Transacquisition Pedagogy for Bilingual Education: A Study in Kura Kaupapa Māori Schools

Abstract

Kura kaupapa Māori have been a cornerstone of the movement in revitalising te reo Māori in Aotearoa/New Zealand. However, it appears that the reo Māori only approach used in kura has come at some cost to the students’ proficiency in English. Resolving the historical issues associated with English instruction in kura, and the uncertainty about when and how to transition students from te reo Māori to English, is the rationale for the development of transacquisition pedagogy. This thesis describes the theorising and design of transacquisition pedagogy for the biliterate teaching of academic English, as well as the trialling and evaluation of the pedagogy in an intervention study conducted in two kura. Transacquisition draws on Cummins’ (1978, 1981a) theory of developmental language interdependence; Hornberger’s (2003, 2004) idea of language evolution; and Williams’ (1994, 2002) pedagogical technique of translanguaging. The pedagogy engaged students in flexible bilingualism (Creese & Blackledge, 2010) and to use their languages interdependently in mutually supportive ways to accelerate the development of academic language and understanding of academic concepts. Underpinned by Kaupapa Māori principles, the kahikatea metaphor was used to illustrate the transacquisition analogy of symbolic tree root systems as interconnected cognitive and linguistic relationships. These relationships formed the bilingual student’s interrelational translingual network. This network functions as the transacquisitional zone of proximity (Vygotsky, 1962), within which the student’s linguistic and cognitive capabilities are synthesised to build new knowledge and understanding in both languages. Transacquisition pedagogy involved three sequential phases of developmental tasks. Each consecutive task built on the linguistic and cognitive function of the preceding task to accelerate bilingual and biliterate development. The tasking process used conceptual progression (Rata, 2015) to ensure that concepts are taught explicitly in an ordered, sequential way. This recognises Vygotsky’s (1962) claim that concept formation is “always part of a system of relationships, systematically built up over time to form hierarchical knowledge” (cited in Howe, 1996, p. 38). The transacquisitional tasking sequence of skim reading, word-surfing, three-on-three mapping, retelling and revoicing engaged the students in cross-linguistic meaning making and conceptual knowledge building. In contributing to the students’ increased confidence and self-efficacy, transacquisitional tasking provided the students with opportunities to behave as ‘language users’ to interpret, express and negotiate meaning in both languages. This improved their bilingual reading comprehension in English by helping them to make connections between the knowledge of the target text and their prior knowledge and experience. The quantitative findings from the intervention study showed that the kura students’ academic language, academic understanding, and reading comprehension in English improved significantly as a result of the eight-week intervention programme. The magnitude of the improvement was large and the rate of improvement very fast, well beyond what would be expected among similarly-abled English-medium students. In light of these findings, it is recommended that transacquisition pedagogy be adopted in 21st Century kura kaupapa Māori to equip the students with the academic and linguistic capabilities to succeed in a linguistically and culturally diverse society as regenerators of te reo Māori.