Waikato River Authority: Joint Māori-Crown management of the Waikato River, with equal representation from iwi and government appointees.
Te Waihora Co-governance: Ngāi Tahu and Environment Canterbury working together to restore Lake Ellesmere/Te Waihora.
Tūhoe Settlement: Return of Te Urewera to Tūhoe with innovative legal status as a living entity.
Whanganui River: Recognition of the river as an ancestor with legal personhood status.
Māori Television: Broadcasting service reflecting Treaty partnership principles.
Te Kōhanga Reo: Māori language immersion education demonstrating tino rangatiratanga in action.
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.