Achieving Equity for Māori Children in Reading by 2020

Abstract

One of the biggest challenges in this country is to raise Māori achievement in literacy. Māori are the first nation, and it seems unjust that their literacy levels are not on a par with those of Pakeha despite massive efforts to close this gap. In this review it will be argued that Māori children in New Zealand fail to receive a "fair deal" (equity) in learning to read for a number of reasons, but primarily because our schools employ the wrong method of teaching reading. They do not receive a fair deal in other curriculum areas as well, possibly because the same philosophical assumptions about learning that drive our present teaching of reading are also prominent in other subject areas such as science and mathematics (see Matthews, 1995). However, this review will restrict its attention to reading.