Curriculum development: De facto language planning

This study suggests that, in the absence of any official Māori-medium education plan, the development of Māori-medium curricula such as the Pāngarau i roto i te Marautanga o Aotearoa (Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga, 1996, 2008) became de facto language planning. Traditionally in language planning research, this sort of policy work was not considered language planning per se. More recently, Hornberger and Johnson (2007) introduced the ethnography of language policy as a method for examining the agents, contexts and multiple layers of language planning. They argue that ethnographies of language policy can illuminate and inform various types of language planning, including the official and unofficial, de jure and de facto (Hornberger & Johnson, 2007).

The following section examines the development of two iterations of the pāngarau (Māori-medium mathematics) curriculum for classroom teaching in te reo Māori, one in the period 1993–1996 and the other in the period 2006–2008 as components of the broader curricula developments. First, however, it is useful to provide a timeline and diagrammatic explanation of the various curricula because it can be quite confusing without familiarity of te reo Māori curricula developments. The following timeline is drawn from McMurchy-Pilkington et al. (2013).

Phase 1: 1991–1996

 1991. Mathematics in the New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 1991).

 1993. The New Zealand Curriculum Framework (Ministry of Education, 1993) was an overarching statement on curriculum. Ironically published after the mathematics curriculum.

 1993. Te Anga Marautanga o Aotearoa (Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga, 1993). Translated directly by Taura Whiri from its 1993 English-language version above.

 1996. Pāngarau i roto i Te Marautanga o Aotearoa (Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga, 1996). This is the Māori-medium version of the English- medium version above; see discussion below.

Phase 2: 2006–2008

 2006. New Zealand Curriculum (NZC; Ministry of Education, 2006). Revised version of the NZ curriculum framework.

 2006. Mathematics in the New Zealand Curriculum—becomes a section in NZC.

 2008. Te Marautanga o Aotearoa (MoA; Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga, 2008). No longer a translation of NZC.

 2008. Pāngarau i roto i te Marautanga o Aotearoa—becomes a section in MoA. No longer a direct translation of Mathematics in the NZC.

Phase 1: 1993–1996

As an outcome of the Aotearoa/NZ curriculum developments in the period 1991–1996, a new mathematics curriculum eventually emerged in the medium of Māori (see Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga, 1996). This was the first time in the long history of schooling and curriculum development in Aotearoa/NZ that Māori educationalists were given some authority,

however limited, to develop state curricula (McMurchy-Pilkington et al., 2013). However, for those involved in the development of the curriculum statement for mathematics (pāngarau), their initial excitement was tempered by the Ministry of Education’s contractual requirement that the structure had to “mirror” the hegemonic English-medium version (McMurchy-Pilkington & Trinick, 2002). The Māori-medium version of the curriculum had to have the same achievement objectives and mathematical strands, and had to be based on eight levels of progression, as in the English-medium version (McMurchy-Pilkington & Trinick, 2002).

Despite these restrictions, the writers saw the process as an opportunity to advance linguistic developments, and after some 12 months of writing and consulting with the Māori-medium sector, a pāngarau curriculum was produced (McMurchy-Pilkington & Trinick, 2002). Much to the dismay of the writers contracted by the Ministry of Education to develop a Māori- medium document, their version was discarded and Te Taura Whiri (Māori language Commission) was subsequently commissioned to translate the English-language version of the learning outcomes into Māori (McMurchy- Pilkington & Trinick, 2002). The rationale given by the Ministry of Education at the time was that, while the structure appeared to reflect the English-medium version—for example, similar mathematics strands and levels—the learning outcomes (content) did not mirror the English-medium version (McMurchy-Pilkington & Trinick, 2002).

The Māori-medium writers had not attempted to provide a word-for-word translation; that was neither a contractual requirement nor a prudent way to develop curricula (McMurchy-Pilkington et al., 2013). It raises the question as to why the Māori writers (including myself) continued to support this particular curriculum development and its eventual implementation.

When both English-medium (see Ministry of Education, 1991) and Māori- medium curricula (see Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga, 1996) were developed, the Ministry of Education, as the agent of the government and, in particular, the Minister, had specific conceptions about how the curriculum development process would be undertaken and what the

finished curricula would look like (McMurchy-Pilkington et al., 2013). On the one hand, these were based on their understandings of how to make schools accountable to the government and in relation to the neo-liberal notion of the building of human capital (O’Neill, 2004). On the other hand, Māori language and cultural revivalists, such as the Māori-medium mathematics curriculum developers, saw an opportunity to co-opt the development of a Māori-medium mathematics curriculum to serve their community of interests’ linguistic needs, including the development of a Māori-medium mathematics register (McMurchy-Pilkington et al., 2013).

As McMurchy-Pilkington (2004) noted, for the Māori-medium curriculum developers, the primary goal at the time was not necessarily a pāngarau curriculum in itself, but the opportunities the development of a state- mandated curriculum would provide for Māori-medium education more consistently than it had hitherto. To support the development of the pāngarau curriculum, the state funded a series of consultation meetings with various key stakeholder groups, including kaumātua (elders), to extend and to consider the appropriateness of the pāngarau corpus of terms that had been developed thus far (see Chapter 7 for further discussion). These consultation meetings resulted in a more robust discussion with the community and in some terms being accepted and others rejected (Barton, 1990; McMurchy-Pilkington et al., 2013). For example, initially an even number was variously termed a tau tika (correct number), taukehe kore (not an odd number) and taurite (similar number; Barton, 1990, p. 7). During the development of the pāngarau curriculum, these terms were all rejected and taurua (multiple of two) became the norm (see Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga, 1996). This more inclusive process also probably encouraged later acceptance of the standardised corpus of terms by most of the Māori-medium education community (McMurchy-Pilkington et al., 2013).

With implementation of the pāngarau curriculum now a requirement under legislation, the Ministry of Education was obliged to support teachers and schools through a range of initiatives, including professional development and the publication of resources to support teaching and learning (McMurchy-Pilkington et al., 2013). While this support was inadequate to

address all the challenges of teaching mathematics in te reo Māori, an outcome of these initiatives was that terminology and register development accelerated and became more systematic and planned. This enabled the teaching of pāngarau to higher levels of schooling, thus providing another opportunity to elaborate the language. Trinick (in McMurchy-Pilkington & Trinick, 2002) stated that the writing of the curriculum “legitimised the teaching of mathematics in Māori . . . led to teacher, advisor and resource teacher of Māori professional development . . . that suited their specific needs [and] many Māori were involved in mathematics education debate” (p. 36). The determination by Māori to revitalise their language saw them take advantage of the spaces that had opened up in the development process, making the process a more enabling one, even within the heavy contractual constraints placed on them by the state (McMurchy-Pilkington & Trinick, 2008).

Phase 2: Revision of pāngarau curriculum 2006–2008

In Phase 1 of the Māori-medium curriculum developments, 1993–1996, it was agreed by Cabinet that the publication of curriculum statements would be followed by a curricular stocktake to reflect on a decade of developments and their implications for teaching and learning, and to consider future curricula directions (O’Neil, 2004). While the basic structure of the 1996 pāngarau curriculum was to be maintained, the earlier restrictive requirements, for example, that it had to be a translation of the English version, were removed in the 2006–2008 revision (McMurchy-Pilkington et al., 2013). There had been a number of political and educational changes over the previous 13 years that facilitated this change. While the basic tenet of neo-liberal ideology lived on and underpinned the revision of the curricula in 2006–2008, the capacity to develop Māori-medium curriculum had expanded significantly over the intervening decade and the “Ministry of Education appeared more accommodating of difference” (McMurchy-Pilkington et al., 2013, p. 357).