MEd (Hons) | PhD Candidate | Te Kotahitanga Facilitator & Researcher | Applied Theatre Practitioner | Former Secondary Teacher (Drama & English) | Kaupapa Māori School Reform Specialist
Dawn Lawrence spent two decades inside Te Kotahitanga, one of Aotearoa's most significant kaupapa Māori school reform projects. As a facilitator and researcher, she worked alongside teachers to shift how schools understand and practise culturally responsive pedagogy, not as an add-on, but as the foundation of effective education.
A former Drama and English teacher with an MEd (Hons) and a PhD currently underway, her research explores what it means to be Tangata Tiriti within a Te Tiriti-centric model of educator development. She uses applied theatre as both a research method and a metaphor for the kind of transformative learning that requires people to genuinely inhabit perspectives other than their own.
Her contribution to the Master of Contemporary Education at academyEX is rooted in that depth of practice: the understanding that culturally responsive teaching is not a technique learned in a workshop, but a way of being that takes years to develop. She brings a lifetime of that work to every room she's in.