week 27 notes

INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND CULTURAL RESPONSIVENESS AND SUSTAINABILITY

What is culturally responsive pedagogy?

Culturally responsive pedagogy is defined by Gay (2001, p.106) as “using the cultural characteristics, experiences and perspectives as conduits for effective teaching”. It is reflected in five elements including knowledge about cultural diversity, the culturally integrated content in the curriculum, the development of the learning community, the ability to communicate with culturally diverse students and culturally responsive delivery of instruction (Gay, 2001).

To have a better understanding of culturally responsive pedagogy, view the following “A culturally responsive pedagogy” Edpuzzle video (required). In the video, Bishop in Edtalks (2012) suggests that a teacher whose pedagogy is culturally responsive challenges the “deficit thinking” of student educability and has agentic thinking, believing that they have skills and knowledge that can help all of their students to achieve.

See examples of culturally responsive pedagogy in practice in Culturally responsive pedagogy and assessment in primary science classrooms (required), in which researchers discuss the benefits for students.

What is culturally sustaining pedagogy?

The concept of schools responding to student cultural identity needs has been furthered by Dr Ann Milne as “culturally sustaining pedagogy” (CORE Education, 2017 ). Milne (2017) argues that cultural identity is not a thing that needs to be celebrated on certain occasions such as cultural weeks, rather teachers and schools should embrace student cultural identity at every opportunity throughout curriculum and learning activities, school policies and events. In her talk at ULearn 2017, Milne stressed that schools have a role in sustaining culture instead of negating it. She also comments that in this 21st-century era of connectedness, culturally sustaining practice has to take into account how to prepare students to be global citizens (Milne, 2017).

As we operate within society, we interpret the world and interact with others through our cultural lens. Milne (2013), using the coloring book analogue, reminds us that just as we may not think much about the dominant white background and assume it is blank, we make assumptions about those whose cultural backgrounds differ from our own. This could sometimes result in cultural insensitivity in our practice.

In this supplementary resource video “Introduction to Culturally Relevant Pedagogy” three US educators remind us of visible and invisible culture, and the need to take into account the cultural knowledge and filters that students bring to their learning.

Cultural Intelligence

To deliver culturally responsive pedagogy, it helps to understand your own cultural intelligence. Bucher (2008) identifies the following nine megaskills that contribute to cultural intelligence:

1. Understanding My Cultural Identity — how we think about ourselves as well as the people and ways of life with which we identify.
2. Checking Cultural Lenses — recognising the ways in which cultural backgrounds differ and how they influence thinking, behaviour and assumptions.
3. Global Consciousness — moving across boundaries and seeing the world from multiple perspectives.
4. Shifting Perspectives — putting ourselves in others’ shoes and cultures.
5. Intercultural Communication — exchanging ideas and feelings and creating leanings with people from diverse cultural backgrounds.
6. Managing Cross-Cultural Conflict — dealing with conflict among people from differing cultural backgrounds in an effective and constructive manner.
7. Multicultural Teams — working with others from diverse cultural backgrounds to accomplish certain tasks.
8. Dealing with Bias — recognising bias in ourselves and others and responding to it effectively.
9. Understanding the Dynamics of Power — grasping how power and culture are interrelated and the effect of power on how we see the world and relate to others.

Use this Cultural Intelligence (CQ) Self-Evaluation form to self assess your cultural intelligence, and help you identify the gaps and what you might want to change.

EVALUATION FRAMEWORKS FOR CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE PEDAGOGY

There are four evaluation frameworks below that you could choose to use to reflect on your practice or your school practice in terms of culturally responsive pedagogy. The first one is ‘The Action Continuum’ extracted from Milne’s presentation at ULearn17, the second one is ‘Unitec’s Poutama’, the third one is the ‘Mauri Model’, and the fourth one is ‘Cultural Responsive Practice for Maori Scale’.

Alternately you could provide your own evaluation framework (instead of one of the four mentioned above) as long as it helps you to identify where your practice or your school’s practice is at and what is next.

The Action continuum - eliminating the White spaces

Milne’s presentation (CORE Education, 2017) outlines the stages of culturally sustaining practice. View Milne’s ULearn 2017 presentation video 32:11 to 35:53 (supplementary) in which Milne discusses culturally sustaining pedagogy and offers recommendations for schools and teachers.

Critical pedagogy is a movement that requires you to be in the struggle, in solidarity with your community. Culturally sustaining pedagogy replaces our thinking around relevance, responsiveness and mainstreaming.

Unitec’s Poutama tool

At Unitec, the embedding of Mātauranga Māori is one of the characteristics of its Living Curriculum. The Poutama is the stepped patterns of woven tukutuku panels that act as a metaphor for scaffolding knowledge (Unitec Glossary). The Unitec’s Poutama (supplementary) shows the three-stage progression to consider the alignment between Mātauranga Māori and the Living Curriculum (Unitec, n.d.). At the base of Unitec’s Poutama are different areas of Unitec’s Living Curriculum. You can replace the areas with the one you have identified and aim to focus your discussion on. Reflect on your practice or your school’s practice. Try to answer which stage the practice is at on the progression ladder and which stage it should reach next.

The Mauri Model

Mauri is considered the life force, “a central place in informing Māori, how and why our lives take the forms they do” (Pohatu, 2011, p.1). There are different states of being of Mauri which include Mauri Moe, Mauri Oho and Mauri Ora. Pohatu (2011) explained the meaning of the different Mauri states as follows:

Mauri Moe has two levels: the first level is an inactive state which can be thought of as “being dead” and the second level is the proactive potential which can be described as a “sleep” state.

Mauri Oho is the state of being proactive, being awakened from the Mauri Moe.

Mauri Ora is the state of being actively engaged.

When applying the principles of Mauri for the purpose of self evaluation, you could consider which Mauri states you are at, in terms of cultural responsiveness, for example, if you are of Mauri Moe (sleep state), you may listen to the students’ cultural story but do not really respond to their cultural needs. This Mauri Model (supplementary) is adapted from Pohatu’s (2011) work which has some examples of the actions and expressions that can be used for the relevant states.

Culturally Responsive Practice for Māori Scale

Asil (2017) (supplementary) has presented Culturally Responsive Practice for Māori Scale. This school-based and self-report instrument, which is designed by the National Monitoring Study for Student Achievement (a collaboration between the Educational Assessment Research Unit at the University of Otago, the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, and the Ministry of Education), can be used to measure cultural responsiveness at mainstream English-speaking schools in New Zealand (Asil, 2017).

The tool is based on five interrelated concepts: Whanaungatanga (building relationships), Manaakitanga (ethic of caring), Rangatiratanga (teacher effectiveness), Kotahitanga (ethic of bonding), and Pumanawatanga (school morale, tone, pulse) that are the key factors in considering culturally responsive setting at the schools. The tool also focuses on the practices at the schools rather than the beliefs of leadership (Asil, 2017).

Asil (2017) has also explained how the framework was developed as well as how it was quantitatively and qualitatively verified and piloted by principals from a range of schools.

Examples of how schools address culturally responsive pedagogy

The following supplementary materials provide some implications and examples of how schools address culturally responsive pedagogy.

• This indigenous student experience across the curriculum report (Supplementary) evaluates Māori student experiences in the NZ classroom whose teachers underwent Te Kotahitanga training. The authors discuss the implications for teachers when implementing Te Kotahitanga to address cultural responsiveness in their practice.
• Ministry of Education on home-school partnerships provides a number of useful links that shows some examples of how schools address indigenous knowledge and culturally responsive pedagogy.
  THIS WEEK’S ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY

Activity 3: Examine how indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness are informing the way you are taking action

Create a reflective entry to demonstrate your critical understanding of indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness inform the way that you take action.

Then, in light of one of the above frameworks, or another one that you are familiar with, critically examine how the way you are taking action(s) during the Inquiry has been informed by indigenous knowledge and culturally responsive pedagogy in one of the following areas:

• goal,
• communication methods,
• decision-making,
• planning,
• assessment,
• learning activities,

• human resources,
• learning resources.

We recommend you structure the reflection on this topic around a reflective model that has been discussed in the class notes of week 26. You can also follow the steps below, from Rolfe’s model of reflection, to structure the reflection. However you are not limited by our recommendation(s), you can use another model in your reflective post if you wish, but make sure it is clear which one you are using and by whom.

Step 1 (What): What is your understanding of indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness and what area mentioned above do you want to focus on for discussion?

After reading the above class notes, you might find the mentioned definitions resonate with your understanding of culturally responsive pedagogy. Or if you have another definition(s) or different ways of viewing this cultural aspect, explain them.

Select one of the areas mentioned above to focus on for the discussion.

Step 2 (So what):Examine how indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness are informing the way you are taking action

There are four evaluation frameworks above that you could choose to use to reflect on your ‘taking action’ in terms of indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness. The first one is the Action Continuum extracted from Milne’s presentation at ULearn17, the second one is Unitec’s Poutama, the third one is the Mauri Model, the fourth one is Cultural Responsive Practice for Maori Scale.

Alternately you could provide your own evaluation framework (instead of one of the four mentioned above) as long as it helps you to identify where your taking action is at.

If you choose ‘Culturally Responsive Practice for Maori Scale’ as the framework for the reflection, you need to focus on only one of the five concepts.

Step 3 (What next) What might you need to consider or take action on to move up to the next level of cultural responsiveness? What are the next steps?

* Please note that the above questions serve as a guide to your reflection. When writing your reflective journal, you do not have to answer each and every question.

References

Asil, M. (2017). A School-Based Measure of Culturally Responsive Practices. Frontiers in Education 2(17), 1-7. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2017.00017 

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.

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

CORE Education.(2017, 17 October). Dr Ann Milne, Colouring in the white spaces: Reclaiming cultural identity in whitestream schools.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cTvi5qxqp4&feature=em-subs_digest

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

Gay,G. (2002). Preparing for culturally responsive teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 53(2),106-116.

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

Milne, A.(2017).Coloring in the white spaces: reclaiming cultural identity in whitestream schools. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.

Pohatu, T. W. (2011). Mauri - Rethinking human wellbeing. MAI Review, 3, 1-12. Retrieved from http://www.review.mai.ac.nz/index.php/MR/article/v...

Te Toi Tupu. (n.d.). Pasifika: Participation, engagement, achievement tool. Retrieved from http://www.tetoitupu.org/pasifika-participation-engagement-achievement-tool

Unitec. (n.d). Learning and Teaching at Unitec Institute of Technology. Retrieved fromBooklet.http://www.unitec.ac.nz/ahimura/publications/U008817%20Learning%20and%20Teaching%20Booklet.pdf

Van Dyne, L., Ang, S., Ng, K. Y., Rockstuhl, T., Tan, M. L. & Koh, C. (2012). Sub-dimensions of the four factor model of cultural intelligence: expanding the conceptualisation and measurement of cultural intelligence. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 6(4), 295-313.