Activity 7: Indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness in my practice

Culturally responsive pedagogy is defined by Gay (2001, p.106) as “using the cultural characteristics, experiences and perspectives as conduits for effective teaching.” It is reflected in five elements including 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 (Gay, 2001).

Step 1 (What): What is your understanding of indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness and what are the two of the areas mentioned above that you want to focus on for discussion?

My understanding of Indigenous knowledge did not develop until I was in tertiary education and was finally educated about the true history of New Zealand and the impact of colonization on what was previously a thriving and highly educated indigenous population of Maori, the Tangata Whenua. 

Until then I was fairly ignorant as I was raised in a pakeha family with little to no interaction with Maori, despite the fact I had married a Maori man and had Maori children. He was completely disengaged from his culture. I had no cultural exposure beyond the tokenistic numbers and colours in Te Reo that was part of the New Zealand educational system in the mid 1970s to 1980s.

As an educator, I recognize that I am an agentic style teacher, believing I have the skills and knowledge to help all learners and that I have culturally responsive pedagogy. Watching Russell Bishop speak (Edtalks, 2012) I can attest that Culturally responsive pedagogy is the premise to my practice, for all students within my classroom, and that I am continually evolving and developing my practice in this direction. It is interesting that the six steps he discusses are also the pedagogy for future focused learning, so truly what works for Maori, works for all.

Reflecting on how my school does within this model, I think they do vision, mission, and core values fairly well. The intention is there to build relationships with and among students. We have also been participating in Culture Counts workshops for professional development that are based upon Russell Bishop’s work. There are attempts to have unity across the staff based on the theory and values presented within these workshops.

My school could improve the learning activities schoolwide to be more in alignment with culturally responsive pedagogy. There have been attempts to have a kaupapa Maori class, but this has now been disbanded. I believe for this to have been a success other areas needed to be addressed, such as communication, decision making and more transparency around the goals and intention behind the set up of this classroom. 

The result of this initiation was an ‘us verse them’ culture that grew out of this. The students involved in this kaupapa seemed unruly and disrespectful to the staff, other students and showed disregard toward the school rules and system in place. This could have been based on the community we are situated within, but a pack mentality seemed to flourish. Perhaps the outcome would have been different if communications and expectations around this were shared school wide.

In my observation and understanding, embedding culturally responsive pedagogy within every classroom will have beneficial results for every student, without the need for segregation, and more toward unity.

Step 2 (So what): Evaluate your practice or your school practice in light of the following frameworks or use another one that you are familiar with.

Reflecting on which evaluation framework our school uses, clearly to me is Milne’s Action Continuum – Eliminating white spaces model. Although leadership are initiating change within the school, understanding the need for culturally responsive practice, our policies and assessment practice are situated within the blue and purple boxes of benevolence with some community consultation.

Fundamentally, to move along this framework, there are many changes that would need to happen within our school. I believe the same issues underscore attempts to make change; lack of trust and communication with staff to hear teacher voice and share in decision making, lack of support to implement change in practice, despite being in alignment with future focused pedagogy and the parallels to culturally responsive practice. How can we model what this looks like for our students if we cannot model it from leadership to classroom teachers?

To move from culturally responsive practice to culturally sustainable practice will take time in our school community. We have a societal split in the community our students come from. There are still attitudes from white families that are anti any form of cultural activity, such as our upcoming noho marae. The ignorance around what this school experience is means some parents think they have a right to deny their child this cultural experience based on what I can only term as cultural racism. As long as these attitudes prevail in our community, we will continue to have whitestream thinking.

Step 3 (What next) What might you or your school needs to consider or take actions to move up to the next level of culturally responsiveness? What are the next steps?

I believe that attempts are being made to move our school into cultural responsiveness. Professional development is underway schoolwide, and will continue to be implemented. It is a process that takes time, time to change mindsets and attitudes, and to eliminate the pervasive ignorance that only continues to support the educational gap and negative hegemony that is a result of being a colonized nation.

Future focused learning marries well with culturally responsive practices, and as the educational wheel turns further in this direction it can only but support the changes necessary as eventually this will become a norm.

Within our school, supporting and developing agentic teachers will mean they can become leaders and model what this looks like within classrooms. Our school would benefit from applying knowledge that teachers bring into the school, and letting go of control and trust that ultimately these teachers have the wellbeing of students, colleagues and the representation of a healthy culturally responsive model for the entire community at the forefront of their initiatives.

REFERENCES:

CORE Education. (2017, 17 October). Dr Ann Milne, Colouring in the white spaces: Reclaiming cultural identity in whitestream schools. [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cTvi5qxqp4&feature=em-subs_digest

Edtalks.(2012, September 23). A culturally responsive pedagogy of relations. [video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/49992994

Gay,G. (2002). Preparing for culturally responsive teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 53(2),106-116.