While there is a significant number of Pasifika secondary students in Auckland, there are also over 100 secondary schools across New Zealand which have Pasifika student populations of between 5-10% and / or between 30-70 Pasifika students. Equally, these populations can be diverse with a range of Pasifika ethnicities represented. Increasingly there are students carrying more than one Pacific ethnicity or other ethnicities. The Pasifika Education Plans since 2001 have highlighted the role of schools to support Pasifika students to maintain their languages and cultures. Nationally, supporting Pasifika languages in secondary schools has mostly focused on where there are larger Pasifika populations, rather than smaller groups of Pasifika students.

The thesis responds to the Pasifika Education Plan by implementing a junior Samoan language class in a secondary school with a small and diverse Pasifika population. It explores culturally responsive practice through reflective and reflexive practitioner research. Teu le va (to value and nurture) was used as a pedagogy and methodology. This was the approach used to support relationships and reciprocity with the research participants. The overall methodology used was action research with a focus on practitioner research. The findings are shared using the metaphor of O le fa’asolo a Mānaia. Each of the findings’ chapters builds the metaphor and examines the supports, challenges, and effects of the implementation.

The project was three years from 2015 to 2018. There were three phases: the Initial Phase, Evolving Phase and New Model Phase. The main outcome was the junior Samoan language class evolved to create a new multilingual and multilevel Pasifika languages space (va). The findings do not categorise themselves precisely into supports, challenges and effects hence the findings are presented under the themes of the collaboration of schools; linguistic and cultural development; parents’ support and engagement; effective bi-cultural teacher and student leadership collaboration and professional development; diversity; funding uncertainty, class size justifications and time constraints; a transformative paradigm; and the evolution into a new teaching and learning space.