I really enjoyed the readings and viewings about cultural responsiveness for this post because they resonated with my personal pedagogy and that of my school. I feel that learning conferences with individual ākonga are a great opportunity to practice personalised culturally responsive pedagogy.
Bishop (2012) describes an 'agentic teacher' who believes in each child's ability to achieve. He says that agentic teachers are able to manage the classroom in such a way that they can have "...interactions with young Maori people which provide them with academic feedback and feedforward."
Learning conferences achieve this goal. The ākonga and kaiako can use the learning conference as an opportunity to connect prior knowledge, set goals, offer support, advice and feedback. The whole learning journey can be designed in a personalised and culturally responsive way for the individual ākonga.
A speaker in the Teaching Tolerance (2010) video reiterates the need to cater for individual voice, stating that a 'one size fits all' approach to cultural diversity can be damaging. She points out that "Each child brings their own version of culture, which is highly personalised."
Bucher (2008) describes the nine mega skills for Cultural Intelligence. Number 9 is about "Understanding the Dynamics of Power; meaning that it is important that kaiako understand that they usually hold the power in a classroom. I see learning conferences as an opportunity to hand this power back to the ākonga because their intention is put the ākonga in charge of their learning journey.
I have chosen to use the Mauri Model to reflect on how I have gone about taking action in regards to learning conferences; and also to discuss how our team are responding to the requirement to do learning conferences.
I see myself as being in the Mauri Ora state of being actively engaged. I feel highly motivated and committed to helping to establish learning conferences routine mahi for kaiako in the teina hapori. My recent Mindlab work has enabled me to change the direction of my research so that I am now reading, writing and thinking about an aspect of my work that is related to my research but that is more engaging for me.
I feel alert and I am interested in talking with other kaiako about their experiences so I understand them more. I would like to create opportunities for kaiako to discuss the why, how and when of learning conferences.
I believe that hapori wide a few of our kaiako may be in the Mauri Moe state. They may be choosing not to participate because they are feeling anxious about how our emphasis on learning conferences challenges their perception of their role as a kaiako. Other kaiako are in a Mauri Oho state where they are interested in finding out how they can make the time to have effective, culturally responsive and culturally intelligent learning conversations with our ākonga.
Bucher, R. (2008). Building cultural intelligence (CQ): Nine Megaskills. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Inc.
Edtalks.(2012, September 23). A culturally responsive pedagogy of relations. [video file].Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/49992994
Pohatu, T. W. (2011). Mauri - Rethinking human wellbeing. MAI Review, 3, 1-12. Retrieved from http://www.review.mai.ac.nz/index.php/MR/article/v...
Teaching Tolerance( 2010, Jun 17) Introduction to Culturally Relevant Pedagogy Retrieved from:
https://app.themindlab.com/media/31865/view
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