Week 31- Indigenous cultures

STEP ONE- Identifying the issue.

I understand" indigenous knowledge" to mean the amount of knowledge and level of understanding  you have personally about the culture of the indigenous people of a country. This knowledge is hard to quantify, as it can be divided into many different areas. Focusing on indigenous knowledge of Maori, one could divide their knowledge into pre and post European contact history, modern and traditional cultural practices as well as an understanding of economic and political factors concerning Maori. These categories can be looked at as separate or intertwined entities.

STEP TWO- So what?

My school follows the guidelines of the treaty of Waitangi and provides teaching of Te Reo and other aspects of maori culture to all our students. The aspects of our teaching that I am going to critique are the "Resources for Learning" we provide and the "Planning and Assessment" that we do.
I work in a school that has less than 5% Maori students. Therefore we have a tiny community to draw on, which means that we do not really have an understanding of the aspects of Maori culture that Maori view as relevant and important for children to learn about. This impacts on our planning, as we are not given firm direction. It also means that is difficult to gain community input in the classroom or a sense of what skills or learning the community feel is relevant. If we were to look at it on Milne's "Action continuum", you could say that, while not at the "Benevolent" stage, where we are still assessing the success of our Te-reo teaching by colonial standards, that is, the feedback we get from ERO about the inclusion of Te Reo in our long term planning.

STEP THREE- What next?

The alternative approaches we could take are interesting, and I would love to gain feedback or advice about what we could do. One option is to provide PD to staff around the importance of fostering Te Reo teaching in the classroom. TKI has a wealth of resources that can guide a thorough Te Reo teaching program at all year levels. TKI provides quality planning resources that can be easily assessed using the curriculum progressions on the website.
Another option is to move away from the academic model of teaching the language and focus on teaching aspects of Te Reo culture and history that are of interest to students. This would move away from using any kind of assessment, but would still require thorough planning. it would also require aspects of community involvement. We could look at to cobtact our local marae and find out about when intersting cultural activities or festivals are taking place, such as Matariki.

References

Bishop, R " A Culturally Responsive Pedagogy", taken from Edtalks.(2012, September 23). A culturally responsive pedagogy of relations. [video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/49992994

CORE Education.(2017, 17 October). Dr Ann Milne, Colouring in the white spaces: Reclaiming cultural identity in whitestream schools.[video file]. 

Milne, A.(2017).Coloring in the white spaces: reclaiming cultural identity in whitestream schools. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.

TKI, http://hereoora.tki.org.nz/Unit-plans