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REVIEW PAPER 6: Issues of Culture and Assessment in New Zealand
Education pertaining to Māori Students
Rangimārie Mahuika and Russell Bishop
School of Education
University of Waikato.
The national curriculum sets out the objectives we want to see achieved.
Assessment should evaluate students’ progress and provide a basis for planning
that reinforces strengths, and addresses gaps, in teaching and learning and
assessment programmes. Consistent ongoing assessment is needed to monitor
student progress and to enhance the quality of education at both the school and
national levels. To be valuable, assessment must provide teachers, schools,
students, and parents with information that helps to improve the quality of
education outcomes for students. (Ministry of Education, 1998, p. 4)
In any quality education system the ultimate goal is to improve the educational outcomes for
its students. Assessment then plays a key role in our education system as an integral
component of any teaching programme. Assessment provides a vehicle for teachers and
schools to understand the various learning and assessment needs of their students. It provides
evidence from which parents can be informed of their children‟s progress, and teachers can
make judgements about how best to tailor their teaching programmes to address the various
strengths and weaknesses of class members. It provides a base from which qualifications can
be awarded by ensuring that individuals have the requisite skills and knowledge to fulfil
certain tasks and in the end become competent and contributing citizens in society.
Assessment then is more than simply taking tests or collecting and analysing data, but implies
a necessary judgement in what knowledge is valued through decisions about what is assessed
and how this assessment is carried out. Such judgements cannot help but have significant
implications in culturally diverse nations such as New Zealand.
Effective assessment is part and parcel of quality teaching practice and research has
shown that good assessment is an essential component in improving outcomes for students.
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What then are the features of effective assessment? Do these features apply equally to Māori
learners? Or are Māori learners‟ needs different? If so how are they different? This paper
examines the literature relevant to the influence of culture on assessment for Māori learners
within New Zealand. It will specifically explore the ways in which assessment has been both
constructed and applied to Māori learners, but moves further to highlight the broad research
that has both critiqued and advanced thinking in this area both nationally and internationally.
The paper will provide a review of the literature, but also seeks to pull together data
necessary for the development of more robust educational assessment policies relating to
Māori learners. These goals align with those of the Ministry of Education‟s in ensuring that
Māori learners enjoy educational success as Māori (Ministry of Education, 2008, p. 11).
Central to this goal and the core topic of this paper is the long standing issue that
Māori learners are culturally different from their non-Māori counterparts, and thus have
different learning and assessment needs that must be addressed in culturally appropriate and
responsive ways (Bishop & Glynn, 1999; Durie, 2001; Smith, 1997). As Hemara (2000)
notes, the diversity of Māori students requires an adjustment in understanding the
inappropriateness of developing a blanket approach to serve their heterogeneous needs.
However, there is a danger in suggesting that Māori students are different and therefore need
some different, and as yet, undiscovered „recipe‟ for addressing these differences. The taha
Māori programme of the 1980s was one such approach based upon this notion that providing
Māori curriculum content and associated assessments would be the answer to educational
disparities. However, it failed to address the problems of educational disparity because it
failed to address the fundamental cause of educational underachievement by Māori students
which is that Māori students are treated differently in mainstream schools, but most often
negatively. In an analysis of teachers discursive positioning in relation to influences on Māori
student achievement (Bishop, Berryman, Tiakiwai, & Richardson, 2003), it was identified
that the main influences on Māori students‟ educational achievement that people identified
varied according to where they positioned themselves within discourse. The majority of
teachers spoken to identified that the main influences on Māori students‟ educational
achievement was Māori students themselves, their homes and/or the structure of the schools,
that is, influences from outside of the classroom. In so doing, a large proportion of the
teachers were pathologizing Māori students‟ lived experiences by explaining their lack of
educational achievement in deficit terms, either as being within the child or their home, or
within the structure of the school.
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Positioning within this group also meant that the speakers tended to blame someone
or something else outside of their area of influence and as a result they suggested that they
can have very little responsibility for the outcomes of these influences. The main
consequence of such deficit theorising for the quality of teachers‟ relationships with Māori
students and for classroom interactions is that these teachers tended to have low expectations
of Māori students‟ ability or a fatalistic attitude in the face of systemic imponderables. This
in turn created a downward spiralling self-fulfilling prophecy of Māori student
underachievement and failure.
Further, those who positioned themselves within a deficit discourse saw very few
solutions to solve the problems. In terms of agency then, this is a very non-agentic position in
that there is not much an individual can do from this position other than change the child‟s
family situation or the education „system‟, solutions often well outside of their own agency.
Therefore, along with others (Gay, 2000; Kincheloe & Steinberg, 1997; Nieto, 2000;
Wagstaff & Fusarelli, 1995), it is suggested that this deficit theorising by teachers is the
major impediment to Māori students‟ educational achievement and as Bruner (1996)
identifies, unless these positionings by teachers are addressed and overcome, they will not be
able to realise their agency and little substantial change will occur.
In Shields, Bishop and Mazawi (2005), we found in 3 case studies of the impact of
pathologizing theories and practices on Navaho, Māori & Bedouin peoples, that
pathologizing of the lived experiences of these 3 peoples was all pervasive and was deeply
rooted in psychological, epistemological, social and historical discourses. Indeed, we found
that:
pathologizing is manifested in education and schooling in knowledge, power, agency,
structures and relationships including both the pedagogical and home-schooling
relationships. In fact pathologizing in the form of deficit theorizing is the major
impediment to the achievement of minoritized students (p. 196).
In contrast, speakers who position themselves within the discourse of relationships and
interactions understand that within this space, explanations that seek to address the power
differentials and imbalances between the various participants in the relationships can be
developed and implemented. In addition, these speakers tended to accept responsibility for
their part in the relationships and are clear that they have agency, in that they are an active
participant in educational relationships. That is, speakers who position themselves here have
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a personal understanding that they can bring about change and indeed are responsible for
bringing about changes in the educational achievement of Māori students.
Historically, New Zealand education policies and practices have been applied to all
students uniformly with little recognition of the inherent differences and diversity that existed
amongst these students. This has slowly changed over the years and it is now more widely
understood that Māori learners have their own specific needs which are different from those
of their non-Māori peers and as such need to be addressed directly. However, as more recent
literature has testified, such understandings, while being useful at one level, at another can be
a double-edged sword in that such analysis has a danger of becoming a meaningless
relativism, overlooking the long-term impact of a colonised history and education system on
Māori student achievement. In addition, “the educational needs” understanding can promote a
homogenous approach to Māori learners. The reality is that Māori people are not
homogenous in nature or form, but multi-layered and multi-faceted not only in dialect, but
also in inter-tribal tradition and politics. In association with the development of these
understandings, there has grown a shift in focus from the deficiencies of the learner to a
closer examination of the role of schools and schooling, the „system‟ itself, and the
production and implementation of culturally responsive models and quality teaching
programs, however, again often without any detailed analysis of the interactions between the
elements that constitute detrimental and effective classroom and school relationships and
interactions.
While the body of literature relating specifically to Māori and cultural influences on
assessment is relatively small, this research is informed by the larger bodies of literature
relating both to Māori student achievement and effective teaching and assessment practice.
International literature in the area of cultural influences and issues in assessment are also of
particular interest here, and will be utilised in this paper. Subsequently, given the significant
gaps within the literature surrounding this topic, this paper also seeks to identify those areas
necessary for further research, with a view to encouraging those studies that will assist in
developing a fuller understanding of these issues and possible alternatives or processes that
might best fulfil the needs of assessment for Māori learners. Overall, what has been identified
as being essential is the realisation that at an abstract metaphorical level Māori cultural
knowledges offer a framework for realistic and workable options for dealing with Māori
educational underachievement (Bishop, Berryman, Cavanagh, & Teddy, 2007; Bishop &
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Glynn, 1999; Macfarlane, 2004; Smith, 1997). Indeed at some levels, these are necessary
strategic understandings that can only be developed and tested within iwi-centred dialogues
and communities.
Are Māori learners’ needs different?
While significant changes and progress has been made amongst a large proportion of the New
Zealand education sector their remains a significant proportion who continues to believe that
specific attention to the needs of Māori students is unfair, unjust and simply unnecessary.
They argue that resources should be shared equally and programmes should focus on meeting
the needs of all students not just one group among many who require assistance. Such
attitudes fail to recognise the “pattern of dominance and subordination and its constituent
classroom interaction patterns that perpetuates the non-participation of many young Māori
people in the benefits that the education system has to offer” (Bishop & Glynn, 1999, p. 131).
Others argue that issues of culture are irrelevant (Bourke et al., 2001). In theory an
argument could be made that at a very basic level the needs of Māori learners are identical to
their peers. All students will prosper in a teaching and assessment programme that meets their
individual and specific learning and assessment needs whether those needs are academic,
emotional, social, or cultural. However, what this statement fails to make clear is that while
many students‟ cultural needs will be adequately accommodated within the normal
mainstream teaching and assessment programmes, the needs of Māori students and other
learners from minority cultural groups are in most instances not appropriately catered for. In
this sense then, the need itself of Māori learners to be taught and assessed in ways that are
culturally responsive, is not significantly different from their non-Māori peers. How that
teaching and assessment is carried out to fulfil those needs however must be markedly
different, and therein lies the problem.
Metge (1990) raises the point that because Pākehā culture is accepted as the
mainstream or norm, many are unaware of the influence it has either on them or the education
system in New Zealand. “Whereas members of the minority group have their own ways
thrown into relief in their encounter with others, Pākehā people take theirs for granted as the
norm” (Metge, 1990, p. 15). In the normalisation of their own culture, many Pākehā
educators fail to see how the education system reinforces their own cultural values and
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beliefs. This explains in part the misconception that catering to the specific cultural needs of
Māori is unfair and also to a certain extent the lack of understanding about the importance of
culture, especially for cultural minorities, in the processes of education and assessment. Such
beliefs while not new, remain persistent barriers that must be addressed if we are to improve
assessment procedures for Māori students and Māori students educational achievement
overall.
There exists a significant body of literature that discusses the various ways in which
“culture and society shape an individuals‟ mind and thinking” (Solano-Flores & Nelson-
Barber, 2001, p. 553) and the significant impact culture has on teaching and learning and
assessment for both teachers and students. The socio-cultural context in which a student lives
influences their values and beliefs, the ways in which they see and understand the world and
their own position in it. In a very real way our culture acts as a kind of blueprint for the way
we interpret information and the importance we attach to various types of information
(Bevan-Brown, 2003). Learning and assessment is interactive, social and contextual, new
information and experience is understood, analysed and assimilated in relation to prior
knowledge and experiences. It is not surprising then that compatibility between the school
and home environments will better facilitate effective learning and assessment and
assessment. Bevan-Brown (2003) argues that most, if not all teachers want the best for all of
their students, the problem is often that they don‟t understand the important role that culture
plays in children‟s learning and assessment and they don‟t know how to address these issues
within their teaching practice. Often then these teachers continue with what they do know,
teaching and assessment that fails to respond to the cultural needs of their Māori students.
How can assessment be more inclusive of culture?
As long as Māori have been educated in the New Zealand education system and
have been deemed as failing in it, we have been assessed using tools that we may
not consider appropriate or even important. (BOT quoted in Gilmore, 1998, p.
16)
This notion of being assessed in ways that may be seen as culturally inappropriate or
unimportant is a significant theme in both the national and international literature.
International research examples have shown that assessment across cultures is often based on
assumptions from within the mainstream culture and as such raises questions of validity and
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assumptions from within the mainstream culture and as such raises questions of validity and
bias for students from minority cultural groups (Solano-Flores & Nelson-Barber, 2001;
Sternberg, 2007). Indeed Sternberg (2007) argues that as the cultural understanding and
purposes for assessment vary “the very act of assessing cognitive and educational
performance affects that performance differentially across cultures” (p. 6). He provides the
example that in some collectivist cultures such as the Mayan culture there is an expectation
that collaboration is not just permissible but preferable, unlike the western preference for
individualistic assessment. As highlighted earlier such cultural “predispositions influence the
ways in which students interpret material presented in tests and the ways in which they
respond to test items” (Solano-Flores & Nelson-Barber, 2001, p. 554). An awareness of these
issues is essential to ensure any assessment processes employed within New Zealand schools
appropriately accommodate the cultural needs of the students.
Even the way in which knowledge and information is viewed is significant in
understanding how to create more culturally inclusive teaching and assessment programmes
(Holt, 2001). Barnhardt and Kawagley (2005) discuss the western habit of
compartmentalizing and decontextualizing knowledge, detaching it from its origins in the real
world to be taught in an isolated classroom or laboratory. In comparison “Indigenous people
traditionally acquired their knowledge through direct experience in the natural world. For
them, the particulars come to be understood in relation to the whole, and the laws are
continually tested in the context of everyday survival” (Barnhardt & Kawagley, 2005, p. 10).
This holistic and thematic approach to education is echoed amongst the New Zealand
literature also. Barton and Fairhall (1995) highlight the fact that traditionally mathematical
concepts were taught in context as they related to “the design of canoes, buildings and tools;
astronomical, meteorological and oceanographic information and analysis; geometries of
pattern in weaving (raranga), painting (kowhaiwhai) and carving (whakairo); and the logic of
argument in oratory” (1995, p. 3). While this paper is not suggesting that these specific topics
would have meaning and relevance to all Māori students, a holistic approach to teaching and
assessment features considerable potential for more culturally inclusive assessment measures.
Identifying what is meaningful and relevant to Māori learners poses another difficulty
in accommodating cultural difference in New Zealand assessment policy and procedures.
Hemara (2000) highlights these difficulties in dealing with issues relating to Māori education
as Māori are by no means a homogenous group. “Māori who are native English speakers, and
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who have never been to a marae or do not know their whakapapa, are just as much part of
contemporary Māori culture as those who have been steeped in ancient traditions. How
assessment practices respond to Pākehā/Māori differences and Māori diversity is crucial”
(Hemara, 2000, p. 62). Such difference is illustrated by the range of education options
available to Māori today, from full immersion Māori medium to mainstream English
medium, and the placement of Māori students across the range of options. Government
consultation with Māori communities regarding the Māori education strategy and initiatives
impacting on Māori medium education is positive and a sign of the significant change that
has taken place within the New Zealand education system over the last twenty to thirty years.
However, considerable progress is still to be made as specific consultation with Māori over
provisions for Māori learners within mainstream English medium education is noticeably
lacking (Hemara, 2000, p. 63). In Assessment for success in Primary schools Report of the
submissions to the Green paper (Gilmore, 1998) an interesting comment was quoted from the
Academic Board of the Dunedin College of Education:
The nature of immersion schools implies different pedagogy, context,
expectations and values. Assessment standards must, therefore, be different from
those in mainstream education… The curriculum for students in Māori-
immersion schools has to take account of the uniqueness of the iwi, the learning
and assessment styles of the students, the context uniquely Māori and tikanga.
Assessment standards must, therefore be relevant to the curriculum, appropriate
to the students and consistent with cultural values (p. 16).
While the statement is no doubt true in its application to Māori immersion schooling,
arguably it is the potential implications for mainstream English medium schooling, and the
majority of Māori students who receive their education there, that is perhaps more thought
provoking. Surely if these factors need to be taken into account in Māori medium schooling,
then shouldn‟t English medium schools also take into account the unique iwi background and
learning and assessment styles of their Māori students. Shouldn‟t English medium schools
also ensure that the assessment standards are “relevant to the curriculum, appropriate to the
students and consistent with cultural values” (Academic Board of the Dunedin College of
Education quotes in Gilmore, 1998, p. 16). Although considerable changes remain before this
becomes a reality across all New Zealand schools, such a goal is necessary if we are to
achieve a system of assessment that is truly inclusive of culture.
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What is effective assessment for Māori learners?
The national and international literature outline a range of assessment approaches which have
been found to be successful with Māori and other minority cultural groups (Barnhardt &
Kawagley, 1998; Black & William, 1998; Hernandez-Sheets, 1995; Kent, 1996b; McGee-
Banks & Banks, 1995; Solano-Flores & Nelson-Barber, 2001; Sternberg, 2007; Stiggins &
Chappuis, 2005). This section will outline some of these approaches. However, it is important
to note that one of the predominant themes that comes through in the literature is the need for
a multi-faceted approach to assessment, including a range options that are sufficiently
flexible to meet the heterogeneous needs of the students. This is essential if we are to avoid
creating new stereotypes about what approaches work for particular students and run the risk
of further disadvantaging already low-achieving students.
One of the most commonly referred to factors is the use of effective and supportive
feedback. This use of detailed positive feedback to scaffold student learning and assessment
is often referred to as formative assessment and has been identified as “one of the most
influential elements of quality teaching” (Alton-Lee, 2003, p. 86) and a key feature of quality
teaching for students from diverse backgrounds. This approach is “based on the assumption
that all students can learn and provides opportunities for students to improve their
performances” (McGee-Banks & Banks, 1995, p. 155). Formative assessment supposes that
students are given sufficient opportunities to practice the new skills they are learning and
assessment, and as they progress the feedback they receive supports them to understand what
they need to do to improve and how they might accomplish that (Clarke, Timperley, &
Hattie, 2003). The way the approach is employed varies, however the studies seem to show
that moving away from traditional letter grades to detailed feedback and providing students
with the opportunities to revisit their work has a considerable influence on both student
motivation and achievement (Black & William, 1998).
While formative assessment is commonly practiced in New Zealand schools, the
uniformity of its effective implementation remains a concern in some schools. One study
focussing on factors impacting on the educational achievement of Māori girls found that the
school‟s language of instruction had an impact on the frequency of positive reinforcement,
with Māori students experiencing approximately twice as much positive feedback in
immersion programmes than in mainstream programmes (Carkeek, Davies, & Irwin, 1994).
Such findings take on particular significance in light of the noticeably higher performance of
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students in Māori immersion programmes and the still substantial achievement gap in
mainstream programmes between Māori students and their non-Māori peers. Clearly,
formative assessment has the potential to provide quality assessment for Māori students.
However, its implementation must be consistent for Māori students to derive the same
benefits as their non-Māori peers.
The use of portfolios for assessment also arises in the literature as a way for students
“to document the complexity and individuality of their work and to reflect on their progress
and areas that need improvement” (McGee-Banks & Banks, 1995, p. 156). While portfolios
are used extensively within the early childhood sector in New Zealand their use in higher
levels of schooling is inconsistent, both in quality and frequency. Portfolios are sometimes
used more as an opportunity to show parents examples of students work rather than using
them for more practical assessment purposes (Timperley, 2004). However, as Holt (2001)
explains in the context of the mathematics curriculum, assessment through portfolios, concept
maps and student journals provide opportunities for students to both demonstrate and develop
their mathematical understandings in a non-competitive way. The importance of non-
competitive assessment is echoed by Begg (1993) who argues that competitive assessment
methods emphasise individual performance which not only reinforces European practices and
values but may further disadvantage Māori students. This line of thinking is also supported
by this quote from a Kura Kaupapa Māori in the Assessment for success in Primary schools
Report of the submissions to the Green paper (Gilmore, 1998): “assessment must primarily
be in the interests of the student and his or her immediate whanau and not simply as a means
of identifying one student over another” (p. 14).
Kent‟s (1996b) masters research, which examined interviewing as a valid assessment
strategy for Māori students, highlighted a number of factors essential for understanding
effective assessment for Māori learners. Using a context that was familiar to the students,
cooking a hāngi, students investigated the scientific concept of the phenomenon of heat. The
research compared the student responses to a written assessment task with their responses to
an individual interview followed by a class interview which focussed on the student
perceptions of the different assessment methods. The research found that the interviews
provided a more accurate reflection of the students‟ understandings of the concept of heat
than the written assessment alone as students written responses were influenced by their
perceptions of what they thought the question was asking: “students often misread the task
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question, seemed incompetent because of a single slip in a complex process, failed to
recognise the value of their knowledge, and had their non-standard responses marked down
by a marker who did not understand the quality of thinking” (Kent, 1996a, p. 95). The
interviews were unanimously preferred by the students as they were able to ensure they
understood what was being asked of them by the interviewer and the oral nature of the
interview made it easier for the students to more fluently express their ideas and
understanding.
The individual interview encouraged the expression of conceptions where the
written responses could not and enabled the students to express themselves in
ways that were intelligible to the interviewer. If a written or verbal statement was
incomprehensible to the interviewer, further questioning elicited clarification
(Kent, 1996a, p. 98)
It has been acknowledged that “traditional time constrained pencil and paper tests have
proved unreliable indicators of Māori achievement in the past” (Ministry of Education, 1992,
p. 13). However, there are situations where traditional pen and paper tests cannot be avoided
and a belief that Māori students cannot achieve using such methods is simply false and can
perhaps more accurately be put down to inadequate and inappropriate preparation.
Hernandez-Sheets (1995) work highlights how in creating a culturally relevant Spanish
program her students were supported to prepare for national exams with study tutorials
covering both exam content and exam skills. Tutoring in study and exam skills is also
mentioned by Lipman (1995), as explicitly teaching the students how to deal with
assessments supports and encourages students to choose academic success. Practice sitting
exams in tests situations was also used to better ensure students were prepared to deal with an
environment so different to their supportive and encouraging class. Stiggins and Chapuis
(2005) also recommend using assessment tools in advance of grading as teaching tools in
support of student learning and assessment and future assessment.
While this is one aspect of the teaching and assessment programme that can be drawn
on it is important to remember that it was the context that provided the impetus for success.
“In this program a culturally centered pedagogy included: the use of Spanish language as the
medium of instruction, affirmation and validation of ethnic identity, development of self-
esteem, curricular content emphasis on the students‟ cultural heritage, history and literature,
and the implementation of learning and assessment strategies that matched preferred learning
and assessment styles (e.g. oral language, cooperative learning and assessment, peer support,
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and family involvement)” (Hernandez-Sheets, 1995, p. 189). The success of this program
highlights the potential of effective assessment methods for cultural minority students when
they are based within a program of culturally responsive teaching.
The importance of context: Culturally responsive teaching.
Assessment is a powerful tool for optimising or inhibiting learning and
assessment. The degree to which a teacher is skilled in scaffolding learning and
assessment and providing effective and constructive formative assessment is
accordingly a key factor in the teachers capability to provide quality teaching for
diverse students. (Alton-Lee, 2003, p. 88)
It cannot be understated that quality assessment is an integral component of effective
teaching. Similarly, the literature supports the contention that when culturally responsive
teaching practice is used, that is quality teaching that responds to the specific cultural needs
of students, student achievement improves (Bishop et al., 2007; Bishop, Berryman, &
Richardson, 2001; Bishop et al., 2003; Macfarlane, 2004). This paper has discussed in some
detail the potential influence and importance of issues of culture for the educational
assessment of Māori students. While changes in the approaches and understandings of
assessment in line with those recommendations outlined above will no doubt have positive
repercussions for Māori students, changes to assessment policy alone is insufficient. Alton-
Lee (2003) alludes to this problem in her Best Evidence Synthesis on quality teaching for
diverse students: “assessment effectiveness is embedded within and dependent upon
pedagogical context – assessment and feedback alone do not achieve the effect” (p. 86). For
culturally appropriate assessment practices to be truly effective they must be embedded
within a culturally relevant teaching pedagogy.
Ladson-Billings (1995) defines culturally relevant teaching “as a pedagogy of
opposition…specifically committed to collective, not merely individual, empowerment” (p.
160). She goes on to explain that culturally relevant pedagogy rests on three criteria: Firstly,
students must experience academic success; Secondly, students must develop and maintain
cultural competence; and finally, students must develop an understanding of the status quo in
order to be able to both challenge and improve the current social order (Ladson-Billings,
1995, p. 160). Culturally relevant assessment then would support students to achieve these
things while simultaneously ensuring that schools and teachers develop the necessary skills
and expertise to deliver such a teaching and assessment programme.
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What Bishop et al. (2001) term a culturally responsive pedagogy of relations is
another expression of the process of creating a context for learning and assessment for Māori
students. The development of this construct as part of the Te Kotahitanga project took the
form of an examination of what those metaphors which are fundamental to kaupapa Māori
generated educational institutions and kaupapa Māori research might mean for mainstream
educational institutions. These institutions, where education for the vast majority of Māori
students is located and which are dominated by metaphors based in the dominant culture such
as territorial, boundaried notions of self-determination, are sites of struggle for Māori people,
culture and language. The model suggests that in contrast to those contexts for learning and
assessment that are currently dominant, mainstream classrooms that are constituted as places
where; power is shared between self-determining individuals within non-dominating relations
of interdependence; where culture counts; where learning and assessment is interactive,
dialogic and spirals; where participants are connected and committed to one another and
where there is a common vision of excellence, will offer Māori students educational
opportunities currently being denied to them.
Methodologically, examining what might constitute the operationalization of this
model involved a variety of approaches. The first involved the use of collaborative storying
(Bishop, 1996; Bishop & Berryman, 2006) as a means of developing a series of narratives of
experience from Māori students themselves and also from those most intimately involved
with their education. This approach sought to address Māori peoples concerns about
researcher imposition by focusing on the collaborative co-construction of the meaning that
the participants ascribe to their reported experiences. In this project, this involved the
authorising of student experiences and the meanings they constructed from these experiences
in ways that addresses the power of determination over issues such as who initiates classroom
interactions; who determines what benefits there will be and who will benefit; whose reality
or experiences (voice) are present in the classroom; with what authority do educators speak;
and to whom are educators accountable? (Bishop, 1996; Bishop & Glynn, 1999).
The narratives were then used in the project in four main ways. Firstly they were
used to identify a variety of discursive positions pertaining to Māori student achievement and
the potential impact of these positions on Māori student learning and assessment. Secondly,
the narratives were used to give voice to the participants (students, whanau, principals, and
teachers) in a manner that addressed issues of power relations pertaining to issues of
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initiation, benefits, representation, legitimation and accountability. Thirdly, the narratives
were used in the professional development part of the project to provide teachers with a
vicarious means of understanding how students experienced schooling in ways that they
might not otherwise have access to. This experience provided teachers with a means of
critically reflecting upon their own discursive positioning and the impact this might have
upon their own students‟ learning and assessment. Fourthly the narratives provided a
practical representation of the theoretical model by the development of an Effective Teaching
Profile.
Operationalizing a Culturally Effective Pedagogy of Relations means implementing
the Effective Teaching Profile. Such a profile creates a learning and assessment context that
is responsive to the culture of the child and means that learners can bring who they are to the
classroom in complete safety and where their knowledges are acceptable and legitimate.
Such a context for learning and assessment stands in contrast to the traditional classroom
where the culture of the teacher is given central focus and has the power to define what
constitutes appropriate and acceptable knowledges, approaches to learning and assessment,
understandings and sense-making processes. This model suggests that when the learner‟s
own culture is central to their learning and assessment activities, they are able to make
meaning of new information and ideas by building on their own prior cultural experiences
and understandings. The visible culture of the child need not necessarily be present but may
well become present as a result of a co-constructing learning and assessment experiences
with their teachers, in this way addressing the potential imposition of the teacher displaying
cultural iconography, a solely culturally appropriate context for learning and assessment.
Such contexts for learning and assessment also allow learners to critically reflect on their own
learning and assessment, how they might learn better and more effectively and ensures
greater balance in the power relationships of learning and assessment by modelling this
approach in class. In effect therefore, raising expectations of their own learning and
assessment and how they might enhance and achieve these expectations engages students
actively, holistically and in an integrated fashion, in real-life (or as close to) problem-sharing
and questioning and uses these questions as formative catalysts for on-going study; this
engagement can be monitored as an indicator of potential long-term achievement. This shift
from traditional classrooms is important because traditional classroom interaction patterns do
not allow teachers to create learning and assessment contexts where the culture of the child
can be present, but rather assume cultural homogeneity (Villegas & Lucas, 2002), which in
15
reality is cultural hegemony (Gay, 2000). Discursive classrooms have the potential to
respond to Māori students and parents desires to “be Māori”; desires that were made very
clear in their narratives of experience (Bishop & Berryman, 2006). However it must be
stressed that fundamental to the development of discursive classrooms that include Māori
students, is the understanding that the deficit theorising by teachers must be challenged.
Deficit theorising will not be addressed unless there are more effective partnerships between
Māori students and their teachers within the classrooms of mainstream schools, and in turn
between teachers and those parenting Māori students. These partnerships being engendered
by teachers listening to the voices and experiences of Māori students: this listening being a
form of assessment that can lead to changes in teaching practice in a responsive manner.
Once these aspects are addressed the culture of the child can be brought to the learning and
assessment context with all the power that has been hidden for so long.
The metaphors that Te Kotahitanga draws upon are holistic and flexible and able to be
determined by or understood within the cultural contexts that have meaning to the lives of the
many young people of diverse backgrounds who attend modern schools today. Teaching,
learning and assessment strategies which flow from these metaphors are flexible and allow
the diverse voices of young people primacy and promote dialogue, communication and
learning and assessment with others. In such a pedagogy, the participants in the learning and
assessment interaction become involved in the process of collaboration, in the process of
mutual story-telling and re-storying, so that a relationship can emerge in which both stories
are heard, or indeed a process where a new story is created by all the participants. Such a
pedagogy addresses Māori people's concerns about current pedagogic practices being
fundamentally monocultural and epistemologically racist. This new pedagogy recognises
that all people who are involved in the learning and assessment and teaching process are
participants who have meaningful experiences, valid concerns and legitimate questions.
This model constitutes the classroom as a place where young people‟s sense-making
processes are incorporated and enhanced, where the existing knowledge‟s of young people
are seen as „acceptable‟ and „official‟, in such a way that their stories provide the learning
base from whence they can branch out into new fields of knowledge through structured
interactions with significant others. In this process the teacher interacts with students in such
a way (storying and re-storying) that new knowledge is co-created. Such a classroom will
generate totally different interaction patterns and educational outcomes from a classroom
16
where knowledge is seen as something that the teacher makes sense of and then passes onto
students and will be conducted within and through a culturally responsive pedagogy of
relations, wherein self-determining individuals interact with one another within non-
dominating relations of interdependence.
17
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