Abstract:
Title: Preparing professional planners to work and engage with Māori Authors: Professor Dory Reeves and Lena Henry University of Auckland. This abstract is offered to the organizers of the 2017 Conference and speaks directly to the theme of Capital and Changing Places – Where to Next for Māori involvement in the planning system? Planning practitioners, researchers and educators working in Aotearoa New Zealand have a responsibility to ensure that they are equipped to play their role in facilitating Māori involvement. The research on which the paper is based contributes to our greater understanding of the nature of planning issues particularly within a New Zealand context and contributes to the canon of research in New Zealand. It does this by examining why and how we can better prepare professionals to work with Māori. Students in planning, need to learn why and how it is important to engage effectively with Māori. As built environment professionals, planners effect change to the spaces and places in which communities live. Research to date has identified a dearth of relevant discipline specific material and resources to effect curricula change. Building on seed funding from the University of Auckland’s Te Whare Kura initiative, the research forms part of an AKO Aotearoa co-funded project. The project involves employers, professional institutes, Te Hana Te Ao Marama Community Development Trust, Māori professional associations, key Māori staff in local authorities, students and staff. The objective is to address the way new entrants to the planning profession are taught. The project will develop, implement, evaluate and disseminate curricula change to the teaching of Maori values in planning. The objective is to identify the situations non-Māori and Māori professionals need to be prepared for; the values and ways of working which professionals need to be able to work with. The research on which this paper is based contributes to practical approaches to current planning issues of Māori involvement in the planning system. The focus of the paper will be on the results of a survey of planning practitioners undertaken during 2016 investigating the experiences of Māori and non-Māori professionals. The paper shows the scope and scale of the challenges ahead.