in Aotearoa New Zealand. But, probably what is not commonly known, is that the purpose of these language weeks has a wider vision that includes the Pacific Languages Framework.

The Ministry of Pacific Peoples has a vision that the Pacific Languages Framework is a commitment to ensuring that Pacific languages are flourishing. This vision will be realised by evidence of more people using Pacific language with skill and fluency in everyday situations, particularly children and young people. Those Pacific languages now at risk will be revitalised, and their future assured. Pacific people’s sense of personal and cultural belonging in New Zealand will be enhanced by the support given to Pacific languages. New Zealanders will appreciate and value Pacific languages as a source of pride in New Zealand’s rich cultural diversity. The government and Pacific communities will be working in partnership to maintain and promote Pacific languages.

Samoa, Cook Islands, and Tonga have celebrated their Pacific languages in May, July, and September this year. And just this month, October, the following have celebrated their languages:

Tuvalu – Sunday 1st October – Saturday 7th October

Fiji – Sunday 8th October – Saturday 14th October

Niue – Sunday 15th October – Saturday 21st October

Tokelau – Monday 23rd October – Sunday 29th October

Did you celebrate any of these weeks?

Challenge:
How can we ensure that our Pacific Languages will continue to be spoken, to keep them alive in our communities?

If you are interested in learning multiple languages, why not make one of them a Pacific language?

To celebrate the Pacific Language Weeks in your centre, school, or organisation in future, or to carry the point of these “Weeks” further, seek further information from:

  1. NZ Online
  2. Coconet TV
  3. Your local library
  4. Your local city council
  5. Pacific Education Centre

The Pacific Language Weeks are a great way to start recognising, valuing, and celebrating Pacific nations in Aotearoa, but you might be asking yourself, how can I offer some meaningful and practical support that will enhance the work we are doing in our team, in our school, and in our communities? How can we offer support beyond the Pacific Language Weeks? This would involve being able to help people who have yet to develop a disposition for working with people of other cultures, different to their own. This process is called developing your “cultural intelligence”.

I have blogged about this concept in a previous blog post about Multiculturalism. If you would like to attend a CORE Breakfast seminar and workshop, there is the final one for the year in Auckland on Friday 10 November. Be sure to register as places are limited!

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