Culturally Responsive Pedagogy and Mathematics Through Creative and Body-Based Learning: Urban Aboriginal Schooling

Abstract

Global neoliberal imperatives that numerically measure student success through standardized testing undermine the educational outcomes of students, in particular Indigenous students, and construct a seemingly fixed reality that avoids State responsibility to address structural inequality in Australia. Achievement gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous school students in mathematics have become an urgent international problem. Although evidence suggests that culturally responsive pedagogies (CRPs) improve student academic success for First Nations peoples in settler colonial countries such as the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, less prominent is a focus on how CRP is enacted and mobilized in Australian classrooms. Although some initiatives exist, this article explores how creative and body-based learning (CBL) strategies might be utilized to enact CRP. Using an ethnographic case study approach, we examined how two early career teachers serving Indigenous and ethnically diverse students implemented CBL to reengage students with mathematics. Findings suggest that the teachers were able to mobilize a number of CRP principles using CBL strategies to facilitate engagement in mathematics for urban Aboriginal students. Specifically, when teachers repositioned students as “competent” and designed embodied learning experiences that connected to their cultural backgrounds, students let go of their cautious learner histories and remade themselves as clever and competent.

Teaching and learning probability using games: A systematic review of research from 2010-2020

“…The authors suggested that probability lessons embedded in cultural context help students to build connections between content (probability) and cultural context and, as a result, students can broaden their perception of mathematics. This suggestion aligns with culturally responsive pedagogy (Averill et al, 2009;O'Keeffe et al, 2019;Rigney et al, 2020) that is being promoted in multicultural settings. The game Lu-Lu can be used with students at the high school level with adaptations.…”

Are We Teaching Nurses to Be Racist towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples? A Critical Race Document Analysis of Discrete Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Courses

“…In a 2012 audit of pre-service teacher training Moreton-Robinson et al [ 68 ] found that ‘Unless the relationship between racial privilege and racial disadvantage is understood the development of an effective Indigenous pedagogy remains beyond the scope of the national standards’. However, culturally responsive pedagogies, for instance, provide frameworks towards curriculum that are derived from critical theory, centring social justice and the classroom as a tool for social change [ 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 ]. Similarly, Ramsden [ 74 ] discusses anti-racism in nursing education as a foundational concept for the application of cultural safety education.…”

Considering Young People’s Dislocation From STEM Education: Looking Beyond the Narrow Focus of Teaching and Learning Practice Within School

“…Schooling provides a general disposition ("cultured habitus") towards STEM learning, for example, which may not resonate with individuals in the community. The gaps between children's local rural knowledge (Avery and Kassam, 2011) and school science can be bridged through place-conscious pedagogies which serve to legitimize local STEM-knowledges (Rioux et al, 2018;Rigney et al, 2020). If the concept of STEM learning offered by the school is not embraced by the community, students are likely to lack encouragement to take up or continue STEM study.…”

“…Rigney's contribution to STEM has included a focus on digital inclusion (Rigney, 2014) in classrooms and more recently on mathematics within Culturally Responsive Pedagogies (Rigney et al, 2020), and more specifically applying Creative and Bodybased Learning (CBL). In their study Rigney et al found that for Aboriginal students engaged with CBL "there was a decrease in student dissonance in the classroom and a stronger community of learners" (p. 1168).…”

“…The issues related to the teaching and use of RRR-related STEM knowledges in RRR-based learning contexts [e.g., schools, technical and vocational education and training (TVET), university] has been explored extensively and has demonstrated that there is a metrocentric (city/urban-specific) focus embedded in this knowledge, which is replicated in policy documents, particularly in the Australian Curriculum (Roberts, 2016). Teachers responsible for presenting knowledge to RRR students, are often in schools for limited periods (Hall, 2012;Cuervo and Acquaro, 2018), tend to come from urban backgrounds (Handal et al, 2013), may be teaching out of area (Hobbs, 2013), and have little practical/firsthand knowledge or experience of RRR STEM knowledge or how to teach it (Rigney et al, 2020) in context with their students. The knowledge gaps of teachers increase exponentially when they engage with Aboriginal students, many of whom speak traditional languages or creoles, and have a culturally different embedded knowledge of STEM in their repertoire, very different to that which is privileged in a white, metrocentric, western knowledge system.…”