Te Kaupeka Ako | Faculty of Education, in partnership with the Graham Nuthall Classroom Research Trust, is proud to present the Annual Graham Nuthall Lecture.

“If you don’t know what that means, here – I will tell you”: Creating space for Pasifika learners’ linguistic and cultural resources at school

Presented by Dr Rae Si'ilata

Abstract

As early as 1987, Graham Nuthall and Adrienne Alton-Lee, were drawing attention to racism in primary classrooms, highlighted in the article, ‘Take your brown hands off my book’. They argued that we need to study dominant culture classrooms to “understand the complexities of the processes which promote racism”. Dr Rae Si'ilata would argue that we need also to critically examine curriculum and school culture, as we ask the question, “Whose knowledge, world-views, and ways-of-being are valued at school?” In education research and practice, those who are positioned as linguistically and culturally diverse are usually those who are different to, or distant from dominant cultural norms: In effect they are ‘othered’. Nuthall provided insights into the hidden lives of learners, arguing that we need to be aware of the importance of differences in background knowledge and in the understandings and misunderstandings that students bring to any task. Teachers whose world views and ways-of-being are culturally dominant may be unaware of how their own power and assumptions privilege particular knowledges, languages, literacies, and world views in their classrooms. How might teachers confront institutional racism embedded in curriculum and school culture to open up spaces for learners’ linguistic and cultural resources to thrive at school?

This lecture will share insights gleaned from research into the professional learning journeys of teachers, focusing on how they were supported to create and normalise bilingual and multilingual learning spaces for Pasifika tamariki in English-medium centres and classrooms. Teachers needed to be willing to share power and to surface and disrupt deficit assumptions in order to initiate transformational system change that celebrated the linguistic resources and embodied cultural literacies of Pasifika ākonga as central to their success. As teachers changed their beliefs about the centrality of learners’ lived experiences, languages and cultures, their classroom practice changed, and learners were empowered to lead learning, and to share their voices in powerful and culturally located ways.

About the presenter

Dr Rae Si'ilata (Ngāti Raukawa, Tūhourangi, Fiji) as Director of Va‘atele Education Consulting is contracted to deliver Ministry of Education PLD and research contracts to Early Learning Services (ELS) and primary education sectors. Three current projects are the Reo Moana Project, for Pacific bilingual/immersion kaiako and leaders; the Pasifika Early Literacy Project (PELP), for ELS and early primary kaiako; and the Pasifika Teacher Aide Project (PTAP), for learning assistants and team leads. All projects focus on supporting ELS/school leaders, teachers and learning assistants to privilege and utilise linguistically and culturally sustaining/revitalising pedagogies within their learning spaces. Rae has been a teacher, principal, PLD provider, researcher, and lecturer/senior lecturer. From 2005-2019, Rae worked at the University of Auckland with practising kaiako, and since 2020, has also worked in the School of Indigenous Graduate Studies (SIGs) at Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi.

Lecture commences at 5.30pm and ends at 7pm.
Join us for refreshments from 4.45pm.