Swings + Roundabouts Autumn 2021

INTRODUCTION The Education Act 1989 emphasises a key imperative: that the education system in this country will ensure that every child, from early childhood education (ECE) to higher education, can attain educational achievement to the best of their potential. Yet, while some Pasifika learners are achieving well, the system continues to fail many Pasifika learners (Ministry of Education, 2019a). As educational leadership has the potential to positively influence educational outcomes, it offers hope as an important lever of change for Pasifika learners. Leadership is a concept that we all know of, see, and understand from our own positions and frames. However, our positions and frames aren’t always clear to us or others. An ongoing tension in ECE is that many conversations about leadership tend to be dominated by leadership thought and practice based only on Western ideology and norms. For example, Western forms of leadership may be viewed in terms of linear, sequential, logical and cause and effect relationships, which contrast with the more non-linear, non-sequential, circular, and spiritual ways of relating to others common in non-Western forms of leadership. While the existing leadership literature suggests a strong research base for Westernised conceptions of leadership, this dominance has left non-Western ways of knowing, such as Pasifika perspectives and wisdom, side-lined as additional positive influences on leadership thought and practice in educational settings serving Pasifika children. A new research project led by Maria Cooper of the University of Auckland, and supported by Pasifika Early Learning (AoKids), seeks to legitimise Pasifika ways of knowing to effect change for Pasifika children. The study builds on Cooper’s (2018) doctoral research about the leadership of teaching teams in which everyday collective leadership was conceptualised as an intentional, sustained and goal-driven joint activity aimed at transforming teaching and learning. This form of leadership was seen to draw strength from the collective expertise, knowledge and agency of both teachers and leaders. What remains an enigma in the research literature and in ECE conversations is what leadership (Samoan: ta’ita’i) means to Pasifika communities when Pasifika ways of knowing are valued and critically considered. In the context of Aotearoa New Zealand, the term “Indigenous” refers first and foremost to Māori as tangata whenua, the first peoples of this land. The study acknowledges this fact and extends the use of this term to refer to Pasifika as trans-national Indigenous peoples living in Aotearoa New Zealand (Naepi, 2015) who have an enduring connection to their original homelands in the Pacific. Since their migration to Aotearoa New Zealand in the 1960s and 1970s, Pasifika peoples, including those who are now New Zealand- born, have continued to look to their traditional values and knowledge to shape how they live and support one another in their adopted homeland. This entanglement between Pasifika identity, relationality, and belonging is inherent in Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Taisi Efi’s (1998/2003) words: "I am not an individual; I am an integral part of the cosmos. I share divinity with my ancestors, the land, the seas and the skies. I am not an individual, because I share a "tofi" (an inheritance) with my family, my village “INITIATING” A RETURN TO WISDOM: EXPLORING LEADERSHIP IN ECE THROUGH A PASIFIKA INDIGENOUS LENS MARIA COOPER, WITH VALUNIU FITU AH-YOUNG AND INA FAUTUA Every member of a community knows something special. Every indigenous person has knowledge. That knowledge is important. It is important for you to believe that you have knowledge. It is important to believe that your knowledge is important and unique. It is important to value that you know, to understand what it means to know something. And then it is important to share what you know. - Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2015, as cited in Jolivétte, p. 208) March 2021 { 16 }