Week 31 - Cultural Responsiveness.

Week 31 - Cultural Responsiveness.

This weeks mission is to demonstrate my critical understanding of indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness. Then, I will critically evaluate how my practice or school’s practice has been informed by indigenous knowledge and culturally responsive pedagogy in a couple of areas. I will be using a reflective model from Rolfe et al. (2001).

Step 1 - What? What is my understanding of indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness and the two areas that I want to focus on for discussion?

I found that Gay (2010) defines culturally responsive pedagogy as teaching to and through students’ personal and cultural strengths, their intellectual capabilities, and their prior accomplishments. This is achieved through close interactions among ethnic identity, cultural background, and student achievement.

I found that these ideas were similar to the teacher development initiative Te Kotahitanga that captured key Māori whanau narratives. These narratives identified classroom caring and learning relationships being at the centre of educational achievement for Māori. Therefore the success of this initiative success was based around teachers actively rejecting explicit deficit theorising to instead assume agency (Savage, et. al., 2011).

The two areas of practice that I would like to discuss in terms of being culturally responsive are planning and assessment and school-wide activities.

Step 2 - So What? What does culturally responsive practice look like?

Russell Bishop in his Tedtalk (2012) outlines 6 key principles for being a culturally responsive teacher:

• Caring for Maori students as Maori on a daily basis.
• Caring for their performance and having high expectations.
• Manage classrooms, and the pedagogy promotes the following element.
• Interactions with Maori that provide academic feedback and feedforward and negotiated co-construction of learning. Learners amongst learners is the prevailing phenomenon. 
• Effectively use a range of strategies. 
• Use evidence of student performance to guide teaching and students also know this and are involved.

It is all about being relationship centered (caring and learning relationships). A culturally responsive pedagogy is based on relations.

Dr Ann Milne, CORE Education (2017), provides a culturally sustaining pedagogy continuum that I will use to reflect on the two areas of planning and assessment and school-wide activities. The continuum starts with having no awareness or paying lip-service to cultural aspects, through to the middle where we might make token attempts or limited changes. At the optimal end of the scale we would be aiming for taking action to normalise ‘being authentically Maori’.



In terms of our school-wide activities I think our school has taken a very proactive approach as a relationship centered school, our school culture is very supportive and encouraging of teachers to be culturally responsive. Our timetable is essentially optional (apart from having to take an English and Math Module each semester), so there is a lot of agency for our learners and we have a strong Learning Advisory programme that helps to build supportive relationships between our teachers and students. We also integrate curriculum, are very aware of using Universal Design for Learning strategies and often co-construct learning. We also have a great relationship with our local IWI and this has influenced many school wide activities and decisions ranging from how our cobble stones have been laid to the naming of our learning communities and spaces.

In terms of how we as teachers at this school personally plan and assess learning I think I like many teachers have room for improvement and I would put myself more in the middle of the continuum, I think primarily due to my lack of a deep understanding of Māori culture as this has not really been part of my worldview growing up with parents who are from Switzerland. Despite being very openminded and growing up in NZ I still have much to learn due to having a very european upbringing.

Therefore, despite our school environment being setup to be culturally responsive I feel like I often personally drop the ball. My knowledge and confidence with Māori Language and Kaupapa is not great, we have these beautiful Māori names, however, I’m often not confident with using them and I lack a real authentic understanding of the terms and concepts. I know I have more to learn in this area. What am I really doing to improve in this aspect of my practice? This course is a good step in the right direction in developing my self-awareness of this issue.

Step 3 - Now What? What can we do to move up the continuum?

I think I do personally need to focus on this area more and I could do this by formally reflecting and setting myself some practical goals based on some of the key Effective Teacher Profile Elements identified in the Te Kotahitanga initiative. I could start by using more Te Reo Māori and exploring relevant Māori culture within my classes rather than shy away because I lack confidence. I realise I default to a very European worldview and to move up the continue I must take more explicit action to develop a deeper understanding of Kaupapa Māori. Being a student centered school maybe I could also ramp up and expand the ways in which I am trying to connect and learn with Māori students in my classes in order to gain a better understanding of being Māori. I could simply start by spending more quality time getting to know my Māori students to gain a better understanding of this world view, the strengths and treasure this uniqueness, therefore, actively working together to reject Māori deficit theorising.

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). A culturally responsive pedagogy of relations. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/49992994

Gay, G. (2010). Culturally responsive teaching (2nd ed.). New York: Teachers College Press.

Rolfe et al. (2001). Reflective Model. Retrieved from https://my.cumbria.ac.uk/media/MyCumbria/Documents/ReflectiveModelRolfe.pdf

Savage,C, Hindleb, R., Meyerc,L., Hyndsa,A., Penetitob, W. & Sleeterd, C.(2011) Culturally responsive pedagogies in the classroom: indigenous student experiences across the curriculum .Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 39(3), 183–198: (Available to download from Unitec Library)

Week 20 - Inquiry Topic

Teacher Inquiry Topic
This week I have been asked to choose a topic area that I am passionate about or interested in investigating in my teacher inquiry. I will also explore the principles of Kaupapa Māori and how they relate to educational research and my inquiry.

Choosing a Topic
I started by watching a video from Dr David Parsons in unpacking Research and Research Questions. He has identified 5 aspects of research:

• Aims - challenge thinking, apply, test assumptions, justify, discovery, investigate etc.
• Ways - research methods, approaches, reasoning, data etc.
• Sources - books, journals, experts, conferences, websites, blogs etc.
• Problems - personal agendas, funding, ethics, bias, peer review etc.
• Outcomes - increasing knowledge, finding answers, multiple views, infer new understandings and future work etc.

We should choose what fits best with the topics, interests and desired outcomes of the research. Research can also be defined as original investigation to contribute knowledge and understanding to a discipline, culture or social context. Research is important in feeding back into our own professional development.

Educational Research as defined by the American Educational Research Association - “Education research is the scientific field of study that examines education and the learning processes and the human attributes, interactions, organisations, and institutions that shape educational outcomes."

John Creswell (www.johncreswell.com) suggests an approach for scripting inquiry questions. Agile stories can also be used. Here is a basic structure that could be followed for qualitative inqiry questions:

1. How/what
2. story/meaning of/theory of process/culture sharing pattern/issue/case/ of
3. the central phenomenon for
4. the participants at
5. the research site.

This reminds me so much of developing a concept statement as part of brief development in the Technology development process curriculum which basically covers who, what, where, why and how for an issue or problem to solve as the starting point of technological innovation.

Here is an example that Dr David Parsons gave “What is the impact on engagement in learning of device addiction for students at my school?”

For quantitative inquiry questions that are a bit more focused the following structure is suggested by John Creswell:

1. Does (the name of the theory)
2. explain the relationship between (the independent variable - stable)
3. and (dependant variable - moves by management independent variable)
4. controlling for the effects of (control variable/s)

An example of this kind of inquiry question from Dr David Parsons - “Does social constructivism explain the relationship between student activity and learning outcomes, controlling for the effects of prior learning?”

Integrating the Principles of Kaupapa Māori Research into My Teacher Inquiry

Katoa Ltd has some great information about Kaupapa māori - http://www.katoa.net.nz/kaupapa-maori. Kaupapa Māori is literally ‘a Māori way’. Graham Smith describes Kaupapa Māori as:

• Related to ‘being Maori’,
• Connected to Maori philosophy and principles,
• Taking for granted the validity and legitimacy of Maori,
• Taking for granted the importance of Maori language and culture, and
• Concerned with the ‘struggle for autonomy over our own cultural well-being’.

Katoa also describe the potential of Kaupapa Māori being based upon six intervention elements or principles:

• Tino Rangatiratanga - The Principle of Self-determination
• Taonga Tuku Iho - The Principle of Cultural Aspiration
• Ako Māori - The Principle of Culturally Preferred Pedagogy
• Kia piki ake i ngā raruraru o te kainga - The Principle of Socio-Economic Mediation
• Whānau - The Principle of Extended Family Structure
• Kaupapa - The Principle of Collective Philosophy

Therefore, I should consider how these elements might be integrated into my Literature Review and Teacher Inquiry project plan.

There are also interesting points made by Macfarlane, H., Glynn, T., Grace, W., Penetito, W. & Bateman, S. (2008), about our NZ Curriculum Key Competencies not being consistent with Maori world views as they don’t really take into account these competencies in the bigger picture of how they are impacting on the natural world and survival. Also some other interesting points made about the early childhood curriculum Te Whāriki being more inline with a Māori perspective. There is probably much I can learn by including further investigation into these contexts.

My Inquiry Topic Selection
In my teaching and leadership practice I am still grappling with how to best support and inspire teachers and learners to drive their own learning and development in the area of digital fluencies as everyone is on such a different journey in this respect. So for my broad topic I would like to look into Learner Agency and Engagement.

I think this inquiry would link in well with the principle of Tino Rangatiratanga (Self-determination). This is all about having meaningful control over one’s own life and cultural well-being.

I look forward to diving into this in more detail over the next few weeks.

References
Creswell, J. W. (2009) Research Design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Katoa Ltd. Retrieved from http://www.katoa.net.nz/kaupapa-maori