Culturally Responsive Practice

Ok, Today it's a heavy one... I hope you're prepared.

This topic today feels heavy for me because I'm quite conflicted by it.
What do I understand 'culturally responsive pedagogy' to be?  I think it's where I choose to know and understand my students and I choose to relate them in a way that reflects I know them and believe in their success.  This is similar to Russell Bishop's ideas about a culturally responsive teacher who enable students to learn through a relationship of knowing one another and teaching in light of that knowledge and refuse to accept deficit explanations for lack of achievement (Edtalks, 2012)

I swing wildly between my belief in my ability to do this.  On one hand, I grew up overseas, I lived in one cultural context, I went to school in 4 different countries (probably 2 major cultural situations though), and I know smatterings of a few different languages.  I probably place a significant amount of self-perception and therefore, value, in this.

Life in New Zealand (1988ish)

Playing at the Pond where Mum did the washing- Karenland

Life in YongGu (Karenland) Thailand

Holidays in Chiang Mai, Thailand

However, on the other hand, I've lived here in NZ for over 10 years, I teach in a community very different from what I grew up in.  I don't know the languages of my students and often feel out-of-my-depth when trying to understand what makes them them.  I know that learning somethings about their ethnicity will help me, but I also know that just because I know about White Sunday and what Kilikiti is and what makes a Tokelauan dance unique doesn't actually tell me anything specific about each student I teach!

So...let's examine what I'm doing in reality in 2 areas.  One I feel I'm relatively successful at.. another I'm less so.


1.  Vision, Mission and Core Values
So, I think our school has done pretty well in integrating Mãori perspectives across our vision/mission and core values.

As you can see, all our values come from Te Ao Mãori.  And it's clearly stated that these values will be expressed and interwoven through all learning areas and inclusive of PI perspectives too.

I'm gonna reflect on how our practice can be reflected on in terms of some models that help us to think about how cultural responsive we are.

One model I could use is the Unitec Model (Unitec, N.D.).  This one looks pretty flash, but I find it very very confusing.  That's probably because there is a lot of Mãori terms I don't fully understand, and it's pretty complex.  I wonder how used this really is?! 





Another alternative is the Mauri Model (Potahu, 2011) which is a pretty interesting way to reflect on how proactive our practice is in regards to the levels of Mauri.  I'm not sure that anyone who's not Mãori could or should ever think of themselves as 'E kokiri ana' because that's not our place.  But I also wonder if we (as a school) can be over a number of levels at once.  I would say, we show Kai te whakatõngã (in Level 2 of Mauri Moe) while also concurrently Kuawhakawhiti (Mauri Oho) and also E Manawanui Ana me E Pümau Ana (Mauri Ora).

I guess, I think that Maori perspectives and voice are essentially core to our mission and values, such that we don't often question and reflect on what we're doing because we feel they're such a part of what we're doing.  I wonder though, if we operate from Pasifika perspectives as consistently as we do Maori?  Do we have enough knowledge as a staff team to feel we can integrate those values, or belief systems in an authentic and respectful way?  How, also do we enable new staff to our team to get up to speed with our unique kaupapa?

2.  Learning Activities

So, how am I going personally at being a culturally responsive practitioner through my learning activities.  I actually think that my culturally responsive practice is more complex than knowing ethnicity stuff about my students.  It's about knowing them personally.  At the beginning of the year, I got my class to learn a Tokelauan song because I had 2 students in my class that were relatively new to New Zealand from Tokelau.  Both of them struggled with English, and I thought this would be a great way for them to have their status raised in our class- through teaching us a song, and helping to choreograph moves for us.  Great Idea right?? 

No!  

Because, I quickly found out that my boy, though an enthusiastic and capable singer, really disliked dancing.   He loved joining in in a group and that sense of belonging, but he was hopeless at leading and his status was not raised because he didn't want to teach the boys how to Tokelauan dance!  

According to the Mauri model, I'd say that in that instance, I was E manawanui ana me E kakama ana, me E pumau ana, yet also pretty clueless!

It wasn't so much as me needing to do something culturally responsive, as needing to know my student's as learners, and what would help them to move on to greater success in whatever they loved to do and learn about!  

This is where Russell Bishop's ideas of a 'relationship based education' not a 'child-centred education where the teacher's job is to hold hands and sing songs together.  This is my ethic of care.  My job as a teacher is to know my students- what they like to do, don't like to do, how they prefer to learn, what their life is really like- as 2nd or 3rd generation NZ'ers or as recent immigrants, who know and value their ethnicity very highly, but mostly live removed from their ancestral homeland and predictable ways of being.  I can't make any assumptions.  I need to proactively (agenticly) choose to know each of my students and then choose to teach in light of that knowledge.  

At no point, can I sit back on my haunches and complacently assume I've got culturally responsive pedagogy all sewn up because I grew up overseas and knew 'other cultures'!