Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

“Caring for students as culturally located individuals within a framework of positive student–teacher relationships is considered beneficial for all students, but particularly so for Māori" (Bishop et al., 2003; Hall & Kidman, 2004).

ERO cites ‘Educationally Powerful Connections’ - agency, ubiquity and connectedness - as being critical to achievement of all NZ students.  I would argue that this concept also links strongly to being culturally responsive in the classroom, with strong and positive relationships with students and whānau being key to the concept of connectedness.  

My own practice

Connectedness: Having taught in primary, intermediate and secondary school environments, I find that at primary and intermediate it is easier to get to know your students and their whānau well. Building positive relationships with students in a secondary school environment, where it is usual to teach several different classes in the course of each day, provides more challenge. Getting to know students well, allows them to bring their whole selves, culture included, to their learning.

Agency: I am comfortable positioning myself as a learner.  My Year 8 students respond better to a more shared power state in the classroom. The more ownership of learning that I can pass onto my students, the more ‘buy in’ I tend to get from them.  The Te Kotahitanga project left me reflecting on the concept of deficit thinking.  Some of my less-engaged Year 8 students demonstrate deficit thinking towards themselves as learners.  This year I have taught and revisited a growth mindset approach with them in an attempt to remove some barriers to deficit thinking for my students. Russell Bishop uses the powerful analogy of national debt to represent the build up of educational underachievement of Māori students in NZ, and 'Through Other Eyes' (Andreotti & Souza, 2008, p21) provides disturbing insight into varying perspectives of the impact of the NZ education system for Māori over the last 150 years.

Ubiquity: I see huge potential for digital technologies to provide ubiquity for students and whānau in the future; however I am conscious of the inequality that socio-economic factors currently have on students’ access to digital learning from home.

My school’s practice

A strength in my school’s practice, in terms of culturally responsive pedagogy, is in the planning of the curriculum.  The curriculum of my intermediate school revolves around eight themes – running from the start of Year 7 to the end of Year 8.  The first of these themes involves students defining and sharing cultural values and practices, and the other themes link into global issues involving people and places.  Empathy is one of our school values and the curriculum themes are approached through an empathetic lens.

An area for continual improvement is in our communication with whānau.  This is currently a focus for our school and continues to be a challenge.  The transition from several (some significantly smaller and semi-rural) primary schools to a larger town intermediate is significant for many of our students.  Half our student population transports to and from school on a bus, and 12-13 year old students typically are reluctant to allow their parents on site.  We are currently investigating many different ways of communicating with whānau and, in my opinion,  this is a key aspect in becoming a more culturally responsive school.

In using the Mauri model (Pohatu, 2011) to evaluate my school’s cultural responsiveness, I would describe it as ‘Mauri oho’.  There is a level of consciousness of the need to be culturally responsive; but some way to go to achieve this.