How Bicultural Education can contribute to the formation of a Multicultural Society. Case study: New Zealand Aotearoa

This thesis discusses the important impact a bicultural educational approach can have on the formation process of Multicultural societies. Given the increasing numbers of students with different ethnic background, classrooms and professionals of the Education sector often find themselves alone in solving the issues that may occur in such circumstances. On this matter, the thesis suggests to observe and analyze how Bicultural Education systems have tried to address the inevitable challenges of bicultural cohabitation in order to find suitable and useful solutions for multicultural systems. In particular, an analysis of the New Zealand Tomorrow’s Schools Reforms of 1989 will be proposed, exploring its successes and failures. Data demonstrates that, although a general proficiency decrease persists in most OECD countries, Aotearoa New Zealand remains above the OECD average and the educational gap between Māori (the native community) and Pākehā (white descendants of British colonizers) is shortening. The research also shows how many issues still need to be addressed, the first being a power dominance one mostly related to the white community that is consciously or unconsciously slowing the healing process of the nation. A problem, this one, that might be relevant for many other country, especially western multicultural democracies that are now trying to face similar problems. The research finds that solutions to solve these urging pressions of a world enriched of countries always more varied and multicultural, exist and can be adopted. The most important issue, however, remains the will of governments to improve the multiculturality within their systems and to rectify the inevitable inequalities present within them. The thesis suggests that, adopting bicultural premises in our Education systems might improve the overall quality of the learning process of all students and facilitate the birth of a more unified and diverse society.