The Ministry of Education quotes Statistics New Zealand’s (Ministry of Education, 2005, 2006a) definition of ‘ethnicity’ as:
the ethnic group or groups that people identify with or feel they belong to. Ethnicity is a measure of cultural affiliation, as opposed to race, ancestry, nationality or citizenship. Thus, ethnicity is self-perceived and people can affiliate with more than one ethnic group. (2006a, p. 18)
The enrolment forms for students enrolling in New Zealand schools allow identification of up to three ethnic groups as selected by students or their parents/guardians. However, the Ministry of Education requires that New Zealand students be reported in only one ethnic group on the school roll characteristics information collected from schools. Each student’s reported ethnicity is determined using the Roll Return Guidelines (Ministry of Education, 2005, 2006a). Where more than one ethnic group has been identified, the ethnicity recorded for the Ministry of Education is determined using the system of priority recording used by Statistics New Zealand in the 2001 census (Ministry of Education, 2005, 2006a). The results of this process include that:
• the ethnicity of all students is recorded as one of five ethnic groups: Māori; Pasifika;20 Asian; Other; and New Zealand European;
• all students who have identified Māori alongside an/other ethnicity/ies are recorded as Māori (despite the relative depth of personal identification with their heritage ethnicities); and similarly
20
‘Pacific Peoples’ was the term used in 2007 (Ministry of Education, 2006a). In 2006, the corresponding term was Pasifika (Ministry of Education, 2005).
• all students who have identified as Pasifika students alongside an/other ethnicity/ies are recorded as Pasifika (unless Māori is one of their other noted ethnicities).
Tables 3.4 and 3.5 respectively show the Ministry of Education ethnicity data of the study schools and classes.
The study data highlight the limitations of the accuracy of the Ministry of Education data as the ethnicity data provided by the study schools and the data provided by study students varied greatly (Figures 4.1 and 4.2). Study students were asked (Questionnaire One) to indicate all ethnicities that applied to them: almost half (42%) identified with more than one ethnicity, with 37% and 5% indicating two and three ethnicities respectively. Overall five combinations of ethnicities were selected: Māori and European (22% students), Pasifika and European (9%), Māori and Pasifika (5%), Māori, Pasifika and European (4 %), and Pasifika, European, and Other (1%).
The comparison is shown using the two types of ethnicity results (Ministry of Education data and self-reported data) for the students who indicated their ethnicity in Questionnaire One, 70% of the total student sample. It would be reasonable to assume that this is a representative group from the complete student sample and many New Zealand students in multicultural schools also claim more than one ethnicity.
other Pasifika Maori NZ European Ethinicity as recorded on school data
Figure 4.1: Students’ ethnicity as recorded in Ministry of Education data
NZ European and Pasifika and Other Other
NZ European and Maori and Pasifika Maori and Pasifika NZ European and Pasifika NZ European and Maori Pasifika Maori NZ European Main ethnic groups
Figure 4.2: Students’ self-reported ethnicity
Note: Students who completed Questionnaire One
Students who identified themselves as Māori (in Questionnaire One) were not asked to identify their heritage iwi and none did so. Students who indicated Pasifika heritage were asked to state their heritage country and all did so as did some New Zealand European students, illustrating further limitations to the accuracy of how well the Ministry of Education ethnicity data represent students’ heritage claims. The differences between school ethnicity data and data provided by students indicate that although a convenient way to explore differences between New Zealand students’ ethnic groups nationally, research and publications using the Ministry of Education’s ethnicity data (as recorded and provided by schools) should be interpreted with some caution.
Because of the comparatively small study sample size, the diverse combinations of students’ self-reported ethnicities, and the incomplete set of student-reported ethnicity data,21 many study results (including most student quotes) included in the results chapters do not highlight students’ ethnicities. Where apparent differences emerged between the data from students of different ethnic groups, students’ ethnicity is reported in one of two ways depending on the most suitable type of data for analysis or comparison: students’ self-reported ethnicities; or school-recorded ethnicity data:
21
Only 96 of the 136 student participants completed Questionniare One in which students reported their ethnicity. Furthermore, students’ ethnicities were not able to be determined for many of the student interviews because in an attempt to ensure students felt confident their comments would be treated confidentially, student names were not always recorded. A further complicating factor was that many student interviews were conducted with students in pairs.
• Māori* (M*), Pasifika* (P*), New Zealand European* (E*), include all students who identified each as part of their heritage22 (Chapters Seven and Eight).23 The numbers of students in each group were: 35 Māori*; 34 Pasifika*; and 53 New Zealand European*; and
• Māori (M), Pasifika (P), New Zealand European (E) indicate use of the school ethnicity data (Chapters Seven and Eight). The numbers in each group were: 46 Māori; 52 Pasifika; and 52 New Zealand European.
Student totals include all students (Māori, Pasifika, New Zealand European and all other ethnicities).
The school’s ethnicity data were used for most of the analysis because:
• school ethnicity data were available for a larger proportion of students (Questionnaire Three provided the main data source for Chapter Eight but Questionnaire One was completed by only 70% of those completing Questionnaire Three);
• these data allow closer comparisons with related data in Ministry of Education and other New Zealand publications; and
• the students’ self-reported ethnicity data were comparatively complex.
4.5
Discussion
Clearly, school environments affect the general sense of care in the school; however, the caring nature of the school environment can be over-ridden within individual classrooms in which the levels of teacher care for students and their learning are the predominant influences on classroom atmosphere. All study teachers’ practice included caring and less caring elements. Some teachers included more caring elements than others. The study data indicated that the teachers who ensured students were kept on task with work set at appropriate levels, varied learning activities, attended to details, and placed importance on knowing their students as individuals appeared best placed to establish and maintain caring teacher-student relationships (Chapters Five-Nine). SS’s and WK’s classrooms were those in which most students were consistently on task and in which the greatest levels of teacher care were apparent, followed by WW’s and UM’s classrooms, and lastly those of UU and ST24.
22
Therefore many students are counted in more than one group. 23
This method was discussed with and endorsed by the cultural advisors. 24
It should be noted that all study teachers showed care for their students. None were uncaring.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Mathematics Lessons
This chapter presents the researcher’s perceptions of teacher care as observed in the study classrooms in light of the literature (Chapter Two) and consultation with cultural advisors. The findings from analysis of the data gathered from the lesson observations and lesson audio-recordings are described using two typologies to organise the discussion. The first is drawn from Durie’s (1998) whare tapa wha model for health and well-being. The second, drawn from elements of Bishop et al.’s (2003) “effective teaching profile” (pp. 97-118) and themes from the study results, is embedded within Durie’s (1998) model (Section 3.5.1, Figure 5.1, Table 5.1).
In order to provide a clear and detailed discussion of teacher care in mathematics lessons, this chapter begins by using the first typology to describe a holistic view of teacher care in the mathematics classroom and to compare the practices used in comparatively care-rich and care-poor classroom lessons (Section 5.1). The discussion then narrows its focus to examine the elements of teacher care most closely related to mathematics teaching and learning using the second typology to highlight specific caring mathematics teaching practices (Section 5.2). Key ideas from both of these sections are then drawn together in a description and analysis of the lesson that best exemplified the three aspects of care explored in this study (Section 5.3). Section 5.4 introduces a brief discussion of the results from the lesson observations relating to teacher care for students as culturally located individuals, a theme which will be further explored in Chapters Six and Eight. Finally key themes from the chapter are discussed in Section 5.5.
A three-stage consultation process was used to ensure that culturally related classroom observation data were appropriately interpreted and incorporated. Cultural advice was sought to inform researcher decision-making with respect to a possible framework for analysing observational data (previously discussed in Chapter Three), the subsequent data analysis, and the final chapter content.
Analysis of data from student questionnaires, student interviews, and lesson observations indicated that of the six teachers observed, teachers SS and WK exhibited the greatest teacher care overall (Section 4.5). In order to understand teacher care more clearly, the analysis presented in this chapter privileges the practices of the most
caring teachers and examines the main differences between these and the least caring teacher practices.