Embedding Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Teaching Practice in an Aotearoa New Zealand Initial Teacher Education Programme

This paper reports on how one initial teacher education (ITE) programme has worked to support culturally responsive and sustaining teaching (CREST) practice for its student teachers. In Aotearoa New Zealand, we are required by law to include as much of the language and customs of Māori (the Indigenous population) as reasonable in our school policies and practices. The issue becomes that most of us did not grow up in Te Ao Māori (the Māori worldview) to be able to authentically include this in our practice. Therefore, ITE programmes need to prepare future teachers to be able to meet the requirements of biculturalism and authentic inclusion of Māori. The ITE programme in this paper has explicitly included communicative language teaching (CLT) aspects within a noho marae (an overnight stay on a marae with associated aspects of Te Ao Māori) that are then expected to be included by our student teachers, specifically for this paper, in their science education assessment. This paper reports on how a cohort of student teachers has been able to embed CREST practices in their teaching. This paper concludes with recommendations to better ensure the inclusion of CREST practices in ITE and subsequent teaching practice.