Cultural Responsiveness



A cultural responsive pedagogy:

Culturally responsive teachers:

Create a learning context in the classroom where young Maori people (and any cultural group) can bring themselves to the learning conversation, where they can bring their own experiences, their own cultural understandings, how they make sense of the world to the learning conversation, where their language is official and legitimate. And it is that level of engagement that brings improved attendance, achievement and engagement. 
Bishop, R. (2011)
Culturally responsive pedagogy is a student-centered approach to teaching in which the students’ unique cultural strengths are identified and nurtured to promote student achievement and a sense of well-being about the student’s cultural place in the world. Culturally responsive pedagogy is divided into three functional dimensions: the institutional dimension, the personal dimension, and the instructional dimension.
Lynch, M. (2012, February 13)

Each one of us has a cultural background which affects the way we think and respond. When our culture is considered second-rate or is minimised, we feel inferior and unengaged with the learning environment. This is significant for all cultures in our classrooms, whether European descent, Pacific Island, Asian or African.

The culturally responsive teacher considers how the learning conversation can be enhanced when each person has the opportunity to participate using their own culture, including language, knowledge and methodologies.

In this blog, I have chosen to discuss the participation of students in my class, according to the Te Toi Tupu Participation Tool. Although focussed on Pacifica students, the tool could be used to determine the level of participation of any ethnic or cultural group.

Vision, Mission and Core Values

The vision, mission and core values in a Catholic school are strongly aligned to a Catholic world view and as such could be considered strongly European. Certainly the values that are promoted would fit with many different cultures, but often we see these values through the eyes of the European/Pakeha world view and this gives a skewed picture, without realising the impact on the student.

A significant part of being culturally responsive is to give opportunity for students from different cultures to participate in the development of the vision, mission and core values. This is difficult when these are controlled from a prescribed body and there is little room for modification based on others' cultural awareness. Instead, those of different cultures are expected to align themselves to the values already represented in school documentation. It could be said that a state integrated school has the right to set the vision, mission and core values and expect those who attend to adhere to these. However, there is still a responsibility of the board of trustees (BOT) and senior management team (SMT) to consider how cultural responsiveness could be applied so that cultures have language and methods incorporated into the vision, mission and core values.

Learning Activities

I recently gave my Year 9 Science class the task of developing a poster about an introduced species that had become a pest in New Zealand and how it has affected the environment. One of my students is from the Chatham Islands, where introduced weka have become a pest. He spoke to me about the situation with the weka in the Chatham Islands and he was able to bring his expertise to teach me about a pest from his home. By giving him the opportunity to discuss the weka and allow him to use this as his topic, I had a conversation with him where in the past it had been difficult to get him to talk. This opened the door to other topics where he could share some expertise, gained from life in the Chatham Islands. We also learned why they were introduced in the first place (a food source) and how they manage their numbers.

By developing further learning opportunities where students can bring their expertise, use their own language and methodologies, students will become more engaged and achieve.



References:




Bishop, R. (2011). A culturally responsive pedagogy of relations. EdTalks.

Lynch, M. (2012, February 13). What is culturally responsive pedagogy? Huffington Post









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