week 28

Week 28: Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Responsive pedagogy

The New Zealand Curriculum (2007) states in the vision a goal to have our students work towards a country where Maori and Non Maori regard each other as “full Treaty partners and where all cultures are respected for the contributions they bring.”

Savage, Hindle, Meyer, Hynds, Penetito, and Sleeter (2011) informs us that “Achieving equity in diverse schools is a global challenge.” Bishop (2012) adds that disparities exist in our education system between Maori and European and he continues to explain that this problem is evident with other indigenous people.  There is a huge need to address these disparities as they are detrimental to the country financially and there is research backing the fact that under achievement links directly to lack of employment and incarceration.

Although this information is absolutely correct Bishop (2012) made a profound statement with evidence to back it, when he stated that Maori are a highly educable population and it is this statement that we in education should be focusing on.

So with this positive statement I continued to gather information on how we need to go about making positive changes in our classes. Change is the only option and the most powerful people to make these changes are the professionals.   Bishop (2012) suggests teachers focus on the future rather than the deficit theorising and adopt agency for these students.  He talks of putting six initiatives in place in order to do this.

• ·         care of Maori students as Maori 
• ·         care about their performance,
• ·         have high expectations of students learning
• ·         manage classrooms and discuss students learning with them so they know what they need           to learn
• ·         provide situations where collaborative learning can take place and critique your practice             regularly
• ·         build relationships with students, this is paramount

Effective pedagogy for teacher actions promoting student learning, recommended by the Ministry of Education (2007) support Bishop (2012), with well documented evidence about similar teaching approaches that also impact positively on students learning.  When teachers take agency for students learning they critique their teaching practice regularly to check its effectiveness in promoting student engagement and ultimately raising achievement.  Working collaboratively with colleagues, using research and past practices add to the effectiveness of their practices.

When I reflect on my teaching practice I feel I’m on the right track to being an agent for our tamariki as I consciously build relationships with my students and care about their learning.  I critique my practice regularly and have an open relationship with my critical friend and outside agencies.  I do need to work on discussing students learning with them so they know what they need to learn and what their next steps are to get there.  I’m so busy internalising the information that I often forget to share it.

 One incident recently made me realise how powerful sharing their learning with them is.  I had finished assessing their writing and the majority of my year 2 / 3 class show limited evidence of recording sounds they could hear in words they couldn’t spell yet, and it really was limiting what they were capable of writing.  I thought about why and realised that whenever I modelled writing I spelt the words correctly because I was focussing on punctuation or using adjectives etc.  Anyway I discussed this fact with the students that it was our goal to record all the sounds we heard in words and get our ideas down then go back and fix it later.  Student led conference time arrived and I smiled as lots of the students said they wanted to make their learning goal in writing and when I asked them what they wanted to learn to do several of them said record the sounds we hear in words and one added remember Mrs Smith that’s our class goal.    

     

Professor Russell Bishop talks about culturally responsive pedagogy

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

Savage, Hindle, Meyer, Hynds, Penetito, and Sleeter (2011) Culturally responsive pedagogies in the classroom: indigenous student experiences across the curriculum.  Asia-Pacific Journal of teacher Education Vol. 39, No. 3, August 2011, 183-198

Ministry of Education (2007) The New Zealand Curriculum;   Learning Media Limited, Wellington New Zealand.