Pūrākau, place and digital learning: helping tauira share their stories

At Tairangi School in Porirua, a collaborative project is weaving together pūrākau, place-based learning and digital education. It’s part of a wider effort to reimagine how tamariki see, tell and share their stories inside and outside the classroom.

How does digital education outside the classroom (EOTC) enable tamariki to see, tell and share their stories? This pātai has brought together educators, researchers and cultural leaders in a partnership grounded in connection, co-design and whanaungatanga.

The project team includes Tairangi School tumuaki Jason Ataera; Dr Andrea Milligan and learning specialists Chelsea Wynne and Finn Culver from Nōku te Ao Capital E in Wellington; Māori education consultant and Te Kura o Hanana tumuaki Rochelle Thorn; and Dr Ben Egerton from Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington.

Ngā tāngata

Jason is excited about how his tauira can share pūrākau with whānau and community.

“Our kids have an amazing rich heritage and have so much to share,” he says. “This project enables our community to celebrate who they are and look to who they may be in the future.”

For Jason and his staff, that future is digital. But it’s also, as he notes, about looking “at ways of bringing our ancestral and cultural intelligences into future technologies”.

Dr Andrea Milligan is from Wheako Pōneke, the organisation of which Nōku te Ao and other arts, culture and science institutions in Wellington are a part. She’s keen to uncover ways in which EOTC learning programmes support schools to develop ‘place consciousness’.

Andrea reminds us that for indigenous communities, “the story and storyteller both serve to connect the past with the future, one generation with the other, the land with the people and the people with the story.” (Linda Tuhiwai Smith, 2021, p. 166).

Andrea wants to reimagine the relationships Nōku te Ao has with schools.

“What would more of a two-way flow,” she wonders, “between our site and Tairangi School, with multiple touchpoints across teaching and learning programmes, mean for how we work together?”

Rochelle is convinced that for tauira – at Tairangi, at her own kura, and across the motu – “ākonga should always be empowered to tell their stories, shape their own narrative of who they are, where they come from, and where they are going”.

Ben is a poet and educator, and as principal researcher and co-convenor of this project with Andrea, Jason and Rochelle, he is drawn to these questions of pūrākau with his creative hat on.

“How can we design learning,” he asks, “to deepen ākonga creative thinking?”

Establishing kaupapa

Partnership involves bringing everyone on board and beginning without either agenda or preconceived research pātai.

As a first step, Jason hosted everyone at his kura to whakawhanaungatanga and to gently scope out the territory. Who are we? How do we connect? And what – from each of our perspectives – does connection between pūrākau, digital technologies, understanding place, and ākonga-centredness mean? And crucially, what could and should it look like?

The key right from the start is openness and a shared commitment to tauira.

Rochelle puts it like this: “When tamariki have a strong sense of knowing who they are and where they come from (whakapapa), it gives them belonging and, consequently, confidence and contentment in themselves.”

With this shared commitment, Jason invited Ben, Andrea, Chelsea and Finn to address kaiako at a staff hui to collectively share the project’s open vision.

Kaiako, quite understandably, were apprehensive to commit to a nebulous wondering – uncertain about what this would look like in the classroom and their practice.

For some, the thought of being asked to introduce (unfamiliar) digital technologies into their teaching and learning was daunting. As Karen, teacher of new entrants, admits of this vagueness, “Initially I was concerned about how my new entrants could participate fully.”

Yet, with Jason’s careful support and unpacking, kaiako agreed to give this a go. Key to this was ‘ko wai au?’

Ko wai au?

Already, at the start of the school year, this pātai is being asked across the school. And tauira answers are uncovering pūrākau: about themselves, their whānau, about the place they come from, about the place they live in.

“I share my stories about me playing rugby. It’s important because the class might like a story,” says one tauira in Year 2.

A Year 8 tauira says telling stories is important, “because it is who you are. It encourages others to share their stories back.”

And another from Year 5, discussing how personal each story is, says, “It is describing you, what you like … so others know about you more.”

Tauira are telling, writing, listening to these stories. In Karen’s new entrants class, they have been writing about themselves and their families one day a week.

She is “collecting this information (one sentence at a time) so that we may use it to help them tell their stories later on down the track”.

Finn, from Nōku te Ao agrees, saying, “When tamariki tell their own stories, they’re building a stronger connection to themselves, their communities, and the world around them.”

Te ara hāpai

But where does digital technology fit in? Kaiako were worried on two fronts: they didn’t know what new tools could help tauira share pūrākau, and were unsure they could digitally upskill tauira.

Jason, Ben, Andrea and Rochelle split the approach into two strands: developing an understanding of what ‘storytelling’ is, and digital tools and skills.

The digital component is important. As Chelsea says, “Digital opens creative possibilities that other forms of storytelling can’t always offer.”

To foster a sense of digital impetus, Jason proposed ‘Excite Day’ for early July. On Excite Day, each kaiako will run a digital activity for all tauira to have a go at. The aim is for all members of the school community, including whānau, to be exposed to and ‘excited’ by the potential of digital tools to support learning.

Kaiako become the learners

Chelsea suggested inviting Tairangi staff to Nōku te Ao for professional learning and development.

Ordinarily, Nōku te Ao is a space for tamariki to learn. In this case, it’s kaiako who were visiting to upskill.

As Andrea notes, “Effective EOTC programmes, including in spaces such as ours that are dedicated to digital creativity, focus on supporting the transfer of knowledge.”

Prior to coming, kaiako had thought about tools they could present to tauira – some had firm ideas and others were still thinking.

As well as being exposed to new digital tools, they could discuss their emerging ‘Excite Day’ ideas with each other and with Chelsea and Finn for feedback and reassurance.

Viv speaks for her colleagues when she says, “It’s been a lot of fun finding out about different types of digital activities. It’s also been good developing my skills personally in this area. The more I find out, the less scary it all becomes!”

Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua

Five months into the project, they’re currently concentrating on the digital strand. The next phase is to focus on pūrākau, before drawing both strands together.

For now, in this emergent phase of the project, Jason has been careful to remind them of the whakataukī “kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua”.

This perfectly captures the kaupapa of the project, says Ben. “How might we walk backwards into the future but with our eyes fixed on our past? Past is people, and past is place. As is the present and the future.”

In taking the time to build relationships, to share a vision and to find ways to connect each other and aspects of the kaupapa, Ben says a story of partnership is emerging.

“And from partnership comes purpose. In our case, ways forward to consider how digital education enables tamariki to see, tell, and share their stories.”