Abstract:
An investigation of sites, uses and practices for literacy in the lives of Pasifika
students
Lower test scores on school measures of literacy for Pasifika students than for the
majority of students in New Zealand are a cause for concern. As part of a wider
attempt to address this problem the Ministry of Education has argued that teachers
need to be better informed of out-of-school literacy practices. This thesis considers
what can be learned when this guidance is followed and it investigates students'
social and cultural uses of literacy in family and community settings. It explores the
argument that knowledge of these out-of-school literacies will inform teachers and
through incorporation (McNaughton, 2002) teachers may be able to make effective
connections for students to school literacy.
A sociocultural perspective is used to investigate the social and cultural practices of
the students while the study also uses Cremin's (1976) concept of configurations of
sites to consider how learning is mediated for students in different settings. Rogoff's
(1995) three planes of analysis provide a tool to examine students' practices at the
community, interpersonal, and personal levels.
The investigation sought the students' own perspective of how they appropriate
knowledge about literacy as they collected information with cameras and journals on
their own practices. The participants were 14 Pasifika students aged 11 and 12 years
(mostly Samoan) as well as three adult Samoan church representatives and teachers
from the students' school. Students' photos were used to elicit rich description in
semi-structured interviews and interview schedules were also used with students and
adult participants.
The findings illustrate how the students were socialised into particular practices that
are contextualised in the sites of family, church and neighbourhood. They reveal that
for the students there was both overlapping of values and conflict between their sites
of literacy practice. The complementarities occurred most strongly between family
and church and a valued feature of the students' practice was the use of Samoan
language. The most common conflicts were those related to popular culture and
they occurred between the sites of family, church and school on the one hand and
neighbourhood sites on the other as well as within family sites. The thesis argues that awareness of the complementary and conflicting features is essential for teachers in
understanding the complexity the students face in choosing their paths among two
cultures. This knowledge enables teachers to incorporate aspects of out-of-school
literacy into school practice and to draw on those in the students' backgrounds who
may facilitate students' literacy acquisition.
