In a webinar, Professor Russell Bishop discussed his research into how Māori and other marginalised students – such as the children of migrant, refugee, and faith-based groups and neuro- and gender-diverse children – can benefit from a pedagogical approach that combines strong relationships with effective instructional practices. He also described how leaders can develop the culture and practices in their schools that ensure teachers are able to implement and sustain this effective pedagogical approach.
The ’north-east’ refers to the top right-hand quadrant of a cross-hatch that expresses two variables. When someone is in the north-east, they demonstrate high levels of skill and knowledge about how to establish relationships with all students, but young Māori and other marginalised students in particular, and are able to use interactions that will make the most difference for those learners.
Te Kotahitanga established the importance ofstrong relationships with students, but they are a means to an end rather than an end in themselves. While it is important that teachers build a family-like environment in the classroom, and practise those types of interactions that have been shown to make the biggest difference for Māori students, those relationships and interactions will not in and of themselves achieve better outcomes for students. Teaching to the North-East established three main sets of principles that need to be implemented in the classroom, and which are effective across all curriculum areas:
- Creating a family-like or whānau context in the classroom
- Using effective pedagogies and strategies
- Monitoring the impact of practices on students, and making adjustments accordingly.
Creating a family-like or whānau context involves teachers using strengths-based rather than deficit discourses in relation to their students, and thinking and talking in terms of potential rather than deficiencies. It also involves voicing high expectations and setting the bar high for all the students in the class. It is essential that teachers are knowledgeable about what they are teaching, and knowledgeable about how to teach it, so that students can have confidence that this is a setting in which they can achieve to high levels. In this context, students have all the rights but also take on the responsibilities of being in a family.
Effective pedagogies and practices start with the prior knowledge and experiences that students bring to their learning. Then, research outlines four key steps in the process of effective teaching, which are:
- Induct students into the new knowledge using explicit instruction.
- Give students an opportunity to trial and practice what they have learned.
- Provide opportunities to apply what they have learned in new contexts and settings.
- Give opportunities for reflection on what has been learned and the process of learning.
Providing feedback and feedforward, using co-construction and co-operative learning strategies, and sharing power in the classroom are all effective approaches for teaching Māori students.
Monitoring the impact of teachers’ practices on students involves checking whether or not students have learned the content of the task, but it also involves evaluating how well they are learning to become effective, self-managing learners with tino rangatiratanga over their own learning. It is also valuable to involve families and whānau in the evaluation of the impact of teaching practices on students, and ERO’s 2018 report Building genuine learning partnerships with parents offers useful guidance on how to do this.
Leading to the North-East was written because teachers are not able to get into and stay in the north-east without leadership support. Leaders need to address the variability of teachingby ensuring the implementation theteaching principles and practices from Teaching to the North-East that have been shown to improve outcomes for all students, and particularly Māori and other marginalised students. They also need to put systems and processes in place that will ensure the fidelity of the implementation, and these systems need to be timetabled and built into the regular practices of the school (including the appropriate allocation of human and financial resources). Leaders need to be teachers of their teachers, and they can do this by using the same principles and practices that teachers are learning to implement in their own classrooms. However, for leaders to be able to become leaders of learning, they need to be able to spend less time on management and administration, and more time on systematising ongoing professional learning and the practise of new learning.
