Agency and transformation: Pasifika teachers navigating the currents of change

Abstract

The research study Voices from Manukau, which informs this article, was primarily concerned with the complexities of culture, identity, diversity and intercultural awareness, and the significance of context in a pre-service teacher education programme located in New Zealand’s most ethnically diverse and fastest growing city. The participants were a total of 60 students who were drawn from four consecutive intakes at the Manukau Institute of Technology. These intakes were at 6-month intervals. The students were interviewed during each year of their programme and during their first year teaching. Half of the research participants were from Pasifika cultural groups. This article explores Pasifika responses to questions that asked them to reflect on what studying in their local community had meant to them as tertiary students and as teachers in diverse urban schools. The implications of their responses for educational inclusion are theorised as representing the cultural effects of globalisation, as cultural dynamics are played out in a multicultural context.