Activity 7: Indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness in my practice

What?

My understanding of being culturally responsive is to respect a person’s upbringing and their personal history. To understand that their view of this world will be different to mine due to their values and beliefs and so through this filter will interpret information and act within our world accordingly.
As a teacher, you are able to capitalise on the diversity within your class to offer all students the ability to connect with the learning in their own way, to have them share their views and in this way everyone is enriched.

So What?

In reflecting on our school’s values and beliefs around cultural responsiveness, I used the Poutama model to map our own culturally responsive journey and the aspects of our practice that is going well and what is a work in progress. If found a lot of information in our charter about building relationships with students, whānau and the wider Papamoa and Tauranga community. Using our values to build trusting relationships and affirm our Māori learners as Māori.
We have done a lot of work in the community. We have a good relationship with our local iwi and through the Nga Potiki programme over the past 2 years, we have been able to support target students and this year, because of the relationships that have been established, this support has continued in some areas. We are bringing knowledge in from the community by having experts support our learners and teach through waiata and Kapa Haka.
The school’s curriculum is built around the connected curriculum and authentic learning (inquiry). There is a culture of engaging with community experts, posing and solving real world problems and empowering the learners to follow their wonderings. This is interweaved with our school values to promote positive living and learning behaviours.

What Next?

Our school is building a culturally inclusive environment by being trilingual (including sign language) and gradually renovating the environment to be more inviting to a wider community. The curriculum acknowledges the benefit of catering to students on a multicultural level and uphold inclusive practices including students with behavioural and/or learning challenges.
Assessment (not just at our school) is an area that is being held fast in the 19th century. With whole school assessment and still steeped in the reading and writing model (in any subject area), this excludes almost 20% of our students from being assessed on what they know, not what they are able to recall and record.
The fact is that we still need to be able to plot progress and considering our need to be active researchers, this entire facet of our practice is long due for an overhaul.
Therefore the ‘Assessment’ section of my model is based on our beliefs in learning and I see these as being the basis for moving forward with our assessment. That our curriculum is flexible and students are given a variety of opportunities to learn from. The students are assessed through their reflections and can provide evidence of a learning journey (e-portfolios) and finally that their new skills are applied back into the learning cycle of building upon successes and iterate to practice and test out new found skills.
Changing how we assess students can be a more accurate measure of their learning success and as such be more culturally inclusive by giving students the agency to show their progress that is in tune with who they are.

References:

Skilton, M. (2018) Tahatai Coast School Charter 2018 - 2020 and 2018 Annual Plan Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/document/d/15nfjcjk7iAnbI3e1iJr5FrTHCrTlA6GG6wlWbp9J1us/edit

Unitec. (n.d). Learning and Teaching at Unitec Institute of Technology. Retrieved from U008817 Learning and Teaching Booklet.pdf