View comments from Aroha Puketapu, Project Advisor – Literacy and Numeracy Implementation Team at the Tertiary Education Commission, taken at the Symposium in Hamilton, July 2011. Aroha comments on the the Maori Literacy Report, Whakatipuranga Arapiki Ako launched at the symposium.
Key content
The consultative process used to develop the publication Whakatipuranga Arapiki Ako and the purpose and possible uses of the publication.
Transcript
Māori have a concept called 'rahui', and inside of that concept of rahui is like a prohibition. The only person that can put a rahui on an area is, or say something about something is a rangatira – someone of a chiefly nature, someone who's expert or designated to say something about the context, and the rahui in that context. The rangatira used to actually put a stake in the ground. So it’s interesting we call these people "stakeholders" – put a stake in the ground, hold onto your stake. So our context is that Owen saw these people as people who had something to say about this term "Māori literacy". So all those people came together from 50-odd organisations nationwide and put their stake in the ground, basically saying "This is what I interpret as Māori literacy, this is what I interpret as Māori literacy".
The publication is there to help others, hopefully to inform those special notes, and to also... The thing is that, what it does is that the stakeholder group is so large now that it’s perhaps the only one of its kind, where so many people have been able to come and contribute to a piece of information and knowledge. So hopefully that particular document will inform the ongoing teaching of the NCALE, or the National Certificate of Adult Literacy Vocational and Educator, which therefore informs the entire sector when they go and teach literacy and numeracy in an embedded course. So hopefully people will use it in that way – to help them to interpret a term and become clearer about what this terminology means for them.
Whakatipuranga Arapiki Ako is about the further development of the concept of embedded literacy and numeracy, and getting gains in that way for our Māori learners – but actually for learners. And now that we’re all expected to deliver, at foundation level, embedded literacy and numeracy in an explicit way in the classroom, we need to have some consensus about what we’re thinking about, how we’re dealing with that, who we’re talking to, and have a deeper conversation about what that means. Giving permission to people to trial things: "It’s okay to trial this and it’s okay to do this in your classroom if you’re going to get better engagement and relationships with your learners who need some help" – making a difference.