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

pitfalls created by Māori participation in institutional and research settings”
(Johnston, 2001, p. 15). However, as this thesis will show, rather than viewing the
Māori-friendly position as weak, possibly that stance should be viewed as a
positive step on the journey towards the implementation of Tiriti-based pedagogy.
Johnston‟s second approach is Māori-centred. Here her focus is on
inequality and how educators can best address “unequal power-relationship
between Māori and Pākehā by incorporating appropriate decision-making forums
for Māori” (Johnston, 2001, p. 13). This has produced specifically Māori
initiatives such as Kōhanga Reo. As centre staff develop relationships with
whānau Māori and local iwi, partnership and shared decision-making become
possible. The principles and strands in Te Whāriki encourage early childhood
teachers to develop partnerships with whānau Māori, as Tiriti-based programmes
are developed.
There was a steady move from the 1980s towards Te Tiriti-based
pedagogy culminating in 1996 with Te Whāriki. Surprisingly, (given that it lays
claim to being the first bicultural curriculum), that document does not include a
definition of bicultural. Subsequently, in 1998, the Ministry of Education defined a
bicultural framework as:
…a concept that implies the interactions, relationships, and sharing of
understandings, practices, and beliefs between two cultures; in New
Zealand, the term generally refers to Māori and non-Māori. (Ministry of
Education, 1998, p. 86)
There was a temptation to contest all these definitions and to ultimately
construct my own working theories for biculturalism. However, as this last
definition comes from the documentation that early childhood teachers use to guide
their bicultural practice and as this is what I am investigating, I have decided that
this definition takes precedence in my research with Tiriti-based curriculum.
However, to return to the point I made at the beginning of this discussion on
definitions, those who were wary of the notion of biculturalism were, apart from
Spoonley, of Māori descent and those who were positive were non-Māori.
However, although biculturalism and bilingualism are intertwined, it is
important to define bilingualism separately, as much of the literature and many
studies investigated for this project were more about bilingualism than
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