Session Information
07 SES 12 A, Global Teaching: Southern Perspectives on Working with Diversity
Symposium
Contribution
Culturally responsive practice by teachers and within schools has been posited as a promising pedagogical framework for creating positive learning contexts to mitigate the inequities that minority groups including Indigenous peoples, commonly experience in education (Macfarlane, et.al., 2007). Yet, often the conceptual frameworks that are put forward to support educators in developing culturally responsive practice do not consider or critically engage with key Indigenous constructs such as sovereignty and self-determination, colonization, cultural and language revitalization and preservation, or Indigenous epistemologies (Castagno & Brayboy, 2008) Thus they are not fully able to prepare educators to be responsive to their Indigenous students and families, nor to the wider communities and contexts within which they work. In this presentation, the authors draw together sociocultural theory and Indigenous epistemological frameworks, as well as their our own scholarly and personal experiences in Alaska and New Zealand, to critically examine the conceptual and praxis landscape of culturally responsive teacher education within Indigenous contexts. In doing so, they critically consider both the global literature on culturally responsive practice and share examples of teacher education initiatives developed using indigenous epistemological and methodological frameworks in response to each respective local Indigenous context. They posit the need for a more nuanced and contextualised response for indigenous contexts and make the case for re-envisioning culturally responsive practice using five specific sociological and political constructs which are infrequently addressed in culturally responsive theory and practice, yet which arguably form the necessary knowledge base for the development of cultural competence for working in Indigenous contexts. These are 1) sovereignty and self-determination, 2) settler colonialism’s legacies, 3) contemporary manifestations of racism and White supremacy, 4) the cultural and language revitalization efforts arising from this historical and continuing contemporary context, and 5) meaningful engagement with the extant epistemologies of Indigenous peoples that give rise to Indigenous worldviews.
References
Castagno, A. E. and B. M. J. Brayboy. 2008. “Culturally Responsive Schooling for Indigenous Youth: A Review of the Literature.” Review of Educational Research 78: 941-993. Macfarlane, A. H., T. Glynn, T. Cavanagh, and S. Bateman. 2007. “Creating Culturally Safe Schools for Māori Students.” The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 36: 65-75.
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