Abstract:
The New Zealand government has set a range of targets for the public service sector to achieve in the coming years. In education, one target is that, by 2017, 85% of school leavers gain their NCEA Level 2 certificate. Currently, the proportion of Pasifika school leavers gaining Level 2 is not expected to meet this target. Therefore, the NZ government has focused on improving the achievement of Pasifika students in NCEA Level 2. English is a compulsory subject at Level 2 in most New Zealand schools and success in English will therefore be critical for Pasifika students' overall success in NCEA Level 2. This is a qualitative case study of teachers who have successfully promoted Pasifika student achievement in NCEA Level 2 English with a specific focus on Achievement Standard 91098. The two participating schools were large, mid-decile, co-educational, multicultural, and had significant proportions of Pasifika students on their roles. Student achievement data was used to identify three successful teachers. The teachers were interviewed about their practice in semi-structured interviews. This was followed by semi-structured focus groups involving 19 of the teachers' current NCEA Level 2 Pasifika students and one lesson observation of each teacher with their current class. The study was designed to gather qualitative data about the instructional strategies used by successful teachers. The aim was to develop a profile of effective teaching of English with Pasifika students that could be shared with other teachers to improve the achievement of Pasifika students in the future. The findings clearly support existing research showing that effective and positive learning relationships are crucial to the achievement of Pasifika students. The findings further suggest that the use of group work; interacting with individual students; modelling learning; high levels of pedagogical content knowledge; direct instruction; developing context knowledge and effective feedback could be added to the profile of effective teaching of English with Pasifika students.