Sewing Pūrākau in the Fabric of Our Place – A Kaiako Te Tiriti Perspective

Sewing Pūrākau in the Fabric of Our Place – A Kaiako Te Tiriti Perspective
Catalina Thompson, Educational Leadership Project

Wednesday 10 July, 7-8:30pm

Localised curriculum or place-based curriculum are phrases we often hear in our pedagogical discourse. In essence, these concepts are concerned with the relationship between people and their identities, the place which they occupy as a learning community and the spaces around it, imbued with story and history. The unique fabric of our learning space is what localises our curriculum. In the New Zealand Annual Review of Education, 2009, Wally Penetitto tells us that place-based education “emerges from the particular attributes of a place and ….connects place with self and community….These curricula include multi-generational and multicultural dimensions.” For me, one of the most powerful resources we posses in enacting meaningfully such curriculum are pūrākau o tangata whenua which, from a Mātauranga Māori perspective “seek to explain who we are, where we are from, why we do things the way we do and how we organise ourselves with an eye to both past and future.” (Puwhare R., 2016). Moreover, we cannot speak of truly honouring Te Tiriti o Waitangi in our early childhood spaces without knowing the stories of the land we stand on. But how can we practically achieve this ‘knowing’ for our tamariki me ōna whānau? This lecture seeks to give one answer to a complex yet intriguing question from a kaiako Te Tiriti perspective.