Amanda Yates

Following up on our recent article in this journal, this research note discusses the range of names used in Māori school settings for flexible learning spaces (FLS) and innovative learning environments (ILE), There are various existing Māori names for FLS/ILE, which fall into two types: individual names and category names. We consider several of these names as a way to explore this concept and provide a background for positing ‘he wāhi ako’ as a generic name for Māori FLS/ILE, which translates into English as ‘Māori learning space(s).’

Māori aspirations in education have not been served by past national policies. It is hard to extinguish the influence of monoculturalism, whereby schools were used to colonise Māori by enforcing linguistic and cultural assimilation. The history of debate on Innovative Learning Environments (ILE) and Flexible Learning Spaces (FLS) demonstrates the ongoing dominance of this Eurocentric, monocultural approach. Official New Zealand education policy and practice follows international trends in school design, moving away from traditional single-cell classrooms towards more open and inter-connected spaces, despite no real evidence concerning the relative effects on learning of each classroom type. Meanwhile, school marae have been around for several decades, but largely ignored in national ILE and FLS policy and research literature. Our experiences lead us to suggest that Māori identity must be ‘built in’ not ‘added on’ to monocultural ILE frameworks, and for this reason, spatiality is crucial in Māori teaching and learning spaces. This article explores the notion of ‘Māori learning spaces.’

In this author response, we further reflect on pluriversal and prefigurative approaches to research, centred on Indigenous Māori knowledge, while opening space for cross-cultural perspectives and co-creation methods. We address the responses authored by Meg Parsons, Wendy Steele and Wendy Harcourt, starting by summarising what we took from each contribution. We discuss key questions raised by each of the authors in the context of the evolving research programme and broader developments on wellbeing governance in Aotearoa. Pluriversal and prefigurative experimental approaches are key to testing and iteratively advancing the research agenda in disruptive times.

Aotearoa New Zealand is at a critical juncture in reducing and managing organic waste. Research has highlighted the significant proportion of organic waste sent to landfills and associated adverse effects such as greenhouse gas emissions and loss of valuable organic matter. There is current debate about what practices and infrastructure to invest in to better manage and use organic waste. We highlight the diversity of existing organic waste practices and infrastructures, focusing on Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. We show how debates about organic waste practices and infrastructure connect across three themes: waste subjectivities, collective action in place and language.

The institutional frameworks within which we conceive, design, construct, inhabit and manage our built environments are widely acknowledged to be key factors contributing to converging ecological crises: climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, and social inequity at a global scale. Yet, our ability to respond to these emergencies remains largely circumscribed by educational and professional agendas inherited from 20th-century Western paradigms. As the crises intensify, there is a compelling case for radical change in the educational and professional structures of the built environment disciplines. This paper presents a work-in-progress examination of an emergent architecture programme at Te Wānanga Aronui O Tāmaki Makau Rau/Auckland University of Technology (AUT), Aotearoa New Zealand. The program is within Huri Te Ao/the School of Future Environments, a transdisciplinary entity formed in 2020 to integrate research and teaching across Architecture, Built Environment Engineering, and Creative Technologies. The school itself is conceived as a collaborative project to co-create an outward-facing civic research platform for sharing ecologically positive design thinking across diverse communities of practice. The programme foregrounds mātauranga Māori (Indigenous ways of knowing), transdisciplinary systems, and regenerative design as regional place-oriented contributions to planetary-scaled transformation. We illustrate and evaluate a specific curriculum change tool, the Living Systems Wellbeing (LSW) Compass. Grounded in Te Ao Māori (Māori cosmology and context), the Compass offers a graphic means for students to navigate and integrate ecological relationships at different scales and levels of complexity, as well as affords insights into alternative foundational narratives, positive values, design strategies, and professional practices. This paper identifies four foundational factors for transformative pedagogies. The first factor is the value of a collectively held and clearly articulated vision and focus. The second factor is the capacity and commitment of an academic team that supports and values the vision. Thirdly, the vision needs to meet and acknowledge place-specific knowledges and values. Finally, the pedagogy should have an action research component founded in real-world interactions. While this research-based pedagogy is place-based and specific, we argue that these four factors are transferable to other learning institutions and can support critical pedagogies for social, cultural, and ecological wellbeing.

At a time of ecological emergency there are pressing reasons to develop more responsive wellbeing-led governance frameworks that engage with both human and more-than-human wellbeing. Attempts to incorporate wellbeing indices into wellbeing-led governance include the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, the Gross National Happiness index of Bhutan, and a variety of emerging wellbeing-led governance frameworks in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Some of these frameworks have begun to include more-than-human wellbeing indices in their toolkit, but like many geographers and Indigenous scholars, we are wary of the dangers of universalising and abstractionist ‘indexology’ ( Ratuva, 2016 ). In this paper, we review wellbeing-led governance frameworks with a view to more-than-human wellbeing and Indigenous knowledge. We outline an emerging pluriversal and prefigurative project where Indigenous scholars engage with partners in co-creation methods in place, incorporating Indigenous-Māori cultural perspectives into more situated and holistic wellbeing tools. We argue that while critique is important, so too is engaging in Indigenous-led research interventions for transformative metrics and tools, particularly in these times of socio-ecological crisis. As we ‘stay with’ this trouble ( Haraway, 2018 ), we hope to contribute to a culturally specific place-based set of wellbeing indices and tools to inform wellbeing-led governance for more-than-human wellbeing.

This paper explores how spatial governance models oriented to the well‐being of the more‐than‐human might better enable Indigenous peoples' capacity to live‐well‐with and care for our more‐than‐human whanaunga (kin). The discussion positions Indigenous more‐than‐human ontologies as a cultural framework that supplants human‐centrism with a focus on holistic ecological well‐being. The paper considers how a culture of holistic ecological well‐being might be spatially emplaced through well‐being‐led planning tools that ground these ontologies in neighbourhoods, cities and wider afield. Currently settler‐colonial spatial governance and planning structures hold dominion in Aotearoa New Zealand, inscribing cultural territories fundamentally other to Indigenous norms. Yet the country's Te Tiriti o Waitangi contracts for tino rangatiratanga (Māori sovereignty), and to meet the Tiriti it is imperative that current spatial governance approaches swiftly converge with Indigenous ethical practices for mauri ora holistic well‐being. There is much at stake. The Petrocene—our current era of ecological breakdown, accelerated by a rapacious petrocapitalism—is a time of mass death of our more‐than‐human whanaunga (kin).