Performing history: culturally sustaining pedagogies for indigenous students in the historical disciplines

ABSTRACT

Current research into, and definitions of, historical literacy do not adequately acknowledge the cultural backgrounds of indigenous learners across the historical disciplines and levels. Nor do they recognise the vital role of historical literacy in empowering indigenous students. In conversations with teachers of a range of ethnicities and Māori and Pasifika students from across the historical disciplines, we asked: how can teachers inspire indigenous students to feel at home in the historical disciplines, do well in them and make them their own? The teachers and students saw historical literacy as predominantly textual in nature, and critical historical literacy as often culturally alien to Māori and Pasifika students. The teachers revealed that what worked to foster critical historical literacy in Māori and Pasifika students was multimodal performance. Accordingly, we argue that pedagogy in the historical disciplines that sustains Māori and Pasifika students culturally enables them to perform their culture through historical literacy – and, thus, to see history (both history per se and their histories) as open to their knowledge, critique and ownership.

KEYWORDS:

• Historical literacy
• critical literacy
• culturally sustaining pedagogy
• Māori
• Pasifika

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For example, in 2014, in History at The University of Auckland, the Māori pass rate in 2014 was 71.5% and that of Pasifika students was 64.0%, compared with 89.9% for all other ethnic groups.

2 In 2014, in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Auckland, the Pasifika pass rate was 40.8%, which is half that for other ethnic groups, excluding Māori, and 10.7% lower than in 2013.

3 In Music at the University of Auckland, the number of Māori and Pasifika students who do not complete or withdraw from their core Music History courses and must repeat them is increasing. In addition, the enrolment of Māori and Pasifika students has dropped significantly in recent years in some courses: in 2014–2015, no Māori students enrolled in second-year Music History, and in 2015, no Pasifika students did so; in the core first-year Music History course (MUS 140), the percentage of Māori and Pasifika students halved over the period 2012–2015 (9%–4.5%).

4 Compare, for example, Brown (2000), in the field of composition studies.

5 For international studies of historical literacy, see Duvenage (1993), Monte-Sano (2011), Nokes (2010; 2012), Reddy and VanSledright (2010) and Wineberg (2010).

6 An exception is studies on ‘content-area literacy’ (historical literacy in particular disciplines); see Broomhead (2005), Damico and Baildon (2011), and Shanahan and Shanahan (2008).

7 For culturally responsive and place-conscious History teaching in an Aotearoa/New Zealand context, albeit at secondary level, see Harcourt (2015).

8 For our reflections on the process of the talanoa, in particular, on how talanoa can and should be applied in a non-Indigenous context, see Hindley et al. (2020).

9 For the educational implications of the whakatauki (‘proverb’) Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua (more literally, ‘We look to the past so we can move forward’), see Rameka (2016).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Teaching and Learning Research Initiative [Grant Number 36919].