Case study | Communities and culture

An indigenous model, evolved.

How the world’s largest indigenous tertiary institute built its own version of TetraMap, rooted in Māori culture.

The journey from awareness to action

From shared framework to indigenous practice.

Te Wānanga o Aotearoa began with 20 students on a former rubbish dump, funded by founders who mortgaged their own homes to make it happen. Thirty years on, it’s the second-largest tertiary provider in New Zealand and the largest indigenous tertiary institution in the world, serving more than 30,000 graduates.

Ruhia King, Master TetraMap Facilitator and manager of the institution’s Ako Wānanga practice, set out to align TetraMap with an indigenous worldview rather than simply importing it unchanged. Drawing on Te Tapa Toru, an indigenous model passed down through her own whānau, Ruhia customised TetraMap’s instrument to sit alongside Te Wānanga’s own teaching philosophy — reportedly the first time a tertiary provider has held that kind of arrangement directly with TetraMap’s founders.

The institution now has seven Certified TetraMap Facilitators, training tutors across 52 sites nationwide. For Ruhia, the fit works because TetraMap and indigenous ways of understanding people share the same instinct: connecting behaviour back to nature, rather than treating people as types to be sorted. The result is a genuinely bicultural teaching tool — used to train tutors, to support governance of Māori land and family trusts, and shared at the World Indigenous Peoples Conference for Education in Toronto.

The challenge

Make TetraMap relevant within an indigenous learning context.

Te Wānanga o Aotearoa wanted to use TetraMap to support communication, teaching and learning, while ensuring the framework aligned with its own indigenous worldview and philosophy. Rather than importing an external model unchanged, Ruhia King wanted to connect TetraMap with Ako Wānanga and Māori ways of understanding people, behaviour and the relationship with nature.

The solution

Adapt TetraMap through an indigenous lens.

Ruhia customised TetraMap’s My Nature, Your Nature instrument to work alongside Te Wānanga o Aotearoa’s own framework, drawing on Te Tapa Toru, an indigenous model passed down through her whānau. With support from TetraMap’s founders, the organisation established a memorandum of understanding allowing the two approaches to be used together.

The approach was then embedded into Ako Wānanga workshops, where tutors could use TetraMap to understand different teaching and assessment preferences and adapt their approach to different learning environments.

“As an indigenous culture, we naturally connect to nature… there is a saying, ‘don’t teach me my culture, but use my culture to teach me.”

— Ruhia King, Master TetraMap Facilitator, Te Wānanga o Aotearoa

The result

A bicultural approach embedded across the institution.

  • 7 Certified TetraMap Facilitators were developed within Te Wānanga o Aotearoa.

  • The Ako Wānanga team used the approach to support approximately 640 national tutors.

  • TetraMap was being used across the institution’s 52 sites nationwide.

  • Tutors could apply the framework across diverse subjects and teaching environments, from carving and weaving to language, computing and security.

  • The approach supported a learning environment where tutors and students could engage with different perspectives and learning styles.

  • Ruhia also applied TetraMap beyond teaching, including tribal charitable trust governance, land and family trusts, and her own Master’s study in Indigenous Practice.

  • The work was subsequently shared internationally when Ruhia presented Te Wānanga o Aotearoa’s approach at the World Indigenous Peoples Conference for Education in Toronto in 2017.

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