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This paper aims to provide a commentary on how the accelerated utilisation of online learning in accounting education could further impede Pasifika students from completing an accounting qualification, thus perpetuating Pasifika underrepresentation in accounting.

This commentary is based on the authors’ experiences and informal conversations with teaching colleagues and support staff. This paper uses Bourdieu’s (1977, 1990) theory of practice with a focus on his notion of symbolic violence to evaluate the challenges faced by Pasifika students in the learning of accounting.

The social world is inherently unfair, and this can be seen in the inequality that persists in various settings, one of which is in the accounting field. Acquiring an accounting degree requires studying accounting content, which is taught and assessed in a particular way. Unfortunately for the Pasifika learner, learning and assessment in accounting education are according to the demands and rules of the accounting field. These demands and rules, with the increased utilisation of online learning, are at odds with the Pasifika student’s habitus. Thus, Pasifika accounting students are likely to be disadvantaged by the increased utilisation of online learning. This could potentially exacerbate their underachievement in accounting education and prolong Pasifika underrepresentation in the accounting profession.

This paper contributes to teaching practice by bringing to the fore the potential of online learning as an additional impediment for Pasifika students in accounting education. This will help inform policymakers, tertiary institutions, accounting accreditation bodies, educators and support staff and could result in the formulation of suitable strategies to better support Pasifika students in online learning.

This paper is original and provides a critical analysis of how some groups in society will be disadvantaged by the increased utilisation of online learning in accounting education, thus further hindering the slow progress in achieving greater diversity in the accounting profession.

This paper aims to examine the issues of underrepresentation and barriers that impede Pasifika students’ achievement and success in tertiary accounting education.

The participants of the study were the second- and third-year students from the “Pasifika” ethnic community enrolled in undergraduate accounting degree papers. The first stage of data were collected through face-to-face questionnaire survey and quantitatively analysed. Further data were collected through focus group meetings held as “talona” sessions and analysed using descriptive narrative, to capture the lived experience of the students.

The findings of the study suggest that low self-efficacy beliefs, low self-regulation and culturally unresponsive pedagogical practices negatively impact on Pasifika student success in accounting education. Better student engagement; use of culturally responsive pedagogy; utilisation of internal assessment tools; and more strategic use of group work could help enhance the retention and success of Pasifika students in accounting programmes. The findings also suggest that the institutional support framework for Pasifika students’ needs to be more responsive to proactively help develop their self-efficacy and self-regulation learning needs.

This research makes a significant contribution by informing accounting educators, support staff, tertiary institutions and other stakeholders including Pasifika students, of potential challenges faced by Pasifika students in completing a tertiary accounting qualification. The findings have the potential to assist in the design and implementation of actionable strategies to enhance the retention and success rates for students from this group.

This research complements earlier studies on barriers faced by students from disadvantaged communities in gaining tertiary qualifications and looks specifically at challenges faced by Pasifika students in gaining an accounting qualification.

The Pasifika (Pacific Island) research methodology talanoa (conversation) has contemporary resonance beyond its local context. At the recent Bonn Climate Change Conference, for example, talanoa was adopted to spark international dialogue about our collective futures. But this and other recent instances raise the question as to whether and how talanoa can and should be applied in a non-Indigenous context – or, indeed, online. As a culturally diverse research team, we undertook a talanoa about our experience of researching historical literacy with Māori and Pasifika students through talanoa. Here we introduce what we learnt from the literature about the nature of talanoa, its use as a methodology, and its application in higher education and reproduce our own recent online talanoa on the experience of learning to do talanoa together. Three key lessons emerged from our research conversation. Firstly, we learnt that time is of the essence: researchers must carefully balance the need for the talanoa to run its natural course with the need to not overburden the participants. Secondly, we learnt that where the researchers undertake the talanoa is less important than attending to the relationships (the vā) between the researchers and participants, and the researchers and participants themselves. And, finally, in keeping with what some Māori researchers and their allies have argued of Kaupapa Māori research methodology, we learnt that indigenous methodologies like talanoa, when employed with care and in recognition of their emergence out of decolonial struggles for indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, can foster a fruitful intercultural research conversation.

Does participation in tertiary education in Aotearoa New Zealand weaken or strengthen Samoan ethnic identity? Narratives of Pacific women graduates interviewed for a doctoral study of ethnic identity construction provide illustrations of how a process of ethnic identity formation is built up through interactions between groups and individuals within institutions where all members of society participate and come into contact with each other. Ethnic identity construction is influenced by both circumstantial situational factors and what people themselves bring into those circumstances (Cornell & Hartmann, 1998). The cultural backgrounds of this group of tertiary students are socially constructed within their families and churches. It is these backgrounds they bring with them into tertiary education contexts. The strengthening of ethnic identity, as experienced by this group of Samoan women graduate students, was unique, complex and at times contradictory.

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.

Writing performance is an international issue and, while the quality of instruction is key, features of the context shape classroom practice. The issues and solutions in terms of teacher practice to address underachievement need to be considered within such a context and the purpose of the chapter is to undertake such an analysis.

Data from five different research projects (national and regional) of the author and colleagues, and two studies of the author’s doctoral students, are synthesized to identify both common and specific elements of primary/elementary (years 1–8, ages 5–13) teacher practice in writing. These data provide an indication of the practices which appear to be the most powerful levers for developing writing and for accelerating student progress in the context in which the teachers work. These practices are discussed.

The identified practices are: (1) acquiring and applying deep knowledge of your writers; (2) making connections with, and validating, relevant cultural and linguistic funds of knowledge; (3) aligning learning goals in writing with appropriately designed writing tasks and ensuring that students understand what they are learning and why; (4) providing quality feedback; (5) scaffolding self-regulation in writers; (6) differentiating instruction (while maintaining high expectations) and (7) providing targeted and direct instruction at the point of need. A discussion and a description of writing-specific instantiations of these help to illustrate their nature and the overlaps and interconnections.

As much of the data are drawn from the practices of teachers deemed to be highly effective, classroom practices associated with these teachers can be targeted as a means to improve the quality of instruction more widely in the particular context.

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.

Developing the health workforce is an ongoing concern, especially in New Zealand, where Māori and Pasifika populations are under-represented. Programme Incubator (PI) was developed by a health provider to raise awareness of careers in the health sector. The purpose of this paper is to report on a study undertaken in a tertiary institution which involved tracking and mentoring students who had been engaged in PI, and mentoring them through their tertiary studies.

In total, 40 students (n=40) were recruited into the four year study, which involved a survey and participating in focus groups.

PI was found to be an effective initiative of encouraging secondary students to enter a career in health, but more work is needed to facilitate students’ choice of tertiary provider and academic programme. Within the tertiary sector, mentoring was found to be lacking.

Group mentoring and peer mentoring are introduced to mitigate these concerns and provide students with the mentoring support they require.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate two recent examples of the New Zealand Ministry of Education's approach to reducing the persistent disparities in achievement between students of different social and ethnic groups. The first example is cluster‐based school improvement, and the second is the development of national standards for literacy and numeracy across the primary sector.

The evaluative framework used was derived from recent international analyses of the characteristics of school systems, which are either high performers or successful reformers on recent international surveys. Policy documents and evaluation reports provided the evidence on which the evaluation of the two New Zealand (NZ) examples is based.

The six criteria associated with high system performance and/or reform success were: system‐wide commitment to educational improvement; ambitious universal standards; developing capacity at the point of delivery; professional forms of accountability; strategic resourcing; and institutionalizing the improvement of practice. The present analysis of the NZ reform examples suggests that while there is a broad commitment to more equitable outcomes, a new resolve to introduce and report against national standards, and a high level of espousal of professional accountability, there are significant contradictions between school self‐management and the work that needs to be done to reduce achievement disparities.

This paper's evaluation of these two examples raises important policy questions about the assumptions that are made in the NZ self‐managing system about teacher and leader capability and about where responsibility for school improvement lies.