Navigating culturally responsive pedagogy through an Indigenous games unit
Alison Wrench, Robyne Garrett
Abstract
Curricula and pedagogies that fail to utilise the cultural resources of students contribute to educational disadvantage. The health and physical education (HPE) learning area is not exempt from these concerns with calls emerging within Australia to include movement forms and ways of knowing of Indigenous and ethnic-minority students. In many respects, these are calls to counter the normativity of Anglo-Saxon middle-class male framings for HPE. This paper engages with these concerns and seeks to contribute through reporting on a case study from Australian-based research into culturally responsive pedagogies (CRP). Utilising Ricoeur’s theorisation of narrative processes we explore a case study which centres on CRP informed pedagogical and curricular redesign in HPE. We engage with discourses of CRP to explore emergent understandings and raise awareness amongst HPE educators about the possibilities of CRP in foregrounding culturally informed movement forms and ways of knowing. We conclude in arguing all HPE educators face an ethical imperative to take up the challenge of adopting CRP and a broader range of culturally defined movement forms.