At the national summit Science Education: Fit for Purpose three wahine speak about their paths and experiences as Māori women in science and education. Simone Marsters (Ngāpuhi) from the Science Learning Hub Pokapū Akoranga Pūtaiao and Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research’s Milly Grant-Mackie (Te Rarawa, Ngāti Kahu ki Whaingaroa, Ngāpuhi) and Yvonne Taura (Ngāiterangi, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāti Hauā, Ngāti Uenuku, Ngāti Tūwharetoa).
“Mā te mōhio ka mārama, mā te mārama ka ora ai te iwi.”
Simone Marsters, Science Learning Hub Pokapū Akoranga Pūtaiao
“I could see how my science training supported the aspirations for our hapū, but more importantly how mātauranga gave this work so much more value and understanding to our whānau”
Yvonne Taura, Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research
-We always talked about students saying, “I have to leave my culture at the door.” And I’m thinking, “why?” Like no you don’t! Let’s not do that. Let’s bring it in the door. You know, like let’s kick down the door!”
Millie Grant-Mackie, Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research
Transcript
Simone Marsters
We’re here today just to lend our voices and our experiences to today’s kaupapa, beginning with this whakataukī:
Mā te pātai, ka kōrero, mā te kōrero ka mōhio, mā te mōhio ka mārama, mā te mārama ka ora ai te iwi.
And of course, the literal translation is: From an inquiry comes discussion, from discussion comes knowing, from knowing comes understanding, and from understanding comes wellness and prosperity for all.
And of course, much like, our revised curriculum, the framework, it’s not linear. It doesn’t need to be. Sometimes the doing comes before the knowing, the knowing comes after the understanding. That’s the way it should be. But we can dissect this a little bit more, this whakataukī:
Mā te pātai ka kōrero. We’ve heard it already that humans are innately curious. We’re driven by an insatiable desire to explore, to understand and to innovate.
Curiosity motivates individuals to seek out new information, and so they call it this ‘information seeking behaviour’. When tamariki are curious about something or about a topic, they actively engage in exploring and seeking and asking questions and seeking answers. Now this behaviour alone, it promotes deeper understanding and retention of that knowledge: Mā te kōrero ka mōhio.
Curiosity also arises when a perceived gap between what one knows and what one wants to know [arises]. This gap drives individuals to seek answers, leading to more effective learning. And in science, as we’ve heard, curiosity encourages students to explore concepts beyond the surface level, fostering critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
Mā te mōhio ka mārama, mā te mārama ka orai ai te iwi. And this is where the action happens. A positive effect from this learning, from this understanding from this mōhiotanga, tēnei māramatanga te mātauranga, is when our tamariki really begin to act.
It’s a positive effect. When students are genuinely interested, they are more likely to stay engaged. They participate actively whilst retaining the information, knowledge, understanding that’s been shared with them. This positive emotional connection enhances motivation and persistence in scientific learning. And we’ve heard that today over and over again.
And as I said, it’s similar to the framework of the refreshed curriculum, with our Understand, Know, Do. But what is driving this learning framework, comes back to that curiosity. So, ngā mihi Sarah, when I saw your saw your kōrero before, I said, ah, see, see us kaiako, we’re on the same, we’re on the same ara, we definitely are. Because curiosity is powerful. It’s a multifaceted trait that has shaped our past, influences our present, and will continue to drive our future if we let it, if we don’t hinder it.
As I said, tamariki are more likely to engage in learning when they feel a connection, a hononga to the mahi in front of them.
This short clip, it’s part of a suite of resources created in collaboration with Manaaki Whenua and the Science Learning Hub. We were fortunate to be working alongside Manaaki Whenua to whakamanahia ērā tamariki Māori kei ngā kura Māori. We are encouraging our tamariki – actually I’m just going to play it. He reo Māori, he reo Māori. What we’re asking our tamariki to do is see themselves as mātanga pūtaiao, as kaihōpara pērā ki ngā tupuna.
Video voiceover
Nā, e mōhio ana koe ka taea e tātou katoa te tu hei mātanga pūtaiao, hei kaihōpara hoki pērā ki ōu tātou tūpuna? Ka taea hoki e koe te ako me pēhea te tiaki i tō tātou taiao. E hiahia ana koe te mōhio? Mā te tirotiro me te rohirohi i ngā raraunga o tō māra ka timata tō haerenga.
Simone Marsters
The reason I wanted to show you that was because it was a one resource that how we could get into a classroom. We can show it to our tamariki, and then it’s followed by a suite of resources that had been created in collaboration.
Tamariki are more likely to engage in the learning, when they feel a connection, when they see themselves in the learning. And we’ve heard that, we’ve heard that all day today.
A little bit about myself. Education played a huge part in my upbringing. Nothing was ever good enough for my Pāpā. Always had to be better. You had to be better, you know. It didn’t matter that you came home with straight As, you needed to be better. It took me a while to realise what better meant – to act better, to be better. But better than what, Dad? Better than who? And he never actually gave us the answer.
But of course, being a child of the 70s, being raised and, and schooled in the 80s, being Māori wasn’t something that was widely celebrated. Our reo was only just beginning. Um, my whānau moved from Matauri Bay, Mangamuka, to Kirikiriroa, and it was almost like we were the urban Māori shift. And so when my siblings and I were at school, you know, we tried our best to do what our Pāpā and our Koro and our Nannies wanted us to do, but nothing was ever good enough. We never seemed to – sort of – appease them with where we were going with our education.
And then it took me a while to realise that what they were doing, well, what they were trying to do is rather protect me from the outside world who didn’t want to see my Māoritanga. They didn’t want to see this this kotiro Māori standing in a Pākehā world who could excel. They just wanted me just to be better.
I was fortunate as well. I kuraina ahau ki Kirikiriroa this small high school in in Hamilton, Melville High School, which just happened to have one of the first in school marae on its site. And there I was blessed to sit under some wonderful kaiako, who happened to be Ngāpuhi. And they shared with me a few little things that I’d never heard before in my life. How after the first settlement of European, Māori literacy levels were sky high. They were way above that of the European that were coming. Our trade sectors were booming. The initiatives that our tīpuna had, were embedded then. What happened?
What happened was decades of lost mātauranga that would help inspire tamariki Māori like myself. Which is why I’m so glad to be standing here today and seeing how far the progress that has been made. And I don’t want to say ahakoa he iti, he pounamui, but it has been.
I mean, I don’t want to give away too much of how old I actually am, but it was a while ago and so now I’m seeing my tamariki, my mokopuna, who are openly being embraced for their Māoritanga, who can kōrero Māori who know more Māori. You know, actually, to be honest, some of my moko was like, ‘oh Kui, your reo!’ I’m like, I hear you e hika mā, but I love that. I love to be challenged.
Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, he toa takitini kē. My success and our tamariki’s success is not theirs alone. It belongs to those that have gone before them, way before them, and it will go to those who come after them.
So it’s our job, it’s our responsibility to ensure that the learning, the understanding that they have makes a difference – is life worthy. I love – when I heard that today I said yes, love that. Our tamariki have strengths that many kaiako aren’t aware of before they even step foot in the classroom. And they are there to encourage, to guide and to challenge us, all of us, to flourish in whichever space and place that they choose to put themselves in.
Hei te mutunga, anei te mihi kau ana ki a tātou katoa mō tō koutou taenga ki tēnei rā, ki tēnei Kaupapa. Kia ora rā.
Millie Grant-Mackie
OK, so I’m going to actually start off with just talking about my science journey. Then I’ll go back to my whakataukī that kind of guides the way that I do my mahi.
I’ve always been interested in science. My grandfather was a geologist. Like, my family are just nerds and scientists and we’d watch a lot of, you know, David Attenborough and a lot of documentaries just growing up. So I was kind of always immersed in the science world. And for me, it was identified that I was immersed in that world and that I was a part of science.
And I think for a lot of kids, tamariki, it’s not necessarily identified, like, this is science. Observing things, being out in the Taiao, anything like that is science.
And I had the privilege of working with these amazing wahine and going into a kura and teaching them about science. And again, identifying like this is science. Like, just looking at rubbish from a beach and seeing where it comes from and that, you know, process of enquiry and curiosity, that’s science. And so I was able to tell them like ‘You are scientists now!’ And these Māori kids are like, ‘Oh yeah!’ And also, you know, the way that I look and the way that I am as a Māori wahine in science, you don’t see a lot of us.
And so for me at uni, I studied geography and environmental science. And then I did Māori studies to kind of have a well-rounded, you know, multidisciplinary approach in the way that I do my mahi.
And so for me, like, science was really, really important. And when I went into the school, these kids are like, you can’t be a scientist, you don’t have a white lab coat. And I’m like, well surprise, I am a scientist and you don’t have to look like this. And so it was opening their minds to what science actually is and what it looks like. It doesn’t look like a Pākehā in a lab coat with, you know, glasses doing their thing. It can look like that, but it can also look like multiple other things.
And so for me, it’s important for these tamariki to be exposed to, you know, scientists and people with a bit of personality, you know, like, these kids – it’s boring. I get bored. I was a hautūtū too, you know, Maui pōtiki I was cheeky in school and so, you know. But I was still smart and you know, in school, you got to be honest, I was, you know, I was a smart kid because I was around science and that kind of stuff.
So for me, now going into schools when I can, and I will do it more. But you know, we’ll see when the projects come through, you know, to go and actually show them and be a good role model for these kids. So for me that’s really important.
The mahi that I do specifically is coastal geomorphology. So through my uni journey, I actually went in and looked at how sea level rise is going to impact my marae. And so again, like relating to these kids being like, you can do science and you can also do it to help your whānau and to help your marae and help your whenua and all that kind of stuff.
So that’s kind of the journey that I’ve been in, in science. And along the way I’ve taken my family, I’ve taken my friends. This photo right here is actually of my friends coming up to my marae to actually do the research and this was just for an Honours project, so it wasn’t even like a Master’s. But it’s about, you know, I was just like a chill thing and like we don’t have to be doing these high level science things for it to have impact on our whenua, for our whānau, for our tamariki, our mokopuna.
So for me, it’s just really important. And also, in my science journey, I got to go to Hawaii a couple of months ago, you know, so I was like showing these kids like there’s so much you can do in science. Like it’s so fun.
But yeah, that’s kind of my mahi. And a whakataukī that I kind of follow is Ngarunui, ngaruroa, ngarupaewhenua, ko ngā ngaru e toru o Nukutawhiti me Ngāpuhi. So the great wave, the long wave and the wave that lands up on the shore. And that’s kind of the journey that I take throughout my research.
So the great wave is deciding to take on a big task, something that you’re going to do, for example, was me deciding I’m going to do research on my whenua because that’s quite a scary thing to do as a Māori. There’s like a billion Māori in science that you had access to at uni. Like it was like not many scientists, not many Māori in my classes and a lot of times my friends, I built my own community within university of Māori scientists within that space.
You know, we always talked about students saying “I have to leave my culture at the door. I have to leave who I am at the door”, like let’s kick down the door.
And then the long wave. So the long wave is the long slog. You know, you’re you need you’re doing your mahi, you’re doing the research. It’s really, really hard. Sometimes it really sucks, but that’s a part of it, you know?
And then the wave that lands upon the shore, you’ve done the task, you know, you’ve done the mahi. And now what you’ve produced is some amazing mahi, amazing work. Nah, jokes.
So yeah, that’s kind of how I divide my research. And I’m always about trying to show tamariki that we can do it. We can make it fun, we can make it interesting. And yeah, that’s me.
Yvonne Taura
So my journey was very different to Milly’s. I grew up in Australia and at school I wasn’t deemed very, very smart. So I was never encouraged by my teachers to do science at school. So for me, the science classroom was really daunting. It was really intimidating and I didn’t really step foot in the lab.
But I also, I always loved the environment. And I knew as a young kid that we were putting pressures on our environment. There were many impacts going on around us. So I always knew I wanted to be an environmentalist. So when I was told that I had to learn science to be an environmentalist, I guess I was really driven by my want to be, you know, protecting the environment by studying Biological Sciences.
At the same time, while still living in Australia, I was having a cultural identity crisis, never being brought up around Māori in Australia. I was brought up around every other kind of culture you can think of. So I was desperately kind of missing that side of myself. And so I decided to come home to Aotearoa and reconnect to my Māoritanga. So this one decision really changed the trajectory of my life’s journey, both personally and professionally.
So this whakataukī, He parohe na te wahine e ora ai te taiao. So this whakataukī really explains the responsibility to empower wahine to lead roles in environmental matters. This whakataukī has guided me both as a wahine Māori and a kairangahau Māori since returning home all those years ago.
So when I returned, this was my backyard, my playground, Taupō-nui-a-Tia in the rohe of Ngāti Tuwharetoa, where my whāngai parents lived. I spent four years in Tūrangi, studying environmental science at Te Whare Wānanga and also working on some hapū led environmental projects with my hapū.
So these are my kaumātua here in the middle with my uncle. I spent a lot of time with these guys, you know, in the boat up and down our awa, around our moana, charging through the repo and also walking up our maunga. So we were really driven by investigating the impacts of our taiao through a hapū lens. And I was guided by my uncle and my kaumātua who held our mātauranga.
So this to me – science made a lot of sense. I could see how my science training when I was going to wānanga at the time supported the aspirations for our hapū, but more importantly how mātauranga gave this work so much more value and understanding to our whānau. So to me, this was my lab. There were no white lab coats in sight. So having kaumātua support, mentorship to guide me at this time was really crucial. These kaumātua are no longer alive, they passed away in the last 10 years. So this was a really precious time to spend that time with them.
I do a lot of different kaupapa in my research, but I always come back to the repo. And this is Hine te Repo, the maiden of the wetlands. We developed some wetland handbooks, Te Reo te Repo, which really focus on hapu-led wetland restoration projects. And so repo has featured a lot in my rangahau. And I always come back to this mahi, working with whānau, that has supported me as a wahine Māori and kairangahau Māori.
But it was really when my son started going to school, Te Ariki, he goes to kura kaupapa, which isn’t the type of upbringing that I had. But I found out as a parent that schools didn’t have a science programme or resources or even funding for science education. So that’s when I started pivoting towards supporting, collaborating with science educators to bring our rangahau into the kura classroom – to ensure that my son was taught and encouraged to learn science at kura.
So I became a member of the House of Science Central Waikato branch after meeting Chris Duggan at a Women in Science conference and totally being blown away by her bilingual science education programme. I convinced Waikato Tainui to sponsor up to 16 of our Kawana te kura, including all of our Kura Kaupapa within Hamilton, so that they we could bring House of Science into the classrooms.
I’ve also been collaborating with the Science Learning Hub to transform our repo rangahau into educational resources and more recently the New Zealand Garden Bird Survey.
So you’ve already heard my son in the animation that we just played. He features in a lot of the mahi that I do. Wearing a lab coat in a lab is definitely not an intimidating place for him. He’s the junior ambassador for the House of Science Central Waikato, and he also features on the National Science website as well.
So I’m really grateful for the teams of science educators – wahine – that I work with who supports tamariki Māori in science, and that make space for our kura kaupapa Māori classrooms, giving me as a scientist and a researcher the opportunity to work with them to demonstrate mātauranga into their resources.
So my son does not have the same barriers that I had. He’s got quite a strong sense of who he is as a Māori kid and as someone who can learn whatever he wants. He’s confident, and that’s all because I didn’t want him to grow up the same way that I did.
We’re just going to finish off our kōrero today. So this [video] is another one of Te Ariki, and he’s setting us all a wero for us to learn from our tupuna, from our past – kā mua, kā muri – to learn more from our tūpuna and become kaitiaki of our environment.
So this really empowers our tamariki and rangatahi to be confident and be curious, observant and taking action. It is in te reo Māori. We do have English versions, but today we’re privileging our reo Māori.
Video voiceover
I mōhio ō tātou tūpuna me pēhea te noho tahi me te taiao. I tiaki rātou tō tatou taiao hei tāonga mo ngā rangatira o apōpō. Me pupuri tātou ki ēnei kōrero hei tiaki, hei manaaki i tō tātou taiao.
Yvonne Taura
Ok, and we’re just going to end our last slide with Ko te manu e kai ana i te miro nōna te miro, ko te manu e kai ana i te mātauranga, nōna te ao.
Kia ora.
Acknowledgements
Simone Marsters (Ngāpuhi), Science Learning Hub Pokapū Akoranga Pūtaiao
Milly Grant-Mackie (Te Rarawa, Ngāti Kahu ki Whaingaroa, Ngāpuhi), Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research
Yvonne Taura (Ngāiterangi, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāti Hauā, Ngāti Uenuku, Ngāti Tūwharetoa), Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research
Science Learning Hub Pokapū Akoranga Pūtaiao and Royal Society Te Apārangi Taiao