Week 27. Examine how indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness are informing the way you are taking action.

Bishop’s definitions of culturally responsive pedagogy resonate with my understanding of indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness (Edtalks, 2012). My perspective of cultural knowledge is based on the way of doing things in the class and developing a learning relationship with students. Where practical my approach provides for collaborative learning, where ideas are shared, not just held by one person, and new knowledge created by many. This pedagogical approach allows for the student's voice, and increasingly more student agency when deciding on what we should be learning. While I am responsible for teaching the curriculum it is important that the students feel they have ownership in the process of learning and set standards for their achievement. As Bishop mentions an agentic teacher works cooperatively and collaboratively with students (Edtalks, 2012). An example of this is negotiating what might be required to complete a lesson; having the students have a say in what they feel can be achieved in a lesson and building on this. This is an example of empowering the student to set goals and aim high. Bishop mentions setting high standards and feeding constructive information back to the students, providing them with a goal and negotiate to co-construct the learning.

Step 2: Examine the actions you have taken for your inquiry in light of the cultural frameworks

For this reflection, I will refer to the Culturally Responsive Practice for Māori scale, and focus on Whanaungatanga (Asil, 2017). A significant aspect of my inquiry was and is to use digital technology to provide an oral platform for students who find writing a challenge. I was concerned that some of my students were disengaged from writing. Theoretically taking away the barrier of handwriting would provide a stronger chance at success for my students. I choose Flipgrid for video posting students book reports and writing. The use of video posts using Flipgrid expanded into daily news at the request of the students.

Knowing and caring that some of my students were disengaged when writing, I provided the option of using video posts to publish their writing. Hopefully, the student survey will show that students have an increased level of confidence with their learning, and particularly writing.

One unplanned result was the class negotiation and inclusion of Flipgrid buddies. The idea was to improve learning outcomes by providing feedforward from peers, and learn skills to work with each other; tuakana teina (Asil, 2017). I have found it surprising how students are more sincere using the video posts. Teacher feedback is constructive and private for the students, which provides a certain level of reassurance, that nobody else needs to hear.



Step 3:Implications for future inquiry

I have an excellent pedagogical tool in Flipgrid. As a class, we have negotiated how this can be used for home learning and in class. We have worked with developing collaboration with the digital app. However, to move to a higher level of cultural responsiveness need to improve on providing relevant contexts for the learning activities that can be completed using Flipgrid. Bishop mentioned that the agentic teacher knows where the deficits are in the students learning and takes action and I believe this is where I need to be better (Edtalks, 2012). The focus should go on sharing and celebrating what is achieved online to the front of the class. To continue to move to a higher level with my Maori and non-Maori students I believe it is important to develop diverse ways for students to express themselves and their learning, rather than the status quo of pen and paper or digital technology (Cowie et al., 2011). The implication is that I need to now turn my attention to creating more opportunities to connect the classroom curriculum with student's lives outside of school, and their funds of knowledge (Cowie et al., 2011).

References

Asil, M. (2017). A School-Based Measure of Culturally Responsive Practices. Frontiers in Education, 2, 6–7. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2017.00017

Cowie, B., Otrel-cass, K., Glynn, T., Kara, H., Anderson, M., Doyle, J., … Te Kiri, C. (2011). Culturally responsive pedagogy and assessment in primary science classrooms: Whakamana tamariki. Teaching and Learning Research Initiative., 1–5.

Edtalks.(2012, September 23). A culturally responsive pedagogy of relations. 

[video file].Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/49992994