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This article examines the relationship between academic mentoring and tok stori, a Melanesian orality, in a digital environment. This relationship is significant where dispersal is an unintended consequence of the way development aid... more
This article examines the relationship between academic mentoring and tok stori, a Melanesian orality, in a digital environment. This relationship is significant where dispersal is an unintended consequence of the way development aid intersects with academic opportunities for scholars from less developed countries, and, consequently, country-focused academic communities remain undeveloped as education becomes individualised. This situation occurs despite the fact that the self is social and education is a common good in many contexts, such as Solomon Islands in Melanesia. Using the contributions of participants in the Solomon Islands Research Mentoring Tok Stori (SIRMT), we discuss the various kinds of support and outcomes that become possible when deliberate attempts are made to create a connected community through mentoring in virtual space. Among the findings are the significance of mentorship to personal and academic growth, the potential of deliberate community building through...
Pacific education is an area of priority in Aotearoa New Zealand. It involves the teaching of Pacific students by a workforce that is largely of European origin. Pacific communities value education and have the capability to contribute to... more
Pacific education is an area of priority in Aotearoa New Zealand. It involves the teaching of Pacific students by a workforce that is largely of European origin. Pacific communities value education and have the capability to contribute to the understandings of teachers as they seek to provide the kinds of service that communities want to see. This article reports on a Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI), Learning From Each Other. Leveraging talanoa as a dialogic research approach, the initiative examines the change value of Pacific voice in enhancing teacher understanding and promoting deliberate action to improve Pacific education. We present findings organised by spaces in which educators enact change using a contextualised revision of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model as a mapping tool. What emerges is a sense of how non-Pacific educators’ growing Pacific-informed understandings support Pacific learners in personal, classroom and institutional spaces.
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In Aotearoa New Zealand, teachers have signaled that they would like to further their development as classroom practitioners, as a way of improving their capabilities as professionals. They want to foster strengths-based authentic... more
In Aotearoa New Zealand, teachers have signaled that they would like to further their development as classroom practitioners, as a way of improving their capabilities as professionals. They want to foster strengths-based authentic partnerships between themselves and their diasporic migrant communities. This article attends to Pacific education, the education in Aotearoa New Zealand of students with migratory links to one or more Pacific Island Nations through a strength-based lens. We report on a Professional Learning Development (PLD) research endeavor, Learning From Each Other, that focused on supporting partnerships between Pacific communities and teachers. We provide a window on the sense making of teachers as they listen to, and are challenged by, diasporic Pacific community voice. Particular emphasis is placed on how teachers explore and transform their approach to partnership by negotiating with habitual practice. The examples given, selected for their apparent ordinariness, ...
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In the complex and diverse region of Oceania, researchers often work across more than one cultural understanding. Thus, a researcher’s position with regard to their research requires careful ongoing negotiation because position, when... more
In the complex and diverse region of Oceania, researchers often work across more than one cultural understanding. Thus, a researcher’s position with regard to their research requires careful ongoing negotiation because position, when understood through relationality, is fluid. Negotiating position requires acute reflexivity of the researcher but also offers opportunities for ongoing development and agency. In this article, we use the literature of relational positionality and autoethnographic methodology to discuss two researchers’ deliberate re-positioning in relation to their field of education, focusing on deliberate self-change and the application of new conceptual learning. The context is Pasifika education, a space which sits between different knowledge systems as the education of Pacific-origin people in Aotearoa New Zealand. The article demonstrates how storying can support new understandings which, in turn, can help negotiate positionality. The argument draws on data from a...
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Access to education, a key element of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, features in the ongoing planning of national education ministries and is of interest to donors in the Pacific. Access is generally an aspirational... more
Access to education, a key element of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, features in the ongoing planning of national education ministries and is of interest to donors in the Pacific. Access is generally an aspirational matter framed by concrete factors such as new building programmes, increased numbers of teachers, and so on. However, the discussion of access can helpfully be extended by paying attention to ethical educational leadership as it supports students to attend school, especially when associated with the related concepts of equity and quality. This article re-thinks access through a tok stori process in a Solomon Islands context. We propose a concept of access that employs a nuanced, strengths-based, widened lens to take account of the ethical, creative, purposeful actions of school leaders. This enables education authorities to recognise and develop the ‘soft’ leadership skills and ethical positions of leaders who have the potential to provide day to day e...
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A literature review is generally a compendium of written material on a topic presented as research background. It functions to describe what is known in academic circles and to justify research questions that step beyond the known. A more... more
A literature review is generally a compendium of written material on a topic presented as research background. It functions to describe what is known in academic circles and to justify research questions that step beyond the known. A more nuanced approach involves getting “beneath the skin” of the literature itself; considering the fabric of the literature; what worldviews are evident, the questions that started inquiry, and the usefulness to communities of the knowledge gained. In this article, we discuss the place of the literature review by going beyond a compendium approach. We offer summaries of literature from the Pacific Island Countries of Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Marshall Islands as background to a research effort on leadership indigenous to the Pacific region, before getting beneath the skin of our reading. We augment our approach by imagining a conference tok stori discussion of Pacific leadership literature as a form of literature itself. This acts to re-value real-ti...
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A relational approach focusses on connections between things, assuming that all things exist in relatedness. In this article, attention is given to the relationship between innovative learning environments (ILE) as described in... more
A relational approach focusses on connections between things, assuming that all things exist in relatedness. In this article, attention is given to the relationship between innovative learning environments (ILE) as described in literature, and elements of the field of Pacific education. In order to investigate this relationship, I take a layered approach, attending to five relational matters. First, I ask how relationships are configured between key elements within ILE thinking. Second, I examine what the literature of Pacific education says about how relationships can be understood. Third, I investigate the relational space between ILE thinking and Pacific Education. Next, I describe some aspects of three innovative Pacific educational spaces. And finally, I seek to learn from these deliberately configured educational spaces. The inquiry trajectory grounds discussions of literature and theory in innovative practice, a significant move where the intent is to offer support for innova...
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Sometimes things come together - luck, divine guidance, call it what you will. I spent 2012 in Tonga as a lowly paid High School teacher. The NZ High Commission brought The Kermadecs art exhibition, a collaboration between the Pew... more
Sometimes things come together - luck, divine guidance, call it what you will. I spent 2012 in Tonga as a lowly paid High School teacher. The NZ High Commission brought The Kermadecs art exhibition, a collaboration between the Pew Charitable Trust, a group of artists, and the NZ Navy to Nuku'alofa. They were exhibiting a McCahonesque mix of words and images to celebrate the Kermadec Arc, working towards turning this undeveloped part of New Zealand's EEZ into a sanctuary. I met some participants, including Wellington-based Greg O'Brien. I wondered if Greg wanted to collaborate in an education project when we had returned to Aotearoa. He was keen.
Pasifika education, the education of students with connections to the Pacific in Aotearoa New Zealand, is intercultural; Pasifika students are generally taught by Palangi (European-origin) teachers in a system originally designed to meet... more
Pasifika education, the education of students with connections to the Pacific in Aotearoa New Zealand, is intercultural; Pasifika students are generally taught by Palangi (European-origin) teachers in a system originally designed to meet the perceived needs of European settlers. The field has a history of inequity, consigning many Pasifika students to mediocrity in formal education. A cultural reading of the situation connects a need for emancipatory self-description with the achievement of social justice within the kind of participatory democracy imagined by Dewey. Recent government initiatives such as the Pasifika Education Plan have sought ‘Pasifika success’ through targets and initiatives, the most visible focusing on success as achievement understood by comparison to other ethnic groups. This has been critiqued as not seeking success as, but of Pasifika, in effect another assimilative practice. This thesis interrogates how success in formal education is understood, described, a...
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Understanding, articulating and managing relationality, the state of being related, is a central feature of research, teaching and other people-centred matters in the Pacific. Although various groups in this diverse region, Indigenous and... more
Understanding, articulating and managing relationality, the state of being related, is a central feature of research, teaching and other people-centred matters in the Pacific. Although various groups in this diverse region, Indigenous and otherwise, bring their own concepts and protocols to relationships, physical, social and spiritual connection are salient. Connection is most visible between people but also extends to other entities, including land. Recent events have accelerated the significance of connections constructed in virtual space, such as through conference calls augmented to facilitate presentation and discussion. This phenomenon, relatively new in Pacific academic practice, re-draws attention to relationality in a novel context. In this article we look at one such initiative through the lens of relational leadership to understand the role of leadership in the deliberate curation of a virtual space. The setting is the inaugural Wellington southerlies virtual tok stori. ...
Indigenous knowledge is generally understood to be knowledge developed by a particular group in their specific environment over an extended period of time. In academia generally, bodies of knowledge of differing origins are not often... more
Indigenous knowledge is generally understood to be knowledge developed by a particular group in their specific environment over an extended period of time. In academia generally, bodies of knowledge of differing origins are not often understood. This article employs ontology as a ground for developing relational clarity in the academy by considering two oral traditions—talanoa (a Polynesian conversational form) as represented in research and Melanesian tok stori (a Melanesian form of discursive group communication) understood through an Indigenous Solomon Islands ontology. The discussion of tok stori offers a window into the complex ontological thinking required of the academy when seeking to learn from the knowledge of Mala’ita Solomon Islands specifically, and from Indigenous groups generally. The value to the wider research community suggests that bringing research back home through approaches constructed on the way people act can capitalise on the logic of aligning ontology and ...
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This article discusses the perceptions of Solomon Island mentors and regional administrators of a Solomon Islands aid-funded school leadership professional learning and development intervention. The focus is on contextualisation, used... more
This article discusses the perceptions of Solomon Island mentors and regional administrators of a Solomon Islands aid-funded school leadership professional learning and development intervention. The focus is on contextualisation, used here as a broad term to refer to the adoption of ways of understanding, thinking and working recognisable and coherent within local practice. The scope of the article includes the significance of the configuration of relationships between delivery partners, the power of cause-based motivation, programme delivery protocols and ways of understanding successful outcomes. Using data drawn from two perspectives in a multi-facetted programme construction and delivery model, the article offers some provocations regarding the potential of re-framing relationships and practices in aid-funded development programmes in educational leadership and beyond.
Tok stori is a Melanesian form of dialogical engagement. Although it has been generally associated with informal activities, this article points to the potential of tok stori as a pedagogical or teaching process. Set in a school... more
Tok stori is a Melanesian form of dialogical engagement. Although it has been generally associated with informal activities, this article points to the potential of tok stori as a pedagogical or teaching process. Set in a school leadership programme spread across the Solomon Islands, the discussion illustrates the value of approaching the education of school leaders through their own experiences and in a manner to which they are accustomed. Data are drawn from the stories of programme mentors. Of particular relevance are the relational implications of tok stori as these frame learning, the kinds of learning facilitated by tok stori, gender and the restricted nature of some knowledge, and the openness of tok stori to encourage and promote learning beyond the initial scope of a programme. Although tok stori can be informal, the data suggest that effective professional learning can take place through tok stori as pedagogy. As one amongst a number of traditional oral forms across the re...
© The Author(s) 2020. Across the world, knowledge communities categorise and attach conditions of guardianship to different kinds of knowledge. For private or secret knowledge, those responsible for its care have obligations for arranging... more
© The Author(s) 2020. Across the world, knowledge communities categorise and attach conditions of guardianship to different kinds of knowledge. For private or secret knowledge, those responsible for its care have obligations for arranging and restricting transmission to ensure community survival. While an insider/outsider positionality is often used to navigate this knowledge area, a binary approach is unhelpful. Taking a more relational reading of positionality, we support a dynamic understanding of the transmission of restricted knowledge, using relevant principles of guardianship or custodianship. Based on a Melanesian Solomon Islands tribe, the study sketches a set of principles and shows how they operate in practice. Our intents are to honour the contribution that Melanesian thought makes to rethinking research dichotomies regarding secret knowledge, that readers appreciate the dynamic nature of knowledge guardianship, and that this case study enhances the discussion on ethical...
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© 2018, Flinders University. Donor-funded programmes in areas such as leadership development take place in every continent. In the Western Pacific, Melanesia has been host to such programmes based on non-Melanesian thought and practice... more
© 2018, Flinders University. Donor-funded programmes in areas such as leadership development take place in every continent. In the Western Pacific, Melanesia has been host to such programmes based on non-Melanesian thought and practice over the years. However, a review of donor-funded leadership programmes in the region reveals a history of concern regarding effectiveness but no significant change in programme orientation. This article provides a counter-story of a donor-funded leadership programme which utilizes a readily available cultural model of thought and practice of Indigenous origin: tok stori. Tok stori is a form of discursive group communication which is an everyday occurrence in Melanesia. The experiences of leadership mentors operating in a tok stori-centred leadership development programme located in the Solomon Islands provide an opportunity to explore and evaluate what cultural wisdom can contribute as the core of a leadership development programme. The benefits are ...
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This article discusses the perceptions of Solomon Island mentors and regional administrators of a Solomon Islands aid-funded school leadership professional learning and development intervention. The focus is on contextualisation, used... more
This article discusses the perceptions of Solomon Island mentors and regional administrators of a Solomon Islands aid-funded school leadership professional learning and development intervention. The focus is on contextualisation, used here as a broad term to refer to the adoption of ways of understanding, thinking and working recognisable and coherent within local practice. The scope of the article includes the significance of the configuration of relationships between delivery partners, the power of cause-based motivation, programme delivery protocols and ways of understanding successful outcomes. Using data drawn from two perspectives in a multi-facetted programme construction and delivery model, the article offers some provocations regarding the potential of re-framing relationships and practices in aid-funded development programmes in educational leadership and beyond.
Across the world, knowledge communities categorise and attach conditions of guardianship to different kinds of knowledge. For private or secret knowledge, those responsible for its care have obligations for arranging and restricting... more
Across the world, knowledge communities categorise and attach conditions of guardianship to different kinds of knowledge. For private or secret knowledge, those responsible for its care have obligations for arranging and restricting transmission to ensure community survival. While an insider/outsider positionality is often used to navigate this knowledge area, a binary approach is unhelpful. Taking a more relational reading of positionality, we support a dynamic understanding of the transmission of restricted knowledge, using relevant principles of guardianship or custodianship. Based on a Melanesian Solomon Islands tribe, the study sketches a set of principles and shows how they operate in practice. Our intents are to honour the contribution that Melanesian thought makes to rethinking research dichotomies regarding secret knowledge, that readers appreciate the dynamic nature of knowledge guardianship, and that this case study enhances the discussion on ethical entitlement to, or re...
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Set in Aotearoa New Zealand, this examination of “Pasifika”education as an inter-cultural event discusses what students from the Pacificdiaspora say about educational success. Against a backdrop of literature that pays attention to... more
Set in Aotearoa New Zealand, this examination of “Pasifika”education as an inter-cultural event discusses what students from the Pacificdiaspora say about educational success. Against a backdrop of literature that pays attention to teacher-student relationships, achievement targets, and peer relationships, the article uses Pacific concepts to theorise the dynamics between individuals, “brotherhood” groups, and success. It suggests that teachers and institutions might respond better in intercultural situations by “looking backwards to walk forwards.”
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Like all acts of naming, the term ‘Pasifika’, which is used to refer collectively to persons with connections to Pacific Island nations living in Aotearoa New Zealand, can be used to represent or to misrepresent, to enable or to control.... more
Like all acts of naming, the term ‘Pasifika’, which is used to refer collectively to persons with connections to Pacific Island nations living in Aotearoa New Zealand, can be used to represent or to misrepresent, to enable or to control. Consequently, the notion of a field of Pasifika educational research is contested. This article provides a discussion of the potential contextual justification and consequent theorisation of Pasifika education. It pays attention to developments in the literature and to the usefulness of theory based on wisdom from the Pacific. It suggests that a relational edge-walking methodology framed through va is one way of making Pasifika educational research catalytically powerful. Located in recent PhD study, this account is by a Palagi (European-origin) teacher- researcher seeking to navigate the intercultural and positional edges of both Pasifika research and education. The aim is to facilitate respectful dialogue and thus enhance understanding and harmony...
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Intercultural understanding is required for effective intercultural education. The education of Pasifika students (those with cultural and/or family ties to Pacific Islands) living in Aotearoa New Zealand is a negative case in point.... more
Intercultural understanding is required for effective intercultural education. The education of Pasifika students (those with cultural and/or family ties to Pacific Islands) living in Aotearoa New Zealand is a negative case in point. Research has linked Pasifika educational achievement to the quality of relationships between teachers and Pasifika students, but has generally stopped short of framing the discussion through Pasifika concepts. This article explores the concept of va (relationship/relatedness) for its potential in telling a relational story in Pasifika conceptual language. It provides grounds for a more nuanced discussion of relationships in Pasifika education by addressing the breadth and transformational power of the application of va. If Pasifika educational research seeks to represent the world as Pasifika students experience it, an awareness of va has its place both in the classroom and in the New Zealand education system as a whole. Appreciating va can make a contr...
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