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Ma ka hana ka ike perpetuating excellence in Native Hawaiian education: Native Hawaiian Education Council members' approaches to supporting the needs of Native Hawaiians

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Ma ka hana ka ike perpetuating excellence in Native Hawaiian education: Native Hawaiian Education Council members' approaches to supporting the needs of Native Hawaiians

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Content Running head: EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 1

Copyright 2016 Jaymee Nanasi Feinga

MA KA HANA KA IKE PERPETUATING EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN
EDUCATION: NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION COUNCIL MEMBERS’ APPROACHES
TO SUPPORTING THE NEEDS OF NATIVE HAWAIIANS

By

Jaymee Nanasi Feinga

________________________________________________________________________

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

December 2016

EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 2
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I acknowledge all who added to my accumulated social capital, specifically those within
my social network who openly provided me with resources, including emotional, physical,
spiritual and cultural supports, to complete my dissertation. In alignment with the Hawaiian
participants in Foley and O’Connor’s (2013) study, I’d like to thank my bonding network. First,
my family for their unconditional love and backing. Without my mom and her bonding network
(aka her friends, classmates, childhood connections, and co-workers), none of this would have
been possible. To the rest of my `ohana, I apologize for all the missed dinners, performances,
meetings, events, and everything else. Second, my mentor, Dr. ‘Alohi Okamura, for pushing me,
showing me the way, and always reminding me about who I represent. Third, the Native
Hawaiian Education Council members who are dedicated to the perpetuation of Native Hawaiian
education, and allowed a novice, naive, country girl into the threshold of excellence. The weight
and privilege of their words of wisdom are a kuleana that I am honored to carry.
Finally, I am grateful to be one of the few Natives who admit to leveraging my bridging
networks. To my formal expert and chairperson, Dr. Julie Slayton, thank you for demanding
excellence and providing me with the supports needed to succeed. Dr. Slayton is instrumental in
the expansion of my overall capacity as a thinker and researcher. She exemplifies the attributes
of a great teacher, mentor, and role model… my life will never be the same… you have set the
standard extremely high. Partnered with Dr. Lui Hokoana and Dr. Artineh Samkian, on my
committee, I express heartfelt gratitude and know our relationship will foster great work in the
future. Included with lessons on persistence and endurance by my CrossFit KBlock coaches,
which had an active role in my dissertation, I believe I will make a difference in the Native
Hawaiian community.
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 3
TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables 5
List of Figures 6
Abstract 7
Chapter One: Overview of the Study 9
Background of the Problem 9
Context of NHEA 9
Title VII-The Native Hawaiian Education Act 15
Statement of the Problem 19
Purpose of the Study 19
Research Questions 20
Importance of the Study 20
Definitions of Terms 21
Chapter Two: Literature Review 22
Culturally Based Education 23
Culture of Power 24
Culturally Based Education for Native Students 28
Definition of Culturally Based Education 29
Types of Culturally Based Education Programs 32
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy 34
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy 36
Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy 39
Conclusion 41
Social Capital 42
Bourdieu 43
Coleman 44
Social Capital and Educational Policy Implementation 48
Social Capital and Indigenous People 52
Conclusion 56
Indigenous Leadership 57
Framing Indigenous Research 58
Indigenous Women in Leadership 62
Concepts for Indigenous Educational Leadership 66
Conclusion 76
Conceptual Framework 78
Culturally Based Education 79
Social Capital 81
Indigenous Leadership 82
Conceptualizing Approaches 84
Chapter Three: Methods 87
Research Design 88
Sample 89
Instrumentation and Data Collection 92
Data Analysis 94
Limitation 98
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 4
Delimitations 98
Credibility and Trustworthiness 99
Ethics 100
Conclusion 103
Chapter Four: Findings 104
Perceived Roles 106
Finding 1: Community Impact 108
Finding 2: Culturally Based Educational Programs 113
Conclusion 134
Enacting Roles 137
Theme 1: Bonding Network Focused 141
Theme 2: Bonding and Bridging Networks 158
Conclusion 168
Summary 171
Chapter Five: Discussion 173
Implications and Recommendations 175
Implications for Practice 177
Implications for Policy 181
Implications for Research 182
Conclusions 184
References 186
Appendix A: Interview Protocol 192
Appendix B: Informed Consent 194

EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 5
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Indigenous Educational Leadership Framework 70

EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 6
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure A: Conceptual Framework 86

EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 7
ABSTRACT
The Native Hawaiian Education Act (NHEA) is a federal policy created in an effort to
improve the educational outcomes of Native Hawaiian people by recognizing the unique
historical, social, and cultural context of Native Hawaiian people (Native Hawaiian Education
Act, 2004). The federal government, through the enactment of the NHEA, supports culturally
based educational efforts to enhance schooling for Native Hawaiian students, which includes the
use of Native language and culture in the classroom to improve the academic outcomes of Native
students.
The NHEA established the Native Hawaiian Education Council (Council), a 21-member
statewide consortium, to “coordinate, assess and make recommendations to perpetuate
excellence in Native Hawaiian education” (Native Hawaiian Education Council, 2014, para. 15).
This study asked the following research questions: What do members of the NHEC perceive to
be their role in “perpetuating excellence in Native Hawaiian education” (Native Hawaiian
Education Council, 2014, para. 15) as Council members and as individual community members
to support or develop educational initiatives to benefit Native Hawaiians? How do they see
themselves enacting their roles in relation to this agenda as individuals and members of the
Council? This multi-case study examined interviews from 10 members or 50% of the Council to
answer research questions. The findings from this study revealed that, in general, Council
members described their roles to impact their community by improving the education of Native
Hawaiians through culturally based educational programs or initiatives. Yet, beyond those
general agreements, there was variation in Council members’ perspective of the role of Native
Hawaiian language and culture within educational efforts, which influenced their understanding
of culturally based education. Furthermore, Council members discussed enacting their roles as
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 8
Council members or as individual community members by leveraging their relationships within
their self-defined communities to enact their perceived roles.

EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 9
CHAPTER ONE: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY
The Council works to bridge the educational needs of the Native Hawaiian community
with the financial resources of the federal government. This study examines the way Native
Hawaiian Educational Council members go about “perpetuating excellence in Native Hawaiian
education” as Council members and as individual community members. I argue that the way
Native Hawaiian Educational Council members approach their work to improve the educational
outcomes of Native Hawaiian students, both individually and collectively, is a reflection of their
beliefs regarding culturally based education, their utilization of social capital resources, and their
practice of Indigenous leadership. I assume that Council members’ work includes the support or
development of educational initiatives that benefit Native Hawaiians.
In this chapter, I set the context of this study by discussing the background of the NHEA
and the Council. I also present the purpose of the study, research questions, and importance of
the study, limitations, delimitations, and definition of key terms.
Background of the Problem
This section lays the foundation for examining the way members of the Council seek to
reach their individual and collective goals by providing a historical context of the NHEA. I
present factors that support the enactment of NHEA, which include: 1) The Native Hawaiian
Educational Assessment Project of 1983; 2) Culture of power theory; and 3) Culturally based
education. Next, I discuss the history of NHEA, beginning with the Native Hawaiian Education
Act of 1988; then, reauthorizations of the act; and finally, the current version of the act as Title
IV-The Native Hawaiian Education Act.
Context for NHEA
The change from the traditional Hawaiian place-based transmission of knowledge to a
western educational system of standardized tests, curriculum, and content has alienated Native
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 10
Hawaiian children (Kamehameha Schools, 2005). Marginalization and socioeconomic adversity
continues to affect Native Hawaiian engagement and trust in formal institutions such as schools
(Kana`iaupuni, Malone, & Ishibashi, 2005). Hawai`i’s history led to the development of the
NHEA as a means to improve the political relationship of trust between the United States and the
Native Hawaiian people by addressing the educational needs of Native Hawaiians (Native
Hawaiian Education Act, 2004).
There were several historical events that Congress pointed to as an explanation for the
enactment of NHEA. First, Congress acknowledged Native Hawaiians as Native inhabitants of
the Hawaiian Islands prior to western contact in 1778 (Native Hawaiian Education Act, 2004).
Western contact led to the introduction of western forms of government, education, and various
health concerns. Second, Congress acknowledged the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawai`i by
a small group of non-Hawaiians, including citizens from the United States of America (USA)
and the armed forces (Native Hawaiian Education Act, 2004). The USA has since then
apologized for the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom and continues to build a relationship of
trust and responsibility for Native people (Native Hawaiian Education Act, 2004). This act
acknowledges Native Hawaiians as an Indigenous people who had exercised sovereignty and had
never relinquished those rights. Third, Congress recognized Native Hawaiians with the same
political status as American Indians and Alaska Natives with the continued right to autonomy in
their internal affairs and an ongoing right of self-determination and self-governance. In addition,
the NHEA explained that Native Hawaiians were extended services not because of race but
rather as a need to establish a trusting relationship with the USA (Native Hawaiian Education
Act, 2004).
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 11
The culture of power theory provides context to the enactment of NHEA, which delivers
resources to the Native Hawaiian community. According to the culture of power theory, low
achievement of minority students is a result of a culture of power, where children enter the
educational system with varying understandings of the rules of power. Rules of power provide
access to power and are determined by those in the dominant culture (Delpit, 1998). Unequal
power structures, such as the achievement gap, are created when students have varying
understandings of the rules of power depending on race and class (Delpit, 1998). Delpit (1998)
asserts that students from “non-white and non-middle-class” communities encountered a culture
of power that hinders their academic progression in school (p. 282). Reflecting on the concepts
within the culture of power theory, Native Hawaiian communities have been denied access to the
culture of power. The NHEA provides resources to restore unequal power structures within
Native Hawaiian communities.
Native Hawaiian Educational Assessment Project of 1983. In 1974, Native Hawaiian
advocates attempted to gain legislative support to redress the social and educational equality of
Native Hawaiians. These efforts led to the creation of an advisory council on Hawaiian
education to conduct an extensive study of Native Hawaiian needs. However, the Budget
Reconciliation Act of 1981 cut federal funding for the study (Kamehameha Schools, 1983).
Kamehameha Schools/Bernice Pauahi Bishop Estate, a private endowment, intervened to fund
the study entitled, The Native Hawaiian Educational Assessment Project of 1983 (NHEAP).
Conclusions derived from this study provided evidence needed to support the notion that
Native Hawaiians were behind in most educational and social outcomes in comparison to non-
Hawaiian students. First, Native Hawaiian students scored below national norms on
standardized achievement tests, with an emphasis in reading and math (Kamehameha Schools,
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 12
1983). Second, Native Hawaiians were disproportionately overrepresented in special education
and underrepresented in gifted and talented programs. Third, negative social and physical
statistics, beginning with inadequate prenatal care, indicated that Native Hawaiians did not start
school at an equal level with other children (Kamehameha Schools, 1983). The NHEAP was the
first comprehensive study on Native Hawaiian education and therefore, provided the evidence
necessary to support the initiation of the NHEA.
Native Hawaiian Education Act of 1988. Conclusions of the Native Hawaiian
Education Assessment Project of 1983 (NHEAP) led to the enactment of the first edition of the
NHEA in 1988 (Native Hawaiian Education Council, 2014). This first edition of the NHEA
authorized and supported supplemental educational programs for Native Hawaiians. The focus
of these supplemental programs was based on the conclusions of the NHEAP to enhance the
educational achievement outcomes of Native Hawaiians by improving the areas of early
childhood education, elementary curriculum development, special education, higher education,
and gifted and talented programs. With these five areas of focus, the NHEA funded the startup
of six ground breaking Native Hawaiian programs:
1. Family-Based Education Centers – administered by the Kamehameha Schools
Bishop Estate (KSBE).
2. Punana Leo – a Hawaiian language immersion pre-school program.
3. Native Hawaiian Model Curriculum Implementation Project – administered by
the KSBE.
4. Pihana Na Mamo – a special education program within the State Department of
Education.
5. The Native Hawaiian Higher Education Program – administered by the KSBE.
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 13
6. Na Pua Noe`au – an education program for the gifted and talented, administered
by the University of Hawai`i. (Native Hawaiian Education Council, 2014)
1994 reauthorization of NHEA. There were two major occurrences that affected the
1994 reauthorization of NHEA. First was the Native Hawaiian Educational Assessment of 1993,
a 10-year status update to the NHEAP 1983. This assessment detailed the educational needs of
Native Hawaiians along with statewide initiatives to address those needs (Kamehameha Schools,
1993). Although this assessment did not specifically report on NHEA initiated programs, several
programs were noted as positively impacting Native Hawaiian educational efforts. For example,
Na Pua No`eau was noted for its pioneering efforts in identifying gifted and talented students,
which added to the positive learning environment of Native Hawaiians, an identified goal within
the assessment. The Punana Leo program was named for impacting the increase of Native
Hawaiian language speakers and addressing the assessment goal of increasing Hawaiian cultural
awareness and understanding.
The Native Hawaiian Education Assessment of 1993 reaffirmed the educational needs of
Native Hawaiians and continuation of federal support through NHEA to meet those needs. This
assessment of statewide initiatives found that Native Hawaiian students: 1) started school behind
other non-Hawaiian students as demonstrated by lack of parent support in prenatal and early
childhood educational programs; 2) scored below national norms on standardized achievement
tests; 3) encountered excessive absentee rates that exceed other non-Hawaiian students; 4) had
the lowest pattern of literacy skills when compared to non-Hawaiian students; and 5) lacked
services for students with special needs and an emphasis on substance abuse and violence
prevention (Kamehameha, 1993). Although this assessment reaffirmed the educational needs of
Hawaiian students, it also concluded that the inclusion of Hawaiian cultural understanding,
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 14
knowledge, beliefs, and values improved the status of Hawaiians, which provided the support
needed to reauthorize the NHEA (Native Hawaiian Education Council, 2014).
As part of the 1994 reauthorization of NHEA, the US Senate Committee on Indian
Affairs held a series of meetings with individuals of the programs funded under the NHEA.
They discovered that although programs were servicing the Native Hawaiian community,
programs were operating in isolation from each other. To facilitate interaction within the Native
Hawaiian education community, a Native Hawaiian Education Summit was initiated to bring
together Native Hawaiian educators, administrators, parents, students, and community members
to assess current needs, share best practices, and plan for the future (Native Hawaiian Education
Council, 2014). Through the Native Hawaiian Education Summit, participants made
recommendations for the NHEA. One such recommendation was the establishment of a Native
Hawaiian Education Board, “to ensure the quality, accountability, coordination and self-
determination for Native Hawaiians in educational initiatives. The hope was for a recognized
collective vision for the education of Native Hawaiian community and the desire to move
together towards a common goal” (Native Hawaiian Education Council, 2014, para. 9). This
recommendation led to the amendment within the NHEA for the establishment of the Native
Hawaiian Education Council.
The Native Hawaiian Educational Assessment Project and the Native Hawaiian
Education Summit provided the necessary supports and recommendations to reauthorize the
NHEA. The recommendations from the Native Hawaiian Education Summit led to the
amendment of the NHEA for the establishment of the Native Hawaiian Education Council.
Congress amended and reauthorized the NHEA under the Improving America’s Schools Act of
1994 through the year 1999 (Native Hawaiian Education Council, 2014).
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 15
2001 reauthorization of NHEA. In 2001, the NHEA was reauthorized as part of No
Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Under NCLB, the NHEA was grouped with Native American
and Alaskan Native Education as part of Title VII–Indian, Native Hawaiian, and Alaska Native
Education. Minor changes such as the composition of the Council were made during this
reauthorization. This edition of the NHEA continues to be enacted through today.
Title VII-The Native Hawaiian Education Act
Purpose. Under Title VII of NCLB, the purpose of NHEA was to provide funding to
programs that facilitate the educational achievement and attainment of Native Hawaiians through
the authorization of programs that supplement and expand current areas of education (Native
Hawaiian Education Act, 2004). Specifically, the NHEA has four guiding purposes, which are
to:
1. Authorize and develop innovative educational programs to assist Native Hawaiians.
2. Provide direction and guidance to appropriate Federal, State, and local agencies to
focus resources, including resources made available under this part, on Native
Hawaiian education, and to provide periodic assessment and data collection.
3. Supplement and expand programs and authorities in the area of education to further
the purposes of this title.
4. Encourage the maximum participation of Native Hawaiians in planning and
management of Native Hawaiian education programs. (Native Hawaiian Education
Act, 2004)
Through NHEA, grant funding was available to carry out the program purposes. Specifically,
NHEA prioritized funding to early education and care programs, activities to address the needs
of gifted and talented Native Hawaiian students, special education programs, professional
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 16
development for educators, and activities to enable Native Hawaiian students to enter and
complete postsecondary education programs (Native Hawaiian Education Act, 2004).
Native Hawaiian Education Council. The Native Hawaiian Education Council
(Council) provided a way for the Native Hawaiian community to have a voice within the NHEA.
The NHEA specified that the Council members should consist of at least 10 Native Hawaiian
education service providers and 10 Native Hawaiians or Native Hawaiian education consumers,
with one representative from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA). The law authorized OHA
to facilitate the establishment of Island Councils on Hawai`i, Maui, Lanai, Molokai, Kauai,
Niihau and Oahu to adequately represent the interests of the various island communities within
the State of Hawai`i. Each island’s Council was allotted one seat on the statewide Council; for a
total of 7 out of the 21 seats. Island Councils consisted of either parents, students, and other
community members interested in the education of Native Hawaiians (Native Hawaiian
Education Council, 2014). The Island Councils were able to gather information on the
educational status of Native Hawaiians in their communities to make informed recommendations
within the statewide Council to “coordinate, assess and make recommendations to perpetuate
excellence in Native Hawaiian education” (Native Hawaiian Education Council, 2014).
Under NHEA the Council had the following responsibilities:
1. Coordinate the educational and related services and programs available to Native
Hawaiians, including the programs assisted under this part.
2. Assess the extent to which such services and programs meet the needs of Native
Hawaiians, and collect data on the status of Native Hawaiian education.
3. Provide direction and guidance, through the issuance of reports and
recommendations, to appropriate Federal, State, and local agencies in order to focus
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 17
and improve the use of resources, including resources made available under this part,
relating to Native Hawaiian education, and serve, where appropriate, in an advisory
capacity.
4. Make direct grants, if such grants enable the Council to carry out the duties of the
Council, as described in paragraphs (1) through (3). (Native Hawaiian Education
Act, 2004)
The Council, as members or influencers within the Native Hawaiian community, discussed the
priorities of Native Hawaiian education and made the necessary reports to government agencies.
Implications. In 2008, the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO)
conducted a study of the NHEA and its impact on Native Hawaiian education. The GAO
concluded that there was little known about the NHEA’s impact on Native Hawaiian education.
Educational outcomes improved for Native Hawaiians, but research did not solely identify
NHEA as a contributor to those outcomes (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2008, p. i).
Moreover, this report concluded that the parties responsible for administering NHEA, both the
US DOE and the Council, did not fulfill many of their respective responsibilities under the act.
This report stated that the US DOE did not provide sufficient management and oversight of grant
activities to the Council. In addition, the GAO claimed that the Council did not fulfill its
commitment to collect data on Native Hawaiian education, assess the different educational needs
of the various communities, and provide recommendations for future use of grant funds (U.S.
Government Accountability Office, 2008).
In response, the Council conducted an assessment of the educational needs of Native
Hawaiian learners (Native Hawaiian Education Council, 2011). The Council proposed this needs
assessment to the US DOE to guid planning efforts and funding priorities of the NHEA in the
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 18
areas of criteria, communities, populations, and strategies/services. First, findings of this study
provided priority criteria to focus Native Hawaiian Education programs on:
1. Schools and communities that had a higher than average proportion of Native Hawaiians.
2. Schools and communities that had a higher than average participation rate in the federally
subsidized school lunch program and/or were considered economically disadvantaged.
3. Schools with a higher than average Native Hawaiian student population and that were
considered persistently lowest achieving schools by the Hawai`i Department of
Education.
4. Collaborations that reflected community needs where the community was actively
involved in the design, implementation, and evaluation of the project. (Native Hawaiian
Education Council, 2011)
Second, a holistic assessment of demographic, economic and academic factors identified priority
communities. These seven priority communities demonstrated the most need: Kahuku (Oahu),
Hilo and Konawaena (Hawai`i), the entire island of Molokai, Kapaa and Kekaha (Kauai), and
Hana (Maui). Third, an assessment of cultural and academic factors identified priority
populations, which were most vulnerable to future academic risk. This included three specific
groups within the Native Hawaiian population: 1) families from priority communities;
2) students/stakeholders of Hawaiian-focused charter schools; and 3) middle school students.
Finally, strategies were identified to prioritize the needs Native Hawaiian Education programs
should address: 1) early childhood education services; 2) support for proficiency in STEM; 3)
strengthening Hawaiian immersion schools; 4) training in culture-based education; 5) support for
proficiency in reading and literacy; and 6) strengthening Hawaiian focused charter schools. The
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 19
Council provided this assessment to the US DOE for planning efforts and funding priorities of
the NHEA to address the needs of Native Hawaiians.
Statement of the Problem
Unequal power structures such as the achievement gap are created when students who do
not share the race and class of those in power, have varying understandings of the rules of power
(Delpit, 1998). Accounting for the culture of power, classrooms need to validate the importance
of students’ own culture (Delpit, 1998). Although the culture of power theory does not directly
reflect Native Hawaiian participants, Delpit helps us understand that NHEA works toward
providing resources to a community that has been denied access to the culture of power.
The federal government, through the enactment of the Indian Education Act (IEA) and
NHEA, supports culturally based educational efforts to improve schooling for Native American
students (Beaulieu, 2006; Demmert & Towner, 2003). Yet, Beaulieu (2006) critiques
incongruences within such policies where specific academic needs of Native students and
strategies to improve those needs are not identified.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study was to explore the ways which members of the Native
Hawaiian Education Council made meaning of their role in accomplishing their mission, as
individuals and Council members, in relation to the needs of Native Hawaiian students.
Specifically, this study examined Council members’ perception of their role in “perpetuating
excellence in Native Hawaiian education” (Native Hawaiian Education Council, 2014, para.15)
as Council members and as individual community members to support or develop educational
initiatives that benefit Native Hawaiians. In addition, this study sought to understand the way
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 20
Council members saw themselves enacting their roles in relation to their perceived agenda as an
individual and as a member of the Council.
Research Questions
The research questions for this study asked:
1. What do members of the NHEC perceive to be their role in “perpetuating
excellence in Native Hawaiian education” (Native Hawaiian Education Council,
2014, para.15) as Council members and as individual community members to
support or develop educational initiatives that benefit Native Hawaiians?
2. How do they see themselves enacting their roles in relation to this agenda as
individuals and members of the Council?
This study was based on three bodies of literature: culturally based education, social
capital, and Indigenous leadership. These bodies of literature laid the foundation for my study.
Importance of the Study
This study focused on the way Native Hawaiian Educational Council members
approached their work to improve the educational outcomes of Native Hawaiian students, both
individually and collectively. This study sought to understand the perceptions of the Council
members, as key stakeholders of the NHEA and leaders in Native Hawaiian education, and to
provide insight on the existing achievement gap of Native Hawaiian students. This study
contributed to our understanding of the way the NHEA has been implemented. Specifically, this
study contributed to our understanding of the way in which Council members believed they
accomplished the goals they set for themselves and by the NHEA. This study was an
opportunity for the Council and those invested in Native Hawaiian education to reflect on current
approaches of Council members as a representation of Native Hawaiian educational leadership.
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 21
This study contributed to the limited research on Native Hawaiians and Native Hawaiian
education. It documented the progress and challenges of Native Hawaiian education. It
contributed to the research on understanding culturally based education, the enactment of social
capital, and practice of Indigenous leadership.
Definitions of Terms
Native Hawaiian Education Act: The Native Hawaiian Education Act is reauthorized in 2001 as
part of the No Child Left Behind Act, and is grouped with legislation concerning Native
American Education and Alaskan Native Education under Title VII (Native Hawaiian Education
Act of 1988). The purpose of this act is to develop innovative educational programs that assist
Native Hawaiians, by supplementing and expanding, programs and authorities in the area of
education (Native Hawaiian Education Council, 2014).
Native Hawaiian Education Council: The Native Hawaiian Education Council is established by
the NHEA to coordinate, assess and make recommendations to perpetuate excellence in Native
Hawaiian education (Native Hawaiian Education Council, 2014).
Native Hawaiian Student: Students who self-identify as being of Hawaiian ancestry.

EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 22
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW
The research questions for this study asked: What do members of the NHEC perceive to
be their role in “perpetuating excellence in Native Hawaiian education” (Native Hawaiian
Education Council, 2014, para.15) as Council members and as individual community members
to support or develop educational initiatives that benefit Native Hawaiians? How do they see
themselves enacting their roles in relation to this agenda as individuals and members of the
Council? To frame the answers to these questions, I drew on three bodies of literature: culturally
based education, social capital and Indigenous leadership. I argued that the way Native
Hawaiian Educational Council members approached their work to improve the educational
outcomes of Native Hawaiian students, both individually and collectively, was a reflection of
their beliefs regarding culturally based education, their utilization of social capital resources, and
their practice of Indigenous leadership.
First, I present literature on culturally based education, which promotes the integration of
Native language and culture to improve the academic performance of Native students (Demmert,
Grissmer, & Towner, 2006). The theory of and research on culturally based education provided
a foundation for exploring Council members’ understanding of how culture and language should
be used in the education of Native Hawaiian students. I reasoned that Council members’
understanding of culturally based education would shape their perceived mission and approaches
to achieving that mission. Second, I offered relevant literature on social capital. Social capital
provided a theoretical framework for understanding the use of social networks in the approaches
that Council members used to accomplish their work with Native Hawaiians. Finally, I provided
literature on Indigenous leadership to understand practices of Council members who were
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 23
themselves, Native Hawaiian and I believed that they would express characteristics of
Indigenous leaders as they approached their work with Native Hawaiians.
I conclude this chapter with a presentation of my conceptual framework that served as an
overall guide for this study and informed how I collected, analyzed and interpreted data.
Culturally Based Education
In this section, I present literature bases that explain the role of culture in education to
address the needs of historically subjugated or marginalized populations. First, I present
literature on culturally based education, which focuses on integrating language and culture into
educational practices. Within this subset of ideas is literature that prioritizes language and
culture revitalization along with community needs as the center of cultural integration. Next, I
present another line of research, culturally informed pedagogy that explicitly identifies utilizing
culture in the classroom for academic achievement as a means to providing access to the
dominant culture. I present both lines of research, culturally based education and culturally
informed pedagogy, to discuss the role of culture in the classroom as a means to respond to the
reinforced separation between those who have and do not have access to cultural norms of the
dominant society.
First, I present the theory of and research on culturally based education. The literature
generally refers to culturally based education with a common understanding of the importance of
using Native language and culture to improve Native students’ achievement. Yet, the definition
and implementation of culturally based education seems to vary depending on the needs of each
Native community. I begin by reviewing literature that justifies the use of culturally based
education with Native students. I draw on the culture of power theory and culturally based
education to understand the premise of utilizing students’ culture in the classroom to improve
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 24
their academic knowledge and skills associated with the culture of power. I discuss the various
definitions, components, and characteristics of culturally based education to provide a better
understanding of how culturally based education has been conceptualized in Native
communities. Then, I present research on the various forms of culturally based educational
programs to demonstrate how it has been implemented.
Second, I focus on literature that discussed culturally informed pedagogies, which
integrates culture within the classroom as a means towards students’ academic achievement. I
begin by presenting literature on culturally relevant pedagogy, the foundational theory of
culturally informed pedagogies. Then, I present the theory of culturally sustaining pedagogy
introduced as a revision of culturally relevant pedagogy. I conclude with the theory of culturally
sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy, which amended culturally sustaining pedagogy to include a
pedagogical framework specifically for Indigenous students. I focus on these theories, as
foundational pieces that integrate cultural expectations for the purpose of meeting the academic
needs of Native students.
Culture of Power
As described in chapter 1, the culture of power theory provides a foundation for
understanding the role of culture in educational systems. Delpit (1998) theorized that a culture
of power exists within the educational system, where rules of power create unequal power
structures. She claimed that these unequal power structures exist because students have varying
understandings of the rules of power depending on race and class.
Delpit (1998) named five aspects of power to explain the culture of power. First, “issues
of power are enacted in classrooms” (Delpit, 1998, p. 283). Issues of power that affect the
classroom range from the power teachers have over students to the power textbook publishers
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 25
have over curriculum and even the power that guides the standard of intelligence or the idea of
normalcy. Second, “there are codes or rules for participating in power; that is, there is a ‘culture
of power’ (Delpit, 1998, p. 283). Delpit (1998) claimed that codes or rules exist to govern those
who participate in certain power structures. These codes or rules are base linguistic forms,
communicative strategies, and presentation on one’s self. Third, “the rules of the culture of
power are a reflection of the rules of the culture of those who have power” (Delpit, 1998, p. 283).
According to Delpit (1998), this means that the culture of power within schools is a reflection of
those who are in power. Those in power, typically white middle class, understand the rules of
the culture and do better in school when compared to those not in power. The fourth aspect of
power states, “If you are not already a participant in the culture of power, being told explicitly
the rules of that culture makes acquiring power easier” (Delpit, 1998, p. 283). Delpit (1998)
concluded that members of any culture are able to communicate information implicitly to other
members of that culture because there is a common understanding of the culture of power.
However, a breakdown of communication exists when people of different cultures use their own
codes to communicate (Delpit, 1998). A person not a part of the culture of power can much
more easily learn the rules of the culture of power when someone from that culture explicitly
explains implicit rules associated with the culture of power (Delpit, 1998). Fifth, “those with
power are frequently least aware of–or least willing to acknowledge–its existence. Those with
less power are often most aware of its existence” (Delpit, 1998, p. 283). Delpit (1998) explained
that the existence of rules of power goes against liberal beliefs that argue for maximum
individual freedoms and autonomy; therefore, those in power often do not acknowledge or
identify rules of power. This further complicates the culture of power that exists in classrooms
because teachers who are a part of the dominating culture of power do not acknowledge that this
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 26
power structure exists and do not explain rules or codes to non-members. Delpit (1998) exerted
that “to act as if power does not exist is to ensure that the power status quo remains the same” (p.
292). These five aspects of power help explain the culture of power that surrounds how the
classroom affects children’s learning.
The rules of power associated with the culture of power began in the home. Parents of
different cultures have different expectations of schooling. Therefore, the rules of power vary
depending on culture, which includes parent expectations of schooling. For example, Delpit
(1998) explained that in the dominating culture of power the primary goal for education is for
children to become autonomous individuals whereas other parents outside of that culture want
their children to understand the pattern and codes that lead to success in society. Second, parents
teach their children the rules of power according to the culture to which they belong. Therefore,
children who are a part of the culture of power come to school knowing the rules of power.
Children who are not a part of the culture of power and do not know the rules of power are at a
disadvantage because they do not understand the basics of communication and contest. Delpit
(1998) did not contend that parents need to change their home life, but rather advocated for
educators on all levels of power to have an open mind about educational practices that benefit all
children.
Delpit (1998) offered several suggestions for educators to account for the culture of
power. First, educators need to recognize that the culture of power affects learning. As
previously mentioned, children who are a part of the culture of power come to school knowing
the rules of power and children not a part of the culture of power do not know the rules of power.
These children should not be held accountable for knowing the rules of power, about which no
one has ever directly informed them. Second, educational strategies need to be appropriate for
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 27
all children, no matter their understanding of the rules of power. Delpit (1998) claimed that
appropriate teacher strategies should acknowledge the significance of each child’s culture and
inform them about the rules of power. Delpit (1998) stated that each
language and cultural style is unique and wonderful but that there is a political power
game that is also being played, and if they want to be in on that game there are certain
games that they too must play. (p. 292)
For higher-level cognitive thinking, students not only need to be taught the codes of power but
understand the context of those codes. Finally, educators need to ensure the empowerment of
students. Teachers could empower students by allowing them to utilize their expertise in the
classroom. In addition, teachers could provide real life scenarios and application to help students
realize the importance of their voice in their own learning process. In summary, Delpit (1998)
suggested:
That students must be taught the codes needed to participate fully in the mainstream of
American life, not by being forced to attend to hollow, inane, decontextualized subskills,
but rather within the context of meaningful communicative endeavors; that they must be
allowed the resource of the teacher’s expert knowledge, while being helped to
acknowledge their own “expertness” as well and that even while students are assisted in
learning the culture of power, they must also be helped to learn about the arbitrariness of
those codes and about the power relationships they represent. (p. 296)
Delpit (1998) provided suggestions for educators to start accounting for the culture of power that
exists in the classroom to ensure learning for all students.
In conclusion, Delpit (1998) explained the culture of power helped to uncover the rules of
power that affect the educational system from educational standards to classroom learning.
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 28
Educators need to account for students’ cultures and understanding of the rules of power in order
to establish strategies appropriate for all students. Moreover, educators need to develop
students’ understanding and critical analysis of the culture of power with associated rules of
power by first validating the importance of their own culture.
Culturally Based Education for Native Students
Just as Delpit (1988) validated the importance of a student’s culture in understanding and
critically analyzing the culture of power within the classroom, Native American researchers
identified reasons to use culture with Native students and introduced the theory of culturally
based education. The historical and social context and circumstances of Native Americans
reflected the need for implementation of culturally based education. The following studies
support the need for culturally based education.
From the literature of Demmert, Grissmer, and Towner (2006) three hypotheses emerged
that support the need for culturally based education. First, cultural differences, which exist
between the minority and majority group, affect early development, motivation, educational
expectations and learning. These cultural differences are a source of low academic achievement.
Second, the history of unequal treatment of the minority by the majority group accounts for low
academic achievement. Third, factors underlying low achievement are mostly common across
minority and majority groups. Low achieving children across minority and majority groups
share common “characteristics such as poverty, low parental education, high levels of teen
pregnancy, single parent families, and poor health status and lower quality schools” (Demmert,
Grissmer, & Towner, 2006, p. 11). According to Demmert (2006), these hypotheses define the
Native American achievement gaps, differences of in achievement due to cultural differences,
and explain the need for culturally based education.
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 29
To account for cultural differences, Demmert (2001) found available research to support
the use of Native language and cultural programs on improving academic performance. Studies
on Native language and cultural programs identified two interrelated reasons for culturally based
education. First, studies reflected a growing number of Native American communities that
struggle to maintain and strengthen their traditional languages and cultural heritages. Second,
studies demonstrated the relationship between strengthening traditional Native identities and
improving educational outcomes of Native children. School curriculum that integrated Native
language and culture held promise for improving academic performance of Native children.
Definition of Culturally Based Education
Culturally based education interventions sought to lessen Native American (American
Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian) achievement gaps. The premise of culturally based
education was that there needed to be continuity between home and school environments to
promote acceptance and self-efficacy among Native children (Mohott, Trimble, & Dickson,
2006). Although there were common foundational components of culturally based education,
each Native community seemed to define and implement culturally based education programs
differently.
Demmert and Towner (2003) provided several founding characteristics of culturally
based education. There were three major foundational theories of culturally based education:
1) Cultural Compatibility Theory; 2) Cognitive Theory; and 3) Cultural-Historical-Activity
Theory. Cultural compatibility theory provided the basic proposition that “education is more
efficacious when there is an increase in congruence between social cultural dispositions of
students and social cultural expectations of the school” (Demmert & Towner, 2003, p. 7).
Similarly, cognitive theory reaffirmed the importance of prior knowledge and personal and social
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 30
relevance in the acquisition of new knowledge. Cultural-Historical-Activity Theory provided a
rationale for including cultural activities that created internalized knowledge, values, and
cognitive routines. These three theories provided the foundation for culturally based education,
where “education is best built on the experience, values, and knowledge of the students and their
families, both personal and community-based” (Demmert & Towner, 2003, p. 8).
In addition to these foundational theories, Demmert and Towner (2003) identified six
elements that define culturally based education:
1. Recognition and use of Native American (American Indian, Alaska Native,
Native Hawaiian) languages.
2. Pedagogy that stress traditional cultural characteristics, and adult-child
interactions.
3. Pedagogy in which teaching strategies are congruent with the traditional culture
and ways of knowing and learning.
4. Curriculum that is based on traditional culture and that recognizes the importance
of Native spirituality.
5. Strong Native community participation (including parents, elder, other
community resources) in educating children and in the planning and operation of
school activities.
6. Knowledge and use of the social and political mores of the community.
Later, Demmert (2011) offered three additional characteristics of culturally based education.
First, culturally based programs are diverse and reflect various Native student groups and
different educational services. Second, assessment tools need to accurately measure levels of
schools’ culturally based education program and reflect priorities of students’ communities.
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 31
Finally, assessment tools need to be linguistically and culturally appropriate and meet the
academic priorities and needs of the community. Taken together, these theories and
characteristics define culturally based education.
The Native Hawaiian community sought to provide an operationalized definition of
culturally based education for the benefit of the community served. Kana`iaupuni and Kawaiaea
(2008) presented a Hawaiian Indigenous Education Framework to operationalize culturally based
education within the context of Hawaiian culture. In this framework, they used a broad
definition of culturally based education:
Culture may be defined as shared ways of being, knowing and doing … Culturally based
education was consistent with more in-depth treatment referring to the grounding of
instruction and student learning in the values, norms, knowledge, beliefs, practices,
experiences, places, and language that were the foundation of a culture, in this case
Hawaiian Indigenous culture. (p. 71)
This framework described Hawaiian Indigenous education in five components. The first
component of culturally based education focuses on the use of Hawaiian language as a medium
of instruction. Second, culturally based education utilizes `ohana (family) and community
involvement, meaning that `ohana and community are actively involved in the development of
curriculum, everyday learning and leadership. The third component of culturally based
education examines content, ensuring learning is meaningful and relevant through culturally
grounded content and assessment. Fourth, culturally based education reflects the contextual
structure of the school, classroom and other learning interactions are conducted in culturally
appropriate ways. Finally, assessment and accountability focuses on culturally responsible ways
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 32
of gathering and maintaining data for student progress. This Hawaiian Indigenous Education
Framework provides components of culturally based education for Native Hawaiian students.
Demmert and Towner (2003) defined culturally based education through theories and
essential characteristics. As Native communities implemented culturally based education
programs, the definition of culturally based education was amended to fit the needs of the
community. These definitions of culturally based education seemed to not only be defined by
Native communities, but also reflected the needs and priories of those communities.
Types of Culturally Based Education Programs
Utilizing the basic premise of culturally based education, programs that integrated Native
language and culture took many forms.
Culturally based education incorporates Native language and/or important elements of
Native culture. Culturally based interventions introduce these elements as planned
activities and materials designed to improve education in terms of community goals and
student achievement. They range from broad programs that engage participants for long
periods with high degree of involvement (e.g., all-day immersion programs) to more
specific interventions that entail less time and involvement (e.g., a specific language
text). (NWREL, 2002, p.14 as cited in Beaulieu, 2006)
Beaulieu (2006) surveyed culturally based programs in the United States supported by the
federal government through funding provided by the Administration for Native Americans,
Indian Education Act, and sectors of the Indian Education Act. Through reviewing the surveys
of programs that participated, Beaulieu (2006) found that some programs were culturally based
education programs and others were not defined as culturally based. Those programs that were
defined as culturally based education programs could be categorized into five types:
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 33
1) culturally based instruction; 2) Native language instruction; 3) Native studies; 4) Native
cultural enrichment; and 5) culturally relevant materials. First, culturally based instruction
programs use Native language as the language of instruction for all subject areas in a school.
Examples of culturally based instruction programs included immersion schools where Native
language was used in interactions and teachings of all academic subjects. Culturally based
instruction programs have two purposes: 1) create Native language fluency in a population of
learners who do not know their Native language or whose Native language competence was
underdeveloped as compared to fluent peers; and 2) provide academic content to learners
through their Native language while also developing their Native first language competence (p.
56). Second, Native language instruction programs teach the subject of learning how to speak
Native Hawaiian. Examples of Native language instruction programs include Native language
classes taken as an elective in public schools. Third, Native studies programs teach about Native
history and culture through events and Native civic-related subjects. Fourth, Native cultural
enrichment programs bring aspects of Native culture into the school or provide cultural
experiences outside of the school. These programs offer special events for pow-wows,
presentations by cultural experts or Native arts and crafts. Fifth, culturally relevant materials
include instructional materials that reflect students’ identities and/or culture in existing courses
or curriculum such as reading materials with a Native theme brought into a reading program (p.
57). These five types of programs represented the range of programs considered as culturally
based education.
Through reviewing the surveys completed by participating programs, Beaulieu (2006)
found that 66% of all programs were not culturally related. These programs provided funding
for additional instructional time, after school homework assistance, home-school coordination/
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 34
student incentives, and non-cultural academic enrichment. Beaulieu’s (2006) analysis of results
indicated that there were only a few programs that could be described as culturally based
education, which were heavily concentrated in schools with high percentages of Native student
populations. Fewer schools implemented whole-school social-linguistic approaches or programs
that met the definition of culturally based education. Even though it was not required to have all
the elements of culturally based education, it was important to note that very few programs
incorporated all the elements of culturally based education. Beaulieu (2006) concluded that
despite the intentions of Indian Education Act to provide quality and effective educational
programs for Native students, there was a considerably small number of culturally based
education programs.
The various forms of culturally based education programs made it difficult to study the
effectiveness of such programs (August, Goldenberg, & Rueda, 2006). Different culturally
based education programs integrated culture and language at varying degrees. In addition,
programs that utilized culturally based education also integrated other non-culturally rooted
interventions. These factors of culturally based education programs made it difficult to study the
impact of these programs on Native students.
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
Culturally relevant pedagogy recognized the importance of culture in the classroom by
utilizing cultural identity for academic achievement. Ladson-Billings (1995) presented a
theoretical model that validates students’ cultural identity and addresses student achievement
while critically analyzing institutional inequalities. Culturally relevant teaching meets three
criteria. First, teaching must develop students academically. Students achieve academic success
by developing student intellectual grown through classroom experiences. Second, teaching
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 35
nurtures and supports cultural competence, which celebrates the culture of each individual
student while they learn about other cultures. Finally, teaching develops students’ sociopolitical
and critical consciousness (Ladson-Billings, 1995). Developing a sociopolitical and critical
consciousness means that learning moves beyond the classroom to the application of knowledge
and skills to identify, analyze, and solve real world problems (Ladson-Billings, 2014). Teachers
who followed these criteria instill in students a sense of responsibility for and deep interest in
their education.
In addition to the criteria of culturally relevant teaching, Ladson-Billings (1995)
identified three characteristics of culturally relevant teachers. First, culturally relevant teachers
have positive perceptions of themselves as teacher and their students. Culturally relevant
teachers acknowledge their strengths and shortcoming as teachers. They see themselves as
members of their community and their teaching as an investment in that community. In addition,
these teachers see their limitations as learning opportunities, meaning that their teaching
pedagogy is always evolving. They believe that all the students are capable of academic success
and are not permitted to choose failure in the classroom. Second, culturally relevant teachers
develop social relations that enhance students’ academic success, cultural competency, and
critical consciousness (Ladson-Billings, 1995). Teachers achieve this by maintaining a fluid
student-teacher relationships meaning that relationships are equitable and reciprocal. They
recognize that students hold an expertise to share, in addition to being a learner. Teachers
demonstrate a connection with all of their students. They strive to develop a community of
learners by encouraging students to learn collaboratively, teach each other, and be responsible
for one another. The third characteristic indicates how teachers view knowledge and the
assessment of that knowledge. Teachers view knowledge as evolving, to be shared, recycled,
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 36
constructed and critically examined. Teachers are passionate about knowledge and learning.
They facilitate learning through scaffolding and incorporate multifaceted assessments (Ladson-
Billings, 1995). These characteristics distinguish culturally relevant teachers. Culturally
relevant pedagogy offers teachers a systematic method that utilizes student culture for academic
achievement.
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy
In 2014, Ladson-Billings endorsed the emerging concepts of culturally sustaining
pedagogy. She understood that in reality, culture is always changing and scholarship is fluid,
such that her theory of culturally relevant pedagogy is also fluid with “more versions to come”
(Ladson-Billings, 2014, p. 76). She acknowledged the development of a newer fresher version
of culturally relevant pedagogy to meet the needs of this century’s students. Ladson-Billings
(2014) endorsed the use of culturally sustaining pedagogy to understand the “multiplicities of
identities and cultures that help formulate today’s youth culture” (p. 82). Rather than focusing
on one race or ethnic group, culturally sustaining pedagogy allows for the complexities of a
multiple identities.
Paris (2012) asserted that pedagogy needs to be more than relevant to the cultural
orientation of students. He proposed culturally sustaining pedagogy as an approach that
maintains the cultural and linguistic practices of students and their communities while
simultaneously providing access to the dominant culture. This is accomplished by building on
students’ cultural and linguistic practices to include dominant and cultural practices. Paris
(2012) claimed that to sustain and extend the cultural practices of students, pedagogy must
account for dynamic, shifting and ever-changing nature of culture. Therefore, pedagogy cannot
be static; it must sustain and account for both traditional and evolving ways of culture and lived
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 37
experience of contemporary young people (Paris, 2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy moves
beyond cultural relevancy to account for the evolutionary nature of culture by centering
pedagogy on the lived experience of young people.
Paris and Alim (2014) offered a three part “loving critique” to build on their concept of
culturally sustaining pedagogy. First, they identified previous theories of culturally informed
pedagogies. Second, they claimed that previous pedagogies fail to account for the evolving
nature of culture. Third, previous pedagogies are unable to critically critique and contend with
the internal struggles of culture that communities endure.
First, Paris and Alim (2014) reviewed previous theories that had informed culturally
sustaining pedagogies. They (2014) affirmed that culturally sustaining pedagogy attempts “to
shift the term, stance, and practice of asset pedagogies toward more explicitly pluralist
outcomes” (p. 87). Prior to asset pedagogies, educational practices follow deficit approaches that
view cultural languages, literacies and ways of being as deficiencies that need to be eradicated in
order to learn the dominant languages and literacies (Paris & Alim, 2014). Asset pedagogies
reaffirms the importance of the cultural practices, languages and literacies as assets for students.
At the forefront of asset pedagogy, was Ladson-Billing’s theory on culturally relevant pedagogy.
Paris (2012) claimed that although Ladson-Billing’s work on culturally relevant pedagogy
acknowledged the value or relevance of culture and language on education, it did not provide
enough support to sustain the multilingualism and multiculturalism that is needed to support
education in a globalized society. Whereas, the goal of culturally sustaining pedagogy is to
support the multilingualism and multiculturalism practice and perspective of students and
teachers by seeking to sustain and extend the linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of
schooling (Paris & Alim, 2014). Paris and Alim (2014) suggested that the “culture of power”
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 38
has shifted from a white middle class to include the need for multilinguistic and multicultural
education to navigate a globalized society. Thus, culturally sustaining pedagogy ensures access
into a globalized society by teaching more than Standard English. Paris and Alim (2014) argued
that it is important for students to learn Standard English and maintain multiple ways of speaking
and being. Built on previous asset pedagogies, culturally sustaining pedagogy seeks to maintain
students’ multicultural knowledge and skills in addition to the standard curriculum.
Second, Paris and Alim (2014) claimed that previous pedagogies fail to account for the
evolving nature of culture. They asserted that “culture is dynamic, shifting and encompassing
both past-oriented heritage dimensions and present-oriented community dimensions” and
changes depending on how people live, race, ethnicity, language, and culture (Paris & Alim,
2014, p. 90). Previous asset pedagogies focused on “the racialized and culturally situated
heritage practices of our communities,” which Paris and Alim (2014) believed to have actually
reinforce deficit approaches (p. 90). Rather, culturally sustaining pedagogy understands the need
for an appreciation of multiple language varieties and cultural worldviews. Culturally sustaining
pedagogy recognizes the evolving nature of culture by sustaining traditional and living culture of
young people.
Finally, Paris and Alim (2014) stated that culturally sustaining pedagogy must critically
critique and contend with the internal struggles of culture that communities face. Because
culture is dynamic and evolving, educational practice and pedagogy must too be fluid and open
to revision. To avoid the reproduction of hegemonic ideas and outcomes, there must be a
constant critique of practice. Just as culture is evolving; a constant critical analysis of culturally
sustaining pedagogy was needed to avoid the perpetuation of a hegemonic ideology.
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 39
In conclusion, culturally sustaining pedagogy offers an educational approach that seeks to
maintain the cultural and linguistic practices of students and their communities while
simultaneously providing access to the dominant culture. Lessons learned from previous asset
pedagogies inform culturally sustaining pedagogy. Previous asset pedagogies fail to account for
the changing and evolving nature of culture, specifically the way youth interpret and live
traditional and contemporary culture. Through constant critical analysis, culturally sustaining
pedagogy seeks to avoid the perpetuation of hegemonic ideology and meet the needs of all
multicultural students.
Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy
McCarty and Lee (2014) adapted culturally sustaining pedagogy as theorized by Paris
(2012) to include culturally revitalizing pedagogy to fit the needs of Native American and
Indigenous students. They claimed that both culturally sustaining pedagogy and culturally
revitalizing pedagogy are needed to meet the socio-historical and contemporary context of
Native American schooling. The focus on Native American schooling takes on “not only issues
of language, race/ethnicity, social class, and other forms of social difference, but also issues of
tribal sovereignty” (McCarty & Lee, 2014, p. 101). McCarty and Lee (2014) proposed culturally
sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy to account for Native American socio-historical and
contemporary context and meet the needs of Native American students.
In addition to the concepts Paris (2012) used in culturally sustaining pedagogy, McCarty
and Lee (2014) defined culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy through three components.
First, tribal sovereignty is used as a frame for culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy to
address the “asymmetrical power relations and the goal of transforming legacies of colonization”
(McCarty & Lee, 2014, p. 103). The history of colonization and its continued effects had led
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 40
Native people to strive for tribal sovereignty, their rights to self-government, self-determination
and self-education. With a history of western schooling that has sought to eradicate Native
languages and culture, tribal sovereignty includes Native people’s right to self-education through
inclusion of Native language, culture, and worldview. McCarty and Lee (2014) found that
today’s Native youth have internalized aspects of colonization that influence their understanding
of their cultural heritage. Thus leading to the second component for culturally
sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy to “reclaim and revitalize” Native language and culture, which
had been displaced by colonization (McCarty & Lee, 2014, p. 103). Native children need to
have access to traditional knowledge and language in contemporary schooling. McCarty and Lee
(2014) contended that Native communities needed to control the educational policy and practice
of Native culture and language. In addition, they supported pedagogy that included traditional
and nontraditional knowledge and methods in language and cultural revitalization efforts. Third,
culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy recognizes the significance of community-based
accountability. McCarty and Lee (2014) found that Native schools strived to balance state and
federal requirements with community-based accountability. Native schooling often occurred in
relatively small schools with close knit communities, thus culturally sustaining/revitalizing
pedagogy required non-homogenizing accountability practices that attended to expressed
interests, resources, and needs of local communities. Community-based accountability sought to
meet the needs of Native communities as defined by those communities. Culturally
sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy met the needs of Native students through addressing
asymmetrical power relations, revitalizing Native language and culture, and community-based
accountability.
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 41
Culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy accounts for the educational efforts for
Native students. With tribal sovereignty at the core, culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy
accounts for the asymmetrical power relations that exist as a result of colonization. To rectify
the effects of colonization, culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy reclaims and revitalizes
Native language and culture. Finally, at the center of culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy
are Native communities and the need for community-based accountability. Culturally
sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy affirms Native schooling not only addresses the academic needs
of Native students, but also recognizes the significance of reclaiming and restoring Native
language and culture.
Conclusion
The literature is diverse in explaining the reasons and definition of culturally based
education. Culturally based education interventions seek to lessen the Native American
achievement gap by developing continuity between home and school environment to promote the
acceptance of Native language and culture to build self-efficacy among Native children.
Culturally based education integrates Native culture and language into educational practices to
improve Native students’ academic achievement. As Native communities implement culturally
based education programs, the definition and forms of culturally based education shifts to fit the
needs of the community.
The introduction of culturally informed pedagogies provides a focus not only on
acknowledgement of a student’s culture and language, but utilizes culture towards academic
achievement. Culturally relevant pedagogy provides a theoretical model that validates students’
cultural identity and addresses student achievement while critically analyzing institutional
inequities. Culturally sustaining pedagogy moves beyond cultural relevancy to account for the
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 42
evolutionary nature of culture by centering pedagogy on the lived experience of young people.
Culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy affirms Native schooling not only to address the
academic needs of Native students, but also recognizes the significance of reclaiming and
restoring Native language and culture. Culturally informed pedagogies demand rigor towards
academic achievement in addition to the cultural integration that culturally based education
offers students.
The literature on culturally based education, including culturally informed pedagogies,
explains the role of culture in education to address the needs of historically subjugated and/or
marginalized populations. In relation to this study, the literature on culturally based education
provides insight into the motivation of Council members as they approach their work with Native
Hawaiian educational efforts. Culturally based education contextualized Council members’
understanding of how culture and language should be used in the education of Native Hawaiians.
Social Capital
Understanding social capital was beneficial to my analysis of approaches used by Council
members to accomplish their mission as individuals and as members of the Council to meet the
cultural and academic needs of Native Hawaiian children. Reviewing the literature on social
capital deepened my understanding of how Council members utilized their social networks to
accomplish their goals.
I begin with literature authored by Pierre Bourdieu and James Coleman, who were
pioneers in the conceptualization of social capital. Reviewing the literature from Bourdieu and
Coleman helped me understand the concept of social capital. Next, I explore the interrelatedness
of social capital and educational policy implementation. Finally, I present literature on social
capital through an Indigenous perspective. These articles helped me understand the use of social
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 43
capital as it relates to the Native Hawaiian Education Council, who enacted educational policy
for Native Hawaiian children.
Bourdieu
Bourdieu (1986) viewed social capital as a set of resources available to those with
specific social networks. He explained the use of capital in the social world. Capital is
accumulated labor that could be used and converted to produce profits for daily living. Capital is
presented in three fundamental forms: 1) economic capital; 2) cultural capital; and 3) social
capital.
Bourdieu used economic capital as the monetary translation for cultural capital and social
capital. He explained that some goods and services are easily translated into monetary form or
economic capital. Other goods and services can only be accessed through social capital or
cultural capital with non-monetary exchanges. Economic capital provides a foundation for
determining the worth of cultural and social capital.
Cultural capital is non-monetary investments such as knowledge or skills, used to acquire
resources that can advance a person to a higher status in society. For example, parents provide
their children with cultural capital through teaching them the necessary attitudes and knowledge
to succeed in school. Cultural capital exists in three forms: 1) embodied state or long-lasting
depositions of oneself; 2) objectified state or items such as pictures or books; and 3)
institutionalized state or educational qualifications such as a high school degree. Acquired
knowledge and skills provide necessary cultural capital for academic achievement and success.
Social capital translates into resources available to members or acquaintances of a
network that share institutionalized relationships. These relationships only exist when used as a
function of the network. Relationships can also be socially instituted and guaranteed by the
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 44
application of a common name, which are maintained and reinforced by material or symbolic
exchanges. Social capital is determined by the “size of the network of connection he can
effectively mobilize and on the volume of the capital (economic, cultural or symbolic) possessed
in his own right by each of those to whom he is connected” (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 249). Network
connections are created through an ongoing effort to identify essential moments that are
necessary to produce and reproduce lasting, useful relationships that can secure material or
symbolic profits. Investment strategies aimed at establishing or reproducing social relationships
transform contingent relations into network relationships. Network relationships are necessary
and elective, which implies a sense of subjective lasting obligations, and can be individually
valued or institutionally guaranteed. Social capital provides a network of useful relationships to
secure resources.
Family provides a network of useful relationships and accumulated social capital.
According to Bourdieu (1998), social capital is reproduced through the reproduction of the
family, the primary social unit. Large families are more integrated into society because of the
united social capital amongst all family members. Families that are successful at accumulating,
managing, and reproducing the collective capital possessed by family members have more
economic capital and therefore increased social capital (Bourdieu, 1998). Family, as the primary
social unit, can accumulate and sustain economic and social capital as each individual family
member manages and reproduces capital.
Coleman
Coleman (1988) described social capital as the relations between people that facilitate
action. Social capital incorporates a structure of relations between and among entities, entities
being people or organizations. Social capital does not come from the entity itself or the product,
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 45
but the relationship between entities that facilitate action to achieve an outcome or product.
Coleman (1988) defined social capital by its function, where entities are a part of the social
structures and facilitate action. Moreover, social capital is productive, meaning that without
social capital the specific action does not occur. Social capital is characterized by its function
and productivity, where relationships between people facilitate an action.
Coleman further explaind social capital through physical and human capital. According
to Coleman (1988), changing raw materials into productive tools creates physical capital,
whereas human capital focuses on people. Teaching people skills and developing their
capabilities to act in new ways generates human capital. Social capital is less tangible; it exists
in the relations among people that facilitate productive activity not within a person as human
capital or the product of physical capital (Coleman, 1988). Therefore, an individual actor can
possibly possess great social capital despite low physical and/or human capital (Coleman, 1988,
1990). Coleman (1990) stated that human capital and social capital are interdependent. Social
capital lies in the connections between individuals possessing human capital. Moreover,
Coleman (1990) described social capital as a public good. Social capital does not benefit an
individual but benefits all those who are part of the social structure, whereas physical or human
capital only benefits a single actor. An actor can possess social capital despite low physical and
human capital, yet social capital is built through relationships with people possessing human
capital to be used towards an action that benefits those who are a part of the social structure.
Specific aspects of the social structure hold value by their function or ability to achieve
an actor’s goal. Identifying the functions within the social structure, allows social capital to
account for different outcomes both on an individual and organizational level. An action
implemented by an organization can hold a function that has value for both the organization and
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 46
individual. The action is constant but the function of that action can vary depending on value
held by the organization and individual. The concept of social capital allows for the
understanding that an action combined with other resources can produce different behaviors and
outcomes within the social structure. This means that actors have something of value and the
resources available to produce desired behaviors or outcomes. An analysis of social capital
seeks to identify components of the social structure that contribute to the value produced.
Identifying the components of the social structure includes discovering the resources
available to individuals that change the intended outcome of an organizational implemented
action. According to Coleman (1990), resources come from an individual’s investment in
interactions that result in and from obligations, expectations, and trustworthiness of structures.
Coleman (1988) explained the interaction that lead to obligations, expectations, and
trustworthiness, “If A does something for B and trusts B to reciprocate in the future, this
establishes an expectation in A and an obligation on the part of B” (p. 102). Social capital is
contingent on the trustworthiness of social environment that obligations will be repaid and
obligations actually being repaid (Coleman, 1988). Both these contingencies are dependent on
variations within the social structure such as personal needs or cultural differences. Actors
within the same social structure react differently to the latter contingency (Coleman, 1988).
Some actors within the same social structure can have high levels of outstanding obligations,
which means greater social capital or more resources within the social structure (Coleman,
1988). The value of an action within the social structure is influenced by the actor’s social
obligations, expectations, and trustworthiness.
Coleman (1990) used this understanding of obligations, expectations and trustworthiness
to identify various forms of social capital. The first form of social capital is information
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 47
channels where relationships provided information necessary for a particular action to occur. In
most cases, information is acquired through social relations that are created for other purposes
(Coleman, 1988). The second form of social capital is effective norms or behaviors within
society that produce desired outcomes (Coleman, 1988). For example, effective norms that
hinder criminal activity make it possible for people to walk around their neighborhoods safely.
Coleman (1988) cautioned that this form of social capital, as well as the other forms, facilitates
certain actions and constrains other actions. For example, the same effective norms that allow
people to walk around their neighborhood safely constrain others from having a party (Coleman,
1988). Third, Coleman (1990) identified authority relations as a form of social capital where
authority as a form of social capital can be transferred from one person to another. He explained,
“If actor A has transferred rights of control of certain actions to another action to another actor,
B, then B has available social capital in the form of those rights of control” (Coleman, 1990, p.
311). The fourth form of social capital is appropriable social organizations. This means that a
social organization has existing social capital that is appropriated for a new purpose (Coleman,
1990). The fifth form of social capital is an intentional organization of social capital, which is
the direct result of investment strategies by actors who have the aim of utilizing relations with
the intent of receiving a return on their investment. The forms of social capital utilize
obligations, expectations, and trustworthiness differently.
The identified forms of social capital are created, maintained and/or destroyed by factors
within social structures. The first factor within the social structure is the closure of social
networks (Coleman, 1988). Closure is the need for actors within social network to connect with
each other and close any gaps between individual actors. Closure facilitates the emergence of
norms and produces trustworthiness that allows for the creation of obligations and expectations
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 48
(Coleman, 1988, 1990). The second factor is the stability of the social structure (Coleman,
1990). Disruptions in a social organization or social relations can be highly destructive to social
capital (Coleman, 1990). Ideology is the third factor that affects social structure. Ideology
affects the social structure by imposing ideals on an individual that may demand he act in the
interests of something or someone other than himself. The final category is other factors, which
consist of factors that make an individual less dependent on each other (Coleman, 1990). If
social relationships are not maintained, social capital can depreciate over time; expectations and
obligations corrode over time; and norms depend on regular communication (Coleman, 1990).
These factors of the social structure affect social capital.
Social capital is built through relationships with people possessing human capital to be
used towards an action that benefits those apart of the social structure. An institutional action
combined with other resources could produce different behaviors and outcomes within the social
structure. Specific aspects of the social structure hold value through their function or ability to
achieve an individual’s goal. Identifying those aspects within the social structure includes
discovering the resources available to individuals that change the intended outcome of an
institutionalized action. The value of an action within the social structure is influenced by the
actor’s social obligations, expectations, and trustworthiness. If social relationships are not
maintained, social capital can depreciate over time.
Social Capital and Educational Policy Implementation
Coburn and Russell (2008) helped to understand social capital as an approach used by
Council members to fulfill their missions in relation to the academic outcomes of Native
Hawaiian students. Specifically, this article explored the reciprocal relationship between social
capital and educational policy; the way policy increased social capital and the way social capital
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 49
shaped the implementation of the policy. There was limited research that directly explored the
reciprocal relationship between social capital and policy.
Coburn and Russell (2008) explored the relationship between the implementation of an
educational policy and teachers’ social capital based on professional relationships. They used
social capital theory and social network analysis to understand how school district policies
influences teachers’ social networks in the scale up of a mathematics curriculum. They sought to
understand how the implementation of a specific educational policy influenced the development
of social capital, how policy efforts to increase teacher professional community enabled or
constrained different elements of social networks, and what influenced the depth and congruence
of those social networks. Their research questions were: “How does district policy influence
teachers’ social networks in mathematics, if at all?” and “What features of district policy appear
to influence the four dimensions of teachers’ social networks?”
To understand these relationships, Coburn and Russell purposively sampled eight schools
in two school districts. Districts were sampled based on their efforts to improve teaching and
learning through the large-scale implementation of a structured mathematics curriculum.
Schools were sampled based on nomination. Schools with high and low human and social
capital were sought out. Six focal teachers were selected, again by nomination. Teachers were
purposefully sampled to represent a range of grades and perspectives of curriculum. They
conducted interviews and classroom observations for each of the focal teachers. Interviews were
also conducted to gather data from math coaches, principals, non-focal teachers, and district
leadership. Professional development sessions for teachers and coaches were observed. Surveys
were used to collect data from all teachers within each school.
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 50
Coburn and Russell (2008) identified four dimensions of teachers’ social network to
analyze their social capital. The four dimensions of teachers’ social networks they identified
were: tie strength, access to expertise, trust, and content interaction. Tie strength examined a
teachers’ personal closeness to people in his/her social network, which was assessed by the
frequency of interactions between teachers and that person. A teacher’s access to expertise was
assessed by determining the number of experts, or people with formal training or education,
within a teacher’s social network. Trust was determined by the percentage of individuals with
whom teachers identified as having trust or indicators of trust such as respect, personal regard,
competence, and integrity. The content of teachers’ interactions looked at advice that teachers
received from people in their social network about math curriculum. Coburn and Russell (2008)
proposed that the presence of all of these dimensions lead to stronger social capital.
Coburn and Russell (2008) found that policy did “play a role in influencing dimensions
of teachers’ social networks, including its structure, the access to expertise that they afford, and
the depth of interaction that occurs among individuals in the network” (p. 223). Schools hired
on-site mathematic coaches to meet the criteria of district policy, which increased teachers’ tie
span because teachers reached out to coaches more frequently. Although onsite coaches
increased tie span, it did not guarantee access to expertise in a teacher’s social network. Coach
expertise varied across schools because of hiring and preparation practices. For example,
schools in one district required that coaches meet a specified level of training and background,
take additional courses, and had ongoing professional development. Whereas, the other school
district did not require coaches to have a background in the mathematics curriculum nor did
school officials offer professional development.
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 51
The specific design of the coaching program and multiple competition initiatives
influenced tie span. A program designed with clear directions for coaches such that coaches
conducted weekly classroom coaching, met with teachers, and facilitated biweekly professional
development increased tie span. Whereas, a program designed with more discretion and less
guidance about how to structure day to day duties of onsite coaches decreased tie span. In both
program designs, leadership played a key role not only establishing clear expectations but
providing adequate supports and direction to meet expectations. In addition, competing
initiatives from leadership decreased tie span by making it difficult for teachers to interact with
coaches and one another with frequency and closeness. The design of the coaching program also
influenced the depth of interaction within a teachers’ social network. The design of the coaching
program outlined routines of interaction where specific actions were repeated that guided
conversations between individuals towards matters of instruction.
Researchers found that routines of interaction that characterized professional
development became a prominent feature of interaction in teachers’ networks, which influenced
the depth of their interactions. Routines that focused on analysis of teaching strategies,
understanding student problem solving processes, and reflection on practice developed a
moderate degree of depth. Although these routines were initiated during professional
development, researchers found that this process of analysis and reflection permeated throughout
teachers’ interactions in their social network. Whereas, routines of interaction that focused on
explanations of lessons resulted in a low degree of depth. This analysis of routines of
interactions demonstrated that more than just information permeated through social networks.
Coaches acted as bridges between districts and schools, bringing routines of interaction into
teachers’ social networks, which then diffused among teachers.
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 52
School leaders mediated state and district policy as they brought policy messages to
teachers. Specifically, school leaders played a role in fostering depth through the way that they
allocated coaching resources. School leaders’ decisions to increase or decrease the number of
teachers who were actively coached, influenced the overall degree of depth of interaction at a
school. Moreover, the messages and viewpoints of school leaders influenced how teachers
talked about curriculum within their networks. School leaders who promoted messages
inconsistent with district aims led to increased incongruent interactions amongst teachers.
Incongruent interactions were defined as advice that went against district aims such as skipping
lessons. In this way, school leaders shaped policy implementation by influencing the messages
about the curriculum that became salient at their school.
Finally, researchers found that the district or school did not influence teachers’ trust in
others within their social networks (Coburn & Russell, 2008). Instead, teachers’ trust within
their social network was influenced by their prior professional relationships. Moreover, physical
proximity influenced teachers’ trust. A teacher developed trust through interactions with the
teacher next door or the teacher with whom they did lunch duty.
These findings provide evidence that policy can indirectly influence an individual’s
social capital. Policy implementation determine work roles and work flow, which create patterns
of interactions. These patterns of interactions develop an individual’s working relationship with
others influencing the tie span, access to expertise, trust and content interaction with those in
their social network. The presence of all of these dimensions lead to stronger social capital.
Social Capital and Indigenous People
Foley and O’Connor (2013) helped to understand social capital as an approach used by
Council members to fulfill their missions in relation to the academic outcomes of Native
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 53
Hawaiian students. Specifically, their article explored social capital through an Indigenous
perspective and amongst Indigenous people, including Native Hawaiians. There is limited
research that explores social capital through an Indigenous perspective and included Native
Hawaiians.
Foley and O’Connor (2013) explored the role of cultural relationships in the career paths
of Indigenous entrepreneurs. They used social capital theory and Indigenous standpoint theory
to understand the influence of culture and history on Indigenous entrepreneurs’ use of social
networks to achieve their business goals. They sought to understand how Aboriginal, Native
Hawaiian, and Maori entrepreneurs understood their social networks in the context of their
Indigenous culture and dominant society, how social capital of mixed or dissimilar cultures
might influence the networking practices of minority entrepreneurs, and how culture influences
Indigenous peoples’ social capital. Foley and O’Connor’s (2013) research questions were:
1) What does social capital mean in the context of mixed minority/dominant cultural
relationships?; and 2) How does it influence the networking of minority entrepreneurs?
To understand these relationships, Foley and O’Connor (2013) snowball sampled 60
Aborigines, 25 Native Hawaiians, and 25 Maori entrepreneurs. They collected data in the form
of official documents, review of mass media documents, society observation, and interviews
with experts and entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs, who participated in semi-structured interviews,
represented a wide range of business related industries. Foley and O’Connor (2013) utilized
Indigenous standpoint theory to establish the historical, cultural and social perspective of
participants as the context for their examination of social capital among participants.
A comparative analysis was conducted to identify themes among the three Indigenous
populations. From the themes, researchers identified five key indicators of social capital that
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 54
were essential for bonding and bridging networking. According to Foley and O’Connor (2013),
bonding network was grounded in traditional social capital and cultural heritage of Indigenous
peoples. Bridging networks allowed Indigenous entrepreneurs to migrate and act as a link
between the minority and dominant culture. The first key indicator identified was cultural links
with networking, which focused on internal characteristics of social capital and the nature of
bonding networks. Native Hawaiian entrepreneurs had a strong Indigenous normative social
capital. This meant that strong cultural networks were important in business endeavors within
the Hawaiian community and with the broader community networks including those in the
dominant society. The second key indicator was the existence of second-generation
entrepreneurs. This suggested that business role models existed within cultural communities,
which demonstrated greater bonding networks within cultural communities and less reliance on
bridging networks with dominant society for support on business endeavors. Native Hawaiians
were comprised of around 40% second-generation entrepreneurs as compared to 5% among
Aborigines and 80% Maori (p. 288). Foley and O’Connor (2013) speculated that these
differences were a result of how Indigenous peoples of these various communities had dealt with
colonization.
The distrust between the minority and dominant cultures created by history may, from an
entrepreneurship perspective, undermine the assistive capacity of bonding networks.
Both the minority and dominant cultures resist integration and acceptance of the other
and therefore the opportunity for trade and inter-business relations across and between
cultures are considerably reduced. (p. 288)
The third key indicator was educational level, which was important in accessing bridging
networks with the dominant society. Around 50% of the Native Hawaiian participants, as
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 55
compared to 20% of Maori and 75% of Aborigines, had post-secondary education. Foley and
O’Connor (2013) explained that when entrepreneurs were unable to get information from their
cultural networks they sought guidance from formal educational systems developed by the
dominant culture.
The Indigenous entrepreneur uses the acquisition of tertiary qualifications to increase
access to bridging networks into the dominant society’s social capital. However,
education seemed less important for business start-up in the Hawaiian and Maori cases as
both were able to draw upon their cultural heritage and strengths to facilitate their
entrepreneurial activities, limiting the need to use alternate means to establish bridging
networks. (p. 289)
The role of family was the fourth indicator of the influence of social capital. For Native
Hawaiian entrepreneurs, both the nuclear and extended family networks were very supportive of
business endeavors that lead to high levels of bonding networks. This led to networking
relationships that were highly integrated between social and business spheres. The development
and use of bridging and bonding networks was the fifth indicator of the influence of social
capital. These key indicators of social capital are essential for bonding and bridging networking
and stronger social capital.
Foley and O’Connor (2013) identified specific indicators that led to stronger social
capital among Indigenous entrepreneurs. These indicators incorporated cultural norms that are
important in shaping the social capital of Indigenous entrepreneurs. In addition, historical
context influenced how Indigenous entrepreneurs navigated bridging and bonding networking
between and within dominant and Indigenous communities. Specifically, Native Hawaiian
entrepreneurs had strong internal bonding networks within diverse cultural communities. In
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 56
addition, Native Hawaiian entrepreneurs tried to avoid exploiting or utilizing bridging networks
that suggested weak bridging networks with little reliance on the dominant culture. The ability
for Native Hawaiians to navigate bridging and bonding networking between and within dominant
and Indigenous communities influenced social capital.
Conclusion
Social capital provides an understanding of the importance of relationships in bringing
about actions that lead toward accomplishing a specified purpose. According to Bourdieu, social
capital involves a social network, useful relationships with resources as economic or cultural
capital. Those who are a part of the social network are allowed access to the accumulated
resources of the entire network. In addition to institutionalized social networks, social capital is
reproduced through family, the primary social unit. Similarly, Coleman indicates that social
capital is built through relationships with people possessing human capital to be used towards an
action that benefits a part of the social structure. Specific aspects of the social structure hold
value through their function or ability to achieve an individual’s goal. The value of an action
within the social structure is influenced by the actor’s social obligations, expectations, and
trustworthiness.
The articles presented helped me to develop an understanding of social capital as it
relates to educational policy implementation and Indigenous perspective. Policy implementation
determines work roles and workflow, which creates patterns of interactions. These patterns of
interactions develop an individual’s working relationship with others influencing the tie span,
access to expertise, trust and content interaction with those in their social network. The presence
of all of these dimensions lead to stronger social capital. When discussing the social capital of
Indigenous people, cultural norms and historical context shaped bridging and bonding networks.
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 57
Researchers identified five key indicators of social capital that were essential for bonding and
bridging networking: 1) cultural links with networking, 2) existence of second generation
entrepreneurs and education level, 3) role of family, 4) business relationship between social and
business spheres, and 5) presence of bridging and bonding networks. These indicators are
influenced by cultural norms and historical context and shape the social capital of Indigenous
entrepreneurs. The ability for Native Hawaiians to navigate bridging and bonding networking
between and within dominant and Indigenous communities influences social capital.
Indigenous Leadership
This literature review provides insight into the way Indigenous leadership has been
studied and identifies characteristics and concepts unique to Indigenous leadership. The
literature on Indigenous leadership helped me understand the Indigenous leadership practices
that Council members utilized as they approached their work to improve the educational
outcomes of Native Hawaiian students.
I begin this review of literature on Indigenous leadership by discussing the importance of
framing Indigenous research. Researchers who engage in Indigenous studies assert the
importance of proceeding with research using an Indigenous frame (Bird, Lee, & Lopez, 2013;
Faircloth & Tippeconnic, 2013; Kenny & Fraser, 2012). Next, I present research conducted with
Indigenous women leaders. The literature on Indigenous leadership has a significant amount of
research focusing on Indigenous women in educational leadership positions. Researchers in this
section claim that findings provided insight in Indigenous leadership in general. Furthermore, at
the time of this study, 65% of total members on the Council were women. Research on
Indigenous women leaders provides insight into the way that they approach their work with
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 58
Indigenous people. Finally, I presented literature that explored concepts that characterize
Indigenous educational leadership in general.
Framing Indigenous Research
Researchers who engage in Indigenous studies asserted the importance of proceeding
with research using an Indigenous frame (Bird, Lee, & Lopez, 2013; Faircloth & Tippeconnic,
2013; Fitzgerald, 2003a, 2003b, 2006, 2010; Kenny & Fraser, 2012). Indigenous frames
of research account for discourses of privilege and unequal power relationships that could impact
the research study by integrating Indigenous voices into research without bias (Bird, Lee, &
Lopez, 2013; Faircloth & Tippeconnic, 2013; Fitzgerald, 2003a, 2003b, 2006, 2010; Kenny &
Fraser, 2012).
Discourses of privilege. Fitzgerald (2003a; 2003b) explored leadership among
Indigenous women by uncovering discourses of privilege, rights given to individuals based on
gender, race, social class, or beliefs. Although Fitzgerald focused her studies on leadership roles
among Indigenous women, she explained that these concepts behind framing research for
Indigenous women could be used for research with Indigenous people in general. She claimed
that discourses of privilege within educational leadership reinforced the marginalization
of women and Indigenous people.
Fitzgerald (2003b) argued that the low percentage of Maoris in administrative and
teaching positions in comparison to the higher representation of Maori student population
exemplified a gap within the New Zealand school system. This gap could be narrowed through
understanding the current assumptions of leadership discourses that privileged non-Indigenous
perspectives (Fitzgerald, 2003b). Non-Indigenous leadership discourse rewarded leaders through
indicators such as fiscally efficient and public accountability, which defined educational
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 59
leadership in policy and practice (Fitzgerald, 2003a). Whereas, a Maori worldview
saw leadership as internally valued and defined by the leader’s relationship, accountability, and
benefit to the Indigenous community (Fitzgerald, 2003a). Indigenous leaders prioritized the
needs of their communities, which sometimes demanded that they navigate non-Indigenous
expectations for the benefit of the collective whole (Fitzgerald, 2003a). This included dealing
with the pressures from the non-Indigenous community to act as change agents in their
Indigenous communities while simultaneously meeting the needs of their Indigenous community
by challenging existing power structures (Fitzgerald, 2003a). Power imbalances existed between
Indigenous and non-Indigenous views of leadership that perpetuated discourses of privilege
based on race (Fitzgerald, 2003a).
To account for the power imbalance that perpetuated discourses of privilege, Fitzgerald
(2003a; 200b) provided the following suggestions when exploring Indigenous leadership. First,
there is not one definition or theory on Indigenous leadership; rather Indigenous educational
leadership may be exercised in multiple ways depending on the environmental setting
(Fitzgerald, 2003a; 2003b). Second, Indigenous leadership needs to be understood
independently of a non-Indigenous worldview (Fitzgerald, 2003b). The characteristics of
Indigenous leadership cannot solely be described by noting the differences between Indigenous
and non-Indigenous leadership (Fitzgerald, 2003b). The challenge for researchers is to avoid
placing non-Indigenous standards and perspectives at the center of theorizing, which
continues the cycle of marginalization.
Researchers stressed the importance of centering Indigenous ways of knowing in the
middle of theorizing to mitigate the power imbalances that existed. Researchers avoided a
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 60
singular definition or theory of Indigenous leadership to make way for possibilities of new
knowledge that multiple perspectives can provide.
Asymmetrical power relations and safety zone theory. Bird, Lee, and Lopez (2013)
placed Indigenous theory at the center of the study to analyze existing power imbalances. They
use the concept of asymmetrical power relations and the influence of safety zone theory within
school systems to identify key themes important to Indigenous perceptions of leadership. They
use Martinez’s (2010) concept of asymmetrical power relations, which describes the unequal
power structures created by the development and practice of school system policies that placed
Native students at a disadvantage. In addition, Lomawaima and McCarty (2006) proposed safety
zone theory to identify patterns in Indian policy, including educational policy that demonstrated
the “struggle over cultural differences and its perceived threat, or benefit, to a sense of shared
American identity” (p. 6). For example, safety zone theory stated that the level to which a school
implemented Native history or language was dependent on the curriculum’s perceived threat to
the school meeting national educational outcomes (Bird, Lee, & Lopez, 2013). The researchers
use the concepts of asymmetrical power relations and safety zone theory to analyze data from
Native American participants to explore their perceptions of leadership.
Secondary data analysis was conducted to explore Native American perceptions of
leadership. Bird, Lee, and Lopez (2013) used data from a previous study entitled Indian
Education in New Mexico, 2025 (IENM), collected between 2007 and 2010 from 13 schools
located within seven communities in New Mexico. For the analysis of the current study,
researchers chose to focus on school districts that had a student body with 20% or more
American Indian students, which included 31 focus group discussions and 14 interviews with a
total of 205 participants (83 American Indian students, 79 teachers and 43 American Indian
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 61
parents and community participants). Bird, Lee, and Lopez (2013) reviewed participant
quotations in search of comments about leadership within eight critical areas: pedagogy,
curriculum, accountability, language, school climate, successful students, relationships, and
visions of an ideal education.
Analysis of qualitative data identified three key themes related to leadership: 1) negotiating
asymmetrical power structures, 2) critique of leadership practices in schools, and 3) visions of
leadership and accountability. Bird, Lee and Lopez (2013) suggested Native American
participants negotiated unequal or asymmetrical power structures within their school system.
School leadership perpetuated asymmetrical power structures through policies and practices that
limited Native Americans in positions of power or limited decision-making power of Native
American staff. Native American participants critiqued school leadership as they shared
observations and experiences of the racially influenced inequity in power relations within the
school system such as a lack of support from school leadership for culturally relevant
professional development or lack of support and coordination with school leadership that limited
Native students’ effective use of resources. Participant perceptions of leadership indicated that
current school administrative leadership needed to change and acknowledged the value of having
members from their communities in leadership positions. Native American participants desired
leadership to make a positive impact on Native communities and to preserve cultural values and
beliefs.
Moreover, Bird, Lee, and Lopez (2013) identified ways participants wanted to transform
their schools by including Native perspective and voices into the educational system. First,
leadership should provide Native parents with the opportunity and accessibility to become
involved with their children’s school. The more Native parents were involved in their children’s
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 62
school the more positive their interactions were with school and administrators. Second,
participants discussed the need for more representation of Native peoples on school boards.
Third, leadership should advocate for the development of cultural connections within schools.
Participants stated that they wanted to see schools honor the cultural beliefs of American Indian
students in order to develop their cultural identity. Participants in this study identified strategies
for leadership to integrate Native people into the educational system to shift power and control
towards the inclusion of cultural practices and better academic achievement of Native students.
Overall, Bird, Lee, and Lopez (2013) used the theory of asymmetrical power relations
and safety zone to understand Indigenous educational leadership. They found participants
describing unequal power relations within the school system, between Native and non-Native
administration, staff and teachers. Despite unequal power relations, participants held visions for
school leadership to strengthen Native American communities towards self-determination and
resolve unequal power dynamics that participants perceived existed between their Native
communities and the schools that service them.
Indigenous Women in Leadership
The literature presented in this section provides insight into Indigenous leadership
practice as characterized by Indigenous women. Although research in this section focused on the
perspectives of Indigenous women in leadership position, researchers claim that components of
findings could be used to characterize Indigenous leadership in general. Furthermore, at the time
of the study, women represented 65% of the total members on the Council. The research within
this section provides insight into the way that these Council members approach their work with
Indigenous people. These studies discuss concepts of Indigenous leadership such as the triple
bind, walking between two worlds and the spaces in between. The triple bind describes the
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 63
discourses of privilege Indigenous women face based on ethnicity, gender, and judgments from
others. The term “walking between two worlds” is used to describe how Indigenous leaders
negotiate Indigenous and western worldview. The spaces in-between are boundaries that provide
the opportunity for Indigenous people to communicate their concerns or opinions. These
concepts although identified through the research from Indigenous women hold insight into the
practices of those in Indigenous leadership position regardless of gender.
The literature on Indigenous leadership has a significant amount of research focusing on
Indigenous women in leadership. According to Kenny and Fraser (2012), the literature on
Indigenous women in leadership is a reflection on women reclaiming their roles in contemporary
society. Traditionally, in many tribes, men often held formal positions of power while the
women created accountability and were considered to have the final word in decision-making.
With an imposed western government system, the traditional leadership role of women was
disrupted (Kenny & Fraser, 2012). Indigenous women worked on restoring the influence they
had in traditional leadership roles by learning and participating in leadership opportunities within
contemporary society (Kenny & Fraser, 2012).
Triple bind. The triple bind describes the discourses of privilege Indigenous women
face, based on ethnicity, gender, and judgments from others, which characterized the experiences
of Indigenous women in educational leadership. Fitzgerald (2006) interviewed four Maori, three
Aboriginal, and three First Nation women school principals to document their professional
biographies and educational leadership experiences. She did not want to theorize about
Indigenous leadership, but allowed Indigenous women the opportunity to share their experiences
of leadership.
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 64
Fitzgerald (2006) found that gender and ethnicity did matter in educational leadership.
First, these women discussed the influence of their ethnicity in a predominantly white world.
For example, women discussed the lack of positive support from non-Indigenous colleagues
because of their ethnicity. Second, the women were in historically male dominated
organizations. In order to gain leadership positions, these women needed to advocate for
themselves in organizations dominated by white men. Finally, Indigenous women experienced
judgments from others including Indigenous and non-Indigenous men and women. These
judgments continued the marginalization of Indigenous women in educational leadership
positions. The triple bind Indigenous women faced characterized their experience in educational
leadership positions.
Walking between two worlds. While in educational leadership positions, Indigenous
women managed the triple bind by navigating their Indigenous and non-Indigenous worldview.
Fitzgerald (2006) used the term “walking between two worlds” to describe how these women
perceived the negotiation of their Indigenous and western worldview. In the women’s own
words:
Walking between two worlds involved interpreting “the games” (Paula, Canada) that
operated in a “white man’s world” (Paula, Canada) and “very white organization[s]”
(Anne, Australia) in order to fulfill commitments to community and whanau (family).
The “struggle on a day-to-day basis” (Barbara, Australia) centered on “power and
control” (Anne, Australia) that was exercised by white men and women that stimulated
“creating a new person” (Barbara, Australia). (p. 210)
In educational leadership positions, Indigenous women struggled to learn the practices of
western society to meet the needs of their Indigenous communities.
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 65
Similarly, White (2010) explored the experiences of Indigenous women as they
negotiated their path towards leadership positions. Eleven Indigenous women self-selected to
participate in focus groups from a pool of 75 Indigenous female graduates from Australian
Catholic University. Three focus groups were conducted that led to a convenience sample of
five participants for in-depth interviews. Participants negotiated their path towards leadership
positions through networking and mentoring supports. Moreover, women participants indicated
that they applied traditional leadership roles of women to their contemporary leadership practice.
White (2010) used an historical frame to understand Indigenous women’s experiences in
overcoming challenges of colonialism towards leadership roles. She asserted that Indigenous
women needed to be able to tell their own stories in their own voices. Through this study, White
(2010) found that Indigenous women valued social supports and traditional leadership roles in
their current leadership practice.
Spaces in-between. Fitzgerald (2010) introduced the concept of spaces in-between in
her analysis of Indigenous leadership. She extended her research by adding 5 Maori women
leaders to her previous study, for a total of 15 participants. She conducted face-to-face
interviews with new participants and follow up interviews with past participants. She explained
that this study was an intercultural collaboration with boundaries that separated Indigenous and
non-Indigenous culture and other related aspects. She suggested that as boundaries were
negotiated through contact, communication, and interactions, the spaces in-between those
boundaries were acknowledged. The spaces in-between provided the opportunity for Indigenous
people to communicate their concerns or opinions, which led to the development of new
positions and opportunities for Indigenous leadership. Indigenous educational leaders used the
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 66
spaces in-between to share their perspectives on leadership that included the importance of
family and relationships, the collective good, and protection of Indigenous worldview.
Conclusion. While reading the literature on Indigenous leadership there was an
overwhelming representation of research on Indigenous women in educational leadership
positions. The research with Indigenous women provided insight into the practices of
Indigenous leaders such as Council members as they approached their work with Indigenous
people. Indigenous women in leadership described their experiences as a triple bind, challenges
encountered based on race, gender and other judgments (Fitzgerald, 2006). They dealt with the
triple bind by walking between two worlds, where they navigated Indigenous and non-
Indigenous worldviews and expectations (Fitzgerald, 2006). In addition, Indigenous women
found support, as they walked between two worlds, in their social network and in the traditional
cultural practices (White, 2010). The spaces in-between boundaries provided the opportunity for
Indigenous people to communicate their concerns or opinions towards the development of new
opportunities for Indigenous leadership (Fitzgerald, 2010). These concepts. although identified
through the research from Indigenous women, hold insight into the practices of those in
Indigenous leadership position regardless of gender.
Concepts for Indigenous Educational Leadership
Researchers on Indigenous leadership accounted for unequal power relations by
recognizing that Indigenous leadership is non-generalizable. Rather researchers offered concepts
inherent to Indigenous educational leadership based on traditional and contemporary cultural
practices to inform Indigenous educational leadership. The literature presented in this section
provided insight into the forms of Indigenous leadership that Council members might practice as
they approached their work with the Native Hawaiian community.
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 67
Indigenous educational leadership framework. Hohepa and Robinson (2008) argued
for an Indigenous educational leadership framework inclusive of Maori cultural concepts to be
created in order to increase academic outcomes for Maori students. Their argument for this
framework emerged from their analysis of New Zealand’s Iterative Best Evidence Synthesis
(BES), an initiative of New Zealand’s Ministry of Education to build research that informed
educational policy and practice, which determined that the current leadership framework lacked
essential elements of Maori leadership (Hohepa & Robinson, 2008). Hohepa and Robinson
(2008) added Maori cultural concepts to findings of the BES, to develop a leadership framework
to resonate with Maori people.
Research questions of the BES sought to link leadership and student outcomes:
1) What was the impact of differing types of leadership on student outcomes?
2) What was the role of leadership in interventions and educational programs in New
Zealand that improve student learning in English and Maori-medium schooling?
3) What knowledge, skills and dispositions were needed by school leaders to engage in
the practices identified in questions 1 and 2?
Two strategies were used to analyze evidence to answer research questions; Forward-mapping
and Backward-mapping. A Forward-mapping strategy was used to answer the first research
question by determining the impact of Maori and non-Maori leadership on student academic and
social outcomes. Five dimensions or practices of leadership were identified from a meta-analysis
of 27 studies. Backward-mapping strategy was used to “analyze teaching and learning
interventions that produced positive changes in student outcomes, then drew inferences from the
descriptive evidence provided about the role of leadership in creating the conditions that
produced those outcomes” (p. 28). There was a total of 31 studies that assessed initiatives that
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had positive effects on student outcomes in both Maori and English medium settings. These
studies did not specifically study leadership, but did include descriptions of the role leaders had
in interventions. These descriptions were identified and categorized into six dimensions that
reflected the “qualities of school leadership that make a difference to students through the
improvement of teaching” (p. 29).
After analyzing the evidence, Hohepa and Robinson (2008) noted the apparent lack of
Maori focused studies and questioned the appropriateness of identified dimensions on Maori-
medium school and compatibility with Maori worldview and leadership practices. They drew on
guidance from an Advisory Group that consisted of experts on Maori linguistics and culture,
Maori and English-medium school leadership, and policy makers to add cultural descriptions of
dimensions that would resonate with a Maori worldview (Hohepa & Robinson, 2008). After
combining similar dimensions and adding cultural descriptions, Hohepa and Robinson’s (2008)
Indigenous educational leadership framework, as outlined in Table 1, included eight leadership
dimensions and a Maori phrase or saying to help describe the dimension with the English
translation. The first dimension highlighted the importance of goal setting, particularly setting
goals that focused on desired student outcomes through the integration of Maori culture and
language (Hohepa & Robinson, 2008). Second, Hohepa and Robinson (2008) stressed that clear
goals made strategic resourcing achievable. They defined strategic resourcing as the process of
identifying and obtaining resources needed for the well-being of the group, achievable. The third
dimension reflected leadership pedagogy, such that leaders worked with staff to plan, coordinate,
and to provide useful respectful feedback for evaluation (Hohepa & Robinson, 2008). The fourth
dimension indicated the need for leaders to promote professional development through
individual and collective efforts. Such efforts included acknowledging the achievement of
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 69
individual teachers and developing a sense of collective responsibility towards student
achievement and wellbeing (Hohepa & Robinson, 2008). The fifth dimension discussed the
importance of leadership to ensure a supportive environment that personally and culturally
respected staff and students (Hohepa & Robinson, 2008). Sixth, leaders created educationally
meaningful relationship built on the understanding of how students’ cultural and personal context
affected their schooling experience (Hohepa & Robinson, 2008). The seventh dimension
encouraged leaders to engage in constructive problem talk or respectful discussions that held
those involved in a particular decision accountable for his/her actions (Hohepa & Robinson,
2008). This is accomplished when leaders are open-minded, willing to test their own views,
challenge others, made their purpose for action transparent and provided necessary evidence for
decisions made (Hohepa & Robinson, 2008). Eighth, leaders needed to understand that one
smart tool might work for one learner and might not for another (Hohepa & Robinson, 2008). A
smart tool was a knowledge base or technology used to accomplish a particular task (Hohepa &
Robinson, 2008). Hohepa and Robinson (2008) did not intend for this framework to be used as a
checklist but rather saw this framework outlining aspects of the educational leadership that
should always remain in view but would change in focus and intensity depending on the context
of the conditions, issues, or problems.

EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 70
Table 1

Indigenous Educational Leadership Framework

Ahuatanga 1:
Whaia te iti kahurangi
Seek the treasure that is
valued most dearly
Dimension 1:
Establishing Goals and
Expectations
Ahuatanga 2:
Ma te huruhuru karerete manu
It is the feathers that enable
the bird to fly
Dimension 2:
Resourcing Strategically
Ahuatanga 3:
Kia pai te whakatere i te waka
Steer the canoe well Dimension 3:
Planning, Coordinating and
Evaluating Teaching and the
Curriculum
Ahuatanga 4:
Ko te waka matauranga, he
waka eke noa
The vessel of knowledge is the
vessel for everyone
Dimension 4:
Promoting and Participating in
Teacher Learning and
Development
Ahuatanga 5:
Ka tika a muri, ka tika a mua
If all is right at the back, all
will be right out the front
Dimension 5:
Ensuring and Orderly &
Supportive Environment
Ahuatanga 6:
Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi
engari he toa takitini
My strength is not mine alone
but that of the multitudes
Dimension 6:
Creating, Educationally
Powerful Connections
Ahuatanga 7:
He kaha kit e whakahaere i
nga raruraru
Ability to settle disputes,
manage and meditate
Dimension 7:
Engaging in Constructive
Problem Talk
Ahuatanga 8:
Nga tapu ngaio, whiria, mahia
Choose and use the specialist
tools
Dimension 8:
Selecting, Developing &
Using Smart Tools
Hohepa, M. & Robinson, V. (2008). Maori and educational leadership: Tu Rangatira.
AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Scholarship, 4(2), 20-38.

Hohepa and Robinson (2008) indicated that this framework had three important features.
First, this framework recognized the inclusion of positional and distributed leadership in
maintaining a strong focus on building and sustaining schooling for the benefit of the community
and student achievement (Hohepa & Robinson, 2008). According to Hohepa and Robinson
(2008), the use of mana (prestige) in traditional and contemporary Maori leadership resembled
positional leadership, where leadership was determined by the amount of mana possessed. In
addition, distributed leadership acknowledged that anyone with the desire and capabilities to
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 71
complete specific tasks and activities could occupy leadership positions. Second, this leadership
framework was “highly fluid” and reciprocal, which allowed leaders to be influenced by the
community and the community to be influenced by those in leadership positions (Hohepa &
Robinson, 2008, p. 32). Third, this framework connected leadership with task specific
experiences. Leaders were influential because others recognized their ideas, actions, skill set and
knowledge as being essential in achieving a desired goal (Hohepa & Robinson, 2008). In
addition, Hohepa and Robinson (2008) stressed the importance of empowerment, the ability for
“educational leaders to make critical contributions to teaching and learning by creating the
conditions that enable others to do something that they did not have the resources or will to do”
(p. 33). These important features exemplified leaderships’ direct (face to face) and indirect (the
creation of conditions) influences that challenged others to rethink their views about what does
or does not need changing (Hohepa & Robinson, 2008). Hohepa and Robinson (2008) critically
examined findings on educational leadership from the BES and integrated Maori concepts to
develop a leadership framework that would resonate with Maori people.
Hohepa (2013) argued that Indigenous educational leadership was fundamentally
different from more generic forms of educational leadership. Indigenous educational leadership,
Maori educational leadership in particular, cannot fit into generic conceptions of educational
leadership as those generic conceptions had been developed in isolation from a “Māori
worldview and Māori knowledge, understandings, and experiences of leadership” (Hohepa,
2013, p. 620). She presented this argument within the context of her previous work with the
BES (Hohepa, 2013). She recounted the way a project created tension over how educational
leadership should be defined. The question became whether the definition should be limited to
“the generic aspects of educational leadership linked to desired student outcomes from existing
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research” or be extended to include “features of Māori Indigenous educational leadership that
were not necessarily captured in literature fitting within the parameters of ‘relevant evidence’”
(Hohepa, 2013, p. 618).
Through this piece, Hohepa (2013) distinguished Maori educational leadership from
generic concepts of educational leadership. She identified attributes of educational leadership
that were specific to Maori leaders while simultaneously raising concern over the possibility of
“essentializing and homogenizing discourse about Māori educational leadership” if these were
seen as universal to all Māori educational leaders (Hohepa, 2013, p. 621). With these cautions in
mind, Hohepa (2013) offered that Maori educational leaders were expected to meet the needs of
a variety of institutions, communities, sectors and tribes using traditional and non-traditional
knowledge bases from the past, present, and future. Maori leaders must be deeply
knowledgeable about Maori cultural practices to be able to enact those practices in Maori
cultural contexts as well as operate in settings with little connection to the Maori context
(Hohepa, 2013). Moreover, Maori educational leaders must be able to ensure that “Māori
students both acquire universal knowledge and skills and Māori knowledge and skills, which
help realize aspirations held among Māori” (Hohepa, 2013, p. 622). Maori educational leaders
demonstrated leadership consistent with Maori values, practices, and perspectives.
Finally, Hohepa (2013) suggested the concept of indigeneity to ease the tensions that
Maori leaders may face. The concept of indigeneity was an approach that recognized the need
for both Indigenous knowledge bases and western research findings to meet the needs of
Indigenous people. According to Hohepa (2013), indigeneity allowed Indigenous people the
right to decide what and how pertinent information from their own cultural foundation and
western research was integrated. In the Maori worldview, indigeneity permitted Maori
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 73
educational leaders to practice Maori leadership and engage with available knowledge, theories
and information about effective non-Maori educational leadership. In addition, Hohepa (2013)
believed that cultural knowledge deserves the respect of rigorous interrogation. In this sense, the
engagement of Indigenous and non-Indigenous worldviews including leadership and knowledge
was not linear, but a multidirectional exchange and interchanging of ideas (Hohepa, 2013).
Hohepa (2013) recounted her previous study of the BES program and Indigenous
leadership. She argued for the distinction between Maori educational leadership and generic
concepts of educational leadership. She warned against a universal definition of Indigenous
leadership and advocated that Indigenous leadership reflected the needs of Indigenous
communities. In addition, she proposed the use if indigeneity as an opportunity for the
interaction of Indigenous and non-Indigenous to meet the needs of Indigenous people.
Cultural practices. Benham and Murakami (2010) developed an Indigenous educational
leadership framework that demonstrated the need for Indigenous communities to be grounded in
cultural practices. They used data from a larger study conducted in 2003 by Johnson and
Benham. They specifically drew on 30+ interviews with Indigenous educational leaders from
pre-school through postsecondary institutions and community education programs (Benham &
Murakami, 2010).
After a critical analysis of data, researchers developed an Indigenous leadership
framework with four key principles:
1) The concept of ha was the Hawaiian word meaning breath of life. Ha referred to the idea
that all persons, past, present and future was connected.
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 74
2) The concept of place explained the reciprocal relationship Indigenous people had with
the land, sky, and sea. Place was where the individual, the family, and the community
experience life (past, present, and future).
3) The sacredness of relations and mana described each individual’s interrelatedness
between one’s immediate family and social group and connection to the physical
environment and spiritual world; past, present, and future. Mana was the spirit of each
individual that was strengthened by relationships. If this mana was broken the individual
becomes disconnected from ha, place, and all relations in the present and for future
generations.
4) The concept of individual generosity and collective action was explained through mana.
Mana was measured by an individual’s passion and discipline as evidenced by his/her
generosity, a selfless act that positively affected both the giver and the receiver. This was
accomplished by incorporating the following practices. First, leaders lived in a manner
that exemplified traditional values and principles while engaging in lessons learned from
contemporary society. Second, leaders focused on physical and spiritual wellbeing of the
community and place. Third, leaders knew the roles, responsibilities, and relationships of
individuals and collective. Fourth, leaders held respectfulness based on a deep
understanding of importance and intricacies of social networks. Finally, leaders made
connections between the traditional and the contemporary and across communities within
and external to the Indigenous world.
Through the analysis of interviews, Benham and Murakami (2010) identified key principles for
an Indigenous leadership framework. They found that leadership was driven by passion and
generosity towards social action, which was acted upon through the use of their mana. The focus
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 75
of leadership was to have a balanced community where generosity prevails. Benham and
Murakami (2010) offered these concepts of Indigenous leadership grounded in cultural practices.
Similarly, Fitzgerald (2010) asserted that leadership theory and practical approaches
needed to include Indigenous voices and perspective to achieve true diversity. She identified
three concepts of Indigenous leadership by combining relevant research findings with Maori
terms. First, was the concept of affiliation, specifically affiliation through the Whanaungatanga
or extended family and/or the community. Leadership was defined by kinship and community
relations past, present, and future, not aspirations of the individual. Second, was the concept of
advocacy as explained through Manaakitanga or the idea that mana (power) of the collective was
greater than one’s own. Mana was increased as mutual and reciprocal obligations between
people increased, which bound people together. Mutual and reciprocal obligation was expressed
through hospitality, generosity and respect. Therefore, Indigenous leaders increased mana as
they advocated for the needs of the community and fulfilled reciprocal obligations to bind the
community together. Third, was the concept of action as explained through Kaitiakitanga,
leaders take action to guard, protect, and sustain Maori knowledge. Indigenous ways of knowing
and acting led to a collective action where there was a clear connection between people and the
natural world. Fitzgerald (2010) identified these as significant concepts for Indigenous
leadership.
Congruent to the previous literature, Kenny and Fraser (2012) identified concepts unique
to Indigenous leadership that were exemplified throughout the literature. These concepts
included: 1) sense of place, 2) earth, 3) ancestors, and 4) stories. Indigenous leaders had an
inherent sense of place or an intimate spiritual commitment to all living things. Indigenous
leaders had the ability to follow, listen, and respond to the Earth. Ancestors, deceased family
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 76
and tribal members, provided Indigenous leaders with guidance through dreams, teachings, and
in spirit. In addition to ancestors, stories provided Indigenous leaders with guidance and a
connection to history, practices, values and sustainability of Indigenous people.
Effective Indigenous educational leadership. Faircloth and Tippeconnic (2013) offered
concepts of effective Indigenous leadership as determined by their ability to raise the academic
achievement of Indigenous students. First, they suggested that effective leaders needed to
acknowledge and recognize the role of colonization on Indigenous communities and the
educational system. Faircloth and Tippeconnic (2013) suggested colonization led to educational
policies and practices aimed to assimilate and eradicate Indigenous language and culture that had
resulted in low academic achievement of Indigenous students when compared to their non-
Indigenous peers. Second, effective leaders strived to decolonize the educational experience of
Indigenous students to increase graduation rates and perpetuate Indigenous leadership. Faircloth
and Tippeconnic (2013) defined the term decolonize as the “process of reforming the educational
system from one that privileges western beliefs, practices and priorities into one that recognizes
and respects the role of Indigenous ways of knowing and doing in the education of Indigenous
students” (p. 484). Third, effective Indigenous leadership was shaped by the context in which it
occurred. Each Indigenous community had unique concepts and practices of culture, language,
and leadership. Indigenous leadership needed to account for a history of colonization, work
towards decolonization, and meet the varying needs of diverse Indigenous communities.
Conclusion
Previous research on Indigenous educational leadership had been framed through the
historical and social context of Indigenous people that has created discourses of privilege and
unequal power relationships (Bird, Lee, & Lopez, 2013; Faircloth & Tippeconnic, 2013;
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 77
Fitzgerald, 2003a, 2003b, 2006, 2010; Kenny & Fraser, 2012). The historical context of
Indigenous people shape how they practiced leadership. For many Indigenous communities such
as Native Hawaiians, colonization had marginalized Indigenous people and created a dominant
society of westerners. Indigenous leaders grapple with discourses of privilege and unequal
power relationships created by the historical and social context of Indigenous people (Bird, Lee,
& Lopez, 2013; Faircloth & Tippeconnic, 2013; Fitzgerald, 2003a, 2003b, 2006, 2010; Kenny &
Fraser, 2012). In my literature review on Indigenous leadership, other researchers use theories
such as asymmetrical power relations, safety zone theory, discourse of privilege, and
decolonization to discuss the unequal power relations and structures that Indigenous people
contended with in a dominant western society. To mitigate these discourses of privilege and
unequal power relations, researchers contend that Indigenous leadership is non-generalizable,
rather Indigenous leadership is unique to the Indigenous community in which the leader serves
and varies by context, culture, language, values, beliefs, and perspectives of leadership
(Fitzgerald, 2003a; 2003b; Kenny & Fraser, 2012). This literature helped me understand the
importance of framing my research study with an Indigenous frame to recognize the power
relations and structures that characterize Indigenous leadership, while acknowledging the
uniqueness of each Indigenous community.
The literature on Indigenous leadership helped me understand the Indigenous leadership
practices that Council members utilized as they approach their work to improve the educational
outcomes of Native Hawaiian students. The literature pointed to the negotiating between
Indigenous cultural perspectives and western worldviews. Indigenous leaders navigate “walking
between two worlds” to meet the needs of their community within the dominant western society
(Fitzgerald, 2006; Kenny & Fraser, 2012). They integrate cultural values and beliefs into their
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 78
leadership practice while striving to meet the expectations of their Indigenous community and
dominant western society.
Conceptual Framework
In this section, I present my conceptual framework that provides the overall guide for this
study. The conceptual framework functions as the researcher’s understanding of phenomena that
the researcher plans to study and serves as a “tentative theory” (Maxwell, 2013, p. 39). My
conceptual framework informed how I collected, analyzed, and interpreted data.
My conceptual framework is comprised of three connected concepts: culturally based
education, social capital, and Indigenous leadership. At the beginning of this research study, I
argued that the methods Native Hawaiian Educational Council members approached their work
to improve the educational outcomes of Native Hawaiian students, both individually and
collectively, reflected their beliefs regarding culturally based education, their utilization of social
capital resources and their practice of Indigenous leadership. In this instance, I assumed that
Council members’ work included the support or development of educational initiatives that
benefit Native Hawaiians.
After analysis, findings led me to rethink my conceptual framework and how Council
members’ perceptions aligned with the literature on culturally based education, social capital,
and Indigenous leadership to explore their beliefs and approaches to their role. Findings
indicated that Council members’ discussion of their roles and how they went about enacting their
roles was framed in a manner that aligned with the literature of Indigenous leadership. This
meant that Council members’ discussions regarding their beliefs of their role reflected concepts
within culturally based education and was framed through an Indigenous leadership perspective.
Similarly, Council members’ discussions on how they went about enacting their roles aligned
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 79
with the literature on social capital and was framed through an Indigenous leadership
perspective. Figure 1 models the interactions of these three concepts as an individual makes
strategic and purposeful decisions to approach his/her work.
First, I individually describe the role culturally based education, social capital and
Indigenous leadership played in explaining the Council member’s approach to his/her work.
Then, I discuss the way in which these components interacted to explain Council member’s
approaches to address the educational achievement for Native Hawaiians.
Culturally Based Education
Council members’ perception of their role reflects culturally based education literature.
In general, Council members’ perception of their role reflects Beaulieu’s (2006) definition,
Culturally based education incorporates Native language and important elements of
Native culture. Culturally based interventions introduce these elements as planned
activities and materials designed to improve education in terms of community goals and
student achievement. They range from broad programs that engage participants for long
periods with high degree of involvement (e.g., all-day immersion programs) to more
specific interventions that entail less time and involvement (e.g., a specific language
text). (NWREL, 2002, as cited in Beaulieu, 2006, p. 54)
Council members see their role to support and advocate for the educational improvement of
Native Hawaiians, as defined by community goals and/or student achievement, through the
incorporation of Native Hawaiian language and culture into educational efforts.
The way Council members view their role is influenced by their beliefs of how language
and culture should be utilized, which reflects their understanding of culturally based education.
Council members’ beliefs of how and why Native Hawaiian language and culture should be
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 80
utilized existed along a continuum in three fractions. The first fraction or revitalizing group
consists of Council members whose beliefs reflected the literature on culturally
sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy. The second fraction or sustaining group comprises of Council
members whose beliefs reflected the literature on culturally sustaining pedagogy. Finally, the
revitalization group of Council members aligns with the concepts presented in culturally relevant
pedagogy. It is Council members’ beliefs of how Native Hawaiian language and culture should
be integrated into educational efforts that reflected their understanding of culturally based
education and the types of educational initiatives they supported and advocated.
The first fraction aligns with McCarty and Lee’s (2014) construct of culturally
sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy (CSRP). McCarty and Lee (2014) asserted CSRP accounted for
Native American socio-historical in a contemporary context to meet the needs of Native
American students by revitalizing Native language to sustain Native culture. A component of
CSRP is advocacy for systems change that utilized and normalized Native language and culture.
Council members in this fraction hold a deep understanding of Native Hawaiian culture and
language and utilize the western system to revitalize and sustain traditional Native Hawaiian
culture and language. These Council members discuss the importance of normalizing Native
Hawaiian language and culture to improve the educational outcomes of students as defined by
community goals. In addition, Council members see it as their role to advocate within the
western system for the normalization and utilization of Native Hawaiian language and culture.
The second fraction reflected Paris (2012) theory of culturally sustaining pedagogy
(CSP). According to Paris (2012), CSP is an approach that maintains the cultural and linguistic
practices of students and their communities while simultaneously providing access to the
dominant culture. He stated that pedagogy needs to be more than culturally relevant to students.
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 81
Rather, pedagogy needed to build on students’ cultural and linguistic practices to include an
understanding western dominant society. Council members in this sustaining fraction discuss
their role as providing students with opportunities to engage with their Native language and
culture as a means to improve their educational outcomes. They talk about advocating for the
utilization of Native Hawaiian culture and language as a bridge to access resources within the
dominant western society.
The third fraction of Council members utilizes concepts within Ladson-Billings (1995)
theory of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP). Ladson-Billings (1995) asserted that CRP focuses
on student academic success and intellectual growth while nurturing and supporting cultural
competence. CRP acknowledges the presence of institutional inequalities by validating students’
cultural identity and working towards student achievement. Council members in this fraction
voice the importance of Native language and culture and focus efforts on improvements in terms
of western outcomes. They view students’ development of cultural competence as occurring
separate from the academic achievement.
Social Capital
I expect members of the Council to utilize their social networks to enact their roles.
Drawing on concepts within the social capital literature, I contend that Council members utilize
their social capital within two types of networks, bonding and bridging networks. According to
Foley and O’Connor (2013), bonding networks are social relationships among and within
Indigenous communities, which are grounded in traditional social capital and cultural heritage of
those Indigenous peoples. Bridging networks are social relationships with that part of the
dominant western society, which allows Indigenous people to act as a link between the minority
and dominant culture. Foley and O’Connor (2013) found strong bonding networks among
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 82
Native Hawaiian participants, yet they “exhibited a tendency to avoid exploiting or utilizing
bridging networks” (p. 290). This means that Council members discuss predominantly utilizing
their bonding networks to enact their role. Council members draw upon their cultural
background and bonding networks to approach their work. For strong bonding networks,
Council members reported spending time and frequently interacting with informal experts such
as other Native Hawaiian community leaders, elders, and family members to gain advice, share
information, connect them to other experts, or funding sources that support his/her work within
the Native Hawaiian community. Because Council members have strong bonding networks
there is a limited need to use or establish bridging network. Thus, only a few Council members
discussed utilizing a bridging network to enact their role. These few Council members discuss
relationships within bridging networks such as State and Federal government systems to advance
their work. Council members use these relationships to gain advice, share information, connect
them to other experts, or funding sources that provided support external from Native Hawaiian
communities.
Indigenous Leadership
Before analysis, I argued that Council members practiced forms of Indigenous leadership
as they approached their work with Native Hawaiians, including gaining support for and
implementing educational initiatives that they believed would advance their goals and/or agendas
in relation to serving their community. After analysis and drawing on my findings, I contend
that the concepts within Indigenous leadership are a frame for Council members’ approaches to
their work. Similarly, Researchers who engaged in Indigenous studies asserted the importance
of proceeding with research using an Indigenous frame (Bird, Lee, & Lopez, 2013; Faircloth
& Tippeconnic, 2013; Fitzgerald, 2003a, 2003b, 2006, 2010; Kenny & Fraser,
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2012). Indigenous frames of research account for discourses of privilege and unequal power
relationships that could impact the research study by integrating Indigenous voices into research
without bias (Bird, Lee, & Lopez, 2013; Faircloth & Tippeconnic, 2013; Fitzgerald, 2003a,
2003b, 2006, 2010; Kenny & Fraser, 2012). Council members frame their discussions of their
role through an Indigenous leadership perspective. Similarly, Council members’ discussions on
how they went about enacting their roles was framed through an Indigenous leadership
perspective.
First, Council members discuss their role through an indigenous leadership perspective.
Council members view their role through the importance of impacting their community.
Literature on Indigenous leadership identified Indigenous leaders as prioritizing the benefit of the
greater community (Benham & Murakami, 2010; Hohepa & Robinson, 2008; Hohepa, 2013).
Council members discuss their roles to impact their community towards better outcomes. Yet,
the details of how they further define their roles reflects their definition of community. Hohepa
(2013) contended that Maori educational leaders were expected to meet the needs of a variety of
institutions, communities, sectors and tribes using traditional and non-traditional knowledge
bases from the past, present, and future. Similarly, Benham and Murakami (2010) provide
insight into wide variety of definitions of community. They describe one component of
Indigenous leadership as place such that there is a reciprocal relationship Indigenous people had
with the land, sky, and sea and where the individual, the family, and the community experience
life (past, present, and future). Drawing on these concepts within the literature of Indigenous
leadership, Council member’s definition of community and the details of their role to impact
their defined community vary.
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Second, Council members’ discussions on how they went about enacting their roles to be
framed through an Indigenous leadership perspective. Bird, Lee, and Lopez (2013) used the
Indigenous theory of asymmetrical power relations and safety zone theory to analyze existing
power imbalances that identified key themes important to Indigenous perceptions of leadership.
Asymmetrical power relations describe the unequal power structures created by the development
and practice of school system policies that place Native students at a disadvantage (Martinez,
2010). Safety zone theory describes the relationship between a given Indian policy and its
perceived threat or benefit to the collective American identity (Lomawaima and McCarty, 2006).
These concepts from Indigenous leadership bring an understanding of the power relations that
are embedded in the work of the Council as they fulfill their role as defined within Federal policy
and meeting the needs of their community.
In addition to framing, I drew on concepts within the literature of Indigenous leadership
to discuss Council members’ enactment of their role. Hohepa and Robinson (2008) described
Indigenous leadership as “highly fluid” and reciprocal, which allowed leaders to be influenced
by the community and the community to be influenced by those in leadership positions (Hohepa
& Robinson, 2008, p. 32). Similarly, Benham and Murakami (2010) described Indigenous
leadership through the concept of individual generosity and collective action. Reflective of the
literature, Council members discuss enacting their role through an Indigenous leadership
perspective by focusing their efforts on their community and enacting their work by developing a
reciprocal relationship with their community.
Conceptualizing Approaches
At the start of this research process, I believed that the way that Council members
approached their work, both individually and collectively, to improve the educational outcomes
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of Native Hawaiian students was a reflection of their beliefs regarding culturally based
education, the way they used their social capital and the way they enact Indigenous leadership.
After analysis and reflection of my findings, I contend that the way Council members define and
enact, is framed through an Indigenous leadership perspective. Their definition of their role
reflects the literature on culturally based education. In addition, Council members’ discussion on
how they enact their role reflects the literature of social capital.
As members of the Native Hawaiian Education Council, these individuals were appointed
to be on the Council because they had a combination of strengths in beliefs regarding culturally
based education, utilizing their social capital, and understanding components reflective of
Indigenous leadership. Council members describe their approaches along a continuum of high
and low levels of beliefs regarding culturally based education, utilization of social capital and
understanding of Indigenous leadership.
The interaction of these three elements, culturally based education, social capital, and
Indigenous leadership influenced the way that a Council member approached his/her work, both
individually and collectively, to improve the educational outcomes of Native Hawaiian students.
Although I expressed these ideas in a linear fashion, concepts interacted through an iterative
process. For example, a Council member’s awareness of asymmetrical power relations as
expressed through the literature of Indigenous leadership, affects that Council member’s use of
bridging networks as explained through the social capital literature. This limited use of bridging
networks then affects this Council member’s beliefs of culturally based education, such that he
or she may not fully utilize Native Hawaiian language and culture as a bridge to the western
dominant society. Figure A illustrates my conceptual frameworks as an iterative process as
Council members approach their work with Native Hawaiians.
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Figure A. Conceptual Framework.
Now I turn my attention to the methods used in this study and then to the findings,
conclusions, and recommendations.

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CHAPTER THREE: METHODS
This chapter describes the qualitative approach, instrumentation, and data collection
methods I utilized to conduct this study. The purpose of this study was to explore the ways in
which members of the Native Hawaiian Education Council made meaning of their role as
educational leaders, as individuals and Council members, in relation to the needs of Native
Hawaiian students. Specifically, this study examined the way Council members went about
“perpetuating excellence in Native Hawaiian education” as Council members and as individual
community members. I argued that Council members’ discussion of their roles and how they
went about enacting their roles was framed in a manner that aligned with the literature of
Indigenous leadership. This meant that Council members’ discussions regarding their beliefs of
their role reflected concepts within culturally based education and was framed through an
Indigenous leadership perspective. Similarly, Council members’ discussions on how they went
about enacting their roles aligned with the literature on social capital and was framed through an
Indigenous leadership perspective. In this instance, I assumed that Council members’ work
included the support or development of educational initiatives that benefit Native Hawaiians.
The research questions for this study asked:
1. What do members of the NHEC perceive to be their role in “perpetuating excellence
in Native Hawaiian education” (Native Hawaiian Education Council, 2014, para.15)
as Council members and as individual community members to support or develop
educational initiatives that benefit Native Hawaiians?
2. How do they see themselves enacting their roles in relation to this agenda as
individuals and members of the Council?

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Research Design
This study used a qualitative research design. According to Merriam (2009) qualitative
research seeks to “understand how people interpret their experiences, how they construct their
world, and what meaning they attribute to their experiences” (p. 5). The research questions for
this study sought to understand the way that Council members interpreted their experiences, the
way they constructed their world, and the meaning of their experiences.
For this research design, a case study approach was used to provide an in-depth analysis
of a bounded system, a single entity or unit with boundaries (Merriam, 2009). The case study
can be characterized as being particularistic, descriptive, and heuristic. Drawing on Merriam
(2009), this research study was particularistic as it focused on a particular entity, the Native
Hawaiian Education Council. This research study was descriptive in that the end product
consisted of a rich and a literal description of the approaches used by Council members. Finally,
this research study was heuristic because it enhances the reader’s understanding of the way
members of the Council made meaning of and approach their role as educational leaders. I used
a multi-case study of 10 members or 50% of the Council. This allowed for a thorough
exanimation of the approaches Council members use to improve the educational outcomes of
Native Hawaiian students as a collective Council and as individuals.
I drew on the literature of Indigenous methodology to better situate the Native Hawaiian
perspective of Council members. Indigenous methodology focuses on research approaches that
account for the historical and social contexts of Indigenous people (Smith, 2012). According to
Smith (2012), the goal of Indigenous research includes self-determination of and social justice
for Indigenous people. Research then becomes the processes of transformation, of
decolonization, of healing and of mobilization for Indigenous peoples (Smith, 2012, p. 120).
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These approaches put Indigenous protocols, values, and beliefs at the forefront of research
design.
Sample
To guide purposeful selection of respondents, Merriam (2009) suggested that criteria be
used to select information-rich cases. I used criteria to select at least 10 out of 20 members, or
50% of the Council. At the time I chose to conduct interviews, there was a total of 20 members
on the Council with one seat vacant. Criteria assisted in providing maximum variation and
diversity within the sample. Specifically, the criteria provided a sampling of people with
different understandings and beliefs of culturally based education, different social capital and
different Indigenous leadership practices that represents the various perspectives of the diverse
communities across the State of Hawai`i, diverse groupings within the Council, and key
positions within and associated with the Council. Criteria was determined by descriptions of the
various Council positions. The following criteria was used to select respondents:
Criterion 1: The first criterion was that respondents needed to be current members of the
Native Hawaiian Education Council. Interviewing current Council member provided data that
reflected the current beliefs of culturally based education, use of social capital, and practice of
Indigenous leadership as they addressed the existing needs of Native Hawaiian students. This
meant that interviews reflected the existing dynamics that existed within Native Hawaiian
communities, which affected how Council members viewed their role as well as the strategies of
Council members to enacting their role. Insight into those approaches demonstrated Council
members as educational leaders within the Native Hawaiian community today.
Criterion 2: The second criterion was that respondents represented different island
communities across the State of Hawai`i. The Native Hawaiian Education Council is made up of
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representatives from each of the following Island Councils: Hawai`i, Maui, Lanai, Molokai,
Kauai, Niihau and Oahu. I selected at least four Island Council members from different islands
represented on the statewide Council. As representatives of their community or Indigenous
leaders, these Council members understood the unique needs and issues of their community. The
literature on Indigenous leadership pointed to the uniqueness of each Indigenous community
with approaches that reflect those unique needs (Fitzgerald, 2003a; 2003b and Kenny & Fraser,
2012). These Council members provided a perspective as Indigenous leaders, as they discussed
their role in a manner that related to their unique community needs and resolutions. This
experience and knowledge base also influenced how they went about doing their work, and
specifically how they utilized social capital and understood culturally based education.
Criterion 3: Respondents represented different groups on the Council. The Native
Hawaiian Education Act defined the composition of the Council to include Native Hawaiian
education service providers and Native Hawaiian or Native Hawaiian education consumers. As I
explored the selection process, I discovered that Council members from different islands were
categorized and defined as Native Hawaiian education consumers by the Council. Therefore, to
provide diversity, I selected three Council members who were identified as providers. As
providers, these Council members had insight into the educational services for Native Hawaiians
and specifically, they had experience in the way culture based education impacted Native
Hawaiians. This experience and knowledge base also influenced how they went about doing
their work, and explicitly, how they utilized social capital and understood Indigenous leadership.
Criterion 4: In addition, respondents represented key positions within or associated with
the Native Hawaiian Education Council, in which they navigated both the western government
structures and Native Hawaiian community. As such, these respondents had a unique social
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capital network, which included both bonding and bridging networks, which provided insight
into how they utilized their social capital to enact their role. In addition, the way these Council
members understood culturally based education and Indigenous leadership shaped how they
discussed their role.
For the purposes of this research study, a combination of purposeful and snowball
sampling was used to identify respondents. Purposeful sampling is based on the assumption that
the researcher wants to understand and gain insight into a specific group of respondents
(Merriam, 2009). Moreover, snowball sampling, a type of purposeful sampling, was used in this
study where respondents provided the researcher with referrals to other respondents who met the
criteria (Merriam, 2009). I obtained a list of Council members from the Council’s website. This
list identified Council members as either providers or consumers, it also provided names and job
title or island they represented. From that list, I identified potential respondents based on
developed criteria which outlined the various positions on the Council that aligned with
culturally based education, social capital, and indigenous leadership. The first interview was
conducted during a Council meeting break; there, I introduced myself to another Council
member, who through email follow up became a participant. After my interview with my second
respondent, she provided me with an introductory email to another participant. I had a face to
face interaction with the third respondent at a non-Council related meeting and then followed up
with an email. This third participant was a gatekeeper, who sent a supportive email to the rest of
the Council, which provided me access to the remainder of my respondents. I contacted the three
respondents through a phone call and four respondents through email.

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Instrumentation and Data Collection
The purpose of this study is to examine the roles of Council members, as individuals and
Council members, as they approached their work to improve the educational outcomes Native
Hawaiians. The way that Council members approached their work was influenced by their
beliefs regarding culturally based education, the way they use their social capital and the way
they enact Indigenous leadership. As a qualitative case study, the researcher was the primary
instrument for data collection and analysis (Merriam, 2009).
As I collected data with Indigenous people, I had the responsibly to include protocols that
aligned with Indigenous methods. Drawing on Smith’s (2012) work, I needed to show respect
and establish a reciprocal relationship by clearly articulating the purpose of the research to
participants and that research should benefit the community by addressing Indigenous issues.
According to Smith (2012), Indigenous methodology suggested that researchers demonstrate
“respect and practices of reciprocity” to participants (p. 137). Researchers accomplished this by:
1) meeting with participants face to face, 2) observing and listening to participants before
speaking, 3) being generous by sharing and hosting participants, 4) not trampling over
participant’s beliefs or thoughts but rather value Indigenous knowledge, and 5) not flaunting
your own knowledge. Smith (2012) advised researchers to engage and value the process of data
collection rather than focus on research outcomes. As I took heed to the work of Smith (2012), I
needed to be able to build relationships with participants who would then provide their consent
to participate in research because of the credibility of the person conducting research.
For this study, one interview was conducted with each of the 10 Council members.
Interviewing was necessary in identifying the way people interpret the world around them
(Merriam, 2009). The interviews followed a semi-structured interview format, where “the
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interview is guided by a list of questions or issues to be explored, and neither the exact wording
nor the order of the questions is determined ahead of time” (Merriam, 2009, p. 90). This allowed
the researcher to be present in the discussion by responding during the interview (Merriam,
2009). Furthermore, a semi-structured format allowed me to engage in conversation, which was
an important factor that aligned with Indigenous methodology. Smith (2012) asserted that
interviews with Indigenous participants were expected to engage in conversation. The interview
protocol provided the researcher with a guide to ensure conversation relates back to the research
questions.
Guided by my conceptual framework, the interview protocol consisted of questions to
provide insight into Council members’ beliefs regarding culturally based education, the way they
use their social capital and the way they enact Indigenous leadership, which informed their
approach as they work to improve the educational outcomes of Native Hawaiians. First,
interview questions explored Council members’ knowledge of Native Hawaiian culture and
language as well as the role of culture and language in the education of Native Hawaiians.
Responses to these questions provided insight into Council members’ level of understanding of
the tenets of culturally based education. Second, interview question explored Council members’
social capital and the way they make and maintain bonding and bridging networks. Responses to
these questions provided insight into the way social capital was developed and utilized. Finally,
interview question explored the way Council members approached their work with and for their
communities, which included the way they negotiate cultural and western worldviews.
Responses to these questions provided insight into the way Council members approach their
work as Indigenous leaders.
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The data collection process occurred over a 2-month period. I conducted one interview
with 10 Council members for a total of 10 interviews. Interviews length ranged from 45 minutes
to 3.5 hours. Majority of interviews were between 1.5 hours and 2 hours. Interviews were
conducted at a location identified by the Council member. I interviewed Island Council
members in each of their respective island communities. In addition, I interviewed Council
members identified as providers in their offices on various school campuses, some of which were
located on other islands. Furthermore, I interviewed Council members in key positions at their
respective offices. Each interview was recorded and transcribed for data analysis. Additionally,
after each interview I wrote field reflective notes to document my thoughts, feelings, and
observations during the interview.
Data Analysis
Data for this qualitative study included transcripts from interviews conducted with
Council members along with field reflective notes. Data analysis is the process of making sense
of the data by consolidating, reducing and interpreting what people have said to align with what
the researcher has seen and read (Merriam, 2009). Specifically, analysis is a process of
examination to find out what it is and how it works by breaking apart a substance into various
components, then examining those components to identify their properties and dimensions
(Corbin & Strauss, 2008). For this qualitative study, I used my conceptual framework to guide
and analyze data from interviews to examine Council members’ approaches to their work to
improve the educational outcomes of Native Hawaiians.
Data analysis begins during data collection by preparing data for analysis while data is
being collected (Merriam, 2009). Once I left the field, recorded interviews were saved on a
secured laptop. As interviews were being transcribed, the coding process began. I personally
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transcribed interviews. As I transcribed interviews, I wrote reflective notes to gather thoughts on
the coding process. Coding is the process of identifying bits of interesting data and arranging
those data into categories (Maxwell, 2013; Merriam, 2009). My coding process included several
phases. For the first phase, I started with hard paper copies of transcribed interviews in which, I
conducted open and axial coding by reading transcripts to identify important or useful
information to develop coding categories while interpreting and reflecting on the meaning of
codes. The first interview I chose to analyze was of a Council member with whom I thought I
had a well-rounded discussion that provided data in all three areas of my conceptual framework.
In other words, this Council member talked in depth about her viewpoints that demonstrated her
understanding of culturally based education, utilization of social capital, and concepts related to
Indigenous leadership. Analysis of this Council member’s discussion provided me with a
comprehensive first list of codes. In addition, I utilized my reflective notes from the interviews
and transcription process to support the codes I developed. As I went through each interview, I
refined coding categories while reflecting on the meaning of codes, which resulted in the adding
codes, combining several codes together, or deleting codes. I used my conceptual framework as
a guide to develop categories and codes that helped give me insight into my research questions. I
categorized codes by Indigenous leadership, culturally based education, and social capital. For
example, under the category Indigenous leadership there were 32 codes with definitions, which
included:
• Honor past experiences–Discussion on past experiences and honor previous work
of others
• Awareness–Discussion on his/her awareness of self, others, and global.
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• Navigate 2 worlds (West to Native)–Use of western methods to advance Native
agenda
After completing this first coding process of all 10 hard copy transcripts, I had a complete list of
codes with definitions that aligned directly with the concepts within my conceptual framework.
This list included Indigenous leadership with 78 codes, culturally based education with 65 codes
and social capital with 27 codes. For example, new codes within the Indigenous leadership
category included:
• Aina (land)–Connection to the aina as a source of strength and focus
• Drive–Discuss drive to push forward, willing to do more
• Family Focus—Discussion that reflected personal family needs; family
foundation of character development; family as foundation of community
I then used this complete list of codes to go through my transcripts a second time. I conducted
this second phase of analytic coding by transferring coded data from the hard copy transcripts to
a digital format by highlighting typed text on a Word document. Transferring data allowed me
to question, reflect, or validate the codes that I had previous chosen. I refined coding categories
while reflecting on the meaning of codes, which resulted in the adding codes, combining several
codes together, or deleting codes. At the completion of this phase, I had compiled a list of
refined codes and categories that directly aligned with my conceptual framework. For example, I
now used Indigenous leadership as a topic with groups of categories and codes. Under the topic
of Indigenous leadership, I had nine categories with a total of 55 codes. One category was
Attributes of a Leader with codes such as Aloha, Awareness, or Internal Motivation. With this
list of codes and categories, I conducted the third phase of analysis. This final analysis allowed
me to verify that identified data matched revised codes. At the completion of this third and final
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phase of analysis, I had a final list of coded data that I organized a case study database for
intensive analysis. This database categorized data into groups according to conceptual
framework topics, Indigenous leadership, culturally based education, and social capital. Within
these groups there were categories and codes. In the Indigenous leadership group, there were
nine categories and a total of 59 codes. In the culturally based education group, there were six
categories and a total of 58 codes. In the social capital group, there were three categories and a
total of 29 codes. The case study database assisted me in analyzing the meaning of components
reflected in my conceptual framework.
I used the case study database to compare data across Council members for the purpose
of identifying themes. To help me identify themes, I wrote each code with its definition, whether
or not the code was used by each Council member, and a total number of Council members who
used the code data on a notecard. For example, one note card would have the code ‘Ike Hawai`i
with the definition I used Perpetuating and practicing Native Hawaiian culture and knowledge.
In addition, I listed each Council member that I identified through analysis as using that code
with a total amount (ex., Council members 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 had statements coded with
‘Ike Hawai`i for a total of 9 Council members). After making notecards for each code, I kept
notecards grouped according to conceptual framework topics–Culturally based education, social
capital, and Indigenous leadership. For each group, I further separated notecards in a manner
that spoke to answering either research question one or two. Finally, by research questions I
arranged notecards on a bulletin board with codes with a higher total number of Council
members with statements of that particular code closest to the top. For example, `Ike Hawai`i
with nine Council members would be arranged higher than the code History with five Council
members. With codes in one place, I was able to further analyze and synthesize data to develop
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overall themes. Corbin and Strauss (2008) identified the process of theoretical comparisons in
which “analytic tool used to stimulate thinking about properties and dimensions of categories”
(p. 65). The process of developing these bulletin boards with notecards of codes arranged by
research question and frequency, allowed me to further think about the dimensions of categories
and analyze data across Council members.
Using those overall themes, I began writing my findings. While writing my findings, I
applied Corbin and Strauss’ (2008) analytic tool of questioning,
Asking questions and thinking about the range of possible answers helps us to take the
role of the other so that we can better understand the problem from the participant’s
perspective. Any answers to the questions are only provisional, but they start us thinking
about what ideas we need to be looking for in the data, both from this participant as well
as future ones. (p. 72)
Questioning led me to an analysis that further critiqued data to develop potential findings.
Limitations
This study was reliant on Council members’ interpretation of the way they believed they
approached their work to improve the educational outcomes of Native Hawaiians. Council
members’ willingness to share and truthfulness of their responses affected the validity of this
study. This study was limited to the responses of Council members that agreed to participate.
Delimitations
There were several choices made that imposed limitations on this study. First, I
constructed the interview protocol to elicit responses from Council members. As a novice
researcher, I may not have asked questions that I should. Second, I developed the sample
selection process. This study is confined to the responses of 10 Council members, who
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represented 50% of the Council. The participants in the study were chosen using purposeful and
snowball sampling who met identified criteria. Third, I conducted analysis to develop findings.
Merriam (2009) stated, “Deciding what is important–what should or should not be attended to
when collecting and analyzing data–is almost always up to the investigator’s view” (p. 233). As
a novice researcher, I may not have identified findings as a more experienced researcher would
have discovered.
Credibility and Trustworthiness
Validity and reliability have different meaning when used in the context of qualitative
research. Validity refers to how closely research findings correspond with reality (Merriam,
2009). Reliability ensures that results are consistent with the data collected (Merriam, 2009). In
qualitative research they are often referred to as credibility and trustworthiness instead of validity
and reliability.
Drawing on Merriam (2009), I used several strategies for promoting credibility and
trustworthiness. First, I used triangulation of sources by using multiple sources of data to
confirm emerging findings. Second, I provided “rich, thick descriptions” of collected data for
readers to understand the context of the study. Third, colleagues provided a peer review
regarding the process of study, the congruency of emerging findings with the raw data and
tentative interpretations. These peers were knowledgeable about the topic and the methodology
of research process. Fourth, I purposefully sought variation and diversity in sample selection for
maximum variation. Finally, to account for reflexivity, I critically self-reflected on my
assumptions, worldview, biases, theoretical orientation, and relationship to the study that
affected the investigation in a fieldwork journal. This was an evolving process throughout the
data collection and analysis process. I integrated Indigenous methods into my critical self-
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reflections. Smith (2012) discussions on an insider Indigenous researcher aligned with the
concept of reflexivity. Smith (2012) stated, “The critical issue with insider research is the
constant need for reflexivity. At a general level, insider researchers need to think critically about
their processes, their relationships and the quality and richness of their data and analysis” (p.
137). According to Smith (2012), an insider Indigenous researcher needs to be aware of the
changes in roles, relationships, status and positions that the researcher has within the community.
Furthermore, Smith (2012) cautions that an insider researcher cannot assume that his/her own
experience is the same experience of other members within the Indigenous community. Rather,
the insider researcher may uncover beliefs, values, relationships and the knowledge of different
histories that contradict the image that some idealistic researchers may hold (Smith, 2012).
Based on Smith’s discussion, it was important from me as an insider Indigenous researcher that
my self-reflections include that I am Native Hawaiian, currently involved in the Native Hawaiian
community, and previously employed at a Native Hawaiian charter school.
Ethics
Adhering to high ethical standards was a priority throughout this research study.
Maxwell (2013) contends that “ethical concerns should be involved in every aspect of design”
(p. 7). First, this study was submitted and approved by USC Institute of Review Board (IRB).
Second, I conscientiously explained the consent forms with each Council member and required
that they sign the consent forms to indicate that they provided their consent. Consent forms (see
Appendix B) outlined the purpose and procedures of the study, participant rights and privacy,
and risks and benefits. Third, while writing analysis I was conscience about anonymity and
confidentiality of participants. Although Merriam (2009) asserted that, “at a local level, it is
nearly impossible to protect the identity of either the case or the people involved” (p. 233). Yet,
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being a part of a small close-knit community, protecting the identity of participants while
holding the creditability and trustworthiness of this study was an ethical concern. I conducted a
peer review of initial findings; to read quotes and findings, to test anonymity, and determine if
participants were identifiable from provided quotes. If participants were identified, then
quotations were shortened to take out identifying information.
As an insider Indigenous researcher, I had ethical concerns about the presentation and
implications of my findings. According to Smith (2012),
Insider research has to be as ethical and respectful, as reflexive and critical, as outsider
research. It also needs to be humble. It needs to be humble because the researcher
belongs to the community as a member with a different set of roles and relationships,
status and position. (p. 139)
There were two ethical concerns that arose during my presentation of findings and development
of implications because I am an insider Indigenous researcher.
First, being an insider Indigenous researcher I had knowledge of cultural practices and
norms that provided me insight to analyze data. At the beginning of my research, I took heed to
Smith’s (2012) caution to being the “official insider voice” and the arrogance of relying on “she
or he lives in it therefore they know” mentality. But throughout analysis, I unconsciously
selected important data from my transcripts based on my insider knowledge. While writing the
presentation of my findings, I bypassed the reasons why specific data was selected and went
straight into analysis. This resulted in a presentation of findings that reflected culturally based
education and social capital. I overlooked the integration of Indigenous leadership in my
findings. As I relooked through my data, I realized that the literature base of Indigenous
leadership aligned with my insider knowledge and helped explain why certain data was chosen.
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As I made sense of this realization, I found that concepts within the literature provided an
Indigenous leadership frame in which Council members’ discussed their role and enactment of
their role. In addition to not being the arrogant official insider voice, it is just as important to
avoid the other end of the spectrum where the insider voice is lost. The Indigenous perspective
needs to be a part of the discussion. It needs to be identified, which means that the researcher
needs to have knowledge of the Indigenous perspective and be able to acknowledge its existence.
Second, I had an uneasiness to clearly define the variations within my findings and to
select a defined variation as a recommendation in my implications chapter. Smith (2012)
explains that the insider Indigenous research differs from outsider non-Indigenous researchers
because insiders live within the communities in which they study. Therefore, the consequences
or benefits from insider research effect the insider researcher on a “day-to-day basis for ever
more and so do their families and communities” (p. 137). Aligned with Smith’s (2012)
explanations of an insider Indigenous researcher, the presentation of findings and implications of
this research study weigh heavy on my conscience as it will affect my future professional career,
my personal day-to-day life, as well as the lives of my family. I feared the consequences of
categorizing and clearly defining Council members’ beliefs of their role based on their
perceptions of the integration of Native Hawaiian language and culture. These Council members
are predominant leaders in the Native Hawaiian community. Their discussions provided me with
a rich data set and an opportunity to perpetuate a Native Hawaiian worldview. My fear was that
the presentation of my findings, which included the categorizing of Council members’ beliefs
into clearly defined groups, would disrespect or harm the work of these Council members.
Smith (2012) asserts that the insider Indigenous researchers must “think through the complexities
of Indigenous research.” These complexities are presented as Indigenous researchers balance the
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demands of the western research community and the Indigenous community. As I thought
through the complexities of my research, I drew on the literature to help explain Council
members’ beliefs of their role. Specifically, my findings aligned data from my interviews with
the literature on culturally based education. In addition, I framed their responses and approaches
through an Indigenous leadership perspective. As mentioned earlier, the framing of findings
through an Indigenous leadership perspective is critical to Indigenous research.
Conclusion
The purpose of this study was to examine the approaches of Council members, as
individuals and Council members, as they approached their work to improve the educational
outcomes Native Hawaiians. I argued that Council members’ discussion of their roles and how
they went about enacting their roles was framed in a manner that aligned with the literature of
Indigenous leadership. This meant that Council members’ discussions regarding their beliefs of
their role reflected concepts within culturally based education and was framed through an
Indigenous leadership perspective. Similarly, Council members’ discussions on how they went
about enacting their roles aligned with the literature on social capital and was framed through an
Indigenous leadership perspective. For this case study, the unit of analysis was Council
members of the Native Hawaiian Education Council. Data was collected through semi-
structured interviews. Moreover, my conceptual framework guided the data analysis process.

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CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS
The purpose of this study was to explore the ways in which members of the Native
Hawaiian Education Council made meaning of their role in accomplishing their mission, as
individuals and Council members, in relation to the needs of Native Hawaiian students.
Specifically, this study asked two research questions:
1. What do members of the NHEC perceive to be their role in “perpetuating excellence
in Native Hawaiian education” (Native Hawaiian Education Council, 2014, para. 15)
as Council members and as individual community members to support or develop
educational initiatives that benefit Native Hawaiians?
2. How do they see themselves enacting their roles in relation to this agenda as
individuals and members of the Council?
Data analysis of Council members’ interviews revealed Council members defined and enacted
their roles in superficially similar ways, yet, below the surface of agreement, there were
significant differences in the ways they conceptualized and described enacting their roles. First,
I present findings in the way Council members perceived their roles in perpetuating excellence in
Native Hawaiian education. Two categories of agreements emerged from Council members’
interviews with respect to their roles as Council members and as individual community
members. The first category related to the way that Council members understood it as their
responsibility to impact their community, which aligned with concepts within the literature of
Indigenous leadership. Literature on Indigenous leadership identified Indigenous leaders as
prioritizing the benefit of the greater community (Benham & Murakami, 2010; Hohepa &
Robinson, 2008; Hohepa, 2013). Benham and Murakami (2010) asserted that Indigenous
leadership was characterized by individual generosity and collection. Similarly, Hohepa and
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Robinson (2008) spoke to the role of Indigenous leaders in education as building and sustaining
schooling for the benefit of the community and student achievement. The second category
related to the way they understood their role in relation to their beliefs on how to best meet the
needs of Native Hawaiian students. In this category, there were two general agreements among
Council members. First, Council members saw it as their role to support educational efforts that
incorporated elements of Native Hawaiian language and culture to improve education in terms of
community goals and student achievement. Second, Council members saw it as their role to
advocate for educational improvements in terms of community goals or student achievement.
Beyond these two general categories of agreement, Council members varied along a continuum
in how they discussed the details of their role based on their understanding of culturally based
education. This continuum aligned with the ideas within my conceptual framework theory and
literature on culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy, culturally sustaining pedagogy, and
culturally relevant pedagogy. On one end of the continuum, Council members with a revitalizing
understanding, which aligned with culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy, held a deep
understanding of Native Hawaiian culture and language and utilized the western system to
revitalize and sustain traditional Native Hawaiian culture and language. They saw it as their
responsibility to provide students with opportunities to be immersed in their Native language and
culture. Discussions of Council members in the center of the continuum aligned with culturally
sustaining pedagogy. Those in this sustaining fraction saw it as their role to provide students
with opportunities to engage with their Native language and culture as a means to improve their
educational outcomes. Thus, they believed that culture should play a more significant role in
bridging Native Hawaiian students towards academic achievement. At the other end of the
continuum, Council members discussions reflected culturally relevant pedagogy. Council
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members in this relevant fraction voiced their support for Hawaiian language and culture, yet,
saw it as their role to create opportunities that improved students’ ability to be successful in
achieving in western terms. Therefore, they did not believe it was their job as members of the
Council to create opportunities for engagement with language and culture as much as it was
important to provide children with opportunities to improve academically in ways valued by the
western school system.
Second, I present findings in the way Council members saw themselves enacting their
roles towards their agenda. Data revealed a general agreement with varied themes in the way
Council members discussed how they went about enacting their roles. Overall, Council
members discussed enacting their roles by leveraging within their bonding networks. Beyond
this general agreement, variations existed among Council members’ descriptions of approaches
to how they enacted their role.
In the remainder of this chapter, I present my analysis of the data that speaks to the above
findings.
Perceived Roles
For this analysis, I drew on the literature of Indigenous leadership as a frame.
Fitzgerald’s (2010) findings best exemplified leadership practice for those working with
Indigenous communities. She asserted that leadership theory and practical approaches needed to
include Indigenous voices and perspective to achieve true diversity such that: 1) leaders in
Indigenous communities needed to demonstrate their affiliation to the community which was
defined by kinship and community relations past, present, and future and solidified by their
commitment to the community and not aspirations of the individual; 2) leaders working with
Indigenous communities demonstrated their commitment to the community by advocating for
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their needs and developing a reciprocal relationship which further deepened the bonds within the
community; and 3) leaders take action to guard, protect, and sustain Indigenous knowledge.
Aligning with the literature, data revealed that Council members perceived their role: 1) through
the importance of their work to impact their community; 2) to support educational efforts that
incorporated Native Hawaiian language and culture; and 3) advocate for those educational
improvements.
Data revealed that, on the surface, Council members fell into two categories that captured
the way they described their roles in “perpetuating excellence in Native Hawaiian education”
(Native Hawaiian Education Council, 2014, para.15) as Council members and as individual
community members to support or develop educational initiatives that benefited Native
Hawaiians. These surface agreements demonstrated that Council members’ discussed their role
in a general way. For the first category, I drew on the literature on Indigenous leadership.
Consistent with the literature on Indigenous leadership (Benham & Murakami, 2010; Hohepa &
Robinson, 2008; Hohepa, 2013), Council members communicated that they saw it as their role to
impact their community. Beyond this general agreement, variation existed in Council members’
description of their defined community. Council members’ interviews revealed a second surface
agreement, in which they described their roles in a consistent way that reflected concepts within
the literature of culturally based education. This meant that Council members saw it as their role
to support educational efforts that incorporated elements of Native Hawaiian language and
culture to improve education in terms of community goals and student achievement. In addition,
Council members viewed it as their role to advocate for educational improvements in terms of
community goals and student achievement.
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Beyond these general agreements in Council member roles, the way they discussed the
details of their roles, varied along a continuum based on their understanding of culturally based
education. On one end of the continuum, Council members held a deep understanding of Native
Hawaiian culture and language and utilized the western system to revitalize and sustain
traditional Native Hawaiian culture and language, which reflected culturally
sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy. These Council members in the revitalizing fraction favored
providing access to opportunities that allowed students to be immersed in Native language and
culture and much more than with opportunities to engage with activities geared towards
improving the academic achievement as measured in western terms. Council members in the
center of the continuum held an understanding that aligned with culturally sustaining pedagogy.
Council members in this sustaining fraction saw it as their role to provide students with
opportunities to engage with their Native language and culture as a means to improve their
educational outcomes. They believed that the role of culture should be used in a manner that
bridged Native Hawaiian students with academic achievement. At the other end of the
continuum, Council members understanding reflected, held a relevant understanding of culturally
based education where they voiced their support for Hawaiian language and culture, yet saw it as
their role to create opportunities that improved students’ ability to be successful in achieving in
western terms. These Council members believed it was their role to provide students with
opportunities that fostered academic achievement as defined by western standards much more
than engaging in language and culture opportunities.
Finding 1: Community Impact
At the surface, all, or 100%, of the Council members shared the same understanding of
their roles in relation to perpetuating excellence in Native Hawaiian education. As members of
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the Native Hawaiian Education Council, they described their role as leaders in a consistent way
that aligned with the values of Indigenous leadership. Literature on Indigenous leadership
viewed the benefit of the greater community as a priority for Indigenous leaders (Benham &
Murakami, 2010; Hohepa & Robinson, 2008; Hohepa, 2013). Consistent with the literature on
Indigenous leadership, Council members shared that they saw it as their role to impact their
community. Beyond this general agreement, Council members varied in the way they defined
community. Hohepa (2013) provided insight into the tension between defining common
attributes of Indigenous leadership without homogenizing Indigenous leadership practice. She
contended that Maori educational leaders were expected to meet the needs of a variety of
institutions, communities, sectors and tribes using traditional and non-traditional knowledge
bases from the past, present, and future. Similarly, this study found general agreements and
variations among Council members.
The variation among Council members came in the way they defined their community.
This study found that the majority of the Council members discussed their community in a
manner that reflected communities within Hawai`i where Native Hawaiians resided, while others
saw their community as either specific to Native Hawaiians or from a generalist global
perspective. Benham and Murakami (2010) provided insight into wide variety of definitions of
community. They described one component of Indigenous leadership as place such that there
was a reciprocal relationship Indigenous people had with the land, sky, and sea and where the
individual, the family, and the community experience life (past, present, and future). This one
component of Indigenous leadership demonstrated the wide variety of defining community.
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The following three examples demonstrate Council members’ description of their role to
impact the community. Furthermore, these examples speak to the variation in how Council
members defined their community.
Six out of the 10 or 60% of Council members described their responsibility to positively
impact the communities within Hawai`i where Native Hawaiians resided. Council member,
Kau`i, provided one example that best reflects the discussions of the other six Council members.
She described her role to impact her community in this way,
In your mind you have to have that vision of what it looks like to navigate towards it. It’s
the same thing with, we are trying to construct what a successful Hawaiian would be
towards this visions that Hawai`i is this foundation of all our learning and growth and our
intellect and our education. Taking these goals, we have to envision. Part of the activity
is coming to the work and envisioning what joyful communities. So why do we even
bother doing this? We say it’s because in 10 years we envision that Kanaka (human
beings) will thrive through the foundation of their language and values, practices, and
wisdom, new ike (knowledge) to sustain abundant communities. We talked about okay,
why do you want to do this? Well, we just want flourishing abundant communities and
in order to do that, that’s the vision that people have in their minds eye when they’re
doing their teaching or their administrator or here in the Council.
Here, Kau`i explained her role as a member of the Council as working towards a vision of
Hawai`i where Native Hawaiians were successful because of solid foundation of Hawaiian
culture and knowledge. Kau`i suggested that the role of the Council was to support the
facilitation of the development of a common vision in which all those involved would work
towards joyful and abundant communities in Hawai`i. Kau`i asserted that the vision of abundant
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communities was based on Native Hawaiian “language, values, practices, and wisdom, new ike
to sustain abundant communities.” Thus, Kau`i saw her role on the Council as working towards
impacting the communities of Hawai`i by supporting the success of Native Hawaiians through a
foundation of Hawaiian culture and language. Kau`i’s perspective reflected the Indigenous
leadership value of impacting the community, where she saw that her role was to benefit the
greater community by working towards a thriving community.
Two, or 20%, of Council members discussed a priority focus on the Lahui or Hawaiian
people in particular. One example of the discussions of Council members in this grouping,
comes from Council member, Kanani. Her discussion was consistent with Kau`i’s example of
Council members’ roles that aligned with the Indigenous leadership value of community impact.
Yet, Kanani described community in a manner that indicated a priority on serving the Hawaiian
people. Kanani stated,
That gives us the tool the responsibility in terms of what we do with that knowledge in
the betterment of the larger, of our large, of whoever it is we’re impacting. Ultimately
our Lahui (Hawaiian people) gets the benefit and all of Hawai`i get the benefit from that.
The general agreement that existed between this quotation and the previous quotation was that
Council members shared the importance of their work to impact the community. Kanani
explained it was her role or “responsibility” to impact the community towards “betterment.”
Different from the previous statement was Kanani’s perspective in defining the focused
community that would “benefit” from her work. Kanani stated, “ultimately our Lahui gets the
benefit” suggesting the Lahui or Hawaiian people as the priority community and as an extension
other people living in Hawai`i would be positively impacted.
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Two out of 10, or 20%, of Council members discussed their community from a global
perspective. Council member, Kanoe’s discussion best reflected this groupings idea that
community encompassed a global perspective. First, his discussion was consistent with the
previous two examples of Council members’ discussions that their roles aligned with the
Indigenous leadership value of community impact. Second, Council member, Kanoe described
his community from a global perspective. Kanoe explained community impact in this way,
What’s good for Hawaiians is good for Hawai`i, right. Yet, at the same time we have to
understand that we have other people in our global, in our community that we have to
serve.
The general agreement that existed between this quotation and the previous two quotations was
that Council members shared the importance of their work to impact the community. Kanoe said
his role was to “serve” the community, which suggested he worked towards impacting the
community. Different from the previous quotations was the way in which Kanoe discussed the
community he intended to serve. Kanoe explained that he viewed the community as not just for
Hawaiians but also for all those who lived in Hawai`i as well as those in a global context. Here,
he contended the work he did was not just to impact the Native Hawaiian community rather he
visualized his work impacting a global community. Kanoe asserted the importance of
visualizing not only Hawai`i as the community, but rather looking at a global context.
These three examples demonstrate that while Council members shared the belief that
their roles on the Council were to impact the community, there was variation in the way they
defined the community in which they worked for and served. Council members’ descriptions
their roles were consistent with the literature on Indigenous leadership, where the focus of their
work was to impact the community. Furthermore, beyond this general agreement, variation
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existed in Council members’ description of their defined community as communities within
Hawai`i, specific to Native Hawaiians, or in general global context.
Finding 2: Culturally Based Educational Programs
The second category of agreements shared by Council members related to perpetuating
excellence in Native Hawaiian education, which aligned with and reflected concepts within
culturally based education. Demmert and Towner (2003) identified six elements that define
culturally based education:
1. Recognition and use of Native American (American Indian, Alaska Native,
Native Hawaiian) languages.
2. Pedagogy that stress traditional cultural characteristics, and adult-child
interactions.
3. Pedagogy in which teaching strategies are congruent with the traditional culture
and ways of knowing and learning.
4. Curriculum that is based on traditional culture and that recognizes the importance
of Native spirituality.
5. Strong Native community participation (including parents, elder, other
community resources) in educating children and in the planning and operation of
school activities.
6. Knowledge and use of the social and political mores of the community.
Aligned with Demmert and Towner’s (2003) elements of culturally based education, within this
category, there were two general agreements in the way in which Council members viewed their
roles. First, Council members saw it as their role to support educational efforts that incorporated
elements of Native Hawaiian language and culture to improve education in terms of community
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goals and student achievement. Second, Council members saw it as their role to advocate for
educational improvements in terms of community goals or student achievement. Beyond these
general agreements in Council member roles, variation existed among Council members in how
they discussed the details of their role based on their beliefs of the elements that make up
culturally based education.
Role to support educational efforts that incorporated elements of Native Hawaiian
language and culture to improve education in terms of community goals or student
achievement. Members of the Council described their role in a consistent way that aligned with
and reflected culturally based education. Superficially all, or 100%, of the Council members saw
it as their role to support educational efforts that incorporated elements of Native Hawaiian
language and culture to improve education in terms of community goals or student achievement.
For this analysis, I used Beaulieu’s (2006) definition of culturally based education. He stated,
Culturally based education incorporates Native language and important elements of
Native culture. Culturally based interventions introduce these elements as planned
activities and materials designed to improve education in terms of community goals and
student achievement. They range from broad programs that engage participants for long
periods with high degree of involvement (e.g., all-day immersion programs) to more
specific interventions that entail less time and involvement (e.g., a specific language
text). (NWREL, 2002, as cited in Beaulieu, 2006, p. 54)
Consistent with the literature on culturally based education, Council members shared that
education should incorporate important elements of Native Hawai`i language and culture to
improve education in terms of community goals or student achievement. This meant Council
members saw it as their role to support educational efforts that incorporated elements of Native
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Hawaiian language and culture to improve education in terms of community goals or student
achievement.
In general Council members discussed their roles in a manner that aligned the literature
on culturally based education to integrate elements of Native Hawaiian language and culture to
improve education. One example of this general agreement comes from Council member Kau`i.
Her discussion on culturally based education exemplified superficial agreements among all
Council members. Kau`i explained,
Culture based education is educating about the culture but it’s really educating through
the culture… educating through the culture using the knowledge from the culture, using
metaphors, using the lessons from the culture that already exists and align them to
science, right.
Kau`i distinguished between “educating about the culture” and “educating through the culture.”
She asserted culturally based education moves beyond learning about a culture or factual
information of a culture. Rather, culturally based education utilized elements of culture as a
means to improve education. Kau`i offered examples of how culturally based education utilized
elements of culture, “using the lessons from the culture that already exists and align them to
science.” Thus culturally based education incorporates important elements of Native Hawaiian
language and culture to improve education.
Role to advocate for educational improvements in terms of community goals or
student achievement. Council members saw it as their role to advocate for educational
improvements that they believed in. For this analysis, I used literature from McCarty and Lee
(2014). According to McCarty and Lee (2014), tribal sovereignty was an inherent aspect of
culturally based education because of the history and relationship between the federal
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government and Native people, which created areas of tension as Native communities and their
supporters advocated for self-determination of education for Native students. Similarly, the
literature on Indigenous leadership reflected this idea of advocacy. Fitzgerald (2010) contended
that the role of Indigenous leaders was to advocate for the needs of the community by fulfilling
reciprocal obligations to bind the community together. For Indigenous leaders in education, this
meant that leaders advocated for educational reform to recognize and respect the role of
Indigenous knowledge and practice in the education of Indigenous students (Faircloth &
Tippeconnic, 2013). In alignment to this idea, superficially all or 100% of Council members
discussed their role to advocate for educational improvements that they believed in. Yet, there
was variation in how Council members specifically discussed their role to advocate and what it
meant to advocate for educational improvements. Council member, Kau`i’s discussion spoke to
the necessity of advocacy and in general the role of the Council to fulfill that need. Although,
Kau`i’s discussion was not typical of all Council members, her discussion reveals that the role of
Council members included advocacy, which aligns to the concepts presented by McCarty and
Lee (2014). Furthermore, this example from Kau`i was the most complete presentation of the
surface agreement that Council members’ role included advocacy. This meant that Kau`i’s
statement held components of advocacy that each Council member in one way or another
reflected on. Kau`i explained,
We’re trying to explain to people in Washington DC right 10,000 miles away or 5,000
whatever. What a Native Hawaiian education system needs, who’s the construct, how
many charter schools, how many chapter schools there are, what, who oversees what in
charter and then in this whole public school. We got charter schools. We got Hawaiian
focused charter schools. You got Kaiapuni (Hawaiian medium) schools, but you got
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Kaiapuni schools that are public schools and people are like super confused. They get
really confused when we look on the continuum of curriculum instruction and
assessment. Western based Common Core, your curriculum is in English, your
instruction is in English, your assessments in Common Core are in English. So okay that
makes sense. All we’re saying is that if your curriculum is in Hawaiian, your instruction
is in Hawaiian, then your assessment should be in Hawaiian.
Kau`i started this statement by identifying her role on the Council to advocate for educational
improvements in terms of community goals and student achievement. In this example, she
specifically stated her role was to help explain to those in the Federal government the needs of
“Native Hawaiian educational system” by helping them understand the wide variation of
culturally based educational programs. Kau`i’s statement provided an example of the
complexity in the wide variation of culturally based educational programs that existed within the
Native Hawaiian community. In addition, Kau’i demonstrated an understanding of the western
educational system and sustaining understanding of culturally based education with her
discussion on Common Core, teacher instruction, and student assessment. Characteristics of
culturally based education as explained by Demmert (2011) included assessment tools.
Demmert (2011) stated that assessment tools: 1) needed to accurately measure levels of schools’
culturally based education program and reflect priorities of students’ communities and 2) needed
to be linguistically and culturally appropriate and meet the academic priorities and needs of the
community. Kau`i’s discussion aligned with the literature on culturally based education. With
this understanding of the western educational system and the complexity of Native Hawaiian
culturally based educational programs, Kau`i advocated for the self-determination of education
for Native Hawaiian students by asserting, “All we’re saying is that if your curriculum is in
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Hawaiian, your instruction is in Hawaiian, then your assessment should be in Hawaiian.” Kau`i
provided an example that represented the surface agreements of all Council members in how
they described their role to advocate for educational improvements in terms of community goals
and student achievement.
Variation existed among Council members in how they discussed the details of their
role based on their understanding of culturally based education. Beyond this surface
agreement in Council member roles, variation existed among Council members in how they
specifically saw their role based on their understanding of culturally based education. This
variation in beliefs influenced how Council members viewed their role: 1) to support educational
efforts that incorporated elements of Native Hawaiian language and culture to improve education
in terms of community goals and student achievement, and 2) to advocate for educational
improvements in terms of community goals or student achievement, which existed along a
continuum. In addition, this variation aligned with the literature on culturally based education.
In my conceptual framework, I contended that Council members’ beliefs of the integration of
Native Hawaiian language and culture into educational efforts existed along a continuum in
which there existed three fractions. These three fractions reflected the literature on culturally
sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy, culturally sustaining pedagogy, and culturally relevant
pedagogy. The first fraction aligned with McCarty and Lee (2014) proposal of culturally
sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy to account for Native American socio-historical and
contemporary context and meet the needs of Native American students by revitalizing Native
language to sustain Native culture. Incorporated into culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy
was advocacy for systems change that utilized and normalized Native language and culture.
McCarty and Lee (2014) stated that tribal sovereignty was necessary to address the asymmetrical
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power relations within the current western system that has historically disadvantaged Native
students because of their language and culture. The second fraction reflected Paris’ (2012)
proposal culturally sustaining pedagogy as an approach that maintains the cultural and linguistic
practices of students and their communities while simultaneously providing access to the
dominant culture. He stated that pedagogy needs to be more than culturally relevant to students,
such that pedagogy built on students’ cultural and linguistic practices to include an
understanding of western dominant society. The third fraction utilized concepts within Ladson-
Billings’ (1995) presentation of culturally relevant pedagogy which acknowledged the presence
of institutional inequalities by validating students’ cultural identity and working towards student
achievement. Culturally Relevant Pedagogy focuses on student academic success and
intellectual growth while nurturing and supporting cultural competence. These literature bases
aligned with the variation of Council members’ understanding of culturally based education as
they discussed their role.
On one end of the continuum, Council members held an understanding that aligned with
culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy. Council members in this revitalizing fraction held a
deep understanding of Native Hawaiian culture and language and utilized the western system to
revitalize and sustain traditional Native Hawaiian culture and language. Council members in the
center of the continuum discussed their understanding in a manner that aligned with literature on
culturally sustaining pedagogy. Council members in this sustaining fraction saw it as their role
to provide students with opportunities to engage with their Native language and culture as a
means to improve their educational outcomes. At the other end of the continuum, Council
members understanding aligned with culturally relevant pedagogy. This relevant fraction voiced
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their support for Hawaiian language and culture yet saw it as their role to create opportunities
that improved students’ ability to be successful in achieving in western terms.
Revitalizing. On one end of the continuum, two of the 10 or 20% of Council members
held a revitalizing understanding of culturally based education where they held a deep
understanding of Native Hawaiian culture and language and utilized the western system to
revitalize and sustain traditional Native Hawaiian culture and language. Council members in this
faction believed their role was to provide students with opportunities to be immersed in their
Native language and culture. They believed students would benefit more from the revitalization
of Native Hawaiian language and culture than from forms of western attainment. In addition,
these same Council members believed their role was to advocate for the integration of Native
Hawaiian language into educational efforts in terms of community goals by communicating to
Federal and State government systems regarding the unique realities of Native Hawaiian
communities. Council members discussed their role in a manner that reflected concepts
contained in the literature of culturally sustaining and revitalizing pedagogy. Council members’
discussions that pointed to their understanding and beliefs, aligned with McCarty and Lee’s
literature of culturally sustain and revitalizing pedagogy. According to McCarty and Lee (2014),
culturally sustaining and revitalizing pedagogy incorporated:
1. tribal sovereignty to address the “asymmetrical power relations and the goal of
transforming legacies of colonization” (McCarty & Lee, 2014, p. 103).
2. pedagogy that provided Native children access to traditional knowledge and language to
“reclaim and revitalize” Native language and culture (McCarty & Lee, 2014, p. 103).
3. pedagogy that recognized the significance of community-based accountability.
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Council members in this faction discussed their role, reflected their understanding of culturally
based education, and belief to reclaim and revitalize Native Hawaiian language and culture.
One of the Council members, Kalei, provided a description of her role that was consistent
with those in this faction. She expressed her perspective of her role to support education efforts
that integrated Native Hawaiian language and culture to improve education in terms of
community goals, which were specifically to revitalize Native Hawaiian language and sustain
Native Hawaiian culture to meet the needs of Native Hawaiian students in this way,
How I view education is not about just education. But it’s about a people living together,
a society that’s got a foundation, solid foundational pieces that rely on our, that come
from our own Hawaiian understanding of the world… If we have schools or an
education system that embraces that or even supports that as part of their teaching and
imparting this on young students about what it is to, you know, to be together, to work
together, to take care of one another, it’s all good stuff, it’s good for everybody. The
change I believe is in our language, and from language we can do anything, from that
perspective but understanding the words on paper, the text on paper, the delivery of that
from your teacher, your kumu and having that as part of how you see life, it’s part of how
you see education too.
In this example, Kalei discussed her view on her role to support educational efforts that
integrated Native Hawaiian language to improve education in terms of community goals.
McCarty and Lee (2014) explained that culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy recognizes
the significance of community-based accountability. Kalei began by sharing her accountability
to community goals, “Education is not just about education,” rather the purpose of education was
“people living together” or to build society. Kalei asserted the foundation of a society was based
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on people’s worldview and therefore in Native Hawaiian communities’ education should “come
from our own Hawaiian understanding of the world.” Kalei claimed a “Hawaiian understanding
of the world” was embedded in the language of Hawaiian people, which should be taught
through an educational system including curriculum, assessment, and teacher instruction. She
stated, “understanding, you know, the words on paper, the text on paper, the delivery of that
from your teacher, your kumu and having that as part of your how you see life, it’s part of how
you see education too.” To support this belief, Kalei asserted there needed to be “an education
system that embraces that or even supports that as part of their teaching” such that Native
Hawaiian language and understanding of the world would be permeated throughout educational
efforts. Similarly, McCarty and Lee (2014) asserted that sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy sought
to revitalize Native language and reclaim Native culture. Furthermore, McCarty and Lee (2014)
contended that Native communities needed to control the educational policy and practice of
Native culture and language. In this statement, Kalei advocated for an educational system that
provides the necessary supports to meet the educational needs of Native Hawaiian students in
terms of community goals. Thus, Kalei saw it was her role was to advocate for the integration of
Native Hawaiian language into educational efforts in terms of community goals by
communicating to Federal and State government systems about the unique realities of Native
Hawaiian communities.
Sustaining. The majority of the Council members were located at the center of the
continuum. Five of the 10 or 50% of Council members held a sustaining understanding of
culturally based education, where they saw it as their role to provide students with opportunities
to engage with their Native language and culture as a means to improve their educational
outcomes. The discussions of Council members in this sustaining fraction reflected concepts
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within the literature of culturally sustaining pedagogy. Paris (2012) described culturally
sustaining pedagogy as an approach that maintains the cultural and linguistic practices of
students and their communities while simultaneously providing access to the dominant culture.
Students’ cultural and linguistic practices was used as the foundation of learning and dominant
western cultural norms and expectations are interwoven into curriculum. Drawing on the
concepts outlined by Paris (2012), Council members believed that culture should play a more
significant role in bridging Native Hawaiian students towards academic achievement. These
Council members believed their role was to advocate for educational improvements that utilized
Hawaiian language and culture as a bridge towards the western system. All Council members in
this faction discussed the importance of integrating Native Hawaiian language and culture and
advocating for educational improvements. Yet, there was variation in how these Council
members integrated Native Hawaiian culture and language, viewed the terms of educational
improvements, and advocated for those improvements. The literature that Paris (2012) presented
helps to understand the variation of Council members within the fraction. Paris (2012) explained
that culture is dynamic based on the internal struggles that communities face. Therefore,
evolving educational practice and pedagogy must too be fluid and open to revision (Paris, 2012).
The following three examples best represented this variation amongst Council members in this
faction.
One perspective comes from Council member Kekai. Kekai discussed her beliefs of the
qualities of an exemplarily culturally based educational program. As Kekai discussed those
beliefs, she pointed to her role to support educational efforts that integrated important elements
of Native Hawaiian culture to improve education in terms of community goals and student
achievement. Kekai expressed her role this way,
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Of course for our Hawaiian focused charter schools... And Kuleana School, I think are a
school that has shown a lot of growth and yet have been able to maintain their cultural
philosophy and work and groundedness in their students and has been showing steady
growth on the State mandated kinds of tests. So they’re a great actual school example of
great work that’s being done in education.
Kekai believed that culturally based educational programs should maintain and ground students
in “their cultural philosophy” while steadily demonstrating growth in educational outcomes
through State mandated tests. The focus on “cultural philosophy” referred to the communities’
goal to sustain Hawaiian cultural knowledge, while the focus on “State mandated tests” referred
to student achievement. In this statement, Kekai demonstrated her belief of her role to support
educational efforts that integrated important elements of Native Hawaiian culture to improve
education in terms of community goals and student achievement.
Furthermore, Kekai spoke to her role as an advocate. In this statement, Kekai talked
about her goals. As she talked about her goals, Kekai revealed her role to advocate amongst and
within organizations that work with Native Hawaiians to improve education. Kekai discussed
her role in this way,
I see my goals as making sure that I bring together, facilitate, and convene different
organizations that are working with, working in, or working on the issue of Native
Hawaiian education. I kind of see myself as kind of being that facilitator convener
person. So my goals are to make sure that we can be as inclusive as possible and include
a continuum of education. We’ve been very focused on the K-12, but we want, we know,
we need to look at it on a continuum all the way from early education all the way to post-
secondary. I think my goal is to try and make sure we get to a place that we can feel
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comfortable saying we are looking at that continuum and we’re involved in that, in the
convening of ensuring that everybody has a voice.
Kekai described her goal as developing a Native Hawaiian educational system inclusive of
preschool to college to improve of education for Native Hawaiians. She saw her role as
advocating by bringing together organizations that serve Native Hawaiians and facilitating
discussions that would advance a Native Hawaiian system. In addition, Kekai spoke about her
role as an advocate for the needs of Native Hawaiians by “ensuring that everybody has a voice”
and “ensure that we keep coming back to [the commitments to] our educational community.”
Thus, Kekai demonstrated her belief of her role to advocate for educational improvements in
terms of community goals and student achievement.
Another perspective comes from Council member, Kawai. She discussed her beliefs of
the qualities of an exemplarily culturally based educational program. As Kawai discussed those
beliefs, she pointed to her role to support educational efforts that integrated important elements
of Native Hawaiian culture and language to improve education in terms of community goals and
student achievement. In this quotation, Kawai talked about a scholarship program she developed
for Native Hawaiian students that integrated Native Hawaiian culture and language through
participation in community service opportunities. Kawai explained,
We implemented Hawaiian community service that was different than anybody else.
What I mean by that is, our Hawaiian community service was stuff like, it incorporated
culture and you had to be servicing a Hawaiian population. So, I could give you an
example. We would do, lei making classes, start out real small, turned out really big, so
everyone would learn how to wili lei, you know, we’d use flowers, we’d talk about the
kino lau, the flower, we’d talk about what the flower meant, is it endemic is it not, you
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know, and the lauae, whatever fern we using, we, we wili a whole bunch of lei and then
we would take those leis and we would go and decorate a cemetery that had a lot of
Hawaiians there, that are kinda of in disarray…We would go and we would do that as a
service…We made our application process as easy as possible so students were not umm,
you know, they wanted to apply.
In this statement, Kawai discussed her belief of an exemplar culturally based educational
program that leveraged college financial assistance as a means to incentivize student’s learning
of Native Hawaiian culture and language. She believed in providing access to college by
making the “application process as easy as possible,” supporting students in various degrees and
supporting their desire to attend college in various locations. Kawai believed her role was to
support educational efforts that utilized important elements of Native Hawaiian culture and
language to improve education in terms of community goals and student achievement. In terms
of community goals, Kawai believed in cultivating students’ experiences and developing their
knowledge bases in Hawaiian culture and language through community service opportunities.
Kawai provided an example of how important elements of Hawaiian language and culture were
integrated into community service opportunities, such that students would participate in “lei
making classes” where they would learn “how to wili lei, you know, we’d use flowers, we’d talk
about the kino lau, the flower, we’d talk about what the flower meant, is it endemic is it not, you
know.” This meant students not only learned the Native Hawaiian cultural practice of lei
making, but they also learned about the parts that make up a lei from both a cultural perspective
and a western science perspective. Including a western science perspective spoke to Kawai’s
belief that culturally based educational programs should also improve education in terms of
student achievement. Kawai demonstrated her belief of her role to support educational efforts
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that integrated important elements of Native Hawaiian culture improve education in terms of
community goals and student achievement. To support the improvement of education in terms
of community goals and student achievement, Kawai explained her role in advocating for more
funding from the Federal government. She stated,
You go back to the feds and you tell them you’re going to triple the amount you’re going
to give us. And then you can satisfy all the need in our community.
Kawai discussed her role to advocate to the Federal government for funding that would support
the needs of the community. Kawai emphasized the necessity to advocate for “all the need in our
community.” In this statement, she asserted that all the needs of the Native Hawaiian
community were worth advocating for. She contended that advocating to the federal government
should emphasize all the needs of the community and not just one particular focus.
Council member Kehau provided another perspective that gave insight into the variation
within this faction. She discussed her beliefs of the qualities of an exemplarily culturally based
educational program. As Kehau discussed those beliefs, she pointed to her role to support
educational efforts that integrated important elements of Native Hawaiian culture and language
to improve education in terms of community goals and student achievement. In this discussion,
Kehau talked about the “charter movement” in which Native Hawaiian focused educators were
able utilize charter school policy to establish their own charter schools. Kehau shared her
perspective in this way,
I think that when the charter movement began I was interested because we were able to
integrate the curriculum and the language and the traditions, protocols umm in order to
teach our local kids, which I think we don’t do enough because that’s what they relate to
and to be part of something like that I think that was umm a privilege for me. Because I
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get to help shape it, I get to help support it. Cause a lot of time you just on the outside
looking in, so it’s like wow you telling me to come in and help you.
Kehau talked about becoming involved in the “charter movement,” which she described as the
opportunity to “integrate the curriculum and the language and the traditions, protocols umm in
order to teach our local kids.” Kehau believed that integrating Native Hawaiian language and
culture into curriculum would improve the education of “local kids.” The belief in “integrating
curriculum” referred to the focus on student achievement. In addition, Kehau stated “I think we
don’t do enough” inferring that there were not enough educational opportunities within Native
Hawaiian communities, thus the charter school movement met the community’s goal and
provided “local kids” with access to student achievement.
Furthermore, Kehau discussed her role to advocate for educational improvements. In this
quotation, Kehau described how she went about advocating for the needs of charter schools to
State legislators. She stated,
We went to legislation to talk to people about intervening. We went to the DOE and talk
to them about changing policies and trying to umm allow them to continue to stay open.
We all went and did things that way.
Kehau talked about going to the State legislation to advocate for policy change that would
support charter schools. She believed that her role was to advocate for policy change that would
improve education in terms of community needs and student achievement.
These examples best demonstrated the surface agreement and variation that existed
among this second faction of Council members. The discussion of these Council members
aligned with culturally sustaining pedagogy. Drawing on the literature of culturally sustaining
pedagogy, Council members in this faction were grounded in Native Hawaiian language and
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culture and understood the importance of student achievement. They believed their role was to
support educational efforts that integrated important elements of Native Hawaiian culture and
language to improve education in terms of community goals and student achievement. Yet, there
was variation in the way that these Council members believed in integrating Native Hawaiian
culture and language, viewing the terms of educational improvements, and advocating.
Relevant. Finally, on the other end of the spectrum three of the 10 or 30% of Council
members held an understanding that reflected literature on culturally relevant pedagogy.
Landson-Billings (1995) presented culturally relevant pedagogy as a way to account for
institutional inequalities by validating students’ cultural identity. First and foremost, culturally
relevant pedagogy focused on developing students academically. Second, culturally relevant
pedagogy supported cultural competence by celebrating the cultures of each student. Consistent
with the literature on culturally relevant pedagogy, Council members in this relevant fraction
prioritized students’ development in western attainment and voiced their support for Native
Hawaiian language and culture. This meant that these Council members believed that the role of
Hawaiian language and culture operated separate from academic achievement, instead of
integrated with or as bridge to western attainment. In general, Council members in this faction
saw it as their role to support educational efforts that focused on western attainment. In addition,
Council members saw it as their role to advocate for educational improvements. Among these
same Council members there was variation in what area of western attainment they focused on,
how they voiced their support for Native Hawaiian language and culture, and how they
advocated. The following examples are of all three Council members in this faction, which
explain the general and varied agreement of their beliefs of their roles.
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Council member Kanoe shared his belief of his role to support educational efforts that
focused on western attainment and to advocate for educational improvements. He suggested that
the role of Hawaiian language and culture operated separate from western attainment because
values were universal and not necessarily unique to Native Hawaiian culture. He stated, “I think
in the global perspective, the values, the Native Hawaiian values are universal, not unique to us,
as Hawaiians.” In this statement, Kanoe asserted that Native Hawaiian values were not specific
to Hawaiians, rather the concepts behind Native Hawaiian values could be found in other global
communities. Kanoe discussed his belief of an exemplary culturally based educational program,
in which revealed his belief of his role. In this quotation, Kanoe talked about a project he
worked on that utilized student interest, skill set and values to engage students in career
planning. He explained,
It was all about bringing education and career planning services into Native Hawaiian
communities. The reason behind that was students weren’t getting any, well, we know
that if you can make education relevant, you have better chances of keeping students
engaged, retained for completion. The relevance has gotta be based on that student’s
interests, you know, their skill sets and their values. The idea was to start engaging
students on career planning at an early age from elementary school. And once we
understand what those career interests are, we can guide them through the educational
system can guide them to a path that will take them to their ultimate goal.
Kanoe spoke to his belief that his role was to “bring education and career planning services into
Native Hawaiian communities.” Kanoe presented a western focus on education and career
planning. Whereas, those with a cultural focus would focus on the goals of the community in
terms of Native Hawaiian language and culture. Kanoe voiced his belief that values played a
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role in engaging students towards their goals, yet majority of the discussion focused on
developing students’ educational and career planning goals. Although, Kanoe spoke to the
importance of integrating values into culturally based educational programs, he saw his role as
supporting educational efforts that focused on student educational and career planning goals. In
addition, in this statement Kanoe discussed his role of advocating by providing his community
with the resources and skills needed to empower themselves. Kanoe believed that his role was
to advocate for his community by bringing educational resources into that community.
Similarly, Keanu shared his belief that Native Hawaiian language and culture were
important elements to be brought to the community, but focused his efforts toward western
attainment. Similar to Kanoe’s perspective, Keanu focused on western attainment in the form of
economic stability and job opportunities for his community. Different from Kanoe’s perspective,
Keanu discussed his role to advocate for his community by ensuring that the needs of his
community were remembered whether on the Council or to the Federal government. The
quotation below was a part of a bigger discussion where Keanu shared his perspective of the
Council goals. When talking about the goals of the Council, Keanu revealed his role to support
educational efforts that focused on western attainment and advocate for educational
improvements. Keanu shared his perspective in this way,
It goes to ensure that the culture, the language are still intact. I think those are the goals
and try to take those goals but also remember the community voices that are important…
I think if you really look at it. For me, economic stability, to have economic stability,
you gotta have more job opportunities. How do you go about that way? I think you just
assess what the situation is. I know we have a lot of grants coming down from the
Federal government.
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Keanu stated that he supported the Council’s goal to perpetuate Native Hawaiian language and
culture. Yet, the perpetuation of Native Hawaiian language and culture was not Keanu’s only
role. He believed that his community was his priority, specifically, he saw that his community
needed economic stability and job opportunities. Keanu voiced his support for and belief in
perpetuating Native Hawaiian language and culture. He believed that it was his role to support
educational efforts that focused on western attainment, and specifically economic stability and
job opportunities. Keanu’s understanding of culturally based education was revealed as he
shared his belief that Hawaiian language and culture were important aspects of education and
student development, but he prioritized the development of job opportunities. Thus, the role of
Native Hawaiian language and culture operated separate from the focus of providing job
opportunities, instead of integrated with or as bridge to western attainment. In addition, Keanu
talked about his role to advocate for his community by ensuring that the needs of his community
were remembered whether on the Council or to the Federal government. Therefore, Keanu saw
it as his role to advocate for educational improvements that met the needs of his community.
Similar to the previous Council members in this faction, Council member, Kawika
discussed his belief in a way that spoke to his role to support educational efforts that focused on
western attainment and advocate for educational improvements. Different from the previous
Council members, Kawika discussed his belief in Native Hawaiian language and culture and
prioritized western attainment with a focus on academic achievement. Furthermore, Kawika
expressed his role to advocate for Native Hawaiian communities to the Federal government.
Kawika expressed his priority for academic achievement and voiced his belief in Native
Hawaiian language and culture. He explained his perspective this way,
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When we’re looking at what’s best for our student we pull the language and culture card
too much in a sense that we’re willing to compromise the core academics so that our
students get language and culture first. It’s not to say that I don’t want our students to get
it, but it has to be just as much as we wanted to give them language and culture skills
about our kupuna, and that’s why we exist, we cannot forget to give them everything else
with that and the scale has to be more balanced.
Kawika emphasized academic achievement as the priority of education and voiced his belief in
Native Hawaiian language and culture. Kawika asserted that the purpose of school was to work
towards student academic achievement and meeting various accountability measures and not
“just teaching culture and language.” Yet, he contended that the “language and culture skills
about our kupuna” were important elements of education and leadership. He asserted that
although Native Hawaiian culture and language should be a part of educational efforts, it should
not be the only emphasis for students, rather academic achievement needed to be at the forefront
of education. Kawika believed that in culturally based educational programs the role of Native
Hawaiian language and culture operated separate from the academic achievement students,
instead of as a bridge to western attainment. In these statements, Kawika articulated his belief in
his role to support educational efforts that focused on the academic achievement of students,
although he believed that Native Hawaiian language and culture held an important role.
Furthermore, Kawika discussed his role to advocate for educational improvements. He
believed that his role as a Council member was to advocate for the needs of Native Hawaiian
communities. He stated,
As Council members we need to bring what’s happening in our communities to the table
formulate common voice that’s representative of our communities and of our
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organizations and share that voice back to congress, or back to US DOE and go, “Eh you
know you guys are funding the wrong type of program, or your guys’ priorities are
whacked. These are the things that you need to be doing,” and this is why we need to be
doing it this way, and try to be as collective as possible even though we will probably
achieve that fully because we’re just very unique communities.
Here, Kawika discussed the role of Council members as advocating for Native Hawaiian
communities to the Federal government. He contended that this advocate role included
“formulate common voice that’s representative of our communities” and then to communicate
that voice to that the Federal government. Kawika believed his role to advocate for educational
improvements with a focus on Hawaiian language and culture.
This third faction of Council members believed their role was to provide the community
with opportunities that focused on western attainment. In alignment with culturally relevant
pedagogy, these Council members held a relevant understanding where they voiced their support
for Native Hawaiian language and culture into educational efforts, yet, prioritized students’
development in western attainment. This meant that these Council members believed that the
role of Native Hawaiian language and culture operated separate from the academic achievement
of students, instead of being integrated with or as bridge to western attainment. In addition,
Council members varied in their perspective with respect to the aspect of western attainment he
focused on such as student academic achievement, career planning, economic stability and job
opportunities.
Conclusion
Overall the data revealed that there were two surface agreements among Council
members in the way that they perceived their role as Council members and as individual
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community members to support or develop education initiatives that benefit Native Hawaiians.
In addition, variations existed among Council members’ perceptions.
First, Council members shared their role through the importance of their work to impact
the community. This meant that Council members saw it as their role to support or develop
educational initiatives that benefited their community. Beyond this surface agreement, variation
existed in Council members’ description of their defined community.
Second, Council members described their roles in a consistent way that aligned with and
reflected culturally based education. Data analysis revealed that within this surface agreement
there were two themes in the way which Council members viewed their roles.
1) Council members saw it as their role to support educational efforts that incorporated
elements of Native Hawaiian language and culture to improve education in terms of
community goals or student achievement. In general, they believed that integrating
Hawaiian language and culture would improve the educational outcomes of Native
Hawaiian students. In a similar way, the literature on culturally based education
viewed the integration of Native language and culture into educational programs as a
way to improve academic achievement and close the achievement gaps based on
cultural differences and views (Demmert, 2001, 2006; Demmert & Towner, 2003;
Kana`iaupuni & Kawaiaea, 2008).
2) Council members saw it as their role to advocate for educational improvements in
terms of community goals and student achievement. Within the literature on
culturally based education, to improve the educational outcomes of Native students
those working with population need to advocate for changes that address the
“asymmetrical power relations and the goal of transforming legacies of colonization”
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 136
(McCarty & Lee, 2014, p. 103). Similarly, the literature on Indigenous leadership
identified the role of leaders to advocate for the needs of their community (Faircloth
& Tippeconnic, 2013; Fitzgerald, 2010).
Beyond the surface agreement in Council member roles, variation existed among Council
members in how they discussed the details of their role based on their understanding of culturally
based education. This variation existed within along a continuum:
a) On one end of the continuum, Council members aligned with the literature on culturally
sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy. Council members in this revitalizing fraction held a
deep understanding of Native Hawaiian culture and language and utilized the western
system to revitalize and sustain traditional Native Hawaiian culture and language. They
saw it as their responsibility to provide students with opportunities to be immersed in
their Native language and culture. They believed students would benefit more from the
revitalization of Native Hawaiian language and culture than from forms of western
attainment. In addition, these same Council members believed their role was to advocate
for the integration of Native Hawaiian language into educational efforts in terms of
community goals by communicating to Federal and State government systems the unique
realities of Native Hawaiian communities.
b) The discussions of Council members in the center of the continuum related to culturally
sustaining pedagogy. These Council member held sustaining understanding where they
saw it as their role to provide students with opportunities to engage with their Native
language and culture as a means to improve their educational outcomes. Thus, they
believed that culture should play a more significant role in bridging Native Hawaiian
students towards academic achievement. Furthermore, these same Council members
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believed their role was to advocate for educational improvements that utilized Hawaiian
language and culture as a bridge towards the western system. All Council members in
this faction discussed the importance of integrating Native Hawaiian language and
culture and advocating for educational improvements. Yet, there was variation in how
these Council members integrated Native Hawaiian culture and language, viewed the
terms of educational improvements, and advocated for those improvements.
c) At the other end of the continuum, Council members’ discussions reflected culturally
relevant pedagogy. They held a relevant understanding where they voiced their support
for Native Hawaiian language and culture yet prioritized students’ development in
western attainment. This meant that these Council members believed that the role of
Hawaiian language and culture operated separate from academic achievement, instead of
integrated with or as bridge to western attainment. In addition, Council members saw it
as their role to advocate for educational improvements. Among these same Council
members there was variation in what area of western attainment they focused on, how
they voiced their support for Native Hawaiian language and culture, and how they
advocated.
These surface agreements and variations amongst Council members demonstrated the similarities
and complexities of Council members’ perceptions of their role as Council members and as
individual community members to support or develop educational initiatives that benefit Native
Hawaiians.
Enacting Roles
For this analysis, I drew on the literature of Indigenous leadership and social capital.
First, I used Indigenous leadership to help frame Council members’ approaches to enact their
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role. Bird, Lee, and Lopez (2013) used the Indigenous theory of asymmetrical power relations
and safety zone theory to analyze existing power imbalances that identified key themes
important to Indigenous perceptions of leadership. Asymmetrical power relations describes the
unequal power structures created by the development and practice of school system policies that
placed Native students at a disadvantage (Martinez, 2010). Safety zone theory describes the
relationship between a given Indian policy and its perceived threat or benefit to the collective
American identity (Lomawaima and McCarty, 2006). These concepts from Indigenous
leadership bring an understanding of the power relations that are embedded in the work of the
Council as they fulfill their role as defined within Federal policy and meeting the needs of their
community.
In addition to framing this section, I drew on concepts within the literature of Indigenous
leadership to discuss Council members’ enactment of their role. Data also revealed alignment to
the literature on Indigenous leadership. Hohepa and Robinson (2008) described Indigenous
leadership as “highly fluid” and reciprocal, which allowed leaders to be influenced by the
community and the community to be influenced by those in leadership positions (Hohepa &
Robinson, 2008, p. 32). Literature on Indigenous leadership suggests that Indigenous leaders
should make the benefit of the greater community their priority (Benham & Murakami, 2010;
Fitzgerald, 2010; Hohepa & Robinson, 2008; Hohepa, 2013). Reflective of the literature,
Council members discussed enacting their role through an Indigenous leadership perspective by
focusing their efforts on their community and enacting their work within their community.
Second, I used the social capital concepts of bridging and bonding networks as discussed
within Foley and O’Connor’s (2013) study that explored social capital within Indigenous
communities. According to Foley and O’Connor (2013), bonding networks are social
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 139
relationships among and within Indigenous communities, which are grounded in traditional
social capital and cultural heritage of those Indigenous peoples. Bridging networks are social
relationships with those a part of the dominant western society, which allows Indigenous people
to act as a link between the minority and dominant culture. Foley and O’Connor (2013) found
strong bonding networks among Native Hawaiian participants, yet they “exhibited a tendency to
avoid exploiting or utilizing bridging networks” (p. 290). This meant that Native Hawaiian
participants were able to draw upon their cultural background and bonding networks to approach
their work, which limited the need to use or establish bridging networks. Thus, bridging
networks were less prevalent among Native Hawaiians. Foley and O’Connor (2013) explained,
The strength in the utilization of these resources and contacts allows a preferred
alternative to mainstream, which is synonymous with aspects of ethnic enclave theory.
This is not suggesting that Native Hawaiian [participants] follow ethnic enclave theory in
their lack of conformity with mainstream society, rather it is their ability to resource
goods, services, labor and markets in both mainstream and minority markets that is their
strength. This is possible because Hawaii is multicultural and Hawaiian [participants] did
not normally experiences discrimination in their business pursuits” (p. 284).
Analysis of Council members’ discussions revealed alignment to the Foley and O’Connor’s
findings on social capital within Indigenous communities.
Furthermore, I drew on my conceptual framework to analyze Council members’
approaches. As stated in the conceptual framework, Council members draw upon their cultural
background and bonding networks to approach their work. For strong bonding networks,
Council members reported spending time and frequently interacting with informal experts such
as other Native Hawaiian community leaders, elders, and family members to gain advice, share
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 140
information, connect them to other experts, or funding sources that support his/her work within
the Native Hawaiian community. Furthermore, I contended that only a few Council members
would discuss relationships within bridging networks such as State and Federal government
systems to advance their work. Council members used these relationships to gain advice, share
information, connect them to other experts, or funding sources that provided support external
from Native Hawaiian communities. These assertions on Council members bonding and
bridging networks were used to analyze Council members’ approaches.
Data revealed two general agreements with varied themes in the way Council members
discussed how they enacted their perceived roles. First, in general, Council members shared that
they enacted their perceived roles by leveraging within their bonding networks. This meant that
Council members described drawing on their relationships and resources within the Native
Hawaiian community to approach their work. Second, only some of the Council members
discussed leveraging their bridging networks where Council members used social relationships
with those from the dominant western society as a bridge or link for the Native Hawaiian
community to dominant western power structures. Reflective of Foley and O’Connor (2013),
Council members’ strong bonding networks limited their use of bridging networks. Thus, only
some Council members talked about leveraging their bonding and bridging networks.
Consistent with concepts within the literature on social capital, all or 100% of Council
members shared that they enacted their perceived roles by leveraging within their bonding
networks. Yet, beyond this general agreement, variations existed among Council members’
descriptions of approaches to how they enacted their role. Council members’ approaches were
categorized into two themes. In the first theme, Council members discussed enacting their role
with a focus on leveraging within their bonding networks. Yet, Council members’ explanations
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of how they utilized their bonding network varied. This variation further categorized these
Council members into three subthemes. In the first subtheme, Council members discussed
leveraging their bonding networks to develop a reciprocal relationship between the Council and
their community to better meet the needs of their community. Second, Council members
discussed utilizing their bonding network to enact their role and discussed a tendency to avoid
using a bridging network. Finally, Council members in the third subtheme discussed utilizing
their bonding network to access the dominant western power structures. Council members in
this first theme leveraged their bonding network in a variety of ways to enact their role to meet
the needs of their community.
In the second theme, Council members discussed enacting their role by leveraging within
their bonding and bridging network to enact their role to meet the needs of their community. The
following examples are of all Council members, which demonstrate the general agreement and
variated themes among Council members.
Theme 1: Bonding Network Focused
Seven of 10 or 70% of the Council members discussed enacting their role with a focus on
leveraging within their bonding networks. These Council members explained how they utilized
their bonding network in a variety of ways resulting in three subthemes:
1. Developing a reciprocal relationship
2. Tendency to avoid using bridging networks
3. Accessing dominant western power structures
Council members in this first theme leveraged their bonding network in a variety of ways to
enact their role to meet the needs of their community. The following are discussions from all
Council members in this theme demonstrating the general and varied agreements.
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Subtheme 1: Developing a reciprocal relationship. In the first subtheme, two of the 10
or 20% of Council members discussed enacting their role by leveraging within their bonding
networks to develop a reciprocal relationship between the Council and their community to better
meet the needs of their community. Hohepa and Robinson (2008) described Indigenous
leadership as “highly fluid” and reciprocal, which allowed leaders to be influenced by the
community and the community to be influenced by those in leadership positions (Hohepa &
Robinson, 2008, p. 32). Similarly, Benham and Murakami (2010) described Indigenous
leadership through the concept of individual generosity and collective action,
The concept of individual generosity and collective action was explained through mana.
Mana was measured by an individual’s passion and discipline as evidenced by his/her
generosity, a selfless act that positively affected both the giver and the receiver. This was
accomplished by incorporating the following practices. First, leaders lived in a manner
that exemplified traditional values and principles while engaging in lessons learned from
contemporary society. Second, leaders focused on physical and spiritual wellbeing of the
community and place. Third, leaders knew the roles, responsibilities, and relationships of
individuals and collective. Fourth, leaders held respectfulness based on a deep
understanding of importance and intricacies of social networks. Finally, leaders made
connections between the traditional and the contemporary and across communities within
and external to the Indigenous world.
Reflective of the literature, Council members discussed leveraging their role in the community to
inform and improve their work on the Council. Specifically, Council members talked about
utilizing their role in the community to connect them to informal experts such as other
community members they came into contact with. In turn, Council members discussed
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leveraging their role on the Council to meet the needs of their community. Among these Council
members, there were variations in the details of how and why they leveraged within their
bonding network. The following examples were of both Council members in this subtheme,
which explained the general and varied agreement of how they enacted their role.
One Council member, Kawehi, expressed how she enacted her role by leveraging within
her bonding networks to develop a reciprocal relationship between the Council and her
community to better meet the needs of her community. She discussed leveraging her role in the
community to inform and improve her work on the Council. Furthermore, she explained
leveraging her role on the Council to better meet the needs of her community,
I feel like my kuleana is to really bring an understanding of what happens on the
ground… You know like, when you participate in like creating a plan and then
theoretically everything looks good, but then when you have to implement that vision
sometimes there’s different ways of implementing that and maybe your intention didn’t
reach the people that you had intended for that to impact. So I think for me I try to bring.
This is actually what’s happening or this is actually what’s not happening.
Kawehi spoke to enacting her role by leveraging within her bonding networks to develop a
reciprocal relationship between the Council and her community to better meet the needs of her
community. First, she discussed leveraging her role in the community to inform and improve her
work on the Council. Kawehi utilized her role in the community by gathering information from
informal experts to better guide her work on the Council. Kawehi discussed gathering
information from informal experts based on her experiences and the social relationships she
developed as a teacher where she interacted with her students, their families, and other
educational entities. Kawehi talked about gathering information from informal experts within
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the community to “bring an understanding of what happens on the ground” as the statewide
Council developed “plans.” She believed in better meeting community needs by communicating
the realities of her community such as the difference between what was happening and what was
not happening to help the Council understand the effects of the decisions that were made by
those far removed from the community. Second, Kawehi leveraged her role on the Council to
better meet the needs of her community. As Kawehi communicated the realities of her
community she enacted her role on the Council. She fulfilled her role on the Council by bringing
her understanding of the community to help the Council align their efforts to better meet the
needs of the community. Kawehi enacted her role by leveraging within her bonding networks to
develop a reciprocal relationship between the Council and her community to meet the needs of
her community.
Similar to Kawehi, Council member Kanoe shared how he enacted his role by leveraging
within his bonding networks to develop a reciprocal relationship between the Council and his
community to better meet the needs of his community. Kanoe discussed leveraging between his
role in the community to inform and improve his work on the Council. In addition, Kanoe talked
about leveraging his role on the Council to better meet the needs of his community. Kanoe
provided an example of how he specifically enacted this role. In this statement, Kanoe talked
about a previous needs assessment of his community that was based on a small sample size.
Kanoe conducted a reassessment of his community to gain a larger sample size to better
represent the needs of his community. Kanoe utilized his background as a professor and
knowledge of research to gather information from the community through formal surveys and
focus groups. Kanoe believed that gathering data would better inform solutions to best meet the
needs of his community. He discussed gathering information from informal experts or
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community members in a formal manner. Drawing on Foley and O’Connor (2013), the strength
of Hawaiian participants was their “ability to resource goods, services, labor and markets in both
mainstream and minority markets” (p. 284). Similarly, Indigenous leadership literature
described “walking between two worlds” to describe how Indigenous leaders negotiated their
Indigenous and western worldview to approach their work. Drawing on the literature, Kanoe
leveraged his resources within his community and negotiated his western worldview to enact his
role. Kanoe explained how he went about gaining more responses for his survey to ensure that
there was evidence that represented the needs of his community,
We need to get more voices heard and through more venues … So that was one thing that
we did at every community meeting. We ask people to fill out the survey and throughout
our networks we sent it out asking people to fill out this survey and get it back and we all
said let’s have a venue whereby people aren’t doing this all by themselves, they can be in
a group setting, in a community setting and discuss this. And that’s where the idea of this
meeting came about and that’s why we formulated and we structured it that way. So,
again we fulfilled our role of disseminating information out, right. So from the
presentation on the status of Native Hawaiian’s in education to the policy issues. But
then at the same time we gave them that opportunity to share… So that was the main
purpose of this meeting and as you heard from this meeting, there’s unique issues to the
different, in each level but there’s are a lot of common themes. You hear resources,
teacher training, accessibility, you know, those kinds of things are all out there. So we’re
still sifting through all of that to really theme it out. Bu that’s where we come from as a
Council. So that is my role wearing the Council hat.
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In this example, Kanoe talked about leveraging within his bonding network in a manner that
cultivated a reciprocal relationship between Kanoe’s community and his role on the Council to
generate information that would better meet the needs of his community. Hohepa and Robinson
(2008) described the reciprocal relationship among Indigenous leadership, where leaders were
influenced by the community and the community was influenced by those in leadership position.
First, Kanoe leveraged his role in his community to inform and improve his work on the Council.
He asserted that to fulfill his role on the Council, “we need to get more voices heard and through
more venues.” Kanoe explained that his role on the Council gave him a reason to connect with
his community. He discussed actively seeking out opportunities for the community to share their
perspectives about the “unique issues” related to topics such as resources, teacher training, and
accessibility. Kanoe utilized his role in the community to actively find the evidence to
demonstrate the needs of his community. Second, Kanoe leveraged his role on the Council to
better meet the needs of his community. Kanoe asserted the importance of “disseminating
information out” into the community. Kanoe talked about disseminating information to the
community through presentations that discussed the “status of Native Hawaiian’s in education.”
Thus, Kanoe shared that he enacted his role by leveraging within his bonding networks to
develop a reciprocal relationship between the Council and his community to meet the needs of
his community.
In this subtheme, Council members enacted their role by leveraging within their bonding
networks to develop a reciprocal relationship between the Council and their community to better
meet the needs of their community. Council members leveraged their role in the community to
inform and improve their work on the Council. In turn, Council members leveraged their role on
the Council to meet the needs of their community. As Council members explained how they
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developed reciprocal relationships, variations arose in the details of how and why they leveraged
within their bonding network. The finding that variations existed in Council members'
discussions can be explained by literature on Indigenous leadership. Faircloth and Tippeconnic
(2013) stated that effective leadership was shaped by the context in which it occurred. This
meant that Indigenous leaders took into accounted the unique characteristics and needs of each
community.
Subtheme 2: Utilizing bonding network with a tendency to avoid using bridging
networks. Two of the 10 or 20% of Council members discussed utilizing their bonding network
to enact their role and discussed a tendency to avoid using bridging networks. Similar to the
previous Council members, Council members in this subtheme utilized their bonding network to
develop a reciprocal relationship between the Council and the community. Different from the
previous Council members, Council members in this subtheme provided insight into why they
utilized their bonding network rather than a bridging network. Council members’ discussions
demonstrated alignment with Foley and O’Connor’s (2013) findings where Native Hawaiian
participants, “exhibited a tendency to avoid exploiting or utilizing bridging networks” (p. 290).
Council members in this subtheme discussed purposefully choosing to utilize their bonding
network to enact their role instead of bridging networks. The following examples are of both
Council members in this subtheme, which explain the general and varied agreement of how they
enacted their role.
One example came from Council member, Kawika. He discussed utilizing his bonding
network to develop a reciprocal relationship. Kawika provided insight into why he utilized his
bonding network rather than bridging networks. He first discussed his perspective on the
utilization of bridging networks. Then, Kawika discussed how he utilized his bonding network
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to enact his role, which aligned with the general agreement of the other Council members.
Specifically, Kawika talked about leveraging his bonding network to enact his role in two ways.
First, he talked about utilizing relationships within his bonding network to gain access to those
within the dominant western society to serve the needs of his community. Second, he discussed
utilizing his bonding network to develop a reciprocal relationship by communicating with
informal experts within the community to foster change. He explained,
I know previous Council members have made trips to DC to lobby and to present and talk
about it. But I haven’t gone and I think it’s because I don’t find interest in going and
trying to lobby for something because I don’t know, I personally don’t know how loud
that voice is just yet. I’m kinda still on the, I’m on the perspective that no matter how
much we do, no matter how much data we show, they still going do whatever they choose
to do because they’re the US government… Just having more knowledge of how they
function. For me, right now, I sit here in this position and thinking for me what would
really help us is if we start to decentralize Hawai`i’s educational system, you know we
start talking about different districts.
In this statement, Kawika first asserted his perspective on utilizing bridging networks. He
explained his understanding of how previous Council members enacted their roles through
utilizing their bridging networks by making “trips to DC to lobby and to present and talk about
it.” Then, Kawika shared that he chose not to go to DC because he did not believe that he could
influence the decisions of Federal politicians to favor Native Hawaiian communities. He
believed that those within the Federal government system made decisions in a manner that they
saw fit, which was indifferent to the lobbying efforts by those on the Council or conducted in
behalf of Native Hawaiian communities. Kawika did express his belief that understanding how
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the Federal and State educational system functioned was of value. He asserted that he personally
did not find “interest in” lobbying, but found it important to gain “more knowledge of how they
function” in order to meet the needs of his community.
Furthermore, Kawika expressed the importance of having some members of the Council
hold the role of utilizing bridging networks by going to Washington DC and advocating for the
needs of Native Hawaiians. Rather, Kawika expressed his desire to utilize his bonding networks
to develop a reciprocal relationship between the Council and his community. He discussed,
So I may not be that voice that wants to go to DC but I can surely influence the voices
would go to DC. I think it’s important for us that our day to day jobs involves the
education of Hawaiians on all ends of the spectrum from those that are excelling at grade
level to those that are just far below because of just various factors in their lives. I think
part of our kuleana is to be their voices and when you look at the system that we have to
operate in: What are the things that are not umm that are not fulfilling? What are things
that are not working for our students within this system? And trying to get a grasp
around that.
Frist, Kawika explained that he utilized his role on the Council to impact his community.
Kawika discussed utilizing his bonding network relationships with others in the Council to use
their bridging network in support of efforts that would benefit the community. He asserted, “I
may not be that voice that wants to go to DC but I can surely influence the voices would go to
DC.” Here, Kawika explained that he would leverage within his bonding network to gain access
to and information on the State and Federal government systems to meet the needs of his
community. Second, Kawika talked about his role in the community to inform his role on the
Council. He stated the importance of having Council members work in various areas of
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education to gain information from the community. In addition, he pointed to the significance of
having Council members a part of the community to understand the “day to day” lives of their
constituents which allows them insight into how decisions made by those removed from the
community affect people within the community. He went on to explain that his “day to day”
position influenced his belief that the best way the Council could support the education of Native
Hawaiians would be to start talking about “decentralize Hawai`i’s educational system.” He
explained leveraging within his bonding network to foster change through conversation and
talking about the possibilities and effects of decentralization. Kawika discussed his rational for
utilizing bonding networks instead of bridging networks. He leveraged his bonding network to
access to the dominant western society and to foster change within his community.
Similar to Council member Kawika, Kawai discussed utilizing her bonding network to
enact her role and discussed a tendency to avoid using a bridging network. Kawai recalled a
Council event,
NHEC had the federal people over. There’s like 200 of us in a room and all of us were
grantees, and these federal people… they’re sitting there and they’re going, we’re getting
ready to do budget for Native Hawaiians, but we need to hear from you, where do you
want the money? Do you want it in early education? Do you want it in higher
education? Do you want it for special needs? So, right away, I’m like… I cannot believe
we’re going to do this, you know, I just thought, this is a recipe for disaster. They
started, like this side of the room, and everybody say, we really need it. We need it in
early education. The proof is the statistics say that the sooner you get the child, then their
trajectory they’ll be successful. And then the next person’s like, no, no, we really need it
for you know, higher education because we don’t have any kids getting higher, these
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degrees because of the money, the money is the barrier. So, it went all around the room.
I was sitting there forever. So was my turn, I just thought about a particular Hawaiian
leader. And I thought, she would say something. I mean, she wouldn’t be afraid to just.
Because it would be natural when I stood up, everyone thought, oh, she’s going to talk
about higher education… I stood up and I said, listen to all of us. I go, I cannot sit, stand
here, and tell you one is more important that the other. These are all important… I said
the truth is, we all need money. You go back to the feds and you tell them you’re going
to triple the amount you’re going to give us. And then you can satisfy all the need in our
community. And of course they’re like, well, I wish we could do that but we can’t do
that you know. After that, everybody kinda calmed down and then everybody was like,
yeah, they kinda controlling us you know, in this conversation. I’m like, yes, don’t buy
into it.
In this example, Kawai talked about a meeting that the Federal government initiated where
officials were sent to gather information from the grantee recipients of the Native Hawaiian
Education Act (NHEA). These Federal government officials, as formal experts, were sent to
connect and bridge the grantee recipients within the Native Hawaiian community to the western
dominant society. These Federal officials represented bridging network. Kawai explained that
this meeting seemed to be an effort on behalf of the Federal government to develop a relationship
with those who were awarded funding to support the Native Hawaiian community. Specifically,
the Federal government officials stated their intention to gather information from those awarded
NHEA funding to gain insight into the needs of those within the Native Hawaiian community to
determine the priority need area that should receive funding. Then it was assumed that the
information gathered by the Federal officials would be used to inform their decisions to
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distribute monies to better meet the needs of Native Hawaiian communities. Yet, Kawai asserted
that instead of isolating one particular need area the Federal officials should provide funding for
all of the needs of Native Hawaiians. Thus, she expressed a tendency to avoid utilizing bridging
network relationships. Instead of complying with the conversation as outlined by the Federal
officials, Kawai utilized her bonding network to shift the conversation. Kawai was inspired by
the work of an informal expert, a Native Hawaiian leader, as she reminded the other grantee
recipients that rather than identifying one need to support Native Hawaiians, they should
advocate for more funding to meet the multiple needs of Native Hawaiians. Kawai stated that
after sharing her perspective other grantees realized that in reality they were not controlling the
conversation. Although the Federal officials stated that they could not support the multiple
needs of Native Hawaiian, Kawai was able to utilize her bonding network to shift the
conversation. Kawai utilized her bonding network relationships with other Native Hawaiian role
models and leaders to advocate for the needs of her community. In addition, Kawai discussed
relationships with those a part of the dominant western society and explained her tendency to
avoid utilizing bridging networks.
In this subtheme, Council members enacted their role by leveraging within their bonding
network and discussed a tendency to avoid using bridging networks. Council members in this
subtheme utilized their bonding networks to develop a reciprocal relationship between the
Council and their community to better meet the needs of their community. In addition, these
Council members specifically discussed their reasons for focusing on leveraging within their
bonding network which included their perspectives on bridging networks. Their perspectives on
bridging networks reflected Foley and O’Connor’s (2013) findings where Native Hawaiian
participants “exhibited a tendency to avoid exploiting or utilizing bridging networks” (p. 290).
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Council members in this subtheme discussed purposefully choosing to utilize their bonding
network to enact their role instead of bridging networks.
Subtheme 3: Utilizing bonding to access dominant western power structures. Three
of the 10 or 30% of Council members discussed utilizing their bonding network to gain access to
dominant western power structures to meet the needs of their community. Council members in
this subtheme described enacting their role in a similar manner as the previous Council members,
such that they discussed leveraging their bonding network to develop a reciprocal relationship
between the Council and the community. Different from the previous Council members, Council
members in this subtheme discussed utilizing their bonding network to access dominant western
power structures. Foley and O’Connor (2013) explained that Hawaiian participants
accomplished their work through strong bonding networks, which limited their need for bridging
networks. Reflective of the literature, Council members discussed utilizing their bonding
network to access resources within the dominant western society. The following examples are of
all three Council members in this subtheme, which explain the variation in how they leveraged
their bonding network to access the dominant western power structures to gain resources for their
community.
Keanu talked about enacting his role by leveraging within his bonding network to
develop a reciprocal relationship between the Council and his community to meet the needs of
his community. Keanu discussed leveraging his role in the community to inform and improve
the work of the Council to meet the needs of the community. In addition, Keanu discussed
leveraging his role on the Council to gain access to resources to better meet the needs of his
community. He explained leveraging his bonding networks in this way,
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To be honest people ask me, I have an issue what can I do? To be honest I don’t have the
answer, but I try to, based on my experiences, based on the meetings that I do attend,
that’s what I try to capitalize on… I like to have this, umm what we do on this island
council, on an island level we have these community meetings but we also have these
core meetings. And that core meeting we just bounce ideas off, what can we do better, or
the community there’s a need they did that most of the time it’s just planning. But most
of the time they come to me and ask. And I just based on my experience whether it’s me
going to Washington DC or me being an administrator at the high school or it’s me being
a part of that Aloha School’s community hui and to be honest just, being in those places,
meetings or if you advocated or whether you. Cause sometimes every meeting there’s an
objective and there’s a point they gonna share something. And me, I make it a point to
go visit and share that. Cause the more I go out, the more ideas I get I can bring em back.
I like to bring things back and share with the Council…Like for example, the early
childhood education. I kind of knew that 6 months in advance before it started hitting the
schools yeah. And they said how you knew, I just went to one meeting and it’s all part of
the P-20 initiative.
Keanu discussed leveraging within his bonding network in a manner that cultivated a reciprocal
relationship between the Council and his community to better meet the needs of his community.
First, Keanu talked about leveraging his role on the Council to gain access to resources within
the dominant western society to better meet the needs of his community. He explained that his
role on the Council provided him the opportunity to actively seek out avenues to gain
information from the dominant western society that would help meet the needs of his
community. He explained that he drew on those experiences and information when community
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members asked him for advice. Keanu provided a specific example where he attended a meeting
where he gained information about a statewide educational initiative. He was then able to utilize
that information to help his community prepare for the initiative before it was implemented on
his island. Thus, he leveraged his bonding network, which he actively sought to build through
his position on the Council to gain information within the dominant western society to better
meet the needs of his community. Second, Keanu discussed leveraging his role within the
community to inform his role on the Council. Keanu explained that his roles in the community
put him in contact with informal experts who provided him information to share with the
Council. Keanu believed that sharing the needs of his community with the Council would better
inform Council discussions. Keanu leveraged within his bonding network in a manner that
cultivated a reciprocal relationship between his community and his role on the Council to meet
the needs of his community.
Similar to Keanu, Council member, Kehau talked about enacting her role by leveraging
her bonding network to access to the dominant western power structures to gain resources for her
community. She stated,
There’s some kupuna that I work with that are in key positions and I feel because I’ve
had relationships with them even like through NHEC. Cause NHEC has a lot of
prominent people in education leadership, especially in high organizations that deal with
Native Hawaiian education. Those kupuna have been able to help me to think better. I
just have questions about how to move forward in doing certain things. They would give
me advice. Cause sometimes I question, am I doing the right things? I not sure. You
know what I going call uncle so and so…
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Kehau discussed leveraging her role on the Council to gain access to resources for her
community. Specifically, she discussed gaining resources within the dominant western society
to meet the needs of her community. She explained that her role on the Council provided her
with access to other influential and knowable role models in Native Hawaiian education to
expand her bonding network. Kehau discussed leveraging her bonding network to access the
resources within the dominant society. She explained that people within her bonding network
gave her advice and mentoring to access resources within the dominant society by helping her
“think better” and develop approaches “to move forward.” Kehau talked about contacting “uncle
so and so” to gain advice in developing approaches to “doing the right things” and implement her
plans. Beyond this quotation, Kehau talked about contacting “uncle so and so” to help her
develop a step by step action plan that would gain her access to legislative support on a particular
movement. In this instance, leveraging occurred as mentoring and role modeling from those
within bonding networks to access resources within the dominant western society. Thus, Kehau
enacted her role by leveraging within her bonding network to access to the dominant western
power structures to gain resources for her community.
Similar to Council member Kehau, Kalei discussed leveraging her bonding network to
access the dominant western power structures to meet the needs for her community.
Specifically, Council member, Kalei discussed utilizing her bonding network to develop a
stronger voice in advocating for the needs of her community among those within Federal
government. She explained,
We’re working as a coalition, there’s a National Coalition of Native American Language
Schools and Programs, which represents 16 states, we have schools that are just like
Keiki School and Kaleo School. Schools that where small little Native American
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languages are used, the Ojibwa, the Black beak, the Yupik, the Navaho. So we’re a
group of us, a coalition, and we’re trying to ensure that the next education act will align
with the Native American Languages Act. Aligning, means that there’s provisions in the
education law for pathways. For our little schools here in the State of Hawai`i and for
our schools and programs across the Nation that are using our Native American
languages as a medium of instruction that we have a pathway to demonstrate best
practice, to show student progress in the Native American language… Oh we created it.
So you want to make something you go and make it. We make it. I called my friends, I
said let’s make a coalition.
In this example, Kalei talked about connecting with her friends from other Native communities
to initiate a coalition that advocates for the educational needs of Native communities to the
Federal government. Kalei explained that her bonding network included her friends who were
leaders in other Native communities and had similar experiences with Native Hawaiian
communities. She leveraged her relationships with these Native leaders in her bonding network
to form a coalition to advocate for the rights of Native communities to educate Native students in
their Native language. Specifically, Kalei explained that this coalition sought to align the next
Federal Education Act with the Native American Languages Act. Meaning that this coalition
sought to facilitate the coordination between two different Federal acts for the benefit of Native
communities. Thus, Kalei leveraged her bonding network to access to the dominant western
power structures to meet the needs for her community.
Council members in this subtheme discussed leveraging their bonding network to gain
access to dominant western power structures and meet the needs of their community. They
utilized informal supports, community meetings, role models, and friends within their bonding
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network to gain access to resources and power structures within the dominant western systems
for the benefit of their community.
Theme 2: Bonding and Bridging Networks
Three of the 10 or 30% of Council members leveraged their bonding and bridging
networks. Similar to the previous Council members, the following Council members described
how they enacted their role by leveraging within their bonding network. Different from the
previous Council members, Council members in this theme also discussed enacting their role by
leveraging within their bridging network. Foley and O’Connor (2013) stated that “the key
ingredient for success for native Hawaiians was their ability to network both horizontally and
vertically, within the marketplace often using cultural links and adhering to cultural values” (p.
284). This means that those with the ability to network both “horizontally and vertically” would
be likely to succeed in their work. Relatively, for the Council to successfully enact their role,
some members would need to network both horizontally and vertically, or with bonding and
bridging networks. The following examples are of all Council members in this theme, which
explain the general and varied agreements in how they described enacting their role.
One Council member, Kau`i, discussed enacting her role by leveraging her bonding and
bridging networks to meet the needs of her community. Specifically, Kau`i talked about
enacting her role on the Council by developing a reciprocal relationship between Native
Hawaiian organizations and the Federal government. She explained that she went about
developing a reciprocal relationship by leveraging her bonding networks to work towards
developing a common understanding among Native Hawaiian organizations. In addition, she
talked about leveraging her bridging networks to develop a common understanding of Native
Hawaiian education among the various departments within the Federal government. In this
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example, Kau`i explained the importance of gathering data from Native Hawaiian focused and
serving organizations that were awarded funding from the United States Department of
Education through the Native Hawaiian Educational Act. Kau`i explained,
To develop within them a greater confidence in our ability to help them gather
information, be there on the ground eyes and ears so that they can trust that we can help
run their grant competition. This will probably be year five by the time they get
confidence. So very similar relationship building, confidence building that the Council is
doing what it is mandated to do and that the voice of the Council combining with others
is giving creditability to the voice that keeps coming and it’s a consistent voice. So
Aloha School goes up to Washington for whatever they have the same information.
When Keiki School goes they have the same information. We go, we have the same
information that these are the priority areas, these are where we are systemically getting
connections made. Cause on the Federal government side same thing. You have the US
Department of Education, who is overseeing this Native Hawaiian education grant but
they’re also overseeing the postsecondary college grants. All these big silos of granting
don’t appear to talk to each other. Then in Native education, they don’t appear to talk to
the Department of Interior where all the Bureau of Indian Education stuff. So the Bureau
of Indian Education is sitting in the Department of Interior instead of the Department of
Education and they’re over here with parks, National parks, land and stuff like that and
then education. Even in government, it’s very siloed. And you got the Secretary of
Education having his things and the Secretary of Interior having their things and the
Hawaiian are like somewhere caught in the middle of nothingness. So, that’s the other
role the Council wants to play bigger is this coordinating of pulling education, housing
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and health together because those are the large Federal funding efforts and hui-ing
everybody in Hawai`i.
First, Kau`i talked about leveraging her bonding networks to enact her role. She asserted the
importance of collecting data from grant recipients for the purpose of building the confidence of
the Federal government to act on the recommendations of the Council. In this instance, Kau`i
utilized her bonding networks to collect the necessary data that gave “credibility to the voice” of
the Council and other Native Hawaiian focused organizations as they advocated for the needs of
Native Hawaiians. Furthermore, Kau`i talked about utilizing her bonding network to work with
other Native Hawaiian organizations on developing a consistent message to the Federal
government on the priority areas of Native Hawaiians based on collected data. Kau`i believed
that a unified message by Native Hawaiian organizations about the priority needs of Native
Hawaiians would better meet the needs of Native Hawaiians. She leveraged her bonding
network relationships with informal experts from other Native Hawaiian focused organizations
to collect data and utilize that data to formulate a consistent message in advocating for the needs
of Native Hawaiians.
Second, Kau`i explained leveraging her bridging networks with formal experts such as
politicians a part of the Federal government to enact her role of meeting the needs of Native
Hawaiians. She discussed the various departments within the Federal government that work in
isolation from each other, which affected their ability to meet the needs of Native Hawaiian
communities. Kau`i believed that developing a common understanding among the Federal
government about Native Hawaiian communities would unify efforts to better meet the needs of
Native Hawaiians. She provided an example of how she utilized her bridging network,
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The White House initiative of Asian and Pacific Islanders was having their summit and
they had invited a couple of people and we set up this briefing and we felt that it was
important for us from Hawai`i to tell our story… so yeah, we just said we want to set a
context. Here’s our baseline data.
In this statement, Kau`i talked about utilizing her relationships with those from the Federal
government to share information about Native Hawaiian communities with politicians. She
discussed developing the understanding of those within the Federal government by presenting
data to tell the story of Hawai`i though a presentation at the White House initiative of Asian and
Pacific Islanders. Kau`i leveraged her bridging network by utilizing an opportunity to share
information about Native Hawaiian communities at a White House initiative that would develop
a common understanding among those within the Federal government and align efforts in
meeting the needs of Native Hawaiians.
Similar to Kau`i, Kekai talked about enacting her role by leveraging within her bonding
and bridging network to better meet the needs of her community. Different from Kau`i, Kekai
discussed utilizing her bridging network relationships with those on a State government level.
First, Kekai leveraged her bonding network. Specifically, Kekai discussed leveraging her
bonding network relationships with other informal experts who were leaders and decision makers
within other Native Hawaiian focused organizations to collaborate and align efforts to meet the
needs of her community. Kekai shared,
I see my goals as making sure that I bring together, facilitate, and convene different
organizations that are working with, working in, or working on the issue of Native
Hawaiian education. I kind of see myself as kind of being that facilitator convener
person. So my goals are to make sure that we can be as inclusive as possible and include
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a continuum of education. We’ve been very focused on the K-12, but we want, we know,
we need to look at it on a continuum all the way from early education all the way to post-
secondary. I think my goal is to try and make sure we get to a place that we can feel
comfortable saying we are looking at that continuum and we’re involved in that, in the
convening of ensuring that everybody has a voice. I think another goal of mine is in
helping to facilitate and convene the Native Hawaiian education meeting these last couple
of years I think a goal of mine is to make sure that each of the organizations that we
continue to move forward and stick to what our commitment was, which was basically to
ensure that we keep coming back to our educational community, back to the goals that
the educational community agreed to and where are we, you know keep that
conversation. I accept my kuleana and each person who’s on that committee accepts
their kuleana.
Kekai talked about enacting her role by leveraging within her bonding network to better meet the
needs of her community. Kekai saw it as her role to meet the needs of her community by
bringing together people from different organizations influencing or impacting Native Hawaiian
education to develop an early education to post-secondary educational continuum. She talked
about enacting that role by providing a physical and emotionally safe place for people to feel
“comfortable saying we are looking at that continuum and we’re involved in that, in the
convening of insuring that everybody has a voice.” One way Kekai discussed doing this was
through the Native Hawaiian education summits, where organizations came together to develop
common goals and steps towards accomplishing those goals. Thus, Kekai leveraged her bonding
network with people in other Native Hawaiian serving organizations to collaborate and align
efforts in meeting the needs of her community.
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Second, Kekai discussed leveraging her bridging network to align the efforts of those
outside of the Native Hawaiian community to support meeting the needs of Native Hawaiian
students. Kekai explained about connecting with formal experts to share advice and information.
In this example, Kekai talked about utilizing her bridging network relationships with formal
working professionals from her previous work experience as a State of Hawai`i Department of
Education (DOE) administrator. The DOE does not exclusively serve Native Hawaiians nor did
they function as Native Hawaiian organization, rather the DOE operated externally from the
Native Hawaiian community and as a system within the dominant western society. She
explained,
We need to figure out how to do more systemic change within what would get the largest
impact across the largest number of students. And that’s working with, not against, but
with the Department of Education. I’m an advocate for the Department. I know where
the strengths and weaknesses are. I know there’s a lot of good people and I think there’s
just not a good understanding of what the deeper issues are, right.
Kekai believed that to make a larger impact on Native Hawaiian communities, systemic change
within the DOE needed to occur because the majority of Native Hawaiians attend public school
within the DOE. Kekai discussed leveraging the relationships she gained through her prior
employment at the Department of Education to impact a larger amount of Native Hawaiian
students. She asserted the importance of “working with, not against” the DOE in bringing
resolution to the deeper issues that impact Native Hawaiian communities. She discussed
advocating for the collaboration with the DOE and claimed that those within the DOE were
“good people” and “just not a good understanding of what the deeper issues are.” She talked
about utilizing her relationships and experience such as knowledge of the strengths and
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weaknesses to help those within the DOE develop an understanding of deeper issues of Native
Hawaiian communities and work towards resolutions. Kekai leveraged the relationships within
her bridging network to develop the understanding of those within the State of Hawai`i
Department of Education to support system alignment in working towards resolving the deeper
issues that impact Native Hawaiian communities.
Similar to the Kekai, Council member Kanani discussed her role by leveraging her
bonding and bridging networks to meet the needs of her community. Different from the previous
two Council members, Kanani did not necessarily talk about organizational alignment nor did
she talk about her role specifically as a Council member. Rather, Kanani explained the
reciprocal relationship she, as an individual community member, had with her community.
Furthermore, Kanani discussed utilizing the opportunities presented by her bonding networks to
enact her role to better meet the needs of her community. In addition, Kanani talked about a
series of strategies in which she used both her bonding and bridging network to enact her role in
advancing Native Hawaiian education for the benefit of Native Hawaiians. She stated,
Education is a major pathway to access and opportunity. I’ve spent a lifetime in a
particular area of education. I’m an elementary school teacher in the area of Hawaiian
studies. My career started off, I developed the program at Aloha School, when it was
only preparatory division and became an elementary. Then 10 and a half years in, I got
an itch or kuleana call from my community because my family, my grandmother is from
that island but my father’s side and my mother’s is from this island. So I got the
community call that it was my time to come and open up the immersion side of Makai
School, so I opened up that site.
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Kanani talked about utilizing both her bonding and bridging networks to enact her role in
advancing Native Hawaiian education to meet the needs of Native Hawaiians. She specifically
focused her efforts within the State of Hawai`i for the benefit of Native Hawaiian communities.
Kanani explained about leveraging her bonding network to enact her role in opening a Hawaiian
immersion school. In this example, Kanani talked about utilizing the opportunities provided by
her bonding network to enact her role. Kanani stated that she left a 10 year teaching position to
answer a “call” from her community. She asserted her belief that her bonding network was
valuable because of the history she had with her community inclusive of her family. Kanani
stated that when the “community call[ed],” she had the responsibility to utilize her capabilities,
work experience, and knowledge base to fulfill their need by opening a Hawaiian Language
immersion school. Here, Kanani talked about her bonding networks reaching out to her to fulfill
their needs. Kanani leveraged her bonding network to define and enact her role of furthering
Native Hawaiian education for the benefit of her community. Specifically, she leveraged her
bonding network by utilizing her capabilities, work experience, and knowledge base to answer
the “call” or opportunities presented to by her community.
Furthermore, Kanani provided several instances where she leveraged her bridging
network to enact her role. She stated,
And the legislature gave funding to establish the Hawaiian Learning Center, which has
until now still produced the largest amount of curriculum for immersion school. It
allowed me to move out of the classroom and then to impact curriculum at a statewide
level, more than just my school level. Then the opportunity down the road to develop a
teacher education pathway. The Hawaiian Teacher Program, our initial teacher
certificate program and that rolls into a ME program. So we can actually go right into
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initial teacher certification into a MA and if you want, into a doctorate. We had some
that have gone that whole pathway. But that was about creating our own pathway, that is
built on our own ways of knowing and in alignment with the kinds of school models that
we’re looking at that are more culture based and language and culture based and driven.
So that’s been my biggest area of interest impact.
In one example, she explained utilizing funding from the Hawai`i State Legislature to establish a
Hawaiian Language Center, which developed curriculum for Hawaiian language immersion
schools. Here, she leveraged her bridging network relationship with the Hawai`i State
Legislature to enact her role to further Native Hawaiian education and benefit Native Hawaiian
students. In another example, Kanani utilized her bridging network relationships with a formal
educational system to develop a Native Hawaiian educational pathway for teachers. Here, she
described a teacher educational pathway inclusive of a certificate, masters, and doctorate
program. In these examples, Kanani utilized her bridging network to advance Native Hawaiian
education. Specifically, Kanani utilized her relationships with those within the dominant western
power structures such as government funding, formal education post-high school systems, and
the Department of Education to advance Native Hawaiian educational curriculum, teacher
education pathways, and state mandated learner outcomes.
In turn, as part of a reciprocal relationship, Kanani discussed the importance to building
the capacity of her community to strengthen bonding networks. She stated,
I’m really ah at the bulk of my life has been impacting that sector of education. But as
we are 30 years down the road we’re at a place now where we can look at our work and
how that intersects and impacts the larger of education where the bulk actually of the
numbers of Hawaiian children are at. It’s taken us a generation to build up enough
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capacity in the work, in the models, and the capacity and the critical mass for us to be
able to be at a place where we can say our work, we know is something that is an even a
huger contribution to larger of all of Hawaiian education and all school education… The
way we set the policy, we have that it will at only for student but it’ll be something to
look at for professional development. So that teachers can impact students. Really
looking at what we envision, here in Hawai`i as our students are growing as island
children and they graduate from our island schools, built on the strengths that we have
out of our communities. Because for a good 75 years, I’d say, Hawai`i’s mantra has been
success is over there, that meant the continental US, and the things that we do in Hawai`i
is to prepare students for that but not really, I don’t think understanding what that really
means. Because our kids aren’t other there they’re over here. And I think all of the
issues that we have umm in terms of human issues, and economic issues, and social
issues we can find all of those things here at home and we have a lot of solutions. Focus
more on the strengths that we have with our children here, so can we prepare them for
any place they want to go. We should be focusing on those needs because the bulk of our
children still stay home.
Kanani’s discussion reflected the concepts within the social capital literature as explained by
Bourdieu. According to Bourdieu (1998), social capital was reproduced through the family, such
that family could accumulate and sustain economic and social capital as each individual family
member managed and reproduced capital. Here, Kanani talked about her community being
inclusive of her family and therefore she inferred that the community was her family. Kanani
talked about developing strong bonding networks by building the capacity amongst those within
the Native Hawaiian community. She claimed that her life’s work has been to impact education
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in a manner that impacted the largest number of Native Hawaiian children. Specifically, she had
worked towards curriculum development and teacher education pathways to indirectly influence
larger numbers of Native Hawaiian students. She stated that the work she had been a part of in
terms of developing curriculum and teacher education pathways that utilized Native Hawaiian
language and culture in a manner such that it was “our own pathway, that is built on our own
ways of knowing and in alignment with the kinds of school models that we’re looking at that are
more culture based and language and culture based and driven.” As a result, Kanani stated that
she has been a part of educating a generation with the capacity and engrained with a Native
Hawaiian perspective to address the “issues” of Native Hawaiian communities. Kanani asserted
that instead of preparing students for success in western society, Native Hawaiian communities
should be preparing students for success in Hawai`i and through a Hawaiian perspective because
majority of Native Hawaiian reside in Hawai`i. Thus, in addition to utilizing bonding networks
to enact her role, Kanani enacted her role by leveraging her bonding and bridging networks to
build the capacity of individuals in her bonding network to accumulate and sustain economic and
social capital in an effort to resolve issues within the Native Hawaiian community.
In this theme, Council members leveraged their bonding and bridging networks. They
discussed leveraging within their bonding network to enact their role. In addition, they discussed
enacting their role by leveraging with in their bridging network. Council members talked about
utilizing both informal experts within their communities and formal experts within State and
Federal government systems to better meet the needs of their community.
Conclusion
Overall the data revealed a general agreement among all Council members. All or 100%
of Council members discussed enacting their perceived roles by leveraging their bonding
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networks. Beyond this general agreement, variations existed among Council members’
descriptions of how they enacted their role. Council member approaches were categorized into
two themes.
1. Theme 1: Council members discussed enacting their role with a focus on leveraging
within their bonding networks. Yet, Council members’ explanations of how they
utilized their bonding network varied. This variation further categorized these
Council members into three subthemes.
a. Subtheme 1-Developing a reciprocal relationship: Council members discussed
leveraging their bonding networks to develop a reciprocal relationship
between the Council and their community to better meet the needs of their
community. Council members talked about utilizing their role in the
community to connect them to informal experts such as other community
members they come into contact with. These Council members utilized their
role in the community to gather information from informal experts to better
guide the work of the Council. In turn, Council members discussed
leveraging their role on the Council to meet the needs of their community.
They communicated the realities of their communities in an effort to align the
work of the Council to better meet the needs of their communities. In this
subtheme, Council members enacted their role by leveraging within their
bonding networks to develop a reciprocal relationship between the Council
and their community to meet community needs.
b. Subtheme 2-Tendency to avoid using bridging networks: Council members
discussed utilizing their bonding network to enact their role and discussed a
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tendency to avoid using a bridging network. Council members in this
subtheme discussed purposefully choosing to utilize their bonding network to
enact their role instead of bridging networks. Their discussions demonstrated
alignment with Foley and O’Connor’s (2013) findings where Native Hawaiian
participants “exhibited a tendency to avoid exploiting or utilizing bridging
networks” (p. 290). In this subtheme, Council members expressed their desire
to utilize bonding networks to develop a reciprocal relationship between the
Council and the community to meet community needs.
c. Subtheme 3-Accessing dominant western power structures: Council members
in the third subtheme discussed utilizing their bonding network to access
dominant western power structures. They utilized informal supports,
community meetings, role models, and friends within their bonding network
to gain access to resources and power structures within the dominant western
systems for the benefit of their community.
2. Theme 2: Council members discussed enacting their role by leveraging within their
bonding and bridging network to enact their role to meet the needs of their
community. Council members in this theme talked about utilizing both informal
experts within their communities and formal experts within State and/or Federal
government systems to better meet the needs of their community.
This general agreement and varied themes and subthemes demonstrate complex strategies
Council members utilized to enact their perceived roles in support of meeting the various needs
of Native Hawaiians.

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Summary
In general, Council members perceived their role through the importance of their work to
impact the community. They described their roles to impact their community by improving the
education of Native Hawaiians through culturally based educational programs or initiatives.
This meant that Council members saw it as their role to support and advocate for educational
efforts that incorporated elements of Native Hawaiian language and culture to improve the
education of Native Hawaiians in terms of community goals or student achievement. Yet,
variation existed among Council members in how they discussed the details of their role based
on their understanding of culturally based education. The variations existed along a continuum,
which reflected literature on culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy, culturally sustaining
pedagogy, and culturally relevant pedagogy. On one end of the continuum, Council members’
discussion reflected culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy. Council members with a
revitalizing understanding held a deep understanding of Native Hawaiian culture and language
and utilized the western system to revitalize and sustain traditional Native Hawaiian culture and
language. Discussion of Council members in the center of the continuum aligned with concepts
from culturally sustaining pedagogy. Council members held sustaining understanding where
they saw it as their role to provide students with opportunities to engage with their Native
language and culture as a means to improve their educational outcomes. At the other end of the
continuum, Council members held a relevant understanding. Drawing on the concepts of
culturally relevant pedagogy, these Council members voiced their support for Hawaiian language
and culture yet, saw it as their role to create opportunities that improved students’ ability to be
successful in achieving in western terms. The findings demonstrated the similarities and
complexities of Council members’ perceptions of their role as Council members and as
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individual community members to support or develop educational initiatives that benefit Native
Hawaiians.
Overall, Council members discussed enacting their roles as Council members and/or as
individual community members by leveraging within their bonding networks. This meant that
all Council members, in one way or another, utilized their relationships within their self-defined
communities to enact their perceived roles. While only some Council members discussed
leveraging within both their bonding and bridging networks to enact their roles. These findings
demonstrated the complexity of strategies used by Council members to enact their perceived
roles in support of meeting the various needs of Native Hawaiians.

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CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION
This study examined the method Native Hawaiian Educational Council (Council)
members went about “perpetuating excellence in Native Hawaiian education” as Council
members and as individual community members. The Council was established by the Native
Hawaiian Education Act (NHEA), a Federal policy created to provide financial support to
programs with the purpose of improving the educational outcomes of Native Hawaiians.
Although the policy was created in 1998, up until 2008 little was known about the NHEA’s
impact on the education of Native Hawaiians (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2008).
Subsequently to the examination by the GAO, the formal mission of the Council has been to
“coordinate, assess and make recommendations to perpetuate excellence in Native Hawaiian
education” (Native Hawaiian Education Council, 2014, para. 15). This study focused on the
appointed Council members whose recommendations and assessments were meant to guide the
implementation of this Federal policy with the purpose of improving the educational outcomes of
Native Hawaiian students.
In an effort to understand the NHEA’s impact on the education of Native Hawaiians, the
purpose of this study was to explore the ways in which members of the Native Hawaiian
Education Council made meaning of their role in accomplishing their mission, as individuals and
Council members, in relation to the needs of Native Hawaiian students. Specifically, research
questions asked:
1. What did members of the NHEC perceive to be their role in “perpetuating excellence
in Native Hawaiian education” (Native Hawaiian Education Council, 2014, para.15)
as Council members and as individual community members to support or develop
educational initiatives that benefitted Native Hawaiians?
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2. How did they see themselves enacting their roles in relation to this agenda as
individuals and members of the Council?
The way Native Hawaiian Educational Council members approached their work to improve the
educational outcomes of Native Hawaiian students, both individually and collectively, was a
reflection of their beliefs regarding culturally based education, their utilization of social capital
resources and their practice of Indigenous leadership.
In order to understand the perceptions of Council members, as key stakeholders of the
NHEA and leaders in Native Hawaiian education, this study utilized a qualitative research
design. I gathered data through interviews with 10 Council members to understand their beliefs
about and approaches to their role on the Council and as individual community members.
Analysis of data revealed surface agreements and variations in both Council members’ beliefs
about their role and how they went about enacting their roles.
In general, Council members expressed their role through the importance of their work to
impact the community. They described their roles to impact their community by improving the
education of Native Hawaiians through culturally based educational programs and/or initiatives.
This meant that Council members saw it as their role to support and advocate for educational
efforts that aligned with their belief of culturally based education. Yet, variation existed among
Council members in how they discussed the details of their role based on their understanding of
culturally based education. On one end of the continuum, Council members with a revitalizing
understanding of culturally based education held a deep understanding of Native Hawaiian
culture and language and utilized the western system to revitalize and sustain traditional Native
Hawaiian culture and language. Council members in the center of the continuum held sustaining
understanding of culturally based education where they saw it as their role to provide students
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with opportunities to engage with their Native language and culture as a means to improve their
educational outcomes. At the other end of the continuum, Council members held a relevant
understanding of culturally based education where they voiced their support for Hawaiian
language and culture, yet, saw it as their role to create opportunities that improved students’
ability to be successful in achieving in western terms. The findings demonstrated the similarities
and complexities of Council members’ perceptions of their role as Council members and as
individual community members to support or develop educational initiatives that benefit Native
Hawaiians.
Consistent with the literature, the majority of Council members chose to work in their
bonding networks to enact their role. There were some Council members, who also worked in
their bridging networks. These findings demonstrated the complexity of strategies used by
Council members to enact their perceived roles in support of meeting the various needs of Native
Hawaiians. This meant that Native Hawaiian participants were able to draw upon their cultural
background and bonding networks to approach their work, which limited the need to use or
establish bridging network. Thus, bridging networks were less prevalent among Native
Hawaiians. Hohepa and Robinson (2008) described Indigenous leadership as “highly fluid” and
reciprocal, which allowed leaders to be influenced by the community and the community to be
influenced by those in leadership positions (p. 32).
Implications and Recommendations
The unequal power structures that existed within the educational system left Native
Hawaiian students at a disadvantage. To account for those unequal power structures, advocates
for culturally based education asserted the importance of integrating Native language and culture
into the classroom to improve the academic outcomes of Native students. The Federal
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government demonstrated their support for improving schooling for Native American students
through culturally based educational programs by enacting Indian Education Act (IEA) and
NHEA (Beaulieu, 2006; Demmert & Towner, 2003). Furthermore, the NHEA established the
Council to “coordinate, assess and make recommendations to perpetuate excellence in Native
Hawaiian education” (Native Hawaiian Education Council, 2014, para. 15). This study sought to
understand the perceptions of the Council members, key stakeholders of the NHEA and leaders
in Native Hawaiian education, as they defined their role and worked towards improving the
outcomes for Native Hawaiian students. Data from this study provided implications for practice,
policy, and research.
This study provided qualitative data that documented the conversations surrounding the
issues that affect the education of Native Hawaiians students and progression of Native Hawaiian
communities. These conversations demonstrated the complex issues of Native Hawaiian
communities as they strive to advance Native Hawaiian students to meet educational outcomes
as defined by their communities and western system. The various perspectives of key
stakeholders within Native Hawaiian communities provide insight into the core beliefs that shape
general agreements and the various perceptions that lead to tension areas as stakeholders
navigate between their communities and western society. This insight can inform the practice of
those striving to positively impact Native Hawaiian communities, which I will further discuss in
the following section.
Furthermore, this study contributed to our understanding of the way the NHEA was being
implemented. Data analysis provided insight into the way Council members went about
fulfilling their role. Council members discussed the strengths and challenges of the way the
NHEA was being implemented as well as other implications for policies that affect Native
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Hawaiian communities. This insight can provide implications to guide future policy, which will
be discussed in the following section.
Finally, this study documented the progress and challenges of Native Hawaiians and
Native Hawaiian education. This study provided data on Council members’ beliefs on how to
best meet the needs of Native Hawaiian students and communities as well as their approaches to
meeting those needs. This data offered a starting point to research effective programs and
approaches to best meet the needs of Native Hawaiians.
Implications for Practice
Understanding the various perspectives of key stakeholders within Native Hawaiian
communities provided insight into the core beliefs that shaped general agreements and the
various perceptions that led to tension areas as stakeholders navigated between their
communities and western society. This insight could inform the practice of those striving to
positively impact Native Hawaiian communities and students.
This study identified the general agreement that Council members saw importance of
their work as positively impacting their communities. Despite the various viewpoints of Council
members, they all agreed that the main motivation behind the work that they engaged in was to
improve and meet the needs of their communities. This means that others working with or for
Native Hawaiian students should also see the importance of their work as positively impacting
the community. Literature on Indigenous leadership suggests that Indigenous leaders should
make the benefit of the greater community their priority (Benham & Murakami, 2010;
Fitzgerald, 2010; Hohepa & Robinson, 2008; Hohepa, 2013). Fitzgerald’s (2010) findings best
exemplified leadership practice for those working with Indigenous communities. She asserted
that leadership theory and practical approaches needed to include Indigenous voices and
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perspective to achieve true diversity such that: 1) leaders in Indigenous communities needed to
demonstrate their affiliation to the community which was defined by kinship and community
relations past, present, and future and solidified by their commitment to the community and not
aspirations of the individual; 2) leaders working with Indigenous communities demonstrated
their commitment to the community by advocating for their needs and developing a reciprocal
relationship which further deepened the bonds within the community; and 3) leaders take action
to guard, protect, and sustain Indigenous knowledge. Similarly, those working with and/or for
Native Hawaiian students should:
1) perceive the importance of their work through positively impacting the community.
2) support efforts that incorporate elements of Native Hawaiian language and/or culture
to improve education in terms of community goals and/or student achievement.
3) advocate for improvements in terms of community goals and/or student achievement.
This dissertation highlighted the core beliefs of Council members as key stakeholders in Native
Hawaiian communities, which aligned with the literature on Indigenous leadership, to provide
concepts for practical application for those working with Native Hawaiian students.
In general Council members agreed that they engaged in their work to improve their
community, yet depending on the community and the perspective of that individual Council
member the particular needs of their community varied and how he/she went about fulfilling that
need varied as well. Based on the data, in order to resolve the long term effects of historical
trauma that has resulted in the academic gap and other related issues within Native Communities,
there needed to be multiple strategies implemented from all different angles of the problem.
Council member Kanani exemplified this idea when she described the educating a generation
with the capacity and engrained with a Native Hawaiian perspective to address the various issues
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 179
of Native Hawaiian communities. She stated, “it’s taken us a generation to build up enough
capacity in the work… And I think all of the issues that we have in terms of human issues, and
economic issues, and social issues we can find all of those things here at home and we have a lot
of solutions.” This meant that leaders working with Native Hawaiian communities observed a
multitude of needs within that community. In turn, to resolve the multitude of needs within
Native Hawaiian communities a multitude of strategies needed to be employed to meet those
needs. Furthermore, those working to impact their communities could do so by building the
capacity of community members to resolve their own issues with a grounding in both the
knowledge base of their community and western power structures. This recommendation was
further verified as all Council members discussed enacting their role by leveraging within their
bonding networks. Similarly, Foley and O’Connor (2013) found strong bonding networks
among Native Hawaiian participants. Capitalizing on the strong use of bonding networks among
Native Hawaiians, it is imperative that practitioners seek to build the capacity of Native
Hawaiian community members.
Beyond general agreements among Council members, findings identified the variations
of Council members’ perceptions of their role which reflected their beliefs of how Native
Hawaiian culture and language should be integrated into educational efforts. These variations
existed along a continuum with the revitalizing fraction on one end, sustaining fraction in the
center, and the relevant fraction at the other end. The variations among Council members’
beliefs of culturally based education were reflective of the literature and the complexity within
the Native Hawaiian community. Given the findings, I propose that we as a Native Hawaiian
community should critically analyze the role of Native Hawaiian language and culture as we
strive to meet the educational outcomes of Native Hawaiian students as defined by both
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community standards and western accountability. I believe that each fraction of understanding
culturally based education, as a reflection of beliefs on the role Native Hawaiian culture and
language, has a place in meeting the needs of Native Hawaiian students but we should focus our
efforts in the sustaining fraction. Given the socio-historical context of Hawaii, it was necessary
for those in the revitalizing fraction to revitalize and sustain Native Hawaiian language and
culture. Their advocacy efforts at the start of the Native Hawaiian Education Act, brought us to
this point where Native Hawaiian language and culture is an acceptable aspect of the education
for Native Hawaiian students. Those in the relevant fraction, with their focus on western
attainment, remind us that Native Hawaiian students live in a western context. Although all
these components of the continuum held a significant role, I recommend that future focus should
reflect the sustaining fraction in order to move the Hawaiian community forward. I recommend
that practice with Native Hawaiian students need to reflect Paris’ (2012) theory of culturally
sustaining pedagogy where education maintains the cultural and linguistic practices of students
and their community while simultaneously providing access to the dominant western culture.
Native Hawaiian language and culture needs to be used bridge to provide students with access to
the dominant western society. There is a need for constant reflection and critical analysis, as we
as practitioners, strive for the center of the continuum and for educational approaches to be
characterized as culturally sustaining pedagogy because it is easy to end up on either sides of the
continuum with a focus on either the revitalization of Native Hawaiian language and culture or
western forms of attainment. Practice with Native Hawaiians needs to integrate Native Hawaiian
language/culture and constructs of the dominant western society, in such a way that Native
Hawaiian language/culture bridges students to the dominant western society.

EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 181
Implications for Policy
Current policy enacted the Council to provide recommendations based on the
assessments of their communities to Federal government, specifically the US DOE. Yet, it is
unknown as to how the Council’s recommendations impact the US DOE’s decision on awarding
programs that apply for funding under the NHEA. The data from this study gave insight into the
way Council members went about advocating the interest of students in their communities that
provided to the following implications and recommendations for future policies.
First, the various Federal departments that enact policies that impact Native people
should consider ways to align efforts to better meet the needs Native communities. Council
member Kau`i discussed the various departments within the Federal government that work in
isolation from each other which affected their ability to meet the needs of Native Hawaiian
communities. To coordinate services for Native Hawaiians, Council members discussed the
enactment of their role by navigating, informing, and advocating alignment within the Federal
government system to best meet the needs of their communities. Furthermore, the Council
conducted an assessment of the educational needs of Native Hawaiian learners (Native Hawaiian
Education Council, 2011). This assessment demonstrated the efforts of the Council to
communicate the identified needs of Native Hawaiians to the Federal government. Similarly,
Beaulieu (2006) contended:
We must make the intentions of Federal Indian education status a greater reality. There
are currently significant incongruities between the Federal protective statutes regarding
language and culture and our education statutes; similarly, there is incongruence within
No Child Left Behind Act, between its Title VII and the purposes of the Indian Education
Act, Title VII, and the implementation of the general provisions of the stature (p. 60).
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 182
Taking into account Council members’ and Beaulieu’s discussions, to make intentions of the
Native Hawaiian Education Act a reality, there needed to be alignment within the Federal
government and related policies to have a greater impact on Native Hawaiian communities. One
strategy for making the intentions of the NHEA a reality, would be to focus efforts on culturally
sustaining pedagogy, where Hawaiian language/culture is used as a bridge towards access
western systems.
Second, the State Department of Education should consider ways to redesign the
educational journey of Native Hawaiian students. Beaulieu (2006) asserted that part of the issue
with schools failing to meet the needs of Native students “may be related to the desire to focus
on the reform of existing schools rather then re-designing them in the first place for the purposes
of more effectively educating Native American students” (p. 59). Council members discussed
the various possibilities to redesign the educational pathway to better meet the needs for Native
Hawaiian students. Instead of the State of Hawai`i DOE reproducing a western form of
education, they should consider the redesign of schools for the purpose of more effectively
educating Native Hawaiian students. The redesign of the educational journey for Native
Hawaiians need to reflect the perspective of Council members in the sustaining fraction,
specifically the literature on culturally sustaining pedagogy. This means that educational efforts
should maintain the cultural and linguistic practices of student and their community while
providing access to the dominant western system.
Implications for Research
Data from this study revealed the various beliefs and multiple strategies utilized to move
towards improving educational outcomes for Native Hawaiians. More research is needed to
support the beliefs and strategies of Council members. This means that research is needed to
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 183
identify where Council members should place their efforts to best support the educational
outcomes for Native Hawaiian students. Whether efforts should be placed in one particular
program and/or strategy or in multiple programs and/or strategies, more research is needed to
understand the impact of Native Hawaiian language and culture on the educational outcomes of
Native Hawaiians in terms of student achievement and community goals. Specifically, my
recommendation is focus research in the pathway of culturally sustaining pedagogy to build on
the strategies that effectively provide students with access to the dominant western system by
utilizing a Hawaiian worldview which includes Native Hawaiian culture and language.
To build the research on Native Hawaiian education, researchers grounded in a Native
Hawaiian worldview and ways of knowing were needed to interrogate and legitimize cultural
practices that could be used as a bridge to navigate western power structures. Hohepa (2013)
contended the importance of having Maori leaders challenge and critically analyze what has been
presented as traditional Maori beliefs, knowledge, and practices. She asserted that, “What count
as Maori beliefs, knowledge, values, and worldviews deserve being shown the respect of
rigorous interrogation” (p. 625). Native peoples need to be involved in the “multidirectional
exchanging and interchanging of ideas,” which includes a foundation in Native worldviews and
ways of knowing and dominant western approaches (Hohepa, 2013, p. 626). Similarly, Council
member Kanani asserted the importance of educational self-determination. She discussed the
importance of building the capacity of Native Hawaiians to create a Native Hawaiian pathway
based on a Native Hawaiian way of knowing. Thus it is imperative, that research on Native
Hawaiians be conducted by those with the ability to critically analyze and identify the role of
both a Native Hawaiian worldview and western approaches. The absence of a Native Hawaiian
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 184
worldview or Indigenous framework in research gives way to homogeny and the perpetuation of
the culture of power that hinders the progress of Native Hawaiian students.
Conclusions
This study provided qualitative data that documented the conversations surrounding the
issues that affect the education of Native Hawaiians students and progression of Native Hawaiian
communities, which provided implications for practice, policy, and research. Findings suggested
that for those working with and/or for Native Hawaiian students should:
1) Perceive the importance of their work through positively impacting the community.
2) Support efforts that incorporate elements of Native Hawaiian language and/or culture
to improve education in terms of community goals and/or student achievement.
3) Advocate for improvements in terms of community goals and/or student achievement.
Furthermore, those working to impact their communities could do so by building the capacity of
community members to resolve the multitude of issues within the community. In addition, I
believe that each fraction of understanding culturally based education, as a reflection of beliefs
on the role Native Hawaiian culture and language, has a place in meeting the needs of Native
Hawaiian students but we should focus our efforts in the sustaining fraction. Where educational
efforts should maintain the cultural and linguistic practices of student and their community while
providing access to the dominant western system.
Implications for policy suggest that:
1) The various Federal departments that enact policies that impact Native people should
consider ways to align efforts to better meet the needs Native communities.
2) The State Department of Education should consider ways to redesigning the educational
journey of Native Hawaiian students to better meet the educational outcomes.
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 185
Finally, implications for research suggest that:
1) More research is needed to understand the impact of Native Hawaiian language and
culture on the educational outcomes of Native Hawaiian in terms of student achievement
and community goals.
2) Research on Native Hawaiians be conducted by those with foundations of both a Native
Hawaiian worldview and western approaches.
Based on the finding of this study, these implications for practice, policy, and research could
support the Council and others to perpetuate excellence in Native Hawaiian education.

EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 186
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EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 192
APPENDIX A

Interview Protocol
Name of Person Interviewed: ______________________________________ Date: ______
Position on the Council: _________________________________________________________
Job Title (If any): ______________________________________________________________
Time Started: _____________ Time completed: ____________ Total Time: ______________
Researcher: ____________________________________________________________________
The purpose of this interview is for me to get to know a little about who you are and your
approaches to improving the educational outcomes Native Hawaiians. Interviews will be
recorded on digital audio and then transcribed for analysis.

You are free to choose against participating in this study and withdraw from the study at any
time. Your privacy will be protected at all times. You are welcome to ask questions before or
during the study. No harm or injury is anticipated to result from any of the data collected in this
study.

1. What are your personal goals in relation to the educational needs of Native Hawaiians?
a. How has your professional background helped you accomplish your personal
goals?
b. How has your cultural background helped you accomplish your personal goals?
2. Tell me about the goals of the Native Hawaiian Education Council.
a. How does the Council go about accomplishing to goals of NHEA?
b. What do you believe the Council could accomplish?
c. What is your role in accomplishing the goals of the Council?
d. How had being on the Council helped you accomplish your personal goals?
3. As an educator working with Native Hawaiians, what do you believe your kuleana
(responsibility) is as a Council member?
a. Who is your constituency?
4. Walk me through an example of a recent program or initiative that you think is successful
in meeting the needs of Native Hawaiians.
a. What about this program would you point to that makes it “successful’?
b. In that example, what is/was the role of Native Hawaiian language and culture?
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 193

c. What role have your played in the creation of this initiative or in supporting it to
see it come to fruition?
d. What do you believe success looks like in Native Hawaiian education?
5. What is the kuleana (responsibility) of a alakai (leader) in Native Hawaiian education?
a. What is the kuleana of an alakai on the Council?
b. Who are alakai that have influenced you?
c. What teachings from these alakai do you apply into your practice?
6. Can you walk me through a time when you were being asked to do something (external
set of expectations) that conflicted with your cultural beliefs? If any.
d. In that situation, how did you go about resolving that internal conflict?
7. How did you b
8. become a Council member?
a. Who influenced you to become a Council member?
b. How long have you been on the Council?
c. When you first joined the Council, who were the power players at that time?
d. What was your relationship with those people?
9. Think about a recent situation that prompted you to contact or seek advice with someone
(either internal or external of the Native Hawaiian community). Tell me about what
happened.
10. What do I need to know to support Native Hawaiian education?

EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 194
APPENDIX B

Informed Consent

INFORMED CONSENT FORM: NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION COUCIL MEMBERS

The following information is provided to help you decide whether you wish to participate in the
study: Ma Ka Hana Ka Ike - Perpetuating Excellence in Native Hawaiian Education. You are
free to choose against participating in this study. You are also free to withdraw from the study at
any time, without influencing your relationship with the researcher, your school or district, and
the University of Southern California.

Purpose
The purpose of this study is to understand the way those working in Native Hawaiian education
approach their work with Native Hawaiians. More specifically, this study to explore the ways in
which members of the Native Hawaiian Education Council make meaning of their role in
accomplishing their mission, as individuals and Council members, in relation to the needs of
Native Hawaiian students. This study will examine the way Council members go about
“perpetuating excellence in Native Hawaiian education” (Native Hawaiian Education Council,
2014, para.15) as Council members and as individual community members to support or develop
educational initiatives that benefit Native Hawaiians.

Procedures
This study will consist of one in-depth interview with Native Hawaiian Education Council
members. Interviews will be recorded on digital audio and then transcribed for analysis.

Interview questions will focus on how you approach your work within Native Hawaiian
education; specifically, questions will focus on your goals and kuleana both professionally,
personally and as Council members. In addition, questions will focus on your beliefs of
culturally based education, leadership, and relationships.

Rights
You may decline consent to participate at any time preceding this study’s publication of findings.
Consent can and may be revoked regarding one item, a group of items or your entire contribution
to the study. For example, if you provide information during an interview that you later regret
disclosing, you may request that the information cannot be used in the study, and this request
will be honored.

You are welcome to ask questions before or during the study. You will have access to your own
data. If you desire, I will also share the findings with you after the study is complete

Privacy
Your privacy will be protected at all times. A pseudonym will be utilized for the names of
participants in this study. Audio recordings and transcripts will be maintained in a password-
protected computer file until destroyed. All audio recordings and transcripts will be maintained
EXCELLENCE IN NATIVE HAWAIIAN EDUCATION 195
for a maximum of one year following the publication of any and all data collected during this
study. Revelations of illegal activity or of child abuse or neglect cannot be kept confidential.

Risks and Benefits
This study poses no anticipated harm or injury as a result of the data collected. An expected
benefit of this study is an awareness of the approaches and efforts of Native Hawaiian Education
Council members, as both individuals and as Council members. In addition, this study will
highlight fundamental aspects of culturally based education, leadership within the Native
Hawaiian educational community, and the utilization of relationships in the development and
support of educational efforts that promote academic success among Native Hawaiians and
minimize the educational gap between Native Hawaiians and other ethnic groups.

Your participation in this study will contribute to the story of Native Hawaiian education. As
this is a research study, the benefits are contingent upon the results.

Your signature on this form will acknowledge that you have been informed of, and agree to, the
above information and have granted permission to participate in the study. You will be provided
a copy of this form.

____ I agree to the audio recording of the interview.

_____________________________________________ ______________________
Signature Date

Jaymee Nanasi Feinga, Doctoral Candidate
University of Southern California
feinga@usc.edu
808-256-8464

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Asset Metadata

Creator Feinga, Jaymee Nanasi (author)

Core Title Ma ka hana ka ike perpetuating excellence in Native Hawaiian education: Native Hawaiian Education Council members' approaches to supporting the needs of Native Hawaiians

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Education (Leadership)

Publication Date 10/07/2016

Defense Date 08/12/2016

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag culture based education,indigenous leadership,Native Hawaiian,Native Hawaiian education,Native Hawaiian Education Act,OAI-PMH Harvest,social capital

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Slayton, Julie (committee chair), Hokoana, Lui (committee member), Samkian, Artineh (committee member)

Creator Email feinga@usc.edu,jaymee30@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-313178

Unique identifier UC11214664

Identifier etd-FeingaJaym-4871.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-313178 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-FeingaJaym-4871.pdf

Dmrecord 313178

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Feinga, Jaymee Nanasi

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

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