Le Tuiga: Samoan constructs of giftedness and talent within a Samoan bilingual educational context
This research study explores the notions of cultural concepts of giftedness and talent within a Samoan-specific context. The focus of this article is on Samoan teachers of children who were enrolled in a bilingual education setting. It presents the perspectives of Samoan teachers around Samoan giftedness and talent and how these perspectives might be nurtured through Samoan bilingual education. The strong connections between education, language, and culture are explored and discussed. This study highlights the components of Samoan cultural forms of giftedness and talent and how these may be transferred from the home domain into a culturally sustaining school learning environment for enhanced student outcomes.
Learning objectives and PLD intentions:
- Improvements in well-being
- Support for ākonga as Pasifika (Samoan)
- Working with special populations among the gifted with particular reference to gender, culture, locality, socio-economic circumstances, and ākonga with learning, behavioural, and physical challenges.
Successful Tongan Students in New Zealand Secondary Schools: Default or Design?
This article outlines the use of Gagne’s (2008) Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent (DMGT) as applied to Tongan secondary school students in New Zealand. Two case studies of Tongan young women are shared with a particular emphasis on the influence of catalysts, the chance factor, and developmental processes upon the development of their gifts to talents.
The article explains the Tongan way, a conceptual map for developing better understandings of Tongan gifted and talented students in New Zealand. The article concludes that the Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent is a framework teachers can use to explore giftedness with Pasifika families, communities, and students to assist in better understanding their special abilities, qualities, and needs.
Learning objectives and PLD intentions:
- Improvements in well-being
- Support for ākonga as Pasifika (Tongan)
- Working with special populations among the gifted with particular reference to gender, culture, locality, socio-economic circumstances, and ākonga with learning, behavioural, and physical challenges.
Exploring perceptions of giftedness in the Cook Islands Maori community – Graeme Miller
"From my study in the field of gifted education it became apparent that published works related to perceptions of what constitutes giftedness began with a narrow view focused on achievement in intelligence tests and in the latter part of the twentieth century developed to a much broader view. In the New Zealand context the work of Bevan-Brown (1996, 1999) with New Zealand Māori provided a new and different perspective on special abilities or giftedness. This pioneering work was the inspiration for my study.
As principal of David Henry School in Tokoroa, New Zealand for nine and a half years I worked in a community with both high New Zealand Māori and Cook Islands Māori populations. I began to wonder whether Cook Islands Māori had similar perceptions of giftedness to New Zealand Māori and whether their perceptions were different in New Zealand by comparison with the Cook Islands. I also wondered how the Cook Islands Māori children who were plainly gifted in the context of their own culture could be better nurtured by the school in order to foster and develop their gifts. Thus my study was born."
Learning objectives and PLD intentions:
- Improvements in well-being
- Support for ākonga as Pasifika (Cook Islands Māori)
- Working with special populations among the gifted with particular reference to gender, culture, locality, socio-economic circumstances, and ākonga with learning, behavioural, and physical challenges.
Talanoa as a framework to develop more effective dialogic pedagogy with Pasifika students.
A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Education, University of Auckland (2021) Jacinta Lucia Oldehaver
There is an urgent need to provide more effective approaches to teaching and learning for Pasifika learners in English medium contexts that are deliberate and enable active and culturally sustained engagement. A dialogic approach to teaching might add to those practices that are effective.
This study provides an in-depth analysis of the interactive experiences of six teachers ranging from New Entrant to Year 8 in 2 Auckland primary schools following dialogic approaches to literacy instruction bein adopted for Pasifika students.
Talanoa has been used to conceptualise the design of an analytic framework used primarily to code discourse features between teachers and their Pasifika leaners. Talanoa is an Oceanic principle that is generally defined as talk, both formal and informal. Core values of respect and reciprocity underpin Talanoa.
Learning objectives and PLD intentions:
- Improvements in well-being
- Support for ākonga as Pasifika (Samoan)
Creating kakala : gifted and talented Tongan students in New Zealand secondary schools
A thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Education, Massey University (2007) Ingrid Frengley-Vaipuna
This thesis is an ethnographic case study investigation of two gifted and talented young Tongan women in New Zealand secondary schools. A motivation for the study was the researcher's personal and professional involvement with Tongan communities and a deep fascination for this rich and complex culture. The other motivating factors came from a yearning to see all gifted and talented students in New Zealand better catered for, and especially those from cultural minorities who, for many complex reasons, can be overlooked in our present education system.
The following research questions guided the research:
What gifts and talents are valued by Tongan communities? * What catalysts operate in the development of Tongan students' talents? - At school? At home? In the community? Are any of these culturally specific? - How are the intrapersonal characteristics of giftedness exhibited within Tongan culture?
Learning objectives and PLD intentions:
- Improvements in well-being
- Support for ākonga as Pasifika (Tongan)
The Pasifika Education Plan (PEP)
The PEP sets out the Government’s strategy for Pasifika Success (2018) where Pasifika learners enjoy educational success as Pasifika. They are secure in their identities, languages and cultures, and participating, engaging and achieving in education, contributing fully to Aotearoa, New Zealand’s social, cultural and economic wellbeing.
Educational success is achieved when teachers recognise and build on what Pasifika learners, their parents, families and communities already understand, value and what they know; and integrate those understandings, values and knowledge into their planning and teaching practices.
This means taking into account processes, methodologies, theories and knowledges that are fa‘asamoa (the Samoan way), faka-Tonga (the Tongan way), faka-Tokelau (the Tokelau way), faka-Niue (the Niue way), akano‘anga Kūki ‘Āirani (the Cook Islands way), and vaka-Viti (the Fijian way), for the major Pasifika populations.
The Pacific Values Framework for NCEA
These have facilitation guides and other resources that schools could work through as well.
This framework supports kaiako in school departments to have in-depth discussions on how programmes of learning can be designed to meaningfully incorporate Pacific knowledges, cultures, languages, identities, and contexts. Schools are welcome to adapt the workshop as they see fit to suit their participants and local contexts.
Workshop Objectives
- Support kaiako to strengthen their capability in designing programmes of learning that are inclusive and relevant to Pacific ākonga and contexts
- Support kaiako to meaningfully incorporate Pacific knowledges, languages, cultures, and identities and recognise that they are inherently valuable to the teaching and learning of subjects.
