The Importance of Community Knowledge in Learning to Teach: Foregrounding Māori Cultural Knowledge to Support Preservice Teachers' Development of Culturally Responsive Practice

ABSTRACT

Culturally responsive teaching is an essential component of reframing educator preparation for equity and has particular resonance when working in partnership with indigenous communities. As teacher educators in Aotearoa New Zealand, we continually seek to enhance our practices to ensure that Māori cultural values, pedagogies, and epistemologies inform all aspects of our teacher education curricula and support Māori educational aspirations. In this article we describe a preservice teacher education program co-constructed with our local Māori community that foregrounds Māori cultural knowledge. We focus particularly on two signature features of the program, a co-constructed framework for teacher growth and development and community-based learning experiences, highlighting the ways that these features engage preservice teachers in learning through Māori epistemological perspectives and pedagogies. We conclude by reflecting on the generative nature of engaging community expertise and knowledge to create contextually meaningful learning experiences for preservice teachers that support their development as culturally responsive teachers.

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the Ngāi Tahu Educational Advisory Group for the MTchgLn program and colleagues in the UC College of Education Health and Human Development who are part of the MTchgLn development team.

The program development has been a collaborative effort, and the structures developed for the operationalization of the broad goal to prepare adaptive and action competent preservice teachers reflects the knowledge and wisdom of the group.

Notes

1 The Treaty of Waitangi, initially signed on February 6, 1840, was between iwi (tribal) leaders and the Crown. It is understood to be the foundational document for the nation, establishing a partnership between iwi and the Crown, although the history of this partnership through colonial and postcolonial years has not been one of equity for Māori.

2 The Kaiārahi Māori serves as a cultural guide and leader within an organization to ensure that all members are safeguarded and supported to engage in culturally appropriate practices.

3 Mana whenua relates to power associated with occupation and possession of tribal land and those who have the authority and jurisdiction over this territory. See http://www.maoridictionary.co.nz/word/3452.

4 We wish to note here that in our work we seek to trouble this notion so as not to essentialize students from such backgrounds in ways that implicitly reinforce deficit theorizing. Nevertheless, given the issues of inequity, we agree that it is important to turn explicit attention to the disparity in order to change practice toward effecting different outcomes.

5 Māori cultural practices and protocols, and Māori language.

6 Tukutuku panels are latticework panels. In a meeting house, they are panels on the walls between the carvings.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded in part by the Ministry of Education, Exemplary Post-graduate Teacher Education Programmes Initiative