Abstract:
Assisting school's Māori & Pacific practitioners to lead, develop and apply critical action research methods to identify the existing strengths and new pedagogical goals in critical multicultural-bilingual theory, practice and policy (in literacies). The School comprises 3 bilingual units; Māori, Samoan and French, as well as an English medium area and two early childhood centres. The task initially was to focus on examining existing policies and practices and then to move towards a more critical investigation of pedagogical content knowledge as applied to multicultural and bilingual settings. Data was gathered,through mentoring of the teachers, shared, critiqued, analysed and documented from a range of sources and perspectives over a period of one year as a pilot study and a second year as an 'embedded' aspect of professional development. My role throughout this period was inside the school as a fellow action research participant and practitioner and as an advisor to teachers as we sought to theorise practice and to optimise outcomes for teachers and students working to draw together the disparate parts (ie each of the language units) into a a 'cross language, cross cultural' partnership. A positive platform for change was established and the project was established and the school has gone on to use the research skills gained in self researching their work for school improvement.
