supporting tiriti-based curriculum delivery in mainstream early ...

language skills and growing cultural knowledge. From the point of view of this
thesis, such instances are especially important because they inform us about
positive practices that we may choose to adopt in promoting Tiriti-based
curriculum.
Given that in Aotearoa New Zealand, mainstream teachers seek to
implement indigenous culture for all, the emphasis is not merely confined to trying
to preserve and strengthen the cultural capital that defines a minority culture for an
identifiable group, although that is important. Rather, the espoused emphasis, if
not yet the practice, is indisputably posited in ensuring that te reo Māori me ōna
tikanga are embraced by all teachers and taught to all children regardless of their
ethnicity (Ministry of Education, 2007b).
2.2 Process and Frameworks
A comment can usefully be made about the processes used in constructing
this literature review. The work was intentionally continuously revisited and
adjusted as the thesis unfolded. This was done partially because new fields of
theory and evidence needed to be critically considered and partially because there
was a need to anchor literature to data from the case studies as these came to light.
This means that the production of the literature review was not linear and neither
was it a work completed as a single episode. It was not “grounded” per se; it
evolved in a responsive manner that was consistent with asking questions about
what was going on in Tiriti-based pedagogy. These questions were considered in
light of the appreciative inquiry theoretical framework which is a crucial focus of
this thesis. The organisation of the literature in each section thus begins by
considering items which support a strength-based approach.
But as has already been highlighted, it is not an easy matter to only
scrutinise literature through the lens of appreciative inquiry in isolation. To be
useful, it is obvious that literature can also be critiqued against other frameworks
because such a comparative exercise can facilitate comparisons and contrasts. In
this thesis, the framework adopted to facilitate such critique stemmed from the
literature surrounding deficit thinking.
The thinking behind deficit theories centres on blaming the victim
(Bishop, 2001) or as Earle (2008) elaborates, it is the “deficit model, which locates
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