Week 28: Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Responsiveness in my Practice

“Cultural responsiveness is much more than introducing myths or metaphors into class. It means interacting with their families to truly understand their reality; it means understanding the socio-political history and how it impacts on classroom life; it means challenging personal beliefs and actions; and, it means changing practices to engage all students in their learning and make the classroom a positive learning place for all students”

Earl et al (2008) as sited in the Tātaiako - Cultural Competencies for Teachers of Māori Learners

In reflecting on my own beliefs around indigenous knowledge and culturally responsive pedagogy I was interested to hear Russell Bishop talk about the educational disparities around Māori Achievement. In honoring the Treaty of Waitangi, I see it as our duty as educators of Māori students to actively work to address these disparities. This means developing understanding around where our Māori students are coming from, what is important to Māori and their underlying beliefs about learning - valuing what they bring to the classroom. It is about building respectful, positive relationships with the students and their families and constantly inquiring into how to better engage and improve learning outcomes for all students - and as Russell Bishop asserts - this takes professional commitment.

In considering what is important to Maori, I find the six elements of the Effective Teaching Profile (Bishop & Berryman) a useful resource:

Manaakitanga – teachers care for their students as culturally located human beings above all else.
Mana motuhake – teachers care for the performance of their students.
Nga whakapiringatanga – teachers are able to create a secure, well-managed learning environment.
Wananga – teachers are able to engage in effective teaching interactions with Māori students as Māori.
Ako – teachers can use strategies that promote effective teaching interactions and relationships with their learners.
Kotahitanga – teachers promote, monitor and reflect on outcomes that in turn lead to improvements in educational achievement for Māori students.

Reflecting on how my school addresses cultural responsiveness in practice:

Because I have only been teaching at my current school for a short time, I have chosen (for this task) to look at the school where my own children attend and where I am a BoT parent representative - a slightly different hat! The areas I’d like to focus on are around policy development and communication methods - from a BoT perspective.

Policy Development
This is an area that we feel we have improved in significantly over the past few years, in relation to cultural responsiveness. Recognising some major gaps in our understanding, we engaged in a great deal of professional development around better understanding (as a Board) the intent of the Treaty of Waitangi and Māori Achieving as Māori - through Dr Richard Manning (UC) and CORE Education. This also involved an intense review of where we were at as a school and from this a comprehensive Maori Action Plan was developed. This Māori Action Plan feeds directly into our Charter and Annual Plan. As a result we are seeing real traction across the school. There is still a way to go, but there has certainly been improvement and better understanding of our Māori students and teacher actions that can really make a difference. Just some of the actions that have come out of this review process and plan is the establishment of our Whānau group, community-wide cultural celebrations, thriving Kapa Haka group and the inclusion of the cultural competencies in Teacher Appraisal.

With specific policy development, we spent a great deal of time working with our Whānau group and external advisors to develop our ‘Improving Educational Outcomes for Māori’ policy - which informs many of the decisions that we make. Ideally we would like to better engage our Māori community as we work through the policy review process - which leads me to an identified area of improvement …

Communication Methods

Although we made great progress initially as we engaged with external PD providers and our Whānau group, we have since faced challenges in finding the recipe for effective consultation and we think that this is largely due to our methods of communication. Interestingly we have experienced the same concern when engaging with our Asian families. To address this we have identified the area of ‘Effective Communication’ as a strategic priority in our current Charter and have appointed a Community Liaison Facilitator to work with our families to better understand the communication methods that will work for them. We also strive to continue building on the positive relationships that have developed over the past years through our annual cultural activities and group celebrations - that have proven highly successful with huge turn-outs, positive vibe and positive feedback! Really keen to hear what is working well in other schools …