Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Responsiveness in my Practice

Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

The idea of developing a Culturally Responsive Pedagogy in my classroom has been an interesting and somewhat frustrating journey. The idea of Culturally Responsive pedagogy as defined by Bishop (2011) is an excellent and somewhat essential ingredient to engaging learners by the use a relevant context where they can bring their own cultural experiences and beliefs with the aim of improving achievement.  

Why I have I found this frustrating?

I arrived in New Zealand in 2006 to train as Science teacher with my specialty being Chemistry & Physics and during my training struggled with many of the Maori words especially the student names.  This translated in the classroom too much laughter where the students had to keep repeating their names until I could pronounce it in the correct way.  I still struggle with the rolling r's.  The next frustration I found was I had very little guidance on how to make my teaching or lessons more culturally responsive there is very little out there on this topic and as an immigrant to this country I feel I need more help than most.

NCEA and Cultural Responsive Pedagogy

As a Physics teacher my teaching load is often 40-60% senior Physics classes with the emphasis on ensuring the student pass the external standards at the end of the year. The major point to note here is that all the concepts are based on the physics and while some cultural context can be used it’s very limited and I have yet to see it employed in the assessment papers other than loosely linked to some context and unfortunately I do not have the cultural expertise to marry the two.

What has been interesting?

One of the challenges I have faced is in how to embed Cultural Responsive Pedagogy into my teaching.  In part of this has been achieved by sharing of resources and talks with my community of learning. Also a major influence has been the students themselves.  Indeed it is the students who have taught me the most like: counting, naming the Planets and understanding of native floura and fauna.  I have endeavoured to add this where possible to a culturally responsive practice.  Personally one of the most important principles I have used in my teaching is the one of Ako, the culturally preferred pedagogy principle as

defined by (Keown, P., Parker, L., & Tiakiwai, S,  2005). The principle of Ako becomes particularly relevant because knowledge construction should not just be confined to the student it should be considered a journey where both the student and teacher embark on learning together. Bishop, Berryman, Tiakiwa and Richardson (2003) saw that the most important influence on Maori student’s educational achievement was the quality of the in class face-to-face relationships and interactions between teachers and Maori students. Indeed over the past ten years I have learned a considerable amount about their cultural diversity from the students directly, probably more than any personal development I have attended, and will continue to adapt and improve wherever possible.

Bishop, R. (2011). A culturally responsive pedagogy of relations. In The Professional Practice of Teaching (pp. 185-204). Cengage Learning.

Keown, P., Parker, L., & Tiakiwai, S. (2005). Values in the New Zealand curriculum: A literature review on values in the curriculum. Report for the Ministry of Education, New Zealand by the Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research, School of Education, The University of Waikato. New Zealand

Bishop, R., Berryman, M., Tiakiwai, S., and Richardson, C. (2003). Te Kotahitanga: The Experiences of Year 9 and 10 Māori Students in Mainstream Classrooms. Wellington: Ministry of Education. www.minedu.govt.nz/goto/tekotahitanga