Abstract:
This thesis explores the place of Māori approaches to leadership in mainstream leadership policy in New Zealand today. Given that 85 percent of Māori students are in mainstream schools, leadership policies must reflect Māori values, priorities and practices if such policies are to be transformative for Māori. The current educational leadership landscape is littered with policy statements that use Māori leadership terms and concepts, that affirm the Treaty of Waitangi’s centrality to education, that foreground Māori student potential, and that support the idea of Māori enjoying success as Māori. While such ideas help to shift educational discourse in more positive directions, the key leadership policy document Kiwi Leadership for Principals (KLP) (2008b) centres on the individual principal. In doing so, the policy fails to admit that many New Zealand school leaders do not have the capacity to provide leadership for Māori success. Nor does the policy support a distributed approach to leadership that would see school leaders actively promoting Māori leadership values and Māori leaders at all levels in schools. Māori leadership concepts and practices which are devised by Māori can be meaningfully and practically integrated into policy. Instead ‘traditional western’ leadership discourses dominate, and place Māori leadership in a subordinate and peripheral position in mainstream policy. Māori leadership needs to be centred, valued and visible in mainstream leadership policy, if educational success for Māori as Māori is to be a realistic goal.
