Māori Concepts for Animal Ethics

Online classroom resources are the end product of this research project, starting with two journal articles to summarise and analyse mātauranga Māori about animals and ethics.

The Three Rs (or 3Rs) are the principles of Replace, Reduce and Refine for more humane use of animals in research, testing and teaching, developed over 50 years ago.

Professor Georgina Tuari Stewart joined forces with Associate Professor Sally Birdsall on this research project, with funding support from MPI to develop 3Rs resources incorporating mātauranga Māori on behalf of ANZCCART, the Australia and New Zealand Council on the Care of Animals in Research and Teaching.

First, Georgina researched the existing literature and wrote an article about Māori knowledge of animals that was published in the journal Anthrozoos. Seond, she interviewed six Māori experts on working with animals across various domains, from farming to medical science. Georgina and Sally also read the current animal ethics literature, and combined these sources to co-write a second research article in the same journal.

Next, they wrote two source texts off these two articles as resources for science teaching and learning: one on Māori knowledge of animals for Year 7 -10, and the other for teaching and learning about animal ethics for Year 11 – 13. They designed several classroom resources, including crosswords and group discussion activities and handed all these over to Science Learning Hub, who designed two sets of online classroom resources, junior and senior.

Finally, they translated the texts into te reo Māori, and designed the results into student booklets and teacher guide material for Māori medium kura. Funding from CLNZ resourced the printing of the reo Māori student booklet, and sets of 10 booklets were sent to 89 kura around the motu. Limited quantities of these booklets are now available to purchase - for enquiries email: georgina.stewart@aut.ac.nz