Student success: What matters most for high achieving Māori and non-Māori students at secondary school?

Abstract

This mixed method thesis focussed on the schooling experiences of Māori and non-Māori secondary school students who achieved highly in the New Zealand National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) and explored the factors which contributed to their academic success. The research in this doctoral thesis contributes to the body of knowledge focused on academic success for high achieving students within the context of English medium secondary school education in New Zealand. The thesis also makes contributions to the Māori student success literature and the broader field of Indigenous and minority student education. The three research studies within this thesis brought together students' and teachers' perceptions about academically successful students, ideal and non-ideal teachers, teacher-student relationships, engagement with school, and how these concepts were associated with academic achievement. Study One utilised open-ended questionnaires and two-sample Z-tests to explore the attributes of an academically successful student from the perspective of 583 secondary school students and 274 teachers. Study Two investigated how students and teachers defined an ideal and non-ideal secondary school teacher, and further examined whether there were differences in perceptions of what was 'ideal' and 'non-ideal' for students, teachers, and by ethnicity. Study Three utilised confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling to evaluate associations between teacher-student relationships, student engagement, and achievement for 636 high achieving Year 12 and 13 students. Focus groups with 25 students were also used to examine high achieving students' perceptions of their relationships with their best and worst teachers, and their reported engagement with school. Findings revealed that hard work and effort, and motivation and self-regulation were reported most frequently by all ethnic groups as contributing to students' academic success. For Māoriand Pasifika students, the motivation to achieve and work hard came from wanting to make a better life for their families, whereas Asian students had a sense of obligation and duty to their families to be successful.In contrast, Pākehā students were competitive and mainly focussed on achieving personal, individualistic goals. In their connections with others, Māori and Pasifika students were more likely to report that academically-supportive peer relationships contributed to academic success whereas teacher participants reported more frequently than students about the importance of a student's home background. A further finding was that a teacher-student relationship was not as critical to students' academic success as effective teaching. Teachers who had positive relationships with students but did not contribute to their learning and achievement were not considered 'ideal'. This thesis provided several insights into the effective teaching and learning of academically successful Māori and non-Māori students in senior secondary school, and it is the first research study to investigate ideal teachers for high achieving Māori students. Additionally, no other study has investigated high achieving students from other ethnic groups together with Māori to see if their perceptions of academic success differed. Although some findings in this thesis were specific to Māori, who occupy a unique position as tangata whenua in New Zealand, there are also implications for educators who work with Indigenous and minority students in other countries. Internationally, Indigenous and minority students experience many of the same inequities in education that are faced by Māori, and the findings presented in these studies may provide further insights into the effective teaching of Indigenous and minority students and ways in which disparities in education could be addressed.