Expertise

I am an educator, facilitator, coach and emerging kairangahau whose mahi centres on storytelling, Indigenous education, assessment and transformational learning. I am of Niuean and American Samoan heritage but born and raised in Aotearoa New Zealand.  My approach to rangahau has been shaped by more than two decades of working alongside tauira, kaiako and communities in education.

I currently work at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, where my practice has included teaching, wānanga facilitation, leadership and capability development. Across these roles, I have maintained a particular interest in how learning is recognised and valued, and specifically on how knowledge, qualities, relationships and contributions that we value as an indigenous culture, but that mainstream approaches to assessment do not always make visible.

I am currently completing a Doctor of Professional Practice through Otago Polytechnic | Te Pūkenga, and my doctoral kaupapa, Te Whare Aromatawai, explores an Indigenous approach to assessment that asks educators and communities to consider a broader question of learner success. Rather than seeking to replace existing forms of assessment, Te Whare Aromatawai explores how they might be accompanied by processes capable of recognising dimensions of learning such as relationships, responsibility, contribution, identity, growth and lived experience.

As a recipient of the 2026 Te Manawahoukura Rangahau Residency, I am using the residency to further develop and articulate Te Whare Aromatawai as a practice-led framework. A central part of this mahi is exploring how the framework can move from kaupapa and theory into something educators can understand, apply and evaluate within their own learning environments.

In the past, I have consistently described myself as a practitioner first and researcher second, but now is the time for me to balance those 2 concepts similar to the reciprocal message held within the Takarangi. This position also reflects my belief that rangahau should always be connected to the people and communities from which the knowledge emerged. My aspiration is therefore simply to develop an indigenous model of assessment, and to contribute a practical framework through which educators and communities can recognise more of the learner, value more of what learning produces, and broaden the ways in which success can be understood.