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Indigenous health workforce development has been identified as a key strategy to improve Indigenous health and reduce ethnic inequities in health outcomes. Likewise, development of a culturally safe and culturally competent non-Indigenous health workforce must also occur if the elimination of health inequities is to be fully realised. Tertiary education providers responsible for training health professionals must face the challenge of engaging the Indigenous learner within health sciences, exposing the ‘hidden curriculum’ that undermines professional Indigenous health learning and ensuring tertiary success for Indigenous students within their academy. This chapter summarises recent developments, research and interventions within the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at the University of Auckland that aims to address these challenges by re-presenting Indigenous student recruitment, selection and support, re-presenting bridging/foundation education and representing Māori health teaching and learning within the curriculum.

Since 2002 there has been strategic focus on inclusive tertiary provision as a means of addressing the issues of student groups who have historically not fared well in higher education. Equity groups include Māori, Pasifika and students with disabilities. This chapter charts the terrain of inclusive higher education in Aotearoa through the critical reflections of Kahurangi, a Māori student with a vision impairment. Despite a strategic focus on inclusive provision and Kahurangi’s success his experiences suggest that there is some way to go. The authors argue that given the limited ways in which inclusion and its underpinning theory of disability are theorised inclusive higher educational settings are unlikely to be realised.

We describe an educational intervention pioneered by Te Kawa a Māui (TKaM), the School of Māori Studies at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW), which was designed to improve the attraction and retention of (particularly) Māori students, by involving them in a school-wide research publication – in this case a digital cultural atlas of Māori Studies. We present and describe the work of 250 students from 10 different Māori Studies courses, who have trialled and submitted map-based assessment for the Te Kawa a Māui Atlas (TeKaMA). We argue that the quality and variety of student work is itself an indication of engagement. We then discuss how digital aspects of the work facilitated engagement, using data from course and assignment evaluations, interviews, informal feedback and an online survey. In line with other findings in the literature, digital aspects of our project had to be carefully managed and balanced, so that they did not disengage students from learning. However, our TeKaMA exercises provided multiple ways by which students could engage, with cultural mapping engaging all students, not just Māori. Our chapter discusses how this was facilitated by digital technology.

Māori (Indigenous New Zealanders) and Pacific students tend not to attain the same levels of educational success as New Zealanders of European descent. Addressing this problem is a particular challenge at tertiary level in science, engineering, and architecture and design (SEAD). Te Rōpū Āwhina (Āwhina), an initiative at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW), aims to produce Māori and Pacific professionals who contribute to Māori and Pacific development and leadership. The objective of this analysis was to summarise quantitative results from the first 11 years of Āwhina and to show they are consistent with an Āwhina ‘effect’; that is, a positive influence on (combined) Māori and Pacific success in the SEAD disciplines. Individual-level records held in the VUW student database were used to generate smoothed trends in SEAD and non-SEAD graduate and postgraduate degree completions since 1991. Substantial improvements in SEAD Māori and Pacific completions occurred between 1999 and 2010, including a 50%- increase in Māori and Pacific postgraduate completions relative to all SEAD postgraduate completions. In the same period, non-SEAD Māori and Pacific postgraduate completions increased at a similar rate to all non-SEAD postgraduate completions. Results were consistent with a strong Āwhina effect, which has important implications for the nature of tertiary institutions, their cultural and social disconnection with Indigenous and minority students, and their social obligations and responsiveness. This analysis did not account for students who did not complete a qualification or include key confounders such as entry qualifications and gender. Definitive confirmation of an Āwhina effect is the subject of ongoing research.

Dreams and aspirations are at the core of what higher education is about. Students and scholars alike, the world over, are engaged in the realisation of dreams that bring forth new opportunities, new ways of seeing and being and of changing the world. Many Māori students dream of making a difference, and see the pursuit of higher education as a way to bring their dreams into reality. Often their dreams reflect family and community aspirations bringing with it a significant burden of responsibility and obligation. And for Māori academics and researchers like me, my dreams are not too different to those of my own students except that where students pursue a pathway towards becoming relevant, academics are challenged to remain so. In this chapter, I will share some of my/our hopes and experiences and how Māori went about dreaming ourselves into the staff make-up, curriculum and research activities in the School of Psychology at the University of Waikato.

This chapter chronicles an international inter-institutional Māori-led small-scale tertiary intervention that has potential for larger scale future implementation. The educational intervention, Optimising Māori Academic Achievement (OMAA), is based in Te Puna Wānanga (The School of Māori Education) in the Faculty of Education at the University of Auckland (UoA). It aims to increase the completion rates of Māori students enrolled in the Bachelor of Teaching Māori-Medium Specialisation (Huarahi Māori) at the UoA and the Bachelor of Nursing at Waiariki Institute of Technology, Bay of Plenty. The OMAA initiative is based on the adaptation and implementation of a tertiary intervention that has a research-based track record in North America and has also been successfully adapted for use in Australia. Authors of this chapter are Māori and Indigenous women working as primary investigators, programme directors and leaders facilitating the international inter-institutional intervention among the UoA, Waiariki Institute of Technology (Waiariki) and Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia. Adaptation of the North American tertiary intervention by Māori for Māori is at the heart of the initiative. Māori and Indigenous projects such as OMAA can attract potential postgraduate students from within New Zealand as well as from other countries where there are Indigenous communities of people. Implementation details, implications, lessons learned and future directions will be described in this chapter.

This chapter presents results of a study that investigated the social information grounds of 45 Māori students ages 16–18 when they are at school.

A mixed research method was used. The quantitative approach was based on a survey questionnaire that was distributed to the students to gather data about their social information behaviour in four schools. The qualitative approach used six focus groups of students to discuss the behaviour.

Māori students exchange, share and seek information within their social networks in six different places in their schools. These places are best described as social information grounds, as defined by Fisher, Naumer, Durrance, Stromski, and Christiansen (2005).

The research identifies the importance that Māori students place on information obtained through interpersonal transactions particularly within their social networks. These social networks play an integral role in assisting Māori students to understand the social and educational environment of which they are part.

This chapter focuses on information grounds and indigenous teenage youth, an understudied area of research. It uses the information grounds theory to explore the social networks of Māori secondary school students in New Zealand.

This chapter begins with a traditional, cultural story of indigenous leadership from a young woman of the Ngāti Awa tribe in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand. Some would say her acts of leadership went against the traditional gender roles in order to ensure the safety of her people. Others would say she demonstrated the cultural duality between male and female leadership roles. We consider this story within the context of the ongoing marginalization and educational disparities faced by disproportionate numbers of indigenous Māori students in New Zealand’s secondary schools. If these students are to take their rightful place as successful and valuable contributors to society then education, as it is currently constituted, must be reimagined, reled, and reformed. We explore the pathway of critical, transformative leadership being undertaken by both Māori and non-Māori; by female and male; that is currently seeking to address the aspirations of Māori students in these schools. Such a model seeks to create “critical” spaces where the “creative potential” and diverse funds of cultural knowledge that Māori students bring with them to schooling can contribute to leading to more transformative educational reform.

This investigation aims to highlight the need for the information professions globally to value diverse knowledge paradigms in a world where people from diverse cultures and backgrounds interact with information on a daily basis. We provide examples from the Library and Information Science (LIS) profession in New Zealand which has been shaped by socially and culturally inclusive education and practices which take into account diverse ways of knowing and understanding the world and information.

An investigation into socially and culturally inclusive LIS education initiatives worldwide contextualizes a discussion of current LIS curricula in New Zealand and their delivery. The achievements and challenges in LIS education, the library profession, and library service are considered alongside the rich and varied nature of New Zealand society and the provision and accessibility of library services.

LIS education is at the start of this process, and New Zealand education providers promote a range of socially and culturally inclusive practices within their programs resulting in LIS graduates who are equipped to make ongoing contributions to an inclusive society through their professional work. We conclude that these three inseparable components of LIS in New Zealand result in social and cultural inclusion, but can always be further enhanced.

This chapter draws attention to the absence of consideration for non-Western knowledge paradigms in LIS curricula worldwide, and brings together diverse examples, mandating for library services and a library profession that reflect the rich social and cultural makeup of the communities we serve. We conclude that three inseparable components of LIS in New Zealand result in social and cultural inclusion, and there is always opportunity for further enhancement.

This chapter features leadership practices sourced from more than 25 Māori (Indigenous) and non-Māori women in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) who are leaders of schools where Māori-based best practices benefit Māori and other systemically underserved students (e.g., children in poverty, Pasifika [i.e., Samoan, Fijian, Cook Island, Tongan] descent). This study, by Auckland-based scholars of North American, Indigenous, and international descent (Māori, Latino, African American/American Indian [Choctaw], and East Indian immigrant) examines the expression of Applied Critical Leadership (ACL) in women leaders participating in Te Ara Hou or The Māori Achievement Collaboratives (MACS), an initiative aimed at challenging status quo leadership practices, which result in persistent inequitable educational outcomes for Māori learners. Based on an analysis of data, women leaders demonstrated leadership that mirrored and exemplified leadership practices suggested in ACL research. Qualitative stories evidenced from women leaders in MACS provided exemplars of authentic and appropriate pathways for implementing effective leadership practices aimed at promoting whānau (family), iwi (tribe), and hapū (subtribe) engagement, context-specific pedagogy, tikanga (cultural protocols), and whanaungatanga (relationships) within mainstream school contexts. These findings affirm and validate research on the benefits of critical and culturally appropriate leadership around the world in a number of diverse contexts.