This thesis is a retrospective review and analysis of the processes and information gathered and used by the Ministry of Education in its development of Pasifika education strategic plans from 1993 to 2009. This is a high level strategic analysis, adopting interdisciplinary approaches from across the social sciences particularly from education, public policy and management, and Pacific studies. It draws on information gathered by the Ministry of Education through talanoa ako (consultation), ngaahi fekumi (literature review) and ngaahi ngāue (policy stocktake), to review whether Pasifika strategic plan development met Pasifika and non-Pasifika requirements; fulfilled authorising environments’ expectations; created public value and leadership across the education sector; and, identified what worked and why. The thesis draws upon Tongan and Pasifika values and methodologies and demonstrates how these integrate and create value across Pasifika and non-Pasifika worlds, using tools specifically created to address the methodological challenges in this thesis. The thesis finds that it is important to formulate Pasifika strategic plans with Pasifika communities, and that the Pasifika Education Plans worked in focusing the Ministry of Education and consequently the education sector on Pasifika students, parents, families and communities’ education expectations and aspirations. Keys to successful Pasifika education plan formulation included engaging Pasifika students, parents, families and communities in education discourses; improving the education workforce’s responses to Pasifika peoples; placing Pasifika learners at the centre of pedagogy and epistemology; faster scaling up of what worked in raising participation, engagement and achievement; and, having more choice for Pasifika communities to realise their education potential and exercise their voice at all levels of education governance and decision making. It identifies the successful coordinating factor to be the growing of champions and leaders within the Ministry of Education, Pasifika communities and in the education sector to lead and sustain change through ownership, responsibility, accountability and monitoring for Pasifika success.

This study is a conceptual analysis of specific terms and constructs that have become entrenched within education policy and practice in New Zealand within the 21st century – namely diversity , and Pasifika education. It is uncommon for users of these terms (educators, policy makers and researchers) to make their understandings and use of such terms explicit. In the absence of close and careful critique, limited and partial understandings of groups of learners constructed as diverse and different escape interrogation. The overall risks of this lack of conceptual clarity are: simplification and even misapprehensions of key dimensions of groups such as Pasifika learners and their communities. This results in unarticulated assumptions having undue influence over educators’, policymakers’ and researchers’ perspectives and their subsequent decision-making. The philosophical research questions of this study are addressed through a deconstructivist research framework that draws on the theorisations of J.R. Martin; M. Foucault’s theorisations relating to the historical analysis of ideas; and discourse theorising of a primarily post-structuralist nature. Six analyses were developed in order to address the research questions. Three focused on the level of national policies, macro-level influences, and post-colonial indigenous visioning. Three analyses are based on a selection of narrative accounts of Samoan women across time and space, examining education as a process of change, and its effects on personal identity and culture. The study critically reflects on the underlying values and belief systems of both policy and practice. It identifies and examines the tension between the state’s priorities for the provision of education for Pasifika peoples on the one hand, and Pasifika peoples’ motivations for pursuing and participating in education on the other. This is done in an effort to challenge complacency, provide alternative perspectives, deepen insights and strengthen understandings amongst those actively engaged as educators, policy makers and researchers in the education and development of Pasifika peoples in Aotearoa New Zealand.