The Team

Peta Yates-Francis

Te Arawa, Mataatua, Rongowhakaata

Contact Details:

Phone: 09 921 9999 ext 26496
Email: peta.yatesfrancis@aut.ac.nz

Qualifications:

BA, BHSci (Hons)

Research Areas:

Te reo Māori, Māori psychology and mental health education, mātauranga Māori, pūrākau Māori, tikanga Māori, taonga tuku iho, revitalisation of traditional Māori customs and practice, takapau wharanui

Overview

Peta is a Lecturer in Te Ipukarea Research Institute, Auckland University of Technology. Peta has a background in Psychology with a passion to improve health literacy and mental health outcomes for Māori and in her, honours dissertation, she created a Māori undergraduate psychology curriculum prospectus. She is currently working towards a PhD, written in te reo Māori, on the revival of traditional Māori marriage rites and customs.   

Peta has experience in teaching beginner, intermediate and advanced te reo Māori language papers and has been a paper lead ina cultural competency programme ina university context. 

Peta grew up in a multigenerational home that has shaped her passion for tikanga and te reo Māori, education and indigenous success. 

Current research projects

Project 1: Te Kōhanga o te Tūī: artificial intelligence (AI) in early Māori language acquisition

This is a MBIE-rebid Endeavour Research Programme. Only 1 in 6 Māori and less than 4% of people in Aotearoa speak te reo Māori fluently. At least 80% of Māori tamariki are born into homes not supporting effective te reo Māori acquisition. This lack of fluent speakers and access to tailored resources to teach te reo Māori is severely hindering language revitalisation, government targets for te reo Māori fluency and associated social and economic benefits. We need a simple, efficient, and cost-effective solution to support whānau to teach their pre-school children te reo Māori as a primary language in their formative years.

Our solution will be a new framework, a whānau-centered learning approach in combination with a culturally-aligned and sensitive Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistant. It will be designed to support whānau/early childhood educators to ‘stay in te reo Māori’; to keep using te reo in dialogue with tamariki, passing on language/culture inspired by mātauranga Māori and traditional learning tools/frameworks.

Our research team is led by renowned Māori academics and comprises AI experts and Māori researchers with a track record of undertaking kaupapa Māori research over many years.

Easier and improved access and uptake of te reo Māori has multiple social and economic benefits, supporting government targets for te reo Māori uptake, cultural preservation, art, culture, education, whānau health & wellbeing, and novel AI-based language products and services which NZ companies can export.

We have co-designed our proposal and will collaborate with key stakeholders, including iwi and whānau-led organisations, government departments, education providers, and NZ IT and AI companies. This will lay the groundwork for widespread uptake and roll-out of our outputs, supporting the revitalisation of te reo Māori and creating widespread economic and societal benefits in Aotearoa.

Project 2: The language of the environment 

Funded by Catalyst, this project is led by Associate Professor Isaac Warbrick, Faculty of Health & Environmental Sciences, AUT in collaboration with Te Ipukarea Research Institute.

Project 3: Kapa Haka, Wairua & Mauri

This co-triangulated article looks at the concepts of wairua and mauri within kapa haka performance, drawing from the whakatauākī uttered by Hēnare TeŌwai ‘kia kōrero te katoa o te tinana’, asking where and how does the intersection between performer and audience meet to experience, ihi, wehi and wana expressions of mauri.

Project 4: Te Reo Māori:  Development of a resource for virtual asset creation & integration

This is a Virtual Production Volume (VPV) research collaboration. The creation of these resources aims to inspire others to use te reo Māori in the workplace.

Selected publications

Were, P. (2021). Ki te Ao Mārama: Towards a Bi-cultural Undergraduate Psychology Curriculum. [Honours dissertation, Auckland University of Technology], Auckland, New Zealand