Journal article

There is concern in Aotearoa New Zealand that Pacific students, families, and communities are underserved by schooling. Of note is the inability of education to encourage and equitably enable Pacific students to follow a successful journey into science. To shed light on this situation, this article presents the stories of two young Pacific scientists who are now engaged in the health sector. Key elements include stereotypes, motivations, sacrifices, and teacher influence. The stories offer instructive examples of the “context behind the context”, offering guidance to teachers of Pacific students in science and other subjects.

In 2020, two teachers and seven students participated in an action research project that sought to improve the teaching and learning of fractions in a New Zealand primary school. This research revealed that the collaborative creation of hypothetical learning trajectories was beneficial to the teachers’ practice, content knowledge, and confidence, as well as the learning design and student achievement. The participating teachers employed pedagogical strategies through the hypothetical learning trajectories, which then trickled down into their learning design. It supported their students to move from procedural application to conceptual understanding.

There is often a steady trajectory of curriculum change under the surface of developments that might seem arbitrary or inconsistent. This article traces the change from key competencies to science capabilities and, most recently, to enduring competencies. All these changes (and names) respond to increasing awareness of the challenges involved in weaving curriculum elements together. For the Science learning area, these challenges centre on how best to understand why the Nature of Science strand was included in the Science learning area, and what difference it should make to learning experiences. Other learning areas can doubtless describe similar types of curriculum weaving challenges.

For partnerships between non-Māori teachers and Māori parents in English-medium education to productively support student learning, parents must first associate positive feelings with three layered interaction types involving their child’s teacher. The first interaction type is the teacher with their teacher self; the second is teacher–student interaction; the final is teacher–parent interaction. Māori parents’ perspectives on how teacher dispositions and actions facilitate positive feelings within these three intertwined interaction types make up the paddling along together interactions (PATI) model. It is suggested that this model be implemented in steps, ideally in collaboration with a colleague with whom to explore and celebrate.