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.

Digital Collaboration & Leadership - Session 3

Titiro whakamuri, kokiri whakamua
Look back and reflect so we can move forward.

Eric Martini is ahead of his time.  Five or six years ago Eric worked in my classroom to introduce the idea of augmented reality and the app he used was 'Aurasma'.  We used it with students so that they could create mathematical treasure hunts.  It was a really successful and engaging programme and then I never used it again and only a couple of students went on to select it for further work. Last night the possible uses for the app came flooding back and have left me thinking clearly about where augmented reality could be incorporated within teaching and learning next term. Which left me thinking again about Eric. who now runs 'Techspace' in Greymouth: a place where children of all ages can be introduced to computer coding, augmented and virtual reality experiences, 3-D printing, and the 'internet of things'. Why am I not utilising that resource too?

Thinking about the reading on "Conditions For Classroom Technology Innovation" I was struck by how familiar the process of implementation was even though the article was approximately fifteen years old. Which also reminded me of the 'personalities' talked about last week that seem to be ever present within organisations undergoing change and innovation. There is struggle within change, challenge within change, and a need for the critical thinkers and sceptics to be vocal so that change, if it is truly innovative and effective, can be held up to the light to show the watermark of quality and legitimacy. I would be more concerned by change that occurs in a culture of apathetic resignation; that passive reluctance could clear a path for a level of evolutionary change over which there is no control and within which we are subsumed.

Digital Collaboration and Leadership Session 2

Whakatauki:
Titiro whakamuri, kokiri whakamua
Look back and reflect so we can move forward.
It is true, this is a digital world and I teach and learn within that world. And yet all of the technological skills that I have gained have been developed alongside my students, often because of them and through them.

I guess that I can wear the hat of  'early adopter'. I always saw myself undertaking a new learning challenge from the perspective of someone who saw the idea and wanted to go from A through to Z without too much fretting on the remaining 24 points of contact. I just assumed that as I arrived at destination B or C or Q I would figure it out at the time. That attitude has been pivotal to stepping into the digital classroom I teach in. I have assimilated my love of people, learning, communicating and creating into the digital world in so many aspects of my life that now it would be difficult (but not impossible) to think of working in a classroom without technology and the tools that technology allows into the classroom to support teaching and learning.  And yet I know that I have only skimmed the surface at this point.

When I reflect on the area of my 21st Century skills I would like to focus on I think that it would be to develop greater levels of student agency. It is always a delight to watch students awaken, to see them recognise within themselves innate abilities and to see new skills build increased capability and confidence.

I think that my students would agree that this is a suitable challenge for me and for them, and they would think that they could take on that challenge. They are Year 7 & 8 students in a full primary and developing student agency and leadership within the peer group could enhance their sense of self as they transition through to secondary school.

Digital Collaboration and Leadership Session 1

Whakatauki:
Titiro whakamuri, kokiri whakamua
Look back and reflect so we can move forward.

Revelations occur in the oddest moments: on Wednesday 23rd March at approximately 4.45p.m. I recognised my inner geek had stretched and yawned and sat up straight.  Later that evening, at about 7.45p.m. I had to acknowledge that not only was the inner geek awake but it was driven by timeframes! My perception of myself as a spontaneous human being was being challenged.

I love words... lush, sentient, capricious language that conjures up images and understanding, and provokes emotion and collaboration. And on that night I was gifted three... epistemology, ontology, and axiology. Delicious.

Then a task; to collaboratively create a visual representation of our understanding of what knowledge is and what the purpose of education is. This was when I recognised that timeframes matter to me. Who knew! I had previously thought that I worked within that zone of positive stress and last minute attention to tasks. Strange how that approach can feel like a foray into asphyxiation when you are relying on the team to move in unison towards the zero minute on an automated count down clock.

With regard to meeting the time frame... we did not quite manage this. However kudos to Gina who took it upon herself to complete the task for the group later that evening. So this is Mindlab eh? Collaborative, creative, communicative, critical thinking... and clocks! Oivay!