What ought I to do, all things considered?

Culturally responsive education

Gay(2010) defines culturally responsive pedagogy as, teaching to and through students personal cultural strengths, intellectual capabilities and prior accomplishments.

It is about dealing with prior knowledge and connecting what is known to what is being taught.

I liked the way the teacher in the video called herself a cultural translator and a builder of bridges.

Culture can be broken into two areas – the tangible culture those of craft, arts and technology. These are areas where it is quite easy to incorporate a range of student cultures into the planning and delivery of lessons. Where it gets tricky is making sure that these are genuine teaching moments. For them to be successful teachers need to get to know their students and their cultures so that they develop a true understanding of what is important to them and their families. As a primary teacher who now works in a secondary school, this is far easier to do at primary school level. While it can be achieved at secondary level, it is much harder as there are more restraints with time, assessments and the number of teachers working with the students.

I think that the bridge between the known and what is being taught is more straightforward in these areas as they are so visual. It is areas heavily weighted with the written word, in the case of New Zealand, English where issues start.

The other area of cultural responsive pedagogy is the intangible – values, beliefs, cultural experiences. Unless we have taken the time to get to know and understand our students we have no to little idea of what these are.

As teachers it is up to us to find out about our students and adapt our delivery to meet a diverse range of needs.

Watching the video for this session reminded me of two scenarios where I got things quite culturally wrong.

The first was with a group of Samoan students. We were playing duck duck, goose. The students were running round the circle tapping the students on the head to decide who would be goose. A grandparent happened to be watching and came over and asked me (very nicely and quietly) if I could please get the students to tap the shoulders as the head was scared in their culture. I felt so bad for my error.

Another was a faux pau with a parent. I was meeting a father of a Turkish student for the first time. I had practiced saying hello in Turkish and proceeded to do that while extending my hand. He looked very uncomfortable and said in broken English that he was unable to touch a woman who wasn’t his wife. Again, I felt awful. Simple errors but with quite large impact.

At our secondary school we have a group of Maori boys who are struggling to ‘fit in’. We are working hard on this, but we have a way to go.

Schools are now so diverse that it can be an initial mind field to create a culturally responsive environment. This, in my mind, is a living concept and will  be a work in progress. But we need to always remember –

References:

www.englishlanguage.org.nz/

esolonline.tki.org.nz

Neuliep, James.W. (2009) Intercultural Communication: A Contextual Approach. Sage Publications. Thousand Oaks, United States.