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Item Open Access Determinants of learning success among Pacific children aged six years in New Zealand.(University of Canterbury, 2019) Kim, Hyun MinPacific people in New Zealand originate from the neighbouring Pacific Islands such as Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Fiji and the Cook Islands and they constitute a relatively young, diverse and fast growing ethnic minority. Pacific people’s cultural heritage is diverse and their values and adherence to traditions importantly shape their views on education, health and wellbeing. From this vibrant cultural legacy, Pacific students bring their own rich cultural and linguistic funds of knowledge to school. However, in an environment where the English language is the dominant language of instruction, disadvantages in language, literacy and school achievement levels for Pacific children have been documented in the education literature and research papers commissioned by the Ministry of Education. The scholastic disadvantages can potentially lead to detrimental consequences in Pacific children’s future education, health and career trajectories. Given the close associations between health, educational and social outcomes, it is important to consider an integrated and holistic framework when studying Pacific children’s early development. While many researchers have attempted to understand the reasons behind the educational disparity, they have often faced methodological restrictions – such as relatively non-representative samples and a limited set of variables – in conducting their investigations. Despite all good intent, without a robust evidence-base, strategies and interventions are unlikely to be efficacious. Perhaps this could, in part, explain why Pacific students, as a group, remain the most disadvantaged within New Zealand. However, there is now an unprecedented amount of information on Pacific and other ethnic children growing up in New Zealand due to the availability of large, contemporary and comprehensive datasets. One source of comprehensive information on Pacific children growing up in New Zealand is the Pacific Islands Families (PIF) Study, a contemporary, longitudinal birth cohort study of Pacific children and their families. This doctoral study investigated the social and health determinants of Pacific children’s early learning success using data on 1,001 children from the 6-years measurement wave of the PIF Study. The following three main research objectives were investigated in this study: 1) quantitative analyses of different perceptions of Pacific children’s academic performance in the first year of school held by Pacific children, their mothers and teachers; 2) construction of a classification tree model for Pacific children’s early English language development using a measure of children’s English receptive vocabulary at age 6 years as the outcome variable; and 3) ethnic-specific analyses of Pacific children’s English receptive vocabulary. These separate studies were used to analyse the common traits of successful Pacific learners and to identify children who would benefit the most from early, targeted interventions. Overall, the study found that Pacific children, their mothers and teachers had very different perceptions when it came to assessing children’s academic performance and that those perceptions were strongly influenced by the families’ cultural, linguistic and socioeconomic backgrounds. The results from the subsequent prediction study highlighted the role of early cultural environment, birthweight, age-appropriate early childhood develop- ment and parenting behaviour in accurately distinguishing children with strong English receptive vocabulary at age 6 years. The ethnic-specific analyses, however, revealed that disparate factors or distinct configurations of factors may be relevant across different ethnic groups. The nationally and internationally novel findings add to the relatively scant quantitative evidence-base for cultural and ethnic diversity across Pacific children and suggest that future research be conducted in a manner that takes this heterogeneity into account. The results also indicate that Pacific children’s early language development is truly multifaceted and a framework that integrates cultural factors, physical and psychosocial health, and education may be necessary to better serve Pacific children and families. These empirical findings emphasise the importance of cultural considerations and improving home-school communication and cultural continuity for achieving optimal intervention and academic outcomes.Item Open Access The Samoan vowel shift: A phenomenon in phonetics and phonological awareness(Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, 2019) Tavita, Levi; Aukuso, SailiThis paper is a response to a phenomenon in the area of Samoan phonology, or to be exact, the vowels' pronunciation. It involves a shift in the utterance of vowels in the past thirty years or so. And it comes to this. A gradual blurring in the articulation of the vowel sound has been noted. It appears that the glottal stop had rubbed off on the vowel for reasons that are linguistic, sociological and even pedagogical. This 'emerging reality' is yet to be addressed in literature even though evidence of its first appearance can be traced back to the early eighties. Time moves on and there hasn't been a question raised for reasons not quite clear to the writers, hence the purpose of this response. In this writing we hope to raise the issue, as we believe it is crucial to any type of research that delves into both Samoan phonetics and phonology, and the extent of both in language and learning application.Item Open Access Visibility of language diversity in the educational settings of 4 to 6-year-old multilingual children(2019) Harris LAn important way to value and support language diversity and multilingualism is to include children’s languages and related cultural artefacts in their linguistic landscapes. Languages visible in both the physical and digital environments can reflect the formal and informal policies and practices and can influence how languages are perceived and used. This research describes the linguistic landscapes of seven early childhood centres and five primary schools across a year to understand the language and digital technology policies and practices in the physical and digital environments of multilingual children, with a focus on educational services and their links with whānauItem Open Access Co-Constructing a culturally and linguistically sustaining, Te Tiriti-based Ako framework for socio-emotional wellbeing in education(2019) O'Toole VM; Martin R; Fickel L; Denston AItem Open Access Predicting expressive language outcomes at three years from pragmatic skills at two years of age(2019) Conway, M.; Newbury JItem Open Access Restoring Māori literacy narratives to create contemporary stories of success.(University of Canterbury, 2019) Derby, MelissaIt is generally accepted among scholars and educators that literacy is critical to positive educational experiences and outcomes. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) defines education as a fundamental human right intrinsically important for human development and wellbeing, and for its part, literacy is viewed as a central component of education that provides a foundation for lifelong learning. For these reasons, among others, literacy is a pivotal contributor to fostering self-determination, which is the overarching theme of this study. There is a consensus among educators that literacy is essential to social and human development in its ability to transform lives. Indeed, ensuring basic literacy skills for all is a central goal of every national education system in the world. In New Zealand, research on aspects of literacy has been conducted primarily in monolingual English medium classrooms, or, to a lesser extent, in te reo Māori (the Māori language) immersion settings. Little, however, is known about literacy in home environments where children are exposed to English and te reo Māori. The purpose of this research is to examine literacy with bilingual four-year-old children attending a dual language (te reo Māori and English) early childhood centre in Christchurch, New Zealand. It focuses specifically on two key sets of cognitive skills, which are widely recognised as playing a critical role in children’s emerging literacy, namely phonological awareness, which can be broadly defined as an awareness of the sound structure of spoken words; and key aspects of oral language, including vocabulary knowledge, and story comprehension and retell skills. More explicitly, by replicating eight case studies, the research seeks to determine the efficacy of a home-based intervention involving rich reading and reminiscing (RRR), and stimulating sound sensitivity (SSS), on children’s literacy outcomes. In keeping with a general Māori worldview, as well as theoretical contentions put forward in this work, this research takes a holistic view, and also examines the role of whānau, and in particular, mothers, in children’s literacy acquisition. The purpose of this research is to examine literacy with bilingual four-year-old children attending a dual language (te reo Māori and English) early childhood centre in Christchurch, New Zealand. It focuses specifically on two key sets of cognitive skills, which are widely recognised as playing a critical role in children’s emerging literacy, namely phonological awareness, which can be broadly defined as an awareness of the sound structure of spoken words; and key aspects of oral language, including vocabulary knowledge, and story comprehension and retell skills. More explicitly, by replicating eight case studies, the research seeks to determine the efficacy of a home-based intervention involving rich reading and reminiscing (RRR), and stimulating sound sensitivity (SSS), on children’s literacy outcomes. In keeping with a general Māori worldview, as well as theoretical contentions put forward in this work, this research takes a holistic view, and also examines the role of whānau, and in particular, mothers, in children’s literacy acquisition. Three key series of data are reported on in this thesis. The first sets, presented in Chapter Four, explored the influence of the home literacy environment, and whānau literacy practices, on children’s literacy acquisition, as well as the effects of the intervention on the literacy environment and practices. The results demonstrated that whānau have a significant influence on children’s foundational literacy skills, and that the intervention was effective in creating positive shifts in whānau literacy practices, and the home literacy environment in general. The second series of data, reported on in Chapter Five, was generated by the phonological awareness assessment tasks the children completed in both English and te reo Māori pre-, mid- , and post-intervention, as well as six months after the intervention ceased. A two standard deviation band method was utilised in order to statistically validate the data. The findings indicate that the intervention had a substantial effect on the phonological awareness skills of the children participating in this study, specifically on their ability to identify the first phoneme in English and te reo Māori words, and their skills in detecting the number of syllables in English and te reo Māori test items. The vast majority of the results for each child were significantly different to the average score established pre-intervention, according to the two standard deviation band method. The final sets of data were presented in Chapter Six, and illustrate the findings of the Picture Naming Task, as well as the story comprehension task and story retell assessments, both of which involved two books – one in English, and one in te reo Māori. The results of the Picture Naming Task, which combined both English and te reo Māori test items, indicate that the strategy trialled in the intervention in order to determine its efficacy in growing children’s vocabulary knowledge, was successful in assisting children to learn new words. In addition to this, the story comprehension skills, particularly in English, of the majority of children improved as the intervention progressed. Some improvements were evident in the te reo Māori story comprehension results for most of the children, although the gains made on this task were not as substantial as those made in the English assessment. These findings are an indication of the dominance of the English language for each child participating in this research. Illustrating this dominance further are the results of the story retell task in te reo Māori, where the researcher was unable to obtain an oral language sample of the children telling the story in te reo Māori. However, they could answer the comprehension questions in English, which indicates they could understand the story, despite their inability to retell it in te reo Māori. The results from the English story retell assessment are mixed, and few solid conclusions were able to be drawn from these about the efficacy of the intervention in strengthening this particular skill. However, it is possible that running the intervention for a longer period of time would reveal the effect of the intervention in creating positive shifts in the children’s ability. The findings from the various series of data reported in this thesis, interpreted through both statistical and sociocultural lenses, overwhelmingly indicate that the intervention trialled in this work had a substantial effect on the phonological awareness skills, and aspects of oral language proficiency, of the children participating in this study. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate that the intervention was successful in generating positive shifts in the home literacy environments and whānau literacy practices, both of which, it was revealed, have an impact on children’s foundational literacy skills. It was stated at the outset that literacy is a fundamental human right, critical to accessing other human rights, and a key contributor to self-determination. Therefore, the overarching contention put forward in this work is that the intervention strengthens the emerging literacy of preschool children exposed to English and te reo Māori, and in turn, fosters an ability to access human rights, and to exercise self-determination. Additionally, this study illustrates that aspects of Māori history, epistemology, and traditional pedagogical approaches and practices can be utilised in contemporary whānau settings to support the foundational literacy skills of preschool Māori children.Item Open Access Exploring the opportunities and challenges of the digital world for early childhood services with vulnerable children(2018) Harris L; Davis N; Cunningham U; de Vocht L; Macfarlane S; Gregory N; Aukuso S; Ova Taleni T; Dobson J© 2018, MDPI AG. All rights reserved. Potentially addictive behaviours supported by the internet and mobile phones raise concerns in education services for early childhood. Although there is evidence that screen media can distract the attention of young children, there was a massive uptake of digital devices by early childhood centres (ECCs). We investigated practices of families (n = 85) and of six ECCs serving vulnerable children in New Zealand, many of whom are emergent bilinguals. Descriptions of the limited and exemplary choice of screen media of the ECCs include digital portfolios containing children’s learning stories in multiple languages illustrated with digital photos. This was facilitated by increasing partnership with the families and the inclusion of their languages in the physical and digital landscapes of the ECCs. However, these families and the ECCs are seeking additional guidance to face the complex challenges of the digital world. These early findings from our national research programme, A Better Start, E Tipu E Rea, already informed significant changes in the ECCs; we also identified the potential for young children to act as agents of change.Item Open Access Languages seen are languages used: The linguistic landscapes of early childhood centres(2018) Harris L; Cunningham U; Davis N'Linguistic landscapes' is the term used to describe all the visible language in signs and displays seen in particular areas such as a local street and, more recently, educational spaces (Gorter, 2017; Landry and Bourhis, 1997).Item Open Access Patterns of early primary school-based literacy interventions among Pacific children from a nationwide health screening programme of 4 year olds(2018) Schluter P; Kokaua J; Tautolo E-S; Richards R; Taleni T; Kim HM; Audas R; McNeill B; Taylor B; Gillon GLiteracy success is critical to unlocking a child’s potential and enhancing their future wellbeing. Thus, the early identification and redressing of literacy needs is vital. Pacific children have, on average, the lowest literacy achievement levels in New Zealand. However, this population is very diverse. This study sought to determine whether the current national health screening programme of pre-school children could be used as an early detection tool of Pacific children with the greatest literacy needs. Time-to-event analyses of literacy intervention data for Pacific children born in years 2005–2011 were employed. A multivariable Cox proportional hazard model was ftted, and predictive assessment made using training and test datasets. Overall, 59,760 Pacific children were included, with 6,861 (11.5%) receiving at least one literacy intervention. Tongan (hazard ratio [HR]: 1.33; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.23, 1.45) and Cook Island Māori (HR: 1.33; 95% CI: 1.21, 1.47) children were more likely to receive an intervention than Samoan children; whereas those children with both Pacific and non-Pacific ethnic identifications were less likely. However, the multivariable model lacked reasonable predictive power (Harrell’s c-statistic: 0.592; 95% CI: 0.583, 0.602). Regardless, important Pacific sub-populations emerged who would benefit from targeted literacy intervention or policy implementation.Item Open Access Language, Ethnicity, and Belonging for the Children of Migrants in New Zealand(2018) Cunningham U; King JThe children of migrants grow up with influence from at least two cultures, and they must negotiate their path to adulthood through one or more ethnicities and one or more language varieties that may set them apart from the majority population. We asked how teenagers born to migrant parents in an English-speaking context appeal to the cultures and/or ethnicities they identify with to explain their language choices and perceptions of belonging. More than 50 interviews were carried out with teenagers who identified as speakers of the minority language of their parents (Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Korean, or Spanish), and one or both parents of such young people. The focus of the interviews was the minority language, but they became narratives of belonging. Thematic analysis of the transcribed and (where necessary) translated interviews revealed patterns in the perceptions of the teens and their parents. The reported self-perceived proficiency of the teenagers in the minority language, their perception of their ethnicity (particularly but not exclusively for the Chinese and Korean teens) and the culture of the host country, diasporic, and home country communities- were factors in when and how the teens chose to use the minority language, and in how they identified as, for example, Dutch. More than 160 languages are spoken in New Zealand; 25% of the population was born elsewhere, yet the country is one of the most monolingual in the world. This study reveals tensions affecting the willingness of New Zealand–born young people to openly identify with their parents’ ethnicity and to use their languages. Lessons learned from those who raised bilingual children in New Zealand in the face of minimal official support and overwhelming pressure from English will be valuable to other parents and caregivers in New Zealand and elsewhere.Item Open Access The Intergenerational Transmission of Minority Languages Project(University of Canterbury. New Zealand Institute of Language, Brain & Behaviour, 2015) King, J.; Cunningham, U.