traditional knowledge conference 2008 te tatau pounamu

esponses can be more effective for Māori families. As two indigenous Māori scholars and a nonindigenouscolleague, we brought our own cultural experiences and thinking to the relationship in orderto develop insight into a range of collaboratively set questions. These questions included both genericquestions (How do programmes developed from a traditional Māori perspective differ fromprogrammes developed from a Western perspective?) and specific questions (In Restorative Practiceswhat are we seeking to restore?). We expected that as our learning developed we could bring newpeople into the learning conversation and thus into the relationship.According to L. Smith (2008) such a conceptual framework is appropriate in indigenous researchsettings. It is different from the systematic posing of research questions, data collection and analysis,and generalisation that characterises the dominant discourse in educational research in that it involves asharing of stories, of experiences and of worldviews, using relationships as the basis for newunderstandings. Given that we were seeking clarification in regards to how indigenous knowledge mayinform our questions we wanted to embrace an indigenous methodology. Thus, a conceptual frameworkthat emanated out of relationships (whanaungatanga) and learning seemed to be most useful. Weunderstood that within the dynamics of this environment the roles and responsibilities of nonindigenouspeople seeking to work in those relationships could be clearly defined and understood by theindigenous people (Bishop, 1996). As a result we entered into a learning process that constituted adeliberate and knowing encounter of people and ideas.This learning embraced: (a) indigenous/Māori thinking and analysis; (b) movement to connectrather than generalize; and (c) movement to create and recreate (expand) rather than seeking to reduceknowledge to discrete chunks (L. Smith, 2008). As such, this framework is based on indigenous/Māoriways of understanding and making sense of the world; it is focused on the agreed purpose or kaupapaand it is based on the relationships and learning from within this context.This same traditional conceptual framework was next applied to understanding how relationshipsof trust and respect could be developed and the kaupapa collaboratively set when working withinspecial education settings with Māori whānau. From within this framework the following themes wereprioritised as the essential steps to follow if the interventions were to be seen by Māori as effective:determining relationships as the groups come together;setting the agenda;defining the problems;defining and seeking solutions;defining and allocating resources; anddefining and owning the outcomes.Next we considered what we understood to be current practitioner and whānau thinking, practicesand experiences emerging from current interventions being applied to support Māori students in specialeducation settings. These interventions included two behaviour programmes, one that had beenconceptualised with Māori input from the beginning and one that had been introduced from overseas.We also considered examples of Hui Whakatika (meetings seeking to redress wrongdoing) withnumerous examples of interventions using Restorative Practices. Each of us had been engaged withthese interventions and was coming from a practitioner’s perspective. The interventions initiated andcontextualised within a Māori perspective were compared with interventions set and contextualisedwithin a Western perspective. In this way each of these six themes was considered and compared withwhat we knew of the interventions. Our findings are presented next, then discussed briefly.135