Whakawhanaungatanga in the Māori tertiary Sector

Last Thursday, we briefed media on the inaugural Tuia Te Ako conference in Wellington. I have two overriding impressions from that event. Firstly how much the face of tertiary education has changed in the last 20 years for Māori and secondly how competitive the funding of tertiary education in New Zealand has become.

With capped funding, the tertiary sector has become highly competitive and often institutions within the same part of the sector as well as those from across the sector are pitted against each other. 

Tauira, pouako and kaimahi Māori are spread across a vast array of tertiary providers with different underlying principles and processes.

The burning question for me is, against this backdrop, how do Māori working for different ‘pay masters’ work together to produce better outcomes for tauira Māori? How do we put aside our university-tanga, our wānanga-tanga or ITO-tanga in the wider interest of educating Māori at tertiary level? Some may ask do we actually need to?

Through my role at Ako I get to see some excellent examples of whakawhaunangatanga. One project, Te Hononga Mātauranga brought together Māori staff from Massey University, Victoria University and Te Wānanga o Raukawa to develop a suite of online audio visual resources for doctoral students. Projects like this have the potential to benefit tauira Māori across the sector regardless of which institution they enrol with.

Part of building community amongst the Māori tertiary whānau is having a common understanding of what we are trying to work towards. We are fortunate to have Professor Sir Mason Durie who has had a profound influence on Māori education strategies to deliver a keynote address on this theme.

E hika mā, let us know what your thoughts are on building community within the Māori tertiary whānau and please remember that registrations for the conference close in a few weeks' time (Wednesday 4 August 2010).

If you want to view an interview about the media launch of Tuia Te Ako go to http://tvnz.co.nz/te-karere/2010-wednesday-video-1027496 and click on Chapter 2.

- Ngahiwi