A Heideggerian Analysis in the Teaching of Science to Maori Students
He Kupu 1 (3):31-43 (
2007)
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Abstract
Teachers frequently find that their teaching is
unsuccessful with a particular group of students. This paper
describes how Heidegger’s ontology was useful to teachers as
they developed a distance education platform to teach
astronomy to culturally diverse Aotearoa New Zealand
secondary school students. Māori students do not perform well
within their State’s model of normalising education, and
academic authors ascribe this “failure” to the effects of cultural
difference and imperialism. This paper conjectures that Māori are
not merely “culturally different” but that they represent a
metaphysical heritage that is akin to that described as Greek
metaphysics by Heidegger. There are cultural artefacts and
practices that serve for modern Māori in a way that parallels
Heidegger’s account of the ancient Greeks. Māori may represent
an ontological tradition that stands completely outside of
Western metaphysics. If the conjecture is correct, normalising
education is unlikely to ever to be satisfactory for Māori.