Tapasā

🧭 What Tapasā Is

Tapasā was developed by the Ministry of Education with Pacific communities and education practitioners through a series of talanoa workshops, and published in 2018. Since 2019 it has been stewarded by the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand, which hosts it alongside the Standards for the Teaching Profession and the Code of Professional Responsibility. It is designed primarily to support non-Pacific teachers, leaders and boards to engage with Pacific learners in culturally responsive ways — though it speaks to every teacher of Pacific learners across early learning, primary and secondary settings.

Two of its choices signal its character. Only two Pacific-language words structure the whole document: tapasā (Sāmoan — compass, guide) and turu (from Cook Islands Māori — a stake or post that holds something up). The framework is meant to be exactly that practical: a small number of load-bearing posts, each anchored by concrete, observable behaviours.

Tapasā works from the premise that “Pacific” is an umbrella, not a description: under it sit the distinct identities, languages and cultures of Sāmoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Fiji, Niue, Tokelau, Tuvalu and more — recent migrants, long-settled families and the New Zealand-born, increasingly with multi-ethnic heritages. Effective teaching responds to the ethnic-specific and the shared, never to the stereotype.

🏛️ Ngā Turu — The Three Competencies

Each turu is distinct, but in practice they are interwoven — observable all at once in a single learning activity, and needing to be considered together to demonstrate real change in thinking and practice.

📋 The Indicators — Where the Framework Earns Its Keep

The three turu are deliberately broad — “respectful relationships” alone tells you little about Monday morning. The working layer of Tapasā is its 59 indicators of teacher behaviour, mapped across four stages of the teaching journey:

Every indicator opens with a verb — understand, demonstrate, use evidence, engage, support — and after the verb comes something tangible to learn or do. That construction is the point: when a broad turu leaves you asking “but how?”, you look down at the indicators for your career stage and find a specific, observable behaviour to work on. Teachers carry the indicators of every stage up to their current one.

And the bar is genuinely high. One experienced-teacher indicator under Turu 1 (1.15) expects the teacher to support Pacific learners, their families and communities to understand Pacific peoples' relationship to Te Tiriti o Waitangi — specific, demanding knowledge that most teachers would need to deliberately seek out. Tapasā is not a one-workshop experience; it is a career-length voyage.

🪞 Working With Tapasā — Knowing Yourself First

Tapasā assumes teachers who understand their own distinctiveness, identity and culture in deep and meaningful ways — because only then can they genuinely engage with the identities, languages and cultures of others. Knowing yourself is not only self-reflection: it means understanding your own biases, prejudices and actions of privileging. Among the framework's working assumptions, teachers:

• recognise that good outcomes depend on good teaching practice — and that addressing educational inequality requires a change in thinking and practice, not just goodwill;
• understand that culture is more than ethnicity and race — culture is not the domain of “others” or minority groups; every teacher has culture too;
• hold a strong understanding of and commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Standards for the Teaching Profession and the Code of Professional Responsibility;
• place each learner's identities, languages and cultures at the centre of effective pedagogy for Pacific success and wellbeing;
• are aware that Pacific learners learn differently from each other and from their non-Pacific peers — no single “Pacific learning style” exists;
• treat critical reflection and cycles of review as part of effective pedagogy, not an add-on.

🗣️ What Pacific Learners Say a Good Teacher Does

During the 2017 sector consultation on the draft framework, Pacific learners (Years 7–13) and Pacific parents described the “good teacher.” Their words anchor the whole document:

• understands that my identity, language and culture is important to me
• pronounces my name and words in my language properly
• does not make fun of my or my parents' limited English if we don't speak it fluently
• makes an effort to learn and use simple words like ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ in my language
• knows that I want my parents to be part of my learning journey — and that my parents value being part of it
• does research to know more about me, my family, my culture and the island nation(s) we come from
• understands the values that are important to me, such as faith, spirituality and family
• knows that I want to learn — but in a way and at a pace that is suitable for me

🌊 Pacific Pedagogical Frameworks Within Tapasā

Tapasā closes by pointing teachers to Pacific pedagogical and research models developed by Pacific scholars — frameworks that bring Pacific worldviews to classroom practice rather than retrofitting them. Among them is Tanya Wendt Samu's Pasifika Interface Model (1998), which places the teacher at the interface between the Pacific learner and the school, and maps which of the variables shaping that learner's experience a teacher can and cannot control.

Tapasā also borrows its concept of cultural locatedness — shifting learning, teaching and practice into spaces that culturally “fit” and are receptive to the learner — directly from Tātaiako, its older sibling for teachers of Māori learners. The two frameworks are structurally akin and are best read together: Tātaiako first, then Tapasā.

📚 References & Source Documents

• Ministry of Education. (2018). Tapasā: Cultural competencies framework for teachers of Pacific learners. Wellington: Ministry of Education. Relaunched 2019 under the stewardship of the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand.
  🎓 Teaching Council — Tapasā ↗
• Ministry of Education. (2013). Pasifika Education Plan 2013–2017. Wellington: Ministry of Education. — the strategy Tapasā builds on, including the Pasifika Success Compass.
• Wendt Samu, T. (2026, June 9). Supporting Pacific learners in Aotearoa New Zealand schools [Lecture]. EDPROFST 614A/B, Waipapa Taumata Rau — University of Auckland.