Mindlab Applied Practice in Context Week 28

Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

In appreciating Maori achieving as Maori (Ministry of Education, 2013), we have moved away from looking at only the visible indicators of culture and are now more aware of the invisible indicators.  This means understanding that culture consists of values and a lens through which to view the world but that students are individuals with individual needs.  This avoids making culture a trait reliant on race and ethnicity and deters from making sweeping assumptions (Teaching Tolerance, 2010).  We have used the Education Review Office indicators of culturally responsive practice as self review (Education Review Office, 2016).  These are manaakitanga, whanaungatanga, ako and mahi tahi.  We find these indicators particularly applicable to Maori and Pasifika students and we find that they also sit closely within our Catholic culture of inclusivity and interdependence.

According to the Mauri model (Potahu, 2011), as the school level we have strong engagement with our cultural groups.  We have regular meetings where the groups come together to share experience and kai.  These groups feed forward to the Board of Trustees and on this level we are probably Mauri Ora (actively engaged). We employ an English Language Learning coordinator who is very proactive in developing cultural connections and understandings.  Staff are strongly encouraged to uncover and build prior understandings of all of our learners into our classroom learning.  We are presently engaged in culturally responsive maths professional development for Pasifika learners which is helping us to understand the importance of learning community and shared understanding.

An area for development where we are more Mauri Moe to Mauri Oho – where there is potential but it is not fully activated - is to build up culturally responsive practice from the grassroots level.  Russell Bishop describes agentic teachers as teachers who believe students can learn, and refrain from deficit thinking because they believe they have the skills to address learning and they believe students can be successful (Edtalks, 2010).  I think our teachers are agentic teachers but perhaps need more support and development in connecting with cultural capital.  Culturally responsive teachers are cultural translators and bridge builders, building on students’ prior knowledge (Teaching Tolerance, 2010).  We have been focusing on visible learning, giving good feedback and feed-forward and making the learning journey visible to the students.  We are now moving into a re-focus on our student-led curriculum and the need to bring in the cultural capital and interests of all of our students in a meaningful way.

A further support of development of grassroots manaakitanga would be to provide more development for our teacher aides on culturally responsive practice and support them to facilitate tuakana/teina learning relationships between children with similar cultural understandings and interests.  This would further activate the ako potential of all of our learners, where the teachers can also learn from the students.

Edtalks.(2012, September 23). A culturally responsive pedagogy of relations. [video file].Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/49992994

Education Review Office (2016). School evaluation indicators – effective practice for improvement and learner success.

Ministry of Education (2013). Ka Hikitia Accelerating Success 2013-2017, the Maori Education Strategy. Wellington: New Zealand Government.

Potahu, T. W. (2011). Mauri - Rethinking Human Wellbeing. MAI Review, 3, 1-12. Retrieved fromhttp://www.review.mai.ac.nz/index.php/MR/article/v...

Teaching Tolerance. ( 2010, Jun 17). Introduction to Culturally Relevant Pedagogy.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGTVjJuRaZ8

Mindlab Applied Practice in Context, Week 27

The Broader Professional Context - Trends

The National Intelligence Council identifies a wide variety of influences creating uncertainty and potential future conflicts (2017).  Concerning trends such as climate change, the increasing gap between rich and poor, displaced people and weakening systems of governance require that people are able to act altruistically for the greater good.  The exponential growth in technology, possibilities for robotics and automation of the workforce potentially disenfranchise large sectors of the population.  Yet with the potential ethical demands, conflicts and challenges identified in the near future, it is a time when we more than ever need enfranchised people who can make sound judgments, or else we face the possibility of tyranny.

The conflicting outcomes of the trends identified by the National Intelligence Council require common human ethical efforts (2017).  Technology and the growth in social media has led to a reliance on peers for information, a reduction in the quality and reliability of information and a focus on the trivial and fleetingly entertaining.  The same developments that will enable us to advance in the fields of automation and biotechnology may also rob us of the capacity to make mature and informed ethical judgments.

Education may be able to influence some of the outcomes.   There is a lot of talk about twenty first century skills.  The foremost must be social justice in the context of developing our understanding of individual and collective duty to each other and to the planet.  “Advances in technology will help boost productivity in developed and developing countries alike, but improving education, infrastructure, regulations and management practices will be critical to take full advantage of them,” (National Intelligence Council, 2017, p.14).

Advances in biotechnology and artificial intelligence will raise questions about humanity.  An unemployed generation, plugged into social media is unlikely to be able to answer those questions. 

In this environment I believe that education has two vital roles.  Economic forces will naturally engender the creativity and problem-solving skills needed for the twenty-first century.  But I believe the critical thinking and moral compass necessary to manage our advances will not necessarily come about naturally.  The first role education plays is to develop a sound understanding of truth and the various interplays of truths.  “Regarding the co-construction of knowledge as it relates to the educational objective truth: whose voice counts?” (OECD, 2016, p.21).  Students need to be taught how to construct meaningful knowledge.  This is directly connected with the use of technology which is already the main conduit of knowledge as well as the main conduit of false information.  The second skill is an ethical ability to think about the common good, the environment and the effects of our actions on other people.  Our education systems need to develop ethically mature and responsive citizens.

“Schools and teachers are increasingly faced with the challenges of educating and guiding students through the advantages and disadvantages of the virtual world, without always having the necessary skills themselves,” (OECD, 2016, p.21) and so another key component of education moving into the future is the quality of teachers. Well-rounded, highly educated moral thinkers are needed to influence our future generations of thinkers.

References

National Intelligence Council. (2017). Global trends: The Paradox of Progress. National Intelligence Council: US. Retrieved from https://www.dni.gov/files/images/globalTrends/documents/GT-Main-Report.pdf

OECD. (2016) Trends Shaping Education 2016, OECD Publishing, Paris. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/trends_edu-2016-en

Mindlab Applied Practice In Context Week 26

SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS OF THE COMMUNITY, SCHOOL CULTURE AND PROFESSIONAL ENVIRONMENTS

We are a Catholic school but we do not have a homogenous culture.  Our school is a decile 6 integrated school drawing from a large geographic, urban/rural and socio-economic range as well as having a large range of different cultures and ethnicities within the school. This gives colour and vibrancy to our school community. 

We have a strong vision, “Reach for the Stars as Lifelong Learners in the Catholic Faith,” and this unites our purpose.  Our school is a Dominican school started by the Dominican sisters in Oamaru in 1884.  The Dominican order has the motto, “Veritas” meaning truth and a tradition of social justice and academic excellence.  In many ways this tradition is kept alive in the school through the working of the Parish and through the generational effects of families moving through the school, staff who attended the school as students and purposefully through school leadership actions.  

Over the past few years we have had a turnover of about 50 students a year in and out of the school which can change climate considerably.  We have also had a period of high staff turnover.  We are taking steps to reduce this.

Refocusing on the core values and mission of the school, I believe, has reinforced the culture but our climate can still change day to day.  We have some historic issues which mean we presently have to keep a tight rein on some senior behaviours and attitudes and we need all hands on deck to do this.  For instance, we can have very challenging days when leadership is temporarily absent or when a student or group of students are out of sorts for reasons beyond school.  On those days our climate can change considerably due to elements at odds with our culture.

Our school has pressure from its community in different ways.  Some members of our community see it as a school of choice, others as the extension of their Catholic faith, and others again as a cultural alignment.

I believe the 10 influencing cultural norms (Stoll and Fink, cited in Stoll, 1998) are strong in our school on the whole.  We believe in excellence and so we aim for high standards in teaching and learning and the professional expectations are very high.  We also believe in social justice and the particular dignity of the least served.  This leads, I believe, to an above and beyond commitment by our staff. 

As many staff members contribute to the school culture out of their own sense of faith commitment and vocation, there is definitely a sense of “going the extra mile,” but at times this can be exhausting and stressful. 

Managing this balance is a dilemma for leadership.  This year we have developed systems around overall school wellbeing which are helping us to meet needs in a systematic manner.  We have a focus on teams and a sense that the children belong to all of us and we support each other in our journey.  We also have a sense that our school climate, particularly in the older years, does not always reflect our school culture and we are specifically working towards structural elements which will improve our climate for the future – for instance smaller classes in the juniors, enrolment processes which decrease the high turnover, a growing sense of explicit expectation of support from our community for our culture (only just begun) and an emphasis on getting our culture embedded in the early years at school.

REFERENCES

Stoll. (1998). School Culture. School Improvement Network’s Bulletin 9. Institute of Education, University of London. Retrieved from http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Understanding-school-cultures/School-Culture

Mindlab Applied Practice in Context Week 25

Community of Practice

The Whitestone Kahui Ako is a grouping of one high school, four contributing primaries and the Oamaru Kindergarten Association.  It is a true community of learning in that its sole purpose is learning. 

It has taken time to get to the point where the community has an agreed sense of joint enterprise.  The community is at the point now of developing its governance structures and employing teachers.  Up to now, the main participants in the learning community have been the principals of the schools. Each principal is leader of their own community of learning in their own school.  Each of these schools has their own vision, values and sense of joint enterprise.  One of the challenges to the kahui ako has been to develop a sense of joint enterprise which includes and enhances those of the individual school communities.

Participation in the community can be explained by “modes of belonging,” (Wenger, 2000).  The principals engaged in discussions over a year and have created opportunities for staff within schools to engage with each other.  Up to this point this engagement has been peripheral for the teachers in my school.  It has been secondary to our core purpose and goals. 

We have also participated in “imagination” mode where we have reflected on who we are and our purpose and created vision.  This has been done through “mutuality” creating both personal and professional trust (Wenger, 2000, p. 230).  We are now in a phase where alignment has been established between the leaders. 

“Learning at boundaries is likely to be maximised for individuals and for communities when experience and competence are in close tension,” (Wenger, 2000, p.233).  Competence refers to what the community has established over time and experience is our own interaction with the world.  When there is a close tension – i.e. new or contrasting experiences are not too far removed from the community’s competence there is more opportunity for learning.   The community came into closer alignment through sharing understanding of the competencies and challenges of the constituent groups and through the learning of the principals in the group with the help of an external facilitator.  This has brought a tension between the competency of the group and experience beyond which is a condition for learning.

Through this experience we are now building a sense of a shared repertoire of resources.  One of these is the agreed focus on “Spirals of Inquiry” (Timperley, Kaser, & Halbert, 2014) as a learning tool for all members.  Another is the beginning practice of cross- school moderation thus beginning a shared understanding of resource and competence.  The next step is to engage a learning facilitator for the schools and the lead teachers to work across and within schools and this is when the community’s shared competence and repertoire will begin to grow.

In a sense of joint enterprise, communities agree on their purpose.   Competent members understand the enterprise well enough to be able to contribute to it and to access the community’s shared repertoire of resources.   I now feel a strong alignment and mutuality with the group’s vision and within the shared competence we are building.  My role is as a competent participant and as a leader and now that the group has got to the point of being in alignment with my own school’s goals I have a strong sense of belonging and contribution to the group.  This has been established not through changing my school’s goals or the goals of the group but unpacking to the point where we have established we have shared goals and hence a joint enterprise.

REFERENCES

Timperley, H., Kaser, L., & Halbert, J. (2014). A framework for transforming learning in schools: Innovation and the spiral of inquiry. Victoria: Centre for Strategic Education.

Wenger, E. (2000). Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems. Organization, 7(2), 225–246. https://doi.org/10.1177/135050840072002