Chapter 10: MĀOri Students Flourishing in Education: High Teacher Expectations, Cultural Responsiveness and Family–School Partnerships

This chapter discusses the cultural appropriateness of teacher expectation theory to the Māori context. Māori theoretical models of culturally appropriate pedagogical practice are compared to teacher expectation theory in order to explore the likely responsiveness of teacher expectation theory to the teaching of Māori students. In addition, it has been argued (Macfarlane, Webber, Cookson-Cox, & McRae, 2014) that in order for Māori to be successful in school, there need to be strong links between the school and the community. Therefore, this chapter also discusses whether the theory of school-community relationships has relevance to culturally responsive practice. The “big theory” promulgated in this chapter is that although high expectations for students do increase achievement, they are not enough to interrupt the negative impact of societal racism and negative academic stereotypes, on Māori student achievement. From a Māori world-view, whānau (extended family) are a critical factor to Māori student success and the Māori child is unlikely to see themselves as an individual or independent of their whānau. Therefore, even if a teacher has high expectations for an individual child, if they ignore or minimize the role of the child's whānauin their learning, the child will be negatively impacted. Hence, this chapter brings together theoretical perspectives pertaining to culturally responsive practice, high expectation teaching, and whānauengagement to produce one overarching or big theory that is theorized as being key to lifting Māori achievement.