Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

I am behind a we bit on my mind-lab (Week 31)  so am just posting a relating to
the concept of culturally responsive pedagogy. This week a student (Ezekiel Raui)
who went to Taipa Area School met the Queen, I spoke to his siblings and family
about the exciting event, as we they were in the  school for the evening since we
had parent teacher interviews that evening.

During some downtime in the evening, I was looking at the portal, reading the article
and watching the videos... and thinking about the irony of it all. As I am a Pakaha teacher
at a school with 80% identifying as Maori, I was thinking about how little I personally
identify with the Queen, and the ideas of England the Monarchy and really any of the
ideologies of my ancestors countries (England, Ireland,Sweden)

I was raised in New Zealand, my culture is a mixture of ideas, I am a New Zealander!

As a young adult attending New Zealand State school was a disaster for me, so now
as a teacher of 27 years I am all for any initiatives that make education better for our youths.

The summary in the article about Science teaching gave me some ideas to reflect on,
as I consider myself to be culturally responsive already - there's no harm in trying
some new stuff. I am interested in the idea of trying multiple and diverse opportunities to
express ideas (on Science).

Culturally responsive pedagogy thrives when teachers ensure that students have
multiple and diverse opportunities to develop, express, and receive feedback on
their understanding of science. Ideally, these opportunities accumulate and enable
students to elaborate their science ideas by bringing different experiences and knowledge
into dialogue. Culturally responsive pedagogy also thrives when teachers privilege oral
and visual presentations (both individual and group)

As I am soon to be delivering a  program in my Hospitality course relating to Dietary intake
and health, I am considering how I can have the students link this learning to their Science
and Physical education courses. The two teachers in these classes are interested in Integrated
learning opportunities. I have asked the students whether they would find this approach
useful, and they responded positively.

Next steps will be to consider the ways that we teachers  can gather evidence of the learning
in combined Sport, Biology and Nutrition settings.

A popular sport that is being taught in our school now is Ki O'Rahi, I am wondering if the
very physical game would be a good start point for looking at the role of Nutrition and
sporting performance and overall health, We have recently completed a school camp with the
same Y11 cohort and have successfully used an Integrated teaching model to deliver
learning relating to Pest control, Anatomy, Outdoor rec, Food Handling and hygiene & seafood
cookery. We can build on this by looking for different learning opportunities that allow more
cultural responsiveness.

Record students answers orally, take on ideas about giving feedforward, Involve members
of  the community who have specialist knowledge to assist to deliver the content.
Be willing to listen to and involve the students in the development of the learning
program to suit their interests.

Source: 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

My thoughts on ...White Spaces 

I believe that our school and myself are between the blue and green box  in diagram, above appendix 1 . I have been working on establishing agency in my classes, by including learning contexts where Maori students can include their world, knowledge and language. We try to embrace this as often as possible and are continually looking for ways to engage all our students. Bishop (2012) emphasises that Maori are extremely educationable and it is the system that is failing them.
There is power in goal setting and we need to promote agency by creating learning contexts where Maori can be themselves, feel comfortable sharing prior knowledge,  their stories and experiences and we as teachers need to continue to search for ways to establish engagement. I am looking at ways to have students choose to present work orally (videoed/powerpoint evidence). This could be useful not only for the Maori Students but also those with other learning needs such as dyslexia. We encourage students to work collaboratively or cooperatively and have been introducing technologies to encourage this too. We do consult community groups, via surveys, meetings etc. We invite Maori achievers to assemblies and celebrate local Maori success. We acknowledge Maori events/people and include activities that relate to these regularly. We include Te Reo words and phrases in our sentances, and words around the room. We have high expectations of all our students and communicate that openly.

The majority of the time however, we do measure success within colonial terms, white space thinking and expectations. I am really uncomfortable with this status quo as I do not belive that the it is the best 'measure' of peoples abilities. Recently we have reported on students abilities and it is odious that the language, tick boxes and Levels all reflected colonial standards and White stream thinking/unconscious bias.

These measure extend to wider societal expectations and school measures such as the reports generated by ERO, when they visit the school what set of measures are they using. When you consider Milnes (2013) comments on ERO measuring success with a colonized set of values?  Where is the subjects that they excel in e.g. Kapahaka, recognized?

The two areas I am going to critically reflect upon are Learning activities & Communication. C

Step 2 (So What?)

   Currently we are exploring using an integrated approach to the learning activities used to  deliver the level one program in 2019. We have recently held a Y11 Outdoor education  camp and had integrated style tasks. I believe that the Learning activities and communication could have been improved

Step 3 (Now What?)
Interestingly the feedback after the camp was positive - Students enjoyed the camp, though didn't understand fully the integrated ideas, as they were expecting some learning sessions, rather than the learning as you do type activities. For example the students participated in pest control methods while hiking. This related to the Science standard.

Step 2 (So What?)
The students indicated in the feedback that they would have liked to learn more about the whenua - the history and background about the campsite that we visited. This links with the ideas expresses by Bishop surrounding the relationships to the stud nets own background

Step 3. (Now What?)

Continue to work with Warren and embrace whanau who want to work with us to have camps and intergrated learning opportunities where the studnets and community build an inclusive classroom/school.  Include topics that investigate our area, local Maori whanagatanga and stories and put them on our manakalani website or add to a public platform. Continue to celebrate success and recognize all areas of success or achievement.  Continue to reflect on how we can improve our cultural pedagogy and continue PD in Te Reo. Attempt to merge our Brown and white and wipe out our 'Whiteness'.

References

Bishop, R. (2012) A Culturally Responsive Pedagogy of Relations. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/49992994

Milne, B.A. (2013). Colouring in the white spaces: Reclaiming cultural identity in whitestream schools. (Doctoral Thesis, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand). Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10289/7868

Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D., Jasper, M. (2001) Critical reflection in nursing and the helping professions: a user’s guide. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan