● Reflective entry 3: Demonstrate a critical understanding of how indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness inform your practice and research topic (Macfarlane. K, Fepuleai. M. 2020)

When working in culturally diverse communities it is imperative that educators are connected to the people they serve. 

This is not always easy as each of us carry our own whakapapa, turangawaewae and tikanga dependent on our ethnicity, identity, language, values and beliefs.  Classroom teachers must have knowledge and understanding of how personal cultural capital, values and beliefs can impact the design of learning programmes.  It is important to ensure we have balanced, equitable and contextual content to meet the needs and connections of each of our students.  The way to ensure this is to engage meaningfully with whanau and the community.

Community engagement has been adopted by the United Nations as ‘a two way process by which the aspiration, concerns, needs and values of citizens and communities are incorporated at all levels and in all sectors…’(Smith, J.A. et.al. 2017).  If teachers have a conscious knowledge of their own cultural capital, then making connections with the whanau of the students in their classes will go some way to ensuring the content of their programme is designed to meet the aspirations, needs and values of the community they serve, not what they ‘think’ the community needs.  Be it  writing school policies or creating classroom programmes, research indicates that fundamental philosophies fostering parental and community involvement in not only the outcomes but also the process of education (Sutherland., Schwab. 2018) improve educational achievement and develop lifelong learners.  

Researchers at John Hopkins University worked in partnership with over 1000 schools and communities to develop a framework for partnership between school, families and communities. The framework focuses on six types of involvement; learning at home, parenting, decision making, communicating, volunteering and collaborating with the community (Epstein et al., 2004)

TYPE 1 PARENTING	TYPE 2 COMMUNICATING	TYPE 3 VOLUNTEERING	TYPE 4 LEARNING AT HOME	TYPE 5 DECISIONS MAKING	TYPE 6 COLLABORATING WITH THE COMMUNITY
Help all families establish a home environment to support all students.	Design effective forms of school-to-home and home-to-school communication about school programmes and their children’s progress	Recruit and organise parent help and support	Provide information and ideas to families about how to help students with homework and other curriculum related activities, decisions and planning	Include parents in school decisions developing parent leaders and representatives	Identify and integrate resources and services from the community to strengthen school programs, family practices and students learning and development.

Figure1:Six Types of Involvement (2004)

Focusing on each of the six involvement types from the framework, the use of digital technologies provides affordances for parent and whanau involvement that brings parents into the classroom without them being physically present.  This means that through the use of social media, school based apps and digital communications such as email and Google Apps, schools can connect with whanau providing a window to student learning, a means for immediate feedback, a tool for translating messages into home languages and a platform for keeping parents informed of their child’s progress.  Using this framework as part of a school annual plan provides a lens for making school/whanau/community engagement part of the strategic planning process for the year ahead.  

While the involvement framework adds clarity and sound intention in how parents/whanau and community can be included in school strategic planning, the aspect of cultural responsiveness and indigenous knowledge is in no way reflected.  The most effective way to enact a framework such as the John Hopkins framework above would be to give it context.  

Russel Bishop’s Effective Teaching Profile is a framework for teachers of indigenous and minoritorized students.  This framework consists of six elements which were actioned through the Te Kotahitanga Professional Development programme (Bishop., Berryman. 2009).  

Manaakitanga	Mana Motuhake	Nga whakapiringatanga	Wananga	Ako	Kotahitanga
teachers care for their students as culturally located human beings above all else.	teachers care for the performance of their students.	teachers are able to create a secure, well-managed learning environment.	teachers are able to engage in effective teaching interactions with Māori students as Māori.	teachers can use strategies that promote effective teaching interactions and relationships with their learners.	teachers promote, monitor and reflect on outcomes that in turn lead to improvements in educational achievement for Māori students.

Figure 2. Effective Teaching Framework (2009)

Bishop's model was developed through research into raising Maori student achievement.  Data was gathered through student voice by a team of researchers from Waikato University.  Key findings in this data were the need for educationalists to reject deficit theorising in Maori achievement and the importance of quality relationships and interactions between teachers and students on raising educational achievement.  

Being conscious of the diverse nature of the school community, it is important that whanau not feel in any way marginalised from involvement in student learning.  Research has revealed that parents of minority or culturally diverse students often feel conventional avenues for involvement are closed due to a mono-cultural approach to home/school interactions (Delgado-Gaitan. 1991).  

Both of these frameworks strongly influence our implementation in using Seesaw as a ‘live reporting’ tool for parents and whanau in the Nga Iwi School (NIS) community.  While NIS is 80% Pasifika and 20% Maori, the indicators in Bishop’s model benefit all ethnic groups and are helpful to our interactions and communications not just with students but with whanau as well.  Using these effective strategies in sharing students' learning and progress with families reflects a sound degree of cultural responsiveness and indigenous knowledge of Tangata Whenua and Pasifika people. We will use these same strategies when encouraging involvement of parents/whanau in student learning experiences at NIS.   

Delgado-Gaitan, C. (1991). Involving parents in the schools: A process of empowerment. American journal of Education, 100(1), 20-46.

Epstein, J. L., & Salinas, K. C. (2004). Partnering with families and communities. Educational leadership, 61(8), 12-19.

Bishop, R., & Berryman, M. (2009). The Te Kotahitanga effective teaching profile. Set: Research information for teachers, 2(2), 27-33.

Smith, J. A., Larkin, S., Yibarbuk, D., & Guenther, J. (2017). What do we know about community engagement in Indigenous education contexts and how might this impact on pathways into higher education?. In Indigenous pathways, transitions and participation in higher education (pp. 31-44). Springer, Singapore.

Sutherland, D., & Schwab, R. (2018). Building Indigenous learning communities. Canberra, ACT: Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR), The Australian National University.