Mana Tangata: The Five Optimal Cultural Conditions for Māori Student Success

Abstract

A growing number of Māori students are attaining educational success, even thriving in the schooling context. Indigenous education has much to learn from these students, and it behooves researchers to empirically analyze the drivers of student success. While research demonstrates that self-concept, self-esteem, and self-efficacy affect the academic engagement of Māori students, few studies have examined the social-psychological drivers of success for Māori students. This study focuses on how self-perceptions about the value of their ethnic identity and family support affect the motivation and academic engagement of successful Māori students in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Little will be done to improve Māori students' academic engagement and social-emotional well-being until educators focus on the development of students' connectedness to their ethnic identity and their sense of mana tangata (cultural status and pride). This study offers solutions for change using a Mana Model developed as part of the 2014 Ka Awatea study. The Ka Awatea project was codesigned with the Te Arawa community in 2014 and examined the connection between Māori identity and characteristics of educational success among a selection of successful Māori high school students from Rotorua, New Zealand. Five key components concerning the optimal personal, familial, school, and community conditions for Māori student success compose the resultant Mana Model: Mana Whānau (familial pride), Mana Motuhake (personal pride and a sense of embedded achievement), Mana Tū (tenacity and self-esteem), Mana Ūkaipo (belonging and connectedness), and Mana Tangatarua (broad knowledge and skills). The Mana Model is an unapologetically Māori-centric model of student thriving; a strengths-based model utilizing the principles of social psychology and Māori worldview to explain how Māori students can thrive when afforded a broad range of academic, cultural, and social opportunities. This model broadens the research theorizing of those researchers, educators, and other stakeholders who desire to see Māori students attain their full potential.