Challenges and opportunities in the indigenisation of the Marautanga Hangarau (the Māori-medium technology curriculum): Indigenous knowledge and an emerging philosophy of Hangarau

Abstract

This article examines the challenges and opportunities in the indigenisation of the technology curriculum to support Māori-medium schooling. Since the emergence of indigenous curriculum design in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) in the 1990s in response to the emerging Māori-medium schooling movement, English-medium education and its philosophies, beliefs, and needs have prevailed. These Eurocentric beliefs and ideologies are often opposed to the key goals of Māori-medium education, including the aim of self-determination through the revitalisation of Māori language and mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge). Māori-medium is the collective term used by the New Zealand Ministry of Education to identify learning programmes where 51–100% of instruction is in Māori (Ministry of Education, 2022). These schools are officially required to implement the core national curriculum national framework for Māori-medium contexts including Hangarau (Technology). This article shares initial findings about the development of Hangarau curriculum to date by drawing on primary data from a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with three mātanga Hangarau (Hangarau curriculum developers). The mātanga were involved as curriculum designers, in the authoring of curriculum support materials, and design of professional learning for teachers. Beyond the Aotearoa-NZ context, this study has wider implications for the decolonisation of technology education in general, which involves balancing and negotiating the tensions between indigenous and western, commercial and environmental, and general and local indigenous knowledge. As the sociocultural political landscape changes, and spaces for indigenous knowledges are being claimed, we need to remember what is important to our communities. We want to be working at the micro level, that of whānau and hapū (wider family) daily practices, reclaiming and reframing place-based knowledge as we identify its significance for the Hangarau curriculum.