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

Abstract

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.