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

Included in the section named „collaborative relationships‟, discussion of
professional practice did not appear to include Māori or biculturalism.
Respondents, however, noted that they needed to be culturally aware and
appropriate in their professional practice. At the same time, though, respondents
gave no indications about Tiriti-based curriculum implementation. In other words
Tiriti-based curriculum only became conspicuous because of its absence.
What I am suggesting, therefore, is that the focus on philosophy that
underpins Te Whāriki, and the care with which the document is non-prescriptive,
means that there is a lack of specific content. The purpose of Te Whāriki appears
to be to enable services and teachers to weave their own Whāriki.
However, I argue that it is difficult for Te Whāriki as a curriculum to fit
within even such a loose definition as the following quote suggests: “Our
commitment is that all curricula should give centres, teachers and children the
largest possible freedom, but still retain the direction of overall common goals”
(Pramling, Sheridan, & Williams, 2004).
This is so because with regards to Tiriti-based aspects, teachers have yet to
understand the knowledge of te reo Māori me ōna tikanga and that they do not have
this as a common goal. Pramling Sheridan, and Williams (2004, p. 26) further state
that “countries tend to formulate overall curriculum goals that provide a direction
for children‟s learning, based on agreed values and norms (p. 26). This is clearly
missing from Tiriti-based pedagogy and teachers understandably, therefore,
struggle to grasp the Māori knowledge, values and norms which are embedded in
Te Whāriki. What they are working with instead is more of a philosophy than a
curriculum.
Like Ritchie, I have not found any “models to offer insights into what an
„ideal‟ bicultural development might look like” (Ritchie, 2002b, p. 271) that would
enable substantive guidance for Tiriti-based practice, although her later research
with Rau (Ritchie & Rau, 2006b, 2008) does offer some ideas of Tiriti-based
practice. Nevertheless, I share Duhn‟s (2006, p. 196) concern – namely that “rather
than enabling teachers directly to work from, for example, social justice
perspectives, Te Whāriki appears to assume that all teachers will address issues of
diversity through their individual interpretation of the curriculum”. This is
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