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

Māori underachievement in the shortcomings of the student” (p. 3). One of the
difficulties of deficit theorising is that teachers not only blame their students but
they also lower their expectations of those students (Kane, 2005). Indeed, Bishop
(2008) stated that “negative, deficit thinking on the part of teachers was
fundamental to the development of negative relations and interactions between
students and their teachers” (p. 52).
All theorising involves theory building or construction. Such assemblage
is almost always messy and in this particular study it was found that some literature
did not fit neatly into extant categories. Items were not able to be neatly slotted
into an appreciative inquiry mode nor were they able to be readily labelled as
representing deficit model thinking. Instead, literature was encountered which fell
somewhere between these two models but in other instances, literature was
encountered which did not seem to fit any model at all.
Despite these comments about appreciative inquiry and deficit models, it
should be noted that much of the literature was initially accessed concurrently with
the gathering of data during fieldwork undertaken for the first two case studies.
Amongst other things, this enabled the literature to inform the case study research
as well as vice versa. This fits with the conviction of Hansen and Smith (2001)
who state that the process of a literature review should be one that:
2.2.1 Definitions
…is a continuous and dynamic one…. In fact, we would go so far as to
claim that a literature review worth its salt will have been examined and
adjusted at the end of each chapter of your dissertation or thesis and yet
again at the very end of the research endeavour before you hang up your
keyboard…We do not, therefore, subscribe to the approach that an
absolutely, positively perfect literature review needs to be produced as a
predicate to commencing fieldwork – rather – we believe that as soon as
you have generated a reasonably sound „work in progress‟ you should get
onto the job of commencing fieldwork. After all, a „work in progress‟
only becomes perfect when all of the critical iterations (at least one per
each chapter) have concluded. (p. 13)
The theoretical framework for this thesis is appreciative inquiry but
considering definitions of biculturalism and assigning them into either affirmative
or, problem-based categories was difficult, as noted above, as sources may fit in the
middle of this continuum or be outside the model altogether. Nevertheless as will
be shown, in carrying out that exercise an interesting observation was made – those
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