With round 2 of "Tuhi Mai Tuhi Atu" it saw a new connection between TPS Rm 5 and Riverdale in Gisbourne - two maori immersion classes. With a new beginning the two teachers insisted on holding a Powhiri but how with 470km between them...a virtual solution was found!
Excert from Education Hub - Know your students as individuals, the cultures with which they
identify and what this means for them.
Planning interactions and behaviours without taking into account students’ social and cultural backgrounds is detrimental to
student progress. However, in thinking about and preparing work for their students, teachers often draw on the identity they have
constructed for their students based on their own personal beliefs and experiences about different cultural identities. Instead, get
to know your students as individuals through conversation and classroom activities which enable students share their cultures
and perspectives.
Pasifika students want teachers who know their culture and know about them as people. They want to read, learn, and write
about their own culture. They want their teachers to care about them. Research shows that more than two thirds of teachers make
a point of finding out which Pasifika culture their students and families identify with (Bonne & Spiller, 2017). This is important as the
label Pasifika, rather than Tongan, Samoan, Niuean, Fijian, Tokelauan or Cook Islander, may limit identity formation and disguise
important differences. It also is important that teachers affirm their students’ diverse personal identities. This does not occur
through the use of curriculum units or classroom celebrations that focus on different cultures, which tend to reinforce an assumed
and generalised identity for Pasifika students. Instead, teachers need to recognise that students have the right to construct
their own identities. These unique, personal and multi-faceted identities can be better affirmed through sensitive listening and
understanding. Knowing your students’ identities refers to knowing who they are as people rather than simply which groups they
belong to.
Aside from an ethnic identity, Pasifika students develop multiple identities in regard to diverse contexts, including home, school,
church, sports groups, music groups, part-time employment, and socialising with friends. Often these different contexts are quite
separately associated with different identities: a student might be a New Zealand citizen, Samoan and German, Christian, female
and an All Blacks supporter, but none of these identities is the student’s only identity. In order to present a particular identity,
students may choose to conceal cultural behaviours, including the use of their own language, in the classroom. However, valuing
students’ cultures and reflecting them in the curriculum and school culture will enable students to engage openly in cultural
behaviours and understandings.
What it looks like
Finding out about and responding to the identities of your students means learning about the specific cultural practices and
languages that influence students outside of school. Cultural responsiveness does not mean just learning about others.
Developing an awareness of your own cultural identity is an important tool for developing cultural understandings. This means
critically reflecting on and coming to understand how identity, language and culture influence your own life and your own identity.
In so doing, you can develop an appreciation of complexity rather than reinforce stereotypical and essentialist understandings of
cultural differences that may leave some students feeling they are not understood or accepted. Students also want to know about
their teachers, and their lives outside school.
• Share information about your own cultural identity and personal story. Find opportunities for self-disclosure, which encourages
students to reciprocate. When you share a personal story, students believe they can reveal more about themselves by sharing
their personal stories. You can also, for example, share stories about times you have made mistakes to help students feel more
comfortable about making mistakes themselves. All of this supports the development of strong relationships.
• Acknowledge students’ choice in the ways in which they identify themselves and are identified. Avoid inappropriate
assumptions and ensure that, when you attempt to validate or affirm Pasifika identities, cultures and knowledge, this is not
based on your own views of a Pasifika identity but on those of the student.
To explore more research guides, visit www.theeducationhub.org.nz 6 © The Education Hub
CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE PEDAGOGIES / OVERVIEW
Four strategies to effectively support Pasifika students
• Set up activities that involve students in meaningful exchanges to enable the class to learn about each other. Ask students
to identify similar or relevant practices in their own and others’ culture. For example, when learning French vocabulary for
mealtimes, ask students to describe a typical meal in their culture/family, or, when learning about historic graves, ask how
death and the dead are treated in different cultural groups.
• Encourage and support students to maintain their own cultural identity. Beware of putting Pasifika students and their cultures
on show, or developing a ‘tourist’ approach to diversity, in which students experience particular cultures in the same way as
a tourist might, tasting foods, observing songs, music and dances, and learning a few words of the language or facts about a
country. This does not help students feel understood or develop a sense of identity, and may lead to students being unwilling
to identify as Pasifika in order to distance themselves from the identities promoted.
• Seek professional development not from workshops or books but by participating in your local community. You might consider
participating an event with your local Samoan community, for example, or attending a Tongan church service.
Understanding and using the cultural knowledge and experiences of students is a vital and integral part of planning curriculum
and pedagogy. Once you know your students better, you can construct relevant teaching content to capture their interest and
build on their prior knowledge by developing learning situations based on what is important to students, and ensuring that texts
used by students make links with students’ interests and prior knowledge. An easy way to do this is to use the free reading texts
provided by the Ministry of Education about different cultural groups that incorporate most Pasifika languages and cultures.
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