Education Commons^™

Teacher Strategies To Improve Education Outcomes For Indigenous Students, Theresa Papp

Comparative and International Education / Éducation Comparée et Internationale

Abstract

The article presents the teaching strategies that supported education success for Indigenous students of New Zealand from a case study research approach. Interviews were conducted with teacher participants that revealed four dominant strategies that were perceived to improve Māori education outcomes and were confirmed by national testing results. These strategies were: Building and repairing relationships through a relationship-based pedagogy; student focused school and classrooms; teachers that provided feedforward and feedback to students; administrative leadership, and the regular incorporation of Māori culture in the school and the classroom. Over a six-year timeframe, implementation of these strategies more than doubled Māori …

The Cultural Contours Of Democracy: Indigenous Epistemologies Informing South African Citizenship, Patricia K. Kubow, Mina Min

Democracy and Education

Drawing upon the African concept of ubuntu, this article examines the epistemic orientations toward individual-society relations that inform democratic citizenship and identity in South Africa. Findings from focus group interviews conducted with 50 Xhosa teachers from all seven primary and intermediate schools in a township outside Cape Town depict the cultural contours of democracy and how the teachers reaffirm and question the dominant Western-oriented democratic narrative. Through ubuntu, defined as the virtue of being human premised upon respect, the Xhosa teachers interrupt the prevailing rights-and-responsibilities discourse to interpose a conception of democracy based on rights, responsibilities, and respect. …