Week 31 Mind Lab – (activity 7): Indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness in my practice

Week 31 Mind Lab – (activity 7): Indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness in my practice

This week’s entry I will demonstrate my critical understanding of indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness following Rolfe’s model of reflection to structure my thoughts.

Step 1 (What): What is my understanding of indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness?

My understanding of indigenous knowledge is acknowledging the history of Maori people. For me to personally to know and acknowledging the history, treaty of waitangi, and struggles of the Maori being forced into assimulating in the European way. 

 

Culturally responsiveness, as I listened to Professor Russell Bishop video, he mentions 6 important key points that I understand and agree with and how I can be culturally responsive, to my Maori students. He states that we SHOULD care for Maori students as Maori; 
- care for their learning and still having high expectation of their learning, 
- caring for their performance, 
- creating learning context, drawing on their own knowledge that they can bring to the classroom. 
- My management my classrooms,  
- My interactions with Maori students, 
- co-constructing learning, using a range of strategies to enagage learning. 
- building and strengthening relationships with students and whanau.

Step 2 (So what): Evaluate your practice or your school practice in light of one of the following frameworks or use another one that you are familiar with.

As I listened to Milne’s presentation (CORE Education, 2017) and she shares The Action continuum, I believe, that my school school would be in the ‘Green’ area.

I work at Roscommon school and together we work hard to embrace and acknowledge our tangata whenua and all cultures. Our school motto is ‘Whakapono ki a koe, translated, ‘believe in yourself’. With each letter of ‘Whakapono’ under pins 9 values that our school works hard to bring to life and teaches our students to live by. - Whakawhanaungatanga – relationships, 
- Hiranga – striving for excellence, 
- Aroha – love,
- Kaitiakitanga – respect for our environment and people, 
- Ako – teaching and learning together,
- Puawaitanga – making and taking opportunities, 
- Oranga – health and well being, 
- Ngakau tapatahi – having integrity and being honest and lastly, 
Oho-ake – awakening of knowledge and rising up and facing challenges.

We work hard to bring these values to life in our school. Every week is a new value to work on to understand, develop and apply in our lives.  

Cultural language weeks, not only our Maori culture, but all cultures in our school has the opportunity to embrace, acknowledge, learn and teach all cultures when there is a cultural language week. Our school embraces different cultures. We develop new appreciation when we learn something new from another culture.

Our numeracy program, our school works with Developing Mathematical Inquiry Communities (DMIC) https://www.cerme.nz/dmic
Within DMIC teachers can use the Communication and Participation Framework adaptively, flexibly and in culturally responsive ways. 

In our lessons, we use real life content word problems that our Pacific and Maori students are relate too, and use encourage talk moves to support students mathematical thinking.

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

One thing comes to mind and the next steps of our school would be from our Student Graduate Profile. There is only one part of the profile where it states, ‘I am strong in my culture’. I think, maybe adapting our student graduate profile to our school values would benefit our students more. I think our school cultural responsiveness to amending our graduate profile would really bring our values to our learning. I know the process the school goes through for this amendment involves our BOT, staff, parents and community.

References:

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

https://youtu.be/5cTvi5qxqp4

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

Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D., Jasper, M. (2001) Critical reflection in nursing and the helping professions: a user’s guide. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.