ABSTRACT

In Aotearoa New Zealand, despite decades of education policy reforms attempting to address Moana/Pacific underachievement, Moana/Pacific knowledge is often still absent in universities. Moana/Pacific scholars have long argued that recognising and including indigenous knowledges in university curricula has positive benefits for students, institutions and wider society. We posit that embedding indigenous knowledges within institutions is the difficult work that must be done first; understanding what Moana/Pacific learners mean by success is one area that would benefit from a deeper engagement with indigenous knowledges, as success is a term that is widely used in education but is often not clearly defined. The Samoan proverb – se’i lua’i lou le ulu taumamao – means to pick fruit from the furthest branches of the breadfruit tree. This metaphor refers to the action of privileging Moana/Pacific notions of success in higher education, by focusing on our successful Moana/Pacific learners on the furthest branches. In this article we present, using our Lalaga/Lalanga approach to privilege Moana/Pacific voices, the definitions of success gathered from two distinct research projects. These two projects explored the experiences of successful Moana/Pacific learners. Our Lalaga/Lalanga approach to purposefully consider our projects together helped us to surface three tensions for Pacific student success: (1) measures/’testing’ of success; (2) transitioning between educational contexts; and (3) being Moana/Pacific learners in tertiary settings. Our Lalaga/Lalanga approach also reflects our ‘positional methodology’, a term we introduce here to capture the considerations around who we are in relation to our research rationale as our positionality always influences our methodological choices.

摘要

在新西兰奥特阿罗，尽管几十年来教育政策改革试图解决Moana /Pacific 成绩不佳的问题，但大学中通常仍然缺乏Moana /Pacific 知识。Moana / Pacific 学者长期以来一直认为，在大学课程中承认和纳入土著知识对学生、机构和更广泛的社会有积极的好处。我们认为，将本土知识嵌入机构是必须首先完成的艰巨工作；了解Moana / Pacific 学习者对成功的含义是一个可以从更深入地接触土著知识中受益的领域，因为成功是一个在教育中广泛使用但通常没有明确定义的术语。萨摩亚谚语——se'i lua'i lou le ulu taumamao——意思是从面包果树最远的树枝上采摘果实。这个比喻指的是通过关注我们在最远分支上成功的Moana / Pacific 学习者来赋予高等教育成功的Moana / Pacific 概念特权的行为。在本文中，我们使用我们的Lalaga/Lalanga方法来赋予Moana/ Pacific 声音特权，从两个不同的研究项目中收集到成功的定义。这两个项目探索了成功的莫阿纳/太平洋学习者的经验。我们的拉拉加/拉拉加有目的地一起考虑我们的项目的方法帮助我们揭示了太平洋学生成功的三个紧张因素：（1）成功的衡量/“测试”；(2) 教育环境之间的转换；(3) 在高等教育机构中成为Moana /Pacific 学习者。我们的Lalaga/Lalanga方法也反映了我们的“定位方法论”，我们在此引入的一个术语是为了捕捉与我们的研究原理相关的我们是谁的考虑，因为我们的定位总是影响我们的方法选择。