A study of the factors which contribute to success for Māori women in tertiary education : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy, Massey University

Abstract

This thesis is a study of the factors which contribute to success for Māori women in tertiary education. It focuses on the success of six Māori women who are in positions of responsibility and decision making in various education institutions and agencies. They were students enrolled at Queen Victoria School for Māori Girls in 1961 and have all achieved success in tertiary education over the past thirty years. The focus on success factors is in part a response to the frustration felt by Māori at the concentration on failure, underachievement and barriers to success evident in much of the research which has been sponsored and supported over the past three decades. It is argued in this thesis that it is as important to identify success factors as it is to identify barriers to achievement. This study will complement the many positive initiatives which Māori, particularly women, have taken in the last twenty years of this century to regain control of the education of our children through kōhanga reo and kura kaupapa Māori, by providing relevant research material for consideration. The women's stories are presented as oral narratives in the women's own words. They are a contribution to the body of literature recording the lives of Māori women in Aotearoa, a body of literature which, though currently disappointingly small, is significant. A primary feature of the study is that Māori women are central and essential as kaitautoko, kaiākihaere, research participants, kaiwhakapakari and kaiāwhina. Māori women were supervisors and transcribers. As the researcher, I am a Māori woman. The research is based upon Treaty of Waitangi principles and within tikanga Māori as outlined in the methodology chapter of the thesis The worlds from which the women in this study came are worlds of the past, worlds which Māori currently seek to restore and duplicate within such structures as kōhanga reo, kura kaupapa and wānanga. Modern communication, an international economy and globalisation work against the duplication of the world from which these women came, but attention to the factors which enabled them to live and succeed in two worlds are the some of the factors which must be duplicated in this and the next generation to promote further success by Māori women in education.