Search

Maori aspirations in education have not been served by past national policies. It is hard to extinguish the influence of monoculturalism, whereby schools were used to colonise Maori by enforcing linguistic and cultural assimilation. The history of debate on Innovative Learning Environments (ILE) and Flexible Learning Spaces (FLS) demonstrates the ongoing dominance of this Eurocentric, monocultural approach. Official New Zealand education policy and practice follows international trends in school design, moving away from traditional single-cell classrooms towards more open and inter-connected spaces, despite no real evidence concerning the relative effects on learning of each classroom type. Meanwhile, school marae have been around for several decades, but largely ignored in national ILE and FLS policy and research literature. Our experiences lead us to suggest that Maori identity must be 'built in' not 'added on' to monocultural ILE frameworks, and for this reason, spatiality is crucial in Maori teaching and learning spaces. This article explores the notion of 'Maori learning spaces.'

This article presents narratives from 13 Indigenous early career academics (ECAs) at one university in Auckland, New Zealand. These experiences are likely to represent those of Indigenous Maori and Pasifika ECAs nationally, given the small, centralised nature of the national academy of Aotearoa New Zealand. The narratives contain testimony, fictionalised vignettes of experience, and poetic expressions. Meeting the demands of an academic role in one's first years of working at a university is a big deal for anyone; the extra pressures and challenges for Indigenous Maori and Pacific staff are immense, yet little understood by White 'others.' A writing workshop was the initial catalyst of this collective writing project. Through these insider narratives, this article presents a collective description of, and response to, the experience of Maori and Pasifika early career academics.

Catalysed by conversations amongst a group of colleagues, this article is an initial exploration of what happens to women academics aged 60+ who work in a university in Aotearoa New Zealand. This work is an example of when academic theories, in this case feminism, are called forth by real-world experiences - in this case, increasing academic job insecurity, catalysed by post-pandemic economic shortfalls. We blend together personal anecdotes and feminist analysis to show how women's academic careers, which are commonly constrained by motherhood in their younger years, are also curtailed at the senior end by processes of voluntary/involuntary retirement, as and when demanded by adverse fiscal conditions.

One of the longer-term effects of poststructuralism and its principles, in particular deconstruction, has been to direct fresh attention to reading as an ethical practice. A re-focus on the ethical responsibility of the reader is part of a large, historic process of moving beyond 'structuralism' -- a name for the formerly-dominant paradigm of the academic disciplines, which embedded false ideas based on sexism, racism, and scientism in the heart of philosophical theory. We will consider how ethics applies to reading in our local milieu; a nation founded on a bilateral relationship between British settlers and iwi Maori, which was inscribed in 1840 in a national treaty, the Treaty of Waitangi/Te Tiriti o Waitangi. We read everything we see around us as part of a system of meanings determined by local histories and cultures. What does it mean to be 'read' as a Maori, a Pacific, or a Pakeha/White person in the local educational contexts of university and school, and what are the implications of different (cultural) forms of reading in a complex community?