MAI Journal's new special issue is available online! He Vaka Moana - Navigating Māori student and Pasifika student success in the tertiary sector introduces a compilation of eight articles that provide an invaluable contribution to our understanding of how we can improve teaching and learning in tertiary settings.



This special issue of MAI Journal is edited by Dr Ema Wolfgramm-Foliaki and Dr Hinekura Smith (NPM's Emerging Researchers' Leader), who are both kaitiaki for the He Vaka Moana programme at the University of Auckland.



Professor Cynthia Kiro and Associate Professor Damon Salesa comment in their foreword that the issue is "released at an unprecedented moment" as schools and universities have adjusted and adapted to online learning and engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so they have turned to a new online ocean, where so many of the waters remain largely unknown. In these times the inequalities that academics, researchers and students wrestle with, and the values with which they confront them are heightened. "Innovative work that can offer insight at times like this becomes of special value."



Articles in the issue are:

• He Vaka Moana: Navigating Māori and Pasifika student success through a collaborative research fellowship
• Igniting the Vā: Vā-kā methodology in a Māori-Pasifika research fellowship
• The art of wayfinding Pasifika success
• I am who I am: Pacific tertiary students and the centrality of ethnic identity for successful outcomes
• Lalanga ha kaha‘u monu‘ia: Helping science educators to embed Indigenous knowledge, values and cultures in their courses for Māori and Pacific science student success
• Leadership through learning: Normalising Māori and Pacific leadership and learning success in a tertiary environment
• Pasifika students and learning to learn at university
• Growing the fleet; views of the Moana: A Māori re-search-teina’s perspective on Māori and Pasifika re-search relationality