Whanaungatanga: tutors’ experiences of caring for students in an Aotearoa New Zealand university

ABSTRACT

Who is caring for and supporting our students at university and how is the care and support demonstrated? Students come to university with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and needs and many will require pastoral care at some time during their study. Tutors often find themselves caring for students and this paper focuses on the experiences of care-giving of eight tutors, aged 22 to 34 years. We use a reflexive thematic analytic approach to describe how tutors conceptualised caring as whanaungatanga, a Māori concept that encompasses kinship and caring relationships, community, rights and responsibilities, and inclusion. Tutors describe whanaungatanga in terms of five themes: care for students as people and learners, creating a safe and respectful space for all students, barriers, feelings of obligation, and tutors’ self-care and needs. Our research highlights the complexities of tutors’ care for students. They felt undervalued by the university but nevertheless strove to build and embed whanaungatanga, often at their own cost. Implications for practice include properly acknowledging, remunerating, and training tutors. Future research should focus on who is caring-about and caring-for students at university, and how that caring occurs.

KEYWORDS:

• Tutors
• care
• whanaungatanga
• higher education
• reflexive thematic analysis

Introduction

Tutors are the face of the university for many students. However, they remain an under-researched and precarious group within higher education (HE) (Leathwood & Read, 2022, Lopes & Dewan, 2014, Simpson et al., 2022). Sometimes referred to as sessional staff or teaching assistants, tutors provide the bulk of small group teaching at many universities across the world. Roles vary but tutors are usually postgraduate students or sessional staff (Sutherland & Gilbert, 2013) who are employed to facilitate tutorials in which the content of lectures is discussed and reinforced with other learning activities.

Our aim for this research was to focus on tutors and explore the issue of pastoral care and its ambiguous place within the tutor role. During our analysis of the interview data, we noted that three tutors had framed their thinking of pastoral care around the concept of whanaungatanga. Whanaungatanga is a foundational concept in Māori (the indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand) culture in Aotearoa New Zealand and one of the values underpinning the university’s Learning and Teaching Plan (Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington, 2022). The correct pronunciation is shared at Te Aka Māori Dictionary (https://maoridictionary.co.nz/), where whanaungatanga is described as:

relationship, kinship, sense of family connection – a relationship through shared experiences and working together which provides people with a sense of belonging. It develops as a result of kinship rights and obligations, which also serve to strengthen each member of the kin group. It also extends to others to whom one develops a close familial, friendship or reciprocal relationship.

As Pākehā (non-Māori people, primarily of European and Iranian descent) researchers, we do not yet fully grasp ‘the holistic concept of inter-relationship that is whanaungatanga’ (McNatty & Roa, 2002, p. 91). However, the word is ‘ … commonly now used with reference to those inter-relationships that give thematic meaning to society’ (p. 89) and, as such, serves as an important perspective for the relational teaching described by the tutors in this study. Through analysis of the interviews, we better understood the value of whanaungatanga, the nurturing of relationships through care and connection, as a means to understand tutors’ practice.

In this paper we investigate tutors’ experiences of whanaungatanga, explore its complexity and document the tensions that exist in their practice. We also consider how the University supports tutors in the vital role they play. Though the words may not be the same in other institutions around the world, we intend that these sentiments and experiences and the recommendations arising from this research have validity for tutors, part-time, and sessional staff in other settings.

Whanaungatanga and care

Whanaungatanga broadly derives from the word whānau (meaning family or kin) and encompasses kin-like relationships which exist in the context of communities with shared understandings or obligations (Berryman et al., 2017). Conceptualised as a universal and shared sense of belonging, whanaungatanga benefits and strengthens the collective empowerment of all (Anderson & Bristowe, 2020, Green et al., 2022). Embedded in the sense of belonging are the rights and responsibilities of those within whānau (family) and extended whānau, collaboration, reciprocity, mutual respect, and care (Berryman et al., 2017, Bishop et al., 2014, Greaves et al., 2021). Whanaungatanga acknowledges intergenerational knowledge, connections to and with the past, present, and future, and the physical and spiritual (McNatty & Roa, 2002). When discussing whanaungatanga in teaching Bishop et al. (2014) suggest that ‘such a pedagogy would develop caring and learning relationships that would be culturally responsive and culturally sustaining’ (p. 190).

In comparison, caring teaching, according to Walker and Gleaves (2016) comprises ‘two main pedagogic elements – the active fostering of and maintenance of pedagogic relationships above all else, and within these, the privileging of trust, acceptance, diligence, and individual attentiveness (p. 66).’ Miller and Mills (2019) point to the importance of perceived caring in teaching and argue its importance for student engagement. They highlight the idea of caring as a teaching practice whereby lecturers demonstrate their care through their teaching and understanding of students’ learning needs.

Researchers have emphasised the criticality of caring in motivating students and engaging them in their learning (Bishop et al., 2014, Miller & Mills, 2019, Tang et al., 2022). This is taken to be particularly important for the support and retention of students from minority backgrounds or marginalised groups (Simpson et al.,2022, Woodhead et al., 2021).

Universities across the globe are prone to enthusiastically focusing upon the term ‘care’ within their policies and strategic documents (Walker-Gleaves, 2019), suggesting they have a vested interest in creating caring teaching environments. This connection is reflected in recent nationwide policy; in 2021 the Aotearoa New Zealand Government released a pastoral code of practice for the tertiary sector which aims to embed care within the tertiary system (TEC, 2021).

Caring and whanaungatanga have much in common within teaching and learning. As a result of the research reported here, we have come to see whanaungatanga as describing something more complex and nuanced than care by incorporating ideas of cultural sustainability, reciprocity, and belonging.

Challenges to care in higher education

Care and higher education have a fraught relationship. Universities are frequently described as managerial institutions within a neo-liberal paradigm (Amsler & Shore, 2017) that is at odds with a caring pedagogy (Mutch & Tatebe, 2017). Furthermore, there exists a wider debate regarding whether education is increasingly becoming dominated by a therapeutic culture, wherein focus on emotional wellbeing is turning students into inward-looking, anxious individuals (Ecclestone & Hayes, 2009, Hayes, 2017). Given that whanaungatanga focuses on the development of whānau-like relationships emphasising collective empowerment and belonging, we argue that taking this perspective helps to address these critiques.

Tutors and whanaungatanga

Our tutors occupy a difficult position within their university. Many are simultaneously staff and students but, nevertheless, are frequently the main intermediaries between students and the university’s support services. Advice from academic staff as well as training offered by the university tends to prioritise referral to those services, but this ignores the reality of the tutors’ day-to-day engagement with their students. It was this fact that drew us to this research. We were interested in how tutors navigate their role and how it affects them.

We believe our research is important because it enhances understanding of the relational work tutors often undertake. Our investigation aims to give voice to a role that is under-researched and unstable within the tertiary context. In this paper we take a reflexive thematic analytic (RTA) approach to explore the experiences of tutors at an Aotearoa New Zealand university. These guiding questions have framed our investigation:

1. How do tutors conceptualise their support for students?

2. In what ways do tutors wish to be supported by the University?

Method

Theoretical framework

This research is underpinned by an emerging relational pedagogies theoretical frame (Walker & Gleaves, 2016). Relational pedagogy is ‘a theoretical perspective based on the concept of human beings as relational beings and teaching as relational processes’ (Ljungblad, 2021, p. 4). Where Walker and Gleaves (2016) focussed on the ‘beliefs and thoughts of caring teachers’, we focus on the beliefs and thoughts of caring tutors to broaden and strengthen understandings of care in HE.

Participants

Participants were tutors working at a medium-sized University in Aotearoa New Zealand. The study was advertised via departmental mailing lists inviting tutors who had experience of supporting students to participate. Subsequently, we used snowball sampling, with tutors bringing others into the study. Those who expressed interest in the research were asked to recommend the study to others. This approach brought with it a risk of bias; we could not determine the representativeness of the participants’ views. However, our aim was to explore tutors’ experiences of supporting students in depth, rather than describe those of all tutors (Clarke & Braun, 2013). In total, eight tutors agreed to be interviewed.

The eight tutors differed in Faculty and experience (See Table 1) with two serving as lead tutors for courses. Five mentioned relevant prior experience including: mental health helpline, Chaplaincy pastoral, and well-being training from a previous job. Participants came from a variety of ethnic backgrounds (Māori, Pākehā, and non-New Zealanders). There was a mix of gender identities.

Table 1. Participants’ faculty and experience of tutoring.

Participants	Faculty of Humanities	Faculty of Law	Faculty of Science	Prior Wellbeing Training	Time Tutoring In Years
T1	Y			Y	1
T2			Y	Y	1
T3	Y				2
T4	Y			Y	5
T5	Y				1
T6		Y		Y	3
T7	Y				1
T8	Y			Y	3
Total	6	1	1	5

Data collection

Tutors were interviewed about their experiences of supporting students. The semi-structured interviews focused on tutors’ experiences of interacting with students and creating a comfortable and supportive learning environment in their tutorials. After some initial rapport building, the audio-recorded interviews, which lasted between 40 and 70 minutes, were divided into two sections:

• Relationships between tutors and students.

• Thoughts about the future of tutoring and how tutors could be supported.

Data analysis

Interviews were transcribed orthographically by the first author (Braun & Clarke, 2019), and cross-checked with the interview recordings by the second and third authors (Patton, 1999). We analysed the data by following Braun and Clarke’s (2022) six phases of reflexive thematic analysis (RTA). As a theoretically flexible and interpretive approach, RTA facilitates identification of patterns and themes within a data set. It emphasises researchers’ subjectivity as an analytic resource and focuses on thoughtful and reflective engagement with the analytical process (Braun & Clarke, 2022).,

We began the process of analysis by individually reading and re-reading the data set to familiarise ourselves with the data (Phase 1). At Phase 2: Coding, we individually identified ‘potentially interesting, relevant, or meaningful’ (p. 35) data and then met to discuss the common and differing codes we had each identified. At this phase we were cross-checking our initial findings with each other and for credibility (Patton, 1999). Having agreed on potential codes we identified patterns and generated initial candidate themes (Phase 3). We then individually returned to our initial data set to test the viability of our candidate themes (Phase 4). At Phase 5 we discussed the results of our viability testing and refined, defined, and named our final themes. Our discussions acknowledged our positionality as Pākehā researchers in an Aotearoa New Zealand context and our assumptions around tutors and their role in supporting students’ learning. This process allowed us to critically engage with the data to determine a central organising concept (Braun & Clarke, 2019) under which themes could be described. Participants narratives, links to literature, and our observations were woven together at Phase 6: ‘Writing Up’ (Braun & Clarke, 2022, p. 36). In following the principles and phases of RTA we have shown the transparency of the process (Adler, 2022) and the trustworthiness of our findings (Braun & Clarke, 2021)

Positionality of the researchers

An important ethical consideration of this research is the positioning of the authors. The first author of this paper is a tutor at the University and was motivated to conduct this research based on his experiences of working with students. These experiences allowed him to develop a rapport more quickly with the participants through having shared practice and understanding. However, he had to be mindful of assumptions based on his own experiences as a tutor influencing the analysis. Consequently, we took care to discuss our assumptions and question our interpretations of the data.

We are strongly aware that we approach this research from a Pākehā perspective. As commented earlier, we believe that whanaungatanga provides an important perspective for this study, but our view is both influenced and affected by our cultural position. Thus, we have consulted with Māori colleagues about the ideas throughout the writing process. The story we tell from this data is founded on our experiences of living and working in Aotearoa New Zealand and arises from perspectives explained by the participants.

Findings and discussion

Our analysis led us to focus on Whanaungatanga as the central organising concept for this study because the ideas it encompasses were fundamental to the ways in which all tutors spoke about their work with students. Care for students as people and learners (Sub-Theme 1) is an important aspect of whanaungatanga. However, caring for students is mediated by other factors relating to the tutors themselves. Tutors in this study aimed to create a safe and respectful space for students (Sub-Theme 2). They felt constrained by significant barriers in being able to care for their students (Sub-Theme 3) though their position and empathy for their students’ positions often made them feel compelled to care for them (Sub-Theme 4) despite these barriers. The barriers to caring for students and tutors’ feelings of obligation highlighted their own needs with respect to care and support from the University (Sub-Theme 5). The following sections explore whanaungatanga and each of the sub-themes in more depth.

Overarching theme: Whanaungatanga

The most important thing is the human connection first and everything else can and does follow. (T8)

Our analysis led us to focus on whanaungatanga as the central organising concept for this study because the ideas it encompasses were fundamental to the ways in which all tutors spoke about their work with students. For the tutors in this study, whanaungatanga forms the overarching of the sub-themes which make up this analysis through ideas of relationships, building community and care as well as in tutors’ perceptions of barriers, expectations, and needs. Tutors prioritised their relationships with students above anything else, and emphasised the importance of building them early in a course:

… whanaungatanga, a time of getting to know each other and prioritising relationships first. (T6)

Tutors discussed the key role they played in supporting students, using descriptions of kinship and whānau-like relationships where they behaved ‘ … like they’re a distant cousin and you care about them … ’ (T1). They saw themselves as more able to do this as they had ‘ … the most face-to-face contact with the students … ’ (T7) and felt that students found it easier to approach them because they were similar in age, and less intimidating than a lecturer.

… they see the least difference… it’s a little more comfortable to approach someone the age of your older brother than the age of your dad. (T4)

Tutors saw tutorials as the primary space for creating community and acknowledged the importance of having this for students’ learning. They described community in terms of inclusivity, where students felt ‘comfortable and safe in the learning environment’ (T4) and empathy, using their own student experience to create common ground,

I try [to] make sure they know I’m also a student and that I’m going through the same things they’re going through…we talk about… how it’s hard to do readings and I’m like ‘…I know it sucks but unfortunately we just got to do them’.

(T5)

The proximity to students, developing a sense of community and family-like relationships distinguishes whanaungatanga from descriptions of caring pedagogies. Walker and Gleaves’ (2016) model of the caring teacher in HE tends to focus more on individual relationships between teacher and student. Similarly, Miller and Mills (2019), who argue that ‘effective teaching is at the core of caring and should be a priority for student success work on college campuses’ (p. 86), present their data from the perspective of student interviews. This highlights the importance of a student-centred approach to teaching but emphasises the one-to-one relationship between each student and their teacher. Although the tutors in our study described interactions with individual students, their focus was predominantly on the group. Furthermore, they saw themselves as an integral part of that group.

So if your teacher is behind the lectern which is a physical barrier, it feels very cut off and feels like you can’t really engage … So yeah, I tend to sit with my students at the table … my goal is for someone to walk into the room and not know who the tutor is. (T1)

Tutors recognised that the community they created and the empathy they had for their students were mutually beneficial.

Education should be about learning and growth and helping each other, it should be a symbiotic relationship (T1)

The concept of whanaungatanga carries with it the idea of rights and responsibilities, for both tutors and students, and tutors were keenly aware of this: ‘If you have the power, you have the responsibility – teaching involves two parties’ (T6).

The tutorials described by the tutors provide a context for Kahu and Nelson’s (2018) concept of the ‘educational interface … a psychosocial space within which the individual student experiences their education’ (p. 63). They note the critical nature of relationships and point to mechanisms including self-efficacy, emotions, a sense of belonging and well-being which facilitate students’ engagement with their learning. Indeed, Kahu (2021) uses the concept of whanaungatanga when talking about engaging students online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Kahu and Nelson (2018) also discuss biculturalism and creating an interface for students from different cultural backgrounds and learning experiences. In our study, tutors seemed aware of this responsibility as well as the idiosyncratic journey being taken by each of their learners. This awareness is explored more thoroughly in the first two themes developed from the data: care for students as people and learners and creating a safe and respectful space for all students.

Sub-theme 1: care for students as people and learners

Bishop et al.’s (2014) measure of whanaungatanga shows that Māori students feel most supported by teachers who create caring learning classroom relationships. In their exploration of whanaungatanga as a pedagogical approach, they argue its importance for engagement in a culturally sustaining classroom and show how measures of caring are included in this.

The tutors in this study reinforced Bishop et al.’s finding by referring to themselves as caring for their students. They recognised that their students’ personal well-being was as important for their success as their academic performance and described their work in terms of both.

So I say,

my first and foremost concern is for your well-being, and I want to make sure you’re not worried about your grades and university work when the main thing is that you’re doing okay, and we’ll work through the other stuff. (T4)

Tutors described being ‘emotionally invested’ (T3) in their learners. Caring was described by tutors as being honest and trustworthy, approachable, and relatable within a safe space. Being honest and trustworthy entailed being open about themselves and working within a high-trust model,

I wanted them to know that if something was going on in their life then I’d just believe them, they don’t need to give me the nitty gritty. I just wanted to minimise the fuss because clearly, [they were] … already in distress…

(T3)

Their care for students’ personal needs was manifested in their attempts to create and support students’ community membership and acting as a conduit to the university’s support services where they could.

Just let them know that they’re not alone and that there are services there to help them, just like be a human being and relate to them.

(T1)

For the tutors who participated in our study, care for the student and care for their learning were ineluctably linked.

… it’s kind of interesting that everything I do I always think through the student well-being implications of it, because I know it’s a complex thing to navigate.

(T4)

Care for students’ academic well-being focused on empathy for the students’ learning needs, for students ‘ … to enjoy being there … ’ (T5) and using ‘ … engaging ways to make them think about the content’ (T3).

These descriptions of whanaungatanga, a culturally sustaining representation of care for students as people first and learners second, reflect similar descriptions from other authors writing from the perspective of care (Tang et al., 2021, Tett et al., 2017, Walker & Gleaves, 2016) and whanaungatanga (Kahu, 2021). The tutors’ feelings that they were best positioned to offer whanaungatanga to their students came with an acknowledgement of the challenges associated with this. These challenges are discussed in Sub-Themes three to five below.

Sub-theme 2: creating a safe and respectful space for all students

In her description of building whanaungatanga in her online teaching Kahu (2021) describes facilitating feelings of belonging by focusing on creating a supportive space for online students. Tutors viewed tutorials in a similar way:

a tutorial is like this little space that’s shut off from the rest of [the course] … where they can be a little more relaxed and hopefully feel a little more safe.

(T1)

They highlighted the importance of attending to everyone’s knowledge and beliefs,

… I have more knowledge than them on that particular subject, but they have more knowledge in other things and in different ways, and I just want to engage that as well.

(T1)

Respecting ideas could be challenging and needed to be carefully navigated when students’ views differed on a topic or when they treated others disrespectfully.

…some students might disagree on something that’s quite sensitive. (T2)

I think my biggest issue is the … Pākehā [students who] are really offensive … my instinct is just to call it out. But I have to balance it as: ‘they’re just 17’ and how do you call them out without them turning away?

(T7)

Tutors talked about the importance of engendering ‘ … respect for the room and each other … [and] active listening … not taking over the conversation and letting others speak’ (T5). They achieved this by focusing on building relationships (see Theme 1), ‘ … [making] … intentions very clear … ’ (T1) and having ‘…a list of ground rules that we (tutor and students) made in the first week’ (T5). They also strove to model these ideas in their teaching. Tutor Six discussed the importance of helping their law students to think about others’ needs too ‘ … by treating these people (clients) as if they were actual people who are in actual tragic situations’. Overall, their focus was on ‘ … making sure students felt comfortable and safe in the learning environment’ (T4) while encouraging them to respect the identities and views of others.

Sub-theme 3: barriers to whanaungatanga – valuing tutors and their work

I’d love to see tutors valued more, both as members of the university community and financially. I think tutors are so vital to the way that the university runs. Without tutors we’d be screwed. (T4)

Tutor Four summed up the feelings of the tutors in this study. They noted the importance of the tutoring role in Aotearoa New Zealand’s HE but felt unable to fully teach and care for their students in what one tutor referred to as ‘this neoliberal capitalist university’ (T7). They believed that the university had ‘structurally positioned … (tutors to make) … face-to-face connections … with our students’ (T8).

… I’d like to see tutors, and staff as well, seen as less of a cost and more as an opportunity. …if we had more tutors and more hours to pay [them], the service we could deliver to students would be so much better. (T4)

The belief that whanaungatanga is less important than the academic part of tutoring is mirrored by those who have written about caring. Some argue that caring is gendered and has therefore been devalued as being ‘women’s work’ (Anderson et al., 2020). The same argument might be levelled at whanaungatanga. While the idea of care being gendered cannot be dismissed here, our tutors’ concerns centred around other inequities; thus, while junior positions in universities are more likely to be held by women (Gilbert, 2012), the hierarchical nature of universities was seen as contributing to the lack of respect for tutors building whanaungatanga.

Evidence of undervaluing tutors came through in discussions around remuneration, time allocated to tutors, resourcing, space, training, and the interactions between them. Tutor Three commented that ‘ … it’s quite common for tutors to work more hours than they are paid for’. Tutors particularly saw that remuneration was most lacking in the activities they were expected to do outside the classroom. These included planning, ‘ … it takes hours to plan a lesson … ’ (T3), marking, ‘ … so many scripts for the little pay you get … ’ (T6), and dealing with students’ questions,

When you respond to student emails and get resources for them and talking to them after class, you can’t clock those hours because often the hours they give you [are] maxed out anyway.

(T7)

These perspectives demonstrate a lack of equitable financial support that is characteristic of HE precarious roles (Lopes & Dewan, 2014, Simpson et al., 2022) wherein some role duties are not covered within work contracts. Most tutors in this study felt they were expected to ‘ … do a lot of unpaid emotional labour’ (T7) and that ‘ … the university needs some sort of recognition or compensation for the emotional pastoral support work we do … ’ (T8).

Caring for students required tutors to undertake work for which they felt ill-equipped. Aside from the lack of remuneration and time available to support students, there were few resources available.

We had one office between us, and we had to book it for student meetings so people were conducting their meetings in … a really public place [which] wasn’t a quiet safe place for people to discuss things with you … You have a serious relationship with the students … so you should be resourced as such, you’re doing a really important job for the university, they should give you a damn office. (T3)

Tutors felt that the level of training available to them was inadequate for their role. Currently, tutors receive 7.5 hours of compulsory paid training plus additional (voluntary and unpaid) opportunities for professional development. This training has traditionally focused on scholarly tutoring, but our tutors’ concerns were mostly around whanaungatanga and providing a safe and caring learning environment,

So, there’s a recognition [by staff)] that you will have to do this extra social and emotional labour, but there’s no training for it, and you don’t get reimbursed for it.

(T1)

For Tutor 1, there was a perception that staff and, to some extent, the university in general were aware of the need to provide this support for students but this awareness did not extend to supporting tutors to do it, the assumption being that such issues were best handled by centralised student services. The need for more support, and especially training was referred to by many tutors,

I wish there was a little bit more training and support for tutors … [for] when situations crop up … [that] could allow you to talk about situations a little more and that could give more of a community feeling of what it’s like to be a tutor

(T2)

These concerns led to questions and discussions regarding their training, some of which are discussed in Sub-Theme 5. We will return to this later, but a more in-depth treatment of this topic will be the subject of future research.

Sub-theme 4: tutors’ feelings of obligation in relation to caring for students

In their paper on theorising caring in HE, Walker and Gleaves (2016) found that lecturers who were seen as caring placed relationships at the centre of their practice. They felt ‘compelled to care’ (p. 70) even though caring was often seen as less important than other aspects of academic work and even rebellious in some way. This feeling of obligation came through strongly from the tutors in this study and arose from their belief that they were ‘ … the only person … [students] know’ (T1). Tutors wanted to provide a culturally sustaining, caring, whānau-like setting in their tutorials but felt that it was ‘ … not physically possible to love your students in this environment’ (T6). Tutor Three commented ‘I spread myself really thin … I wanted to give my students the best experience possible, and I felt a responsibility to, but didn’t feel like I could’.

Tutor Eight saw this as ‘ … an ethical quandary … we can’t just dismiss our students but that’s what happens when we just say “go to this service”’. He was especially concerned that if the student was in crisis then they need to get a ‘human response’ where they ‘feel heard, feel supported’.

The perceived lack of care within the wider university environment led to some tutors intentionally emphasising whanaungatanga within their practice. Tutor Six described their tutorials as ‘a little bit of shelter in the storm’ in which ‘things in the teaching learning space can be alright for a little bit’ before the students had to re-enter the wider institution. They discussed the tension between being under-resourced and ill-prepared and their proximity to the students. Furthermore, they felt that advice from staff that ‘ … it’s not our responsibility, and that we need to be referring students to other services’ (T8) was problematic.

… the reality is if someone approaches you with a mental health issue then you need to know how to respond appropriately. I still need to be able to support them … and I’d much rather they bring it to me than no one at all. (T4)

Tutors in this study had a clear sense of the importance of whanaungatanga and their own responsibility to and for students but they acknowledged that other tutors might see this differently,

I guess just be aware that I’m probably very rare, even within this self-selected subset. I would love it if you managed to get interviews with tutors that I would disagree with pedagogically.

(T6)

Tutor Three suggested

I have this entirely unsubstantiated theory that the lecturers pick people who are really caring and willing to go the extra mile so we’ll do all this labour without the pay. (T3)

As mentioned earlier, Sub-Themes three, four and five are closely related; the barriers tutors experienced were incompatible with the feelings of obligation they felt towards their students. The final theme focuses on the tutors’ recognition of the costs associated with whanaungatanga and their own suggestions for addressing these needs.

Sub-theme 5: self-care and tutors’ needs

…I was extremely empatheticI wanted to give it so much more time and energy than I was able to. Like if it was my full-time job I feel like I’d be able to do it really well. (T3)

Tutors were keenly aware that they were not able to provide the kind of support they felt was needed,

Every time I think about the things I feel tutors … and people in positions of power over students need to do, I also realize I’m being paid 23 dollars an hour and if I do all of that stuff then …it will drain so much out of me … If it was a full-time reasonably and justly paid job with enough training, prep, and resources … how much better that could be for the students and also for the tutors.

(T7)

Their concerns also extended to other tutors, who they knew did not have the same experiences or cultural resources they did. They thought it was important that tutors ‘…didn’t take it home…’ (T4). Tutor Seven elaborated on this when discussing a disclosure made by a student about domestic violence,

I was extremely empathetic but also it didn’t throw me as off-guard because my research and life experience and academic and work experience is all on domestic violence … it didn’t trigger any debilitating emotional response [except] ‘oh god that’s an awful thing to happen’ … I wonder how difficult it would be for other tutors who don’t have that. (T7)

Tutors’ thoughts about what they needed to support students were quite broad. They particularly felt the need for more training and better recruitment processes to ensure they could build and sustain whanaungatanga. Although Tutor Three had suggested that tutors might have been selected for their willingness to go the extra mile, others wondered if recruiting new tutors on this basis might be preferable,

it’s not just, this is a job that I got that will help me pay rent… it’s one thing to be like ‘what are your grades?’ and it’s …another to be like ‘are you up for a job that entails being somehow responsible for the learning journeys of one or more classes, and including these pastoral aspects that just happen whether we want to or not?’

(T6)

This empathy for other tutors who might be unable to deal with the expectations placed on them, indicates the importance of whanaungatanga among tutors as well as students. These tutors were highly motivated to foreground this,

What I’d been teaching my tutors was that … whanaungatanga is more important, establishing the dynamic with the students … Whether it would work for all tutors I’m not sure. But that’s what really stirred me to [be part of this study]… when I saw your research thing came up, I thought shit yeah I have stuff to say.

(T8)

This paper has been researched and written within a milieu of changing policy contexts. In particular, the Education (Pastoral Care of Tertiary and International Learners) Code of Practice 2021 (TEC, 2021) which came into effect on 1 January 2022. The Code calls on universities to provide ‘supports for the wellbeing and safety of domestic tertiary and international learners’ (MoE, 2021). Providers are expected to:

• build capacity across their organisation to engage and empower learners to manage their own well-being

• proactively identify and respond to learners who may face additional challenges as early as possible and tailor extra support to meet their needs.

• respond effectively in an emergency. (MoE, 2021)

The Code – alongside our research findings – opens an essential dialogue about where and how tutors fit into resourcing and training. In many universities the first port of call for care is often the central support services, but our research has shown that in reality it may be tutors who are approached first. As such considering how tutors are trained to build and embed whanaungatanga is important. More broadly, Waller et al. (2018) advocate for ‘enhanced staff training, student welfare and wellbeing services, and more opportunities for academic and support staff to discuss concerns regarding individual students’ (p. 398). We believe that tutors must not be forgotten within these conversations, given the proximal role they play within student lives.

Building whanaungatanga was limited by institutional barriers. Our participants consistently expressed a desire for more resourcing and training. They felt that the length of training was not adequate to cover pastoral challenges in caring for students. Of course, this invites further questions about what this training should entail and how far the caring dimension of tutoring should go. Tutors are not support workers, but they inevitably find themselves at the coalface of pastoral care due to the connections students form with them. Universities should consider the implications of the Code for tutor training and resourcing.

However, training alone is not sufficient for supporting tutors in creating a caring environment. It is vital that the caring work that tutors perform is sufficiently remunerated. Low pay and heavy workloads impact how much care tutors can provide for their students and themselves. This lack of resourcing is further problematised by ambivalent university expectations concerning pastoral work within the tutor role. Tutors felt that they were expected to perform pastoral care in their role and yet their pastoral care was rarely acknowledged, remunerated, or resourced by the university. These findings align with the prevalence of unpaid labour experienced by precarious staff in HE (Simpson et al., 2022) and highlight an institutional failure to properly support staff in their work. Our tutors demonstrated whanaungatanga with their students but doing so without wider support came at the cost of their own financial and emotional wellbeing.

Some tutors noted the potential for peer-led models in addition to formal training. Most tutors in this study felt unprepared for some aspects of whanaungatanga, and this sentiment may be reflected more broadly across tutors in the tertiary sector world-wide. Creating environments where tutors can share their challenges, strategies, and successes with each other may create another layer of support. The sheer act of talking with each other can be helpful for exploring the pastoral challenges inherent with teaching (Waller et al., 2018). However, this model should not be the sole avenue of support for tutors; it is imperative that there are other institutional levers that they can pull upon.

In Ecclestone and Hayes (2009) critique of the ‘therapeutic ethos’ (p. 379) that has emerged in education, they comment on the blurring of ‘boundaries between teaching, welfare and applications of therapy’ (p. 379). The argument that this erodes ‘the professional distance and expertise needed to build skills and knowledge, to challenge students’ ideas, to criticise their work so that they can improve, and to take risks’ (Ecclestone et al., 2005, p. 194) begs the question of whether universities should care – and if so, how much?

This research has provided insights into how universities in Aotearoa New Zealand are truly embodying the values of Te Ao Māori (the Māori world) and whether these values connect to the everyday practice of tutors. While universities use words like whanaungatanga to describe values within policy documents they may be failing to wrap around their teaching staff with training and support on how these values should be honoured within teaching spaces. This is further problematised by the fact that many of those who need this support are precarious staff, including junior researchers, doctoral students, and tutors.

Conclusion

The tutors in this study frequently went above and beyond to build whanaungatanga with their students. Tutors have unique strengths that contribute to creating a trusting relational space with students. However, these strengths are problematised within the context of a university that does not provide adequate acknowledgement, remuneration, and training around relational support work. Tutors simply do not feel prepared or supported to engage in pastoral care.

Universities are therefore faced with a complex situation: students trust tutors because of their accessibility and content knowledge, yet tutors do not have the training or resources to safely support their students. The debates surrounding how far the caring role should go in HE is worthwhile and should include those responsible for the formulation and implementation of policies. The pandemic has led to some changes but caring-about and caring -for, by whom, and how must be considered in policy making and change enabling practices.

The pragmatic reality for our tutors is that their students will approach them regardless of their job description. Preparation is therefore essential and should first explicitly acknowledge the reality of their role and avoid labelling tutors as an authorised support worker for their students. Our research has shown that whanaungatanga is central to a tutor’s role and as such Māori well-being frameworks from Aotearoa such as Te Whare Tapa Whā (Durie, 1984) and Te Wheke (Pere, 1997) should be prerequisites of any training. Additionally tutors could contribute to, and learn from peer support models, mental health first aid (Maslowski et al., 2019), and programmes such as The GoodYarn (Morgaine et al., 2017).

We believe this research has contributed to demonstrating the essential role that tutors play in the tertiary ecosystem, however there are potential limitations. First, the authors recognise this is a small-scale study of eight participants. Secondly, the age range of our participants (22–34 years) is a potential limitation as it may not reflect tutors demographics internationally and further research should explore the experiences of whanaungatanga and care with tutors of different ages. Thirdly, most of our participants were from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and as such it would be worthwhile exploring how tutors’ approach whanaungatanga in other faculties.

This research has shed light on an unanticipated issue that is in urgent need of addressing. The use of Māori words within HE strategies and policies foreground rich concepts like whanaungatanga. However, without proper institutional follow-through, there is a risk that these values lose meaning and fail to reimagine the university (Pio et al., 2014), becoming ‘window dressing’ (Anderson & Bristowe, 2020) rather than embodied concepts. Truly honouring these values will require honouring them in all facets of the HE sectors and for all teaching staff. Tutors must be supported with and demonstrated whanaungatanga by their university so they can do the same for their students without the risk of personal or professional cost.

Acknowledgments

Ethical approval was obtained from the Human Ethics Committee of Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington (ID. No.29466). We would like to thank our Māori colleagues whose care and key understandings guided this article and Dr Bernadette Knewstubb for her comments on early drafts of this paper. Finally, we would like to acknowledge the tutors who gave their time to participate in this research - your passion and commitment is a gift and inspiration for us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).