Week 31 - INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND CULTURAL RESPONSIVENESS

What?

My understanding of indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness is that we have come along way in my 28 years of teaching but there is still a need for continued improvement of our practice as educators. Being of European heritage, I am embarrassed by the racial discrimination of my forefathers and early settlers, who wanted to create a place like home, and brought their Euro-centric vision to our shores and gave in to racism and 'haves' and the 'have nots'. Although we are becoming more aware of this there is still ignorance and discrimination in our society.

Before the signing of the Treaty, the Māori conflicts with European settlers of New Zealand, caused huge gaps in the understanding of each other’s cultures. Recently, New Zealand has worked overtime to  undo wrong doings and build respect, grow understanding and listen to the Indigenous Māori and Pacific Island people of our land. This began with better understanding of the Treaty of Waitangi to make New Zealand a bi-cultural nation.

The teaching profession has embraced this and states in Our Code, Our Standards (Education Council, 2018) that we will maintain public trust and confidence in the teaching profession by demonstrating a commitment to tangata whenuatanga and Te Tiriti o Waitangi partnership in the learning environment.

So what?

Using Milne’s presentation (CORE Education, 2017) outlines the stages of culturally sustaining practice to reflect on where our school is at - we can identify that although we are currently exploring ways to deepen our cultural responsiveness  as educators.  We need to continue to explore ways to assist our Māori children to learn as Māori and encourage them to become experts to lead the learning in our classrooms.  Our school is a school with a developing identity. Our school by sheer number is the primary school that educates the highest number of Māori students on the east side in Rotorua, Our Learning at Lynmore Cirrculum (Lynmore, 2017) states that -

We believe that Māori deserve education success as Māori through:

• realising each students potential

• identifying rich opportunities for success

• providing a responsive education to all learners

• collaborating and co-constructing

• celebrating indigeneity and distinctiveness

It is also important for all of our students, including our Māori students, to

appreciate the significance of tangata whenua by becoming increasingly familiar with tikanga. This develops a cultural understanding for our non-Māori students and support Māori students by further strengthening their identities.

 Milne’s action continuum placed our school when I began to work there 5 years ago in the blue box, which was mainly due to the high decile and being on the “white’ side of town. With a massive change of staff and a willingness to be more  culturally responsive, by being educated with marae stays, courses in Te Reo and the Māori culture, and the employment of a kaiawhina, as well as the local kaumatua now having a position on our BOT, which have all been instigated by our management team, our school is working toward the green box… but we still have a long way to go and it will be a continuing process to get there.

What next?

To continue to move along Milne's continuum we must ensure that we continue to challenge our perspectives and address what we can to be more culturally response. We will work to achieve this at our school by:

·      Caring for all our learners and staff vast cultural backgrounds and make an effort to know about their cultures. 

·      Use expertise for our learning experiences from our vast cultural community

·      Allow our learners to draw on their own experiences

·  Continue to engage with family and whanau and the wider community through our Seesaw and encourage whanau feedback

·      Use constant and timely feedback and feedforward for all learners formally and informally. 

·      Expect and celebrate success of all learners, including staff. 

References 

Anderson, M., Doyle, J., Parkinson, A., & Te Kiri, C. Culturally responsive pedagogy and assessment in primary science classrooms: Whakamana tamariki.

Bucher, R. (2008). Building cultural intelligence (CQ): Nine Megaskills. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc.

Education Council New Zealand / Matatū Aotearoa (2017). Our Code Our Standards: Code of Professional Responsibility and Standards for the Teaching Profession. Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education.

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

Lynmore Primary School – Policies and Procedures Manual (updated March 2018)

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