Share your own views on the indigenous knowledge and culturally responsive pedagogy.
This week I am reflecting on indigenous knowledge and culturally responsive pedagogy. In some ways I know this is an area where I know I am not as strong as I would like to be. As I grew up in the UK and have only been in New Zealand for four years I know that my indigenous knowledge is something that I need to work on further. What I have come to understand is the sense of community and location that is important particularly to Maori communities and that it is important to get to understand local traditions and customs as there are considerable variations throughout the country. For me, that is most evident in the local Whanganui pronunciation of 'wh' which is something I took a while to understand. In terms of culturally responsive pedagogy, for me it comes down to building strong relationships with all your students and knowing what is important to them and their whanau as well as providing them with a safe space to express themselves and bring whatever they hold important into the classroom. Students need to feel that all aspects of their culture and identity are valued and supported. Te Kotihitanga project emphasises the importance of strong teacher-student relationships to help raise Maori achievement (cited in Gutschlag, 2007) as well as the need to build on student's prior knowledge and cultural frame of reference (Introduction to Culturally Relevant Pedagogy video, 2010).
Critically reflect on how you or your school addresses cultural responsiveness in practice in two areas:
Learning Activities
In our school we are given a lot of freedom to design learning activities based on the needs of our students. Within our cluster, we have taken a lot of care to ensure that learning activities enable students to take them in their own direction and explore in a way that suits them and their needs. We try to provide lots of open ended learning experiences where students can use their own prior knowledge and preferred ways of learning and communicating to complete assignments and we are always eager to have input from the students about ideas they have. We use what we know about students to try and design learning activities that no only address their educational needs but also enable them to express their ideas in a way that works for them. Ka Hikitea document (2008) says that "students do better in education when what and how they learn reflects and positively reinforces where they come from, what they value and what they already know. learning needs to connect with students existing knowledge". Ka Hikitea (2008).
Planning and Assessment
This is something I feel in our school that we don't do so well on, particularly when it comes to assessment. Our writing assessments particularly spring to mind as they are school wide and often don't reflect the experiences or needs of our students. In one particular example, students have to write a set of directions from a fictional map (which is taken from an English fiction novel) including descriptions of the places someone might pass. This is so far from the experience of the majority of our students and doesn't relate to their own experiences. Our assessment assignments need to be reexamined with our current students in mind in order to make them more suitable and reflective of the students' experiences.
References:
Gutschlag, A Some Implications of the Te Kotahitanga Model of Teacher Positioning New Zealand Journal of Teachers' Work, Volume 4, Issue 1, 3-10, 2007
Source: Edtalks.(2012, September 23). A culturally responsive pedagogy of relations. [video file].Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/49992994
Teaching Tolerance. ( 2010, Jun 17).Introduction to Culturally Relevant Pedagogy.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGTVjJuRaZ8
Bishop, R, Berryman, M., Cavanagh, T. & Teddy, L. (2009). Te Kotahitanga: Addressing educational disparities facing Māori students in New Zealand. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(5)734–742.
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