Research Impact - Case Studies

“We want our children to go out from school confident of who they are, where they come from and who they represent.” “It’s important the stories people tell about themselves,” Hāromi Williams says. At her office at Tāneatua near the Urewera, where she is Executive Manager of the Tūhoe Education Authority (TEA), she explains it’s a lesson she first learned forcibly when teaching adult migrant students in Sydney’s western suburbs learning English as a second language.

“Teachers enter the profession because they want to make a difference. This approach helps them do that.” MORE THAN 30 years ago when Russell Bishop first started teaching at Mana College in Porirua, he was struck by a single question: Why did so many Māori students start out well but still fail as they went through school?

How do birds navigate vast oceans, correcting themselves when blown off-course? The inner compass possessed by some animals is an enigma that has absorbed Professor Michael Walker, Joint Director Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, for many years.

For more then a generation scientists have known that life proliferates more rapidly near the equator. The problem was that up until recently, no one knew why this was so. And in 2006 when Dr Shane Wright solved the riddle in a Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga research project, the scientific world applauded.

Like all research centres, Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga pursues research excellence through academic communities. But our brief also extends outwards – aiming to also benefit many other communities as widely as possible. In doing this, the Knowledge Exchange programme is a unique feature of the Centre, and an essential part of achieving social transformation.

Project purpose: This research project aims to promote and deepen New Zealand’s understanding of Māori and their culture by ensuring that the stories and voices of Māori affected by the Canterbury earthquakes are heard, respected, valued and incorporated into relevant learning and planning environments.

Project purpose: Hapai Te Hauora Tapui Ltd was set up in 1996 with a specific focus on Māori Public Health. The shareholder organisations are: Te Runanga o Ngāti Whatua, Raukura Hauora O Tainui and Waipareira Trust.

Project purpose: Parents of young children, as the intimate stewards of a new generation, carry the weight of societal expectation upon their often youthful shoulders.

Project purpose: Mate Māori - Kōrero Kaumātua is a project within Te Puawaitanga o Ngā Tapuwai Kia Ora Tonu - Life and Living in Advanced Age: a Cohort Study in New Zealand (The LILAC Study NZ). The purpose of Mate Māori - Kōrero Kaumātua is to document the knowledge of Mate Māori held by the oldest old Māori (aged 80-90 years).

PhDs are the backbone of any research community. Yet for the first hundred years or so of universities in New Zealand the number of Māori doctorates could have been counted on not too many hands. This might make the target Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga set in 2002 of contributing to 500 new Māori PhDs in five years only look the more unrealistic. But it is a welcome measure of change, and of a lot of hard work, that Emeritus Professor Leslie R Tumoana Williams, the Centre’s Capability Building Manager, says that target is well on the way to being achieved.