Uruuru Whenua: Using Cultural Symmetry to Rebalance Mātauranga and School Mathematics

Abstract

Tērā te karanga i te rangi He manu tuia, tui tuia Tuia i runga Tuia i raro Tuia i roto Tuia i waho Tuia te here tangata Ka rongo te pō Ka rongo te ao Haumi ē, Hui ē, Tāiki ē!(Kingi et al., 2021; Massey University, 2022; Tapiata, 2019) As Māori (Indigenous peoples) of Aotearoa/New Zealand, we invoke the words of karakia (oral chant) to bind ourselves to the environments we inhabit on land and at sea. The karakia presented here extolls the audience to take a bird’s perspective to become fully aware and present in what is happening above, below, and all around them in both light and darkness. This way, spatial awareness and reasoning intertwine with Māori oral and visual narrative practices and daily rituals. To ensure the intergenerational transmission of mātauranga (Māori ways of knowing, being and believing), Māori aspirations for schooling should include living in a way that is recognisably Māori to Māori, while also accessing notions of academic success. However, due to the colonisation of Aotearoa/New Zealand by the British Crown, Māori have endured more than 100 years of education policy that invalidated mātauranga, including the exclusion of the Māori language from schooling. Māori communities, academics, policymakers and pouako (teachers) have agitated for change, causing considerable shifts in education policy in Aotearoa/New Zealand since the 1970s, including how curriculum is developed. As part of national curriculum and assessment programmes, the NZ Ministry of Education now promotes epistemological parity for mātauranga (Ministry of Education [MoE], 2022a). However, tensions between Māori aspirations for schooling and colonial schooling ideologies continue to shape curriculum development, including pāngarau (mathematics in Māori-medium schools), which is the particular focus of this thesis. This includes minimising mātauranga to promote the acquisition of curriculum achievement objectives imported from countries with colonial legacies, such as the UK. By using the cultural symmetry framework, a Bourdieusian analysis of policy and curriculum development, and teaching as inquiry, this research explores the opportunities, challenges, and tensions for rebalancing mātauranga and school mathematics at macro and micro levels. In doing so, the illumination of Māori wayfinding and spatial reasoning practices was identified as an opportunity to support Māori aspirations for schooling through the pāngarau curriculum and classroom practices.