Week 28: Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Responsiveness

Week 28: Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Responsiveness

The definitions do resonate with me. I have been teaching for over 40 years and it has troubled and concerned me that students from Maori and Pasifika backgrounds have not succeeded in the education system as well as students from other cultural backgrounds. I am particularly taken with Russell Bishop’s (2009) notion of cultural debt when it comes to specifically Maori education. That it is “an artifact of post-colonialism” strikes a chord with me because indigenous peoples around the world have not fared well in post-colonial societies. One just needs to look at the Australian and the United States experiences to see the results of colonial takeover.

I am especially taken by the knowledge that if we, as a society, do not address these disparities then we all bear the consequences through burdens on the health system as well as the prison and social welfare systems. Russell Bishop points out the cost of one individual in our prisons compared to the cost of educating that individual at school.

It is too easy to suggest that Maori and Pasifika students do not achieve because it is their own fault, that there is a deficiency of some kind, but Bishop contends, and I agree that these students “are as educable as any other group.” I have heard the term “agentic’ when it is applied to students but the term is a novel one for me when it is used in relation to teachers. The following quote from the Te Kotahitanga report nicely sums up this position ‘Non-agentic’ positions, as defined in the Te Kotahitanga report, are those in which teachers locate the problems of M!ori educational achievement with the students themselves, or their families or cultural background.  ‘Non-agentic’ positions are also termed ‘deficit theories’, in that they blame the victims and attribute these problems to ‘some deficiency at best, a pathology at worst’ (p.6). (Gutshlag, 2007) Agentic teachers, therefore, are those who do not subscribe to the above. Gutshlag goes onto to suggest this is too simplistic but for our purposes this definition will suffice.

The school I work at has over 50% of the student roll defining themselves as Maori, Pasifika and Asian. We are conscious that we lose too many Maori students too early and even though that is not the case for Pasifika students their pass rates with NCEA indicate issues with accessing the curriculum.  The school has adopted a culturally responsive education which does have its critics but many of us believe it makes sense because it does away with the notion of “deficit” thinking which has been a feature of our schools and society in the past when we have responsive pedagogy and introduced a culturally responsive programme of teaching and learning based on Russell Bishop’s work in Te Kotahitanga:

Culturally responsive and relational pedagogy. The programme comes out of Te Kotahitanga but we affirm that it is good for all students whatever their cultural background.

Effective teachers of Māori students create a culturally appropriate and responsive context for learning in their classroom.

In doing so they demonstrate the following understandings:

a) they positively and vehemently reject deficit theorizing as a means of explaining Māori students’ educational achievement levels (and professional development projects need to ensure that this happens); and

b) teachers know and understand how to bring about change in Māori students’  educational achievement and are professionally committed to doing so (and professional development projects need to ensure that this happens);

As already stated, the school has begun the process of developing understandings of a culturally responsive pedagogy by instituting workshops especially around Kia Eke Panuku which has as its goals, “open, safe, and challenging conversations about Māori succeeding as Māori and, “What culturally responsive pedagogy can look, sound, and feel like” (School document,2016). This process is ongoing and takes place as an inquiry:

The school ensures its vision, mission, and core values reflect cultural responsiveness and also ensures that students maintain the integrity of their own cultural values and identity by the keeping in mind the aims and goals as outlined below from our action plan:

• “This is all based on an ownership model. It’s about who connects and why. This is not a compliance model.
• This is based on the aspirations and targets of Ka Hikitia and our school Charter. It is about doing what we know is effective in, through, and about classroom pedagogy.  
• We aim to become a ‘community of success’ where data (achievement, retention etc) is trending up and ‘gaps’ are closing.
• We will learn to be ‘brokers’ to help others understand this kaupapa and what we can do in the classroom to become better teachers.
• The core business of this kaupapa and process is inclusion.
• It is about developing a depth of understanding about theory and practice that is culturally responsive and relational, i.e., is based on connecting with learners and sharing power.
• The literature that sits behind this is credible and homegrown (Berryman, Bishop, Ford).
• This process deprivatises classrooms and practice.
• We are not doing this only to ‘fix up our Māori kids’. We are doing this to become better teachers.