Kelly’s Culturally Responsive Pedagogy in action at Woodville Gardens School

Context

This is Kelly’s second year in the Culturally Responsive Pedagogy project. Last year, Kelly collaborated with her colleague Skye to develop a culturally responsive HASS unit for Year 6/7 classes at Lake Windemere B-7 School. Subsequently, Kelly accepted a position at Woodville Gardens School. This is Kelly’s seventh year of teaching and her first year at Woodville Gardens School.

In her early years of teaching Kelly had developed a passion for working with Aboriginal students and improving learning outcomes for students who had become disconnected from education. This passion stemmed from her first teaching post in a regional school in which 85 percent of the students were of Aboriginal heritage. When the opportunity to focus on culturally responsive pedagogies arose, she enthusiastically volunteered to participate. Being accredited in Accelerated Literacy and being a pilot teacher for John Fleming’s I Do, We Do, You Do teaching cycle, she was familiar with trialling new approaches to quality teaching and learning. 

Woodville Gardens School B-7 was formed in 2011 as a ‘Public Private Partnership’ managed by a consortium of private bodies in conjunction with the Department for Education and Child Development (now Department for Education). The school is registered as Category 2 in terms of the Index of Disadvantage. In 2018, 10 percent of enrolments were students of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander heritage, 67 percent were students learning English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EALD), 12 percent of students had special needs, and 60 percent of students were eligible for financial support through the School Card system. A total of 564 students from 40 cultural groups were enrolled in 2018.

Woodville Gardens School is located in an area that has a very high level of cultural diversity. More than 55 percent of residents speak a language other than English in the home, with the most frequent of these languages being Vietnamese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Malayalam (an Indian language) and Khmer. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples make up 2.5 percent of the population.The area faces significant economic challenges, with unemployment more than 2.5 times the state average. 

At Woodville Gardens School, Kelly is one of five full time Year 6/7 classroom teachers. She teaches in the Blue Building, which operates as a collaborative learning hub for around 140 students. Classes are usually conducted individually, but are sometimes run in mixed groups or with two classes at once. The school community uses Seesaw and Edmodo educational software to facilitate communication among students, teachers and families, with varying levels of interaction on a case-by-case basis. 

In 2018, Kelly had a class of 28 students, including two Aboriginal students and four students on Negotiated Education Plans. A range of cultural groups were represented in the classroom including Anglo-European Australian, Aboriginal Australian, Liberian, Filipino, Indian, Khmer, Congolese, Vietnamese, Māori, Bosnian, Sudanese and Beninese.

Doing the action research

Dance Unit

At break times, especially when students were confined indoors due to the weather, Kelly noticed that her classroom became an improvised dance floor, with many of the students spontaneously breaking into dance. She wanted to capitalise on the love of dance and extend it by introducing the students to the more technical aspects of choreography and dance movement.

She started by conducting a survey to collect pre-unit data on students’ knowledge and feelings about dance. She then explicitly taught dance terms and skills using PowerPoint and video. There were two assessment tasks: (1) working individually, an analysis of four dances and (2) working in groups, the choreography and performance of a dance. 

Data collection included:

• Assessment results 
• Parent feedback: their observations about student engagement and interest at home
• Student survey and interviews: their interest in the unit, reflections on their work and effort
• Teacher reflections/observations

Student outcomes: Dance unit

Students were excited to show their dance skills, but also to learn more about the technical aspects of dance. From a learning perspective, the unit resulted in improved effort, engagement and academic grades. In terms of social and wellbeing outcomes, the students had fun, got to know each other and learnt to take risks. 

Some student reflections on the Dance unit:

I felt embarrassed about it because our dance in India are really weird and I thought everybody would think it was weird, but it was fine. Being able to show our culture is important, because my family is really culture focussed and want me to be more cultural too. I wanted my family to see my dance on SeeSaw.

Culture isn’t just where you come from, it can be if you play footy too. Some cultures weren’t allowed to share their dances, but we all understood why. I didn’t know the Philippines had a cultural dance, which was interesting to me.

I find dance socially embarrassing, so I didn’t connect with this unit. But I learnt Kelly likes 80s music as much as me.

I loved it because we each got to study and learn about each and everyone’s culture. I learnt about where others came from and where they’re coming from. 

I’m usually shy and shame very quick. I hate dance because it sucks and I can’t dance, because I’m really bad at it. But it was interesting because it’s good to learn each other’s cultures.

English unit

The focus of Kelly’s English unit was ‘Survival’. Many of the students had refugee backgrounds, challenging backgrounds, or inspirational family or friends that were significant to the children. This unit privided an opportunity for them to share a personal story or, if they preferred, to research someone else’s story that they felt a connection to.

At the start of the unit, Kelly collected writing samples and pre-unit data, and also conducted a survey of student feelings and perceptions. During the unit she explicitly taught several narrative features including simile/metaphor, imagery and the five senses, and hyperbole. The class explored published examples of survival stories such as ‘I am Malala’ by Malala Yousafzai, ‘The Little Refugee’ by Anh Do and ‘Ride, Ricardo, Ride!’ by Phil Cummings. As an assessment activity, students wrote a short survival story, based either on events from their own family history, or on an event or person of interest to them. Students wrote two versions of their story: one for the teacher as audience and another for a junior primary audience. As an extension activity, students could turn their story into a book, movie or audio-book. 

For this unit, the students explored the concept and contexts of survival , spoke to their families about possible stories they could use (whether from family history or elsewhere), researched for further information, drafted and refined their text, shared their drafts with each other and exchanged feedback, and adapted their writing for the two audiences. Each student also had individual time with Kelly. At the end of the unit, students reflected on the unit in a survey.

It is important to stress that, prior to this unit, Kelly had already built significant trust both with and between her students, so that those who chose to write a survival story from their own experiences or family histories felt safe and supported. All students had the option to research an event or person documented in the public domain if, for whatever reason, they preferred to do so. In fact, many students valued the opportunity to tell a real story, and particularly one they had experienced or that was important to their family, as evidenced in some of the student reflections in the post-unit survey:

I felt great sharing my grandfathers story, and he would be proud of me. I felt good sharing the story with other people.

I shared it with my mates, so they know what happened in my past.

I wanted people to know more about me

Once I shared my story, I wasn’t worried about people knowing anymore. I felt proud of what I wrote and my story.

I wrote about my mum being trapped in an office during the flood. I wanted to share with people how I felt during the flood.

Student outcomes from the Dance and English units

Through these two units, the students bonded as a group and became more like a team. Not only did they improve their engagement in these learning areas, but in other curriculum areas areas as well. Students felt a stronger connection to Kelly and continued to share more of themselves with each other. Students involved their families more in the learning, talking about what they were doing and engaging more so than unsual. Overall, these units led to:

• Improved academic grades
• Improved effort from students
• A sense of fun and engagement
• Taking risks in a supportive, safe environment
• Family-like cohesion: working together, supporting each other,  making genuine connections to each other, developing empathy and a deeper level of understanding

Student case studies

Dance unit: A Māori student with a history of disengagement from classroom learning and who struggled to complete workwas particularly engaged by the Dance unit. He chose to work with three students of Bosnian, Filipino and Liberian heritage. These students wanted to represent their cultural dances, and to explore the different meanings behind them. Despite quite different prior levels of academic success and engagement, this unit really allowed them to work at the same level. They researched, collaborated and created a combined performance that was powerful and informative. The Māori student initially didn’t want to perform the Haka live. He even filmed himself in a cupboard to avoid being seen by others. By the end of the unit he proudly performed the Haka in front of the whole class. The reception from his classmates was very moving and it was clear that they had a new appreciation for his culture. He later went on to focus his personal inquiry on Māori culture, inviting his parents into class to show them what he had learned independently without their knowledge.

English unit: A Liberian student who had been in Australia for two years chose to write about his own survival story of fleeing war in his home country. He documented having to leave his house with neighbours because, as a Christian, he was at risk from Muslim groups who had started to shoot people in nearby villages. He told the story of hearing the gunfire, almost drowning in mud, crossing a waterfall and finally sheltering in a village with people armed with machine guns. This student dictated his story, with Kelly typing as he spoke. The depth of the story was truly powerful. The student chose to share his story with his class, and again with leaders at the site. Significantly, as a result of this, the Principal realised why this student—who is typically very well behaved—had been previously suspended for a fight with a Muslim student. After reading the story it was immediately apparent what may have contributed to the fight. Having this deeper understanding of the student was helpful for both the other students and the leadership, as they gained greater empathy those who had experienced really extreme, traumatic events. One student with racist tendencies was clearly moved when this student shared his story, and was able to verbalise to Kelly that he realised he had been a ‘real idiot’ judging African students, because he had no idea of their story.

Teacher learnings from the Dance and English units

• Kelly was able to understand the students on a far deeper level, learning about cultural practices, family histories and the real-world experiences of students
• An early challenge was helping students to understand this new approach to their learning and building the sense of trust needed for them to open themselvesup to Kelly and their peers. To overcome this, Kelly was up front with students about what she was doing and why. She took her students with her on the journey and the research, gathering their opinions and welcoming their ideas. Not all teachers are comfortable with honest feedback, but Kelly learnt that to be truly responsive, she needed to open up herself and her practice. 
• Sharing personal stories and details can be confronting, and must always be voluntary. Kelly therefore had to be willing to share from her own life experiences in order to build trust and to role model the process. For example, at the start of the year Kelly sent an introductory letter to her class, sharing that her best friend had died a few weeks earlier, and talking about her hopes and fears. She then invited the students to write to her. Kelly found that by opening up about herself, her students felt comfortable reciprocating. This trust only increased as the year progressed.
• Having a researcher observe the lessons in action gave another perspective and encouraged Kelly to reflect on the observations provided.
• Undertaking classroom research added another level of depth and credibility to the theoretical readings on CRP. Enacting CRP in a real-world classroom cemented Kelly’s understanding of, and commitment to, the theory. Until she saw CRP in action it was hard to understand its full impact.