Winds, tides and currents: A strengths-based approach to resilience in urban Pacific education in Aotearoa New Zealand

ABSTRACT

Mainstream thought on Pacific education tends to highlight the relatively poor educational achievement and sub-optimal experiences of Pacific learners in Aotearoa New Zealand. This article explores further understandings of the links between Pacific learners, their environments, and relational learning experiences. The argument is supported by recent developments in Pacific education that progress a vision of education in terms more Indigenous to the Pacific. These include spatial readings of relationships, relational wisdom, and education as movement in a circular journey. This discussion describes an aspect of a doctoral collaboration between Pacific community members of an urban high school and a Palagi (European) educator/researcher. The focus is the development of a strengths-based, culturally referenced model of resilience in Pacific education to assist practitioners. The model invites the largely Palagi teaching force in Pacific education to think more relationally, re-value the Pacific peer group, and support resilience by listening to Pacific perspectives.

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to students, parents and teachers who undertook the research malaga with me; to Liz at Bolster Designs; to academics and Pacific community members for support; and reviewers for guidance. Finally, to my family for patience.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Martyn Reynolds

Dr Martyn Reynolds has been an educator for over 35 years. He has worked in the UK, PNG, Tonga and Aotearoa New Zealand. In this time he has taught English in secondary education and has worked in teacher education programs in the tertiary sector. He is currently a Post Doctoral Fellow in Pacific Education at Victoria University of Wellington/Te Herenga Waka, and a Teaching Fellow at the Institute of Education, University of the South Pacific. As a freelance researcher, evaluator and educator, Martyn seeks to serve Pacific communities to the best of his ability.