Practising Pacific pedagogies during New Zealand's level four lockdown: Pacific early career academics and COVID-19

Abstract

During New Zealand’s unprecedented level-four lockdown, opportunities to practise Pacific pedagogies in New Zealand universities required creative and innovative solutions from Pacific academics. This paper brings together the experiences of teaching during this lockdown from a cross-section of Pacific Early Career Academics (PECA) across a wide range of disciplines and schools at New Zealand’s largest university. This paper argues that despite the challenges, PECA found ways to adapt Pacific pedagogical concepts through online delivery methods; however, their ability to effectively do this was severely influenced by existing socio-economic inequities that disproportionately impacted Pacific students. PECA continued to nurture the vā/wā with students in innovative ways, but they still encountered major challenges that will require more careful consideration of equity issues by New Zealand universities moving forward.