Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Responsiveness

Bishop in Edtalks (2012) suggests that a teacher whose pedagogy is culturally responsive challenges the “deficit thinking” of student educability, believing that they have skills and knowledge that can help all of their students to achieve, no matter what. 

One of the educators that feature in the Teaching Tolerance video describes culturally responsive teachers as teachers that make connections, we are 'cultural bridge builders'. Students approach learning not as cultural blank slates, they bring into the classroom all of those cultural experiences. It is very compatible about what we know about good teaching. Cultural responsive pedagogy builds our students' prior knowledge, prior cultural knowledge. 

I believe values such as Manaakitanga, Mana motuhake, Whakapiringatanga, Wananga Ako and Kotahitanga as described in Savage, C., Hindleb, R., Meyerc, L., Hyndsa, A., Penetitob, W. & Sleeterd, C. (2011) are values that should be actively present in all classrooms.

Vision, Mission, and Core Values

I think my school does cultural responsive pedagogy well. 27% of our students are Maori. Our recent ERO report (October 2016) states that many Maori children are achieving at or above their school peers. It goes on to say that the school effectively responds to Maori children whose

learning and achievement need acceleration. Leaders and teachers have very high expectations that Maori, and all children, will achieve.

Our mission is "Empowering children to aim high, persevere and succeed while making a positive contribution to the world." I think to do this we first need to build rapport and establish relationships with our kids. Bishop in Edtalks (2012) suggests that highly effective, culturally responsive teachers create a relationship-centred education and that relationships are paramount to the educational performance. 

This is something we do particularly well at my school. We form relationships with our

students. We know who they are, where they come from, the kind of values they hold. We do our best to learn about their cultural practices and religious beliefs. 

When I look at the Unitec's Poutama tool I can see we have climbed our way to the top. We have established culturally safe learning environments in which students feel safe to be themselves. Tuakana teina is integrated throughout all that we do in the classroom and our students are engaged in active and reciprocal relationships with staff. This was evident in our recent Me and My School survey where 95.57% of students said they felt as if the were treated fairly by their teachers, 96.84% said they respected their teachers and felt their teachers respected them, and 97.47 said their teachers helped them to learn. 

Communication

This is an ongoing issue for us. Getting parents and whanau into the school. It is something we are very aware of and in the past we have consulted with our community and our 'experts' to find out what we can do better. We have tried different things like putting on kai, running competitions, giveaways, and earlier start times. We have used outside agencies like the Maori Wardens as they know many of our community. I would like to suggest that we are on the Consultation step of the Poutama tool. Consultation and engagement with our Maori community is certainly established, however this remains a goal for us.

Linwood Avenue School - 23/08/2016. Education Review Office. Retrieved from http://www.ero.govt.nz/review-reports/linwood-avenue-school-23-08-2016/

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).

Three educators talk what culturally relevant pedagogy means and what does not.
Teaching Tolerance.( 2010, Jun 17).Introduction to Culturally Relevant Pedagogy.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGTVjJuRaZ8

Unitec. (n.d). Learning and Teaching at Unitec Institute of Technology. Retrieved fromBooklet.http://www.unitec.ac.nz/ahimura/publications/U008817%20Learning%20and%20Teaching%20Booklet.pdf