‘Working with ICT Cross-culturally – Students and Teachers all learning’

By Brooke Barnett (2006) Teacher, Grades 5/6/7, Borroloola CEC, NT.

Abstract:

When computers enter a classroom they are appropriated in many different ways to become part of the learning environment. Many Aboriginal children come to school with traditional practices of knowledge making and sharing, and traditional understandings of technology and the environment. This study contrasts a grade 5/6/7 teacher’s experience of Aboriginal and nonAboriginal students’ involvement with ICT in a remote Northern Territory primary classroom.

The unit was designed from a student-centred cross-curricular perspective, using outcomes from the new curriculum framework for the Northern Territory (NTCF). The teacher had implemented a similar unit of work within a non-Aboriginal classroom prior to working in the Territory, and during 2005, adapted the unit to the predominantly indigenous classroom. The teacher observed that Aboriginal students found working collaboratively problematic whilst incorporating ICT to achieve the outcomes of the assignment. However, when the art/technology area of the assignment was undertaken by students where they did not incorporate ICT, Aboriginal students were more able to collaborate than non-Aboriginal students, in order to reach outcomes.

Two pedagogical approaches were adopted by the teacher in order to accommodate for these differences to assist students to complete the assignment. This challenged the teacher to reflect on these differences, pedagogical approaches and assumptions about ICT used as part of the learning environment..

Initial Classroom Culture and use of ICT:

A stable classroom culture was not established in this class upon commencing as the teacher for these combined grades in the school. The class experienced three changes of teachers during the first term and some members of another class had been moved into this class to address other issues within the school. There were a couple of long-term behaviour management students in the class.

Many students had experienced using ICT in previous classes, in a limited capacity. Some were able to use the internet for research but most were fairly inexperienced. Most Aboriginal students had experience using ICT, enjoying playing games from the desktop and some could search the internet for pictures and pop-culture sites when given free time on computers. Some Aboriginal and non- Aboriginal students were able to type text into a word document and use search engines for research.

The classroom had four computers for students to work on and three were able to utilize the internet but students could go to the library where they could use more computers if not taken at a specific time by another class.

I attempted some collaborative work in initial stages of teaching the class, and moved tables for students to work in groups but quickly returned to a predominantly teacher-centred approach and single desk arrangements to keep the class stable and to establish a working culture where students formed a routine to be followed each day and where there were clear expectations and understandings of their behaviour.

The pedagogical approach I adopted upon commencement as the classroom teacher conflicted with my previous approach to teaching but I felt it was necessary initially to stabilize the class and form clear understandings of classroom rules, expectations and other issues. I believe this was a ‘survival’ pedagogy to a degree but I still had a clear picture of a culture that I believed was achievable within the class given time. It was common for fighting to break out daily in this classroom for the first month until there were established behavioural expectations and until students had established some form of social understandings within the group.

Student-centred learning was possible outside the classroom in most instances, especially in the areas of sport and any physical activity; however fights still occurred but were easier to diffuse outside the confinements of the classroom space.

The assignment (see attached assignment sheet) as part of the ‘Biodiversity’ unit was introduced in week 5 of Term 2 and students were given until the end of the term to complete all three stages of the assignment amongst other tasks and subjects as part of their school work. I was aware that collaborative work was an area which would be challenging for both the students and myself, and set out to begin the process.

Unit background implemented at Borroloola CEC 2005:

I planned an integrated unit (see attached assignment), as part of the yearly ‘Biodiversity’ theme, where an amount of student-centred and collaborative learning could take place through some scaffolding and structure. I used a constructivist approach to introduce the unit, drawing on what students’ already knew about feral animals, building on this information, drawing ideas from students and using various approaches and examples to guide their inquiry.

As a whole class, we discussed issues they were familiar with such as the Cane Toad issue and brought critical literacy into the discussions relating to such questions as ‘Who makes the decisions that allow these animals in?’; ‘Who benefits or suffers and what can we do?’ We then discussed other local introduced animals and plants and issues surrounding them. The initial stage of the assignment was introduced where they were to form pairs to pick a local feral animal and /or weed and research the questions given for their level, integrating the use of ICT.

The class had a lesson on using a search engine to find information. All students who were present for this session demonstrated ability to use the nominated search engines in order to find information, find appropriate sites to use and write text into a word document and print out the information. Copy write issues were discussed in simplified ways, making it accessible to all levels, and how to rephrase text for students’ own use in their work. More experienced students in the use of ICT were then matched as best as possible with less experienced students to try to balance skills within pairs for the assignment. Students mainly chose to pick partners within their cultural group.

I was required to adopt two pedagogical approaches to assist Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students during the first stage of this assignment, incorporating ICT to research their chosen topic and answer some simple questions in order to achieve outcomes.

I noticed whilst implementing the unit above, that:

All students’ experienced initial problems working collaboratively on the assignment integrating ITC.

Both Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal students generally found the initial stages of working collaboratively problematic and because incorporating ICT was involved in the first stage of the assignment, this stage proved to take more time than did the other stages as the groups sorted out social and organizational issues. Common issues with students involved; Disagreeing with pairing with their partner; resistance to instigated roles allocated to them by others; upset with another group member ‘bossing’ them or lack of valued input, impatience to get onto computers etc. Eventually some groups settled into a process of some agreement, in order to make the process work to reach outcomes. Aboriginal students, more so than non-Aboriginal students experienced problems working collaboratively incorporating ICT to complete the first stage of the assignment. However, when the Art/Design/Technology area of the assignment was undertaken where they chose not to incorporate ICT, Aboriginal students were more able to collaborate than non-Aboriginal students, to reach outcomes.

The specific problems Aboriginal students encountered working collaboratively using ICT, included such processes as organising and prioritizing information to be researched and assigning and working on specific roles as part of the group and finding information to address the given questions. Even though students had to share use of computers, indigenous students did not seem to approach the process with any structure. They seemed to be working independently, even if sometimes assisting each other for short periods on areas of the process, mostly technical or navigational assistance. Many had the skills to find the information that was required but did not attempt to organize or establish roles or read the questions properly; instead they mostly copied and pasted information from sites into their word documents or PowerPoint documents individually, without deliberate awareness of whether they were answering the questions in their assignment or achieving the outcomes as a coherent pair or individually. They often resisted strongly to letting the other person onto the computer after they had gone over the time agreed to in their pair to share the responsibilities.

However, when the second stage of the assignment was undertaken, which was Art / Design / Technology based and ‘hands on’, Aboriginal students were more able than non-Aboriginal students, to work collaboratively on their ‘dioramas’ to achieve the outcomes. Students were encouraged to use ICT to assist in constructing their dioramas but most seemed engrossed with the tangible and practical aspect of the process and did not choose to use ICT at all. Aboriginal students’ approach to this stage was also unstructured as was their approach to stage one, but they were able to communicate and work collaboratively to produce their dioramas, discussing outcomes required for this stage of the assignment and incorporating the outcomes in the finished products with little or no problems.

In contrast, non-Aboriginal students in both this class and from my experience in a similar assignment in another state, seemed to find working collaboratively on this second stage of the assignment more problematic. They encountered such difficulties as not knowing what to use to represent what they were trying to express even when given ideas and examples. They also seemed more likely to undertake this stage of the assignment individually as they felt their ideas were ‘too different’ to that of their co-workers and often became frustrated trying to work together. Some finished collaboratively working in their pair at this stage and others decided that it would be easier for them both to do one diorama each and pick ‘the best’ out of the two for the assessment.

I was required to apply two pedagogical approaches during the implementation of the assignment.

I was attempting to approach the assignment process from a homogenous student-centred, teacher as facilitator, perspective, as I had done previously in a non-indigenous class but through the process of implementing the assignment with predominantly Aboriginal students, found I had to employ two pedagogical perspectives to include a more teacher-centred, explicit, structured and prescriptive pedagogical perspective to assist Aboriginal students to achieve outcomes collaboratively, incorporating ICT and to a much lesser extent to assist non-Aboriginal students to work collaboratively to achieve outcomes in the more tactile, Art/Technology stage of the assignment.

I believe I was presuming that there would be a common understanding or that I could approach the facilitation of working collaboratively in all stages of implementation of the assignment from this homogenous perspective, irrelevant to what stage the students were undertaking and also irrelevant to cultural backgrounds. This proved not to be the case.

I changed my pedagogical approach in order to assist indigenous students to work collaboratively incorporating ICT, as they needed specific direction in such areas as identifying what they were attempting to achieve (outcomes), assigning roles and addressing questions in order to research their topics.

A discussion and conclusion:

Many factors could contribute to the possible reasons why students of both cultures reacted differently to each other, working collaboratively on each stage of this assignment. Environmental factors, personal factors, whole school cultural factors and my approach to pedagogy, are just some which could have influenced the reactions of the students during this assignment. There were however some important specific points that stood out upon my reflection:

 It was obvious that students from both cultures were able to work collaboratively to achieve outcomes.  Students’ success in collaborative processes seemed depended on students’ cultural understanding of knowledge making and sharing and traditional practices of technology and the environment.  Non-Aboriginal students were more likely to have computers at home than Aboriginal students.  I assumed that because the students had the skills to find information, the use of ICT would be easily incorporated into another structured process for all students, from my cultural perspective.  I was required to use different pedagogical perspectives to reach outcomes.

My pedagogical approach to using ICT has altered:

When I altered my pedagogical practice and attempted to explain this process (collaboration and prioritizing) using ICT in relation to the outcomes to Aboriginal students, I was limited in making this process clear through relevant cultural or real life connections. Even though I knew that Aboriginal people used complex systems in their traditional culture, I was limited to and failed to make the specific real and experienced connections needed to assist their understanding of this process.

Christie, (2004) discusses knowledge making and sharing in Yolnu society and that process in non- indigenous society:

‘The best teachers/researchers/learners have the ability to access, and interpret a full range of representations in each new context of meaning making. The skill of the teacher (singer, painter, dancer) lies in the connections they can make’.

I also realized that because Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students come into the classroom with these different traditional understandings of knowledge making and sharing, and use of technology and the environment, that their learning styles also differed.

Hughes & More, (1997) discusses Harris’s (1980) theory of ‘Aboriginal Learning Styles’, from his work ‘Culture and Learning: Tradition and Education in Notheast Arnhem Land. They bringing to light Harris’s ‘Five learning strategies’ that Aboriginal culture traditionally use to learn and acquire knowledge, in his view, as opposed to the ways non-Aboriginal culture use to acquire knowledge:

‘What is meant by 'Aboriginal Learning Styles'? Basically, this theory claims there are significant differences in the ways in which 'Aborigines' and 'Whites' learn. These differences mean that teachers involved in the teaching of Aboriginal students, whether children or adults, must alter or modify their classroom teaching approaches and practices in order to be successful.

Harris posits 'five major Aboriginal learning strategies' which are scaffolded by their apparent opposite number, non-Aboriginal learning styles.  Learning by observation and imitation rather than by verbal instruction: or learning by looking and copying, not by talking.  Learning by personal trial and error rather than by verbal instruction with demonstration: or, learning by doing, not by talking plus demonstration.  Learning in real life, rather than by practice in artificial settings: or learning by real life, not by 'practice'. Closely related to this is learning 'wholes', not sequenced parts, or learning by successive approximations of the efficient product.  Learning context-specific skills, versus generalisable principles: or, learning skills for specific tasks rather than learning generalizable principles.  Person-orientation in learning, not information-orientation: or focus on people and relationships rather than on information. This is related to the absence of the institutionalized office of teacher in Yolgnu society.

These five learning strategies in relation to this paper could be extended into a thesis, so for the purpose of this paper, I will not comment in detail but believe that these strategies along with more information on Aboriginal ways of knowledge making and sharing and use technology and environment, could be utilised more in the curriculum, PD for all teachers and undergraduate programs for pedagogical studies. It would be easy for both experienced teachers and neophyte teachers could make a similar assumption that all students with computer skills come to the classroom environment with a common understanding of the ICT discourse, and how that technology is incorporated into the learning environment.

These strategies and the new curriculum:

Harris’s (1980) five strategies fit well into the new curriculum and its’ inclusion of Gardners’ (9090) Multiple Intellegences theory. The more flexible approach to pedagogy through the current curriculum, including such areas as the ‘Essential Learnings’ allows teachers to design, implement and asses learning, relevant to a learning environment which could include incorporating these strategies into pedagogical practice and classroom culture.

As a classroom is made up of many students, collaborative learning often is an integral element of the classroom daily routine and the five strategies, which specifically in this instance relate to Aboriginal learning, could also be applicable for inclusive pedagogy for many students. I believe many educators make presumptions about knowledge making and sharing, without realising that it can be culturally based and is actually a fundamental element in the learning process. Knowledge or lack of knowledge in this area from a teacher’s perspective, could indeed dramatically affect students’ confidence levels, willingness and ability to learn.

More Complex than first thought:

I thought upon reflection after understanding ideas such as Harris’s learning strategies (1980), that, the added component of incorporating ICT into the research process, took the concept to an abstract level which was another whole area of organization and prioritizing information in itself, which was not immersed culturally for Aboriginal students and therefore not clearly understood. This brought the assignment requirements into multiple levels of structured procedures involving organizing and prioritizing, which is not traditionally Aboriginal cultural discourse but which is traditional discourse which is well emersed in non-Aboriginal cultures.

Michael Christie mentions Gee’s definition of discourse:

In his earlier work defining literacy, Gee begins by defining discourse, which can be seen to parallel a Yolngu understanding of identity: ‘a socially accepted association among ways of using language, thinking and acting, which can be used to identify one’s self as part of a group’ (Gee, 1991). Working collaboratively using ICT in this instance may have been delivered culturally out of perspective and that what I assumed was a simple process and what I was asking in this first stage of the assignment was a very high-ordered structured process requiring three levels of structure and a cultural understanding of how that structure ‘looked’. This structure included: Ordering and prioritizing each other to work in pairs; ordering and prioritizing assignment information to be found using the computer or other means and then having to order and prioritize functions on the computer to achieve the outcomes.

After my experiences within the indigenous classroom I am more aware of the ways culture and cultural assumptions of knowledge making and sharing and the use of technology and environment, influence all aspects of education including Government department strategies and curriculum; whole school culture; pedagogical practice, learning styles and….student behaviour.

A curriculum which accounts for flexible approaches to teaching and learning must be in place if we are to see literacy and numeracy (amongst other areas) reach higher levels amongst Aboriginal society. Thankfully, changes to traditional curriculum have eventuated and are still developing, despite criticisms from many areas of the education sector who may be swallowed up in their traditional discourse of defined structure and explicit procedures, afraid of change.

It would be beneficial for Aboriginal learning strategies such as the ones mentioned in this paper, and others, to be discussed as an essential and mandatory part of any undergraduate course in Education and should be an integral part of any school where Aboriginal students are present for whole school discussion and understanding. This process should include Aboriginal educators to assist in bridging gaps in understanding. Information should be openly discussed and examples of where ICT could be used in a more holistic and practical way, should be available to all educators in the Australian Education sector.

The discourse associated with ICT’s to assist in the acquisition of skills has become familiar to many cultures but this is an acquisition in itself and the processes involved in sharing this type of information and organizing information using new technologies may be doubly challenging to some cultures, who must first acquire the discourse associated with it. Therefore, all people involved in education processes, for adults and students, not just classroom teachers, should also be made aware of how important it is to have an understanding that knowledge making and sharing and technology and environment can be culturally based, potentially affecting many integral aspects of the teaching and learning process.

Parkin’s statement in the passage below, confirms that cultural knowledge making and sharing and technology and environment should be addressed on a whole school level but could also be true for the training of adults learning the discourses of modern technology from different cultural backgrounds:

The school's inability to make use of and extend the way children from a variety of backgrounds learn successfully at home is still one of the fundamental reasons for student failure. I believe that schools still do not understand how to help children acquire the skills they need to be successful when the cultures, ways of talking and thinking that these children bring to school are not congruent with those of school. We still haven't got it right (Parkin, B.???).

It is great to see that more ideas for blending the use of ICT into a more holistic learning environment (as opposed to isolated tasks undertaken by students on computers which is the most common form of use of ICT in classrooms) is now becoming available for teachers. This process of bringing in more collaborative ideas integrating the use of ICT’s into the classroom and curriculum could also assist in changing current student issues involving inappropriate antisocial adoptions of the use of ICT in young people. References:

Christie, M, 2004, ‘Computer Databases and Aboriginal Knowledge’ Learning Communities: International Journal of Learning in Social Contexts, 1, 4-12

Hughes, P. & More, A.J, 1997 ‘Aboriginal ways of Learning and Learning Styles’, Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education, Brisbane.

Parkin, B (????),Theorising Aboriginal Education: Exactly Where Are We Now?, A reply to a paper by Nichols, Crowley & Watt, (????),Theorising Aboriginal Education: Surely it's time to move on?

http://edoz.com.au/educationaustralia/archive/features/abed3.html

Below are some of the collaborative dioramas as part of the 2nd stage of the integrated ICT unit where indigenous students were more able to collaborate and work together to reach outcomes than non-indigenous students.

Feral Animals and Plants in the local area.

Local Feral Animals as part of the ‘Biodiversity’ theme for the year. The unit questions were split into 3 different levels (ability levels – not grades). The unit was to be assessed in three stages adding to a total score with a reward for the highest three groups. The groups were to be assessed by the class. The three stages to be assessed were:

Research (Literacy / ICT):- 20%

Students were required to research the given questions in their group via the internet, library or any other form such as contacting local organizations (Parks & Wildlife, Sea Rangers, Government Weeds etc). Almost all students had been part of previous lessons on the use of search engines to research information and were able to find the appropriate sites to start research.

Design and Construct (Technology / Art / Numeracy):- 20%

After students had researched the key questions on their assignment sheet, they were then able to go ahead with the second stage of the assignment where they were required to construct their animal or plant’s habitat as a ‘Diorama’, making sure they included other living organisms that their chosen feral animals or plants relied on to survive. They were asked to be creative; think about ways to make their diorama show how their feral animal or plant has taken over. (Students could use paint, models, natural material and any other medium in order to create their environment, including using the school’s camera to photograph local habitat around the school to print for habitat background). More capable students’ dioramas displayed both a feral animal and a weed to reflect their research.

Present (Literacy / Critical / Social Skills):- 20%

Once both stage one and two were complete, students in their pairs were to present their research and dioramas to the class using all the information they had found on their journey into finding out about your particular animal or plant. Marks for presentation included: how they worked together to present the information, clarity, information, quality of work etc.

At the conclusion of the assignment in a given time frame the students were required to provide Peer Assessment (Evaluation / Assessment Skills): To be done by class for each other. This stage was presented to students at the beginning of the assignment and Indigenous students particularly were not confident in this process in the initial stages but became more confident as they worked through the stages of the assignment.

Assessment: - Total 60 marks

The assessment sheet was designed for the students as I knew they were not familiar with peer assessment or indeed some had no experience with assessment except formal testing.