eye test

Bright Eyes: What does it mean to have a Pasifika lens?

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eye test

Bright eyes burning like fire
Bright eyes, how can you close and fail?
How can the light that burned so brightly
Suddenly burn so pale?
Bright eyes

(Art Garfunkel, 1978)

I’ve been working for CORE Education for about four years. Along the way, I have had the privilege and pleasure of facilitating professional learning solutions to support principals, senior leadership teams, and educators in all the different sectors that have Pasifika learners — early childhood centres, home-based child care services, primary schools, intermediate schools, secondary schools, tertiary providers, universities, and adult community education services.

But, this isn’t a blog post about how much I love working for CORE. Instead, I want to shed some light about the common thread that weaves through these different sectors. I have been working to hone my Pasifika lens — with a longitudinal view; by being cognisant of the transitions that exist in the education sectors, by building bridges to move freely and fluidly between them. This is the view that I would like to think that I impart to everyone I meet, who asks what a Pasifika lens looks like.

As a specialist in Pasifika education, it can be challenging to attempt to tackle the issues that individual educational contexts face. I may not be familiar with historical extenuating circumstances of particular Pasifika communities and how they have engaged with the formalised learning of schools. I might not be aware of what these schools have attempted to do in the past to not only increase community engagement, but also to foster connections with Pasifika parent communities that empower and embolden them to champion their children’s learning.

When I think about my work in schools, and how I can best use my skills as a specialist in Pasifika education, I see that I help schools to understand how best to use their data effectively to drive outcomes for their Pasifika students. This is a real passion of mine. You could say that I have been through lots of lenses in education — having been a product of the system myself as a student, a teacher, and now a human resource for teachers to improve their pedagogy for Pasifika learners. Having a Pasifika lens with multiple views has allowed me to experience the myriad of perspectives that I have come to know as being critically important.

I often get asked to provide a ‘Pasifika lens’ about schools’ strategic plans to increase Pasifika achievement. I do not subscribe to comparing Pasifika students by noting if their achievement results are on par, if not better than their non-Pasifika counterparts. Shouldn’t we be looking at how Pasifika learners achieve based on their own achievement, rather than in comparison to other ethnicities? It often feels, through the Pasifika lens that I was born with, that such comparison is designed to continually perpetuate this tail of underachievement rather than focus on their own achievement, their own success on their own merit.

How can I share my Pasifika lens?

How can I share my Pasifika lens with others? I have thought about this and the best analogy I can come up with is to look at the difference between an ophthalmologist and an optometrist.

An ophthalmologist is a specialist in the branch of medicine concerned with the study of disorders and diseases of the eye. They also differ from optometrists because of their different levels of training, and they’re able to practice medicine and perform surgery.

I feel that in schools I may be viewed as a Pasifika ophthalmologist, brought in because of my different levels of training in disciplines such as Music, Ethnomusicology, Anthropology, TESSOL, and Education. I might be expected to be able to provide expert advice to schools who have readily identified Pasifika achievement issues that have surfaced through their data. Schools recognise that when challenges or roadblocks start to appear in relation to Pasifika achievement, it is because they are acknowledging that low Pasifika academic results exist. Schools’ ERO reports should help to provide some key focus areas to significantly address discrepancies in their vision for Pasifika learners. Contributing factors that may have a negative impact on outcomes may lead to schools and clusters seeking to inform their pedagogies that are conducive to Pasifika excellence.

As a Pasifika ophthalmologist, I can test their vision, to test their Pasifika lens by customising and tailoring professional learning solutions that help them to understand that their actions impact on Pasifika student achievement. By catching the challenges early, schools can seek ways to foster language that can help to grow collaboration between Pasifika learners and their parents, families, and communities. By growing collaboration in this way enables the school or cluster to co-construct achievement strategies that are a main feature of the community focus of the ERO Pacific Strategy.

Do you see what I see?

A few questions come to mind when I consider how I can best assess what kind of vision schools and Communities of Learning have for their Pasifika learners:

  • How do you know that what you are doing is making learning and achievement better or worse for Pasifika learners?
  • How do you know that what you have written into your school charters, strategic plans, or Community of Learning achievement challenges that focus on Pasifika learners, have been formulated with sufficient consultation with Pasifika parents and communities?
  • How do we bring the Pasifika focus in your school charters, strategic plans, or Community of Learning achievement challenges to life in all classrooms? 

Where can I seek further assistance for my focus on Pasifika learners?

pasifika learner

CORE Education offers professional learning solutions that can address teaching as inquiry as an approach to investigate the impact of your pedagogy on your learners and community.

The courses are constructed for deep learning that will challenge your thinking while building on your prior knowledge of what already works for your Pasifika learners.

You will implement targeted actions either in your classroom or with your school community that make a meaningful difference. These actions will be decided by you, supported by evidence-based practices that you will learn within these courses. There are a range of learning tasks from face-to-face sessions, interactive webinars and online discussions.

 

Image Credit: Eye Test from Pexels CC0

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pasifika in waitangi

Pasifika in Waitangi

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Pasifika in Waitangi
Māori Navigators
L-R: Jason Ruakere, Teanau Tuiono, Anaru White, Shannon Vulu

The one and only time I had previously seen Waitangi was in a passing drive-by. Moana Timoko, a fellow CORE facilitator, showed me what Waitangi looked like under the cover of darkness. We drove past the night before a professional learning event at Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Kaikohe. I would later find out that we had driven past Te Ti Marae and Tau Rangatira, before approaching the bridge on the other side.

When I actually set foot on Waitangi Treaty Grounds, it was for the last whānau hui with Wharehoka Wano before assuming his new role as iwi manager in Taranaki for Te Atiawa. I guess, in some small part, this blog post serves as a tribute to him for his inspiration to me as a contemporary Māori leader who now returns to his community to serve the needs of his people. He will be missed at Tātai Aho Rau — CORE Education.

I have written about Pasifika connections with Māori in two previous blog posts — Pasifika in Parihaka and Pasifika’s position in honouring the bi-cultural Te Tiriti partnership. I see this blog post as a culmination of the learning from these previous posts, reflecting on my understandings of Pasifika connections in the context of actually visiting Waitangi in the flesh. As a Pasifika person in Aotearoa, because I am conscious of being staunch in my own Samoan culture, it helps me to understand and value what it means to be Māori in Aotearoa. The events that have unfolded since the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi have leaned itself more to Pākeha benefitting from the agreement, whereas Māori have continually tried to regain tino rangatiratanga.

russell - hell-hole of the pasificBefore we went to Waitangi, a group of us visited Russell Kororareka, ‘the hell hole of the Pacific’ (the catch phrase plastered all over the island) to take note of the settlement. The Māori settlement quickly gained notoriety when prostitution arrived in the area, together with the whaling trade and new settlers. Busby had originally planned to have the town of Victoria built, but these plans were later scrapped when the capital city was moved.

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Emerging leadership — becoming a chief through service

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Family group

In my last blog post I talked about the concept of tautua or service that focused on three spheres of service:
Sphere 1) Serve to Serve — understanding how to serve, knowing why we serve
Sphere 2) Serve to Lead — developing emergent leadership skills and
Sphere 3) Lead to Serve — enabling and leading the inter-generational process of leadership
 
I’ve just returned from visiting my ancestral homeland of Samoa and I wanted to talk about my own experience of being an emerging leader, as reflected in the second sphere in this model (see below) — as I received a high chief’s title as recognition of my emergent leadership status within my full extended family and as an obligation to position my family within the Samoan community in its entirety.

Sphere 2: Serve to lead — (25 years to 50 years)

This next level usually comes after children have learned the basic tenets of tautua and they begin to understand how to develop their emergent leadership skills once they enter their mid-twenties.

Where will we expect to see some of these skills from these emergent leaders?

  1. Immediate and extended family gatherings
  2. Academic endeavours
  3. Sporting, performing arts or visual arts pursuits
  4. High profile careers where Samoans are the ethnic minority

Why is it important to become a matai?

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The pathway to leadership is through service

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O le ala ile pule o le tautua

Service is one of the key values found in the Pasifika Values within the Pasifika Education Plan 2013–2017. In Samoan culture, this value of service is reflected in the very well known proverbial expression — o le ala ile pule o le tautua — the pathway to leadership/authority is through service.

Samoans believe that if they are taught from an early age to serve their home communities and extended families, then they will be awarded leadership opportunities when they come of age. This can be seen in chiefly titles that are often bestowed on individuals on behalf of their home communities and extended families in elaborate title investiture ceremonies on the Samoan mainland. These titles are then registered with the Land and Titles Court, and titles are specifically tied to land that families have lived on for generations that they are entitled to inherit.

What is tautua?

As a concept of leadership, tautua is more than an attitude amongst Samoans; it is a value that is highly prized, and brings prestige to a family because it is a duty and obligation carried out to honour one’s family or aiga.

What can we learn about service and its pathway to leadership? Can Samoans transfer this concept of tautua, or service, into other leadership contexts? Are other Pasifika cultures and non-Pasifika communities able to transfer a Samoan view of leadership into their working contexts? I believe they can.

This blog post is an attempt to analyse the construction of the pathways to leadership by observing three stages that must be practised. It is based on:

  • my own upbringing as a Samoan New Zealander
  • my observations of fa’aSamoa in extended family situations in New Zealand, Australia, and Samoa
  • my participation in the Ekalesia Fa’apotopotoga Kerisiano Samoa (EFKS) church in Grey Lynn, Auckland, the first Samoan church established in Aotearoa in 1963, where I currently serve and lead as a Sunday School teacher, musician, choral leader and deacon.

Pathway to leadership

Infographic Concept: Manu Faaea-Semeatu
Infographic Design: Shannon Vulu

Sphere 1: Serve to serve — (0 years to 24 years)

As young children, Samoans are taught to honour, respect, and uphold the values of the family. They serve by completing chores that are assigned to them by older siblings and other older individuals who are afforded respect and who also hold senior positions of responsibility in the family. In traditional contexts in Samoa, children would be expected to serve senior family members and guests at all meals, keep the house clean, act as messenger and courier for correspondence between houses in the village, ensure that they are on call for anything that needs to be completed before the sun sets.

In diasporic contexts (contexts where pockets of people of the same ethnicity are scattered about in other host countries), Samoans can still practise and maintain these customs associated with service in their extended family, church community, and in social club gatherings such as sports clubs or hobby groups. So, despite the contexts changing, the values provide the foundation that moves with these modern times.

Children learn the value of service; how we serve and why it is important to serve.

Being able to serve in this way means that children learn how to contribute and become part of a working system of society.

Sphere 2: Serve to lead — (25 years to 50 years)

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Multiculturalism: Navigating the spaces between Ethnicity, Identity, and Diversity using Cultural Intelligence

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When I think about the kind of work that I do for CORE in centres, schools, clusters, as well as with other education partner agencies, I more often than not end up talking about culture. Initially, my role as Senior Advisor Pasifika focuses on Pasifika cultures in relation to raising the engagement and achievement of Pasifika learners in Aotearoa. Now this role has expanded to include multiculturalism.

What has helped me to explain how to go about doing this (the engagement and achievement part) has been by looking at multiculturalism as a lens, as a way of thinking about, discussing and understanding our connections with the rest of the world.

Having grown up in Auckland, I have always heard the term multiculturalism bandied about — by far the most multicultural city in Aotearoa. The all-girls high school I attended would proudly tout at the top of each school newsletter that “We are a multicultural school.” If the high school music groups were any indication of that claim, it quickly verified it — as we had girls from every colour hue under the sun, with as many different accents as you could imagine.

What has changed since then is how multiculturalism is now seen on a global scale, particularly with how we understand what it means to participate in the world as a global citizen and to be culturally intelligent.

Dyne, Ang, Koh (2009) discuss a framework called Cultural Intelligence, that originated in North America, and is widely used by corporate businesses as a way to connect with potential trade partners in the Asian market. This framework can also be applied in other fields or disciplines such as sociology and education. The basic premise is that, in order to obtain cultural intelligence, you must observe and follow four stages:

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