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Exploring the resources
There are many examples, across the resources, of school leaders responding positively and culturally to the challenge of realising Māori student potential, but only one resource (the Taihape Area School Case Study) discusses and illustrates leadership issues and their impact on student engagement and achievement in a direct way.
However, the Taihape Area School Case Study refers almost exclusively to the principal when discussing school leadership issues. In fact, all schools have distributed leadership, and school leaders include such people as curriculum leaders and team leaders.
Leadership issues are referred to in the other resources but less directly. For example, notice the leadership strategies that the principal of Hiruharama School (Te Mana Kōrero 3) uses to make families/whānau and iwi feel welcome in the school, to invlove families/whānau and iwi actively and meaningfully in school operations, and to take the school into the community.
School leaders and teachers can identify leadership issues (and illustrations) that emerge in the Taihape Area School Case Study (and in the other resources indirectly), discuss what they mean within the context of both Taihape Area School and their own school, and analyse ways in which effective school leadership can enhance Māori student engagement and achievement. This will be a way into inquiring into the effectiveness of leadership practices at their school.
To help the facilitator, some of the information and ideas that the group could identify and/or discuss when exploring the questions are suggested in the following sections.