Activity 9 :Evaluations of cultural responsiveness in practice .

My School Community

My school community is made up of learners from diverse cultures. Namely Pasifika students, followed by Indians, Asians, Europeans ,Maori and others. With such diverse cross-sections of learners, the school community is enriched by the diversification of various cultural heritages and communities.

My own views on Indigenous Knowledge

When I first migrated to New Zealand, I passed a group of Maori people doing a Haka at the arrivals at Auckland International Airport. This was new to me as I had not seen this before. I asked my wife, who was waiting to receive me, about this Haka. She explained to me that this is part of New Zealand’s heritage and they were here to welcome some one important. However, since then, my knowledge about the indigenous culture has slowly built up. Hearing about treaty of Waitangi and watching Kapa Haka groups on TV1, taught me a few things about New Zealand’s Maori culture. Other than that I know very little about the cultural aspects of the local people.

In my opinion to learn about the indigenous culture of any country, you need to mingle with the people and see from their perspective.  However, being here in this country for a while, I have not been able to do that. The only interactions I have had is with the parent community during parent teacher nights or when we have cultural night at school.  The only connections I have with Maori students is during school time. Some Maori learners follow their culture, whilst some have no clue what Maori culture is all about. They have lost the language skills and are more westernised than a Maori. I am not sure whether it was their choice or it was the effect of colonialism.

Beginning of this year, I was invited on the Te Tahawai Marae with my year 9s. After the Powhiri , I got to do the Hongi with the people who invited us  and later I was allowed to enter the Marae. To my surprise, we were told to take our shoes off as this was not to be worn inside a Marae. To me, this resembled something similar in my culture where we are not allowed to wear shoes in a place of Worship.

For me, as a teacher and an individual it is my responsibility to build my understanding and gain more indigenous cultural knowledge, so that its easier for me to relate to the Maori students and provide better learning opportunities for them.

Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

Mike Hogan in his Ted talk mentions the word “tokenism”. To me, it feels the same in my school as well. Do we really make any emphasis on incorporating the richness of Maori culture within our pedagogical programmes?  For me this is only on the surface to fulfil some criteria or requirements from the senior management. There is very little cultural awareness within the classroom. This could be that as teachers of different cultural backgrounds, we lack indigenous knowledge to make learning more meaningful to the Maori akonga. They fall in the same rut as other kids of different cultural backgrounds of learning with the cultural boundaries set by the school.

Russel Bishop in his TED talk mentions that the deficit in the Maori students’ achievement is due to the lack of more agentic teachers in school who are not prepared to accept the challenges of incorporating aspects of Maori culture within their teaching.

For teachers to be agentic, Russell Bishop mentions six important things in his TED Talk.

1.      They care for Maori students as Maori

2.      They also care for performances of Maori students (having high expectations)

3.      They manage the class they teach.

4.      They Promote interactions of young Maori by providing feedback and feed forward to create co-constructivism of learning.

5.      Teachers should be able to use range of strategies and be able to use it  effectively.

6.       Highly effective teachers use the evidence of students’ performance to decide where they take their teaching now.

Culturally responsive pedagogy has the potential to grow when teachers are prepared to have multiple and diverse learning opportunities for the students to develop, express and receive feedback on their understanding of the subject. Students should be encouraged to bring in their different cultural experiences and knowledge within their learning context.

Culturally responsive pedagogy also thrives when the teachers allow for oral, visual (group and individual) presentations. Also, for Maori learners teaching other students, with lesser skills is an opportunity to demonstrate what they have learnt.

Maori students are kinaesthetic learners. Their preference is to learn by using all their senses. Maori students learn by being actively involved and they like the abstract content to be presented to them using suitable analogies and using examples from real life situations.(Zapalskadallas, Helen, Keiha, Zapalska, & Dabb, 2002).

School Wide Activities

My school has the ability to entice the parents to be the part of their children’s learning journey in terms of performing Kapahaka, performing at polyfestival, doing powhiri during school senior price giving and other important events. The students are keen to be part of their heritage and spend time afterschool learning Kapahaka etc.  The parents of these students take responsibility along with the Maori teacher to teach and educate their children. Also, during school cultural nights the students take pride in performing in front of their elders and teachers. It is their time to express to the wider community what their culture is about and how much they value it.

The Karakea and  powhiri for  important occasions shows that as a school, we value the input of the Maori community. Students and Parents of Maori origin feel the cultural values are being respected and taught in this school according to the guidelines of the Treaty of Waitangi.

Learning Activities  

Learning activities that happen in my classroom are devoid of any Maori cultural aspects. The main reason could be that my major emphasis is to complete the required teaching for the NCEA assessments. There is hardly any time to think of anything other than completing the teaching curriculum for NCEA.

There have been times where I have incorporated some aspects of Maori culture in my teaching. These have been more tokenistic rather than being agentic as per Mike Hogan and Russell Bishop respectively.

Lack of Maori cultural aspects within my teaching can be attributed to the lack of my indigenous knowledge, lack of Te Reo and not opening open to seek help from the Maori community to see how I could use their funds of ethnic and cultural knowledge to maximise my teaching to help Maori Kids.  

Bibliography.

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

Edtalks.(2012, May 30). Mike Hogan: Culturally responsive practice in a mainstream school. [video file].Retrieved fromhttps://vimeo.com/43097812

Cowie, B., Otrel-Cass, K., Glynn, T., & Kara, H., et al.(2011).Culturally responsive 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

Zapalskadallas, A. M., Helen, B., Keiha, D., Zapalska, A. M., & Dabb, H. (2002). Teaching Maori students business issues : an experiential approach. http://doi.org/10.1108/00400910210424346