Skip to main content

Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Responsiveness


What is my understanding of cultural responsiveness?

Culturally responsive pedagogy is defined by Gay (2001, p.106) as “using the cultural characteristics, experiences and perspectives as conduits for effective teaching”.
I believe the five elements Gay (2001) identifies of “knowledge about cultural diversity, the culturally integrated content in the curriculum, the development of the learning community, the ability to communicate with culturally diverse students and culturally responsive delivery of instruction” all underpin a classroom programme that values the learner and the individual.
To me, successful classrooms are built on relationships, on knowing the child, their strengths and weaknesses, their likes and dislikes and their whanau and family background. Making these connections during the first term of school enable teachers to have a successful and quality learning environment with their students.
I also agree with Milne (2007) when she says that cultural responsiveness is more than just celebrating Te wiki o Te Reo Maori or having cultural assemblies and that a cultural responsive pedagogy should be alive and well within our classrooms and our schools.
A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to listen to Janelle Riki speak about Cultural Responsiveness in Schools. One question she regularly asks schools, teachers and principals is what would I see hear and feel that tells me firstly, that we are a school in Aotearoa New Zealand and what would I see, hear and feel that tells me my child, their culture, their tikanga, their history and their family backgrounds will be valued in this classroom and this place.

So what?

Communication Methods
Using the action continuum (Milne 2017) to evaluate where we are at as a school, I think that some processes reflect the cultures of our community. Each year we hold hui and community consultation evenings where whanau are encouraged to come along and share their views and give feedback on areas for growth and change, this is also done through an online survey at the end of each year. Our website, facebook pages and blog sites, reflect school happenings and help to open communication and dialogue within families, encouraging parents and students to share their learning with each other. The school newsletter is easily accessible for all families and the photos within it highlight school events and classroom programmes, often these are of cultural or sporting achievement and participation, aspects of tuakana/teina relationships and show connections to our community.

Planning and assessment and learning activities
To me these 2 areas sit alongside each other as an area where we as a school need to focus on for 2019. As part of our NPDL learning journey, we are developing inquiry unit plans that have strong links to our community and create learning partnerships with our whanau. But this is definitely an area for continued focus. The link between our planning and learning activities where Maori perspectives and cultural responsiveness are acknowledged would also continue to be part of this process. At the moment, the planning and learning activities designed for incorporating te reo Maori into our classrooms is quite isolated and there is definitely room for more integration and purposeful learning.

What next?
Our self-review processes have already identified that Maori perspectives need to be a focus of our year in 2019. Making sure as a leader of learning that I integrate te reo and tikanga Maori into my classroom and into our inquiry topics will be a way that I help my teachers with this. That we are making links and connections within our inquiry learning to our community (both school and wider) and embedding processes and practises that are culturally centred. At the moment, although there is space and for this in our planning - I feel that we need to concentrate on making this learning overt and explicit for our learners and their families. 

Bishop, R., Berryman, M., Cavanagh, T. & Teddy, L. (2009).Te Kotahitanga: Addressing educational disparities facing Māori students in New Zealand. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(5),734–742.
Milne, B.A. (2013). Colouring in the white spaces: Reclaiming cultural identity in whitestream schools. (Doctoral Thesis, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand). Retrieved from http://hdl. handle.net/10289/7868
Milne, A.(2017).Coloring in the white spaces: reclaiming cultural identity in whitestream schools. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.
Riki J (2017): "Seeing your school through the eyes of Maori parents." [video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/205147189

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Future-oriented Learning and Teaching - "Changing the script for my learners."

Description Throughout my Mindlab journey, I have been excited by many of the innovative practices covered. The big one for me, as a connected educator who perceives herself as having a future focused disposition, is Changing the Script – rethinking the roles of learners and teachers. Perhaps the most intriguing part of this, is not changing the script for myself – but how I feed this forward to my students. We, the teachers, are not the fountain of all knowledge anymore, as the ubiquitousness of technology is surpassing this old concept of education. Many of my students believe in a number of misconceptions. ·       Learning is about them being ‘fed’ information ·       Mathematical learning is about getting the answer right ·       Sharing information, answers, strategies is not okay ·       Research and inquiry is about finding the answers from google as qu...
8 comments
Read more

Key change in Professional Practice

During this year of learning for me, through the Mind Lab course, I have changed a number of elements of my professional practice. I will explore and reflect on one change that encompasses 4 of the key concepts as outlined by Hack Education. What? One of the aspects of my professional practice that I have changed is the move towards real world and authentic contexts for learning, where my students make connections with other learners both in the classroom and on a global scale. Through this learning, their digital toolkit is increasing as they find meaningful purposes for using these tools and applications. So what? Stage 1: Problem Identification I observed many of my learners, on entry into my classroom, mainly focused on the end point of learning tasks. They wanted to complete the task as quickly as they could and many wanted to hold onto their knowledge without sharing their expertise. In terms of inquiry topics, they liked to regurgitate informati...
1 comment
Read more

Professional Online Social Networks

In this week’s blogpost, I will use Jay and Johnson’s model (2002) to critically discuss and reflect on my use of social media within my classroom. How is social media being used in my classroom? Social media is a big part of my classroom and an integral part of my teaching practice already. Our classroom blog is a portal for learning and holds all the important information for students about what their learning tasks for the week are. Each student also has their own blog and they are expected to post regularly. Twitter has, over the last couple of years, also become an important aspect of our literacy programme, as we participate in Chapter Chat each term. During this time, we (read a particular chapter book and complete tasks related to this across the week. At the end of the week, we share our work, look and comment on other students work and answer comprehension texts, along with classrooms across the country. What does the research say about using social media? An...
Post a Comment
Read more