Whanaungatanga: tutors’ experiences of caring for students in an Aotearoa New Zealand university

Who is caring for and supporting our students at university and how is the care and support demonstrated? Students come to university with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and needs and many will require pastoral care at some time during their study. Tutors often find themselves caring for students and this paper focuses on the experiences of care-giving of eight tutors, aged 22 to 34 years. We use a reflexive thematic analytic approach to describe how tutors conceptualised caring as whanaungatanga, a Māori concept that encompasses kinship and caring relationships, community, rights and responsibilities, and inclusion. Tutors describe whanaungatanga in terms of five themes: care for students as people and learners, creating a safe and respectful space for all students, barriers, feelings of obligation, and tutors’ self-care and needs. Our research highlights the complexities of tutors’ care for students. They felt undervalued by the university but nevertheless strove to build and embed whanaungatanga, often at their own cost. Implications for practice include properly acknowledging, remunerating, and training tutors. Future research should focus on who is caring-about and caring-for students at university, and how that caring occurs.