With G. Dodson, E. Kau., C. Neill & R. Shaw
In Lythberg, B., Woods, C., & Bell, A. (eds) Settler Responsibility for Decolonisation: Stories from the Field. Routledge.
Introduction
In 2016 Massey University implemented a new compulsory core curriculum in its Bachelor of Arts (BA) programme. Three of the five new courses comprising the core were connected via an emphasis on citizenship. While not in the first instance explicitly conceived as intellectual sites for engaging with issues of decolonisation, in a de facto sense that is what those courses are in the process of becoming. Progress is muddled, slow, incremental, and contested – but it is progress, nonetheless.
In this chapter, five academics who teach in Massey’s BA core reflect on the
challenges associated with designing and delivering those citizenship courses. We begin by reviewing the literature on decoloniality, following which the context and process through which the core was created is briefly described. The substantive sections of the chapter comprise four reflections on the high notes, the low points, the contradictions, and the gains that are associated with teaching in the BA core, and we conclude by drawing out a series of themes and connecting these back to the scholarship on decoloniality.
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Tū Rangaranga
Sharon
In 2017 I was part of the team tasked with designing and delivering Tū Rangaranga: Global Encounters – the second-year core citizenship course. Tū Rangaranga, which in te reo means ‘to weave together’ or establish connections, explores citizenship from a global perspective with a particular focus on rights and responsibilities. Guided by Māori academic Dr Margaret Forster (Rongomaiwāhine, Ngāti Kahungunu (Māori tribal area in the Eastern Coast) as a key member of the teaching team, and working in consultation with Māori staff, the course design demonstrated a commitment to Māori perspectives and the integration of Māori knowledge into the curriculum.1 This is reflected in the incorporation of a whakataukī, the use of the harakeke (flax plant) as a central design metaphor, and the ‘weaving’ together of indigenous and western epistemologies in the course content (McLennan et al., 2021). The metaphor of weaving is used to symbolise unity, togetherness and strength as reflected by the following whakataukī:
E kore e taea e te whenu kotahi ki te raranga i te whāriki
kia mōhio tātau kia tātou
mā te mahi o ngā whenu
mā te mahi o ngā kairaranga
ka oti tēnei whāriki i te otinga
me titiro ki ngā mea pai ka puta mai ā tana wā
me titiro hoki ki ngā raranga i makere
mā te mea, he kōrero kei reira.
Translation:
‘A strand of flax is nothing in itself but
woven together it is strong and enduring.
Let us look at the good that comes from it,
and, in time, we should also look
at those stitches which have been dropped,
because they also have a message’.
As a sixth-generation Pākehā woman with limited prior connections or knowledge of te ao Māori, the development and teaching of this course has been challenging. The concept of co-learning has taken on real meaning as I learn alongside our students, from them and from my colleagues. As such, for me, teaching Tū Rangaranga has primarily involved two inter-related approaches: problematising and complicating discussions of globalisation, rights, and responsibilities; and de-centring Western, colonial, and individualist approaches, creating space for ‘other’ voices to be heard, particularly those of tangata whenua.
Prioritising Māori perspectives and knowledge was challenging in a course that
was not initially conceived of as a decolonial project, and which needed to be
explicitly global in focus. However, as Macfarlane (2019) asks: “is it appropriate to seek solutions to the impact of climate change, poverty, inequality, and human rights violations that threaten peace and sustainability worldwide, solely from a Western approach? Or are there lessons to be learnt from Indigenous perspectives of ‘place’ and ‘authority’?” (p. 99). A decolonial approach takes this further – as Sium et al. (2012) contend, “Decolonisation does not exist without a framework that centers and privileges Indigenous life, community, and epistemology” (p. ii). In the context of a course on global citizenship in Aotearoa-New Zealand, this required the foregrounding of Māori perspectives of citizenship. In practice, this was dependent on the presence of Māori academics throughout the design, development and delivery phases. This collaboration ensured visibility of the Māori language and the presence of critical Māori content grounded in Māori worldviews throughout the course.
This process was significantly constrained by time and staffing. While the college in which the core courses are taught has a critical mass of Māori academics – far greater than other parts of the university – the actual number of Māori academics is low. This is a situation widely experienced throughout the tertiary sector in Aotearoa-New Zealand (McAllister et al., 2019). This reality placed limits on course design and development and the considerable demands on Māori academics’ time and expertise within a very short timeframe did not create the best conditions for thoughtful and quality collaborations.
As Carol notes below, the processes of building collaboration and effective
learning relationships are also difficult where students are suspicious of intent or unwilling to engage in discussions. Some students complain about (left) bias, a lack of ‘balance’, and the way in which “all the woes of the world (are) blamed on British colonialism”. While overt racist statements are thankfully rare, racism is inherent in some students’ comments and course work and needs careful management, particularly in a classroom or online class forum. Moments like these are challenging and can be disruptive but can also provide opportunities for reflection and learning both for the individual students involved, and for those watching.
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Finally, it is clear that this is an incomplete and often messy process which involves planting seeds, taking small steps and zig-zagging – being light on our feet as teachers in order to accommodate the various stages our students are at, the constraints and opportunities of the institution, and our own learning and development. Academic practice that is potentially decolonising requires risk and trust. As noted above, the decolonisation of education is not a neat, linear process (Andreotti et al., 2015), and the dropped stitches, tangled threads, and unfinished edges of the core courses reflect the complex and fluid nature of decolonisation. But by ‘staying with the trouble’, we hope to continue the messy and non-linear process of decolonising our teaching of citizenship and, in doing so, contribute to the larger and infinitely complex project of decolonising the university.
Of course, much remains to be done, both in the core itself and within the wider university ecosystem. As to the second of these, the challenge is to weave the work of curriculum reform into the fabric of the university. Academic courses are one of the fundamental units of analysis in universities: they are the places where content, people and pedagogy are combined, and from which educated people (and quite what that means certainly goes to the politics of decolonisation) are expected to emerge. But for those very reasons individual courses can also be isolated, positioned as the institutional locations where accountability and performance are calculated. Courses – and the people who offer them – attract a lot of attention. They are both critical to what we do as academics but also tertiary institutions’ equivalents of Weber’s iron cages. At an institution such as Massey, which has rhetorically committed to being Te Tiriti-led, pulling those bars down and allowing the difficult conversations we need to have regarding decolonisation to flow out into the wider institution is the next frontier.
Dr Sharon McLennan 