Te Kōhanga Reo & Kura Kaupapa Māori: Māori-controlled education systems teaching through Te Reo and tikanga Māori.
University Programs: Māori Studies, Indigenous Studies, and decolonised curricula challenging colonial narratives.
Co-management: Sharing authority over rivers, lakes, and forests between Māori and Crown agencies.
Legal Personhood: Whanganui River and Te Urewera granted legal rights as living entities.
Māori Wards: Dedicated representation in local government to ensure Māori voices in decision-making.
He Puapua Report (2019): the report of an independent working group asked by the Minister for Māori Development to advise on realising the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It is advice to government, not adopted government policy — a distinction worth teaching, because it was widely reported as though it were a plan the government had agreed to.
Te Reo Māori Revival: Official language status and increasing use in media, schools, and government.
Māori Media: TV, radio, and digital platforms controlled by Māori for Māori perspectives.
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.
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.