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Canoe to classroom: examining why Hawai'i's schools are adopting a navigation approach to education
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Canoe to classroom: examining why Hawai'i's schools are adopting a navigation approach to education
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Content
Running head: CANOE TO CLASSROOM 1
CANOE TO CLASSROOM: EXAMINING WHY HAWAI‘I’S SCHOOLS ARE ADOPTING A
NAVIGATION APPROACH TO EDUCATION
by
Angie Dolan
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION
Degree Conferral: December 2017
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 2
Acknowledgements
In wayfinding, you cannot know where you are going until you understand where you
came from. In this sense, I would like to acknowledge all the people who inspired to pursue this
degree and supported me through this process. Firstly, I’d like to thank my former USC
academic advisors, UCLA colleagues who modeled how to develop academic efficacy through
athletics and inspired me to pursue a profession in education. My time as a student athlete and
academic mentor taught me that knowledge and learning has many forms and nothing is more
rewarding than helping others figure out their own process.
I’d like to acknowledge my parents for modeling a life where learning and growth were
valued and for inspiring me to constantly challenge myself. My brother Shaun, thank you for
setting the pursuits of education and achievement high in while in Medical School, even though I
graduated one day before you. To my husband Patrick- thank you for always supporting my
dreams (even the wild ones), and for allowing this dissertation to be the topic of many dinner
dates. I appreciated your willingness to talk through every twist and turn. To Dr. Slayton-thank
you for always challenging me, both as a teacher and dissertation chair. I am in constant awe of
your dedication to your work and your students and I am forever grateful that I had you as my
navigator on this journey.
To the members of my dissertation committee, Dr. Kehau Kealoha-Scullion and Dr. Artineh
Samkian for dedicating your time and energy to this project and helping me expand my
perspective of my research and myself. I appreciate your knowledge, passion and insight and
mostly for agreeing to share them with me on this journey. Lastly, mahalo nui to all my family,
friends, coaches and colleagues who allowed me to miss major events, social gatherings, work
functions and paddling practices so I could pursue this degree.
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 3
Table of Contents
List of Figures 5
List of Tables 6
Abstract 7
Chapter One: Introduction 8
Background of the problem 9
Statement of the problem 22
Purpose of the study 23
Significance of the study 24
Organization of the study 24
Chapter Two: Literature Review 26
Environmental Education 28
Environmental Education Theory 29
Empirical Evidence for Environmental Education 33
Place Based Education 39
Introduction to Place Based Education Theory 40
Theoretical Research of Place Based Education 42
Empirical Evidence for PBE 48
Indigenous Epistemology 55
Indigenous Knowledge 57
Empirical Articles 68
Conceptual Framework 70
Chapter Three: Methodology 82
Research Design 82
Sample and Population 83
Instrumentation and data collection procedures 88
Data Analysis Procedures 88
Limitations 90
Delimitations 94
Ethics 95
Credibility and Trustworthiness 95
Conclusion 96
Chapter Four: Findings and Analysis 101
Finding One: School Leaders’ Motivation Existed on a Continuum
Characterized by the Intersection of Personal Ideology
and School Context 103
Category One 106
Category Two 125
Category Three 141
Summary and Conclusion 164
Chapter Five: Discussion 166
Summary of findings 167
Implications and Recommendations 168
Implications for Practice 169
Implications for Policy 172
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 4
Implications for Research 178
References 180
Appendix A: Interview Protocol 191
Appendix B: Informed Consent 195
Appendix C: Conceptual Framework: Outline of Significant Changes 198
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 5
List of Figures
Figure 1. Star Compass Conceptual Framework 62
Figure 2. Internal Factors 70
Figure 3. External Factors 71
Figure 4. Academic Product Outcomes 73
Figure 5. Intellectual Product Outcomes 73
Figure 6. Values based Product outcomes 74
Figure 7. Western Education Orientation 74
Figure 8. Environment Centered Orientation 75
Figure 9. Indigenous World View Orientation 76
Figure 10. Findings Framework 89
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 6
List of Tables
Table 1. School Leader Sample 86
Table 2. Respondents Background Information 103
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 7
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine why Hawai‘i school leaders are deciding to
adopt a navigation curriculum and how they perceive it to be benefitting their students. The
research questions guiding this study are: How do school leaders make meaning of the decision
to adopt a navigation based curriculum at their schools? What do they perceive to be the benefits
for students? How do they believe they have enacted this approach to achieve benefits?
In order to answer these questions, this multi-case study analyzed interview data from
six Hawai‘i school leaders who had intentionally adopted aspects of traditional Hawaiian
wayfinding curriculum. All respondents were heads of school or key leaders in the enactment or
implementation of wayfinding curriculum within their school setting. Data for this study
included in-depth interviews with each school leader and artifact collection.
Findings revealed that while all leaders held similar expectations regarding the intended
outcomes of adopting wayfinding approach, their personal ideology and the constraints of their
specific school resulted in variations of how school leaders made meaning of their decision to
adopt a navigation approach. Additionally, data revealed this intersection of school context, and
each leader’s personal experience with their own situationality contributed to their ability to
develop curriculum, which addresses the political, social and cultural challenges facing those
who inhabit the same place. In order to provide meaningful place and culturally relevant
curriculum, school leaders must first, identify their own biases; understand the limitations of
their situationality and address teacher competence in delivering culturally relevant instruction.
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 8
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Americans have long considered education as a contributor to the collective good
(Pelligrino & Hilton, 2012). Additionally, one of the primary goals of education has been to
prepare students to contribute to the workforce in order to strengthen the national economy
(Woodhouse & Knapp, 2000). However, in the face of shifting societal challenges, educating for
responsible citizenry is more important than ever (Pelligrino & Hilton, 2012). In recent years, the
sustainability of our social, environmental and economic systems has prompted an increased
examination into how schools prepare students to solve the societal problems they will inherit
(Smith, 2010).
Traditionally, the goals of American school systems have encompassed the need to meet
the future needs of the nation’s workforce (“Common Cores State Standards Summit Report,”
2012). Most recently, the needs of the workforce have been defined by the ability to contribute to
a “highly technological and consumer-oriented society” (Woodhouse & Knapp, 2000, p. 3).
In effort to prepare students for careers in a competitive, consumer-driven workforce
current education models have failed to consider the long-term consequences to society. While
rapid economic growth has been a consistent goal of the global market, the increased production
and consumption, has consequently left the environment in a state of crisis (Pelligrino & Hilton,
2012).
Therefore, one of the principal issues facing the next generation will be how can schools
simultaneously create a powerful workforce and a citizenry that is interested and able to make
decisions regarding the management of diminishing natural resources. This study looked at how
Hawai‘i schools have begun to align their curriculum to the societal issues of the future, using a
framework of 21
st
century skills and knowledge Indigenous to the students’ place of learning.
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 9
The remainder of this chapter will present the background of the study, providing historical
context relevant to sustainability initiatives within education and exploring possible solutions
drawing from traditional practices of Native Hawaiian wayfinding.
Background of the Problem
According to the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNSECO, 2014) challenges facing education today and in the near future revolve around the
essential question of: What do today’s children need to know in order to face current and future
economic, environmental and social challenges? Individuals can only be expected to contribute
to society the skills and values that they have learned through both formal schooling and
informal learning environments (Pelligrino & Hilton, 2012). Therefore, if today’s students are
expected to grapple with unprecedented issues of population growth and climate change left over
from it begs the question: “Where are the schools that will help them meet these challenges?”
(Thompson as cited in Witt, 2012, p. 24). While prior educational outcomes were aligned to
prepare students to participate in an economic workforce, recent challenges emphasize the need
to additionally equip students with the skills needed to grapple with growing concerns caused by
growing environmental instability. Hawkin (2007) believes “our fate will depend on how we
understand and treat what is left of the planet’s surpluses—its lands, oceans, species diversity,
and people” (p. 2). Additionally, Nainoa Thompson said of environmental sustainability, “you
cannot protect what you don’t understand and you don’t if you don’t care” (2017). In other
words, the societal challenge that will define the next generation will be for schools to “prepare
students to reinvigorate our community and democratic processes while enacting the innovations
required by changing planetary and social conditions” (Smith, 2010, p. 4).
Due to the broadening of educational expectations, environmental advocates are calling
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 10
for an overhaul of educational initiatives to correspond with the impending environmental
challenges of society (Eames, Barker, Wilson-Hill, & Law, 2010). Specifically, the United
Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) has called for “far-
reaching changes in the way education is often practiced today” and foresee “a new vision of
education that seeks to empower people of all ages to assume responsibility for creating a
sustainable future” (as cited in Eames et al., 2010, p. 1).
Understanding how schools prepare today’s students to tackle the challenges of the
society they will inherit is important to address as reports indicate academic outcomes alone are
insufficient in developing future leaders (“Partnerships for 21
st
Century Learning (P21),” n.d.).
Success in today’s society requires a different set of competencies than 10 years ago (Pelligrino
& Hilton, 2012).
Conventional industrial skills have been replaced with intellectual competencies that
better prepare students to become innovative problem solvers in order to respond to issues
brought on by climate change. More specifically, there is an increasing need for citizens who can
negotiate challenges related to the rising costs of energy, an increase in catastrophic weather
events, and water and food shortages (Smith, 2010). Some authors have theorized confronting
these issues will require developing adaptable and resilient learners who will not give up in the
face of adversity (Smith, 2010; Sterling, 2010). Thus, instead of an emphasis on content
expertise, as was desired in prior generations, Witt (2012) suggests, “learning to learn is fast
becoming the most important educational outcome” (p. 22).
21
st
Century Skills for Sustainable Development
In order to develop adaptive and resilient learners, greater emphasis is being placed on
fostering the creative, collaborative and critical thinking process characteristic of 21
st
century
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 11
learners (“21
st
Century Skills,” n.d.). However, the existing structure of education is not
necessarily conducive to the new role schools will have to undertake in order to nurture these
outcomes (Smith, 2010). While leadership and academic skills were part of the educational
priorities of former generations, there is an emerging obligation to educate students for
sustainable development (Smith, 2010; UNSECO, 2014; Witt, 2010). According to a report
published in 1987 entitled “Our Common Future, the World Commission on Environment and
Development (WCED), defined “sustainable development” as a process that “meets present
needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (1987, p.
43). In an article entitled “It’s too late to stop climate change?” Gelspan (2007) says we have
already “failed to meet natures deadline” (para.1) and must now focus on how to mitigate
impending consequences as a result of our global footprint. To the critical and possibly life-
threatening nature of these problems, there is increased pressure on education to demonstrate it is
providing kids with the knowledge and skills they need to contribute to a sustainable future.
Models for Change
The urgency of developing competent environmental leaders has opened a conversation
about how educators might integrate environmental curricula into schools. Dominated by a
history of “learn to earn” mentality (Woodhouse & Knapp, 2000, p. 3) educational policymakers
have recognized that the U.S. has not entirely been “committed to making K-12 education
relevant” to today’s world (“P21,” n.d.). Outcomes essential to educating for sustainable
development, and are explicit goals of EE and PBE curriculum, such as sustainable stewardship,
investment in place, environmental advocacy and community engagement are noticeably “not
well accounted for in the standardized measures that drive the high-stakes testing mandated by
NCLB” or recent federal educational policies (Duffin, 2006, p. 29). However, national
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 12
policymakers are slowly making progress towards aligning the needs of competencies and
outcomes. Under the 2016 reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the
goal of education is to prepare every child to “contribute in a competitive, interconnected world”
(“P21,” n.d.) Additionally, ESEA defines college and career readiness as the “integration of core
subject knowledge and higher-order thinking skills” and seeks to expand the expectations of
American students to include learning process or intellectual outcomes (“P21,” n.d.). The
broadening of prior education outcomes to include thinking skills such as reasoning,
observations and problem solving, are essential to success of future generations, who be faced
with unprecedented environmental challenges. ESEA has recognized that the desirable skills of
the 21
st
century are no longer part of a prescriptive standard but located in learning itself.
An Alternative Approach
While explicit lessons regarding sustainable development are still lacking in state-driven
educational curriculum, some educators are taking it upon themselves to adopt approaches that
foster experiences that “engage students in community issues while preparing them to become
actors more than consumers” (Smith, 2010, para.12).
Place based education offers a viable approach for integrating 21
st
century capacities into
classroom curriculum (Smith, 2010). Rather than standardizing knowledge across a broad
curriculum, it seeks to connect learning to the place it occurs. This approach also seeks to
democratize sustainable practices and teach students to be invested in and accountable for their
community through the facilitation of specific learning experiences (Smith, 2002). This approach
is founded on the idea, that one cannot solve the world’s problems without first solving the
problems inherent in one’s community.
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 13
However, an entirely different perspective on PBE looks outside the realm of Western
education to solve issues of sustainability. Advocates of this approach believe lack of sustainable
literacy stems from inherent societal values and everyday habits. Sterling (2010) defines
sustainability as having social, economic and environmental viability, “but also necessitating an
operating ecological or participatory worldview which recognizes these qualities or system
conditions as mutually interdependent . . . sustainability is both a process and a broad direction”
(p. 512).
In addition to changing how we educate students, some argue we also need to change the
way “we interact with one another and the planet as well as how we think” (Smith, 2010). In
order to change the way students think, educators “are beginning to recognize that Western-
based formal knowledge remains just one knowledge system of many” (Quigley, 2009, p. 76)
and are looking to Indigenous knowledge systems as a basis for better understanding students’
interconnectedness with their surroundings (Hawkin, 2007).
Using place to engage students is specifically relevant to Indigenous cultures, such as
Native Hawaiians, who traditionally have a strong cultural and personal connection to their
environment (Cajete,1994; Kuwahara, 2000). Cajete (1994) suggests that Indigenous practices,
behaviors and ways of knowing are directly connected to that people’s interaction with the
natural world. Kana‘iaupuni and Malone (2006) state place is inherently intertwined with
identity and self-determination of Native Hawaiians. Specifically, they argue, one cannot begin
to understand Indigenous knowledge without the understanding of place.
Western education traditionally considers place in terms of its physical and geographic
features, with almost no regard to the relationship of the people who share that space (Seawright,
2014). Conversely, an Indigenous perspective of place views people and the environment as
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 14
constantly overlapping and interacting (Kana‘iaupuni & Malone, 2006, p. 283). In this way,
Indigenous culture and place based education pedagogy often overlap and are nearly
interchangeable (Barnhardt & Kawagley, 2005).
Hawai‘i schools in particular have begun to embrace place-specific resources and Native
knowledge as a basis for student learning (Witt, 2010). In response to issues of environmentally
sustainable citizenry, Hawai‘i has leveraged the understanding that Indigenous cultures hold
valuable knowledge of how to live sustainably due to rich experiences living off the land
(Hawkin, 2007). Through using Indigenous knowledge to inform educational outcomes, different
expressions have emerged throughout K-12 schools in Hawai‘i. One version of this is through
the adoption of traditional navigation and voyaging curriculum.
A Navigation Approach
With the understanding that Indigenous groups view place and culture as inherently
intertwined (Barnhardt & Kawagley, 2005), Placed Based Education in Hawai‘i is also often
grounded in Hawaiian Culture. One emerging expression of place based education grounded in
Hawaiian culture is a navigation or voyaging approach. Though not standardized in its
integration, many Hawai‘i school leaders have begun to adopt a navigation approach to
educating their students. Navigation and voyaging hold significant meaning to Hawaiian people
as it has been considered a symbolic representation of their cultural values and ways of knowing
framework (Richards, 2008).
Significance of Voyaging. Voyaging has always been a symbolic part of Hawaiian
culture and plays an integral role in development of social identities (Low, 2013 Richards; 2008).
Richards (2008) explains, “oceanic people had a passion for exploration, or were habituated to
it” while Witt (2012) calls wayfinding a way of life (p. 218). Additionally, navigators of the
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 15
voyages were believed to receive the highest honor from their ancestors due to their “ability and
courage to penetrate into the hitherto untraversed seaways” of the Pacific Ocean (Hiroa, 1954,
p.13 as cited in Richards, 2008, p.218).
Sahlins (1985) was the first to identify and describe the process of voyaging as a
“mythopraxis” for Hawaiian culture, referring to the “tendency of human beings to appropriate
experiences according to an already existing cultural pattern” (Richards, 2008, p. 218). Sahlins
(1985) theorizes “Hawaiian people relive, re-experience and reenact mythic schemes in current
events and that through reenacting, the meaning of the mythic schemes themselves change”
(1985, pp. 145-151).
Expanding on this perspective, Richards (2008) asserts that the canoe is a significant and
“sacred vehicle for social transformation” expressing that “to be at sea was to experience the
world in an alternative manner, effecting a different form of embodiment and understanding of
seascape” (p.218).
Hawaiian culture is nested in individuals’ relationships to nature, which is considered a
divine embodiment (Meyer, 1998). According to Sahlins (1985) the cosmological beliefs which
defined Indigenous spirituality causes Hawaiians to think and behave a certain way. Therefore,
from a cultural schema, the more intimate one was with nature, the closer they were to the gods.
From this perspective, the purpose of voyaging is “not about exploration and colonization” but as
a means to constructing and negotiating identity which includes the embodiment with ocean
(Richards, 2008, p. 218). Richards (2008) states that “during passage upon the elemental waters
of the Pacific Ocean, within sacred vehicles for liminality, Polynesians became out of place and
time, to emerge transcendental in being (p. 218). More overtly, voyaging within Hawai‘i’s
educational landscape has sought to reconnect students to their culture and place of learning
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 16
(“Hōkūle‘a,” n.d.). Whether through the development of Indigenous competencies or as a vessel
for 21
st
century skill attainment, expressions of voyaging have emerged in various capacities as
schools attempt to operationalize the skills essential to achieve the mind of a navigator.
Modern conceptions of navigation have been brought to life through the restoration of
Hōkūle‘a. Hōkūle‘a is a double- hulled sailing canoe replicating traditional Polynesian vessels
used more than 600 years ago and marked a resurgence in Hawaiian culture (Polynesian
Voyaging Society (PVS), n.d.; Low, 2013). Since its initial voyage to Tahiti in 1976, Hōkūle‘a
has symbolized a visible connection to past, while also positioning itself as a relevant fixture in
future of Hawai‘i culture. In other words, the significance of Hōkūle‘a is one “grounded in
historical reality and deployed in the present to affect social transformation” (Low, 2013;
Richards, 2008, p.218). While its presence has encouraged a cultural revival across Polynesia,
the purpose of its current voyage is considerably “less about sailing, more about learning” as its
“designed to inspire educators to transform how and what they teach” (Witt, 2012, p. 24).
Modern Navigation and the Star Compass. Navigation is specific form of nautical
wayfinding requiring precise knowledge of where you are and where you are going. Early
Polynesian voyagers were able navigate by taking cues from the natural surroundings including,
wave, wind and stars. It is thought that navigators memorized the stars and could guess the
precise location off the horizon (The Star Compass, n.d.). However, with few navigators using
these ancient methods, modern navigators were forced to come up with a framework that would
help them memorize the exact location of the stars at precise points throughout the year (The Star
Compass, n.d.).
Therefore, more recently, Polynesian navigators have begun using the star compass,
developed by Nainoa Thompson, which helps organize the stars into houses (The Star Compass,
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 17
n.d.). This approach assigns star to quadrants based on the where they rise and set. According to
this compass there are 32 houses, each separated by 11.5 degrees adding up to 360 degrees.
Using this framework, modern navigators have developed and articulated a more technical
approach to navigation, rather than traditional methods, which were believed to, memorized by
ancient navigators (On Wayfinding, n.d.).
Thompson developed the star compass as a framework for how to memorize the stars and
used his hand as a way to measure the exact degree aboard the canoe. By pre-measuring one’s
hand to determine how many degrees each finger could be, modern Polynesian navigators utilize
a much more technical method than ancient Hawaiians (The Star Compass, n.d.).
Thompson (On Wayfinding, n.d.) acknowledged this when he described his own process:
Initially, I depended on geometry and analytic mathematics to help me in my quest to
navigate the ancient way. However, as my ocean time and my time with Mau have
grown, I have internalized this knowledge. I rely less on mathematics and come closer
and closer to navigating the way the ancients did.
Implementation of a Navigation Approach in Hawai‘i
Within the 40 years since the resurrection of the traditional voyaging canoe Hōkūle‘a,
various expressions of a navigation-based approach to education have emerged in Hawai‘i’s
educational landscape. Most recently, the Mālama Honua World Vide Voyage (MHWWV) has
influenced on educational initiatives within the state. Specifically, a handful of select private,
independent and charter schools have begun to integrate the concept of navigation or wayfinding
into their curriculum (Witt, 2012). One of the largest commitments to this approach has been the
implementation of state-wide standards by the Hawai‘i State Department of Education.
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 18
Hawai‘i State Department of Education. In accordance with Hawai‘i State Standards,
developing place-specific outcomes has become a targeted outcome as part of nation-wide
overhaul of college and career readiness (“Core Standards,” n.d.). The College and Career
Readiness Center, provided each state with the opportunity to develop its own definition of
college and career readiness using a combination of five actionable categories including:
academic knowledge, critical thinking, social/emotional and citizenship and/or community
involvement (Mishkind, 2014). Hawai‘i was one of the six states to capitalize on this opportunity
to include place and culture specific standards which identify the need to develop citizens who
are responsible to the community and based in Hawaiian cultural values.
As a result, in 2013, the Hawai‘i P-20 Council updated its statewide definition of
College, Career, and Community Readiness, which measures students’ readiness through the
acquisition four key outcomes: 1) essential content knowledge 2) learning and cognitive skills 3)
transitional skills and 4) wayfinding (“Hawai‘i P–20 Partnerships for Education,” 2013).
The inclusion of a navigation based competency represented by wayfinding to encourage
students to “engage in local, national, and global contexts” (para. 4). More specifically, it asserts
students should be “able to identify their kūleana and work hard to fulfill these responsibilities to
their families, ‘āina (land), promote cross disciplinary learning and the acquisition of 21
st
century
skills, community, and future and past generations” (pp. 1-2).
Furthermore, their definition of wayfinding skills to include the ability to:
1. Be socially responsible and embrace a commitment to aloha, pono, diversity, fairness,
equity, and excellence
2. Maintain caring relationships, and value community, family, and ‘āina
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 19
3. Strive to cultivate an understanding of diverse perspectives, cultures, and the physical
world
4. Integrate the concepts of mālama ‘āina and sustainability into daily life and activities
5. Be community contributors who are collaborative, respectful, ethical decision-makers
6. Make healthy life choices that promote wellness and well-being
7. Be respectful to our island home including its Native language, culture and history
The integration of Indigenous values based positioned equally to traditional academic and
intellectual competencies in Hawai‘i’s College and Career Readiness Standards suggest themes
of navigation are perceived to hold educational value to the students of Hawai‘i. While not
overtly connected, the revision of the Hawai‘i State Standards for College and Career Readiness
to include “wayfinding” coincided with the departure of Hōkūle‘a on the Mālama Honua World
Wide Voyage.
Mālama Honua World Wide Voyage
Mālama Honua translates to mean “take care of our island earth and its people” and the
Mālama Honua World Wide Voyage (MHWWV) sparked a global education movement centered
on using Indigenous knowledge and constructs of physical and social place to inspire globally
sustaining teachings (“Hōkūle‘a,” n.d.). Astronaut Lacy Veach conceptualized this idea when
looking down upon the Hawaiian Islands from space, noticing how much earth appeared to be
just one big island. While his observation was essential to the conceptualization of the World
Wide Voyage (Low, 2013), it was not a new concept to the Native people of Hawai‘i. In
Hawaiian culture, as in other Indigenous cultures, the concept of nature and oneself are
inextricably connected, meaning climate and other environmental concerns are also closely
connected to problems of social justice (Hawkins, 2007). Therefore, goals of MHWW voyage
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 20
were to unite global society in awareness of environmental health and sustainability using the
framework of Indigenous. While there were many dangers in sailing around the world on a 22ft
vessel, the decision to sail was made after it was decided that it was “more dangerous to leave
Hōkūle‘a tied to the dock” rather than to let “inaction become your future” (2017). The voyage
advocated not only for an education movement in order to care for earth and each other, but also
to change how one relates both to the natural world and each other, a concept grounded in an
Indigenous worldview. Thompson said of calling the voyage Mālama Honua, “it has the tone of
an environmental movement but they’re all the same, the social issues, the environmental issues,
the future of our children, they are all the same thing. They all have to succeed.”
The Mālama Honua World Wide Voyage (MHWWV), began in June 2013 to
circumnavigate the globe using traditional navigation techniques of the Native Hawaiians. Over
3 years, the Hōkūle‘a sailed 49,000 nautical miles, reach 26 countries, and dock up at 85 ports
(Honoré, 2013). According to the MHWWV official website, the purpose of the voyage was to:
Navigate toward a healthy and sustainable future for ourselves, our home–the Hawaiian
Islands–and our Island Earth through voyaging and new ways of learning. Our core
message is to mālama (care for) Island Earth–our natural environment, children and all
humankind...and inspire communities around the world to think like an islander about our
resources and our relationships to these resources.
- Hōkūle‘a, n.d.
While Hōkūle‘a ended their world-wide voyage with a triumphant homecoming into Honolulu,
Hawai‘i on June 17
th
, 2017, according to Polynesian Voyaging Society, it is just the beginning of
their journey to transform the way Hawai‘i’s children relate to the earth and each other. In a
news story about the return of the vessel, navigator Bruce Blankenfield suggested that traditional
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 21
Polynesian Voyaging has far reaching affects both for education and Hawaiian culture (Filmore,
2017). Members of PVS will now focus their efforts on bettering the local community’s
sustainability awareness and practices, visiting 30 ports across the state (Honoré, 2017).
Educational Partnerships
Education was a key tenet of the Mālama Honua Voyage and central to success of its
mission. In order to ensure integration into Hawai‘i schools, the Polynesian Voyaging Society
developed a memorandum of understanding entitled “A Promise to Children,” which garnered
commitments from over 175 local and international educational organizations. Notable
commitments from Hawai‘i included all 10 campuses of the University of Hawai‘i and the
Hawai‘i State Board of Education. In a non-binding pledge, these hundreds of educators vowed
to carry out the values of voyaging through instructional classroom curricula. The Promise
sought to “transform our schools, empower youthful voices, and accept the responsibility of
Mālama Honua. We believe that by inspiring children to explore, discover and learn about Island
Earth, they will navigate the future of humanity toward vitality, renewal, and compassion”
(“Hōkūle‘a,” n.d.)
Through engaging the world as one island community, the educational aspect of the
voyage sought to combine traditional values with modern learning objectives. Thompson
describes this union as “something that is global, 21
st
century but yet very grounded in our
tradition and culture” (Honoré, 2013, p. 1). Hawai‘i State Department of Schools Superintendent
Kathryn Matayoshi similarly portrayed this approach as connecting “21st-century technology—
and all the science that the students need to learn—with some very fundamental values”
(Honoré, 2013, p. 1). Nainoa refers to this two-pronged approach as going “back to the future,”
which is appropriately and uniquely Hawaiian. Kame’eleihiwa (1992) explains, “The Hawaiian
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 22
stands firmly in the present, with his back to the future, and his eyes fixed upon the past, seeking
historical answers for present day dilemmas” (p. 22). Similarly, ability develop the cognitive
capacity to negotiate between Indigenous knowledge systems and essential 21
st
skills to face
unprecedented environmental issues is “what it means to be educated in the 21
st
century,”
according to Thompson (as cited in Witt, 2010, p.26). Or from an Indigenous context, as some
who possesses the “mind of the navigator” (Witt, 2010, p. 26).
In Thompson’s own words:
Back then we didn’t know, right? We didn’t know climate change, we didn’t
sustainability, we didn’t know all the kinds of things, but we know now. So, if we know
now and we want to prepare a better world, what are we going to teach our children?
That’s the fundamental question-what do they need to know now?” (Thompson, personal
communication, June 10
th
, 2016).
Statement of the Problem
The outcomes of American education are in need of an urgent overhaul. Continuing to
develop a consumer-driven society in our classrooms will insure continued destruction of earth’s
resources (UNSECO, 2014). Furthermore, existing educational systems continue to perpetuate
the disconnect between the place of learning and learning of place. The lack of engagement in
present day schooling not only fails to prepare students about global and community issues, data
reveals they are also not acquiring the essential capacities necessary to tackle the unprecedented
problems they will face (“P21,” n.d.).
While developing sustainability-conscious citizens is of utmost importance, researchers
know little about how to successfully implement sustainable curriculum into the classroom
(“UNSECO Education Strategy,” 2014).
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 23
However, there have been recent efforts to reestablish the role of place within the
educational instruction. Hawai‘i schools in particular, have begun adopting place specific
educational approaches in accordance with its rich cultural history in voyaging. Although, as this
was written, the Mālama Honua Worldwide Voyage was still progress, a handful of schools have
already begun to enact aspects of voyaging into their curriculum. While this educational ideology
is cropping up in several schools across the state, little is known in regard to why school leaders
have decided to implement this approach or what purpose school leaders perceive it to serve.
This study sought to explore these issues and understand how a navigation approach was
perceived to provide academic and affective benefits for students.
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study was to examine how Hawai‘i school leaders made meaning of
their decision to adopt a navigation curriculum and how they perceived it to benefit their
students. The study was designed to understand what factors contribute to this decision and how
school leaders interpret and enact the educational values of this approach within their respective
schools.
This study was guided by the following research questions:
1. How do school leaders make meaning of the decision to adopt a navigation based
curriculum at their schools?
a. What do they perceive to be the benefits for students?
b. How do they believe they have enacted this approach to achieve
benefits?
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 24
Significance of the Study
This study is important because it provided insight into how school leaders have made
meaning of their decision to adopt a navigation approach and sought to identify the perceived
benefits of doing so. Results of this study contribute to the local, community and national
conversation regarding what is important for today’s students to know? And furthermore, how
should schools prepare students for the society they will inherit?
Although the literature describes various and often conflicting outcomes in
Environmental or place based curriculum, this study sought to understand the way the perceived
educational outcomes were enacted through each school leader’s vision for adopting such an
approach. Furthermore, because both the voyage and this analogous educational movement are in
their infancy, there is little research that seeks to understand why and how schools are using a
Navigation curriculum.
This study is also significant because it attempted to articulate how school leaders
perceive to be using a navigation approach to benefit students of Hawai‘i. In doing this, results of
this study inform the decision of other school leaders, and contribute to educational reform
within Hawai‘i’s educational community that addresses needs of both Native and non-Native
students.
Organization of the Study
This study will be organized into three chapters. The first chapter introduces the study
and provides relevant context for the problem.
Chapter two reviews literature appropriate to the study and the conceptual framework.
This chapter outlines theories pertaining to the intended educational outcomes of implementing
environmental and place based education curriculum. Then, it discusses how Indigenous
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 25
epistemology serves as a basis or knowing framework to disseminate knowledge. Drawing from
the literature and personal experience, the conceptual framework informs the research design and
methodology found in chapter three.
Chapter three proposes the research design including methods for data collection and
analysis. Site and participant sampling are discussed in addition to the limitations and credibility
of the research.
Chapter 4 presents my findings of the study. It discusses themes that emerged from the
six respondents, which was analyzed through the lens of my conceptual framework.
Chapter 5 summarizes the findings, discusses implications and offers recommendations
for the study.
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 26
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW
In the face of unprecedented environmental challenges, schools must continue to question
how they are preparing students to negotiate between the expected educational outcomes and the
skills need to be successful in an increasingly complex and interconnected world. In Hawai‘i,
place-centered approaches based on themes of traditional Hawaiian wayfinding have emerged in
schools across the state (Witt, 2012). These approaches seek to integrate Western perspectives of
skill building to enact Indigenous ways of relating to the world. While widely supported by
various institutional entities, there is no uniform purpose for the adoption (Witt, 2010). Thus, the
purpose of this study was to answer the following research questions:
• How do school leaders make meaning of the decision to adopt a navigation based
curriculum at their schools?
o What do they perceive to be the benefits for students?
o How do they believe they have enacted this approach to achieve benefits?
In order to answer these questions, I turned to literature regarding similar educational
movements that have emerged in Western educational contexts and also advocate for location-
specific approaches to education that provide insight into why a school might deviate from the
current Western model of teaching. I also included literature from Indigenous contexts to capture
what type of knowledge is worth knowing and enacting. Through understanding the intended
outcomes of various Western educational movements and how schools have previously
implemented them, I gained an understanding of why a navigation approach might be embraced.
These three bodies of literature include: Environmental Education, place based education and
Indigenous Epistemology.
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 27
In this section, I outline and discuss two educational movements that were relevant to my
research question. The Environment and place based movements are located in a Western
approach to education, while the Indigenous Ways of Knowing are located in an Indigenous
learning context.
First, I discuss the Environmental Education (EE) movement, a Western educational
effort that spurred the discussion of individualizing curriculum toward one’s home environment
in order to re-establish one’s relationship to nature and learning. This body of literature helped
me to understand why a principal might adopt an environmental approach to education, using
students’ surroundings as a context for learning. Navigation curricula are designed to cultivate
environmental awareness as found in traditional wayfinding. Therefore, understanding theories
behind the use of Environmental Education provided insight into the reasons principals choose to
adopt navigation based curricula, such as increased environmental awareness and stewardship.
Additionally, empirical work in this field demonstrated how Environmental Education has been
operationalized into classrooms and enacted in school curriculum.
Secondly, I present place based education (PBE), which expands EE to include human
elements, such as social, historical and political aspects of place, and helped me understand how
the use of place has been be implemented in education to enhances students’ relationship to the
locality of knowledge. Place based education seeks to connect students’ situationality to the
construction of knowledge, highlighting the locality of knowledge in their community and within
themselves (Sobel, 2004). If EE seeks to reconnect students to their environment, PBE seeks to
locate the learner in that environment. PBE acknowledges that people are largely a product of
their environment and therefore heavily influenced by the physical, social and cultural aspects of
the place they live (Grunewald, 2003). This approach serves to bridge the existing knowledge
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 28
base of place to larger societal issues (Woodhouse & Knapp, 2000) and therefore provide insight
into why and how school leaders might be enacting a PBE approach within the context of their
school.
Lastly, Indigenous Epistemology helped me to understand how Indigenous knowledge is
constructed and what Indigenous groups, such as Native Hawaiians, consider is worth knowing.
The growing interest in developing effective sustainable education programs has prompted
educators to turn to Indigenous approaches (Barnhardt & Kawagley, 2005; Hawkin, 2007; Witt,
2010). Indigenous ways of knowing, environmental and place based education share a common
focal point in their pedagogical approach as all three are centered around the interaction between
people and the planet.
Indigenous literature was valuable in answering my research questions because
operationalizing an Indigenous navigation curriculum cannot be developed without deciding
upon a “ways of knowing” framework. Western knowledge provides one type of knowledge
system for addressing ails of society, through introducing an Indigenous knowledge provides an
alternative set of experiences grounded in one’s relationship to nature which might inform why
school leaders and adopting this approach.
Through understanding Hawaiian and Indigenous ways of knowing, provided insight into
how school leaders might perceive themselves to be enacting a navigation-based curriculum,
whether this enactment aligns with Western or traditional Indigenous ways of knowing.
Environmental Education
Environmental Education (EE) was important to answering my research questions
because it provided me with insight into why a school or school system might adopt an
environmental curriculum. Environmental Education focuses on using the local environment as
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 29
tool for learning and leveraging knowledge associated with everyday experiences to support
learning and help students understand not only environment, but also their place in it (Bang &
Medin, p. 1014). Additionally, advocates for EE suggest EE curriculum promotes cross-
disciplinary learning and the acquisition of 21
st
century skills.
In this section, I present literature related to Environmental Education and how it might
be an appropriate approach to target educational outcomes and evoke both individual and
societal perspective-change. First, I offer theoretical approaches to environmental education,
exploring why educators might want to use this approach. Next, I offer empirical work that
demonstrates how EE has been used as a vehicle for student learning.
Environmental Education Theory
There are two central yet somewhat competing goals connected to environmental
education. The first is to increase awareness of student’s surroundings while concurrently using
the environment as a “tool for reaching broader education goals” (The North American
Association for Environmental Education, 2001). Supporters of this approach applaud the
educational learning process tied to EE, which are inherently experiential, active and
collaborative (Woodhouse & Knapp, 2000). The second goal however, stems from the urgency
of recent environmental crises that have prompted environmental advocates to call for an EE
approach that not only informs but to also instills a sense of responsibility and accountability to
one’s environment through changing the way people relate to nature (Smith, 2002). These
differing approaches have created tension within the EE community, with one group focused on
igniting social change and the other using EE purely as a vehicle for meaningful learning. Using
Sterling (2009), I will discuss the two conflicting approaches to what he refers to as Education
for Sustainable Development (ESD).
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 30
The first perspective is an “intrinsic” approach, which emphasizes educational goals over
environmental ones (Sterling, 2009). According to Scott and Vare (2008), the intrinsic approach
“involves the development of learners’ abilities to make sound choices in the face of uncertainty
and complexity of the future” (as cited in Sterling, 2009, p. 514). Therefore, instead of action,
emphasis is placed on learning through experience and developing qualities of a critical but
reflective learner who is able to make informed decisions (p. 51).
Environmental Education theorist who subscribe to an intrinsic perspective believe the
environment is a common basis for learning and students will ideally be more engaged and
motivated to learn about because the content relates to their lives (Krynock & Robb, 1999). In
the context of the current standards-based American school systems, students are often forced to
create new knowledge based on unfamiliar and abstract facts (Sobel, 2004). Environmental
Education serves as a bridge in this gap in knowledge by offering examples from a student’s own
shared experiences as a basis for learning new skills (Orr, 1990).
Krynock and Robb (1999) also support an intrinsic perspective, suggesting
Environmental Education, within the context of problem -based learning, might be the key to
valuable and memorable learning. They suggest that when presented with environmental issues
from their own community, students are able to utilize existing knowledge, are more willing to
learn, and “internalize the new information to a greater extent” (p. 30).
Advocates of the intrinsic perspective view environmental and sustainable learning as an
“open-ended process” that cannot be defined by a specific target or outcome (Smith, 2002;
Grunewald, 2003). They argue for education someone who can make informed decisions, rather
than education for a predetermined and directive outcome (Krynock & Robb, 1999).
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 31
While learning and literacy are universal goals of education, Jensen and Schnack (2006)
present limitations with this using EE as a vehicle for learning alone. They argue that an essential
aspect of using Environmental Education is developing solutions to local and global issues.
While, they caution that not all problems can or should be solved by school level action, they
also argue one cannot effectively teach through an environmental approach without concurrently
incorporating the idea of democratic accountability. The authors refer to their model as the
“Action Competence Approach,” which includes four central tenets: knowledge/insight,
commitment, visions, and action experiences (p. 481). These tenets separate the goals of an
“action competence approach” from behavior change in that it seeks to establish a critical and
participatory approach to solving environmental issues, instead of teaching a standard pattern of
behavior (Jensen & Schnack, 2006). Knowledge and insight are concerned with students’ ability
to acquire knowledge in field, such as identify problem in a coherent and non-compartmentalized
manner (Jensen & Schnack, 2006). Commitment refers to the drive or motivation of the students,
which Jensen and Schnack (2006) say are essential to igniting behavioral change. The third
component of vision, points to students’ idealizing how the future might look which is crucial to
developing motivation. Lastly is action experience, which the authors say, must be modeled by
teachers taking action within the confines of school. The combination of “emotions, values,
knowledge, and action” enriches the education process (p. 482).
The authors emphasize that key to an Environmental Education approach is the idea of
equitable participation in environmental sustainability. They believe if the elements of action and
accountability are not integrated, there will be no meaningful or lasting impact for students.
Sterling (2009) offers additional critiques of an intrinsic approach. He suggests that there are
consequences of not emphasizing immediate action or change. While he agrees the learning
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 32
experience is necessary to developing reflective citizens, is simply not sufficient on its own, and
therefore describes the second, “instrumental” approach (p. 515).
The second perspective of EE focuses on the development of environmental or
sustainable literacy, emphasizing the importance of educational-induced action. Sterling (2009)
refers to this behavioral approach, or one that evokes social change as an “instrumental”
perspective. An instrumental approach assumes that awareness of environmental issues and
knowledge of how to resolve them, will rationally lead to individual behavioral change, and
eventually a social transformation (p. 513). The goals of this perspective are grounded in change
producing actions that improve “literacy, health and development for economic competitiveness”
(p. 515). Supporters of this approach accentuate the environmental justice aspects of EE. They
are motivated by the urgency of the issue and passion for developing sustainable socio-
ecological solutions for the future and betterment of society. However, critiques of this approach
claim ESD is too solution based, and ignores benefits of the learning process.
While the goals of each perspective appear to be in direct conflict with each other,
Sterling (2009) proposes a solution that integrates elements of both perspectives: learning and
action. Building upon learning theory, he calls for transformative educational paradigm, with the
goal of developing “resilient learners”—those who are able to “develop resilient social-
ecological systems in the face of a future of threat, uncertainty and surprise” (Sterling, 2009, p.
512). Borrowing from both approaches, his transformative model acknowledges urgency of
behavioral change but understands that this change must be accomplished intrinsically, through
reflective and meaningful learning (p. 522). The North American Association for Environmental
Education (2001) reflects on this framework, defining success as the ability to not only “develop
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 33
environmentally literate citizens” but also those “that have the knowledge to make responsible
decisions for the environment as a whole, as well as their local community” (p.3).
Now I turn to empirical articles about Environmental Education.
Empirical Evidence for Environmental Education
In this section I present a range of studies, which examine the way EE has been
implemented in classrooms, and the effectiveness of the curriculum on different populations of
students. These studies show a range of outcomes, which are often dependent on demographic
characteristics of the students and the schools. I begin with wide-ranging longitudinal study,
which discusses the general benefits of adopting an EE approach. Later, I present studies, which
examined the outcomes of an EE approach within various sub-groups such as Indigenous,
socioeconomic, multi-cultural schools. Given the uniqueness of Hawai‘i’s school and student
characteristics, this range of research will be important to answering my research question as the
findings presented offer insight into the way schools have either effectively enacted this
approach or haven foresee opportunities for future implementation. Additionally, this research
calls into question the viability of national mainstream EE and provides insight into how our
current educational system fails to address these issues.
The most comprehensive research on EE has been conducted by the State Education and
Environmental Roundtable (SEER), an organization managed jointly by 12 state departments of
education, established to “motivate education systems toward incorporating both methods and
content modeled by EE” (Hoody, 1996, p. b3). In 1994, they set out to conduct a 3-year study to
understand the benefits of implementing a concept of “Environment as an Integrating Context for
learning” (EIC). The study, motivated by gaps in Environmental Educational literature, sought to
examine how using the environment as an educational tool could impact learning and instruction.
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 34
Using EIC based schools as a sample, they sought to understand both affective and cognitive
domains, and therefore utilized a mixed-methods approach.
The sample included 40 schools (15 elementary, 13 middle and 12 high schools) that
were identified by the 12 roundtable members as meeting the criteria “degree of environmental
integration within curriculum, longevity of program and, extent of team teaching employed in
program” (Lieberman, & Hoody, 1998, p. 15).
The mixed-methods study, focused primarily on qualitative data. Data collected by the
SEER Research team included on-site observations, interviews with over 400 students, 250
teachers and administrators, student work and curricular resources, GPA and standardized test
scores, as available. Four instruments were used to collect information regarding the effects of
EIC, general site survey, learning survey, teaching survey, domains survey. They then conducted
a comparative analysis of the schools using both qualitative and quantitative data (“State
Education and Environmental Roundtable,” 1997-2014)
Findings suggested students learned more effectively with an environment-based
program than traditional compartmentalized educational approaches (p. 5). On average, students
in EIC programs scored higher than traditional school programs on standardized assessments in
math, language arts, social studies and science. Furthermore, teachers reported student growth in
interpersonal skills, problem solving and cognitive reasoning.
Fisman (2005) set out to examine the effect of children’s awareness of their local
environment within an urban school environment. The site was a neighborhood-based
Environmental Education program called Open Spaces as Learning Places program offered in
New Haven Connecticut. A mixed methods study was conducted in alignment with an action
research approach, as the researcher was both the “primary facilitator of the Open Spaces as
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 35
Learning Places Program as primary data collector and analyst” (p. 41). Data was collected
before and after their participation in the program in the forms of knowledge questionnaires,
cognitive maps and semi-structured interviews. Additionally, student journals, classroom
observation and informal teacher interviews supplemented this data.
The third and fifth grade participants were required to complete the pre- and post-
knowledge assessment and pre-post concept mapping exercise. While 82 children completed the
pre- and post- knowledge assessment, only 49 children also completed the mapping portion.
Forty-seven of the 49 completed both assessments so only their data was used in analysis.
The researcher sampled 47 students from two classrooms of third and fifth grade
students. Results showed a positive effect on students’ awareness of their environment, however
more so on students who resided in high socioeconomic neighborhoods. This proved to be a
significant finding, as it contributes to the question of how the meaning of a place can greatly
differ between students who occupy the same physical space, but divergent socioeconomic
spaces. Findings support the idea that how one views place is heavily influenced by his/her
situationally within that place and suggests teachers need to allow reflective time to consider
these differences within the context of school (Fisman, 2005).
A study by Kushmerick, Young, and Stein (2007) sought to empirically analyze the
“level and manner of environmental justice presence in Environmental Education” (p.391) based
on the following two hypotheses:
• H1—the mainstream US, 6-12 national Environmental Education guides will include
little information in the environmental justice (EJ) context.
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 36
• H2— Smart Consumers will contain the most environmental justice content due to its
subject matter (consumerism); the other guides will contain less environmental justice
content because of their topics, e.g. Project WILD (wildlife). (p. 391)
In order to test these hypotheses, researchers utilized a content analysis of mainstream,
national Environmental Education programs from Project WILD, Project Learning Tree, Project
WET and the World Wildlife Fund. This analysis looked at number of lessons and frequency of
what they determined to be “environmental justice” indicators.
The sample was chosen from all published educational material for grades 6-12 (students
aged 11-18). The programs selected were referred to researchers through experts in the fields and
validated to be the most popular and widely distributed K-12 Environmental Education guides.
In total, researchers evaluated a total of 224 programs. These programs were coded based on
“environmental justice indicators, implied EJ content and supplementary sections of the
educational guides, such as appendices and conceptual frameworks” (p. 393).
Limitations of the study included time frame, which prevented researchers from
collecting all supplemental material and may have missed additional lessons of EJ.
Methodological limitations were that the designers of coding scheme and the actual coders where
same people and due to time and budgetary restrictions, they used only a binary scheme, which
may have accounted for an over estimate of EJ prominence, however, this was not considered a
threat to their conclusions (Kushmerick et al., 2007).
The results most relevant to my study showed while most of the curricula address issues
related to EJ only 3 of the 224 lessons explicitly discussed environmental justice as issues. These
results proved the initial hypothesis correct, that environmental justice is not “adequately
integrated into mainstream Environmental Education material” (Kushmerick et al., p. 403).
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 37
Findings relevant to my research question suggests while issue of environmental justice are
prevalent in national EE programs, they are missing out on a significant opportunity to
incorporate environmental justice aspects.
A mixed methods study by Ruiz-Mallen, Barraza, Bodenhorn, and Reyes-Garcia (2009)
examined the acquisition of local and environmental knowledge by Indigenous students in
Mexico. Multivariate regression analysis was used to assess (1) school and local environmental
knowledge overlap and (2) the association between individual environmental knowledge and
socio-demographic characteristics (p. 89).
The sample included 107 students age 15-20 years old from a preparatory school in Ixtlan
de Juarez, an Indigenous community in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico. The sample
represented 42% of the total number of students in the school. Forty-six percent of students were
boys. However, 12 students could not be accounted for, so the total sample used for data was 95
students.
Empirical data was collected through written questionnaire, which was used to obtain
information about socio-demographic information. It included multiple choice, free listing, open-
ended and sentence completion questions designed to assess school environmental knowledge
and local environmental knowledge. Additionally, observations and informal conversations were
employed to learn about environmental learning activities.
Limitations of the study were the small sample size (n=95), and omitted variables that
might have impacted results in regards to causality between variables. For example, parental
education level was not collected yet may have implications students’ environmental knowledge
acquisition (Ruiz-Mallen et al., 2007, p. 89).
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 38
Data showed that school and local environmental knowledge were not statistically
correlated. This meant that one’s level of school-taught environmental knowledge could differ
greatly from community or cultural environmental knowledge.
Ruiz-Mallen et al. (2007) suggested a possible explanation for the lack of association
was that the two forms of knowledge were not compartmentalized as hypothesized, and might
exist in complementary, rather than competing domains. The most significant findings however,
were environmental learning in school had a greater impact on students’ level of environmental
knowledge than factors from home. These findings upheld results from previous studies that also
suggested school as the dominate factor in environmental learning.
Conclusion
The literature suggests various reasons for implementing Environmental Education. In its
most basic level, an environmental approach to education is an effective vehicle to reach broader
education goals, due to the capacity of the curriculum to tap into existing cognitive structures.
Krynock and Robb (1999) outline the benefits of EE as being a common platform for connecting
meaning. However, looking beyond learning benefits, Orr (1992) discusses EE as an action-
oriented curriculum with the purpose of developing future activist and community leaders.
However, multiple authors assert that EE curriculum that excludes accountability and democracy
is inherently ineffective (Jensen & Schnack, 2006; Sterling, 2009). Drawing from both
perspectives, Sterling (2009) proposes a transformative approach that considers the urgency for
developing activist citizens, but also believes in the value of meaningful learning to generate
intrinsic motivation.
Understanding the varying implementations and outcomes of Environmental Education is
important to answering the question of why school leaders might adopt an approach grounded in
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 39
environmental practices. Understanding the various existing academic and community-based
outcomes associated with this curriculum will help me to understand why a school leader might
turn to this approach to educate their students.
The empirical research on EE provided insight into how EE programs might benefit
specific student populations by tapping into existing knowledge resources. Research suggests
Indigenous communities traditionally have extensive informal Environmental Education that are
not accounted for in the classroom, which has implications for answering my research question.
Additionally, findings show EE contributes to both academic and intellectual capacities, which
has significant implications for why school leaders might seek out an approach grounded in EE
principals.
However, essential to answering my research question was the understanding that
educational benefits are not solely dependent on cognitive development. How students learn is
also a product of who they are and where they come from, layered in identity and cultural and
social practices, which are constantly interacting to create meaning. Therefore, for the purpose of
answering my research question, I now turn to place based literature, which expands EE to
include the historical and cultural aspect of place (Gruenewald, 2003).
Place Based Education
Place based education (PBE) literature served to better my understanding of why Hawai‘i
school leaders might embrace a place based curriculum to benefit students. PBE literature
provided insight into what theories might have informed and influenced school leaders to adopt a
place based approach and what outcomes they expect to see. This was important to my research
question because it offered an alternative approach to education which though the process of
experiential learning, seeks to locate self through reconnecting students to their immediate
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 40
physical and social space. Therefore, the perceived the outcomes of a PB approach look different
from of a Western or even an EE approach. Furthermore, the foundations of PBE helped me
evaluate to what extent the adopted curriculum aligns with existing literature related to PBE and
what, if any, critical pedagogies of place a school addresses.
Traditionally, Western education compartmentalizes knowledge into arbitrary subjects,
which are often irrelevant to our daily life (Seawright, 2014). Western education also frames the
acquisition of knowledge as a something that we must seek outside of ourselves (Smith, 2002).
PBE, however, seeks to engage learners with curriculum grounded in their home environment
and educate students about the interconnectedness of human interaction and the environment in
which that occurs (Woodhouse & Knapp, 2002). This body of literature is important in
answering my research question because PBE offers not only an approach to education but also a
pedagogical framework for how one relates to the world, which has implications for why and
how school leaders might adopt and enact a navigation based approach.
In this section I present literature related to place based education. First, I will explore
the theoretical pieces that provide insight into motivation behind using PBE as learning
approach, as well as its more problematic elements. Finally, I turn to empirical research on PBE
demonstrates how PBE has been implemented in schools and how it has effected learning
outcomes.
Introduction to Place Based Education Theory
Place based education (PBE) literature provides insight into how using local knowledge
and cultural practices may enhance students’ relationship with their natural world (Smith, 2002).
PBE is considered an extension of Environmental Education (EE), as it similarly incorporates the
ideas of experiential and collaborative learning while utilizing local knowledge about physical
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 41
place (Sobel, 2004). However, PBE also extends its definition to incorporate the diverse,
historical aspect of place that creates unique backgrounds for student learning. Embedded in this
approach is a reflective sense of one’s relationship to place, which has implications for social
inclusion and justice (Gruenewald, 2003; Seawright, 2014).
In 1958, philosopher Martin Buber outlined two ways people relate to the world—either
through looking at is a separate from you or as part of you. He referred to these contrasting
perspectives as the “I-it” or “I-Thou” approach (Knapp, 2005). One who adopts an I-it
perspective objectifies and distances him/herself from the earth. Whereas, an I –thou perspective
considers the outside world as part of oneself and therefore he/she is more likely to be
compassionate about its welfare (Knapp, 2005). Consequently, he argued, when physical spaces
are taught to be destinations for field trips or as products to be bought, students feel alienated
from the environment.
The goal of place based education is to connect students to their specific place, which can
only be accomplished through “making meaningful personal connections to the land” (Knapp,
2005, p. 280). Acknowledging the significance of interconnection of physical place and social
well-being has far-reaching implications for educating students about democracy, accountability
and social justice. As Smith (2010) says:
When people grasp the degree to which their own physical and psychic welfare is
dependent on the welfare of others or the health of natural systems, they become much
more likely to behave responsibly towards them and to take steps to protect them from
harm. (p. 4)
By incorporating identity, community and culture in the framework, the goals of PBE go
beyond developing a sense of environmental stewardship, but attempt to instill a sense of
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 42
activism and empowerment within students that not only evokes understanding also but a desire
to act and change aspects of their community (Gruenewald, 2003).
Theoretical Research of Place Based Education
Place based education is a theoretical approach that seeks to connect student learning to a
particular place (Sobel, 2004). It frames the learning process exclusive to the particular
environment in which learning takes place, taking advantage of the local physical, cultural and
community practices that are assumed to already hold meaning to the student.
Woodhouse and Knapp (2004) assert that as an educational philosophy, PBE is
“inherently multidisciplinary” in that its underpinnings are not exclusive to its practice or tied to
content (p. 4). The authors say that the goal of PBE is to position the students’ identity and
learning within their community, building upon existing knowledge and sense of self, embedded
within a place. They believe a place specific approach to education instills a sense of agency
with students and frames them as the creators of their own knowledge and learning (Smith,
2002). Within the context of existing educational landscape PBE has been considered an
educational response to “feeling alienated from nature and human nature” (Woodhouse &
Knapp, 2000, p. 4)
As the purpose of PBE continues to evolve, supporters and critics identify two main
perspectives in regard to the goals and implementation of PBE. The first perspective emphasizes
the use of place based education to foster stronger local and community outcomes, and the
second expands into a critical application of PBE pedagogy, which aims to challenge current
conceptions of place in education.
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Learning Local Community
The first perspective of PBE is based on foundational authors such as Orr (1990), Sobel
(2004) and Smith (2002) who focused on the importance of connecting education to local
environment and community. This approach attempts to challenge the current relationship
schools have with nature and community, putting the emphasis on the student as a creator of
knowledge and eventually an advocate for his/her community (Smith, 2002).
Orr (1990) proposes a comprehensive argument for the use of Environmental Education
in pursuit of ecological literacy, or knowledge of one’s surroundings. He suggests that all
education is Environmental Education and that if the purpose of education is acquiring
knowledge for the betterment of mankind, one cannot begin to this pursuit without awareness of
one’s immediately surroundings.
Orr (1990) strongly endorses the value of using place as a vehicle to advance educational
outcomes through an equitable discourse between students and nature. Instead of passive
perspective taking, Orr (1990) argues education must be two-way dialog with a place. According
to Orr (1990), essential to attaining Ecological Literacy is understanding relationships and he
emphasizes the significance of understanding the relationships between humans and the physical
world.
Most notably Orr (1990) outlines the positive outcomes related to the integration of place
within education. He suggests that integration with place develops better intellectual skills and
“promotes practical competence” (p. 51). He goes on to argue that the study of place involves
complementary dimensions of intellect: direct observation, investigation, experimentation, and
skill in the application of knowledge” (Orr, 1990, p. 14).
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Sobel (2004), considered a founding father of PBE, sees place as a “starting point to
teach concepts in language arts, mathematics, social studies, science and other subjects across the
curriculum” (p. 6). He views the context of place as a way to de-compartmentalize education and
transcend the traditional academic limits by in integrating “existing knowledge of place that
youth have while at the same time continuing to nurture traditional academic skills such as
reading and math” (p. 6). From this framework, Sobel’s (2004) version of PBE seeks to foster a
relationship between place and education while simultaneously enhancing students’ academic
achievement across all disciplines.
Similarly, Smith (2002) defines PBE as learning that “adopts local environments–social,
cultural, economic, political, and natural–as the context for a significant share of students’
educational experiences” (p. 30). Smith (2002) outlines five themes of place based approaches:
cultural studies, nature studies, real-world problem solving, internship/entrepreneurial
opportunities, and induction into community processes. Smith (2002) argues that schools or
school leaders who enact programs utilizing these pedagogical practices seek to engage students
in order to improve conditions of that place. He also makes the argument that tying one’s
education to a shared involvement of place also taps into a student’s existing knowledge and
lived experiences, proving a cognitive base of knowledge.
Smith (2002) supports the idea of PBE as highly active and experiential, where students
construct knowledge, rather than be instructed. He emphasizes that “a critical characteristic of
place based education is its emphasis on learning experiences that allow students to become the
creators of knowledge rather than the consumers of knowledge created by others” (Smith, 2002,
p. 593).
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Theobald and Nachtigal (1995) present additional goals, emphasizing the goal of
community involvement, especially in rural schools. The authors contend that the standardization
of school does not meet the needs of children in schools, and furthermore disconnects students
from their communities and even identities. The authors suggest using place as a common shared
educational experience, makes learning more powerful, relevant, and helps students invest in
their community. They content, using place based education to educate students will not only
help students become more involved in their community but give them a better sense of self in
the process saying “knowledge of place, where you are and where you come from is intertwined
with knowledge of self” (p. 134).
Advocates for place based education believe that it is important to teach students to be
environmentally literate and invested in the sustainability of their communities (Smith, 2002).
Goals of a place Based approach are fostering students’ relationship to nature, their community
as well as improving academic outcomes across all disciplines (Sobel, 2004). Critiques of a
learning and community approach suggest that more can be done to challenge the way place is
currently conceptualized (Grunewald, 2003; Seawright, 2014). By asking students to consider
their current relationship with place, curriculum grounded in this perspective does little to disrupt
existing place based politics between the various peoples who occupy the same place
(Gruenewald, 2003; Seawright, 2014). The following section will discuss a critical perspective of
place in education, offering conflicting conceptions of place and how it can be used to disrupt the
status quo.
Culturally Responsive Approaches to Place
Beyond the traditional goals of PBE, Gruenewald (2003) advocates for a more critical
perspective of place, one that emphasizes social transformation and conservation. Borrowing
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from Freire’s (1968), “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” he argues that a PBE approach must go
beyond the one-dimensional exploration between humans and nature, to include the relationship
between all people who occupy the same place. He argues that place is not passive participant in
environmental learning, but a rich social, cultural and political context for which humans must
“reflect and act on their situationality” (p. 4). In his pedagogy of place, he argues students need
to have a critical understanding of the connection between place and people, because it is in that
intersection where human culture is nested (p. 1).
Gruenewald (2003) maintains, in minority or Indigenous communities, PBE should be
the instrument through which populations can look critically at place, understand how people,
politics and power enforce hegemonic codes, and unite in action against them (p. 5). In schools, a
critical pedagogy of place based education means curriculum must relate to actual student
experiences of the world, not experiences that students are assumed to have. Furthermore, this
curriculum must “mirror the scope of a child’s world: first on home, school, then neighborhood,
religion” with the goal of contributing to well-being of student and community (Sobel, 2002 as
cited in Gruenewald, 2003, p. 8). He says that in order to for students feel compelled to take an
activist role, they must first develop mutually enhancing relationships with the world and
understand their place in it. When education reflects a student’s own experiences, he/she has a
more accurate perception of his/her situationality in the world and is therefore empowered to act
(Gruenewald, 2003).
McInerney, Smyth, and Down (2000) sought to explore the strengths and limitations
inherent in the theoretical underpinnings of place based education. Much like Gruenewald’s
(2003) stance, the authors argue that PBE lacks a critical perspective, and must reach beyond the
goals of identity. The authors outline four main apprehensions: 1) PBE is often presented
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unrealistically within the constraints of school, rather than a “dynamic place,” 2) PBE often
confines student learning to local whereas it should also incorporate other “places, cultures,
times,” 3) PBE reinforces hegemonic curriculum by ignoring issues of inequity, politics and
inherent power structures, and 4) PBE has a “tendency to view social and environmental
problems as solvable by local people,” which ignores larger political agendas ( McInerney et al.,
2000, pp. 9-12).
They argue that while PBE does have the capacity to include critical perspective towards
education, it is often “downplayed in preference to a celebratory approach to place,” which
ignores “inequitable practices” and maintains the hegemonic status quo (p. 10). They suggest an
authentic critical perspective would prompt students to question the current order and interrupt
the prejudicial foundations that current structures were built upon. This approach teaches
students not only how to think, but how to solve problems, giving them the power to challenge
existing dominant power structures.
Seawright (2014) further advocates for a shift in awareness within the PBE approach.
Focusing on epistemological foundations, he examines dominant, Western Epistemology as it
relates to the politics of place and identity, suggesting that PBE can disrupt the normative
practices of Western schooling only if it directly addresses what he refers to as “white settler
Epistemology” (p. 557). He argues that understanding of place must also address and engage the
complex relationships of place and self while also addressing the politics of white colonization.
Seawright (2014) contends that both Western and Indigenous Epistemology are founded
on specific notions of place. While Western Epistemology “encourages ownership and
domination” (p. 559) based on years of normalized colonization, manifest destiny and industrial
expansion, Indigenous Epistemology emphasizes the responsibility for caring for land and
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nurturing the relationship between humanity and nature. Therefore, Western schools should not
be considered placeless but inherently engrained in white settler perspectives of land (Seawright,
2014, p. 562). He argues, in order to truly achieve the goals of social and ecological justice, PBE
curriculum must attend to these inherent historical politics of place, shaped by years of
rationalized oppression, or otherwise risks perpetuating the oppression of colonizer hegemony.
Next I introduce the relevant empirical research associated with PBE.
Empirical Evidence for Place Based Education
In this section I am going to present empirical studies regarding the implementation and
outcomes of incorporating a PBE curriculum across a range of school settings, for a variety of
purposes. The studies I have selected prove that incorporating a PBE curriculum has implications
for the development of academic and intellectual outcomes for all types of students such as
community involvement, environmental awareness, cultural preservation and identity and
purpose. The research provides insight to my research question in that I can use these findings to
better understand a school leaders reasoning for adopting a navigation based curriculum. With
past programs as a basis of understanding, I can delineate what school leaders believe to be the
benefits of adopting such curriculum and how they enact it.
Howley, Howley, Camper and Perko (2011) explored how a rural island school
implemented place based curriculum over a decade. Two research questions guided their study:
1. What school and community dynamics support and sustain place-based education?
2. What school and community dynamics threaten or constrain place-based education?
They conducted qualitative case studies at seven U.S. school sites that emphasized the
use of a place based curriculum. To find their sites they asked educators in rural areas for
suggestions then inspected the recommended sites for eligibility.
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After all criteria were met, two-person research teams conducted interviews and collected
relevant documents as well as performed observations in classrooms and other school related
gatherings. One of the member of the team conducted interviews in two, five-person focus
groups. One focus group was limited to students in fifth and sixth grades, while the other was
reserved for students in eighth and ninth grade. Participants for the focus group were referred by
the school principal, based on willingness to share their experiences. Interviews were also
conducted with the principal, six teachers, a place-based educator, a member of the school board,
a parent and two community members. The other member of the team, captured field notes,
conducted observations and gathered relevant documents.
The researchers used qualitative analysis software to determine the emergent themes.
Findings suggested that through cultivating a culture of inquiry, students were more able to
students think critically, celebrate diversity of viewpoints and consider matters of the future.
Furthermore, using a PB and EE approach seemed to develop a school culture “focused on
honoring and sustaining traditional ways of life and distinct natural environments” (Howley et
al., 2011, p. 230).
Data showed various aspects of school culture greatly affected the success of the PBE
curriculum. The most significant finding was the unanimous consensus of teachers to teach
beyond standardized tests or external measurements. Despite the use of different instruction
methods to achieve the PBE goals, observation and interview data showed the vast majority of
teachers exemplified an approach in order to “cultivate students’ ability to think and helping
them develop a sense of responsibility” (Howley et al., 2011, p. 229). They also found that
collectively, students “seemed to share a concern about preparation for the future” (Howley et
al., 2011, p. 229).
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Limitations of this study were due to number of researchers present at Island Community
School. Since seven similar case studies were simultaneously taking place, a single researcher
conducted all of the interviews.
Ngai and Koehn (2010) conducted a 2-year quantitative student-impact assessment of a
multicultural placed based approach in Missoula, Montana. The questions guiding their study
were:
1. What changes, if any, occurred in learning outcomes (knowledge and attitudes) over
the program period among Lewis and Clark Elementary School students?
2. Do the knowledge and attitudinal outcomes for Lewis and Clark Elementary School
students at the end of the program (2007) differ from those of students at the CS in
2007?
The researchers utilized a “simple written survey” asking all primary students to share
their attitudes and knowledge about local tribes in open ended, close ended and open
interpretation questions. Data presented in the study were the result of four different surveys
disturbed across two school years, at two neighboring schools. During the first phase in Fall
2005, 400 primary students responded to the survey at Lewis and Clark (L&C) Elementary
School. The number of surveys sent out was not reported. A similar number of students were
given a similar survey at the end of the 2005-2006 year, and again at the end of the 2006-2007
year, all at L&C. In Spring 2007, 100 students in grades 1-5 enrolled in a geographically and
demographically similar school completed the survey. Data were analyzed using the results of
the survey (Ngai & Koehn, 2010).
Results indicate the PB multicultural curriculum showed gains in both academic and
affective domains. Findings showed an increase in general knowledge and identification of local
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tribes as well as a strong influence on students’ cultural awareness and increased appreciation for
both global and local diversity (Ngai & Koehn, 2010, p. 603). According to researchers, much of
this appreciation resulted from positive interpersonal relationships with students and educators
throughout the program, which has potential social justice implications. This study concluded
that place based education was able to promote a global and diverse educational initiatives by
“directly experiencing the local context in which diversity resides” (Ngai & Koehn, 2010, p.
604).
Takano, Higgins, and McLaughlin (2009) sought to explore the complex “meaning of
connection to place” and implications of place based education in Alaskan school setting. The
mixed method study was part of a seven-part case study surrounding Alaskan educational
programs that actively sought to incorporate values and culture into the school curriculum.
Utilizing an ethnographic approach, researchers collected data primarily in the form of
participant observations. This initial data was then supported by semi-structured interviews,
surveys and conversations with key stakeholders. The sample included three school staff at
Russian Mission School (RMS), 11 students, seven parents and three community members who
were involved with the program. All student participants were initially observed within the
confines of outdoor classes where they made snow shelters, checked rabbit snares or went on an
overnight hunting trip. All participants were interviewed twice about their experiences in the
classes, first in 2002 and additionally in 2007.
All interviews were recorded and transcribed. Qualitative analysis software was used to
analyze data and identify emerging themes. Findings from both qualitative and quantitative data
suggested that PBE had an impact on student outcomes, community involvement and self-
confidence and identity. Over the course of this study RMS was the only school to reach the state
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performance measure entitled Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). Findings proved that RMS’s
PBE program had an “instant and direct implication for understanding ‘sustainability’” for the
school and community (Takano et al., 2009, p. 365). Further findings suggest the “meaning of
connection to place” was present in Western and non-Western contexts which “influenced
environmental ethics and sustainability in the sense of following traditional teaching based on
‘respect’” at RMS (Takano et al., 2009, p. 365). This study justified the use of geographically
specific context when attempting to bridge the gap between culture, community and school, and
most importantly found a way to prepare students in their community “practically, intellectually,
emotionally and spiritually to live in the village and beyond” (Takano et al., 2009, p. 365).
In a capstone study, Samaneigo (2012) sought to understand perceived benefits of using a
place based and environmental approach on Oahu, Hawai‘i. In this qualitative study, the
researcher conducted 20 structured interviews with major stakeholders across Oahu. The sample
was collected through purposive and snowball sampling. Of this sample, six participants worked
in schools, while another 10 work in various community organizations, and the last four were
deemed content experts on the topics of PBE and EE. Interviews were conducted over a
conference call service and later transcribed for analysis. Data was separated by topic issue, then
later categorized as benefits or challenges. Samaneigo (2012) found a range of both benefits and
challenges. Benefits were perceived in student performance, achieving natural and social capital
skills, increased engagement and ties to community.
Other findings were that there was a deeper level of benefits when PBE was tied to
Hawaiian culture. Participants commented that culture integration with PBE was perceived as
must. Data showed that when tying PBE to culture, there were perceived benefits in
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environmental stewardship, culture-science education. These findings were also consistent for
students of non-Hawaiian descent (Samaneigo, 2012).
Challenges included funding outdoor field trips, implementation. However, one of the
significant challenges was buy-in and attitude from teachers who did not believe in experiential
learning. Additionally, at the high school level, convincing parents, students and teachers that
PBE was equally as valuable as college core classes was difficult (Samaneigo, 2012).
A study by Yamauchi and Brown (2007) sought to understand how participation in a
place and community based education program in Waianae affected students’ high school
experience. The Waianae School Hawaiian Studies program (HSP) utilized a contextualized
instruction approach, which sought to align curriculum to students’ home and cultural
experiences. The program was open to 10
th
to 12
th
grade students in Waianae High School, which
was a predominantly low SES and Native Hawaiian. Prior studies had found that students who
participated in the HSP program showed positive academic outcomes such as engagement,
retention and attendance rates. However, this qualitative survey examined program participants’
perception of their high school experience as well as its effect on their career and personal
development.
The quantitative study surveyed 22 alumnae of the program. Participants were selected
based on prior participation in the program and were recruited through mail. Of the 22
respondents, 9 were male and 13 were female, with ages ranging from 19-23 years old. Sixteen
participants were Native Hawaiian, 4 were of Asian descent and 1 was Latina American
(Yamauchi & Brown, 2007).
After surveys were collected, 12 participants were also interviewed using a semi-
structured format, which focused on participants’ values, relationships and community
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involvement. Interviews were transcribed, coded and analyzed based on using a “thematic data
analysis method” ((Yamauchi & Brown, 2007, p. 49).
Yamauchi and Brown (2007) found that in addition to previously studied academic
outcomes, participation in HSP also positively affected respondents’ self-confidence, self-
awareness and identity development. For example, one participant reported
Now, I know exactly where my place is in life. I know exactly where I’m going, where I
came from, and I’m on a set path. I don’t have to question myself . . .I know exactly what
I’m going to do and exactly who I’m going to become . . . For me, that was probably the
biggest gift. (Yamauchi & Brown, 2007, p. 52)
However, the strongest findings were tied to the students’ perceived connection to
community and environment. Findings showed participants felt a strong association to place as a
result of the program, citing they felt like they “belonged and wanted to take again to make
changes in their communities” (Yamauchi & Brown, 2007, p. 53). At least eight were involved
in environmental preservation groups at the time of the study, while others contributed to the
community in other ways. Additionally, they felt they understood issues facing their
communities and factors that influenced the well-being of their place (Yamauchi & Brown,
2007, p. 53).
In conclusion, place based education is an instrument capable of serving many
educational needs in many different ways. While Smith (2002) and Sobel (2004) advocate PBE
for the purposes of environmental awareness and connection to home life, Gruenewald (2003)
cautions educators to include the politics, power and history of place. Furthermore, Seawright
(2010) contends that teaching the power, politics and history of place is not enough, especially if
they are taught in the Western perspective, which further oppresses Indigenous groups,
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packaging it into acceptable forms of knowledge. While all authors agree that PBE holds much
needed value in the education landscape, there is disagreement on the intended outcomes and
how to achieve them.
While these bodies of literature provide me with insights that will enable me to
investigate school leaders’ reasons for adopting a navigation based curriculum, what they believe
their students will experience as benefits, and how they enact the curriculum, the question of
how a navigation approach grounded in PBE is perceived to benefit students. In Hawai‘i, place is
considered inextricably tied to Hawaiian culture, and must be considered as such. In this regard,
it’s not enough to teach students about the land on which they live, without including the rich
cultural meaning the land holds to Indigenous peoples of Hawai‘i. For this information, we turn
to Hawaiian Epistemology to provide insight into what type of information regarding place
might be considered most valuable by school leaders and how they might enact a navigation
based curriculum to achieve the benefits they believe are possible as a result of the enactment of
such a curriculum with Hawai‘i’s students.
Indigenous Epistemology
Indigenous knowledge and values were important to my research question in that
understanding how Indigenous peoples make meaning of the world empowered me to understand
why school leaders might look to Indigenous knowledge as a basis for certain educational
benefits. Indigenous knowledge literature explains what type of knowledge systems were
considered valuable and offered an alternative set of competences in regards what students need
to know in today’s interconnected world.
Indigenous Epistemology is another way of looking and knowledge and offers knowledge
as set of experiences grounded in one’s relationship to nature, which might inform why school
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leaders are adopting this approach. This body of literature will show the worldview of
Indigenous knowledge construction and how they make meaning differently than Western
learners. Of particular interest were what capacities or outcomes were emphasized, which helped
me to understand what benefits school leaders intended to gain through enacting this approach.
Embedded within this bucket is literature on Native Hawaiian Epistemology, which
explains what counts as knowledge for Native Hawaiian people and how they make meaning of
their experiences. Hawaiian ways of knowing are inherently grounded in both place and
environmental frameworks due to the complexities of Indigenous Hawaiian experiential
knowledge, which have been developed through generations of harmonious interactions with the
natural world (Hawken, 2007). Also, since the purpose of the study is to examine why school
leaders have chosen to adopt a navigation based curriculum I will focus on the Hawaiian Ways
of Knowing that are consistent with developing a navigation mindset. While, many authors have
sought to describe the varying tenets of Hawaiian Ways of Knowing, I am approaching Hawaiian
Epistemology in a way that best answers my specific research question.
In this section I will briefly provide context for Indigenous knowledge, then move more
specifically to Hawaiian Ways of Knowing, before using Meyer’s (1998) framework of
Hawaiian Epistemology to outline knowledge relevant to my research question.
Indigenous Knowledge
The first step in unpacking Indigenous knowledge is understanding “who can be the
knower, what can be known, what constitutes knowledge” (Gegeo & Watson-Gegeo, 2001, p.
57). To understand these principles is to understand one’s epistemological perspective, which,
according to Castegano and Brayboy (2008), “is fundamental to how he or she sees the world,
understands knowledge, and lives and negotiates everyday experiences” (p. 952).
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Understanding what type of knowledge is considered valuable from an Indigenous
perspective, is understanding where knowledge is perceived to be located. The Western
perspective of knowledge considers information as something outside of ourselves that we must
obtain or receive from others (Smith, 2002). Indigenous knowledge systems understand that
knowing is based on how well one understands him/herself in relation to place and others. In
other words, knowledge is nested in the interconnectedness of the world (Meyer, 2001).
In the book, “Blessed Unrest,” Hawken (2007) explains the key to Indigenous
Epistemology is the relationship one has with his/her surroundings.
For Indigenous people…the relationship one has to the earth is the constant and true
gauge that determines the integrity of one’s culture, the meaning of one’s existence, and
the peacefulness of one’s heart. In most Indigenous cultures, there are no separate social
and environmental movements because the two were never disaggregated.
(Hawken, 2007, pp. 22-23)
Using this epistemological definition and framework, I will identify the epistemological
principles of Hawaiian Indigenous education essential to my study.
Hawaiian Ways of Knowing
Native Hawaiian Epistemology grounds itself in cultural practices of Native Hawaiians to
explore what counts as knowledge and how that concept of knowledge is constructed from a
Native Hawaiian perspective (Meyer, 1998). Similar to most Native ways of knowing, Native
Hawaiian Epistemology is rooted in culture and characterized by a complex code of integrity,
which “deeply values the intersection of nature, self and relationships to others” (McCubbin &
Meyer, 2009).
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Navigation Framework
To answer my research question, I approached Hawaiian Epistemological literature from
the framework of what was needed to know from a navigation perspective. Navigators are
thought to embody an Indigenous Ways of Knowing framework due to their inherent resolve to
protect natural resources and their use of traditional knowledge (Richards, 2010). For example,
navigators harbor a wealth of functional knowledge and ancient skills but also rely on the deep,
meaningful relationships with the land and crewmembers (Meyer, 2001).
Borrowing from Meyer’s (1998) Epistemological Framework, I selected four “ways to
experience knowing” (p. 126) which I believe are best represented within a navigation
philosophy for education:
• Physical place and knowing
• The Cultural Nature of the Senses
• Relationship and Knowledge
• Utility and Knowledge
While I chose to select these four tenets, it is important to point out that these types of
knowledge are all part of an interrelated and complex web of knowledge. Nainoa Thompson,
Master Navigator for Hōkūle‘a, stated that when teaching the art of wayfinding, there is an
“obligation, make sure that [Navigators] understand the interconnectedness, the interrelatedness
between themselves and the natural world” (Polynesian Voyaging Society, 1999).
Physical and Place Knowledge
Hawkin (2007) suggests the true value of Indigenous ways of knowing is the
“experiential knowledge diligently gleaned from generations of interaction with the natural
world” (p. 100). Hawaiian knowledge is grounded in “the relationship between the natural
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environment and cultivated from the universe in which they live” (Meyer, 1998, p. 23).
Additionally, according to McCubbin and Marsalla (2009), this enhanced sense of place is
deeply intertwined with identity and sense of self. In other words, Native Hawaiian people view
place and culture as inextricable from each other. For thousands of years, Native Hawaiians
cultivated a harmonious relationship with their environment, based on the belief that a positive
reciprocal relationship would also sustain their people.
Place has long played a significant role in Hawaiian culture. For early Hawaiians,
survival was dependent on their ability to develop positive symbiotic relationship with their
natural surroundings. Their worldview was dependent on the interconnectedness and harmony
between all living things, which can be traced back to their stories of origin. Hawaiian mo’olelo,
or legends, describes all natural things as physical embodiments of the gods. Additionally,
genealogical accounts also describe the birth of the Hawaiian Islands as the result of the union
between earth mother and sky father, who later conceived the first man (Maly, 2001). Even in
naming, ‘āina —the Hawaiian word used for land—is also defined as “that which feeds,”
“origin,” “mother,” “inspiration,” and “environment” (Meyer 2001, p. 128). From this
worldview, the land is considered both a divine embodiment and sibling to mankind. Therefore,
caring for the environmental is done not only to ensure reciprocation from the gods, but also
because of a familial responsibility to protect.
Early Hawaiian society practiced what Sahlins (1992) refers to as an “ecological
coherence” or symbiotic relationship with nature. Sahlins (1992) explains their land structure
was “more than territory and landscape, but are structural coordinates of our ethnographic
history” (Sahlins, 1992, p. 17). Nainoa Thompson (2007) echoed this sentiment saying, “we
become Hawaiians because we come from the land and the oceans, I believe there is a need to be
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connected to our land and the oceans. So, when we are disconnected from that, part of use, we
are wandering.” (p. 12)
When considering this perspective in an educational context, Meyer (2001) illuminates
the conflicting approaches between traditional and Western concepts of land, which are
differentiated by the direction of learning. While Western education seeks to learn through the
land, Hawaiian epistemology would champion learning from the land.
Specifically, the relationship to the ocean is unique among people of Polynesian descent.
Native Hawaiians have long had a reciprocal relationship with the ocean. They valued canoes,
which allowed them to fish, travel and connect to other islands. Ingersoll (2013) synthesizes this
concept and offers a voyaging analogy for Hawaiian cultural integrity:
The wa‘a itself becomes an ethical image and basis for a way of life for Kanaka Maoli,
(as well as non-Kanaka), because it is a vessel that can establish and carry a relationship
between Indigenous knowledge and modern ethics: showing the way toward human
sharing, cultural exchange, and environmental sustainability. (Ingersoll, 2013, p. 130)
The Five Senses, Observation and Knowledge
Hawaiian people experience their world through the information gathered through the
five physical senses of sight, sound, smell, sound and touch. They train their senses to organize
relevant information to make meaning of physical experiences. This is essential to knowledge
formation because, how one experiences the environment has implications for how he/she
understands the world (Meyer, 1998, p. 23). The importance of the senses in the creation of
knowledge is also reflected in their language patterns. The Hawaiian words for the five senses
each have multiple, layered meanings, for example, ‘ike, to see, also means to learn. Meyer
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(1998) explains the complexity of the language in regard to the senses suggest the level of
engagement and awareness they had for their surroundings and its value to the culture.
Beyond the five typical senses, Hawaiian also acknowledges the sixth sense of
awareness, or what they refer to as the “art of paying attention” (Meyer, 2001, p. 134). The sense
of awareness is extremely valuable in Hawaiian culture, considered the interconnectedness of all
five senses to form innate meaning or instinct.
The traditional Hawaiian people were expert resource managers, and voyagers. Part of a
navigators training is to develop sensitivity to wind, currents, and swell direction. They traversed
long distances with minimal resources and relied heavily this sixth sense.
The majority of navigation is observation and adjusting to the natural environment. The
rougher the weather, the more the navigator needs to be awake, and the less he can leave
the crew on their own…. At sunrise, you start to look at the shape of the ocean, the
character of the sea. You memorize where the wind is coming from. The wind generates
the waves. You analyze the character of the waves. When the sun gets too high, you steer
by the waves. And if you can read the ocean, you will never be lost (“Polynesian
Voyaging Society,” n.d.).
Wayfinding knowledge has also traditionally been acquired through a powerful sense of
awareness and observation. Low (2013) describes navigators as “attuned to a world of natural
signs-the stars the winds, the curl of the ocean swells,” while Master Navigator, Nainoa
Thompson recalls his first experience with the sixth sense:
I can’t explain it, there was a connection between something in my abilities and my
senses that went way beyond the analytical, beyond seeing with my eyes. It was
something very deep inside. Hawaiians call it Na’au, knowing trough your instincts, your
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feelings, rather than your mind or intellect… It;s like new doors of knowledge open and
you learn something new. But before the doors open, you don’t even know that such
knowledge exists. (Low, 2013, p. 277)
According to Meyer’s (2001) this as a profound level of awareness—a culturally specific
intelligence, derived from “deep internalized knowledge,” that is only achieved through practice
(p. 134). From a Western perspective, this would be considered a strategy or approach to
navigation, however, for Hawaiians it is considered an authentic interaction with nature.
Utility and Function
The utility of knowledge was significant for Native Hawaiians. They believe that
knowledge is most valuable when it is intentionally applied (Meyer, 2001, p. 137). Purposeful
knowledge from a Hawaiian perspective is defined as anything worth repeating or “passing
down” (Meyer, 2001, p. 135). However, this definition is not limited by the tangible outcomes
from knowledge. Natural observations, personal experience, music and beauty—anything that
would maintain relationship or give someone purpose in life, is seen as having use. If something
was not known, it was not due to ignorance, but because it did not hold value (Meyer, 1998, p.
24).
Navigators were highly respected and valued in ancient society (“The Hawaiian
Historical Society,” n.d.). According to the Hawaiian Historical Society (n.d.) “the navigator
held a vast quantity of knowledge in his head, taking no written notes and sailing without
instruments or charts.” While Hawaiian navigation became extinct in 19
th
century, under the
training of Mau Pialug, modern wayfinders were able to iterate this knowledge into a star
compass, which provides a “basic mental construct for navigation” and encompasses factors such
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as tides, currents, wind and wave patterns, bird migration and cloud observations (Thompson,
n.d.).
Relationships and Knowledge
Another important principle of both wayfinding and Hawaiian ways of knowing is the
value of relationships. Notions of self are derived from one’s relationship to others and to nature.
They believed in an interconnected web of being, “grounded in social relationships and tied to
the view that the individual, society, and nature are inseparable” (Handy & Pukui, 1972, as cited
in McCubbin & Marsella, 2009, p. 375). Furthermore, knowledge is nested in these relationships.
According to Meyer (1998), “knowledge is found another, reflected off of each other, continued
from another, and nurtured through another” (Meyer, 1998, p. 46)
Closely tied to their perspective of relationships is the idea of ohana, family and kūleana,
responsibility for one another (Meyer, 2001, p.135). This cultural cornerstone permeates through
all epistemological tenets and is exemplified in how they care for the environment and their
community. Core to the concept of kūleana is that one’s own wellbeing is tied to condition of the
community as a whole. In understanding this pivotal concept, we understand how compassion,
awareness and responsibility for others are at the core of what it means to know in Hawaiian
culture (Meyer, 2001, p. 136).
In this section above, I began by defining basic Epistemology as understanding “who can
be the knower, what can be known and what constitutes knowledge?” (Gegeo & Watson-Gegeo
2001, p. 57). Through exploring four tenets of Hawaiian Epistemology, we understand that
knowers in Hawaiian culture are those who are have functional knowledge, who are aware, who
can care for the land and who can maintain relationships (Meyer, 2001). Similarity, we
understand that what is considered knowledge in Hawaiian culture is to care for, to sense, to
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relate and to feel. All four knowledge concepts are interrelated and interconnected and play a
role in the community (Barnhardt & Kawagley, 2005).
While, Hawaiian people have always had a close relationship and understanding of the
ocean, it was navigators who housed troves of functional ocean knowledge, settling 10 million
square miles of ocean, and continuing to sail and paddle to other islands for fishing (Low, 2013).
Furthermore, the art of navigating was based on an intimate relationship between the
navigator and his environment and crew (Low, 2013, p. 35). Navigator, Bruce Blaneknfield
stated, “I think ohana comes from our culture of voyaging. For the crew to survive long voyages
they had to take care of each other” (Low, p. 199).
In this way, the “mind of the navigator” embodies the epistemological principles of
Hawaiian ways of knowing, showing functionality, utility, relationships and care for the land.
Through Navigation we understand what it means to learn and to know in Hawaiian culture. As
Nainoa Thompson (1999) explains,
When we voyage, and I mean voyage anywhere, not just in canoes, but in our minds, new
doors of knowledge will open, and that’s what this voyage is all about. It’s about taking
on a challenge to learn. If we inspire even one of our children to do the same, then we
will have succeeded (“Polynesian Voyaging Society”).
Culture Based Education
In this section, I provide a brief summary of literature on Culture-based education (CBE).
This section is not a comprehensive overview because this body of literature was not a direct
focus of the study. However, it did provide valuable insight in regard to understanding how a
navigation based curriculum was taken up by the school leaders I studied. In some cases, CBE
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literature helped to explain the way certain leaders were making sense or attending to aspects of
navigation and voyaging curriculum.
In the context of American school systems, multicultural students are often forced
creating new knowledge based on unfamiliar cultural practices. Culture-based education (CBE)
bridges this gap in knowledge by offering examples from a student’s own culture as a basis for
learning new skills. The CBE literature provides insight into effective ways to use cultural
practice to educate indigenous students. Many researchers and theorist have sought to explore the
indigenous knowledge systems essential to learning (Ladson Billings, 1995; Paris, 2012).
Various theories and frameworks emerged in effort to better understand how indigenous students
learn using their native knowledge systems. This section will discuss major underlying theories
to approach the culture-based education framework.
Literature on CBE suggests education becomes more meaningful when it is compatible
with the expectations, norms of a student’s home culture (Castegano & Brayboy, 2008; Ladson-
Billings, 1995). Additionally, the values, knowledge and practices one experiences within their
family or community, influences how one creates and internalizes knowledge at school. From
this perspective, the CBE framework attempts to “build a bridge” between a student’s home
culture and what is taught in school in order to improve student academic outcomes (Pewewardy
& Hammer, 2003, p. 1) (p.947).
Effective CBE practices align instruction and expectations within the values, practices
and experiences of the student’ s home culture, taking into account their worldview,
epistemological origins and cultural values (Kawaiʻaeʻa & Kanaʻiaupuni, 2008).
The pedagogical framework of Culturally Responsive Schooling (CRS) emerged from
larger bodies of literature exploring multicultural education and differentiated learning styles.
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Gaps between culture and practices at home and schools have long accounted for disparities in
education (Ford & Stuart, Ladson- Billings, 1995). In response to these findings, researchers
sought to bridge the gap between the two cultures in effort to improve learning (Ladson-Billings,
2014). Recent studies, educational policies and the increasing emphasis on a developing a
globally competent society have propelled CBE literature to the forefront. This body of literature
encompasses pedagogy, teaching and curriculum directed as responding to the news of
multicultural students.
In Gloria Ladson-Billings’ (1995) seminal article, “Toward a Theory of Culturally
Relevant Pedagogy” she proposed a comprehensive theoretical summary of what it means to
make education relevant to students of different cultural, linguistic and literary backgrounds.
Based on decades of research on multicultural education, Ladson-Billings (1995) called for
curricular changes that would challenge the existing deficit approach to learning and produce
students who could “achieve academically, demonstrate cultural competence and understand and
critique the existing social order” (Ladson-Billings, 1995, p. 474). The goal of Culturally
Responsive Pedagogy (CRP) was to support students in the maintenance of their current cultural
identities as they simultaneously learn the dominant cultural practices inherent in American
school systems. Ladson-Billings’ (1995) work was largely cited and influenced an academic
movement integrating social, cultural and familiar factors into education students. However, over
the years some critics suggests the static nature of CRP’s objectives have caused it to land short
of its goal (Paris & Alim, 2014).
Almost two decades later, Paris (2012) offered an expanded, alternate framework, based
on the same basic principles, which encompassed the continuing goals of culturally relevant
teaching practices. Influenced by more recent research, the changing needs of 21
st
century
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students and educational politics, the revised framework sought to take a stronger stance on the
social injustices occurring in school systems. In his critique, Paris (2012) questioned the efficacy
of the words “responsiveness/relevance” within Ladson-Billings’ (1995) pedagogical framework
(p. 95) and in response presented the framework of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP). The
purpose of this was to broaden the stagnant implication of CRP to include more dynamic and
explicit objectives such as to “perpetuate and foster- to sustain- linguistic, literate and cultural
pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling” (Paris, 2012, p. 95). This framework
differs from Ladson-Billings’ in that it seeks to perpetuate and sustain cultural presence
pluralistic educational settings.
McCarthy and Lee’s (2014) Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy (CSRP) further
builds upon CSP theory to include not only a way to sustain cultural practices but as a way of
reclaiming and revitalizing culture. It integrates the CBE pedagogy while recognizing
epistemological need for self-determination.
While CBE literature was not a direct focus of this study, it did help to explain the way
some school leaders attended to a traditional Hawaiian navigation curriculum. Additionally, it
provided background on some school leaders’ own educational background or professional
goals.
Next, I introduce the relevant empirical research associated with Indigenous Education.
Empirical Articles
I will now turn to empirical articles on Hawaiian Epistemology in schools. My primary
criterion for deciding which studies to include was my perception of the extent to which the
article helped me to answer my research question. For example, there is extensive research
regarding Hawaiian culture based education and using Indigenous learning curriculum to
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promote student achievement and teacher ideology that were not included due to the narrow
parameters surrounding my specific question regarding perceived benefits to students through
using a navigation approach, from a school leadership perspective. The following article was
chosen to reflect that the reasons a teacher or school leader chooses to adopt a values based
curriculum, in regards to perceived benefits, will ultimately influence their enactment of the
approach.
Schonleber (2011) set out to understand the perspective of Hawaiian language immersion
and culture based educator’s perspective towards the Montessori approach to education. Using a
qualitative approach, the researcher sampled 40 Hawaiian educators from 15 school sites within
three islands located in the State of Hawai‘i. Participants for this study were educators from
public, private schools, charters and K-12 programs and were acquired through referrals and a
“modified snowball technique” (Schonleber, 2011, p .6). Their average age was 33. Fifteen
participants had Montessori experience, while another 15 were fluent in Hawaiian language, and
the last 10 were of Hawaiian descent. Three participants had worked both in Montessori and
Hawaiians schools while 25 did not have any Montessori experience.
The constant comparative study used both semi-structured interviews, focus groups,
observations from the classrooms and artifacts in the form of Montessori’s writings. Interview
data was transcribed with a Native Hawaiian language speaker and data was used to inform
future interview questions throughout the study. Data was analyzed using open coding. Of the 70
initial codes, six themes emerged which were then coded axially to detect relationships. The six
themes were characterized into three agreements of approaches between Hawaiian culture-based
education and Montessori approach, one difference, one challenge and one Hawaiian pedagogy.
The three themes Schonleber (2011) found Montessori and Hawaiian culture education to have
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in common were where in epistemological perspectives found in Ways of Knowing, Ways of
Believing and Ways of Teaching. These values represented not only the worldview of
Montessori educators but were also common in Indigenous education practices. Schonleber
(2011) found that in both Hawaiian and Montessori educators believed in shared responsibility
and that “all things in creation are interconnected, the earth is living and the responsibility of
humans, and children have a spiritual essence” (p. 13).
Schonleber (2011) found that both Montessori and Hawaiian educators agree that
curriculum should be based on the community’s deepest beliefs and values (Schonleber, 2011, p.
21). Additionally, re he found that participants believed that educators should have the ability to
develop teaching strategies based on cultural and community goals, meaning pedagogical teacher
strategies should be based on students not text book. Schonleber (2011) found the relationship
between worldview and teaching strategies was important and necessary to educational practice
and indicated that educators should take worldview and beliefs into account when designing
programs and creating both pre-service and in-service training opportunities and developing
curriculum.
This article is important to my study because it demonstrates how the worldview of the
individual who adopts curriculum, will have implications for how the school enacts values and
uses content to achieve a desired set of outcomes. In other words, essential to understanding how
school leader how a school leader might enact a navigation approach, is their reason for adopting
it in the first place. The way the school leader makes meaning of the navigation approach will
align with their perception of student benefits, which will ultimately impact how they enact the
approach within their school. Schonleber (2011)’s study also validates the idea that teaching
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curriculum is tied to one’s worldview and belief system and provides insight into why a teacher
in Hawai‘i might choose to incorporate navigation curriculum to reach educational goals.
Conceptual Framework
In this section, I present my conceptual framework, which provided the foundation for
my study. A conceptual framework is a “system of concepts, assumptions, expectations, beliefs
and theories that supports and informs your research” (Maxwell, 2007 p. 33). This framework
outlined a “tentative theory” which informed my research design in regard to what type of data to
collect and why (Maxwell, 2007, p.33). My conceptual framework was designed to understand
how a school leader might make meaning of a navigation based curriculum and what benefits
they perceive it could have for students.
The conceptual framework presented below is a revised framework, which evolved as a
result of my completed study. I started this study with the expectation that school leaders would
be influenced more by educational outcomes of this approach and concluded that there were
more personal factors at play. Therefore, this framework is differentiated from my original
framework, but only in the most inward circle of school leader influence (See Appendix C).
Within this framework, I argue that how a school leaders made meaning of curriculum was
influenced by their own educational experiences, as well as the particular context of their school.
Furthermore, I assert that the impact of these factors would be representative of one or more
educational outcomes drawing from my three bodies of literature: Environmental Education,
place based education and Indigenous ways of knowing. First, I discuss the visual aspects of my
framework by defining and describing the three orientations and how a navigation approach
might be used in each. Then, I discuss the interaction and overlap of the orientations.
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Star Compass Conceptual Framework
This conceptual framework, presented in Figure 1, was designed to replicate the Nainoa
Thompsons’s Hawaiian star compass, which serves as a “basic mental construct for navigation”
(Thompson, n.d, para. 1). Just as the star compass guides navigators to their destination, the
conceptual compass framed my understanding of how school leaders made meaning of their
decision to adopt a navigation curriculum in a way that fits their ideological approach to
education.
Understanding how to read the star compass is key to interpreting this conceptual
framework. Starting from the center of the compass, the school leader, represented by the ‘iwa
bird, is surrounded by a continuum of outcomes. While the bodies of literature are not explicitly
depicted in my framework, the outcomes chosen emerged from my interpretation of the literature
regarding the use of Environmental, place based and Indigenous educational approaches. These
outcomes are then organized into discrete categories based on my assumption of the overarching
educational philosophy of the school leader.
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Figure 1. Star Compass Conceptual Framework.
Internal and External Factors
The written component of the compass represents the two types of factors I believed to be
influential in the way that school leaders make meaning of the curriculum. In this section I define
and describe the process and product outcomes shown in my framework, starting from the center
out.
Internal Factors. The internal factors, located within the circle, which surrounds the
school leader, represent the factors unique to the school leader that contribute to their
understanding of the world and therefore how they interpret the benefits of a voyaging
curriculum. The epistemological factors that I have identified are: education, personal
background and experiences, values and knowledge system (these are depicted in green)
Figure 2. Internal Factors
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.
Figure 2. Internal Factors.
These internal factors are critical to this framework as they help to locate each school
leaders’ epistemological perspective when approaching this educational initiative. From this
perspective, vision and implementation started from within the school leader and emphasized the
importance of a school leader’s situationality in the adoption process. Therefore, depending on
the school leader’s epistemological tenancies this framework I asserted, the school leader utilized
navigation as a vehicle to achieve his/her own perception of what constitutes education, which
was also based on his/her own educational experience. Consequently, his/her epistemological
location served as predictor of which orientation the school leader subscribes to, based on his/her
own educational experiences.
Figure 3. School Context
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External Factors
Moving outward from the circle to the triangle, I identified three external factors, which
influenced the way in which the school leader had made meaning and/or enacted the curriculum.
The school context factors (shown in purple) have been identified as: school history, school
climate and school mission.
Context factors are an important part of wayfinding as they guide school leaders to make
decisions based on information from the past, present and future. The school’s history or past
illuminates the foundations upon which the school was built, informing mission and overall
school. School history might encompass cultural, political and racial tensions within the school,
which are all inherent in places where people occupy the same space (Gruenewald, 2003).
Historical foundations might dictate which direction the school can or cannot go. School climate
represents the current atmosphere within the school, comprised of current faculty, staff and
leadership. The current school leader’s personal ideology also played an important role in
affecting school climate. Lastly, the school mission acted as the sail plan for the school leader,
guiding him/her to where they want to end up. The mission of the school was usually part of its
historical underpinnings, but was often open to interpretation by the school leader. Therefore, in
addition to the leader’s own perception, I argued these three external school factors played a role
in the enactment of the curriculum within each school setting.
Product Outcomes
Moving outward from the center, the second layer of multi-colored words are product
outcomes, which align directly with the literature and identified as benefits of using an EE, PBE
or Indigenous knowledge approach to education. Using Katz’s (1999) model, I categorized the
product outcomes into three distinct categories: academic, intellectual and values based and
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color-coded them to match. Katz defines academic outcomes as compartmentalized units of
knowledge and skills; what educators often refer to as “hard skills.” On the other hand,
intellectual goals or “soft skills,” address “habits of mind that include a variety of tendencies to
interpret experience” (Katz, 1999, p. i). Lastly, values based outcomes spoke to worldview or
perspective-changing goals, which sought to change the way students relate to the world.
Drawing on themes from the literature, I outlined the following as academic goals, coded in red:
multidisciplinary knowledge acquisition, environmental literacy, global knowledge, college and
career readiness.
Figure 4. Academic Product Outcomes
Similarly, the intellectual goals, in orange, were: accountability and advocacy, resilient
learners, development of 21
st
century skills, self-reflexivity, personal and social responsibility.
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Figure 5. Intellectual Product Outcomes
Values based goals are in blue: Perpetuate Hawaiian culture, promote Indigenous
worldview, ecological responsibility, Mālama Honua, interconnectedness with nature,
Indigenous stewardship, ecological coherence.
Figure 6. Values based Product outcomes
The qualities and capacities school leaders expected to see develop through the use of a
navigation curriculum, informed my understanding of the types of outcomes they prioritize
within the context of their school. For example, responses to questions asking them to describe
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how voyaging or navigation knowledge is important for their students to know, allowed me to
understand their perceived benefits.
Orientations
Lastly, on the outer most layer of the compass are the orientations. To understand the
desired outcomes of school leaders, I gained insight into each leader’s philosophical orientation.
The three orientations are comprised of a Western education orientation, environmental centered
orientation and Indigenous worldview orientation. While each orientation houses a dominant set
of outcomes, a school leader’s vision could encompass aspects of all three. However, the set of
outcomes (i.e. academic, intellectual or values based) that is privileged above the others will
indicate which orientation the school leader more heavily leans.
Figure 7. Western Education Orientation
Western Education Orientation. Drawing from learning goals of EE and PBE as
described by Sobel (2004) and Orr (199), I defined a Western orientation as an educational
philosophy that champions the acquisition of nationally recognized academic standards over
intellectual and values based outcomes. I maintained, a school leader with a Western orientation
was likely grounded more heavily in the learning process aspects of both environmental and
place based literatures. Therefore, I reasoned that he/she might utilize navigation curriculum as a
vehicle to engage students in learning that is relevant and meaningful to them for the purpose of
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achieving a Western attainment of knowledge and skills. Under this perspective, I believed the
goals of adopting navigation approach would be to achieve a Western set of academic standards.
Figure 8. Environment Centered Orientation
Environment Centered Orientation. Drawing from action competence goals of EE
(Jensen & Schenck, 2006; Smith, 2002, 2010; Sterling, 2010, Woodhouse and Knapp, 2004) and
Indigenous stewardship literature (Meyer, 2001; Barnhardt & Kawagley, 2005) I defined an
environment centered orientation as a philosophy that focuses on developing responsible and
accountable ecologically-minded citizens who hold the skills necessary to protect our
environment and create a sustainable way of life. Two essential components of this orientation
were sustainability and recognition of interconnectedness between self, nature and society.
Therefore, this framework suggested a school leader who subscribes to an environmental
orientation, was likely to be centrally located in the environmental educational literature, with
some overlap in Indigenous ways of knowing. A variant of Environmental Education literature
defines an essential goal of education as having an action component comprised of a democratic
participation in environmental sustainability. Complimentary to this orientation were Indigenous
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ways of knowing, which inherently viewed themselves as protectors and stewards of their
environment. Therefore, drawing from both bodies of literature, I asserted that a school leader
who subscribes to an Environmental orientation might use a navigation approach to stress the
importance of an external response or change by cultivating environmental literacy and
awareness through one’s interconnectedness to nature. Furthermore, I asserted school leaders
with an Environmental orientation would likely endorse an outdoor education component, such
as field trips to explore local environment or promote sustainable practices and hands-on
learning experiences in nature or within the community.
Figure 9. Indigenous World View Orientation.
Indigenous Worldview Orientation. The third approach was an Indigenous orientation.
Drawing on Indigenous epistemological framework (Meyer, 2001), I defined an Indigenous
orientation as one grounded in Indigenous epistemology and values which emphasized the
interconnectedness of all things. This perspective, was drawn from an Indigenous understanding
of where knowledge is located, views the concept of education for skill building as secondary to
developing one’s relationship with the world around them (Gruenewald, 2003; Woodhouse &
Knapp, 2000). In this orientation, I argued, school leaders believed students who learn to nurture
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their relationship with place, all other outcomes, such as advocacy, learning and understanding of
self will be a byproduct.
Interaction and Overlap
The emphasis of outcomes shifts depending on which orientation the school leader was
located. While a school leader might privilege a specific set of outcomes, it was not to the
complete exclusion of other outcomes. While this framework outlined school leaders can only
subscribe to one philosophical orientation, it was important to understand that the individual
outcomes are not mutually exclusive and often overlap with each other. I suggest, a school
leader, for example, might embrace a navigation curriculum for the joint purposes of
encouraging college and career readiness and also teaching and perpetuating Hawaiian culture.
Regardless of having multiple and overlapping outcomes, the school leaders would have one
dominant orientation.
Just as a navigator maintains his course by orienting their canoe to their intended
direction, school leaders referred to these factors when implementing and enacting a navigation
based approach to education. Essential to the design of the star compass is the inclusion of
outside factors that a navigator must consider when determining the sail plan. Wind, wave
patterns, weather all affect the navigators approach to their destination. Similarly, in education
mission, history and values which made up the climate of the school influence why and how a
school leaders choose to adopt and incorporate this approach. This is why inherent in the circular
framework was the opportunity for continuous readjustment. Once school leaders had set sail on
their intended outcome, they would have to make adjustments based on external factors.
Therefore, I contended if the school leader drifted or intentionally sailed off course, he/she would
still make landfall at another set of outcomes.
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Conclusion
My conceptual framework aligned the literature on environmental, place based and
Indigenous knowledge pedagogies to explain why school leaders might adopt a navigation
approach to education. This framework informed my research design by providing insight into
what data was needed to answer my research question. Each school leader and their school
served as the unit of analysis. The methodology will be discussed in the following chapter.
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CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY
This chapter outlines the qualitative approach that was used for this study. The
instrumentation and data collection methods were informed by the qualitative nature of the study.
The purpose of this study was to examine why Hawai‘i school leaders have adopted a navigation
based approach to educating their students. Additionally, I examined the perceived benefits for
students and how school leaders have enacted this approach to accomplish these benefits.
Specifically, I investigated how school leaders have created meaning from traditional Hawaiian
navigation and incorporated it into their respective schools.
This qualitative case study sought to answer the following research questions:
1. How to do school leaders make meaning of their decision to adopt a navigation
approach?
a. What do they perceive to be the benefits for students?
b. How do they believe they have enacted this approach to achieve benefits?
Research Design
Since the purpose of the study was to investigate why school leaders were adopting a
navigation based approach I utilized a qualitative approach. A qualitative approach was most
appropriate for this study because it enabled me to obtain the personal perspectives, feelings, and
values of the participants (Creswell, 2014; Merriam, 2009).
Specifically, I used a multi-case study approach. While a case study is an “in depth
description and analysis of a bounded system… that investigates a contemporary phenomenon
within its real-life context,” a multi-case study looks at multiple bounded systems which “share a
common characteristic” (Merriam, 2009, p. 40, 49). Essential to utilizing a case study
methodology is having a bounded or finite number of units of analysis (Merriam, 2009). Since
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traditional Hawaiian navigation is place-specific and its adoption is a relatively recent
phenomenon, the school leaders who had adopted this approach served as my bounded system.
The units of analysis were the individual school leaders representing charter, private and public
school leadership.
The goal of this study was to gain insight into why school leaders have chosen to adopt a
navigation based curriculum. A qualitative design allowed me to analyze each principal as a case
to understand each person’s reason for adoption. Furthermore, case study research is inherently
descriptive, which means it entailed a “rich, thick description of the phenomenon” studied
(Merriam, 2009, p. 42). Merriam (2009) goes on to define thick description as being a “complete,
literal description of the incident or entity being investigated” (p.42).
With respect to my research question, a multi-case study design best served the purpose
of deepening my understanding, of the phenomenon surrounding how Hawai‘i school leaders
made meaning of their decision to adopt a navigation approach as well as what benefits their
perceive it to have and how enactment of the approach was played out within their school.
Sample and Population
Participant Selection
Since the goal was to examine the way school leaders made meaning of their decision to
adopt a navigation based approach, I used purposeful networking sampling in order to reach a
maximum variation sample, which determined the “widest possible range of characteristics of
interest” (Maxwell, 2007, p. 98). I adhered to this strategy, and allowed my sample to emerge
from the data so as to include the specific individuals whom the most information could be
obtained (Merriam, 2009).
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Due to the specific criteria for the individuals I was looking for in my sample of school
leaders, purposeful sampling was an appropriate approach. Purposeful sampling seeks to identify
specific individuals from whom the most information can be obtained (Merriam, 2009). In
purposeful sampling, the sample is not selected ahead of time but emerges from initial data
collection and was be used to achieve a wide and diverse range of participants for my study
(Merriam, 2009). I began by drawing upon existing knowledge of schools and school leaders
who had adopted a navigation approach and supplement that with the recommendations of
colleagues in the field of education who might have been aware of other schools that fit my
criteria.
Since the focus of my study was to obtain information regarding the (1) vision, (2)
enactment and (3) implementation of a navigation curriculum, it was essential that I selected
participants who had played a role in one of these three responsibilities. Firstly, I sought out
school leaders, which I defined as: principals, board members or other stakeholders—who had
brought forward the idea of incorporating a navigation curriculum into the school. This person
provided insight into the vision of the curriculum and the perceived benefits it was expected to
have for their students.
I then asked them questions regarding the enactment of this approach. If the school leader
was merely the visionary or advocate for the approach, I asked for a referral to speak to another
person within the school responsible for articulating and enacting the approach in a tangible way.
Those in charge of enactment helped to play out the vision of the school leader throughout the
school. I asked enactment leaders questions regarding the translation of vision to curriculum and
how it might playout within the day-to-day curriculum. In essence, to obtain the information
needed to answer my research question, I approached my study by recruiting members of these
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three different levels of how a navigation approach had emerged in school curriculum: 1) The
visionary or advocate and 2) the articulation and enactment of vision. Therefore, depending on
the school’s structure, I interviewed up to two people, for a total of five schools, to understand
not only the benefits this approach was perceived to have for students but also how that approach
was enacted within the school to achieve those benefits.
Criterion 1. The first criterion was to identify a school leader, principal or stakeholder
in a school who had consciously adopted a navigation-based approach to education. Participants
were recruited through recommendations by key stakeholders in both the navigation and
educational community. The role of these leaders, revealed how they had made meaning of the
curriculum, either though envisioning or enacting the approach within their respective school. If
this person was not the visionary or advocate of this approach, I asked them to put me in contact
with that person. Additionally, if the school leader was the visionary but not the enactor, I
requested to speak with the person responsible for enacting the vision.
Criterion 2. The second criterion was that the participants were the visionaries or
advocates for adopting a navigation approach within their school. For my particular research
question, visionaries from these schools were selected from one charter school, three
independent schools and one district school on Oahu who had enacted a navigation based
curriculum. I sought to recruit at least three schools from each category. No emphasis was given
to elementary, middle or high school level schools. This sample was selected due to the
ideological settings of the schools. For instance, based on geographical location and population
demographics, students in the charter schools and the public school would presumably have a
high representation of native students, while students in the other charter and the private schools
would be dominantly non-native students. Additionally, I generally assumed that charter schools
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in Hawai‘i have traditionally positioned themselves to attend to a deeper understanding of
perpetuation of culture, as opposed to private schools, which I assumed were situated in a more
Western, college-going perspective. This diverse set of school settings was chosen to give me the
widest possible range of student and school demographics, which might lend itself to a diverse
set of expected outcomes.
After I identified participants who fit my criteria, I emailed them a request to confirm
their role in the vision and enactment of the navigation curriculum as well as invited them to
participate in the study. As displayed in the table below, out of nine written requests, I completed
six interviews from respondents at five different types of schools.
Table 1.
School/Respondent Sample Table
The following paragraphs provide background information on the sample:
School Respondent School
info
Job Title/ Role School’s
Orientation
Oahu Prep
School
Dr. Tom Berry
Mrs. Anuhea Kula
Private Head of School Western
Island
Academy
Ms. Rachel Seto Private Initiatives Coordinator Western
Pacific
Institute
Mr. Jack Wright Private Director of Voyaging
Engagement
Western
Ko'olaupoko
Charter
School (KCS)
Dr. Cindy Figueroa Charter Head of School Indigenous
District
School
Mr. Kapono Moore Public Hawaiian Education
Specialist – Voyaging
Engagement
Western
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Dr. Tom Berry–Oahu Prep. Dr. Berry was the current the head of school at Oahu Prep.
He had a traditional Western educational experience. He attended Oahu Prep himself when it
was even more so a “haole (Caucasian) school.” Upon graduation, he attended two different
prestigious Ivy League schools for undergraduate and post-graduate work. He went on to work in
affluent suburban communities on the mainland before returning to head of school position at
Oahu Prep. Dr. Berry is oriented in a very Western perspective, likely a result of his own
educational experiences and reinforced through previous positions in high socioeconomic urban
areas. This Western approach is focused on academics, the learning and mastery of content and
critical skills needed and recognized by most colleges. He is cognizant of the cultural aspects of
the curriculum and the tensions that exist outside of his school community.
Mrs. Anuhea Kula—Oahu Prep. Mrs. Kula, who prefers to be referred to as Kumu, the
Hawaiian word for teacher, was a graduate of Oahu Prep and the current Director of Hawaiian
Studies at the school. Her traditional Western education at Oahu Prep juxtaposed her Indigenous
informal education, which provided a dualistic perspective on teaching culture within the
contextual limitations of her school. Kumu Kula is unique to this sample in that her dualistic
perspective allowed her to maintain her indigenous orientation, even though she is physically
located in a Western setting.
Ms. Rachel Seto—Island Academy. Ms. Rachel Seto was the coordinator of internal
and external partnerships at Island Academy. She was the respondent who spoke the least about
her personal background. She was a graduate of Island Academy and completed her Bachelors
and Masters degrees on the East Coast at an Ivy League school and went on to teach on the East
Coast upon graduation. She had a deep understanding of the voyage’s purpose within a school
setting.
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Mr. Jack Wright—Pacific Institute. Mr. Jack Wright was the Director responsible for
wayfinding engagement for Pacific Institute. He had a meaningful and deep personal experience
with Hawaiian culture and voyaging instilled in him through informal family outings as well as
first-hand experience traditional voyaging experience. He was a graduate of Pacific Institute
where he formally learned about Hawaiian Culture. Personally, due to his familial upbringing, he
was oriented towards an Indigenous way of knowing and learning.
Mr. Kapono Moore—District School. Mr. Kapono Moore was a Hawaiian Education
Specialist assigned with navigation engagement for the district school. He grew up in a fairly
rural and remote part of the state and is much grounded in traditional Hawaiian culture and
practices. Prior to his current position, he was a Hawaiian language immersion teacher. He
remembers learning about past voyages while he was in school and felt drawn to the voyage’s
mission.
Dr. Cindy Figueroa–Ko’olaupoko Charter School. Dr. Cindy Figueroa was the Head
of school at Ko’olaupoko Charter School. She was a graduate of Oahu Prep, and went on to
pursue her Masters and Doctorate on the West Coast. While she did not speak much of her
cultural upbringing, she acknowledged her desire to pursue higher education was to best serve
Hawai‘i’s native population.
Instrumentation and Data Collection Procedures
The purpose of this study was to understand why school leaders adopted navigation based
approach within their school. As outlined in my conceptual framework, I was specifically
interested in how school leaders have made meaning of their decision to adopt such an approach
in regard to how it benefitted their students as well as how they had enacted the curriculum to
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achieve those benefits. My role as a qualitative researcher was to collect the data through
interviews and to gather document and artifacts from respondents.
Interview
For this study, I conducted one round of semi-structured interviews with each school
leader. Three interviews took place at the respondent’s place of work. One took place in the
respondent’s home and the last two took place in a neutral coffee shop. Interviews lasted 45 min
to 1.5 hours. A total of six hours and 38 minutes of interviews were conducted. Interviews data
allowed me to gain insight into the background and ideology of the school leader (Merriam,
2009).
Interview protocols (Appendix A) guided the line of questioning during the interviews,
however, consistent with a semi-structured interview, questions were often improvised and
altered to include clarifying and probing questions (Merriam, 2009). The purpose of the
interviews was to understand the school leader’s role in the vision and implementation and what
benefits they perceive a navigation based curriculum will have for their students. I asked
questions about their role and responsibility within their school and how they came to hold that
position. Further, I asked about their personal relationship to traditional Hawaiian voyaging and
how they understood it to align with their school vision and educational outcomes. These
questions provided insight into how the school leader made meaning of the voyage personally as
well as how they sought to interpret it into their school setting. I had intended to follow up with
secondary interviews if necessary, but found that the initial interview data had answered my
research questions and provided extensive and rich data. At the end of each interview, I asked
participants for any documents which supported their description of how they enacted the
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curriculum. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed via an external transcription service.
Files were saved in a secure drop box file.
Documents and Artifacts
Obtaining documents and artifacts provided insight into how the curriculum was being
implemented into the school setting. I collected documents in the form of curriculum mapping,
presentations on curriculum, lessons, school mission statements and long-term strategic planning
presentations. These documents, which were created by the respondent or utilized in the
development of the respondent’s curriculum allowed me to understand the information
processing and/or what influenced the way respondents made meaning of the curriculum to
themselves and their schools as well as also how they planned to encourage others to adopt it.
Furthermore, they provided me with data free from researcher limitations (Merriam, 2009).
Data Analysis Procedures
Data from interview transcripts and documents and artifacts were included in this
qualitative study. Corbin and Strauss (2008) describe analysis as the process of giving meaning
to data by taking it apart to identify its various components, taking a closer look at those various
components to understand how those components function and their relationship to each other.
Data analysis began in the field in the form of reflective notes and analytic memos, which
documented my “feelings, problems ideas, hunches, impressions and prejudices” (Bogdan &
Biklen, 2007, p. 122). I then, followed a constant-comparative coding process, which involved a
three-step process, wherein each stage the researcher makes an increasingly deeper analytical
examination of raw data (Harding, 2013).
After my interviews were transcribed, I continued analysis in the form of coding. Open
coding, draws conclusions grounded in data that has been “systematically gathered and
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analyzed” (Strauss & Corbin, 2008). I employed this coding approach, firstly using a priori
codes, which were concepts drawn from my conceptual framework and data synthesized from
literature (Lichtman, 2014). My a priori codes were taken from the three types of outcomes and
included: environmental literacy, global knowledge, college and career readiness accountability
and advocacy, resilient learners, development of 21
st
century skills, self-reflexivity, personal and
social responsibility, perpetuate Hawaiian culture, promote Indigenous worldview, ecological
responsibility, Mālama Honua, interconnectedness with nature, Indigenous stewardship,
ecological coherence.
I decided to start analyzing the first respondent’s data because he had a long and
comprehensive discussion surrounding his own background and belief system as well as how it
related to his school context. His in-depth perspective clearly demonstrated his understanding of
and intention for place based education, culture-based education and the expansion of ways of
knowing and learning within their school. Further analysis of this school leader’s data provided
me with an additional list of codes such as: Epistemology, adoption, outcomes, learning, cultural
connection, environmental awareness. Additionally, reflective notes written after the interview
helped to support the codes that emerged from the discussion. As I analyzed each respondent’s
transcript, I continued to condense and streamline codes into categories that gave me insight into
my research question. I categorized codes, which I thought would help me understand how each
school leader made meaning of their decision to adopt this approach by classifying interview
data into three categories:
1. Epistemology—background, values, education
2. Adoption—How is curriculum played out in their school including motivation and
approach?
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3. Outcomes—discussion of desired outcomes in affective, cognitive, social and/or
cultural arenas.
After completing coding for all respondents, I began a second phase, which looked for
the commonality and differences in the use of these codes across respondents by documenting
the numerical occurrence of each theme in a codebook. This process was consistent with Corbin
& Strauss’s (2008) constant comparison analytic tool, which recommends checking for
similarities and differences between the incidents throughout the coding process. I noticed that
while many respondents used the same terminology what they actually meant was very different.
Therefore, I had to go back and check for multiple meanings of words, especially in regard to
Hawaiian language where in which multiple meanings are commonplace.
During this process, variations in the benefits and enactment of curriculum began to
emerge from the data. I chose to analyze and code data for each person separately to best
understand their worldview and perspective. I began to see how each respondent’s background or
ideology affected how they intended to use Hawaiian navigation. Once these larger themes
emerged, I began to write analytic memos to document my feelings and interpretations about
what I was reading.
In this second phase, after the initial codes were identified and deconstructed, I began to
use axial coding, which seeks to identify and understand the relationships between the first
phases of coding (Lichtman, 2014). During this phase, I re-built the data by synthesizing
emergent codes that represent participants’ responses into broader themes. While I had expected
to see clear orientation categories emerge, axial coding revealed the school leader’s orientation
was the result of a intersection of personal ideology and school context. I began to plot these
themes to create a visual framework for myself. I plotted the personal location of the respondent
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in relation to the orientation of the school and found that not all respondents were physically
located in an environment conducive to their own epistemology.
Figure 10. Findings Plot.
From this plot, I was able to make groupings based on commonalities of the respondents’
intersections of their personal ideology and orientation of their school.
I also analyzed documents and artifacts from each respondent. These artifacts provided
insight into what wayfinding knowledge they perceived to be important and useful for students
as well as how they planned to implement that type of knowledge within the school.
The coding process highlights commonality throughout data and helps the researcher organize
findings, interpret data uncover themes (Saldaña, 2009).
Lastly, I engaged in the selective coding process that evaluated the first two phases of
coding in order to construct a more collective core theme (Lichtman, 2014). The purpose of a
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constant comparative approach was to compare and contrast data sets, to discover commonalities
and differences across a sample. From this type of analysis, I was able to see how each school
leader has arrived at their common and unique understandings of the perceived benefits of
adopting a navigation approach. I then used my conceptual framework as an analytic lens to
understand and evaluate the data in regard to the three distinct orientations of school leaders in
regards to their perceived benefits of adopting a navigation curriculum.
Once all the data were coded, I brought all of the data together in order to create what
Merriam (2009) calls a “case study database or method” (p. 292). The findings were reported and
connected back to my conceptual framework.
Limitations and Delimitations
Limitations
Limitations of this study include accessibility, truthfulness and credibility. The quality of
the data was dependent on the ability to access and recruit the participants within the school who
had played a role in the envisioning and enactment of the navigation based curriculum. The
recruitment of participants was based on the suggestions and referral of colleagues and
acquaintances with the educational and voyaging community. Additionally, the accuracy of the
study was reliant on the openness and truthfulness of those participants.
One limitation was obtaining school’s permission to access participants that fit my
criteria. On multiple occasions, I reached out to the Hawai‘i Department of Education to get
access to school principals who fit my criteria. However, no one ever contacted me back. Ideally,
I would have liked to been able to sample across different school types, and include multiple
public schools as they serve the greatest population of Hawai‘i’s students. Alternatively, I was
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able to interview someone in the administrative department, who spoke to the broad
operationalization of the curriculum across the district.
Delimitations
Findings of my study may also be impacted by the fact that I was the primary instrument
for data collection. As the primary designer of my study and instrument of data collection, there
was the possibility that my personal biases and interest impacted findings. As someone who has
had a personal and positive experience with paddling and canoes, biases may have appeared in
the phrasing of questions and again in the way I approached analysis of my findings.
Additionally, as a novice researcher there may have been implications on my research
design and protocols. As a novice researcher, my protocol might have set me up to ask questions
which were not aligned with my research question. Furthermore, I am not an experienced
interviewer, which may lead to the possibility I did not pick up on probes or markers, which
would have influenced findings. Additionally, I chose a research question, that did not require
observations and therefore was not able to see first-hand what enactment looked like. This meant
I had to take the respondents word for how their curriculum was enacted.
Ethics
In order to insure an ethical study, I adhered to the recommended procedures outlined by
the Institutional Review Board, which states researches need to take in account the ethical
considerations of their work (Glesne, 2011). Researchers are responsible to making sure
respondents are making informed decisions, based on the reality of the risks or penalty of
participation (Glesne, 2011). I provided participants with verbal and written explanations of the
purpose of my study, known as “Informed Consent” as is based on the notion that “research
subjects must have sufficient information to make informed decisions about participating in a
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study” (Glesene, p. 163). In order to comply with the principals of informed consent, the
participants were briefed on, the purpose of the research, what is expected of a research
participant, including the amount of time likely to be required for participation and the fact that
participation is voluntary and that one can withdraw at any time.
Once the school leaders agreed to participate, they were sent an informed consent form
and asked to return it to me prior to the interview. Upon receipt of the informed consent, an
interview was scheduled.
At the start of the interview, I reviewed the purpose of the study and the confidentiality
procedures, which allowed another opportunity for participants to ask questions. Within the
discussion of confidentiality, I explained how their information and identity will be protected as
well as how I planned to store the data. I then asked for verbal permission to record the interview
as well as a signed consent form.
Credibility and Trustworthiness
The collection of qualitative data is interpretive by nature (Merriam, 2009). During data
collection, a researcher must make thousands of decisions in regard to what data to collect and
how to interpret it—all of which are influenced by personal experiences. In order to avoid this
type of personal bias Miles, Huberman and Saldaña (2014) suggest checking for possible
researcher effects on data. The first effect on data that was addressed was my positionality.
Positionality. Positionality refers to where one stands within the social structure of
society, which is especially relevant in relation to the “politics of knowledge construction” (as
cited in Merriam et al., 2001, p. 1). Researchers, especially in complex and multicultural
environments, must consider their own position in relation to their respondents and the setting of
data collection (Throne, 2012). In my study, it was imperative that I investigate my own
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positionality before and during data analysis as not to affect credibility. While, I often felt like an
“insider” due to my affinity towards Hawaiian voyaging culture and the fact that I was
interviewing respondents within a close educational community, I had to address the fact that my
own ideology and physicality positioned me as an outsider, and therefore could create a social or
cultural division.
Additionally, because the purpose of the study was to understand how people of different
cultural communities made meaning, it was important to remain conscious of my own
epistemological framework so that while I might not be actually able understand their “own idea
of what selfhood is, I can be wary of my own interpretations and analysis of them” (Geertz,
1983). Geertz (1983) addressed the concept of credibility within cultural research specifically
when he discussed a researcher must be conscious of “tracing out of the way in which our sense
of ourselves and others—ourselves amidst others—is affected not only by our traffic with our
own cultural forms but to a significant extent by the characterization of….” (p. 8).
In analyzing and drawing conclusions about another person’s epistemology for,
especially of another culture, Geertz (1983) argued that a researcher should be conscious of their
own way of viewing the world. Geertz (1983) warned “hopping back and forth between the
whole conceived through the parts that actualize it and the parts conceived through the whole
that motivates them, we seek to turn them, by a sort of intellectual perpetual motion, into
explications of one another” (p. 69).
For example, as a white female researcher examining Western and Indigenous
ideologies, it was important to understand the lens through which I see the world and through
which people see me. In other words, understanding the cognitive framework that naturally
shapes or is assumed to shape my judgments, emotions and actions. In this way, I had to be
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cognizant of my own funds of knowledge and how my social and cultural identities contributed
the way I made meaning of my data. In analyzing other people’s epistemologies, especially those
belonging to different cultural groups, I had to remain aware of my own judgments and
positionality affects my interpretations as well as respondent’s willingness to be truthful with me.
For example, the way I assessed each respondent holds its own potentially for bias. As according
to Geertz (1983),
The Western conception of the person as a bounded, unique, more or less integrated
motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic center of awareness, emotion, judgment,
and action organized into a distinctive whole and set contrastively both against other such
wholes and against its social and natural background, is, however incorrigible it may
seem to us, a rather peculiar idea within the context of the world's cultures. Rather than
attempting to place the experience of others within the framework of such a conception,
which is what the extolled "empathy" in fact usually comes down to, understanding them
demands setting that conception aside and seeing their experiences within the framework
of their own idea of what selfhood is (p. 59).
Additionally, I had a personal investment in examining a navigation based educational approach
as I subscribe to a comparable educational philosophy. Another potential bias would be the
possibility of collecting the research at a school I formerly attended. The familiarity with the
school practices, mission and curriculum could influence the way I construct protocols and
analyze data. However, I am aware of these biases and addressed them throughout the study by
following the established research design and writing reflective notes after each interview I
conducted to reflect on my own biases.
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I engaged in peer review and debriefing with my dissertation chair, for an external check
of the research process (Creswell, 2003). During this debrief we reviewed the data I had
collected and my interpretation of them for multiple meanings and methodology (Creswell,
2003). Having another person assess my evaluation of the data was another way I checked for
personal biases, and became aware of my stance towards data.
In order to avoid skewing the data I used reflective notes and analytic notes, which was a
strategy which questioned my investment in this curriculum, and how I might have interacted
with the data and what I felt about each case interview.
Reflective Notes. Creswell (2009) explains data analysis is an ongoing process that
requires continual reflection and returning to and revising analytic questions. In this regard, I
used reflective notes to document my feelings and perceived biases throughout the interview
process.
Analytic Notes. In addition to reflective notes, I wrote analytic memos throughout the
coding process, which allowed me to have conversations with myself about what I expected to
find in each interview. This helped me tease out what I thought I knew from what the data was
telling me and served as a way to check my effects on the data. For example, I wrote about
things that stood out to me, whether it was an example that was given, comment I wasn’t
expecting to hear, or a fresh perspective on the curriculum. I also wrote about what personal data
was disclosed to me and how that might have played a role in their interpretation of curriculum,
which helped contribute to my findings. These memos provided space for me to talk about my
position as the researcher and discuss areas I may have felt uncomfortable or failed to probe
effectively.
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Rich and descriptive data. I also collected rich and descriptive data which reflected the
complexity of my study and “allowed readers to make decisions regarding transferability
(Merriam, 1988). In order to accumulate this rich data, I exhausted the range of purposeful
sampling and collected descriptive data from a diverse and relevant sample relating to my
research topic. Patton (1990) recommended that “validity, meaningfulness, and insights
generated from qualitative inquiry have more to do with the information-richness of the cases
selected and the observational/analytical capabilities of the researcher than with sample size” (p.
185). In this way, my data provided a rich and deep data set for which I had abundance of data to
analyze.
Member Checks. In order to help improve the accuracy and validity of data, especially
as it pertained to cultural frameworks different from my own, I utilized informant feedback to
correct initial interpretations. This approach helped me broaden my range of interpretations and
correct initial analytic errors based on verbatim testimony.
Conclusion
The purpose of this study was to examine the way school leaders made meaning of their
decision to adopt a navigation based approach to education. Additionally, I had hoped to
understand what they perceive to be the benefits to their students and how they were believed to
be enacting this curriculum. Six school leaders from public, private and charter schools, who
played a role in the decision to adopt or enact this approach served as my units of analysis. Data
was collected through semi-structured interviews of school leaders and the gathering of
documents and artifacts from their respective schools. Analysis of this data was guided by my
conceptual framework.
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CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS
The purpose of this dissertation was to explore how school leaders in Hawai’i have made
meaning of their decisions to adopt a navigation based curriculum. Furthermore, this study
explored how their epistemological view and the context of their school influenced how it
impacted the way curriculum was enacted within their schools. Thus, the data collected and
findings of this study addressed the following research questions:
1. How do school leaders make meaning of the decision to adopt a navigation based
curriculum at their schools?
a. What do they perceive to be the benefits for students?
b. How do they believe they have enacted this approach to achieve benefits?
The conceptual framework informed the findings of this study by acting as a “tentative
theory” (Maxwell, 2007, p. 33) to make sense of the data. It helped me understand the leaders’
epistemological worldviews and the factors that shaped their perceptions of the benefits,
enactment and value of the curriculum to their schools.
This qualitative study used a multiple case study method. Each case was a leader or
leaders from a school in Hawai’i that had adopted some aspect of navigation, wayfinding or
voyaging. For each case, I conducted 1-2 in-person interviews with each leader, and as well as
collected artifacts. Pseudonyms were used to provide confidentiality to the participants. First, I
present the findings regarding the way school leaders made meaning of their decisions to adopt
navigation curricula, which encompasses how they perceived the curriculum to benefit the
students as well as how they believed they had enacted this approach to achieve benefits?
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Overall the data revealed that the decision to adopt a navigation approach was complex
and multifaceted. Findings showed a consensus among respondents in the way academic and
affective outcomes were articulated; however, variation existed in what brought them to the
decision and how it was played out within each school setting. For example, all school leaders
spoke of adopting a “Mind of the Navigator” curriculum, yet an analysis of interview data
revealed that when it came to describing and defining the enactment of this curriculum, there
were significant differences across the school settings. Furthermore, these varying interpretations
of the voyaging initiatives were found to be based on the inextricable intersection of personal
ideology and school context. First, I present findings in the way the school leaders made
meaning of their desire to adopt this approach regarding their epistemological location and
school context. Within this finding, I discuss what they perceived to be the benefits of adopting
this curriculum and how they perceived they had enacted the curriculum based on their location.
The table below outlines my sample of school leaders and includes pertinent information
about their personal location as well as the orientation of their school. I used the term ‘informal
background/education’ to depict the personal social and/or cultural location of each school
leader. Alternatively, I used ‘formal background/education’ to discuss the type and orientation of
the school they attended. In this way, a school leader could have been raised culturally Hawaiian,
therefore having an informal Indigenous background and subscribe to a Indigenous ways of
knowing epistemology, but also have attended a Western educational institution, which might
shape the way they view learning. In regard to the school leader, their personal educational
background and location were essential in understanding the decisions made about the
curriculum. Additionally, the type and orientation of the school, the population of students
served provided insight and background about the desired outcomes of the curriculum.
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Table 2.
Respondent Background Information Table
School Respondent School
info
Educational
Background/Location
School’s
Orientation
Ethnic
Majority of
Students
Served
Oahu Prep
School
Dr. Tom Berry Private Formal & Informal=
Western
Western Non-native
Oahu Prep
School
Kumu Anuhea
Kula
Private Formal=Western
Informal=Indigenous
Western Non-native
Island
Academy
Ms. Rachel Seto Private Formal & Informal=
Western
Western Non-native
Pacific
Institute
Mr. Jack Wright Private Formal =Western
Informal= Indigenous
Western Native
Ko’olaupoko
Charter
Dr. Cindy
Figueroa
Charter Formal= Western
Informal=Indigenous
Indigenous Native
District
School
Mr. Kapono
Moore
Public Formal =Western
Informal= Indigenous
Western Native
Finding 1. School Leaders’ Motivation Existed on a Continuum Characterized by
the Intersection of Personal Ideology and School Context.
School leaders’ personal ideologies and their school contexts came together to explain
their choice to adopt a navigation based curriculum. It was clear that how they saw the world and
where they came from was an important part of their decision to adopt this specific type of
curriculum and what they saw as the benefits of the adoption. This was consistent with
Castegano and Brayboy’s (2008) understanding of one’s epistemological perspective as
“fundamental to how he or she sees the world, understands knowledge, and lives and negotiates
everyday experiences” (p. 952). Additionally, it was not possible to disentangle school context
from the way they discussed the choice and the benefits.
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Data revealed that school leaders fell along a continuum reflective of their
epistemological location and the intersection of the context of the school. The continuum was
bound on one end by their personal alignment with a more Western or more Indigenous ideology
and the schools’ alignment with a more Western or more Indigenous orientation. Either end of
the continuum was categorized by a complete alignment between personal ideology and school
context, while the more towards the middle of the continuum, the more conflict arose between
one’s personal perspective and school orientation. Findings revealed three distinctive categories,
which captured the varying orientations of school leaders. On one extreme were school leaders
who were personally and professionally oriented in a Western context. This grouping was
categorized by little conflict as their personal beliefs and school’s orientation were aligned with
one another. Similarly, on the other extreme, were school leaders whose personal beliefs and
schools’ orientations aligned with an Indigenous perspective. However, the leaders located at the
center continuum experienced more complexity and dissonance with regards to what motivated
them to adopt the curriculum, how it was played out and for what purpose.
In this first grouping, the school leaders’ motivation to adopt a navigation curriculum
reflected a complete alignment of the school leaders’ Western epistemological perspective and
the school context. In this category, school leaders’ Western orientation was embedded in their
schools’ mission and values. Members of this group were able to articulate the way a navigation
approach reflected both their personal beliefs and intended school wide benefits. This same
group struggled with both expressing and enacting critical cultural components of the
curriculum. For example, they were less able to articulate the ways the curriculum was intended
to provide students with exposure to the cultural aspects of a navigation based curriculum. They
believed a navigation based curriculum was a vehicle to achieve previously existing academic
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and affective outcomes, and struggled with implementing effective cultural aspects of the
curriculum. This was significant because the absence of a meaningful cultural component within
this curriculum generated a discrepancy between how school leaders articulated their goal for
adoption and how it was actually being implemented.
The second category moved the school leader away from complete alignment and into
one of conflict. Members of this group had a more complex understanding of their motivation to
adopt this curriculum as they personally subscribed to one worldview and held a position within
their school that required them to advocate for another. In this category, school leaders endorsed
an Indigenous worldview yet understood their roles within their school to promote the goals
associated with a Western educational orientation. While they discussed the cultural benefits of
utilizing this curriculum, they saw the primary benefit as a multi-disciplinary approach to
achieve academic and life skills. Thus, they enlisted their Indigenous knowledge and
competencies in order to achieve Western definition of success, established by their school
setting.
Lastly, the third category, like the first, was one of low conflict in that the school leaders’
Indigenous worldviews were aligned with an Indigenous school orientation. Therefore, the
values, behaviors and outcomes associated with an Indigenous way of knowing were embedded
in the schools’ mission and values. Leaders in this group believed in adopting a navigation or
voyaging curriculum in order to achieve both Indigenous perspective-taking as well as meeting
academic benchmarks. Similar to the first category, the personal ideology of this group of
aligned with goals of the school to embrace the adoption of a voyaging curriculum. I present
each category below.
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Category One: Alignment between Leaders’ Western Orientation and Schools’ Western
Orientation
On one end of the continuum, school leaders’ reasons for adopting a navigation based
curriculum were influenced by the alignment of a Western epistemological ideology and a
Western school context. Members of this group were influenced by their own traditionally
Western or American educational experiences—such as attending and/or working in typical
American educational institutions. These personal experiences shaped their perception of what it
meant to be educated, what types of outcomes were necessary for success, and their definition of
what it meant to be successful in today’s society. Moreover, their personal experience with place
shaped how they viewed its importance within their school setting.
For leaders in this category, motivation for adoption was derived from a complimentary
personal ideology and school context. This approach was indicative of a Western ideology in the
way school leaders discussed the value of place in education. Members of this group expressed
their decision to adopt a voyaging curriculum in terms of its ability to teach students about their
physical location while simultaneously developing academic skills. This strategy demonstrated a
very Western understanding of place, using it as something to be leveraged to reach Western
outcomes, rather than be an outcome itself. This was in stark contrast to Indigenous ways of
knowing, which considers nature as being inextricable from humanity and therefore worthy of its
own platform (Seawright, 2014).
Leaders in this category’s Western understanding of place was in alignment with The
North American Association for Environmental Education’s (2001) definition of Environmental
and Community Based Educational approaches, which were proposed to increase awareness of
students’ surroundings while concurrently using the environment as a “tool for reaching broader
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educational goals” (p. 6). Additionally, Orr (1990), Sobel (2004) and Smith (2002) emphasized
the importance of connecting education to local environment and community. Consistent with
these bodies of literature, school leaders in this category both communicated their intentions of
1) connecting learning to place and 2) using place as a viable approach to integrating 21
st
century
skills. These intentions were a result of an intersection of personal perspective and a perceived
gap in their schools’ educational outcomes.
Role of Place/Locality. One way the interaction of personal and school ideology played
out was in the respondents’ understanding of “place” within the voyaging approach. Analysis
showed school leaders’ perceptions of the role of place in education were a result of the
intersection of both personal perspective and schools’ orientation. Additionally, while both
respondents in this category expressed a desire to address cultural aspects associated with place,
when it came to enactment, data revealed a lack of Indigenous programing.
Through interviews, both respondents in this category interwove aspects of their personal
relationship and their schools’ responsibility to the surrounding community. Dr. Berry put his
personal experience at the forefront of this explanation. In reference to his own locality, he
discussed his perceived social connection to the community, which reflected tensions he
experienced being ethnically, but not culturally, Hawaiian. Additionally, within his narrative, he
empathized with aspects of an Indigenous ideological approach to education, and frequently
articulated aspects of cultural disconnects he wanted to challenge. Yet when pressured to enact
these changes, his decisions tended to perpetuate and reflect his Western educational philosophy.
Within this theme, he referred to this clash in three different ways: 1) personally, 2)
professionally, and 3) schoolwide. He outlined his own connection to cultural tension stating:
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Even some of my friends at Pacific Institute don’t feel like I’m Hawaiian enough. It’s
what Obama had to go through. You’re not black enough. The stuff is mostly crap, but
it’s there. You just have to embrace it. I think as long as there’s an economic disparity
among a lot of Hawaiian people, I think they’ll always feel that. I went through a period
of time when I was in my early 20s when I thought that Oahu Prep had robbed me of my
community. I was raised in Windward Side. It’s a long commute now, but back then, it
just felt like 45 minutes each way. Oahu Prep became a community. That’s why it’s such
a great place. I can remember I grew up with these kids in Kailua and then by seventh
grade, I’m playing baseball and football here, basketball at school. “Tommy, where you
been? Where do you go to school?” “Town.”
This first revelation began by sharing the belief that he was not considered “Hawaiian
enough” by colleagues and peers, due to his experience at the very Western Oahu Prep. He
described this as a reoccurring theme throughout his life, starting when he was a child who was
forced to give up his community and culture to attend Oahu Prep, which was located outside of
his school district. Here, Dr. Berry first identified the struggles he experienced in relationship to
the social and cultural expectations of place in Hawai’i. The way he described his childhood and
made meaning of those experiences further located him in a Western ideology, as there was no
explicit mention of a cultural connection prior to attending Oahu Prep. This suggested little
cultural emphasis at home and possibly that his understanding of what it meant to be Hawaiian
was determined by friends in the community who modeled those behaviors. Additionally, his
background further established his early epistemological underpinnings, which explained his
current relationship to place. Furthermore, the way in which he discussed his relationship to
place demonstrated a cognizance of the social complexities of living in place such as Hawai’i,
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which Gruenewald (2003) argued is a critical aspect of place based education (PBE). Consistent
with Gruenewald’s (2003) definition, PBE should consider not only one’s relationship to the
physical aspects of place but also the relationships between people who share the same place. It
was these two aspects of place inherent in an Indigenous perspective, that were left out of Dr.
Berry’s description.
Secondly, he referenced political and cultural implications of place which again,
examines the interaction of different people who occupy the same place. Dr. Berry stated that
due to cultural and societal pressures, many educators felt out of place when teaching an
Indigenous curriculum. He explained, educators “don’t feel skillful enough nor do they feel
enlightened enough to talk about [Hawaiian culture].” He classified this as sense of “cultural
selectivity” experienced by non-Native educators characterized by the feeling that “you need to
be one of us [Native Hawaiian] in order to teach this.” This statement demonstrated the marrying
of his personal and professional perspective, and the inability to separate them from each other.
He illuminated his singular perspective of the social and political tensions of place, explaining
not only did one need to be of a certain standing to be considered a “Native Hawaiian” but also
to be qualified to teach Hawaiian curriculum.
Lastly, he expanded his personal and professional experience to encapsulate the tensions
felt by the entire school due to the changing student population. Again, he demonstrated his
awareness of the multifaceted approach to place as he explained,
There’s a certain tension—because the school is more diverse than it ever has been, the
respect for differences and embracing of differences, I think, is ... This notion of holding
the duality of the two, I think we’re all sort of feeling that.
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In this statement, he addressed the schoolwide response to changing student population while
projecting and interweaving aspects of a “tension” from own ideology in regard to managing the
duality of it. Additionally, he interjected his intent to address the cultural, political facets of place
into the school community when he revealed the growing pains of changing the school mission.
He stated, “I think that I've been motivated by, and such is the financial aid part, but just
becoming more a part of the community and becoming more representative of the community
financially and his desire to have the student population more representative of the community.”
These three examples offered by Dr. Berry, exemplified the ways physical, cultural,
social and political aspects of place impact the school environment. His unique perspective,
consisting of elements of personal experience and school ideology, provided insight into how Dr.
Berry conceptualized how he believed learning should be connected to place and how it
eventually played out in Oahu Prep.
Similarly, Ms. Rachel Seto intermixed individual ideology and the context of Island
Academy when discussing the decision to adopt a voyaging curriculum. She too framed the drive
behind the school’s adoption by the intersection of how Island Academy was situated historically
and her personal understanding of how to address the needs of the school and community.
However, different from Dr. Berry, she placed the school’s context at the forefront of her
explanation for adoption, citing the priority to convene the public and private populations of
Honolulu.
In reference to the contextual background of the school, she disclosed that Island
Academy felt like an “outsider” or “fish out of water,” in regard to how to approach the initiative
due to its lack of prior culture-based initiatives. While Island Academy supported the adoption
outright, she revealed they struggled to make it fit with their school ideology and student
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population. Contributing to this struggle, was the fact that other schools seemed to already have
an established connection to a theme of the voyage. She admitted the Head of School at Island
Academy was cognizant of this and wanted to “do what they were already good at” as not to
“step on any toes.” She outlined Island Academy conversations around their intention to adopt
was to:
Keep Island Academy at the table but not be so fully invested. I know Oahu Prep and
Hawaiian Islands Institute for example, and the district schools, they’ve really committed
in very different ways. With Hawaiian Islands, there’s money involved. With Oahu
Academy, there’s this long history. I don’t see us starting a navigation component, a
navigation curriculum…our wheelhouse was sustainability and alternate fuels and for a
while he [Head of School] was searching for what our thing was going to be. We could
all have, we all do, but he felt [Pacific Institute] had the cultural thing down.
In this statement, Ms. Seto explained how Island Academy made meaning of a navigation
curriculum for their school by sharing the factors that helped shape their enactment. Her
explanation was characterized by the intersection of external community pressures, such as
knowing what other schools were doing, and the internal influences, such as her understanding of
how the curriculum could make an impact.
Externally, Ms. Seto stated Island Academy struggled with “not knowing our thing” and
being wary to commit to the cultural aspect of the curriculum due to a general comfortability
with the topic. This statement echoed Dr. Berry’s sentiment of “you have to be one of us to teach
this,” which speaks to the shared goals, situationally and challenges of these Hawai’i schools.
She disclosed Island Academy finally settled on the theme of community, capitalizing on
the school’s existing strengths, in order to “pull together to create a community of these schools”
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and to “learn more about our place.” She shared, “education is what we know” and that Island
Academy was a “sciencey and mathy place” so it was a natural direction for the school to take on
the theme of environmental sustainability and place.
This narrative demonstrates the intersection of her internal beliefs and the school’s
academic interest and values. Ms. Seto said the school’s intention for adoption was to enhance its
environmental and sustainability curriculum through community partnerships and projects. For
example, she shared, students learned about place by “taking water samples” and “digging
deeper into history of where we are.” Similarly, she also believed it was her “kūleana” or
responsibility to connect the schools together and to the outside community. Referencing her
personal beliefs about benefits of adoption she shared:
The power is going to lie in connecting these schools with each other. It’s fine that we are
this nice little resource for everyone, but everything goes away eventually. If our resource
goes away, we still want to create the situation where we’ve got these 39 schools that are
bonded by these waterways, by our watershed, by our ahupua’a, these valleys so that’s
where we’re headed. To pull together to create a community of these schools, to provide
a space for us to meet, to share resources, to learn more about our place. I think if there
were one big project or something that came out of Mālama Honua and the voyage and
what that platform, I guess, when I think about platform what that looks like for Island
Academy specifically, it’s that. To be the convener, I guess, of these schools.
Here, Ms. Seto conjoined her own perspective with the school’s ideology to discuss the
impact of voyaging within Island Academy. She brought up the school’s philosophy as one
grounded in sustainability and environmental aspects leading them to a more literal adoption of
“Mālama Honua” which translates, to “care for the earth.” This provided insight into how Island
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Academy sought to connect learning to place, emphasizing the physical aspects of place as to
increase awareness of the local environment. While she acknowledged the desire to emphasize
local knowledge, the place based curriculum adopted further grounded her in a Western
ideology. Consistent with place based Literature, Western education traditionally considers place
in terms of its physical and geographic features, with almost no regard to the relationship of the
people who share that space (Seawright, 2014).
Ultimately, this played out in the student outcomes, which were translated from their
original Mālama Honua context. An internal school document outlined the selected values of
Mālama Honua Voyage that Island Academy hoped to adopt within the context of its school
mission. ‘Aloha ‘āina, defined as “a deep and abiding love for and connection with the land” was
translated into the student learning outcome of: “students will recognize and value the
interrelationships between the social, economic, ecological, and architectural history of place and
contribute to its continuous health.” The disconnect between the traditional explanation and
learning outcome provided a definitive example of the dissonance between Indigenous and
Western epistemology. The Indigenous definition emphasizes a connection to and love for the
land, while the educational outcome expected students to “identify” this relationship and
contribute to it, with no mention of personally experiencing this phenomenon. This overt
example was demonstrative of the differing approaches to place within the educational sphere.
Western/Indigenous Balance. While Placed Based Education appears to prioritize “the
significance of the local in the global age,” it often does so through Western-oriented perspective
(Gruenewald & Smith, 2008, p. xiii). Therefore, like Island Academy’s adoption, the concept of
place, was still “most often experienced through a Western lens” (Kuwahara, year, p. 4). This
further validated the way that Island Academy discussed its enactment of sustainability practices,
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particularly in regard to the ahupua’a. In the statement below, Ms. Seto used ahupua’a, an
Indigenous term and concept, and watershed, a Western term and concept, interchangeably:
“these 39 schools that are bonded by these waterways, by our watershed, by our ahupua’a.” she
does this a second time saying, “I feel like it’s critical and in our modern day, it’s such a
complex ahupua’a, it’s such a complex watershed.” Additionally, in the school’s internal vision
planning framework for translating Mālama Honua values of sustainability into curriculum, they
identify the value of ahupua’a as:
The division of land from mountains to the sea, the ahupua’a as managed as a single
ecosystem in both natural resources and human relationships. The ahupua’a necessitated
a deep understanding about how the watershed operated and how actions up the mountain
affected life downstream. The people with in the ahupua’a relied on each other for the
survival of the community and the health of their resources” (p.1)
Then the document identified the corresponding student learning outcome as:
Students will know and understand the dynamic nature of complex systems and change
overtime. They will be able to apply the tools and concepts of system dynamics and
systems thinking in their present lives, and to inform the choices that will affect our
future. Students will know and understand that 21
st
economic practices and will produce
and consume in ways that continue to the health of the financial, social and natural
capital. (p. 1)
This example demonstrates the weaknesses associated with place based approaches, which often
use the environment as a vehicle which “ignores the local knowledge that has allowed societies
to persist for thousands of years as well as the environmental and cultural variability” that place
represents (Kuwahara, year, p.1). Through the use of both ahupua’a and watershed
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interchangeably, Ms. Seto confirmed the understanding of place-relevant cultural knowledge
comes secondary to the environmental concept of land division. This parallels the school’s
intended usage, which also compartmentalized what was supposed to be an inextricable
connection between human and nature into a tool to teach “systems dynamics” and “systems
thinking.” In other words, the school decided to overlook the ancient Hawaiian concept of an
ahupua’a, which emphasizes connection between land and people, for the more Western concept
emphasizing systems, intentionally disregards the value of learning local knowledge for the
chance to understand its scientific benefits. This aligned with how Sahlins (1992) explained
Indigenous land structure from a Western perspective, saying an Indigenous approach to place
was “more than territory and landscape, but are structural coordinates of our ethnographic
history” (Sahlins, 1992, p. 17). Therefore, Island Academy’s use of place for the purpose of
scientific inquiry and physical environmental attributes systematically marginalized local
knowledge and further perpetuated its Western approach to science which historically “attempts
to separate itself from culture” (Kuwahara, 2000, p. 6).
Ms. Seto addressed this Western perspective explicitly when outlining the school’s
intentions for using a voyaging approach. She made it clear the intended use of this curriculum
was not to learn actual navigation skills or encourage a career path in that field but more so as a
cognitive framework to learn valuable life skills. She stated,
I don’t see for example, students deciding they want to go into a career of navigation or a
career on the ocean. I think the voyage in particular, the worldwide voyage itself, has
allowed some students in some classes to see that the impossible can be possible and that
there’s an adventure waiting out there for them. If it’s not on the ocean around the world,
it’s somewhere and it’s ignited some of that. I hope that continues.
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She also stated,
All of the efforts toward sustainability and independent study and knowing more about
the waterways, their back yard and doing what we can to preserve where we are to restore
the health of where we are, I hope. I think that will continue, I know that will continue.
However, she described the greater impact beyond scientific learning as creating a community of
educators and positioning Island Academy as the convener of this community. From her
perspective, providing a resource is not enough, because resources go away, but the relationships
fostered throughout this initiative were what was going to have a lasting impact. Therefore,
through the intersection of Ms. Seto’s intention to forge lasting relationships within the
community, and the school’s desire to connect students to their physical place and community,
the concept of voyaging played out within the school. In this regard, when considering the
societal goals of a voyaging curriculum, both respondents struggled with how to best enact the
place based curriculum for benefit of the school and community.
Enactment. Both respondents addressed the critical societal aspects of place based
education within their discussion of adopting a voyaging curriculum. Data revealed agreements
on the perceived benefits of adopting a navigation curriculum and how school leaders intended to
leverage those benefits within their school community. Within enactment discussions, both
school leaders recognized the need to address the cultural aspects of place within a navigation
curriculum, yet ultimately sided with emphasizing established Western approaches to education.
This further demonstrated how the dueling perspectives of their individual epistemological
location and school’s philosophy impacted the way in which the curriculum was adopted.
For example, communication about the perceived benefits of adopting a voyaging
approach offered another way personal and professional epistemologies intersected. Both Dr.
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Berry and Ms. Seto spoke broadly about developing the Mind of a Navigator, which they
articulated as a combination of affective and cognitive skill building. While this approach
appeared to be driven by the schools’ educational mission and goals, it additionally reflected the
respondents’ personal location as the way in which members of this group hoped students would
interact with place and was reflective of their own relationship to place.
Two themes emerged in regard to the school leaders’ intended use of a voyaging
curriculum. Firstly, school leaders saw a voyaging curriculum as a vehicle to reach other
education outcomes, and second, they hoped it would reconnect them to place and community.
These dual goals also represented the ongoing struggle to develop Western educational outcomes
while addressing the cultural aspects of place in education.
Using place as a vehicle. Each school leader rationalized his/her personal and the
contextual ideologies in order to make meaning of a voyaging curriculum within his/her school
setting. Embedded in this intersection were a set of perceived benefits unique to their personal
location and aligned with their schools’ histories, climates and missions.
In articulating primary goals of adoption, both members emphasized two common
intended outcomes they hoped to achieve though this curriculum. The first benefit was to
leverage themes of voyaging to align with their schools’ existing academic and affective
standards. This desired outcome was reflective of their Western ideology as it aligned with their
own educational experiences and perception of what it means to be educated. Additionally, the
school leaders’ expected outcomes were already present in current school literature, meaning
voyaging did not offer a new set of goals for schools to adopt, but provided a mapping vehicle to
attain existing school outcomes.
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The following themes demonstrated school leaders’ description of the perceived benefits
of using voyaging as an educational approach as a result of school context and personal belief in
Western education. Furthermore, these examples speak to the variations outlined in place based
literature.
Dr. Berry overtly discussed the idea of leveraging the themes of a voyaging curriculum to
achieve the current school wide aims of Oahu Prep. In the document entitled “Goals of Oahu
Prep,” the use of Hawaiian culture and values was nested within its greater learning outcomes for
the purpose “to help each Oahu Prep students to see the interconnections between subjects; to
integrate Hawaiian values and culture in ways that extend and deepen their learning.” This
educational mission statement positioned the values and knowledge of Hawaiian culture as
vehicle to enrich the acquisition of a Western set of academic standards. Additionally, the goal
for students to recognize the interconnection between academic subjects spoke to the school’s
Western location. Academic subjects were a Western construed model of teachers, which was in
opposition to a Hawaiian or Indigenous way of knowing and learning, which views all
disciplines as interconnected.
Moreover, he admitted the expected benefits of a navigation curriculum were already
embedded within the school’s mission. In relationship to a voyaging curriculum, he stated,
“when you look at the 21st century skills, that’s all that is. That’s what we’re supposed to be
talking about for the last 20 years.” He went on to describe, “the mind of the navigator in the
canoe mirrors the 21st century skills students will need to be a critical and compassionate
thinker, to know how to communicate with eloquence and soul, to have a global perspective.” He
also said, “we want kids to be able to think critically and creatively, to be self-directed and
independent, to work collaborative and to have self-confidence, all of those qualities you want on
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a crew.” In this example, 21
st
century skills were re-conceptualized and repackaged to be
culturally and place relevant.
Additionally, he explained how the timing of the voyaging coincided with the school’s
movement to connect to place,
we’ve been developing the philosophy here. I didn’t bring that to Oahu Prep... the school
always wants creative, critical thinking, bold thinking, confident, enthusiastic, self-
directed students. I think it was the intersection of those Aims of an Oahu Prep education,
just as Nainoa [Thompson] was thinking about going around the world and training for it.
This statement provides insight into the inception of the curriculum at Oahu Prep.
According to Dr. Berry, it was the intersection of timing of the Mālama Honua Voyage as well
as the desire of the school to reconnect to place. The ease with which Dr. Berry’s personal
understanding of educational outcomes aligns with the school’s 20-year-old mission further
reflects their complimentary Western ideological approaches.
This approach was consistent with Sobel’s (2004) perspective of place based education.
As a founding father of PBE, Sobel (2004) recognized the concept of place as a “starting point to
teach concepts in language arts, mathematics, social studies, science and other subjects across the
curriculum” (p. 6). In this way, Dr. Berry communicated his personal agenda for voyaging and
specifically the current worldwide voyage as a platform to reach existing school wide expected
learning outcomes.
Similarly, Ms. Seto talked about the role of the timing of the voyage for her school when
she described “to have the worldwide voyage and have Indigenous made in Hawai’i connection
to these great UN (United Nations) global goals, but there’s something from home. This connects
us to home. It’s been good timing.” She went on to outline the goals for her school as, “the
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listening, the analyzing, the critical thinking, all of those things that need to happen to be
effective, global citizens and participatory in that… We want them to be well rounded. Strong,
academically.” Here, Ms. Seto revealed the goal of Island Academy was to teach students to
think a certain way, to be able to be a global citizen and to hold the qualities deemed necessary
by various Western educational standards. These outcomes were in alignment with the academic
and intellectual outcomes in the conceptual framework whereas academic outcomes were
defined as compartmentalized units of knowledge and skills and intellectual outcomes were said
to address “habits of mind that include a variety of tendencies to interpret experience” (Katz,
1999, p. i).
Both perspectives were consistent with the Environmental Education body of literature.
More specially, they aligned with Sterling’s (2009) definition of an intrinsic environmental
approach, which champions the acquisition of educational goals over environmental ones.
Therefore, the motivation behind adopting an environmental or outdoor curriculum was to
engage students in learning that was meaningful, so they were more apt to reach American
educational standards. However, within this category, school leaders varied along the continuum
in how they discussed their intentions for achieving these PBE outcomes.
Both respondents acknowledged the presence of traditional voyaging knowledge and
skills present in wayfinding curriculum, yet use it in a way to champion their respective school’s
outcomes. This practice of leveraging Indigenous ways of knowing to achieve academic
standards such as college and career readiness standards, was reflective of a Western approach to
knowledge. Western education teaches students strategies and approaches to learning about the
environmental, whereas an Indigenous approach would consider experiential learning a way to
develop an authentic relationship to nature (Meyer, 2001). This was also consistent with Meyer’s
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(2001) assessment of Western educational models, which seeks to learn through the land, as
opposed to learning from the land.
Secondly, respondents hoped to use voyaging as a vehicle to reconnect them to the
community. The variation among school leaders was in the way they hoped to connect to
community. Data showed that while Dr. Berry sought to reconnect to community through
diversifying the student population and increasing financial aid and Ms. Seto sought to bridge
relationships between public and private communities, both respondents wrestled with how to do
this. Both interpretations of how to connect back to place were reflective of their Western
situationality and influenced by their personal relationship to place.
Dr. Berry grappled with the duality of Oahu Prep’s history throughout the interview. As
a prominent Western college preparatory school, he struggled with how to prepare students for
success in a Western society while simultaneously address the tensions of place. He
demonstrated this discord by explaining,
Our students here are the beneficiaries of two gifts. One Western and one Hawaiian. One,
the gift of bold vision of education by Protestant missionaries who, 200 years ago, came
here to do that. The other gift is a gift of ‘āina, the land, by Hawaiian chiefs. It’s the
duality of those two gifts that make us different, make us unique.
Due to the school history, he explained,
We’re called to a different type of leadership that embraces both Western and Hawaiian
culture, history, tradition. It’s in embracing both of them that I think that they begin to
understand the roots of Oahu Prep and where this place is and where this school is and
makes us different.
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Here he acknowledged the school’s responsibility to honor both gifts, and also outlined some of
the ways he’s addressed this balance when he stated, “I think that I’ve been motivated by, not the
financial aid part, but just becoming more a part of the community and becoming more
representative of the community, financially.” He explained, due to his financial contribution
Oahu Prep was now “more diverse ethnically, economically, and a lot of things. But, we’re still
holding that tension. I think by holding that tension, we have this responsibility to work through
it.” On the one hand, he explained the contextual restraints of the school, while on the other he
demonstrated his personal attempts to connect to the community.
Furthermore, Dr. Berry recognized that it had not alleviated the cultural pressure. He
addressed the problematic political aspects of place when he asked himself, “How do you move
forward? You have to move forward with pride and with a vision for curriculum, but we also
move forward by some healing.” Yet, when pressed about the school’s role in facilitating
healing, he stated “the fact that we can talk about it is probably good.” Here Dr. Berry
demonstrated this dichotomy of his positionality. While he empathized with Indigenous
perspectives and engaging with the social, cultural and political aspects of place, the space to
properly address them had not yet been created. His enthusiasm for a voyaging curriculum was
overridden by the realities of a Western context. He again, dreamt of how a voyaging curriculum
would play out in the school he stated, “I’d like to think that in the same way that community
service, any spiritual learning is. It’s a level ground because you’re not comparing SAT scores.
You’re out there digging …I keep thinking maybe the wa’a may be able to do that.”
While he envisioned the way in which a voyaging curriculum could level the
socioeconomic barriers of education, the actual enactment fell victim to one of the apprehensions
of PBE, as asserted by McInerney, Smyth, and Down (2000), who stated, “PBE is often
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presented unrealistically within the constraints of school” (pp. 9-12). While, this perspective
shed light on the contextual constraints of the school, it additionally demonstrated the limitations
of Western perspectives of place.
Echoing Dr. Berry’s thoughts and struggles, Ms. Seto also acknowledged the limitations
of a place based approach. She stated, “the phrase place based education is a very mainland
thing, but the concepts around it are a very Hawai’i thing and I think we’re coming to terms with
that and we’re finding our way. She went on to say “I think the voyage probably aligned with
lots of other things, but it’s really... The schools in Hawai’i are really starting to wrap their heads
around what that means for us.”
She also identified the responsibility of the school to address these conflicts when she
explained,
the idea that there’s still a disconnect and there’s still imbalance and what can we do
about that? I hope that [conversation] continues. All of the efforts toward sustainability
and independent study and knowing more about [place], their back yard and doing what
we can to preserve where we are to restore the health of where we are.
Both passages outlined the duality of his struggle to celebrate both the Western and
Hawaiian foundations of the schools. While both respondents shared the desire to connect their
students to the place they lived, they were also constrained by the schools’ missions and their
own epistemological perspectives of place.
This predisposition of using place as a vehicle was consistent with the findings of
McInerney et al., (2000), Western iterations of PBE often reinforce hegemonic curriculum by
ignoring issues of inequity, politics and inherent power structures in preference to a celebratory
approach to place (p. 10). While Dr. Berry’s personal experiences exemplified the tensions,
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which develop when the social, political and cultural aspects of place were not present in
education, his ability to enact these desires was constrained by his simplified understanding of
what it means to be engaged with place. Furthermore, when he acknowledged the dissonance
between his race, culture and community, he simultaneously revealed an established meaningful
relationship with place, thus positioning him in a place-neutral perspective. Ms. Seto, was
similarly confined by the school’s mission to emphasize a curriculum rich in science and math
based outcomes. This data revealed the alignment of the respondent’s personal perspective and
school ideology.
Conclusion and Summary
While variation existed between the two school leaders, both intentions for enactment
further demonstrated their Western ideology. For example, place based education itself is a
Western concept, characterized by a concerted educational effort to connect with the land,
whereas Indigenous people, such as Native Hawaiians, view place and culture as inextricable
from each other, thus making Place-Based Education, from an Indigenous perspective a
redundant concept.
Furthermore, both respondents expressed the desire to use the land to achieve broader
educational goals. According to Meyer (2001) this was typical of a Western education system,
which seeks to learn through the land, as opposed to Hawaiian epistemology which would
champion learning from the land.
The intended enactment of this category was also consistent with Gruenewald’s (2003)
critique of one-dimensional PBE, arguing that an effective PB approach goes beyond the
physical aspects of place to include the social, cultural, political aspects of all people who
occupy the same place” (p.4).
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Category Two: Tension between Leaders’ Epistemology and Their School Contexts
The second category along the continuum was comprised of school leaders who
personally subscribed to an Indigenous ideology but worked in a Western oriented school
environment. Motivations for adopting a navigation curriculum for members of this category,
were influenced by the intersection of Indigenous upbringings and the perceived needs of their
schools. These personal, cultural experiences shaped their perception of where and how learning
occurs, which impacted their approach to close perceived learning gaps within their schools. This
group, most clearly pulls aspects of Indigenous knowledge from voyaging for the stated purpose
of acquiring Western educational goals.
Both respondents revealed aspects of a culturally Hawaiian upbringing that further
located them within an Indigenous epistemology. Respondents expressed direct connections to
voyaging and Hawaiian culture, and made mention of how learning occurred from their own
perspective aligning with an Indigenous perspective which “views people and the environment as
constantly overlapping and interacting” and the school’s perspective which seeks to use Place as
a vehicle to acquire more traditional educational outcomes (Kana’iaupuni & Malone, 2006, p.
283). Their native worldview was further revealed in their struggle to Westernize a voyaging
curriculum, separating their personal ideology with that of their schools.
Through their responses, members of this category revealed they had to manage both
ideological perspectives of the world. Data revealed that these school leaders, while individually
grounded in their own Indigenous ways of knowing, had to address an opposing perspective in
order to effectively fulfill their position within their school. This tension played out in their
responses, through a disconnect between their own beliefs about voyaging and how they made
meaning of voyaging within the context of their school.
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School leaders in this category perceived their professional responsibility was to provide
educators with the resources and tools to be able to incorporate the curriculum into multiple
disciplines. However, in order to achieve this, their responses revealed they had to separate their
own perspectives about the benefits of the curriculum in order to serve the school needs.
Members of this category expressed a complex and conflicted understanding of a voyaging
approach characterized by a misalignment of their school’s worldview with their own. The most
apparent example of this conflict was presented when school leaders made a point to
intentionally distance their enactment of voyaging curriculum from the Hawaiian culture of
where it originated. The following example demonstrated the disconnect between their personal
values and what their school has asked of them. Furthermore, it demonstrated the how both
respondents rationalized the two perspectives in order to carry out their role in the enactment of
the curriculum.
Cultural implications of voyaging. While both respondents had cultural ties to
traditional Hawaiian voyaging, interviews revealed a disconnect between their personal
viewpoint and their school’s beliefs surrounding the cultural implications of voyaging. Jack
Wright demonstrated this perspective when he described the purpose voyaging and its cultural
relevance within Pacific Institute. He said,
It’s cultural, but you look at the art of wayfinding, and it’s, I don’t know how, there’s a
cultural component definitely, but a lot of the concepts that you hear about that is
transferrable is more of a technical nature…. I’m not sure on the cultural aspect other
than it came from our ancestors.
Here, Mr. Wright explained while the concept of wayfinding had cultural components, he
also considered some of the transferrable aspects for education as culture-neutral. This
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explanation of wayfinding has two explanations. One interpretation considers his proximity to
the modern art of Hawaiian Wayfinding, which utilizes nature in a more technical way than their
ancestors. Utilizing the Star Compass, developed by Nainoa Thompson, modern navigators
divide stars into 32 houses, each separated by approximately 11.5 degrees, which roughly adds
up to 360 degrees. Navigators use the specific measurement of their hands as degree markers in
order to locate themselves in the night’s sky. Using this calculated framework, modern
navigators, such as Mr. Wright, have adopted a more technical approach to navigation, as
opposed to traditional observational methods, which were believed to memorize by ancient
navigators. Therefore, using this literal model, it was conceivable to teach modern wayfinding
without emphasizing the traditional cultural component.
However, another way to understand this perspective was through the lens of Culturally
Sustaining Pedagogy. From this perspective, Mr. Wright attempted to repackaged cultural
knowledge, such as wayfinding, into a more technical curriculum in order to appeal to a wider
non-native audience. This approach leveraged voyaging as a culturally relevant tool–or a place
based mechanism to teach academic content, that did not previously exist.
Additionally, expressing uncertainty regarding the relevance of culture within a voyaging
curriculum could also be due to his proximity to modern, technical wayfinding or a contradiction
between his native epistemological and cultural background and his professional position. In
stating that voyaging originated from “our ancestors” he acknowledged its cultural heritage and
his own connection to it while simultaneously minimizing its cultural significance in the
classroom. This further revealed the way in which he had to manage both his personal
perspective and the school’s to fulfill his position. In this statement, he not only recognized the
cultural underpinnings of voyaging but aligned himself to that ideology. This was a further
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reflection of his personal location as, from Native Hawaiian perspective, voyaging was
considered an extension of both self and culture, representing social transformation through the
constructing and negotiating of identity by way of one’s relationship to nature (Richards, 2008).
Although he subscribed to this perspective and was a navigator himself, he was able to decouple
his own beliefs to rationalize its role in education, further revealing his ability to separate out his
personal beliefs from the context of the school. He justified his role in enactment as to make the
curriculum accessible to educators regardless of their discipline or connection to Hawai’i.
Similarly, we sew this same conflict played out in Kapono Moore’s discussion of this enactment
approach:
One of the big messages that came out of our own Mālama Honua push is looking at a
more broader content area like science versus maybe a ‘more Hawaiian studies’ focus.
For me and for some of my team, we try to kind of sometimes avoid the perception that
this Voyage and Voyages is just about Hawaiian culture. Because I try to look at it as, no,
it’s about physics. It can be about computer-ology, climatology, oceanography ... There’s
other content aspects that teachers can bite into. Taking a 30 thousand point of view
where you look at the bigger content areas of Voyage like this could encompass like
geography.
Here, Mr. Moore explained his role as working to find a way to broaden the curriculum to
encourage large-scale adoption by teachers. In doing so, he distanced himself from the original
cultural connection to accommodate the school’s expectations of adoption. He wrestled with the
separation from his personal perspective when he said, “I try to look at it as no, it’s about
physics, it can be about computer-ology, climatology, oceanography...There’s other content
aspects that teachers can bite into.” This statement demonstrates a concerted effort to decouple
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cultural aspects of the curriculum in his own mind, by convincing himself it was more about the
academic subjects that traditional knowledge. Additionally, the way in which he talked about
how he “tries to look at it” revealed how he had to detach himself from the traditional and
cultural aspects inherent in his own worldview in order to find “other aspects” that the school
could feasibly adopt. Finally, he rationalized this decoupling of cultural and academic benefits
by stating the goal was to make it tangible for all teachers, even those who were not necessarily
comfortable with the cultural piece.
This acknowledgement of teacher comfortability was reminiscent of the respondents’
sentiment in Category 1’s regarding teachers and administrators feeling uncomfortable teaching
about culture. However, Category 1 leaders’ approach to the cultural connection came from a
different understanding of culture than the members of this category. While Mr. Moore described
his role as “tailoring” the curriculum to fit the teachers need, he did so in a way that was
somewhat disconnected from his own worldview. Therefore, while his personal location was
naturally nested with the cultural aspects of place and voyaging, his professional responsibility
tasked him with broadening the curriculum to encompass a Western iteration. It was this
intersection of contrasting perspectives where conflict began to emerge from the data.
Additionally, the disconnect between the personal perspective and the school’s needs was further
suggestive of his Indigenous perspective and how he had to manage both worldviews. The
conflict exemplified within this statement further demonstrates his Indigenous ideology and is
consistent with most Indigenous cultures where “there are no separate social and environmental
movements because the two were never disaggregated” (Hawken, 2007, pp. 22-23).
This was especially apparent when compared to Dr. Berry’s case. Wherein his personal
location placed him in the broad Western iteration of the curriculum, which Mr. Wright and Mr.
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Moore hoped to achieve, he struggled with how to make meaning of the cultural aspects. Data
revealed this was due to the lack of relationship to place, a concept which was inherent within an
Indigenous or Hawaiian ideology. Therefore, while members of both categories ended up in the
same curricular place, they do so from very divergent starting points. The goal of Category 1
leaders was to connect more to community and culture, wherein which their personal ideology
prevented them from enacting, while members of Category 2 strived to generalize curriculum to
reach a more Western set of educational outcomes, which was equally outside of their
epistemological perspective.
The greatest variation between leaders in Category 1 and 2 was their acknowledgement
of, and relationship to place. Respondents in Category 1, acknowledged the cultural
underpinnings of a voyaging curriculum but struggled with how to enact them or make meaning
of them within their school setting. Alternatively, members of Category 2, who had direct
connections to the voyage, overtly disregarded the cultural foundations to make way for
academic outcomes, which can be broadly adopted and enacted. While both respondents in
Category 2 were grounded in Indigenous ideology, the Western focus of school in which they
worked, overrode their personal ideology and relationship to voyaging. Therefore, when
opposing viewpoints come into conflict, findings showed the Western context overruled the
Indigenous approach.
Role of Place
One of the significant variations from the first category was the respondents’ relationship
to place. While they still referred to place based approaches, the way in which they understood
the role of place was revealed to be considerably different. For one, they viewed place and
culture based curriculum as inextricable from each other.
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Mr. Moore shared his perspective of place as framework for how to relate to the world
when he said “looking at Hawai’i as the place and what this ... And this echoes with intents of
the Voyage as well looking at elder knowledge to kind of be framework for how we can
understand the world.” This statement grounded him in an Indigenous ideology in two ways.
Firstly, by referencing the value of ancestral and Indigenous knowledge as a way to understand
the world and secondly, he expressed his belief that place, Hawai’i, in particular, offered a
foundation for both applying this ancestral knowledge and using it as a framework to relate to the
world. This is consistent with Meyer’s (2001) understanding of Indigenous knowledge systems
stating, that Indigenous knowledge was nested in the interconnectedness of self and place.
Furthermore, he expanded on his understanding of place based education within in Western
school systems when he outlined:
The voyage represented a way to investigate what it means to have place based education
in our schools. So, looking at Hawaiian knowledge and what is contained here in
Hawai’i. The land and the people and ways of knowing with navigation and written
language and the other, you know, sets of knowledge in Hawai’i that are so rich.
Dynamic yet often times overlooked for things that come from the continent standards or
continent published or printed or just not created here locally. So, I think that was one
way or avenue that the Voyage played out that we can look at Hawai’i as this really rich
textbook of sorts to learn from. We call it a place based.
This statement clearly demonstrates his individual beliefs about the values of the voyage and its
relationship to place within an Indigenous knowledge system. Here, the recognition of the
inextricable interconnectedness between place and culture as it related to voyaging curriculum
was in stark difference than his previous statement where he discussed his strategy to remove
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cultural aspects from the curriculum. The contrast of these statements further exemplified the
cognitive dissonance present within the leader’s understanding of the curriculum. One on hand,
he acknowledged the set of Indigenous knowledge located in Hawai’i, yet similar to Mr. Wright,
minimized the scope of it into the title of “place based”. Similar to previous sections, where he
had already established that place and culture, from an Indigenous perspective were one in the
same. This further grounded him in an Indigenous perspective, as his belief was in contrast to a
Western perspective of place which champion learning from the land. While they both discussed
distancing the curriculum from Hawaiian culture to reach a broader audience, their own
understanding of the curriculum’s value was nested in its Indigenous knowledge base. Here, Mr.
Moore attempted to make meaning of a Hawaiian “set of knowledge” for students and teachers
by labeling it “place based” which was symbolic of the conflict between his personal ideology
and what he perceived were the best benefits for the school.
Inherent in this idea of Indigenous knowledge was where and how learning occurs. In
alignment with Indigenous perspectives, Mr. Moore expressed the concept of using elder and
cultural knowledge of place as a framework to view the world. Additionally, he contended the
set of knowledge located in Hawai’i often was secondary to Western academic standards,
acknowledging that they have not yet found a place for both within their curriculum.
Further evidence of cognitive dissonance was present within the discussion of school
wide benefits of using a navigation approach, as they were often discussed in conflict with their
personal ideology. An example of this intersection of ideologies was present in the data when
Mr. Moore and Mr. Wright discussed their strategy to engage and inform teachers. While both
respondents empathized with Indigenous and culturally grounded educational practices, they also
had to address the challenge of how to appeal to today’s teachers. Mr. Wright further grounded
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himself within Hawaiian ways of knowing epistemology when he explained what culture-based
education meant to him. He said:
We learn by watching. We learn by, we don’t ask questions. We learn by watching and
then doing and then when that teacher felt it was ready for you to and you earned the
right to get that information, they would give that information, but you have to do your
own research and studies on your own. That’s really Hawaiian culture-based education.
This statement regarding where knowledge was located, further demonstrated his alignment with
an Indigenous epistemology. Experience and observation were essential steps of knowledge
formation from a native Hawaiian perspective, as Meyer (1998) explained, “how one experiences
the environment has implications for how he/she understands the world” (p. 23). Furthermore,
observation and experiential learning were thought to help foster a keen sense of awareness
uniquely valuable to Hawaiian culture. He revealed his deeply traditional positionality as well as
his struggle to make alternative meaning of navigation curriculum, through the following
statement,
That’s why I kind of question some of those things. I’m like, “What is it? What is truly
Hawaiian culture based education?” I know there are groups trying to put that together,
but they’re trying to put it together, but you’re living in this modern society.
He went on to say:
Looking at education system and saying, “Do we need to adapt? Is cultural based the best
way? Is using what they’re doing,” because what we’re seeing now, I think, you’re seeing
a lot of Indigenous knowledge coming back out to help solve these complex modern
issues. You get this Indigenous knowledge. Is that telling us that it actually did work?
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Here, he continued to wrestle with the concept of culture based education as related to
navigation. While he acknowledged Indigenous knowledge revitalization as it related to modern
day issues, he also questioned its appropriateness when he said he questioned culture based
education, what it was whether it actually worked for native people. This train of thinking was
also reflective of his personal interpretation of Hawaiian culture based education, in which one
observes and acts on one’s observations.
Data revealed that Mr. Wright, continued to come back to this idea of learning throughout
his enactment strategy. This culture based perspective played out in the way he attempted to
engage students in with the canoe. Tapping into his own perspective of learning and knowledge,
he continued to emphasize a culture based model when he discussed:
There’s a strategy of, how do we get students involved, have them have that experience,
and then take it back and share it with their schools.
He went on to say they tried to
get students there so that they can have that experience and then make a difference.
That’s kind of Pacific Institute approach…Get the information, get them engaged, and
now we’re trying to make them empowered that they will now run with it. That’s kind of
our strategy.
This approach emphasized the experiential aspect of Hawaiian epistemology and spoke to where
knowledge is located from an Indigenous perspective. In Western education, knowledge is often
located outside of oneself, and is measured by the ability to identify and recall, as seen in Island
Academy’s learning outcomes, which asked students to identify sustainable practices. Mr.
Wright’s approach, however, revealed the hope to capitalize on student’s experiences to
empower them to pursue further knowledge acquisition. Aligning his personal ideology with that
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of his culture was an example of a critical pedagogy of place, which must relate curriculum to
actual student experiences of the world, not experiences that students were assumed to have.
Furthermore, authors suggest this curriculum must “mirror the scope of a child’s world: first on
home, school, then neighborhood, religion” with the goal of contributing to well-being of student
and community (Sobel, 2002 as cited in Gruenewald, 2003, p. 8).
Mr. Wright addressed this concept when he said:
How do you provide people an opportunity? How do you give them that experience?
How do they move forward? That would be great. They’re kind of like, “Wow.” My
children, if I can give them…put them in that situation, give them an experience and have
a core group that supports them, and then as they move, there’s always this core group
that is supporting them…
Mr. Moore’s approach focused on teacher engagement rather than students, but utilized some of
the same cultural tactics. He explained his strategy stating:
So that’s kind of how it’s been rolled out and trying to touch people’s hearts and minds
with this idea that hey, there’s other options out there for teaching and other creative
ways to approach your subject area. It totally fits Hawai’i. We’re surrounded by an
ocean. Earlier on in my engagement with the Voyage and with teachers, I had this idea
that teachers, some born and raised here, some maybe not, but we live on an island but
people don’t get out. As teachers, we get stuck in our rooms and we don’t even go to the
beach sometimes and get in the water. You don’t get to, I call it “wind in your hair and
your feet in the water” and I thought that if teachers had more of a spiritual learning they
might get inspired to look at the ocean like a textbook or a resource for them to teach
with.
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These complementary approaches not only illuminated their personal location but also provided
insight into how they adjusted their perspective to recruit others to engage with the curriculum.
Enactment
Another example of managing two perspectives played out in the enactment of a
voyaging curriculum. Both respondents discuss strategies and curriculum. One example that
demonstrated the conflict of perspectives was the way in which they describe the enactment of
navigation based curriculum. Consistent with his multifaceted perspective on voyaging, Mr.
Wright suggested using the skills a navigator uses to find land as a vehicle or framework to
achieve Western goals such as college and career. He switches back to the more conceptual
aspect of wayfinding, or ‘mindset of a navigator,’ which he described as,
using the skills, or using the principles or using these concepts that the navigator uses to
find land. How do you use those concepts in a constructive way that you can transfer that
into a college or career, post-high college kind of an atmosphere?
Even when describing a more conceptual version of wayfinding he minimized the cultural
concepts and values of Hawaiian culture to attend to the Western educational benchmarks of
college or career readiness. This distinct departure from the rich values of voyaging in order to
serve academic standards of college readiness further revealed his rationalization for managing
both worlds. Here again, his proximity to the complexities of modern wayfinding allowed him
to compartmentalize the cultural, traditional components of wayfinding from the more technical
aspects. Therefore, from his familiarity of this knowledge, he was able to create distance. He
demonstrated this distance when he revisited the discussion of the cultural implications when
discussing the enactment of geometry curriculum.
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We developed a curriculum for geometry that uses all the angles. That part, I don’t know
how cultural that is, but you could say its cultural because it came from our community. I
don’t know. Then you have that piece, concepts of that. Then you have, how do you
know where you are and that’s through dead reckoning, the speed of the canoe, and
knowing the direction you’re going. If you came from here, this island, you only know
where you are from knowing where you came from. It’s kind of a cultural thing, but the
scientific term is dead reckoning, of knowing where you are from where you came from.
In this statement, Mr. Wright described the basic concepts of traditional Hawaiian navigation:
using the speed of the canoe, where you are, where you came from, yet attributed those skills to
the scientific approach of dead reckoning. The way in which he Westernizes the concept of
Hawaiian voyaging through referring to it as dead reckoning for echoes the way Mrs. Seto
similarly interchanged the Hawaiian and Western terms ahupua’a and watershed. Both examples
revealed how school leaders initially adopted an Indigenous knowledge concept yet ultimately
enact it in a way that marginalized its Indigenous value to perpetuate Western understanding of
the concept. However, given Mr. Wright’s background with the voyaging, his
compartmentalization appeared to be intentional and strategic. Mr. Wright, distinctly separated
the Western, or what he called “technical” aspects from the cultural aspects of the geometry
curriculum, continually justifying how it can be viewed through both perspectives. What he
initially referred to as a technical skill of dead reckoning he also explained through native
intelligence. The following statement revealed his multidimensional understanding of
wayfinding from conceptual, to technical and educational in order to best present it to the
teachers:
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I shared with them how to navigate, and I shared with them the concept of navigation, I
shared with them about sail dynamics, I shared with them about the canoe and all those
different things. I just kind of laid it all on the table and took them through just many
activities to give them an idea. Then from that, they were like, “Oh. This might work
from the angle.” We’ve got to teach them how to use a protractor and how to understand
the angles through 60 and such. Then from that, we created the lesson, which was to give
them, teach them the star compass, the students the star compass, have them build their
own star compass based on one point, and then from that one point, build their star
compass. Then we give them an in-classroom activity, which they need to find different
islands, different points on these islands, and then they have to say what the degree is and
then what the star house is on the star compass, so you’ve got both sides. That was kind
of an easy one. Then we added in the wind, and the wind is coming from this direction.
You can only sail 67 degrees off of the wind line, so now they are integrating tacking into
the equation.
This example of a geometry curriculum integrated both conceptual and technical aspects of
traditional Hawaiian navigation into the classroom. While the way in which the lesson was
delivered might be representative of Western education, using information collected by the
senses such as wind speed, angle and the star compass, were all traditionally Hawaiian.
Additionally, due to his personal background in navigation and wayfinding, his curriculum was
derived from authentic, generational knowledge that cannot be taught in books.
Furthermore, this passage was representative of multidimensional nature of voyaging
curriculum. Without attaching judgement to whether it was cultural or technical, in this section
Mr. Wright described a curriculum absolvent of epistemological tendencies. Yet, because
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nowhere throughout his interview did he discuss the possibility of a wayfinding curriculum could
address both Indigenous and Western outcomes simultaneously is representative of his
compartmentalized perspective. This inability to consider both the cultural and academic
outcomes of the curriculum was unique to leaders in Category 2 as they both actively struggled
with managing both perspectives disjointedly. This differs from Category 1 leaders’ descriptions
of benefits and enactment in which school leaders aspired to utilize the curriculum to
simultaneously satisfy both outcomes, but failed to do so due to a lack of understanding of how
to implement the cultural aspect. However, within this Category, leaders’ competing personal
and school ideologies created a rift so divergent, respondents were either unable to conceptualize
them as supplementary and therefore end up privileging the Western knowledge over Indigenous
knowledge, or do so intentionally.
This was particularly significant because it especially underscored the role of the school
leader in the enactment process. Data found the interjection of the school leader’s personal
perspective significantly influenced the schools attempt to operationalize the skills essential to
achieve the mind of a navigator. For example, when compared with the 2010 Navigation lesson
from the Pacific Institute’s learning resources webpage, student objectives were comparable to
those identified in the geometry lesson. They were stated as:
▪ Describe how navigation contributes to the preservation of Hawaiian culture
▪ Identify three natural navigational clues used to find islands
▪ Learn the four cardinal directions in English and Hawaiian
These navigation outcomes match up with the goals of the geometry lesson, with the only
difference being the cultural benchmark, which Mr. Wright left out. The benchmark for the
navigation class was to:
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incorporate cultural traditions, language, history, and values in meaningful holistic
processes to nourish the emotional, physical, mental/ intellectual, social, and spiritual
well-being of the learning community that promote healthy mauli (life spirit) and mana
(power bestowed directly or indirectly from a supernatural source; an inherent quality of
command and leadership; authority).
This further demonstrated the significance of the school leader’s individual epistemology as it
related to the enactment of the voyaging approach. While Pacific Institute had already
established a set of aligned academic and cultural outcomes, the interjection of Mr. Wright’s
personal ideology forced him to consciously separate them from each other.
This was also evident within the District School. While Mrs. Moore clearly believed in a
culturally relevant voyaging curriculum, he settled for a Western implementation. Here, he
shared his hopes for how the curriculum would play out culturally,
I think it kind of played itself out more on the STEM, kind of, realm. And I think that’s
also a reflection on what the available funding was because we were able to get funding
in those areas. I was hoping to see more humanity base things like with music and dance.
Songs of Hōkūle’a and songs of voyaging. You saw some of that, but I wasn’t directly
involved. I actually did some teaching. I taught a few songs to different elementary
schools that requested it. So, I did do some fine arts work with that. But I thought that
would be a more tapped into area, but it didn’t seem to get as much traction as the STEM
did.
He went on to say,
so, I think that the voyage it came at a good time just in general with the trends in climate
change and looking at how we’re impacting the world and the environment. And so, it
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was easier to find fits with science curriculum and science teaching. I think that voyaging
often times takes ... It’s kind of like a hands-on thing where you gotta get on the canoe
and you gotta kind of like get out of the classroom to do that. So that’s one area that we
weren’t able to really give teachers really good content knowledge on. What voyaging is
and how to translate that into a classroom.
Here, Mr. Moore recognized the need to “get on the canoe” and “get out of the classroom” in
order to fully appreciate voyaging curriculum, yet he seemed to settle for its presence in a
Western science or STEM teaching environment. While, he had hoped for more cultural aspects
to gain momentum such as Hawaiian song and dance, he acknowledged that school funding
influenced how and where the curriculum would be adopted. Therefore, while this more Western
interpretation and enactment of the curriculum is in conflict to his own epistemological
background and intent, there was a sense of appreciation for it being adopted regardless of
ideological lens.
Category Three: Alignment between Leaders’ Indigenous Epistemology and School
Contexts
The third category was characterized by individuals who were personally located in an
Indigenous worldview. Members of this group believed in adopting a voyaging curriculum
inclusive of its Indigenous aspects, for the purpose of providing a foundation in both content and
culture. Therefore, the school leader and their role within the school were in alignment with their
values and enactment, and accepting of non-traditional models of education. However, while
both respondents held comparable ideologies, the way they played out or enacted their beliefs
varied due to their school context and role within their school. Therefore, this category was
defined by their beliefs on an individual level as they each had a different lens through which
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they perceived their schools’ needs. Additionally, respondents acknowledged multiple ways of
knowing and demonstrating knowledge, which reflected their indigenous perspective. Literature
on Indigenous epistemology suggests Hawaiian people gather information from their five senses
and additionally champion the art of awareness. This was a cultural type of intelligence derived
from a “deep internalized knowledge” about surroundings, according to Meyer (2001, p. 134).
The personal ideology of group members was aligned with the roles they held within
their schools. In other words, the beneficial aspects of enacting a voyaging curriculum was
already ingrained with their own belief systems. However, unique to this category was how the
school leaders arrived at their epistemological perspective. The two members of this category
were Kumu (teacher) Anuhea Kula of Oahu Prep and Dr. Cindy Figeuroa of Ko’olaupoko
Charter School (KCS). Kumu K was the director of Hawaiian Curriculum engagement at Oahu
Prep and was tasked with enacting a navigation themed curriculum based on Dr. Berry’s vision.
Dr. Figueroa was the head of school and enactor of curriculum at KCS. Both Kumu (teacher)
Anuhea Kula (Kumu K) of Oahu Prep and Dr. Cindy Figueroa’s of Ko’olaupoko Charter School
(KCS) had personal experiences in both formal Western education and Indigenous knowledge,
which placed them in both perspectives. Different from other respondents, was that their own
educational background was very Western (both were alumnae of Oahu Prep), yet they had
organically developed and subscribed to an Indigenous way of understanding the world. Dr.
Figueroa first expressed her Indigenous perspective in reference to her educational philosophy
about Hawai’i’s students with learning differences when she said, “what they need is they need
back with culture. They need to get back to land, and they need to be doing something.” This
sentiment was suggestive of an Indigenous and place centered approach, in that she believed
using the land and culture as a means to educate students of Hawai’i. This personal perspective
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was also inherent in the school mission and values. In the same way, Kumu K who worked at
Oahu Prep, was still very much grounded in an indigenous ideology.
While these two individuals had very similar backgrounds and interpretations of
navigation curriculum, the way their understanding and expectations of the curriculum was
played out, differed at their respective schools. One reason for this was their position within their
school. While Dr. Figueroa was the visionary and enactor, Kumu K was solely responsible for
enacting the vision of her head of school, Dr. Berry. This lent itself to some divergence from the
intended vision and plan for enactment. Due to Kumu K’s Indigenous epistemological
perspective, the way she internalized and made meaning of Dr. Berry’s vision deviated from his
more Western explanation or expectation of enactment. She described how she came into the
position of Hawaiian Students and voyage engagement when she said,
I started in this job 5 years ago, so this is my fifth year in this job. I was a third-grade
teacher for forever…Then Dr. Berry asked me to do this, more across the board for the
school.
She later described,
Dr. Berry reminded me, “Anuhea, every class doesn’t have to do this. Every student has
to know this.” I’m like, “Okay, okay, okay,” that opens a lot of, that gives us a lot of
leeway in that every class in the academy, you know, there are so many choices, doesn’t
have to have this piece, but every child who goes through needs to know it.
Here she outlined the expected reach of the curriculum and what she was tasked with
accomplishing. In this statement, she described the process of interpreting Dr. Berry’s intent for
the curriculum in her own way. While her personal location was not completely aligned with the
stated mission of the school in the way Dr. Berry’s was, she admitted that she had a lot of leeway
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to accomplish his vision for every student to know the curriculum. Additionally, the decision to
take Kumu K out of the classroom in order to fulfill the task of Director of Hawaiian Studies and
enactment and engagement coordinator provided insight into his own comfortability with the
content of the curriculum. While his goal was for every student to know about the voyage, the
appointment of a new position and hand off signaled his distance from the enactment parts of it.
Another way their enactment of navigation approach differed was due to their student
population. While KCS supports a majority of native students, Oahu Prep’s students were
majority non-native. Even with Oahu Prep’s intention of increasing the socio economic and
ethnical diversity, their primary demographic influenced how the curriculum was attended it.
Therefore, while these two individual school leaders were both responsible for carrying
out the vision, their different roles in the formation of the vision impact the way they were able
to accomplish this task. While Dr. Figueroa was both the school leader and responsible for the
vision and enactment, Kumu K was held to the expectations of Dr. Berry, who’s interpretation
was also infused with his own epistemological location and the context of the school.
Role of Voyaging
One commonality among this category was their understanding of voyaging’s role in
school. While they differed in the way voyaging was integrated in their school, their
understanding of benefits remained consistent. Unique to KCS was the way which all academic
and affective learning was delivered through the framework of wayfinding. Dr. Figueroa
explained this concept saying, “I guess, the voyage is our vision, and our mission really impacts
our last value since value is olakino maika’i [healthy life and body].” The intersection of the
beliefs of school and school leader was virtually seamless, including the language and analogies
Dr. Figueroa used to talk about the school’s mission.
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Demonstrating her own locality as well as that of the school, she shared the following
olelo no’eau or proverb and analogy to describe the significance of voyaging within the school’s
approach to education.
If you’re on Wa‘a [canoe], you’re only on this small …he wa‘a he moku, he moku he
wa‘a [the canoe is an island, the island is a canoe]. Right? Our community is our wa’a
[canoe] Because we have pilikia [problems], and we cannot get along, it impacts our
whole community and it impacts our ability to move forward to move on with our wa‘a
[canoe].
Her analogy and language such as “our community” and “our wa‘a” located her both as part of
the school community and within the school’s mission. Using a canoe analogy to describe the
school mission further aligned her with navigation theme indicating a complete immersion of
personal and school epistemology. Additionally, in her language she identified herself as a
member of the immediate community, which she served and additionally was suggestive of a
larger, possibly native Hawaiian community base in which they were trying to “move forward.”
Her location within the community was especially significant to her own epistemology and the
way in which she enacts a navigation curriculum within the school. Data revealed the way in
which she made meaning of a navigation curriculum was reflective of both her own educational
upbringing and her epistemological perspective, rooted in Hawaiian culture.
Similarly, Mrs. Kula also drew upon on her own understanding of Hawaiian culture and
voyaging to make meaning of enactment. She said,
we’re still working on what the real meaning of the voyage was. Okay good, good. You
guys are coming home, good, we’re going to help and be part of that, but that’s not our
focus. Oahu Prep’s focus now was, “so how do we keep this going?
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Here, she attempted to impart her own interpretation of the goals of the voyage for Oahu
prep. She started by repeating the Goals of Oahu Prep framework and said,
Those are the things that he [Dr. Berry] feels that the voyage can help us teach, that aren’t,
I don’t know, on a curriculum map. They’re not in a science class or they’re not in that, but
we can teach them these things. I do think that these ideas about creativity, being able to
adjust like a navigator has a plan. You have a plan, you make a game plan, you make a
route, then these things happen to you. Then you have to adjust. You have to go off-course
to come on-course. Those are life lessons, right?
While she recited the basic aims of the Oahu Prep framework, she began to apply her own
ideology to it. She emphasized that it was more about the life lessons and way of interacting with
the world. In regards the engagement with voyaging she stated,
I know it’s not a class but, it’s kind of what many of us are saying on campus, it is just a
way of being. We can kind of create that on campus. We can create the Aloha-ness that
we want. We can create the inclusiveness, that’s important. We can create the kindnesses,
the compassion, the level of respect between colleagues. Kids can read that, the way you
talk to a kumu on campus.
She went on to say,
It’s more of a mindset, a mind growth of how we would like our community to be. That’s
why I feel it’s so inclusive, but it takes a while to get to that point. I feel we’re better now
and we’re four years in.
This example married her own indigenous perspective with Dr. Berry’s more Western “Goals of
Oahu Prep.” While she appeared to agree with the intended usage and outcomes, her description
of the curriculum diverges into a big picture, perspective-taking approach, rather than a college
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and career mindset. This convergence of both perspectives continued to be played out in the
enactment of the curriculum and further demonstrated the significance of the enactor on the
success of the approach.
Bridging Both Worlds
The greatest distinction between the leaders in these three categories was the way in
which each group acknowledged and enacted both Western and Indigenous ways of knowing.
While all respondents acknowledged both the cultural and academic benefits of implementing a
wayfinding curriculum, leaders in two of the three categories spoke of these outcomes as
mutually exclusive of each other, which in turn, created a point of tension for the school.
However, members of this Category were the only school leaders to express both outcomes as
equally important. Dr. Figueroa most overtly addressed this concept. As the leader of a school
serving a Native Hawaiian community, she articulated her desire to achieve a specific balance of
both Western and Hawaiian learning styles. She demonstrated her belief when she said:
We need to look at Hōkū and Hiki, that you have this traditional way of finding of
culture, of course, is deeply important, but Hikianalia is a 21st century science vessel.
How you really bridge those? How do you bridge and have students so that they have a
solid foot and a base in both?
In stating her desire to bridge both cultural and 21
st
century concepts, she not only
acknowledged the disconnect between the two learning styles, but also the possibility to couple
them together. This approach was revealed to be a result of her dual backgrounds in both a
Western and Indigenous ideology. As reasoned above, data suggested that school leaders were
limited in their understanding and enactment of curriculum based on their own prior experiences
with similar curriculum. In, Dr. Figueroa’s case, her fluency in both the native and Western
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worlds, allowed her to envision and enact a curriculum which championed multiple ways of
learning.
She additionally revealed her pluralistic perspective when she discussed what steered her
development of the school’s mission and goals. She shared that she was guided by the idea of
“well, how do we accomplish that? How do we accomplish this mission of 21st century learner,
compassionate hearts, and all of these navigation skills?” Unlike the perspective of leaders in
prior categories, her internal struggle did not revolve around selecting which approach would
best achieve a Western outcome, but how to create an equal balance of both ways of knowing.
The context of the school, including the student population, community stakeholders and
cultural leaders influenced the way students were taught, what they were taught and what the
expected outcomes were. While, her personal ideology and background married in the aspects of
Western 21
st
Century standards. In a presentation Dr. Figueroa shared, the subtitle of the school
was labeled “learning beyond the four walls,” immediately below a olelo no‘eau reinforced the
idea stating “‘A‘ohe pau ka ‘ike I ka Halau ko‘okai” which translated to “not all knowledge is
learned in one school” emphasizing the idea that knowledge was not only found in a classroom
setting. This was additionally exemplified in their school’s mission statement, which intertwined
both:
All haumana [students] and kumu [teachers] will become caring, compassionate, and
loving navigators. Then we go through the values of aloha, mālama, ‘imi ike, lokomaika’i
with the skills of the 21st century learner…It’s constantly that we have to hold ourselves
accountable as learners and leaders for the values, for the mission, for becoming 21st
century learns and future leaders to society.
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Here, again both her personal ideology and the goals of the school aligned. Due to the
intersection of her traditional Western educational experience and Indigenous locality, she was
able to pull outcomes from both perspectives to develop a curriculum in which students can
leverage the best of both worlds. From this perspective, she argued students should be grounded
Hawaiian values but with the skills of a 21
st
century learner in order to be future leaders of
society.
While members of other categories questioned the inclusion of both sets of knowing, Dr.
Figueroa saw the opportunity to give her students the option of being grounded in both.
Conceptually, “building a bridge,” allows one to go back and forth between two places, which
differs from all the other combinations school leaders have displayed thus far. Proponents of
culture based education advocate for using Indigenous knowledge to “build a bridge” between a
student’s home culture and what’s taught in school (Pewewardy & Hammer, 2003, p. 1). Not
only did Dr. Figueroa want to bridge these concepts or give students access to both, but she
wanted them to have a “solid base” in both. She acknowledged this ability to go back in forth
between worlds when she shared her definition of the mind of navigator as it related to
communication skills. She stated,
Listening, communication skills, being able to cold switch when appropriate, so that
whole idea of being ... We tell them that, too. Proper English at school. Playground,
pidgin. In the classroom, English. You need to be able to code switch things. Stuff like
that. Environment awareness is both, not only environment, but being able to read people
as well. Confident in cultural identity where they come and kind of look towards their
future.
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Here, she acknowledged not only the importance of being able to “code switch” between two
social norms, but read the environmental cues. When she stated, “proper English” in the
classroom but “pidgin in the playground,” she recognized both communication styles as
valuable, but only when used appropriately. This approach draws upon literature from Lisa
Delpet (1997) who said,
the teacher’s job is to provide access to the national "standard" as well as to understand
the language the children speak sufficiently to celebrate its beauty… [they] must know
how to effectively teach reading and writing to students whose culture and language
differ from that of the school, and must understand how and why students decide to add
another language form to their repertoire. (p. 2)
Therefore, the value of being in both worlds comes not only knowing how to do so, but in
knowing when and where to leverage a Western or Indigenous behavior. Unlike prior categories,
she emphasized the applicability of the teachings into society, rather than the just acquisition of
knowledge for recall and assessment purposes.
Similarly, Kumu Kula of Oahu Prep also mentioned the benefits of teaching students how
to navigate both worlds. However, differing from Dr. Figueroa, she discussed the ability to
switch between both from the perception of a non-native student when she stated:
A secret hope, want, wish for me is that our kids that leave, that they can go into difficult
situations on the mainland when they’re in college, and they know that they got people
back here pulling for them. You got your home, you know your roots, you know where
you come from. Doesn’t mean you have to be all Hawaiian-ed out and you have to talk in
Hawaiian and only in Hawaiian but you know what, there’s going to come a time when
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you’re going to have to do that. Now you can do it, if you ever have to. You’ll never
know if you’re going to meet an indigenous person or an indigenous group.
Kumu Kula approached the idea of bridging two worlds from the perspective of her school’s
non-native population when she said, “you never know if you’re going to meet an indigenous
person or indigenous group.” She argued there was value in being grounded in Hawaiian culture
regardless of ancestry. She said, “we want our kids to be strong and I hope that it’s moved from,
“Well I don’t have the blood,” to no, this is our home. Everybody grows up here. This is our
home. You’re part of Hawai’i.” While the two approaches differed in origin of perspective, they
arrived at the same conclusion: it is beneficial for students to be able to walk in both worlds.
Their ability to articulate and address a two worlds concept suggested an insightful and
critical approach to education, reflective of their own experiences in both worlds. In allowing
students to navigate and develop skills of both worlds they addressed the critical aspects
consistent with Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. Authors suggest culture based education (CBE)
should examine effective ways to use cultural practice to educate Indigenous students through
the framework that learning more meaningful when it was compatible with the expectations,
norms of a student’s home culture (Castegano & Brayboy, 2008; Ladson-Billings, 1995). While
Dr. Figueroa’s student’s home culture was a Native/Indigenous population, Kumu K echoed this
approach with her non-Native population as well.
Another commonality appeared in the way school leaders sought to address Hawaiian
culture education. While both individuals fused their dual perspectives to develop her own
iteration of how to address voyaging and culture in the schoolroom, their different student
populations affected the way in which it was played out. For instance, while both respondents
discussed incorporating voyaging curriculum through the following two approaches: 1) teaching
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students through place and 2) teaching them about their role within the community, both
respondents’ approaches were consistent aspects of culture based education.
Firstly, members of Category 3 used place as bridge. Dr. Figueroa approached her
curriculum by incorporating aspects of both Western and Indigenous ways of knowing, which
was reflective not only of her own personal epistemology, but was also relevant to her student
population. According to Kawaiʻaeʻa and Kanaʻiaupuni (2008) effective culture based education
practices align instruction and expectations within the values, practices and experiences of the
students’ home culture, considering their worldview, epistemological origins and cultural values.
One example of how Dr. Figueroa aligned her curriculum to cultural epistemological
expectations of her students was through their essential questions:
Our first essential question is “O wai la?” Who am I? O wai la, we realize that in order
for you to navigate out, both physically and theoretically and intellectually, you have to
know who you are and where you come from first. Every first trimester so far, what
we’ve done is have them go deeper into their mo’o puna, their genealogy and
understanding what is their special place, their wahi pana, for their family. Then it
infuses, right? We go back to Common Core. It infuses in reading and writing. It infuses
communication and collaboration. You’re looking at Common Core standards on
speaking and listening.
This example, linked her understanding of Western academic standards and Indigenous
epistemology, connecting the importance of native genealogy with current trends in education.
Through using student’s genealogy as the means to develop reading, writing and communication
standards she bridged their home life and cultural norms to Western standards of academic
achievement, giving them mutually grounded base of knowledge. Furthermore, the way she
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described navigation demonstrated a cultural understanding unique of voyaging or navigation
from this perspective. Instead of interpreting navigation by its hard or technical skills such as
“dead reckoning” as observed in leaders in Category 2, Dr. Figueroa grounded the concept of
wayfinding tightly to Hawaiian culture and ways of knowing. Essential to both Hawaiian
intelligence and navigation, she argued, was the idea of knowing where you came from,
“physically, theoretically and intellectually” in order to move forward. Kumu Kula also echoed
this sentiment, when she stated an important part of teaching a global perspective was starting
with self. She said it was “important to wherever they go, that they can understand people of that
area, because they know their own home.”
This perspective encompassed all three navigational tenets including the hard or technical
skills, the affective or intellectual skills and the cultural values of knowing one’s past. Unlike
previous understandings she fully embraces the “theme” of navigation in its multidimensional
entirety. Additionally, this definition demonstrated an understanding of place as inextricable
from self and identity, consistent with Meyer’s (2001) definition of Hawaiian epistemology. The
intersection of the Hawaiian values system with modern educational standards was
representative of her own epistemology and the school context which sought to educate students
to be grounded and knowledgeable about both worlds in which they live. In summary of this
perspective she asserted: “You can have students that do well academically and have a strong
connection to their culture, and in that strong connection to their culture, know how to live
values.”
Assessment of Knowledge. The intersection and alignment of Dr. Figueroa and Kumu
K’s personal and school ideology allowed them to conceptualize a curriculum that embraced
both knowledge systems. While their school’s orientation and needs were positioned in
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opposition to each other, as individuals, they come from the same epistemological
understanding. Data revealed they were able to envision both a Western and Indigenous
curriculum because they had personal and professional experience with both sets of
epistemologies. In the case of Dr. Figueroa, who came from a traditionally Western High School
(Oahu Prep) and earned her terminal degree from a Western university, she did so with the drive
to return home to help Hawai’i’s students become successful in today’s society.
Varying from leaders in other categories, Dr. Figueroa’s perspective of what it meant to
be educated and successful in today’s society was not to the detriment of either the nationally
accepted academic standards nor the rich cultural history of Hawai’i. She stated, “an important
part of the school, too, was that balance.” She acknowledged that in order for intelligence and
potential to be recognized, students need to remain competitive in the Western iteration of
success. Her understanding of how to develop future leaders was attributed to a careful balance
of both. She explained,
Because 21st century schools are common core, so we want our students to be able to,
yes, have a strong foundation in culture, but also be competitive in the world, which
means that we have to align everything that we do to what is considered standard. All of
our projects are aligned with Common Core, Next Generation Science Standards, Social
Studies C3 Standards, and not to the greatest extent as we want, but we have this
framework. We’re constantly trying to get it to iterate as well as our vision and our
mission values and our mind in the navigators.
This statement was representative of both the school’s approach and her own personal ideology.
Not only did she acknowledge the importance of teaching students’ Western standards to be
competitive in society but she also emphasized that teaching those standards was not mutually
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exclusive to teaching cultural values. As Deyhle and Swisher (1997) suggested, culture specific
behaviors and learning process should be included in assessments for Indigenous students. We
see her balance the idea of western and Indigenous assessment in her description of how students
present their knowledge. While she recognized measurement of learned values as a challenge,
KCS also utilized Indigenous modes of assessment such as “trimester Ho‘ikes (presentations of
learning)” and well as “transference into actions” to offset overly Western academics. In this
way, she again demonstrated the goal for students to be competitive in today’s society through
nationally recognized assessment, as well as be able to demonstrate their values. This was
suggestive of Demmert and Towner’s (2003) belief that assessment tools must be culturally
appropriate as well as academic priorities and needs of the school (as cited in Okamura, p. 95).
Data revealed Dr. Figueroa was able to comprehend and balance these dual goals because she
was able to draw upon both perspectives. This was consistent with what Resnick (1991)
describes as an “authentic assessments, which measure experiential, hands-on education and
culture specific behaviors that are common for Native Hawaiian students (as cited by Okamura,
p. 107).
While Kumu K also addressed the challenge of assessment within her school setting, she
did so from a different location in regard to assessment. Her professional location, at a
prestigious college prep school she stated,
It’s hard to measure, you know. I know you feel you’ve got to measure, you’ve got to do
this, and this percent and this, but it’s just something that I think people are talking more
about that we value this in an Oahu Prep graduate, even though we cannot get the ABCD
in it. It’s very important that our kids leave with this. We’ll never know. We’ll never
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know until they come back 20 years later. 10 years, 20, 30 years later and they’ll mention
something.
This statement most clearly demonstrated her personal ideology in relation to the schools and
summarized the challenge of all respondents in this category in saying, “It’s hard to measure…
but it’s important our kids leave with this.” She said the non-measurable outcomes were a part of
what they want in a graduate but at the same time, there was no discernable way to know the
impact until later. Her struggle to convince the school that these outcomes matter, disconnect
her from Dr. Figueroa’s location in that the entire framework was built upon a values-based
structure without concern for grades, while Oahu Prep still questions how to assign a grade. This
divergence of perspectives again, were similar in belief but were played out in the different
school context.
Role of Place/Locality
Another way they bridged their own understanding of what it takes to be successful in
today’s society was within their understanding of place. Place played a significant role within the
charter school, different from all other iterations of place expressed in previous categories. Place,
in this category, was not a secondary outcome but an interwoven piece of identify that must be
carefully nurtured. She demonstrated this perspective when she discussed her lessons
surrounding the ahupua’a which were in a stark contrast to Island Academy’s:
Within their first study of the whole ahupua’a, we want them to stay in Waimānalo to
know their place, because you can’t navigate out and teach it and learn about anybody
else if you don’t have a good understanding of who you are and where you come from.
Really, it’s about focus around ours. Cleaning up ‘Ehukai beach down the street. Going
to Haunauma, Maunalua, which is all a part of the ahupua’a and also within the Mau
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school points. How do we learn about the ocean just within our area? Kula same thing,
how do we look at farmlands in Waimānalo?
Here, Dr. Figueroa described the purpose of exploring their ahupua’a was to relate learning to
where they live. She described it as intertwined with self and how knowing your place helps one
to form an understanding of self. Her description also aligned with her earlier definition of
navigation, when she spoke of starting with where you are before you can “navigate out.”. This
sentiment grounded her with in an Indigenous perspective, not only in the way she spoke about
the place/self-connection but also in the way she was able to translate this concept into
curriculum. Indigenous Epistemology emphasizes the responsibility for caring for land and
nurturing the relationship between humanity and nature (Seawright, 2013). Dr. Figueroa outlined
her curriculum as one of experiential learning, taking students to local beaches and having them
understand how to care for place. Unlike the members of Category One, who articulated the
desire to teach students to strengthen their relationship with the land but did not have their own
relationship to base it off of, Dr. Figueroa’s approach understood the cultural significance of
place and how to change the way students relate to nature and themselves. Kumu K echoed this
approach, stating “we go all over this island to learn,” she went on to describe a recent trip to a
taro patch. She stated,
I cannot just be reading about the taro patch. I have to know the history, why it’s
important, why is it considered our brother, what’s the legends behind it. I’ve got to be in
the patch, doing the work with the farmer, who’s talking to me about water, water rights,
why is that endangered. Waterbird, not helpful to us in this situation, but I can’t, want to
keep him because he’s totally endangered and endemic to Hawaii, but he’s not helping
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me. This is just what happened yesterday, bah bah bah bah bah bah boom. You have to
have the experience of it.
In this example, Kumu Kula grounds herself in Hawaiian ways of knowing ideology,
emphasizing values of place in regard to sustainability, experience and the interconnectivity of
nature. In describing the taro patch lesson, she outlined a curriculum consisting of water rights
issues, endangered animals, farming and legends of Hawaiian culture, revealing her knowledge
and alignment with indigenous knowledge systems. The way she spoke of place and its complex
and interconnected propensities revealed her personal perspective and approach to the intended
vision for the school.
Values. The unifying concept of this categories curriculum was an emphasis on values.
Aligning with the tenets of traditional Hawaiian navigation, everything Dr. Figueroa taught was
grounded in the values of wayfinding. While members of all three categories made mention of
various values associated with developing the Mind of the Navigator, no other group understood
their foundational significance to developing a comprehensive Navigator or 21
st
century thinker.
Dr. Figueroa frequently articulated the goal of “living your values,” a concept reflective
of an Indigenous epistemological framework. She stated, “I think everything that we do is around
how do we live the values of the voyage.”
She discussed the difficulty in assessing values when she stated,
What we really value is how do we assess the values? How do we know that when our
students graduate from us, not only are they going to have their reading, writing and
math, know how to research, understand the science, how to apply it, but that they are
doing it with a compassionate heart, that they’re living their values, that they understand
what aloha is. They understand how to treat each other, how to treat other people. That’s
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not easy to assess, so I think the reason why we have this whole idea of who am I?
Research, community service, kūleana is that in the end that’s what we want. We want
students who know who they are, where they come from, and have a deep understanding
so that they can understand where other people ... The compassionate heart.
Similar to all school leaders, discussed the key to develop the “mind of navigator” or a 21
st
century learner as balance of affective and cognitive outcomes. However, varying from other
leaders was her approach in how to achieve that. She acknowledged the importance of instilling
values into students, but also the difficulty in assessing those values. Therefore, she discussed
assessment comes from the Western cognitive outcomes of reading, writing, math and science.
However, she argued that just because values were hard to assess they could not be neglected
within the school curriculum. It was through those values, she asserted, that students were able to
learn perspective taking, respect and other collaboration skills that weren’t conducive to learning
in a Western environment. She explained that her goal was to educate the heart and ingrain
values, which become a framework for which students see themselves and interact with the
world.
Kumu Kula also commented about the admirable values of Dr. Figueroa and spoke in a
similar about values in relation to navigation. She brought up recent conversations about what it
meant to be educated at Oahu Prep. Referencing her own ideas about voyaging and Dr. Berry’s
perception of what this curriculum meant for the students she stated:
I hope that our kids will have something that they can share about Hawai’i, our history,
whatever, something that they feel they’ve had these experiences where it’s deep for
them. They can get through the difficult times. Okay, this is difficult. Okay, we’ve been
preparing for college for a long time. You can do this. There’s going to be some hiccups
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along the way, just like a voyage, but okay we can go here. Okay but then boom, we’re
going to get back on track. We’re not going to fall apart. We’re not going to just throw
the towel in. We’re going to get to the destination. Those are the things that he [Dr.
Berry] feels that the voyage can help us teach, that aren’t, I don’t know, on a curriculum
map. They’re not in a science class or they’re not in that, but we can teach them these
things. I do think that these ideas about creativity, being able to adjust like a navigator
has a plan. You have a plan, you make a game plan, you make a route, then these things
happen to you. Then you have to adjust. You have to go off-course to come on-course.
Those are life lessons, right?
Here, she clarified her understanding of how she believed Dr. Berry made meaning of the
curriculum. Yet, infused in this description were her own interpretations of Dr. Berry’s
perspective. While both Kumu Kula and Dr. Berry discussed affective outcomes of this
educational approach, her depiction and analogies affirmed her own epistemological perspective.
As an alumnus of Oahu Prep, who was grounded in an Indigenous ideology, she intertwined her
hope for students to use the mindset and resiliency associated with navigation to get through
college. This statement echoed Mr. Wright’s previous statement about using Indigenous skills
and determination to achieve college and career readiness. In these pairs of examples, both
school leaders, were grounded within an indigenous framework and yet work at Western schools,
manipulated their ideology to fit the needs of the school.
Situationality
The second way members of this category infused a culture based approach was to
educate students about their place within society. The discussion of situationality and social
order marked the most apparent divergence from the previous two categories. Additionally, the
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approach of both respondents deviated from one another due to their school context. At KCS, not
only where students openly taught about voyaging, place and culture, they were explicitly
infused with the knowledge of their situationality within the curriculum. This approach was
reflective of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy, in regard to getting students to “understand and
critique the existing social order” (Ladson-Billings, 1995, p. 474)
While both individuals addressed their personal or schools’ situationality within their
responses, only Dr. Figueroa expressed the way they were actively teaching students about their
“place” in the community. Teaching situationality, or one’s place within the cultural, political
and social aspects of where one lives, was the concept that the first category of school leaders
could not conceptualize because of their lack of understanding about their own situationality.
While the school leaders in Category One acknowledged their personal experiences with place
and fitting it, they had not yet found a way to mitigate it or more importantly address it within
their school setting. This topic, which was difficult for other school leaders to articulate was
expressed by Dr. Figueroa as a primary tenant of the curriculum:
We want them to be able to research and understand and at a very young age all the way
through what historically has happened in the area, what is currently happening in the
area. What are the factors that go into the challenges facing now? What can we learn
from the past? How can we bring it forward to the future? Then, always asking how am I
going to give back? In the end, if we can have them independently go through that
process, always being able to tie in and be cognizant of and reflect on these different
values that we see every day, these different ‘Mind of the Navigator’ skills that we want
them to have.
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In this statement, Dr. Figueroa married all approaches to place through the lens of navigation.
Mind of the navigator was not a toolkit or a vehicle to achieve a goal but a way of looking at and
understanding the world. She expressed the desire not only for them to be able to walk in both
worlds in the future, but also to understand the past and their place in it. This approach to
education was consistent with Culturally Revitalizing Pedagogy which not only teaches students
about the political, cultural and of place but also addresses the students’ role with in place. The
goal of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy is to support students in the maintenance of their current
cultural identities as they simultaneously learn the dominant cultural practices inherent in
American school systems (Ladson-Billings, 1995, p. 474). Dr. Figueroa encompassed aspects of
CRP by through the acknowledgment of multiple ways of knowing within the curriculum and her
desire for students to walk between both worlds of modern Western society and their home
Indigenous culture.
Kumu K also addressed aspects of situationality, both in regard to the position of the
school and her own Hawaiian heritage. However, different from Dr. Figueroa, there was no
overt curriculum for students situationality mentioned. She first referenced situationality in
relation to the non-native reputation of her school when she commented on the additional
pressures Oahu Prep faced in regard to propagating Hawaiian culture. She conveyed her
awareness and sensitivity to the stigma of students at Oahu Prep when she said, “you have to be
ready to chant. You can’t just show up. You’ve got to have it. Especially for Oahu Prep, our
kumu are different than other schools. Our students are different.” This statement
demonstrated an awareness of a reputation of the school, and how their students are “different”
than students at other schools who were able to chant. This example also revealed her own
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perception of how non-native students were perceived when they engage with Hawaiian
curriculum.
Secondly, from a more personal perspective, she referenced the significance of
situationality of Hawaiian people. However, while her experience was obviously meaningful to
her, she did not articulate it a way it could show up in curriculum for students. Her remark was
discussed in a more exploratory, less developed way than Dr. Figueroa but points to the role of
Oahu Prep in addressing some of those issues. When describing a trip she took to meet
Hōkūle’a in South Africa she recalled,
One of the big things I learned in Cape Town, because we wanted to ask those kinds of
questions, ‘how do you guys move forward with that kind of history?’ They were young
black guys that we talked to, that we’d made friends with, so we felt that we could talk to
them towards the end of the trip. “You know what, our ancestors fought the fight. It’s
over. We’re good. We need to move forward. We need to put all our energy into
education, learning, come back, help our people and we need to move forward.”
Everybody said the same thing. It was amazing because of course, I’m thinking, okay
Hawaiians need to hear this. We need to hear the same message. We cannot be in the
past, not forget about it. Theirs was the same thing. We’re not going to forget about the
pain, because it was so painful, right, but they didn’t grow up in the apartheid but their
parents did, like us. We didn’t grow up in the era of, “You can’t speak Hawaiian. You
can’t dance,” but our grandparents did. We know what pain because they talked to us.
They would never talk in Hawaiian when we were around, because everything was, they
wanted us to learn English, but there were so many similarities halfway around the world.
She went on to state:
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[This kind of experience] deepens our learning about Hawai’i. We are in a very special
place, Hawaii of course, but Oahu Prep as being a leader for many things. As soon as, not
as soon, but when Oahu Prep went in, then a lot of people went in for the voyage. We can
help things along. We have the tools to move things along.
While not clearly connected to student outcomes, this memory touched upon the deep political
history of Hawai’i and unpacked in a way that was relevant to a voyaging theme. She alluded to
the values of a voyaging curriculum going beyond the pursuit of academic outcomes, from the
perspective of someone with a profound understanding of what it means to engaged in critical
aspects of place. She says “we” didn’t grow up like this but “our grandparents did.” This
language connected her to the complex history of Hawai’i and recognized it as something Oahu
Prep should acknowledge.
While, both respondents spoke of the significance of knowing the past in order to
understand and inform one’s sense of self, they did from different starting points. While Dr.
Figueroa addressed the need to bridge native students to Western standards, Kumu K emphasized
the significance of non-native students to engage in the place that they live. Both respondents
held similar perspectives of the curriculum but were influenced in their enactment by realities of
their student population and context of school. The desire for all students to understand those of
different backgrounds were consistent with the values based outcomes present in my conceptual
framework which speak to perspective changing and seek to change the way students relate to
the world.
Summary and Conclusion
Overall, data revealed variations existed in how school leaders made meaning of a
navigation approach at their school. While all school leaders wanted their students to be
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successful in today’s society, each category expressed and enacted a different approach to
achieve that goal. Data revealed that all school leaders interwove their own epistemological
location into their interpretation of adopting voyaging approach. Similarly, the uniqueness of
each school context contributed to the way in which curriculum was enacted. Therefore, findings
revealed school leaders’ motivation to adopt a navigation curriculum existed on a continuum
characterized by the intersection of personal ideology and school context.
On one end, school leaders with a Western personal ideology and who worked in schools
with Western orientations utilized navigation as tool to reach existing school outcomes. In the
center of the continuum, school leader’s perspectives were characterized by a conflict between
their personal epistemology and school orientation in regard to navigation. At the other end of
the continuum, school leaders’ Indigenous personal epistemology was aligned with their school’s
orientation and goals.
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CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION
This study examined the way Hawai‘i school leaders made meaning of their decision to
adopt a traditional Hawaiian navigation curriculum. Furthermore, it explored how they enacted
this curriculum to achieve their intended benefits by way of understanding their own
epistemological location, personal experiences and school context.
In effort to understand this concept, the research questions guiding this study were as follows:
1. How do school leaders make meaning of the decision to adopt a navigation based
curriculum at their schools?
a. What do they perceive to be the benefits for students?
b. How do they believe they have enacted this approach to achieve benefits?
The way school leaders made meaning of their motivation for adoption was result of the
intersection of their personal ideology, which was reflective of their own upbringing, and the
context of the school in which they worked. Therefore, the way the adoption was understood by
the school leader, started from their individual cognitive framework. In order to understand their
perspectives and ideologies, I conducted a multi-case study of six leaders in five Hawaii schools
who were intentional about their use of navigation curriculum. I used purposeful sampling to
choose the school leaders and gathered interview data and artifacts from respondents. This data
was analyzed first by open coding using a priori codes present in my conceptual framework and
additionally from empirical codes that emerged from the data. Analysis of data revealed that a
continuum of approaches existed reflecting the varying intersections of personal ideology and
school context.
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Summary of Findings
Data revealed one primary finding, which was a continuum of approaches characterized
by each school leader’s personal ideology and school context. Three distinctive categories
captured the varying orientations of school leaders. Either end of the continuum was categorized
by a complete alignment with personal ideology and school context, while the category located
in the middle of the continuum exhibited conflict between one’s personal perspective and school
orientation. Therefore, on one end of the continuum were school leaders school leaders who were
personally and professional oriented in a Western context while on the other end, were leaders
whose personal and professional orientations align with an Indigenous perspective. In this
regard, groups on each end of the continuum were categorized by little conflict as their personal
and professional beliefs are played out in alignment with one another. However, the leaders
located at the center continuum experienced more conflict and disconnect with regards to what
motivated them to adopt the curriculum, how it was playing out and for what purpose.
Furthermore, while all six leaders spoke of the importance of place, their understanding
of it was constrained in two ways. Firstly, their personal orientation dictated how they were able
to make meaning of place within their school. School leaders who were brought up in very
Western educational systems were not grounded in place were therefore constrained in their
understanding of what it meant to be engaged with place on an Indigenous level. Within this
interpretation of place, complex issues such as politics and social situationality were often
ignored or oversimplified into a one-dimensional aspect of place. School leaders in this category
were also not able to conceptualize the contentious aspects of place and therefore were limited in
their ability to take a critical stance, leading them to develop a more neutral adoption.
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Secondly, school leaders were cognizant of the context of their school in regard to
mission, history and values, which equally constrained their implementation. School leaders who
recognized more complex aspects of place, revealed the limitations of their school setting in the
enactment of cultural political aspects associated with place. Based on the findings of this
dissertation, I will now discuss the implications and recommendations for policy, practice and
future research.
Implications and Recommendations
The intent of this study was to examine the ways in which Hawaii school leaders made
meaning of their decision to adopt a traditional Hawaiian navigation approach to education. This
study found qualitative data that documented the way in which school leaders perceived to be
enacting a traditional Hawaiian navigation curriculum. Analysis of the data revealed a complex
and conflicted understandings of what wayfinding curriculum meant to the school leader, which
was found to be influenced by the intersection of the school leader’s personal background and
the school’s history and context. Furthermore, only one of the respondents consciously
acknowledged their personal and school location within the transmission of curriculum. This is
significant because findings revealed a failure to consider the impact of the school leader on
curriculum, created divergence between how school leaders articulated their goal for adoption
and how it was actually being implemented.
While my sample consistent of six school leaders within Oahu’s educational community,
findings from their responses have implications for the larger community. Data revealed that
acknowledging the importance of a Navigation based curriculum was not enough to sure that the
curriculum was taken up and enacted in a meaningful way. There were various examples
throughout the study that revealed areas of bias. Each school adopted the curriculum in a way
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that their leader made meaning of it to his or her self while additionally considering the school’s
mission and values. Additionally, there was concern over the teachers’ comfort level with
regards to teaching a culturally relevant curriculum.
Therefore, from this finding, I identified three main implications: 1) positionality of
school leaders 2) teachers as gatekeepers of curriculum and 3) significance of state-wide
educational partnerships. The first, was direct result of this study’s findings, while the other two
implications were not essential findings, but emerged as themes from data.
The following section will discuss practice and policy implications and
recommendations.
Implications for Practice
This dissertation suggests a number of practices to consider the finding. In some cases, it
recommends continuing practices that are already in place, while in others, it suggests practices
that could be implemented on the local and national level. Concerning school leader
positionality, there are two implications and recommendations for practice that are discussed
below: 1) addressing positionality 2) dangers of unguided adoption.
Addressing positionality. This study found the way a school approached adopting and
implementing this type of curriculum was strongly tied to the school leader’s personal ideology
and the context of the school. Practice implications associated with this finding include the need
for critical reflection of personal positionality among those seeking to adopt this type of
curriculum. Alcoff (1988) argued that often, educators cannot distance themselves from the
historical and social contexts of their positionality and therefore should address aspects of their
own location explicitly within the curriculum. Additionally, she argued “educators carry with
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them the complex power relations representative of their different positions in the wider society”
(Alcoff, 1988).
Therefore, one practice recommendation for school leaders who are considering the
adoption of this curriculum is to identify their own biases and be honest and reflective about their
beliefs of their benefits of adoption. In addition, they should consider how their own belief
system plays itself out in the context of the school so they can intentionally align their own
epistemology with the needs of the school. When positionality Alcoff (1988) found that
educators who addressed by educators, Alcoff (1988) found their own positionality “were able to
use the neutrality of classroom spaces to examine, challenge and reconstruct those positions (as
cited in Goldberger, Tarule, Clinchy & Belenky, 1998).
Danger of Unguided Curriculum. Expanding on the previous implication, the second
practice implication, addresses curricular dangers of adopting an indigenous curriculum without
significant self-reflection by the enactor. There were various examples of adoption without self-
reflection, which resulted in enactors unknowingly using indigenous knowledge in the pursuit of
Western goals. Consequences of his behavior include the unintentionally subverting of Native
Hawaiian curriculum in pursuit of Western ideals of success in order to empower those who are
already in powered. For example, when majority non-native schools or educators leverage “skills
of the navigator” to pursue American standards of college and career readiness without
acknowledging the cultural significance, they are ignoring the opportunity to expand students
sense of place and their own positionality. Master Navigator and President of the Polynesian
Voyaging Society, Nainoa Thompson, echoed this concern at the Hōkūleʻa homecoming
ceremony on June, 1
7,
2017, when he said:
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I wondered why the idea for a world-wide voyage did not come from Hawaii, he said “I
always wonder why the phone call wasn’t here. Why couldn’t we see it? Well, go look
what we teach in our schools…you graduate from high school and have no idea where
your ancestors come from, have no idea how they got here, have no idea that they were
the greatest navigators and voyagers and explorers on the face of the earth- how come?
Even with the resurgence of traditional voyaging curriculum, the danger of extinction of
this Indigenous knowledge exists if curriculum goes unchecked. One example of this emerged
with regard to using a Place Based approaches within an Indigenous community. Despite an
articulated desire by all school leaders to incorporate a comprehensive understanding of place,
findings revealed their current PBE models failed to address critical aspects of place and
continued to perpetuate the existing educational outcomes of their school. This meant that
although Indigenous concepts such as ahupua‘a management and Hawaiian wayfinding were
taught, they were used more as a tool to reinforce both Western concepts of place and academic
outcomes. This was consistent with the literature on place based approaches which suggest that
Indigenous approaches to education seek to create an authentic connection between students and
nature, while Western educational models seek to teach students about Western concepts through
the land (Meyer, 2001). Of significance to this concern, is that most schools failed to address
critical aspects of place, which take into account the social, political and cultural aspects of
place. This is important because teaching a place based approach in Hawai’i has significant
cultural implications. Local and environmental knowledge is inherently tied to Hawaiian
epistemology and worldview, therefore by in order to effectively teach Indigenous knowledge;
one cannot compartmentalize aspects of native Hawaiian knowledge.
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These dangers are consistent with McInereny et al.’s (2000) apprehensions of PBE
approaches. The authors (2000) outlined four main apprehensions of PBE: 1) PBE is often
presented unrealistically within the constraints of school, rather than a “dynamic place,” 2) PBE
often confines student learning to local whereas it should also incorporate other “places, cultures,
times,” 3) PBE reinforces hegemonic curriculum by ignoring issues of inequity, politics and
inherent power structures, and 4) PBE has a “tendency to view social and environmental
problems as solvable by local people,” which ignores larger political agendas (McInerney et al.,
2000, pp. 9-12).
Therefore, one recommendation for practice is to explicitly address critical aspects of
place within the curriculum. The practice of using indigenous knowledge for Western outcomes
continues to reinforce the status quo through systemic marginalizing and separation within
education. Moreover, failure to properly address critical aspects of place and culture undermines
the purpose of place-based curriculum and ultimately perpetuates the dominant narrative.
Implications for Policy
This section will discuss implications and recommendations for school, state and national
policy levels. Beyond this dissertation’s examination of navigation curriculum, findings point to
other types of curriculum that champion alternative ways of knowing and discusses implications
surround what needs to be anticipated prior to adoption and implementation.
One local policy recommendation to account for unbiased enactment and the inclusion of
culturally relevant curriculum is to consider a governing or advisory board for the curriculum,
akin to that of a charter school. This board would be responsible to issue policy around adoption
while considering the individuals or school context around whom these policies are being
enacted. This board would design policy to consider the positionality of teachers, who are key
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stakeholders in the transmission of curriculum, and who might feel uncomfortable with the
cultural aspects or fail to investigate and address their own location. This is significant because
everyone involved in the development and the enactment of an indigenous based curriculum
should attend to his or her own positionality. Furthermore, when aspiring to teach curriculum
based in Indigenous or other ways of knowing, it is important to consider that “knowledge is
valid when it includes an acknowledgment of the knower's specific position in any context,
because changing contextual and relational factors are crucial for defining identities and our
knowledge in any given situation” (Maher & Tetreault, 1993, p. 6).
Additionally, implications for this category are different at each level of decision maker.
At the level of visionary, as mentioned above, school leaders should engage in honest reflection
about their intent for the adoption an indigenous based curriculum. They should consider their
own positionality and agenda, as well as take in to account that of the person responsible for
operationalizing the curriculum within the school. Findings showed that at each level, school
leaders’ personal ideology influenced the way they made meaning of the curriculum, so the more
people who touch the curriculum the more it has the potential to be biased.
Below that level, policy should reflect the specific role of the enactor in the formation of
the curriculum as well as the individual person who is responsible for enactment. Each school
had a different structure for enacting and implementing the curriculum. Therefore, the policy
should account for a way for key decision makers to examine their own biases and identify the
ways one’s personal orientation align or conflict with the agenda of the curriculum and consider
how address those tensions. Policy at this level, also needs to consider the potential for bias in
the interpretation of the visionary’s intention. As we saw in the discussion of an enactor and
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visionary at Oahu Prep, the way they each made meaning of curriculum was reflective of their
own conflicting epistemology.
Implication #2: Teacher Presentism.
The second take away, was with regard to teachers as gatekeepers of curriculum.
Interview data revealed teachers were key stakeholders and gatekeepers of the curriculum. Along
these lines, teachers’ willingness to adopt the curriculum was not anticipated in implementation.
Consistent with the literature on teacher Persistence and Presentism which is defined as “the
sacrifice of future improvements to the pressing needs of the present” teachers’ willingness to
buy-in played a significant part in the overall success of implementation and enactment
(Hargreaves & Shirley, 2009, p. 10).
Practice. One practice recommendation is to support teacher confidence and competence
with respect to their ability to deliver culturally and place relevant instruction. Teachers were
found to be the mediator between curriculum and students, yet most enactment strategies failed
to address the needs or concerns of the teachers. Jack Wright highlighted this notion when he
described his biggest setback in enacting curriculum:
I think the concept we actually haven’t seen much pushback. I haven’t, if anything, it's
just plates are too full, it’s not highest priority on their list. I think that’s the key thing is
that teachers are busy and trying to get it front burner with the teacher...think, for us, it’s
“How do we make their job easier?” If we make their job easier, then they’ll be more
likely to support and adopt. If you’re just adding additional, they might, “Oh, on top of
No Child Left Behind” or “On top of all those common cores.”
With teachers constantly changing to new top down mandates, they are subject to what
Abrahamson (2004) described as “repetitive change syndrome” leads to feelings of “innovation
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overload” (p. 3). This means that even if the curriculum does make their job easier to, if the
curriculum is not developed in consideration of teachers needs it is likely to be overlooked.
Therefore, recommendations include catering the curriculum to firstly meet the needs of teachers
instead of the students to promote early teacher buy-in and training.
One way this was addressed was through Dr. Figueroa, who, with regard to developing a
new curriculum stated, “Okay, if this is what we’re going to be doing, we need to start helping
teachers. We need to start professional development.” Her decision to start with teachers may
have had a resounding influence on the effectiveness of her curriculum.
Policy. This section will discuss implications and recommendations for school, state and
national policy levels with regard to teachers as gatekeepers. One recommendation for policy is
for state departments, or governing agencies to set clear goals and methods of assessment and
align unconventional knowledge systems with alternative assessments that are reflective of the
type of knowledge. Part of the Assessment presented an unanticipated limitation of enactment.
As Mr. Moore stated,
Inspiration is not overnight sometimes. It takes time for people to digest and to put action
into what they’ve learned. So, it makes it hard to kind of gage how effective this voyage
was for the [district].
The Indigenous Assessment Working Group (IAWG, n.d.) identified culturally
appropriate approaches should include assessments which involve “meaningful performances,
including those that are place-based and community-based; Are culturally appropriate in format
and delivery; Give feedback that can recursively inform instruction and learning in a frequent,
timely way; and Provide evidence of progress in globally valued academic skills and content, as
well as in locally valued knowledge, skills, and dispositions” (pp. 1-2).
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According to IAWG (n.d.) Traditional Hawaiian Learning process, “includes reflection
on one’s own work and a high degree of ownership… reflects culturally grounded and valued
ways of knowing, such as focused observation and reflection, authentic performances of
meaningful work, and judgment based on relevant criteria” (p. ). One example of a culturally
reflective assessment is from Dr. Figueroa who described their assessment:
Our big picture is they have a fifth-grade defense next year, so our new fifth graders next
year will defend. It’s like a dissertation defense where you have to do your research, pick
whatever you’re going to pick, and then stand up and say, “I’m ready to move on to the
next phase of learning. Let me tell you how I can show you all of these Mind of the
Navigator skills, how I’ve lived my values through the work samples that they have.”
That’s the process that we’re building up to, so that next year, they’re ready to defend.
A second recommendation for policy section will discuss policy in relation to teacher presentism.
Current policy regarding the adoption of wayfinding curriculum in Hawai’i schools was revealed
to be voluntary across all school settings. While private and charter schools had more autonomy
in their implementation, it is suggested that the State Department of Education consider ways to
connect students to place, while taking into account the cultural, social and political aspects of
place. The State Department of Education reaches the highest population of native students, yet
budget and funding restrictions often sacrifice local knowledge for meeting Nationally accepted
standards. Findings from this study suggest a balance of both Western and Indigenous ways of
knowing can prepare students to be competitive in today’s society, while also grounding them in
their home culture.
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Educational Partnerships
While this study focused on the perception of intended benefits and how school leaders
made meaning of their decision to adopt this curriculum, findings also revealed many
unanticipated benefits. All respondents cited the significance of working together in a
partnership. Many referenced this curriculum as the first time all types of school leaders
collaborated on a shared vision and approach to education. Mr. Moore described his experience
within this club or “hui” when he stated,
[You saw all these school leaders] come together to talk, to socialize and kind of vision
of what this would look like. From what I've seen and what I heard from these groups
that thought, "this has never been done before." So it took this really daring Voyage to
pull, to show people this is vision and [crosstalk 00:08:11] and they kind of rallied around
this call to come together. It provided a really neat venue for Ed. Leaders to look at what
things they have in common and how working together can help all of Hawaii and the
children of Hawaii through the promise.
Mrs. Seto added,
I do hope that Island Academy maintains the partnerships and relationships that we’ve
had with the institutions that we’ve been able to partner with...That’s been really
powerful. From my perspective, I guess, watching. A bunch of us who were in New York
City together, we were literally sitting on governor’s island, we had just taken a tour of
New York Harbor school. We were all sitting on the hill overlooking the Hudson Bay and
talking about education at home and I don’t know, I was like “This is crazy. This is
incredible.” I don’t know that any other effort would have moved all of us in this way and
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would have brought us to this place together. It just gave us all an opportunity to look
into our own institutions. To look into ourselves, re-prioritize.
She added, “that would not have happened before the voyage and without this call and insistence
and commitment to rethink these things.” Since all respondents spoke positively of this
collaboration and their desire for it to continue after the voyage, one policy recommendation is to
create a space for Hawaii’s educational community to come together to discuss collective goals.
As a small community, connected through history, culture and place there is a need to for a
unified partnership. As Thompson repeatedly states, Hawai’i needs to ask, “what do kids need to
know?” as part of state who will feel the effects of global warming. He said, “the Pacific islands
had nothing to do to create climate change, but they may the ones to suffer the most, first. They
are the most at risk” (“Hōkūle‘a Homecoming Speech,” 2017). In this regard, it is recommended
that state-wide educational partnerships continue to discuss what do Hawaii’s children need to
know, and how can Hawaii’s schools collaborate to accomplish those goals. As Thompson
stated, “so if we know now and we want to prepare a better world, what are we going to teach
our children? That’s the fundamental question-what do they need to know now?” (Thompson,
personal communication, June 10, 2016).
Implications for Research
Firstly, this study identified a dissonance between the intended and actual outcomes of
using a place or culture based curriculum. Research regarding how teachers’ own positionality
affects their ability to teach culture or place base curriculum is limited. Further research
regarding teacher positionality in historically indigenous places should be completed.
Findings of this study revealed the intersection of personal ideology and school
orientation influenced the adoption and enactment of the curriculum. Data collection was done
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through interviews and artifacts, therefore additional research was needed to understand how
implementation and enactment were actually played out. While this study examined the
intentions of the school leaders, it lacked observation of the discussed curriculum. Therefore,
additional research was needed to understand how implementation and enactment were actually
played out. One way to further the research of this study would be to observe curriculum.
With regard to educational partnerships, further research should be conducted at the state,
district and school level regarding the benefits for both students and educators of schools who
took part in this particular partnership. Additionally, future research surrounding all small
communities with common historical context could be examined.
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Appendix A
INTERVIEW PROTOCOL
Visionary
School Name: _______________________________ Date: ___________
Name of Person Interviewed: ______________________________________________
Position: _______________________________________________________________
Time Started: ______________Time Completed: ___________Total Time: _________
Researcher: _____________________________________________________________
The purpose of this interview is for me to get a sense what experiences have informed your
decision to adopt and enact a navigation based approach and your beliefs regarding the benefits it
has for your students. Feel free to share as much as you feel comfortable.
I would like to start with a few questions about your background:
Background
1. Tell me a little bit about your educational experience. What prompted you to pursue
your current positon in education?
2. What educational experiences, if any, lead your decision to adopt a navigation
curriculum?
a. What steps were taken? For example how did you propose this idea?
Philosophy/Orientations:
3. Briefly describe your educational philosophy as it relates to educating Hawaii’s
students.
4. What do you believe are the most important skills for students of the 21st century to
have? How did you come to this belief? For example, were there particular experiences
that you have had that lead you to this conclusion?
5. In your own words, describe the mission of your school.
6. How does a traditional Hawaiian voyaging or navigation approach fit into this mission?
7. What prompted you to adopt this curricular approach? Tell me about any experiences or
insights that may have informed this decision?
Navigation:
8. What values of traditional Hawaiian voyaging or navigation are most important to your
school?
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a. What lead you to that conclusion?
9. What would it look like for the students to master or internalize that value or those
values?
a. Does this look different across students of differing cultural backgrounds?
10. Please describe the oceanic voyaging knowledge you believe is valuable to your
school/students specifically.
11. What would it look like for students to demonstrate they had mastered or internalized
that knowledge?
a. Does this look different across differing cultural backgrounds?
Outcomes:
12. What are the academic and nonacademic outcomes do you expect to result from the
adoption of a navigation curriculum?
13. What does learning look like within this type of curriculum?
a. What types of behaviors do you expect as a result of this curriculum?
14. Who, if not you, was responsible for the translation of the vision to curriculum?
a. What was your role in this process?
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ENACTOR INTERVIEW PROTOCOL
School Name: _______________________________ Date: ___________
Name of Person Interviewed: ______________________________________________
Position: _______________________________________________________________
Time Started: ______________Time Completed: ___________Total Time: _________
Researcher: _____________________________________________________________
The purpose of this interview is for me to get a sense what experiences have informed your
decision to adopt and enact a navigation based approach and your beliefs regarding the benefits it
has for your students. Feel free to share as much as you feel comfortable.
Background
15. Can you describe a little bit about your educational experience? What lead you to your
current position in education?
Philosophy/Orientations:
16. Describe your educational philosophy.
17. What do you believe are the most important skills for students of the 21st century to
have? What experiences have influenced this belief?
18. Describe the mission of your school.
19. How does voyaging/navigation approach fit into your philosophy/mission?
Navigation:
20. What values of voyaging/navigation do you feel are most important to education in
general?
21. Can you describe what oceanic voyaging knowledge is valuable to your school/students
specifically?
22. What prompted you to adopt this approach? Can you describe any experiences or insights
that may have informed this decision?
Outcomes:
23. How does navigation approach to education impact student achievement?
24. What type of relationship should students have to the place of learning?
25. What is important for students to understand about place?
26. What role should education play in regards to learning about place?
Enactment:
27. How would you describe your enactment of a navigation curriculum?
28. What are you goals for adopting this approach?
29. If enacted ideally, what types of outcomes would you expect to see from a navigation
curriculum?
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30. Can you tell me some of the challenges with incorporating this approach?
31. What factors, people, stakeholders have influenced your integration of curriculum?
32. How have you communicated your vision of navigation to the faculty? What examples
can you give?
33. How have you communicated your vision of navigation to community stakeholders?
34. What evidence can you provide that speaks to your enactment of a NB approach?
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Appendix B
INFORMED CONSENT
University of Southern California
Rossier School of Education
3470 Trousdale Parkway
Los Angeles, CA 90089-4033
INFORMATION SHEET FOR NON-MEDICAL RESEARCH
A CASE STUDY OF HAWAII SCHOOL ADOPTION OF NAVIGATION
CURRICULUM
You are invited to participate in a research study conducted Angie Dolan, Doctoral Candidate,
under the supervision of the Faculty Advisor, Julie Slayton, PhD., at the University of Southern
California, because of your position a leader in a Hawaii school which has adopted navigation or
voyaging curriculum. Your participation is voluntary. You should read the information below,
and ask questions about anything you do not understand, before deciding whether to participate.
Please take as much time as you need to read the consent form. You may also decide to discuss
participation with your family or friends. You can keep this form for your records.
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The purpose of the study is to understand why school leaders choose to adopt a navigation based
approach to education and how they have perceived to enact this approach within their school.
STUDY PROCEDURES
If you volunteer to participate in this study, you will be asked to participate in one to two formal,
semi-structured interviews regarding your involvement regarding the adoption and enactment of
the navigation curriculum. The questions will be open-ended and center around your vision
and/or enactment of this curriculum. These meetings can be scheduled at locations and times of
convenience to you, and can be conducted in person, over the phone or over the Internet
according to your preference. The interviews will be audio-recorded with your permission; if you
don’t want to be audio-recorded, handwritten notes will be taken.
As part of the interview procedures, you may be asked to share documents with the researcher,
such as program descriptions, course syllabi, student learning outcomes and textbooks.
This study should take approximately 4 weeks to conduct and will begin with the formal
interview (Week 1). Depending upon the extent of your involvement with the vision and
enactment, a second formal interview will be conducted in the weeks following (Week 3 or 4).
Informal interviews will be conducted on an as needed basis.
Interviews will last approximately 1-1.5 hours.
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POTENTIAL RISKS AND DISCOMFORTS
There are no anticipated risks in participating in this study. You may feel discomfort being
answering questions.
POTENTIAL BENEFITS TO PARTICIPANTS AND/OR TO SOCIETY
You may not directly benefit from your participation in this study—although you may gain
insight into your teaching approaches and practices. This study may benefit Hawaii’s educational
community in identifying common curriculum to benefit native and non-native student
populations.
CONFIDENTIALITY
Any identifiable information obtained in connection with this study will remain confidential.
Recordings of the interviews will be transcribed by a professional transcription service. The data
will not be maintained by that service; it will be transcribed then returned to me.
The data, including identifiers, audio recordings and transcriptions will be stored on a password
protected computer and in a shared Dropbox folder for each respondent. This is called “raw
data.” The researcher and the faculty advisor will have access to the raw data in the Dropbox
folder, and if you would like to see your raw data, you will be given access to it. The raw data,
including identifiers, will be retained for future research. If you don’t want your data or
identifiers retained for future studies, you should not participate.
The members of the research team and the University of Southern California’s Human Subjects
Protection Program (HSPP) may access the data. The HSPP reviews and monitors research
studies to protect the rights and welfare of research subjects.
When the results of the research are published or discussed in conferences, no identifiable
information will be used. Study findings will not be shared with your employer.
PARTICIPATION AND WITHDRAWAL
Your participation is voluntary. Your decision whether or not to participate will involve no
penalty or loss of benefits to which you are otherwise entitled. You may withdraw your consent
at any time and discontinue participation without penalty. You are not waiving any legal claims,
rights or remedies because of your participation in this research study.
ALTERNATIVES TO PARTICIPATION
Your alternative is to not participate in this study; your relationship with your employer will not
be affected, whether or not you participate in this study.
INVESTIGATOR’S CONTACT INFORMATION
If you have any questions or concerns about the research, please feel free to contact the Principal
Investigator, Angie Dolan, via phone at (808) 351-0173; email at giancate@usc.edu or using the
address at the top of this document.
RIGHTS OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANT – IRB CONTACT INFORMATION
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If you have questions, concerns, or complaints about your rights as a research participant or the
research in general and are unable to contact the research team, or if you want to talk to someone
independent of the research team, please contact the University Park Institutional Review Board
(UPIRB), 3720 South Flower Street #301, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0702, (213) 821-5272 or
upirb@usc.edu
SIGNATURE OF RESEARCH PARTICIPANT
I have read the information provided above. I have been given a chance to ask questions. My
questions have been answered to my satisfaction, and I agree to participate in this study. I have
been given a copy of this form.
AUDIO/VIDEO/PHOTOGRAPHS (If this is not applicable to your study and/or if
participants do not have a choice of being audio/video-recorded or photographed, delete
this section.)
□ I agree to be audio-recorded
□ I do not want to be audio-recorded
Name of Participant
Signature of Participant Date
SIGNATURE OF INVESTIGATOR
I have explained the research to the participant and answered all of his/her questions. I believe
that he/she understands the information described in this document and freely consents to
participate.
Name of Person Obtaining Consent
Signature of Person Obtaining Consent Date
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Appendix C
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Outline of Significant Changes
The conceptual framework presented in Chapter Three was revised from my original
framework after my expectations and assumptions evolved upon completion of the study. The
changes from the original framework and the revised framework can be found in the innermost
section as encompassed by the triangle, in the above figures.
Figure 1. Original Conceptual Framework School Leader Factors
The original framework assumed school leaders would be influenced more by
educational outcomes of this approach. The educational outcomes, which surround the school
leader, represented the learning process necessary to achieving the outcomes or benefits for
students. The learning process outcomes I identified were: meaning and personal learning,
experiential and active, or collaborate and constructive learning models (these are depicted in
green). The learning process factors (see Figure 1) were derived from assumption that school
leaders expected to achieve their ideological goal through one or more of the learning
processes. Additionally, it assumed, regardless of the orientation or outcomes, the learning
processes, which were characterized by, experiential, meaningful and collaborative learning were
CANOE TO CLASSROOM 199
expected to be the ways in which the school leader utilized a navigation approach to achieve
those benefits.
Figure 2. Revised Conceptual Framework School Leader Factors
After I completed data collection, I concluded that there were more personal factors at
play. Within this framework, I expected that how school leaders made meaning of curriculum
would be influenced by their own educational experiences, as well as the particular context of
their school. For this reason, I updated the internal sphere to include these internal influencers
such as background/experience, education and value knowledge system. Furthermore, in
understanding how a school leader made meaning of their decision to adopt this curriculum, I
found that there was also and external realm of influence, which I’ve depicted by the triangle.
These external factors were found to be school climate, mission and history.
Abstract (if available)
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine why Hawai‘i school leaders are deciding to adopt a navigation curriculum and how they perceive it to be benefitting their students. The research questions guiding this study are: How do school leaders make meaning of the decision to adopt a navigation based curriculum at their schools? What do they perceive to be the benefits for students? How do they believe they have enacted this approach to achieve benefits? In order to answer these questions, this multi-case study analyzed interview data from six Hawai‘i school leaders who had intentionally adopted aspects of traditional Hawaiian wayfinding curriculum. All respondents were heads of school or key leaders in the enactment or implementation of wayfinding curriculum within their school setting. Data for this study included in-depth interviews with each school leader and artifact collection. Findings revealed that while all leaders held similar expectations regarding the intended outcomes of adopting wayfinding approach, their personal ideology and the constraints of their specific school resulted in variations of how school leaders made meaning of their decision to adopt a navigation approach. Additionally, data revealed this intersection of school context, and each leader’s personal experience with their own situationality contributed to their ability to develop curriculum, which addresses the political, social and cultural challenges facing those who inhabit the same place. In order to provide meaningful place and culturally relevant curriculum, school leaders must first, identify their own biases
Linked assets
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Dolan, Angela Lani
(author)
Core Title
Canoe to classroom: examining why Hawai'i's schools are adopting a navigation approach to education
School
Rossier School of Education
Degree
Doctor of Education
Degree Program
Education (Leadership)
Publication Date
09/26/2017
Defense Date
06/29/2017
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
21st-century skills,culture-based education,Environmental education,epistemology,Hawai'i, worldwide voyage,Hawaiian culture,Hōkūle‘a,indigenous education,indigenous knowledge,Mālama Honua,navigation,navigation-based curriculum,OAI-PMH Harvest,place based education,positionality,sustainability,traditional Hawaiian navigation,voyaging,wayfinding
Language
English
Contributor
Electronically uploaded by the author
(provenance)
Advisor
Slayton, Julie (
committee chair
), Kealoha-Scullion, Kehaulani (
committee member
), Samikian, Artineh (
committee member
)
Creator Email
angielanidolan@gmail.com,giancate@usc.edu
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-437138
Unique identifier
UC11264200
Identifier
etd-DolanAngel-5779.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-437138 (legacy record id)
Legacy Identifier
etd-DolanAngel-5779.pdf
Dmrecord
437138
Document Type
Dissertation
Rights
Dolan, Angela Lani
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
Repository Location
USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA
Tags
21st-century skills
culture-based education
epistemology
Hawai'i, worldwide voyage
Hawaiian culture
Hōkūle‘a
indigenous education
indigenous knowledge
Mālama Honua
navigation
navigation-based curriculum
place based education
positionality
sustainability
traditional Hawaiian navigation
voyaging
wayfinding