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UC’s first Doctor of Education returns to Te Arawa roots to graduate

The University of Canterbury’s (UC) first Doctor of Education graduate will receive his qualification in his home town of Rotorua today.

For his doctorate, Karaka-Clarke explored the challenge of incorporating Taha wairua (spiritual health), one of the four pillars of the Māori health model Te Whare Tapa Whā, into online learning.

Along with lecturing in te reo Māori in the College of Education, Karaka-Clarke leads the Hōaka Pounamu Bilingual and Immersion Teaching endorsement for Māori-language immersion school teachers. The year-long programme is taught face to face but has recently included an online distance option. It starts with a relationship-building one-week noho marae (face to face immersion) with three more of these through the year.

Karaka-Clarke first enrolled in a combined arts and law degree at UC. “It was around the time of the Ngāi Tahu settlement. You might remember there was quite a backlash from what they then called ‘Middle New Zealand’ – they weren’t happy. I used to get quizzed quite a bit and I didn’t know anything about it. The kids were young then, one or two years-old, and I thought, ‘I need to find out about this’.

“I’ve always believed that you need to be a good role model for your children. Māori children have been over-represented at the wrong end of all the statistics and I didn’t want that for my kids, so I thought, ‘I’ve got to show them that I can do it, so they know they can do it’.”

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