Week 31 - PRACTICE - Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Responsibility

Activity 7 - 

Create a reflective entry to demonstrate your critical understanding of indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness.

Then, critically evaluate how your practice or your school’s practice has been informed by indigenous knowledge and culturally responsive pedagogy in two of the following areas (ideally you would be able to evaluate one that is done well, and another that would benefit from improvement):

I will use Rolfe's Model of Reflection to help me structure this blog post.

Step 1 - (What?) - What is your understanding of indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness and what are two of the areas you want to focus on?

Watching Bishop's video what I took from what he said was that near the end where he talks about the culturally responsive pedagogy of relations and that to be culturally responsive you need what he calls Relationship-Based Education.

Caring for people, caring that they learning, creating learning relationships. (Bishop)
That way their indigenous knowledge comes through and helps them grow and find educational success through the feedback. 

This is reiterated by Cowie et al. (2011) where culturally responsive pedagogy thrives when students are given the oportunity to develop, express and receive feedback on their learning but also provide an authentic context to show and share with others what they have learnt. (Pg 4).

Positive learning relationships between teachers and students and the use of feedback are a common theme, as I found in my Literature Review looking at the Maker Movement.

As result, I am going to focus on -

• Planning and Assessment
• Learning Activities

Step 2 - (So What) Evaluate your practice or your school practice in light of one of the following frameworks or use one you are familiar with.

For this evaluation I will use Milne's Action continuum.

I have chosen Planning and Assessment and Learning activities for my focus. It would be disingenuous for me to say that as a team, we do one better than the other, so I will focus on some positives but will primarily focus on what we can do better.

Looking at the continuum it shows how far we need to go in terms of our Culturally Sustained Practice. 

For the two areas of focus I can provide some positives and areas of improvement.

Planning and Assessment -

Positives -

• Identifying the differing cultural backgrounds of our students (Maori, Pasifika, Asian, Afghanistan)
• Resources and learning styles.

Areas of improvement -

• Feedback (Finding the time?) (The correct type of feedback)
• Using community groups to help the learning.
• Assessment is still Whitestream (It's what we know how to do).

Learning Activities - 

Positives -

• Beginning to change our pedagogical thinking about how we teach (e.g. Storytelling)
• Lots more collaborative discussion and sharing of learning among the students and teachers.
• School trips (Styx Mill Eel trip. Looking at sustainability and how it relates culturally).

Areas of improvement -

• Still token attempts that are based on previous styles of teaching (e.g. Treaty of Waitangi)
• Need to consult with the community more and get them to help us more culturally sustainable.

Based on what I"ve listed I think as a school and team we are moving from the "Benevolent" stage of the continuum to the "Some language and Cultural Content". We have a long way to go but I'd like to think as a school we are heading in the right direction.

Step 3 - (What Next?) What might our school need to consider or take action on to move up a level of cultural responsiveness. What are the next steps?

Based on where I think our school is at in the continuum the next step is to move to the embed the indigenous and culturally centred structures. How can we do this?

So far we have taken these steps.

• As part of our Community of Learning, we have two leaders who are helping the schools develop their cultural practices and support them.
• Our teacher inquiry is based on helping Maori Boys develop more success in their writing.
• Our Te Reo resource is helping both Teachers and students develop their knowledge of the Maori Language

What's the next step?

• As a team, think about how we structure the school day and learning? Do we need to make it less timetabled?
• Improve our feedback and build up stronger relationships with the learners, whanau and community so their knowledge is being used educationally and help the students know what their next steps are.
• Continue to develop our Te Reo and use it more in the class so it becomes embedded.

While this only touches the surface it will help us become more culturally responsive and allow us to go along the journey with our students. After all, as teachers, we are lifelong learners as well.

Resources 

Cowie, B., Otrel-Cass, K., Glynn, T., & Kara, H., et al. (2011). Cultural responsice pedagogy and assessment in primary science classrooms: Whakamana tamariki. Wellington: Teaching Learning Research Initiative. Retrieved from http://www.tlri.org.nz/sites/default/files/projects/9268_cowie-summaryreport.pdf 

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

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