Week 31: Indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness in my practice

When I consider culturally responsive pedagogy as defined by Gay (2001, p.106) I question what I know and understand about cultural characteristics, experiences and perspectives. At teacher’s training college I learnt a smattering of Te Reo Maori and Tikanga, and on placement I experienced no teaching of Te Reo Maori and/or Maori Tikanga. I consider myself to be culturally sensitive and having spent 10 years Korea I developed an understanding and questioning of what Milne (2013) calls “our cultural lens”. In Korea I regularly questioned why I thought what Koreans were doing was ‘wrong’, however it took me 2 years to get to a point where I could honestly say “Maybe the way I do and think about things is not the best!”

Bishop in Edtalks (2012) suggests that a culturally responsive teacher challenges “deficit thinking” of student educability and has agentic thinking. The idea of schools responding to student needs based on their cultural identity has been discussed by Dr Ann Milne as “culturally sustaining pedagogy” (CORE Education, 2017 ). Milne (2017) argues that cultural identity is not a thing that needs to be celebrated on certain occasions, but rather teachers and school should embrace student cultural identity at every opportunity throughout curriculum and learning activities, school policies and events. In her talk at ULearn 2017, Milne stressed that schools have a role in sustaining culture instead of negating it. She also comments that in this 21st-century era of connectedness, culturally sustaining practice has to take into account how to prepare students to be global citizens (Milne, 2017).

Step 1 (What):

My Practice informed by indigenous knowledge and culturally responsive pedagogy

1.  learning activities-

My students have been learning Tikanga and Te Reo Maori weekly for an hour because my experience has been that if I do not make a specific time slot for this, it inevitably does not get taught. We (a Kai Tahu member from our community and I) teach culture, history and language. We have learnt the Hail Mary in Te Reo (Catholic school) and have incorporated Te Reo Maori into our core Catholic values by integrating into our daily prayers. In addition we have entered a team in the weekly winter sport Ki o Rahi competition, trained by a local kaumatua who also teaches the history of Ki o Rahi, Maori values of peaceful conflict resolution, working as a team (manaakitanga) and tuakana teina teaching.

2. school-wide activities-

Our school could do this better by oragnising a marae visit, holding a hangi or whanau get together fortnightly, entering the Koru games and generally doing more with whanau. The difficulty in doing these things is usually time and effort. It could also be helped by enrolling members of our community to take leadership of these activities.

Step 2 (So what):

Milne discusses in her presentation (CORE Education, 2017) culturally sustaining pedagogy and offers recommendations for schools and teachers. As educators we need to take time to critically analyse our practice and Milne suggests that we be in the struggle and solidarity with the community. By including whanau voice in decisions that impact their children and creating gatherings to share kai and discuss how to include aspects of tikanga into our school day this could occur. Teachers in the school need to reflect on their practice and consider the white privilege that is inherit in the system, in our mindsets, and work in ways to generate a more culturally sustaining pedagogy.

We should consider our role in sustaining the current culture and bringing to the fore the cultural identity of our learners. We can provide a voice so that whanau can raise fundamental questions about schooling and responsibility to revitalise and sustain the Maori culture and other minority cultures at our school. Milne impresses on us to not just to work on achievement based on cultural background, but to teach young people about education and how to make it work for them. We need to actively teach about learning, know and teach our history, and know the game of education is a rigged game, yet work in ways to let the learners take control of their own destiny.

Step 3 (What next)

As teachers we could attend a project such as Te Kotahitanga to develop culturally responsive pedagogy, however this would not be enough to effect changes in our school policy. I personally would like to partake in learning Te Reo and Kaupapa Maori principles more deeply, but then the question of working again until 10.30pm on a week night and taking time away from my young family makes me question this idea. At present what I can do is consider ways to include all ethnicities in our learning space, by speaking to whanau, listening to learners points of view and being mindful the cultural identity of the learners in the classroom.

References

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.

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

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

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.