Agency–structure dynamics in an indigenous mathematics education community in times of an existential crisis in education

This article is a synthesis of the historical account of the ongoing suppression of Māori indigeneity (language and cultural knowledge) in mathematics education for over 100 years. During that time, Māori, the Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand, have been ravaged by the effects of globalisation as an outcome of colonisation, resulting in loss of property, linguistic, and cultural rights, that have been compounded by the damaging effects of diseases that have cumulatively sustained negative socioeconomic and education outcomes to this day. The COVID-19 pandemic, which arrived on Aotearoa New Zealand shores in February 2020, exposed and further exacerbated the deep inequities that already existed due to the legacy of assimilation policies. This article draws on Bourdieu’s notions of capital, habitus, and field to frame our analysis of the capacity and potential for Māori to act as agents within, and against, multiple cultural and structural pressures that have impacted the historical development of Māori-medium mathematics education, and the capacity of the Māori-medium mathematics community to cope while schools were closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article reveals that despite some recent positive structural changes in response to the emergence of Māori-medium schooling in the 1980s, and partly due to the high status of mathematics educationally, many structural challenges remain. In 2020, in response to having to deliver mathematics education remotely, the Māori-medium community, including parents, teachers, and associates, used their individual and collective agency to overcome the structural barriers created by physical school closures.