Weaving the Strands to be Culturally Responsive

"A mainstream school's organisational structure, language, materials and symbolism provide the systemic context for affirming some students and de-valuing others. (Savage, C., et al, 2011)

Hine Taiao is a carving that represents our school with Hine at the centre of everything we do, with her welcoming arms encompassing the wide variety of our at least 35 different cultures.  Within the carving there are aspects that represent migrants coming into the country represented by the godwit, our team names and related personalities, the physical environment around our school with the natural water springs and associated wildlife, tuakana teina is represented through the footprints at the bottom, the gourd holds all our knowledge we bring but also build up while at the school, Matariki brings new beginnings at the start of school, at the start of a new school year or as new learning brings new beginnings.  This symbolism is everywhere in the carving and our school curriculum is built around this carving.  It was carved by students in 2007 and we are still finding representations within it to explain our place, our sense of belonging, as a school and community.   

The classroom is the daily lived experience of students; thus validation of students' cultural identities and valuing of the cultural knowledge students bring with them to school have the potential to make a difference. (Savage, C., et al, 2011)

I see this as an ongoing area of development.  We are working hard to develop relationships with whanau and students, increase the related contexts for learning and to provide emotional wellbeing in our physical and emotional environments to ensure learning is relevant, contextual and is collaborative in nature as "What's good for Māori is good for everybody' as stated by Bishop.

Bishop discusses that agentic teachers understand themselves and have the power to weave everything together to provide learning contexts so Māori can bring themselves to the learning conversations.  This in turn increases attendance, achievement and engagement but in order for this to occur it needs to be supported from the school through time, professional development and energy and that there needs to be investment provided by the government to ensure ongoing change is sustained.

Māori values and principles, along with Pasifika values are included in our team wide vision and are considered with every change we make to our programmes and our way of working in the Year 0/1 team.  

We have school support to be agentic in our development, through professional development opportunities, and by allowing us to find the best way to teach our cohort of students, developing relationships with our whanau and students.  We are encouraged to continue to change.  There are still deficit groups in each cohort and we are working through ways to increase the achievement of these students.  The recent changes made to our programme to ensure more learner agency for students has seen an increase in engagement.  This is an area we are further developing as it our problem as teachers of these students to solve.  

Macfarlane, Glynn, Penetito & Bateman (2008) put forward the Māori view of Rangatiratanga as taking responsibility for, and control over one’s own learning. They discuss the sense of inner agency that comes from the respect of others and by their giving of responsibility and choice, which links to the New Zealand Curriculum Key Competency of Managing Self, but only when included with whanaungatanga as the Māori view is that an individual’s identity is shaped and formed by the identity of the whole group. This supports social contexts and collaboration as a way to engage Māori students as their identity is formed in group interactions and the wellbeing of the group as a whole. Macfarlane, et al., 2008 discuss the cultivation of student leadership where conditions are created for students to empower themselves. Multiple ways are required for students to acquire leadership skills and teachers can support this by putting themselves in positions of unknown and asking students to take on teaching roles, in tuakana teina relationships.

References

Macfarlane, A. H., Glynn, T., Grace, W., Penetito, W., & Bateman, S. (2008). Indigenous epistemology in a national curriculum framework?. Ethnicities , 8 (1), 102-126.

Savage, C., Hindleb, R., Meyerc, L., Hyndsa, A., Penetitob, W. & Sleeterd, C.(2011) Culturally responsive pedagogies in the classroom: indigenous student experiences across the curriculum .Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 39(3), 183–198