Ask the posts of our house: using cultural spaces to encourage quality learning in higher education

When the Maori goddess, Hinetitama, asked the Maori god, Tane, who her father was, he replied, 'Uia ki nga pou o t whare ... Ask the posts of your house'. This traditional Maori (indigenous people of New Zealand) story implies a cultural teaching pedagogy that utilises the marae (a Maori building complex including a carved meeting house) as a learning and teaching tool. Marae complexes have slowly been embraced by tertiary education institutions throughout New Zealand since the early 1980s, as acknowledgement that they provide an authentic instructional space that enhances quality learning. This article considers the New Zealand university application of traditional marae-based teaching approaches and explores the transformative learning such cultural spaces can encourage. It shares how traditional Maori pedagogies are being modelled by contemporary Maori academics, and how the experiences of learning in a marae environment are perceived by their students.