Te Tiriti o Waitangi

The Collective embraces the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty) in everything we do.

The Collective focuses on Partnership through working together with iwi, hapū, whānau and Māori communities to develop strategies for Māori ako. It is critically important to co-construct learning with our local communities and that this can help to foreground local cultural knowledge and identity. By employing a co-design with the leadership team and the wider community We harness the knowledge and expertise of a diverse range of people, including teachers, families, whānau, iwi, and other community members.

The Collective is focused on Participation and is particularly focused on equality of opportunity and outcomes. As a group, we are focused on the areas where we see un-equitable access to knowledge or resources and aim to work in these areas. We embrace Ako by providing tools to our learners that can be used at home for no cost. This is an important part of all Work as we want our students to take their learnings back to their whanau with a sense of pride, and we need to enable this to happen equitably.

The Trust focuses on Protection and Tangata Whenuatanga. This involves actively protecting Māori knowledge, interests, values, and other tāonga. Identity, language, and culture are important expressions of what it means to be culturally-located learners. This is always key in the co-design of our programmes. We are acutely aware that a lot of the free systems and resources available to schools in DT are designed overseas and placed into an international context. We think that it is critical to have Place-based, socio-cultural aware resources that allow the students to recognize themselves and their culture in technology. We have worked to enable the tools we use to be reflective of this and have a set of resources we use in teacher education that are altered for every unique setting. They have been designed with this in mind.