Making it personal: Academic counseling with Māori students and their families

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Highlights

  • Teacher–student relationship quality affected respect, interactions and trust.

  • Achievement-focused relationships rely on collective vision, efficacy and action.

  • Goal setting, future planning, progress review, and celebrating success were key.

  • School–home relations enhance student motivation, self-efficacy, and achievement.

  • A comprehensive academic advising program could be successful in other contexts.

Abstract

The engagement of indigenous students and their families has often been a challenge for mainstream schools. Many indigenous students and their parents have reported a sense of disconnection from educational contexts due to a lack of personalized or ongoing relationships with the teachers or the school. There are indications in the literature that well-conducted academic counseling can increase engagement with students and their families. However, despite the evidence, New Zealand research has shown that many students do not receive any form of academic counseling. This study examined the effectiveness of an academic counseling intervention from the perspective of 78 Māori students in 12 focus groups and school reported attendance data. The results of the study indicated that Māori students appreciated enduring achievement-focused relationships with teachers that were premised on three factors: 1) collective vision—the degree to which all parties were committed to equipping students with the skills to achieve academic excellence; 2) collective efficacy—the judgment that all three parties could organize and execute the actions required to have a positive effect on Māori students; and 3) coordinated and timely collective action—the belief that all parties had a role to play in actively supporting Māori student achievement.

Introduction

International research has increasingly indicated that schools and teachers working closely with students and their families is critical in promoting achievement motivation and academic success (Goodall, Vorhaus, 2011, Hattie, 2009). As such, educational jurisdictions and individual schools are placing more emphasis on closer home–school–student relationships. In Finland, which has a reputation for very high student achievement, there is time allocated within the working week for teachers to engage in a cooperative manner with families to work collectively on behalf of students (Sahlberg, 2011). The idea that parent involvement is integral to indigenous student success has also been supported in the field of indigenous education (Bishop, Glynn, 1999, Lea et al, 2011, Yeung et al, 2013).

Despite the research, and some attempts by individual schools, many educational institutions have struggled to engage with indigenous students and their families to create an environment suitable for the pursuit of academic achievement. Principals and teachers have perceived that there are a number of challenges when engaging indigenous students and their families related to cultural differences; generational educational disadvantage; and factors related to health, welfare, and socioeconomic status (Bishop et al, 2009, Santoro et al, 2011). Not addressing these challenges has resulted in schools holding low expectations of both student achievement and parent involvement (Bishop et al, 2009, Lea et al, 2011). This position has led to a sense of disconnection by many indigenous school students and left their families feeling that they have no personalized or ongoing relationships with teachers at school.

This study, on implementing an academic counseling intervention with Māori (indigenous) students, came from a larger project, The Starpath Project for Tertiary Participation and Success (known as Starpath: http://www.education.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/research/starpath-home.html). Starpath offers a school-wide program focusing on raising the academic achievement of students in low socioeconomic schools with high proportions of Māori and Pacific Island (those whose origin is one of the Pacific Islands, e.g., Samoa or Tonga) students. As part of the larger intervention, schools were asked to implement academic counseling and parent–student–teacher conferences. Students' learning pathways, academic goals, and the progress made toward meeting them, were discussed during the conversations. Research overseas (Ayres, 1994, Butler, 2009, Cole, 1992) and in New Zealand (McKinley et al., 2009) had shown that academic counseling was an effective way to build and maintain relationships within, and across, the school community.

In relation to Māori culture, academic counseling can be seen as a culturally relevant response to engaging with Māori students and their families. Significant cultural concepts can be addressed through these individualized, in-depth conversations with one teacher who knows the student and family circumstances. These include relationship building (whanaungatanga), face-to-face conversations (kanohi ki kanohi), respect and status (mana), and shame of being singled out for failure (whakama) or humiliated (whakaiti) in front of classmates. The sense of teachers, students, and parents being able to work together leads to ‘family’ (whānau) connections built through shared experiences and working together (Mead, 2003).

The literature suggests that there are different terms used to refer to academic counseling including developmental or prescriptive counseling (Coll, 2008), mentoring, and coaching (Thomas, Smith, 2009, Tolhurst, 2010, Zachary, 2011) and advising (Young-Jones, Burt, Dixon, & Hawthorne, 2013). However, regardless of the terminology, an effective counseling, mentoring, coaching or advising process should help students to identify personal strengths and interests related to their educational and career goals. Academic counseling (the term adopted for this research project) “generally refers to trained professionals counseling students on their academic plans for course-taking while in secondary school as well as for postsecondary education” (Hughes & Karp, 2004, p. 3).

High fidelity and consistency in delivery are seen as key features of a good academic counseling program (Campbell & Brigman, 2005). Campbell and Brigman found that there were several ways to ensure fidelity and consistency, including academic counselor training, the development of a manual, and the inclusion of a structured model for each academic counseling session.

There are indications that well-conducted academic counseling can be a very effective intervention in raising student achievement because it ensures that students do not find out too late that they have closed off their preferred career options, and has the potential to increase student motivation and engagement. Dykeman, Wood, Ingram, and Herr (2003) surveyed students at 20 high schools in the USA about their levels of participation in 44 types of career development interventions, which they divided into four categories: field interventions (e.g., job shadowing), introductory interventions (e.g., career aptitude assessment and career days), curriculum interventions (e.g., career information or skills infused into the curriculum), and advising interventions. They found that only the advising category, that is, interventions that assisted students with their educational or occupational planning, could be shown to have any significant effect on academic motivation. A synthesis of school-based career development literature by Hughes and Karp (2004) noted many positive findings for academic counseling, suggesting that it is effective because it helps students to understand the connections between their goals and the academic steps they need to take toward them. Scheel and Gonzalez (2007) also provided evidence that students who saw their school activities as a good fit with, and contributing to, their future aspirations were more academically motivated. Working with students individually has been shown to be particularly beneficial (Whiston, Sexton, & Lasoff, 1998).

Although the literature indicates that there is a need for systematic academic advice in schools, studies have suggested that many students receive little counseling of this type and carry out their educational planning haphazardly (Scheel & Gonzalez, 2007). In the New Zealand Competent Children, Competent Learners study (Wylie & Hipkins, 2006), 28% of Year 9 and 10 students and their parents said they would have liked more guidance when making subject choices. This percentage was reportedly higher for Māori and Pacific Island students, and those students whose mothers had a lower level of education. The fact that many students do not receive academic counseling is no doubt partly a matter of its availability in schools. Often it may be the case, though, that academic advising (in at least some form) is technically available, but that it is left up to students to self-refer for help. Similarly, a major qualitative study undertaken by the Starpath project (Madjar, McKinley, Jensen, & Van Der Merwe, 2009) investigated how course choices were made in New Zealand schools that served students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, which included significant numbers of Māori students. The findings of this study indicated that parents and caregivers, as well as many students, lacked a comprehensive understanding of the qualification system and its implementation in schools, and often did not fully appreciate the implications of particular subject choices. The study demonstrated that students could easily be diverted down pathways that made it difficult for them to fulfill their aspirations for future study and careers. The report strongly endorsed the need for an adequately resourced academic advisory system, coupled with the systematic monitoring of student achievement, course choices, and goals, to be discussed with students and their parents at regular intervals throughout their school career.

Conducting academic counseling with students, particularly one-on-one advising, can afford school personnel the opportunity to develop closer relationships with students, which can have many benefits. A meta-analysis of 119 studies found an association between positive teacher–student relationships and a range of positive cognitive and behavioral student outcomes (Cornelius-White, 2007). In the New Zealand context, improving relationships in schools was the main focus of the Te Kotahitanga program (now in place in more than 50 New Zealand secondary schools) which has been successful in raising Māori students' achievement levels. Māori students (and their families) who were interviewed in the initial stages of the project overwhelmingly saw the quality of their relationships with their teachers as the main influence on their educational achievement (Bishop & Berryman, 2006). The integral nature of relationships (whakawhanaungatanga) to Māori student learning (Macfarlane, Webber, Cookson-Cox, & McRae, 2014) and Māori family–school partnerships (Bishop & Glynn, 2000) has been well documented. Bishop and Glynn (2000) have asserted that when enduring relationships are established in schools between Māori students, Māori families, and teachers, a pattern of interactions develops where commitment and connectedness become paramount, and collective responsibility for learning is fostered. Other studies which have asked high school students for their views on what makes a difference to their levels of engagement in school have also identified good relationships with school faculty as fundamental (Cushman, 2005, Daniels, Arapostathis, 2005). A study carried out in the USA using data on almost 15,000 students who were tracked over six years found that a strong relationship with a teacher, counselor, or administrator in high school could help propel students to college or other postsecondary education (Wimberly, 2002). Students who formed good relationships with teachers or other faculty had higher educational aspirations and were more likely to be involved in postsecondary education two years after finishing school. Such relationships can help students take advantage of educational opportunities and develop beliefs in the value of education. Wimberly (2002, p. 16) stresses that all students “need to know that an interested adult… is available to them and is one who understands their concerns, continually helps them consider and explore educational and career goals, and wants to help them pursue their education and career objectives”.

However, academic counseling is seen in the literature as also involving parents. In the “High Schools That Work” initiative, the inclusion of parents and families in academic counseling meetings was recommended (Bottoms & Feagin, 2003). Darling-Hammond (2010) has identified that continuous, long-term relationships between adults and students, and advisory systems that systematically organize counseling, academic supports, and family connections are essential for students to be known and understood by their teachers. Involving parents is also repeatedly recommended in the literature on academic counseling because it can help parents understand what their child needs to do in order to succeed at school, and how they can support them in doing this (Grubb, Lara, & Valdez, 2002).

Although connections with families are part of the research, there exists little work on the effectiveness of parental involvement and what their best role might be. Hattie (2009) found that parents have a major effect on student learning through their encouragement and the expectations they transmit to their children. However, he also noted that parents “struggle to comprehend the language of learning and thus are disadvantaged in the methods they use to encourage their children to attain their expectations” (p. 70). In other words, parent aspirations and expectations for their children's academic performance have a strong relationship with achievement. Hattie also found that communication, such as asking questions, showing an interest in schoolwork, and discussing progress, had a moderate sized effect on student achievement and, therefore, was an important element for student learning. Other types of parental involvement, such as supervising homework, had a weak relationship with achievement. These results indicated that schools should be working in partnership with parents to ensure they hold expectations that are appropriately high and challenging, and schools should work with students and families to help realize these expectations. In order to achieve this, schools need to work with parents to increase their understanding of the language of schooling.

In New Zealand, a review of the evidence concluded that parental involvement in school programs could have a positive impact on student achievement when the programs enhanced parent understandings of how to help their child educationally and respected their dignity and cultural values (Biddulph, Biddulph, & Biddulph, 2003). Parent–teacher interviews are one means of involving parents in their children's schooling. However, it has been found that many parents find these meetings unsatisfactory, with miscommunication and conflicting agendas common (Power, Clark, 2000, Walker, 1998). Parents frequently find that the time allotted to speak to teachers is too short to be productive. Various alternative models for these meetings appear in the literature, most of which advocate involving the student in some way. However, there is very little research on the effectiveness of parent–teacher interviews (in any format) in terms of student outcomes, and that which does exist tends to focus on elementary school children.

The objectives of the wider Starpath Project were to identify, test, and develop strategies to reduce or remove barriers that stood in the way of educational achievement for Māori, Pacific Island, and other low income students in New Zealand high schools. New Zealand is recognized for the quality of its compulsory education but it continues to demonstrate low equity in educational outcomes, with Māori and Pacific Island students lagging behind their European and Asian peers (McKinley & Hoskins, 2011).

Early in the Starpath project, poor parental–school engagement was identified as a possible barrier to improved student achievement. Hence, the traditional “parent–teacher report evening” was redesigned as one of a suite of interrelated strategies. Similarly, the lack of student–teacher academic guidance was identified as a barrier to student academic planning and goal attainment. As such, the main aim of the two- and three-way academic counseling was to achieve greater collective vision by increasing parental involvement in their children's academic progress, and helping them make plans and aspirations beyond school. Furthermore, it was intended to refocus school–family contact away from behavioral problems and onto academic achievement. A second aim was to provide a platform for communication with parents and whānau (extended family), and to work with parents to increase their understanding of the language of schooling (Hattie, 2009).

The academic counseling strategy was implemented and evaluated in the first Starpath partnership school (McKinley et al, 2009, Smith, 2009). The success of the academic counseling strategy encouraged Starpath to upscale the work and include it as part of the whole project in 39 other partner schools. This study reports only on Māori engagement in the academic counseling component of the overall Starpath initiative. The paper draws on two sets of data: the Parent–Student–Teacher Conferencing data from 26 of the 39 Starpath partnership high schools which had more than 20% Māori students, and Māori student focus group data from 10 of the 39 Starpath schools.

Section snippets

Design of the intervention—the academic counseling program

The academic counseling program was designed in two parts. The first part consisted of the restructured parent–student–teacher (PST) conferences, sometimes known as three-way conversations, in which parent(s) or caregiver(s) and their child met with their child's home room teacher for an in-depth overview about the child's progress across all subject areas. At the meeting, the home room teacher had a comprehensive academic profile for each student, put together by the student's individual

Students' views of good academic counseling

Students were clear in the focus groups about what they liked in their academic counseling and what they thought did not work. What students found to be most effective was having one-on-one time with a teacher and having a “good conversation”—a little and often—and being pushed gently into reconsidering their options. One student explained:

I was thinking about dropping my statistics class, but my form teacher encouraged me to keep going just in case. […] he was like, “Oh you could get more

Contribution to the literature

This study has shown the impact that students believed academic counseling could have on their progress and on their ability to achieve not just academic, but also, life goals. Although it was generally agreed that the students liked the idea of what academic counseling could offer them, they were also acutely aware that the relationships between student, teacher, and parents were a key factor in the effect academic counseling could have on their achievement. Relationships, or whanaungatanga,

Conclusion

These findings highlighted threads that are useful in identifying how to engage indigenous students and their parents in effective relationships. The program has been successful with a deeper engagement and commitment from parents of Māori students, which has been shown as a key factor to increase student achievement. The increase in the numbers of parents attending the PST conferences was sizeable, and more in-depth conversations were undertaken because of the longer appointment times. A

Acknowledgments

This article forms part of the Starpath Project for Tertiary Participation and Success, established in 2005 as a Partnership for Excellence between the University of Auckland and the New Zealand Government, and administered by the Tertiary Education Commission. As a research and development project, Starpath is designed to identify and reduce or remove barriers that contribute to lower rates of participation and success in degree-level education by Māori (indigenous), Pacific Island, and other

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