Community Partnership Guide

This guide has not been written yet, and nothing in this unit depends on it. It is listed here so the gap is visible rather than implied — no lesson links to it and no task requires it. If you are looking for the community-action material this unit does carry, use the station cards and Protest Case Studies for real Aotearoa examples, and Indigenous Governance Principles for the governance framing. Partnership with mana whenua is not something a generic handout can supply: the people who can tell you how to do it well in your rohe are your local iwi and hapū, and kaiako Māori in your kura.

📋 Teacher Planning Snapshot

Ngā Whāinga Ako — Learning Intentions

Students will engage with this resource to apply systems thinking to real-world civic and community challenges — analysing feedback loops, leverage points, and emergent properties within social, environmental, and governance systems in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Ngā Paearu Angitū — Success Criteria

✅ Students can identify system components and their interactions within a real-world context.
✅ Students can apply indigenous systems thinking principles to analyse and propose community action.

Differentiation & Inclusion

Scaffold support: Provide systems mapping templates and sentence starters for entry-level access. Offer extension tasks asking students to identify a second-order effect or design an intervention at a leverage point within their chosen system.

ELL / ESOL: Pre-teach systems thinking vocabulary (feedback loop, leverage point, emergence, interdependence) using visual diagrams. Allow students to annotate systems maps in their home language first.

Inclusion: Use visual, spatial, and collaborative formats wherever possible — systems maps are inherently accessible for diverse learners. Neurodiverse learners benefit from structured inquiry steps and chunked analysis tasks. Ensure group roles are clearly defined.

Mātauranga Māori lens: Systems thinking has deep resonance with Te Ao Māori. Whakapapa is a relational map of systems — tracing connections between people, place, and time. Kaitiakitanga frames our responsibility within systems. Mauri provides a measure of system health. These indigenous concepts enrich Western systems thinking frameworks.

Prior knowledge: Students should have completed foundational systems thinking lessons (phases 1–2) before engaging with phase 3 inquiry tasks. No specialist prior knowledge required for standalone resources.

Curriculum alignment

Te Mātaiaho (2025) · Social Sciences · Phase 3 (Years 7–8) · Civics and Society (Knowledge): “Pressure groups influence decision-makers outside of elections.”
NZC (2007) · Social Studies · Level 4: “Understand how people participate individually and collectively in response to community challenges.”