Effective teaching for Pacific students
This resource contains a series of videos to support effective teacher practice of Pacific learners.
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- AudienceKaiako
- Resource LanguageEnglish
About this resource
Family, community, culture, and collaboration are the essence of Pacific learners. This resource provides information and videos to support effective teaching for Pacific students.
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Effective teaching for Pacific students
- Know your learners
- Understand Pacific peoples’ culture
- Set high expectations
- Create a safe and supportive environment
- Successful transitions
- Engaging with Pacific parents, families, and communities
Know your learners
Effective teaching for Pacific students begins with the learner. Pacific students often respond positively to teachers who take time to get to know them and make an effort to find out their interests. Pacific learners value relationships and often believe that if they can relate to the teacher, they can relate to the learning.
Effective schools have processes of inquiry that are linked across all school systems and practices. These work together to focus on raising Pacific students’ achievement.
Each student is unique
David Faavae explains that within the changing Tongan culture, Tongan boys can be very different, each requiring a different approach when working with them as teachers.
Know your students
Jim Halafihi, ICT teacher at Papatoetoe High School, explains how establishing a positive rapport with your Pacific students provides a good starting point for knowing your students. When a teacher knows their students, they are in a better position to respond more appropriately to their needs.
Strong student connections
Melaine Sagala, TIC Samoan Language teacher at Avondale College, discusses the benefits of strong student connections for their learning. She also discusses a model for connection that has worked for her in the past.
Understand Pacific peoples’ culture
Maggie Flavell explains the perspective of a non-Pacific person working with Pacific students. She talks about the importance of learning about Pacific cultures to enable her to better engage with Pacific students and their families. She also talks about the value of having a good support network to support her own professional development.
Set high expectations
Effective teachers set high expectations and provide academic challenges. Provide Pacific learners with the kinds of support they need to take risks, think critically, and engage fully.
Let Pacific students know you have high expectations for them. Tell them they’re going to do well, and keep reinforcing that. Put expectations into practise and provide the support needed for success.
Help newly arrived Pacific students. Give them the information and support they need to gain the knowledge and skills required for local schooling. There is no evidence that having two or more languages is a barrier to success, either at the primary or secondary level.
"Inappropriate teacher expectations can undermine students or constitute a barrier to effective practice. Teacher expectations have been found to vary by student ethnicity, dis/ability, gender, and other student characteristics unrelated to a student's actual capability."
(Quality Teaching for Diverse Students in Schooling: Best Evidence Synthesis, p.16)
High expectations
High expectations, together with the vision of Pacific students as successful learners, improve relationships, pedagogy, and academic outcomes.
Thanks to the principals, staff, and students of Aorere College, McAuley High School, Mangere Bridge School, Sylvia Park School, Mary MacKillop School, and Wymondley Road Primary School for their contributions to this video.
Data: how it is used
Pacific students find it motivating when teachers keep them informed about their levels of achievement, share their learning intentions with them, and adjust their teaching to scaffold their learning pathways so that they know exactly what to do next.
Thanks to the principals, staff, and students of Aorere College, McAuley High School, Mangere Bridge School, Sylvia Park School, Mary MacKillop School, and Wymondley Road Primary School for their contributions to this video.
Sharing achievement data with your Pacific students helps you make their learning explicit and meaningful for them. Pacific learners find it motivating to have ready and ongoing access to their own achievement data. Their use of the data and the learning conversations they have with others about their progress and next steps in learning improves their achievement patterns. These also develop their self-analysis and self-management competencies and build their confidence as learners.
"Effective teachers actively involve students in their own learning and assessment, make learning outcomes transparent to students, offer specific, constructive, and regular feedback, and ensure that assessment practices impact positively on students' motivation. Assessment can improve teaching and learning when teachers adjust their teaching to take account of the results of assessment."
(Quality Teaching for Diverse Students in Schooling: Best Evidence Synthesis, p. 89)
Create a safe and supportive environment
Behaviour management
Safe and supportive environments with coherent, clear, and consistently enforced codes of behaviour and restorative discipline practices contribute to learning gains for Pacific students.
Leadership can facilitate the achievement of important academic and social goals by creating an environment that is conducive to success. An orderly environment makes it possible for teachers to focus on teaching and students to focus on learning.
"The findings suggest that leaders of effective schools succeed in establishing a safe and supportive environment by means of clear and consistently enforced social expectations and discipline codes. Restorative justice programmes are favoured, displacing punitive discipline practices.
When ensuring an orderly and supportive environment, leaders in high-performing schools:
- protect teaching time
- ensure consistent discipline routines
- identify and resolve conflicts quickly and effectively."
Coherence within a school at all levels is important to effectiveness. Coherence matters between levels in the school, across members of the school’s professional community, and between different instructional parts, including teachers.
Research into Pasifika achievement indicates that:
"The coherence between teachers appears to be especially significant, so that there is consistency in pedagogical approaches as well as in focus and goals."
(Ua Aoina le Manogi o le Lolo: Pasifika Schooling Improvement Research: Final Report, p. viii)
Thanks to the principals, staff, and students of Aorere College, McAuley High School, Mangere Bridge School, Sylvia Park School, Mary MacKillop School, and Wymondley Road Primary School for their contributions to this video.
Behaviour management
Successful transitions
Pacific children who move between educational settings require special care. For example, their transition to schools from early childhood centres may require them to adapt to using English as the language of instruction. Other Pacific children may not have experienced planned early childhood learning environments.
When they have an explicit focus on Pacific student learning, school leaders play a key role in ensuring that Pacific students experience continuity as they move from one educational setting to another.
"Leaders can create educationally powerful connections by:
- establishing continuities between student identities and school practices
- developing continuities and coherence across teaching programmes
- ensuring effective transitions from one educational setting to another”
The year 8–9 transition also represents a time of significant, deeper-level change and can be unsettling for Pacific students.
“The biggest danger period for students in terms of an increased tendency to be more negative about school, their relationships with teachers, and teaching and learning in general was in the second half of year 9, and not in the first few weeks following the transition."
(A Study of Students’ Transition from Primary to Secondary Schooling, Research Division [Ministry of Education] 2008)
"The coherence between teachers appears to be especially significant so that there is consistency in pedagogical approaches as well as in focus and goals.”
(Ua Aoina le Manogi o le Lolo: Pasifika Schooling Improvement Research– Final Report executive summary)
Transitions
School leaders have a role in establishing practices that support the continuity of their Pasifika students’ learning as they move from and into different learning environments.
Thanks to the principals, staff and students of Aorere College, McAuley High School, Mangere Bridge School, Sylvia Park School, Mary MacKillop School, and Wymondley Road Primary School for their contribution to this video.
Engaging with Pacific parents, families, and communities
Strong home-school connections are a key attribute of effective schools. Bridge the gap between home and school. Involve and value parents in ways that impact Pacific students’ motivation and academic achievement. Show parents and families that their culture is valued.
- Involve them in running cross-cultural events such as Pacific Language Week activities or Polyfest preparation.
- Invite them into school to learn how to use the technology their children are using.
Many students from the Pacific transition between different worlds. For some, handling the roles and responsibilities of home and the expectations of society, school, church, sports, or social groups is a daily challenge.
Many students learn to navigate confidently between the expectations of these worlds, yet at times these varied expectations can place additional pressure on students, and they may find some transitions very difficult. For some students, realistic goals and priorities may need to be developed so that they can manage the demands of both everyday life and the school system.
This clip, from the Connections and Conversations DVD, highlights a variety of viewpoints on the range of different contexts and worlds that Pacific students inhabit. These different contexts can provide challenges for some students. At the same time, they can also provide a basis for learning.
The DVD and accompanying booklet can be ordered via email at [email protected] or phone 0800 226 440. Quote item number 11061.
Different worlds, different experiences
A significant proportion of Pacific Islanders in New Zealand were born in New Zealand. This clip, from the Connections and Conversations DVD, considers the diversity within our groups of Pacific students and their communities in terms of their identities, languages, experiences, and aspirations.
The DVD and accompanying booklet can be ordered via email at [email protected] or phone 0800 226 440. Quote item number 11061.
Diversity and identity
Many schools already involve Pacific parents in fundraising and supporting cultural performance groups and invite them to take part in other Pacific cultural events. This type of involvement is a good foundation upon which to build an even deeper level of involvement, that is, engagement, where parents and schools work together in collaboration to support their Pacific students’ learning and achievement.
Pasifika parents may be hesitant and uncertain about how they can become more engaged with their child’s or young person’s learning. In such cases, schools will need to be creative and proactive in developing their engagement with Pasifika parents and communities.
This clip, from the Connections and Conversations DVD, explores a variety of viewpoints from students, teachers, and parents on the involvement and engagement of Pacific parents and communities in the processes of schooling.
The DVD and accompanying booklet can be ordered via email at [email protected] or phone 0800 226 440. Quote item number 11061.
Involvement and engagement
Sustained higher achievement is possible when teachers use pedagogical approaches and share strategies that enable Pacific students to take charge of their own learning.
When Pacific students are part of the conversation about their learning and achievements, they gain a deeper understanding of their own specific learning needs and challenges. Approaches such as learning conversations foster Pacific students' abilities to define their own learning goals, ask questions, anticipate the structure of curriculum experiences, use meta-cognitive strategies when engaging with curriculum, and self-monitor. When Pasifika parents are included in the conversation, they gain knowledge about their child’s learning in a language that they can understand.
Pacific parents who extend their range of strategies to help their children learn and do well in school are also empowered to support their preschool children as well. Those parents, whānau, and community members who volunteer to help at school also increase their ability to influence their children's educational outcomes.
"Students learn as they engage in shared activities and conversations with other people, including family members and people in the wider community. Teachers encourage this process by cultivating the class as a learning community. In such a community, everyone, including the teacher, is a learner; learning conversations and learning partnerships are encouraged; and challenge, support, and feedback are always available. As they engage in reflective discourse with others, students build the language that they need to take their learning further."
(The New Zealand Curriculum, 2007, p. 34)
Thanks to the principals, staff, and students of Aorere College, McAuley High School, Mangere Bridge School, Sylvia Park School, Mary MacKillop School, and Wymondley Road Primary School for their contributions to this video.
Learning conversations
Many schools already involve Pacific parents in supporting cultural events and activities. However, it should not stop there. Home-school partnerships that have a clear focus on Pacific students’ learning with everyone able to make a positive and active contribution directly benefit Pasifika learners.
When partnerships between schools and parents are directly focused on student learning, the links to learning outcomes are much stronger. Parental and family involvement in Pacific students’ learning is crucial to improving their outcomes. Research indicates that home-school partnerships are dependent upon the actions of educators, their ability to avoid deficits or stereotypical characterisations of parents and carers, and their willingness to initiate links, respond to, and recognise strengths within the diverse families of their Pacific students. Schools need to take the lead in making parents feel welcome and find ways to encourage, scaffold, and enable teacher-student-parent dialogue around school learning.
"Research evidence shows that particularly strong and sustained gains in student achievement have been made when schools and families develop partnerships to support students' achievement at school... However, as is also apparent in the available New Zealand research, unless the focus on student learning is central to the partnership, positive impacts on student achievement are smaller or do not occur."
(Quality Teaching for Diverse Students in Schooling: Best Evidence Synthesis, pp. 38–39)
Thanks to the principals, staff, and students of Aorere College, McAuley High School, Mangere Bridge School, Sylvia Park School, Mary MacKillop School, and Wymondley Road Primary School for their contributions to this video.
Parents matter
Research over many years has shown how expectations held by teachers about their students are highly influential in terms of student achievement.
This clip, from the Connections and Conversations DVD, considers the potentially differing expectations of teachers and parents towards Pasifika students and their learning. Some Pacific students on the DVD describe their experiences and how they believe some teachers see them as less competent learners. At the same time, some Pasifika parents may want their children to become doctors, lawyers, or pursue particular professional careers. School is expected to be the launching pad for these expectations to be fulfilled.
Pasifika students may find themselves pulled between these sometimes contradictory sets of expectations. Schools and teachers need to consider how best to set up opportunities for conversations to take place between all those concerned (teachers, parents, and students) in supporting Pasifika students to increase their learning in all curriculum areas.
The DVD and accompanying booklet can be ordered via email from [email protected] or phone 0800 226 440. Quote item number 11061.
Relevancy and expectations
Partnerships that share and align school and home practices and enable parents to actively support their children's in-school learning have shown some of the strongest impacts on student outcomes.
Pacific parents are not alone in wanting their children to learn and achieve, and they also have much to contribute. Connections and partnership-building can be initiated by teachers ‘reaching out’ to Pasifika parents. It can result in teachers learning as much from families as families learn from teachers, and teachers gaining a deeper awareness of Pacific children’s experiences and competencies.
Such partnerships also increase Pasifika parents’ ability to become more actively involved in supporting their children’s in-school learning. Teachers who take the time to share with Pacific parents their children’s learning goals and achievement levels and detail the kinds of support that would directly help their learning can increase their impact on Pasifika student outcomes.
"Incorporating school-like activities into family activities, through providing parents with access to both additional pedagogical knowledge and information about finding and using local educational resources, can have dramatic and positive impacts on children’s achievement".
Thanks to the principals, staff, and students of Aorere College, McAuley High School, Mangere Bridge School, Sylvia Park School, Mary MacKillop School, and Wymondley Road Primary School for their contributions.
Sharing information
Coming to school for special events is rewarding for Pacific parents if the school makes them feel welcome and the focus is on their children’s achievement and strategies to extend their learning.
Most Pacific parents want their children to succeed educationally and are prepared to help in any way they can. Many parents want their children to have a better chance than they themselves had.
When their children reach secondary school level, many Pacific parents need additional guidance on how to best help their child at home and how to access information or services to support them in that task.
Limited facilities in English should not be an obstacle. In school-family-community collaboration, the use of liaisons of the same ethnicity to assist seems especially important as it allows the partnerships to be built on shared cultural understandings. The time together is well spent if the school takes steps to make Pacific parents and families feel welcome and supported and if the focus is on their children’s achievements with practical suggestions for how they can also contribute.
"There is clear evidence that programmes ... depend for their success on families being treated with dignity and respect, on the programmes adding to family practices (not undermining them), on structured, specific suggestions rather than general advice, and on supportive group opportunities as well as opportunities for one-to-one contact …."
Thanks to the principals, staff, and students of Aorere College, McAuley High School, Mangere Bridge School, Sylvia Park School, Mary MacKillop School, and Wymondley Road Primary School for their contributions to this video.
Welcoming parents
Sylvia Park School has set up a centre to be the parents’ place within the school. The centre’s leader has a proactive focus on involving Pacific parents through mutual learning conversations based on their child’s assessment data and their next-step learning needs.
Sylvia Park does not assume the answers are readily available. An integral part of the school’s vision is building an effective school-community learning partnership. Sylvia Park puts its philosophy of full parental involvement into practice by providing a separate physical space for parents and families within the school: the Sylvia Park Parents’ Centre. The centre’s leader works proactively with parents. This involves sharing assessment data to inform parents of how their children are achieving and what they need to learn next. It involves consulting with parents about learning programmes and reporting on student achievement. Here, Pacific parents can learn the specific questions they need to ask about their child’s learning and progress. As a result, Pacific parents increasingly share the responsibility for their child’s learning at Sylvia Park School.
"A key message emerging from New Zealand and international research is that effective centre/school-home partnerships can strengthen supports for children’s learning in both home and school settings ... The benefits can not only enhance the well-being, behaviour and achievement of children and young people but can also persist into adult life and civic participation. Some studies have also demonstrated considerable benefits for the parents and whānau involved in constructive partnerships."
Thanks to the principals, staff, and students of Aorere College, McAuley High School, Mangere Bridge School, Sylvia Park School, Mary MacKillop School, and Wymondley Road Primary School for their contributions to this video.