The Va‘atele Framework: Redefining and transforming Pasifika Education

Abstract

To successfully transform current notions of culturally responsive practices for Pasifika learners, teachers and educational leaders must move beyond practices that hinge on Pasifika learners adopting majority culture language, literacy, and identity in order to achieve academic goals. This chapter explores the process and outcomes of transforming education and schooling to better meet both the learning and cultural aspirations of Pasifika peoples in Aotearoa, New Zealand. A Pasifika metaphor of the Va‘atele is offered as a framework for Pasifika learners’ success in order that schools and educators might understand how it is possible to both privilege and utilize students’ linguistic and cultural resources within curriculum learning at school. (Va‘atele is the Samoan name for the ocean-voyaging double-hulled canoe of Pasifika peoples.) In this way, Pasifika learners can make meaningful connections between home and school funds of knowledge, and are able to experience success in both domains. We present evidence from two distinct but related case studies that draw attention to the central roles teachers and school leaders play in enabling Pasifika learners to connect, rather than replace, the worldviews, languages, literacy practices, and experiences of their homes with the valued knowledge and literacy practices of school. The enactment of linguistically and culturally responsive pedagogies raises students’ linguistic and literacy achievement and acts as catalyst for the development of stronger connections between home and school domains.