Week 31

Activity 7: Indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness in my practice

Step 1 (What): Culturally Responsive Pedagogy is such a huge area that impacts learners at all
schools. I currently have 11 different cultures within my class.  The two areas I have chosen to focus
on are the schools’ ‘vision, mission and core values, and ‘the human/learning resources’.

Our school has a strong vision, mission, and core value that includes inclusiveness, knowing every
learner and their family, striving for the best outcomes for every learner and having open
communication.  The area I feel there is room for improvement is in both human and learning
resources.

Step 2 (So what):

By using the Action continuum in the above graphic I feel that as a school we are working in the
green level in terms of vision, mission and core values.  As a school with a wide range of cultures
we are inclusive and celebrate different cultures. This is shown from simple things like different
greetings on the doors, ways staff greet people, different cultures celebrating aspects of their
culture in assembly and translating notices and reports into languages to make families feel
involved.  Having child led conferences and listening to parents about expectations and ways of
learning are also important. Within the school we have to Te Reo bilingual classes. There are
also Pasifika groups running in the school.

When it comes to rating the resources, both human and learning, on the continuum I would rate our
school in the purple area.  In the bilingual area it would be red but across the other classes there is
a lot of room to add in resources that are culturally authentic.

Step 3 (What next)

To move forward on the continuum in the area of resources would be quite simple.  This could
involve having experts come in to teach about aspects of culture. Incorporating more people from
our community in showing cultures and talking about other life in other lands.  At present we have
some bilingual books in the class, it would not be difficult to incorporate more of these and traditional
tales into the class programme.

I feel it would be difficult, if not impossible, to reach the Red level in relation to all cultures in the
class.  While the idea of having a culturally sustaining pedagogy is important it would be difficult to
do this successfully across a diverse range of cultures in each class and I feel many would revert to
the brown level of the continuum to feel like they were doing something.