Week 28 APC – Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Responsiveness

Week 28 APC – Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Responsiveness

What is Indigenous Knowledge?Knowing, understanding and respecting the tikanga (protocols and beliefs) of ones culture. What is Cultural Responsiveness?How others (non-indigenous) respond to the protocols and beliefs (tikanga) of the indigenous people of that country. How does it fit  within my schooling context? Students and whānau at Homai school have always felt they are part of what we call the “Homai Whanau”. Parents and whānau feel welcomed, our open-door policy is inviting and parents pretty much attend most of our schools activity nights, conference evenings, informal and formal gatherings.
 There are cultural groups that perform at a drop of a hat – kapa haka, Samoan Siva, Indian, etc, and our environment is loaded with cultural icons, statutes, and cultural artwork. 

So does this mean as a school we are being culturally responsive to our learners and their whānau? Are we embedding practices that are conducive to educational success for minoritised and indigenous (priority) learners? These are the questions as the instructional leader of my school I needed answers for. In 2014 a self-review was conducted looking at how our Maori students were achieving success as Maori. This question was then used on our Pasifika learners. We knew that it was important that students felt their cultural identities and experiences were accepted here at Homai and that there was a place for them to share, celebrate and acknowledge where they come from and who they are. Our review showed positive feedback from all stakeholders on this area, and yet our achievement results for Maori and Pasifka did not reflect the results we had hoped for. In 2015 I was adamant that we had to do something different. If we were doing all the cultural responsive stuff like haka groups, languages, cultural arts, whare challenges, etc and our results remained the same, what were we doing wrong? OR what weren’t we dong? or doing RIGHT? 

So instead of struggling alone, I joined a group of like-minded Principal’s (PIMPS) from Manurewa and shared my frustrations with them. Low and behold they were feeling the same frustrations as I, so we did a little research into the practices, based on evidence that raised student achievement for indigenous (priority) learners. 

We looked into Professor Russell Bishops concept of Te Kotahitanga, and although it is Secondary based, his ideals and the research behind Te Kotahitanga appealed to us and we wanted to see if there was place for this in the Primary sector. 

Professor Russell Bishop in his Edtalk video, (September 23, 2012), culturally responsive teaching practices are strongly based on relationship centred education. 

Bishop states that a culturally responsive teacher:

• builds caring relationships with their young Māori students.
• cares for Māori students as Māori - the teacher cares about the academic performance of young Māori students, and hold/show high expectations for them.
• creates a learning context where young Māori students can draw on their own funds of knowledge and apply it in a classroom setting.
• provides opportunities for the students to co-construct the learning outcomes. Relevant feedback and feed-forward takes place to assist the student with their learning journey.
• takes into account the students performance to guide their future teaching.
• implements effective co-operative teaching and learning so there is a culture of learners among learners (Bishop, R. 2012).
• 
  

We were able to get on board Professor Russell Bishops “Culture Counts Plus and Relationship Based Learning” framework through Cognition Education. Their facilitators were able to meet with us (PIMPS) and share the concepts behind these frameworks.

After our PLD, we decided to go through this initiative and have since had extensive PLD with our schools, senior leaders, Principals and whole staff, delving into who’s culture counts and how the classroom culture and relationships based on the child’s learning is key to improving student outcomes.

Culturally Responsive Teaching is a pedagogy that recognizes the importance of including students' cultural references in all aspects of learning (Ladson-Billings, 1994).

2016 has seen a huge mind shift in our staff, the engagement with parents and whanau has greater focus on learning not just involvement and our leadership team are having more courageous discussions with our whanau on how we as a team can help our Maori learners achieve success as Maori, in turn success for all.

Bishop states that

"agentic teachers do not draw upon deficit models of teaching Maori students. Demonstrate a responsive and relationship centered context for maori students as maori and have high expectations, learning context caters for maori and the pedagogy that they use interactions that increase academic feed forward"
Bishop (2012)

 Teachers also need to consider using -

"a range of strategies effectively, Use evidence of the students performance to guide their teaching and learning. Learning focused relationship." Bishop (2012)

What do we need to do better?

Are we there yet? Absolutely not, but we are seeing good progress and we have the attitude that, " Its not good to be just good enough, its far better to be great!"

So what do we need to do more of? Well we will continue with our kapa haka, cultural groups, reo speaking, (iconography) as these are important, but most of our focus is centred on the cultural responsiveness of students learning in the classroom - classroom culture and bringing family-context to the forefront. Its shifting our deficit thinking to agentic discourse and allowing students to share in the power within the classroom and across the school. "Whats good for Maori, is good for all", what type of teacher is good for Maori? A teacher who cares about the learner and their learning, having high expectations regardless of their circumstances.

Reference List:

Ladson-Billings, G. (1994). The dreamkeepers. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishing Co.

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