Teaching can feel like acrobatics, as critically reflective teaching requires constant attention and balance as well as adaptability. Contriving a new approach to immersing students in important material produces a rush of adrenaline: Will it work or fall flat? There can be breathtaking views, even applause—it worked! But did it work for everyone? And if not, why not? The risks and rewards can be immense for staff and students alike, but the vertigo can be dizzying and the falls shattering. Abrupt changes in methods, mediums, and sometimes messages may be required—heartbreaking adjustments that can also serve as opportunities to put critical reflection into practice.

The Treaty of Waitangi is made up of seven sheets of paper and two sheets of parchment, including this document signed by Māori chiefs. Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga Archives New Zealand. Image cropped.
I teach New Zealand history in the Tertiary Foundation Certificate program at Waipapa Taumata Rau (the University of Auckland), a bridge for students traditionally excluded from postsecondary education. The program includes students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, many of them Māori and Pasifika, refugees, members of the LGBTQ+ community, or students with special learning needs or health issues. Though pastoral care is a huge part of this program, the history I teach also requires sitting with discomfort. The often-murky line between being uncomfortable and being unsafe becomes even harder to distinguish when teaching colonial content at a Eurocentric institution, in a settler colonial society, to students who live with the ongoing legacies of colonization every day.
Until last year, the heart of my course lay in historicizing the Treaty of Waitangi / Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the founding documents of Aotearoa / New Zealand that continue to delineate political debates and social outcomes in the present. Since Europeans arrived in the 18th century, relationships between Māori and Europeans have been multifaceted, but it was very clear with whom authority lay—Māori. There was little appetite for formal acts of colonization by the British until the mid-1830s. In this period, factors including the unregulated activities of an unsanctioned immigration company led to a rapid and official annexation. The result was a hastily drafted set of documents presented by a representative of the British Crown to a large group of Māori leaders at Waitangi in the north in February 1840; copies of these documents were then taken around the coastline over subsequent months.
Māori had varied reasons for signing the treaty, often connected to local concerns and politics. Just as crucially, there were many groups who did not sign—because of active opposition, lack of opportunity, or a combination of the two. The English version, the Treaty of Waitangi, appears to make cession of sovereignty to the British Crown clear. But Te Tiriti o Waitangi, which most Māori signed, is not a simple translation—it is a different document. Te Tiriti indicates that while the British Crown would hold governorship, authority over the land remains with Māori. Many Māori interpreted this as a clear signal of dual authority and that the British would regulate the activity of their own while leaving Māori to continue to exert their own laws over their own people and lands. These documents are hugely important in Aotearoa. Their terms and applications remain contested, and debates around the Treaty / Te Tiriti are everywhere, so overcoming students’ misconceptions that they already know this history is a consistent challenge.
From 2019 to 2022, in the spirit of battling “myth” conceptions and Treaty fatigue in my Foundations history class on Aotearoa / New Zealand, I enthusiastically adopted the Reacting to the Past pedagogy. RTTP, which originated in the United States, is a game-based approach that turns the classroom into a historical event, allowing students to portray historical actors, debate each other in character, and cast votes to determine the outcome of their proceedings.
A small group of department faculty and I designed and developed a role-playing game on the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi / the Treaty of Waitangi. Initially, we saw outstanding results. Students listened to lectures and researched the historical context. In small groups, they were randomly assigned a “role” and were responsible for investigating their historical actor’s beliefs, positions, and relationships—including if they had been for, against, or undecided on the Treaty’s passage. Each group then strategized, negotiated, and attempted to persuade others to achieve their assigned objectives. Using small groups both assisted students who might lack confidence and reflected the collective decision-making processes that are at the heart of Māori communities and tīkanga (protocol). Finally, the students decided: to sign or not to sign.
The real-world applicability of skills enhances the relevance for students whose backgrounds have made education a struggle.
Student agency distinguishes this pedagogy. The real-world applicability of skills learned in an activity like this—such as how to persuade and negotiate—enhances the relevance for students whose backgrounds have made education a struggle. Rather than start from a deficit model, we worked to convince a diverse body of students that education is a journey, using Kevin Gannon’s adaptation of Amy Collier and Jen Ross’s concept of “not-yetness.” RTTP provides a way to invite critical engagement from where students are, a pedagogy that aligns with Stephen Brookfield’s concept of the “disorienting dilemma,” which occurs “any time a case study looks familiar to the student but the outcome of the case study is completely unexpected.” Brookfield suggests that a “disorienting dilemma . . . has to be unsettling enough to shake students out of their comfort zone, but not so discomforting that those students will do their best to avoid dealing with it.” This is an arena of risk for both students and teachers.
The game was afoot in my class in four iterations (in person, online, and hybrid) between 2019 and 2022. The first in 2019 demonstrated one of the key principles of this approach: historical contingency. The positive outcomes students experienced were many, with high levels of engagement and excitement spilling outside our class sessions. In a math class, which included several of my history students, the friendliest possible threats whispered by one faction to another became the stuff of legend. Tumultuous debates on governance versus sovereignty erupted. In the end, Māori retained sovereignty, the French were declared winners after wrangling a free trade agreement out of the discussions, and the British, who barely phoned it in, found themselves sidelined as a result.
Each subsequent iteration had different results. The 2020 game was rapidly rushed online during the first COVID-19 lockdown and discussion boards replaced live speeches. Queen Victoria threw a text-based tantrum, followed by Lord Bunbury threatening to “clickety clack” anyone who wasted his time. Behind the scenes, Tangata Whenua (the original people of the land) colluded with sympathetic missionaries, the original Treaty mysteriously caught fire, and my class drew up an entirely new Treaty reinforcing the primacy of Tangata Whenua. In 2021, the game took place as a hybrid of in-person and discussion board activity. With threat of force again a catalyst, the outcome—no agreement was reached—highlighted the Crown’s desire to avoid armed conflict. A treaty was reached in principle in 2022 but with vastly different wording.
We must prioritize student contexts and the spaces in which these pedagogies play out if we are to successfully “unsettle” our classrooms.
Despite our successes, the spotlight of these theoretical ideas about contingency and agency cast new shadows. In both 2021 and 2022, student objections raised important questions that required serious consideration. Was “changing” or gamifying history devaluing or trivializing the lived experiences of students—and their ancestors—who had already lost so much? This is a crucial question for those of us invested in “decolonizing” or “unsettling” the classroom. In 2022, a related issue was raised: Students playing a particular role did not represent another student’s ancestor the way he thought they should, and he considered the discrepancy disrespectful. This feedback required more than just a pause for thought; they presented us with our own disorienting, unsettling dilemma. I could ignore the concerns as coming from a small number of students, shut the course down, and move on, or use the experience as a teachable moment to reconsider my practice for the future. After the 2022 iteration, I decided to change approach again, and I suspended the game as I took stock of its lessons to aid future classes.
I carry with me the ghosts of classrooms past. But I firmly believe that students need to understand the difference between uncomfortable and unsafe: Studying history requires sitting with discomfort. As I redesign this course, I am building on John Palfrey’s notion of “brave” and “safe” spaces in my approach. However, as a Pākehā (someone not of Māori descent), middle-class educator in an institution on colonized land, my own perspective is not free from the fetters of privilege and power. In a recent article, Holly Bodman pointed out the unconscious bias that many of us bring to our classrooms. Perhaps I had not sufficiently considered how, as Bodman wrote, “Māori conceive their tīpuna [ancestors] as being kua muri (in front) . . . This contrasts my experience as a Pākehā . . . taught to conceive of my ancestors as behind me and largely disconnected from my present.” We undertook this project with the support and input of Māori colleagues, and many Māori students enjoyed this approach to history. Yet their engagement and improved academic outcomes may have kept me from considering core sensitivities. I cannot ignore the possibility that my enthusiasm for this pedagogy comes in part from my own position; perhaps the concerns of a few had to outweigh the rewards of the many.
I have learned that I need to keep a close eye on the nuances of context in the implementation of pedagogical approaches. We must prioritize student contexts and the spaces in which these pedagogies play out if we are to successfully “unsettle” our institutions and classrooms. These lessons now inform my quest to develop different forms of assessment that harness the positives of my RTTP experience. Now I ask, How might I pivot to positively implement performative and creative pedagogies while maintaining the right balance between risk and reward?
Sara Buttsworth is the convenor of two Tertiary Foundation Certificate arts courses and stage one Arts Scholars at Waipapa Taumata Rau / the University of Auckland.
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