Mindlab activity 3 Te Ao Māori & Cultural Responsiveness (week 27)

Te Ao Māori & Cultural Responsiveness

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

When I created my action plan, Whanaungatanga and Rangatiratanga were 2 important te ao Māori concepts. Rangatiratanga is addressed in this inquiry process as ākonga and their whānau are able to share their voice. Ākonga especially should feel empowered as they are able to build their autonomy over their learning. The survey was targeted at them identifying themselves as an individual but also beginning to see how what they say and do can make a difference to what others think.

Ako is the reciprocality of learning between kaiako and students. In my action plan students are also sharing their learning directly with their whānau.
When I first wrote my Action Plan I decided to deliberately analyse the group of students (in detail) aaccording to a few factors, one of these ethnicity, but because the ākonga kept changing in the first 3 week it was difficult to get a grip on the identity of all of the students in our group. During this Edtalks (2012) video Professor Russell Bishop talks about culturally responsive pedagogy and he mentions that being culturally responsive means that your teaching strategies are relationships based and value the prior experiences of the learner and their whānau. These ideas of culturally responsive practice is also reinforced in the required reading by Cowie, B., Otrel-Cass, K., Glynn, T., & Kara, H., et al. (2011).

In the early stages of the inquiry, I identified 2 potential issues of equity; ethnicity and whānau access to their students learning via their emails. Over the past 5 weeks we been able to add more whānau emails to our systems so more parents should be able to access their child's learning.  The impact of this has not been evaluated yet.

Whānau engagement is an important part of acknowledging the culture of students. As Māori students shouldn't be seen as separate from their whānau. Ways that I would like to strengthen my action plan is be more responsive to students answers, this will be my next step.  

Cowie, B., Otrel-Cass, K., Glynn, T., & Kara, H., et al. (2011). Culturally responsive pedagogy and assessment in primary science classrooms: Whakamana tamariki. Wellington: Teaching Learning Research Initiative. 
Retrieved from http://www.tlri.org.nz/sites/default/files/projects/9268_cowie-summaryreport.pdf

Mindlab Activity 1 Reflective Writing (week 25)

Reflective Writing

What I have done so far to take action?

In week 3 our ākonga group has become more settled. My co-teachers and I are beginning to work together to plan and implement strategies and activities to support ākonga learning in Tuakana 8 (one of the year 7 -13 tutor groups)

So far I have shared the ākonga and whānau survey with a head teacher and we are planning to use both of these next week, starting Monday 18th March. Together we have introduced ourselves and contacted all whānau of ākonga in various ways, email, text, phone calls and in person.

It felt good to be able to provide the ākonga survey as an activity and I will be using the writing a letter to whānau to increase communication fluency of ākonga as well as to encourage sharing knowledge of our learning design with whānau and building ākonga knowledge. 

My style of teaching is conflicting with another teacher. I have a relationship focussed philosophy but sometimes I can be too "soft" on students. Several students have begun to monopolise my time and this situation isn't ideal for both of us.

I plan to print and email the whānau survey on Monday 18th February.  I have already had an in-depth discussion with a parent (via phone) about expectations for her daughter, as this student may be leaving the school.

I did expect that contacting whānau would time consuming but it felt rewarding. Something I wonder about is if I could have tried to do this earlier.  However I feel that the first 3 weeks of school have been extremely busy and we are only now getting settled.

What works as expected and what doesn’t? And why?

Over all the student survey was received well by the students. The majority of them filled it in and it gave an insight to how they think. Students who didn't fill the form (via online) or not at are students who were absent and probably the most disengaged. I feel like this should be my target group for further intervention. The whānau survey only had 5 responses (via online) and 3 (via paper)In the  scan phase I chose the issue of whānau engagement because of ākonga disengagement. 

What should be done differently? How would you justify this?

During the focus part of the inquiry I found research with two other kaiako we reviewed 

the literature and found issues around equity especially with to access digital technology and support for whānau to learn how to become digital citizens.  I used our hunch to make a plan for my Puna Ako group. I found it difficult to lead others as I am not as experienced as the Pou leader in my Puna Ako. I feel I demonstrated democratic leadership as I shared the survey with other this was effective as team work is essential to complete this action plan. Transformative leadership means that I change my leadership style based on what is needed. I have been unsettled and not focussed on this. Whanaungatanga is important to me but there have been a few issues that I did not expect. Such as having to focus on developing and maintaining professional relationships with a new teaching team.