Legislative changes are afoot in New Zealand that are formalising an ideological shift in policy that decreasingly positions the Maori language a matter of interethnic national identity but increasingly as one for Maori self-determination. The Waitangi Tribunal (WAI262, Waitangi Tribunal, 2011) established that, from here on, Maori language policy…

The focus of this article is on the findings emerging from a cross-cultural research project exploring children's working theories about identity, language, and culture in two diverse early childhood education centres in Christchurch: one Samoan immersion, and the other English-medium. The project team believes that by nurturing children's…

Racial equity is a high priority in Oregon, which along with many other states has enacted reforms in the past decade to improve racial equity in school discipline practices. One common approach has been to focus on reducing the use of exclusionary discipline, which removes students from classroom instruction. In 2015 the Oregon legislature…

Using auto-ethnography, I write my story as Mexican international student in the role of pre-service teacher in Australia. I focus on exploring my socio-political status and its relationship to assuming a position to respond to education policies about working with students from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds, and teaching…

International social unrest in recent years has resulted in many people choosing or being forced to leave their home countries to seek better lives elsewhere, causing drastic demographic shifts. Yet, it has been pointed out that institutional policies and practices in many countries have not caught up with such changing demographics, which have…

This article describes the process of understanding how translanguaging is naturally used in multilingual teaching environments and then applying this analysis to the creation of translanguaging grammar rules and ultimately pedagogical materials. Focusing primarily on our work with a Maori puna reo in Aotearoa New Zealand, but also drawing upon…

Since teachers are one of the most important resources that can effect change and affect student achievement in any classroom, it is important to explore and understand how teachers operate inside the classroom. In her Ph.D. study the author examined the pedagogical practices of three Pacific teachers working in the public secondary school system…

This report presents key statistics and trends for teenage mothers and their babies in Australia. Teenage mothers and their babies are more likely to experience broader disadvantage, have antenatal risk factors and have poorer maternal and baby outcomes during and after birth, than older mothers and their babies. In Australia, the rate of teenage…

Despite growing scholarly interest in student voice and leadership over the past two decades, both terms continue to be used with little consensus about their meaning. They are also often evoked without much clarity or agreement as to how they should be enabled or enacted, for what purposes they should be fostered, or what conditions are necessary…

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students' experiences in Australian higher education continue to be influenced by the sociopolitical narratives of alterity which locate the students as more likely than their nonIndigenous peers to struggle academically and need support. These western-centric perceptions of indigeneities not only affect…

This article investigates how two Pacific language programmes in secondary schools outside of the broader region of Auckland, New Zealand, enabled an exploration, celebration, and deepening of va (relational space) through language, and contributed to identity construction of students of Samoan and Tongan heritage. As the relational lens is rarely…

This volume brings together the work of a wide range of scholars to explore the long and complex history of the relationships between churches and education. Christianity has always been involved in education, from the very earliest teaching of those about to be baptised, to present-day churches' involvement in schools and higher education.…

This article draws on an action research process carried out by professional learning and development (PLD) facilitators supporting teachers in New Zealand secondary schools. Questions about students' developing knowledge of academic vocabulary, especially for English-language learners, were explored as part of responsive PLD inquiries within…

The Pacific Island countries are committed to promoting disability-inclusive education through enactment of the Pacific Education Development Framework. To support this move, key stakeholders have identified the need for developing local and contextually appropriate indicators for measuring progress of disability-inclusive education. This paper…

The article describes the usefulness of a realist methodology in linking sociological theory to empirically obtained data through the development of a methodological device. Three layers of analysis were integrated: 1. the findings from a case study about Maori language education in New Zealand; 2. the identification and analysis of contradictions…