Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Responsiveness in My Practice

Gay (2001) states that a culturally responsive pedagogy is using cultural characteristics, experiences and perspectives to be an effective teacher. This includes understanding cultural diversity, integrating cultural content, developing a learning community, communicating effectively with diverse learners and using a culturally appropriate method of delivering the curriculum. I think expecting the best from yourself and for your learners is also extremely important

Hearing about the findings of the Te Kotahitanga research done by Russell Bishop and others between 2001 and 2008 was hugely significant for me as a teacher and a learner. Being made aware of the voices of Māori students and their whanau was a very powerful way for me to have to take a good hard look at what I was doing and not doing to ensure that Māori students reached their potential. The findings made it really important that I examine my own beliefs and practises and also draw on the funds of knowledge and experiences of Māori and Pasifika students and their whanau/aiga when it came to ensuring they were all able to be the best they could be. This was huge!

Prior to this I thought that I was aware of issues of social justice and inequitable outcomes for Maori and Pasifika but I did not really know what to do to change my practises.

As all of the students in our class are Maori, Pasifika or Asian, I needed to ensure that the relationships I had with my students were 'relationships for learning', founded on high expectations and a 'kawa of care'. When we are managing student behaviour and discussing with them the choices they make, we often say "We are going through this process because of our 'kawa of care'. This choice is not helping you to be the best you can be." We have high expectations for both learning and behaviour at our school. The process we go through with students to reflect on the choices they make regarding their behavior, involve respectful interactions to rebuild any relationships ‘harmed’ by the behaviour. We as teachers also reflect as to whether we were any part of the choice the student made.

Rejecting deficit thinking has been something that we have consciously done as a staff for many years. When applicants apply for jobs at our school, there are certain questions they are asked in the interview process, that when answered in a certain way indicate deficit thinking. Applicants who come to our school to 'help out' or 'save' our students are not likely to be employed. We challenge each other and students who use words that indicate deficit thinking including stereotypes. Some of us have to be reminded by others not to talk about 'middle-class Maori' as a stereotype of someone who is 'like us'.

Choosing culturally appropriate contexts for learning is something we think we are getting much better at. This is mainly because of our involvement in DMIC (Developing Mathematics Inquiry Communities) a way of teaching and learning we learned from Dr Roberta Hunter and Dr Jodie Hunter. Having very high expectations when setting maths problems for our students, mixed ability groupings, collaborative problem solving and ensuring that the problems are embedded in relevant cultural contexts is an extremely important part of our pedagogy now. Last year our Year 6,7 and 8 students solved a NCEA Level 1 problem confidently and easily that some 15 year olds had struggled with. They have learned group norms to be able to work together with a wide range of classmates to solve tricky problems. We write problems that have a cultural context relevant to the students’ experiences and they see are worth solving. They are the experts in the context so become the teachers when solving them. Although we have consulted with whanau/aiga about contexts that would be appropriate for solving maths problems, we find that at times we are still unsure about the context and have to ask the students for advice.

This way of teaching and learning has now transferred to all learning areas. For example a group of about 16 students were trying to solve the problem “How do we create a poi that communicates information we think is important about Matariki?” The students wrote the words and created the music for the poi. They then created the actions. The poi they created were awesome! One group wrote their poi in Samoan to share information about Matariki with their aiga.

Matariki poi

Some of the events we have in our school to celebrate and honour our diversity are a biannual noho marae at our local marae, a strong kapa haka rōpu, Polyclub, Samoan, Tokelauan, Cook Island and Māori Language Week celebrations and fiafia nights with families. We have language classes for each Pasific language and for Te Reo Māori (even though Te Reo Māori is learned in all classes). We have powhiri to welcome manuhiri but after working with local iwi are considering making a process for welcoming people that is less of a ‘heavy responsibility’ for the students and more responsive to who are manuhiri are.

Ww rely heavily on support and advice from key people in our school community, so we can keep being relationship centred and proactive in making the changes needed to be culturally responsive