Culturally responsive pedagogies

Overview

Each student brings to the classroom a unique background as an individual learner. Celebrating the cultural diversity of all class members can help students feel included, welcomed, safe and supported.

Culturally responsive pedagogy incorporates learners’ cultural backgrounds and histories into classroom practice. This approach to teaching and learning uses ‘the cultural characteristics, experiences, and perspectives of ethnically diverse students as conduits for teaching them more effectively’ (Gay, 2002, p. 106).

Teachers can embed culturally responsive approaches in mathematics pedagogy by using relevant teaching strategies and customising experiences based around culturally relevant content. Areas and activities to connect mathematics and culture could include the following.

• Explore counting systems from a range of cultures and different ways of representing these groupings to form and partition numbers.
• Present instructive games for learning used by different cultures.
• Use First Nations Australians' material, culture, cultural stories or dance to recognise and create pattern sequences.
• Explore durations of time represented in First Nations Australians’ seasonal calendars and calendars of other cultures.
• Identify and locate on a calendar specific days or dates that have cultural significance.
• Compare currencies of different countries and discuss trading and bartering as forms of economy, for example, First Nations Australians’ trading among nations.
• Explore explanations of the passing of time through cultural accounts about cyclic phenomena involving the sun, moon and stars.
• Conduct statistical investigations using secondary data of cultural importance.
• Explore traditional weaving designs practised by First Nations Australians and other cultures.
• Customise maths experiences that localise content, for example, where First Nations Australians use ochre to make paint as part of body decorations. Model situations involving ratio, incorporating cultural knowledge of ratios of ingredients to make ochre-based paint.

Mathematics is not an exclusive western construct. Therefore, it is important that teachers acknowledge and demonstrate the mathematics to be found in all cultures. In the Australian Curriculum, links to First Nations Australians’ culture and histories and those from Asia are of particular relevance.

Pedagogies relevant to First Nations Australians' histories and culture

The Goompi model and the 8 Ways maths model are two sets of strategies that draw on diverse pedagogies used to facilitate learning. Schools should collaborate with local communities to identify any other local pedagogical approaches and initiate localised culturally responsive content, tailoring them to suit their particular community. When respectful, two-way partnerships inform mathematics teaching and learning, as well as learning about culturally responsive content First Nations students are able to see their histories, cultures and identities reflected.

Examples of the strategy in action

First Nations Australians' histories and culture