Legal and Ethical Contexts In My Digital Practice

Whakatauki

Te whakaaro nui, nga mahi mohio.

Conscious thought, conscious actions.

Expect It When You Least expect It!

When you work with students in a school you can forget that taking those students out of the school environment immediately exposes them to the vagaries and whims of a world that is not governed by shared policies and procedures. When students enrol at our school parents sign documentation that either permits or negates the use of their child’s digital image within school newsletters or on the school learning blogs. This documentation is regularly reviewed and adjusted accordingly. With the issues that can arise around misuse of images and also awareness around sensitive situations such as domestic violence or child custody cases we take the documentation seriously.

We have a number of ways in which we aim to educate students and whanau about some of the ‘pitfalls’ of the digital world. Parents and students sign a document called the Kawa of Care. The Kawa of Care identifies some of the ways in which digital tools are best managed for online safety and it is an agreement about responsible use of devices. We undertake ongoing programmes within the classroom on a cyber smart curriculum. Parents are also encouraged to attend evening sessions that allow them to discuss and explore issues relating to their child’s online safety.

A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of taking my class of Year 7 & 8s away on an outdoor education camp. We spent an evening at a hot pool complex and it came to my attention that there was a photographer roaming around the complex taking unsolicited photographs of my students. These were then to be available on line for order!

I spoke with my students about this and we discussed why this was of concern.  They readily saw the potential for misuse and some also felt that they had been pressured into posing for the photographs. I immediately located the photographer and asked that he remove any and all images of my students. He was a little taken aback so I explained to him our school policy. He agreed to do so but he was not apologetic nor did he seem to concede the invasion of privacy his photographs presented. I then followed this up with a face to face and a written letter to the management of the complex explaining our concerns. Their response was much more empathetic and responsible and it resulted in key changes to the way in which the private photographer was allowed to work within the complex.

It can be difficult to know exactly where to draw a line when you are ‘off site’.  I found this line easier to draw because I was aware of a recent case in which a South Island secondary school teacher had overlaid student images onto pornographic images of children he had found on the internet. The devastation of that manipulation of digital images highlighted for me the enormous responsibility we have to ensure the students in our care are not unwittingly caught up in the nefarious use of their personal image or data. This situation was all about ‘promoting the wellbeing of learners and protecting them from harm’ as stated in the Education Council (2017) Our Code Our Standards web booklet.

Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Responsiveness In My Practice

Whakatauki

Ki te mohio ki ahau, ko to mohio ki ahau.

To know me is to recognise me.

My Understanding of Indigenous Knowledge & Cultural Responsiveness

Indigenous knowledge is about developing meaningful educational contexts built on the prior knowledge, values, attitudes, aspirations and rich cultural contexts of our school community. Cultural responsiveness is about building meaningful, purposeful, explicit learning relationships with learners, underpinned by deep knowledge of the learner and the skills and experiences they bring to their learning, with the immutable expectation of success.

To know each student, to build professional and personal relationships with them and their family/whanau, can be seen by some teachers as an enormous expectation and sometimes as an imposition. In my experience it is a privilege. Our work with students and whanau must be built on a model of relational trust.  How else are we to have the difficult learning conversations without causing harm?  How else are we provide praise and positive feedback without causing embarrassment or seeming disingenuous?

Indigenous Knowledge & Cultural Responsiveness Within My School: What is working well?

As a school we have made a number of decisions that build upon both indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness within our school-wide activities and learning activities. We plan our key units using a Maori perspective as our ignition, building on prior knowledge from our student and whanau, and including members of the wider school community when possible. Increasingly we look to do this from the tangatawhenua perspective as local iwi gain clarity around their educational plan for this rohe. We also look to the fluctuating diversity within our student population and aim to  include other cultural perspectives, values and knowledge within units.

We expect teaching staff to incorporate cultural links into the classroom and to expand their own understanding of what it means to teach within Aotearoa / New Zealand in accordance with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi and the Education Council’s Practising Teacher Criteria (2017). Within  our school this means: all students and teachers learning and using their pepeha, incorporating te reo in oracy and literacy, providing opportunity for akonga to pursue further study to express themselves in their culture through the arts or language. It also looks like key community gatherings for whanau hui, hangi, noho marae, kai hapori, and kapa haka festival.  

How do we know that these approaches are working? Student and whanau voice is gathered at regular intervals and within this we hear the message that it is positive to be a learner in our school and in particular students feel proud to be a Māori learner in our kura. Our Māori staff feel supported and safe to contribute their own knowledge and to have ‘difficult’ conversations that may arise.  Increasingly links are developing with tangatawhenua with the recent construction of a local marae and this is an exciting development for all schools in our area.

Indigenous Knowledge & Cultural Responsiveness Within My School: What would benefit from improvement?

Assessment is an area that would benefit from review. We are held in bondage to the National Standards reporting systems and the traditional grade and grind paper reports. Whanau and ako are regularly examined under the miserly microscope of marks and “must do next”. There is an irony there when we have a section that we fill in for ‘how to help at home’ when actually we might benefit more from a conversation that enlightens us as to how home can help school.  

If we looked at conversations with family, whanau and ako as our ignition point in planning programmes of teaching and learning I wonder how different classroom delivery might manifest itself.