Tuli ke maʾu hono ngaahi mālie: pedagogical possibilities for Tongan students in New Zealand secondary schooling

Abstract

This study addresses the complex issue of the 'achievement' of Tongan students in secondary schooling in Aotearoa New Zealand. It argues that the current model of 'Pacific Islands Education' underpinning attempts to assist Tongan students in fact fails to inform practices that could transform their experiences of underachievement in secondary schooling. Rather, I maintain, the popular notion of 'Pacific Islands Education' paradoxically serves to perpetuate the marginalisation of Tongan students and maintain the status quo. As a critique of 'Pacific Islands Education', the thesis draws upon Tongan knowledge of good pedagogical ideas. This ideas are drawn from a critical exploration of two Tongan community-based learning contexts enacted 'within' the formal secondary school system in Auckland, namely the Katoanga Faiva (the ASB Bank Maori and Pacific Island Secondary Schools Cultural Festival) and the Po Ako (Homework Centre project). I argue that malie and mafana, notions that are explored in the thesis as constitutive of good social relationships, are the key to good pedagogy and learning in both of these sites-the only place where substantial numbers of Tongan parents and young people actively and enthusiastically engage with the school. Malie and mafana offer a useful Tongan theoretical framework in which 'achievement' in the broader context of the school can be analysed and reconfigured. As well as recognising the real strengths of, and insights offered by, the two Tongan pedagogical sites, this thesis addresses dangers in both Tongan community and mainstream enthusiasm for these initiatives. I argue that an exclusive focus on skilled, malie-filled 'performance' separated from an analysis of the social, political, and economic positioning of Tongans within New Zealand, merely serves, ultimately, to reproduce the marginalization of Tongan (and other 'Pacific') people in the New Zealand schooling system.