Rebooting Biculturalism in Education in Aotearoa-New Zealand

Abstract

A response to Christine Jenkin (2017). Early childhood education and biculturalism: Definitions and implications. New Zealand Journal of Teachers' Work, 14(1), 8-20.

On knowing who you are and who you are from

“…In this way the poetry and reflections offered here are something of my attempts to reach across the void, to visibilize or begin a bridge for that gap represented in the indigenous-settler or indigene-coloniser hyphen (Jones & Jenkins, (2008). The hyphen connects, becomes a symbolic bridge (Stewart, 2018) but it also interrupts, intrudes, and inserts itself. For Stewart (2016) this is the intercultural hyphen, Aotearoa-New Zealand; indigenous-settler; Māori-Pākehā.…”

“…I could stay 'right' and not have to change. As Stewart (2018) suggests, biculturalism is unsettling and uncomfortable precisely because it challenges dominant understandings and ways of being.…”

“…) Ata: Journal of Psychotherapy Aotearoa New Zealand transparency phenomenon, in that whiteness does not have to see itself -to be white is not to think about race. Stewart (2018) writes that, unlike the dominant group who can ignore ethnicity, Māori have no choice but to be bicultural.…”

“…For Stewart (2016) this is the intercultural hyphen, Aotearoa-New Zealand; indigenous-settler; Māori-Pākehā. Here the hyphen brings our attention to something that connects two groups, two worldviews, and highlights the potential for engagement, or disengagement, across the bridge, from either side (Stewart, 2018). Dove (1994) has described poetry as "the art of making the interior life of one individual available to others" (p. 25), which is where, for me, poetic inquiry might extend toward the autobiographical.…”

A Critique of New Zealand’s Exclusive Approach to Intercultural Education

“…Scholars suggests that the difference between multiculturalism and interculturalism is not clear-cut (Casinader 2016 ; Mansouri and Aber 2017 ) and that intellectual and philosophical debates about policy usually inaccurately juxtapose interculturalism with multiculturalism and can even use them interchangeably (Mansouri and Zapata-Barrero 2017 ). Other studies relating specifically to education have said, “looking more widely at the problem of definitions in the bicultural education literature, there is little or no effective difference operating between the categories of biculturalism, cross-culturalism, interculturalism … it makes little sense to argue their relative merits or try to find the ‘right’ term to use” (Stewart 2018 , p. 9). Such comments are disturbing, as these terms are conceptually distinct and therefore it is important to understand their differences and the ways the policies and practices founded upon them influence the practices carried out by educators in culturally diverse education settings.…”