Culturally Nourishing Schooling: Conversations for Transformative Change

Join the Culturally Nourishing Schooling (CNS) Project for an interactive conversation with world‑leading scholars Professor Mere Berryman and Professor Django Paris, exploring big ideas for lasting, culturally sustaining educational change and re‑imagining education as a space for liberation and justice.

This event will be offered in a hybrid format, with both in-person and virtual attendance available.

Educators, leaders, researchers, and community members are warmly invited to participate in this rich and future‑focused dialogue.

Learn more about the CNS Project:
https://www.culturallynourishingschooling.org.au/

Agenda

• 2:00pm: Welcome and Opening
• 2:05pm: Professor Django Paris - Why Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies Matter for Our Collective Futures
• 2:50pm: Professor Mere Berryman - Collective-Determination: From Blueprint to Iwi-Led, Home-School and Community Collaborations
• 3:35pm: In Conversation & Audience

Conversation - Why Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies Matter for Our Collective Futures

The interrelated crises of climate catastrophe, emboldened white supremacy, resurgent fascism and imperialism, and ongoing genocides have been increasingly unrelenting features of our lives and those of the children, families, communities, and lands we teach and learn alongside. Although each of these crises has in many ways been central across history, students, educators, and families are certainly feeling the heaviness of this time. And still, those we teach and learn with in and far beyond schools and universities are bringing fierce commitments to centering and sustaining their communities, with vision, joy, and care even in the face of so much. In this interactive talk, Django Paris builds from over a decade of collective work on culturally sustaining pedagogies to offer educational paths forward grounded in the strength, wisdom, and leadership of Black, Indigenous, and other Global Majority peoples. He also shares emergent work on a culturally sustaining politic, which has implications for how we teach, learn, and live together toward a more just and joyful set of educational relations.

Conversation - Collective-determination: From blueprint to iwi-led, home-school and community collaborations

The previous Labour-led government in Aotearoa-New Zealand, invited Mātanga (those with expertise) to develop a blueprint based on the successful Te Kotahitanga (Unity of Purpose) secondary school reform initiative. Mātanga considered the historical and contemporary political and policy system settings, and they examined evidence about schooling that had worked effectively for Indigenous Māori learners. A reform blueprint was then developed and funded, to be trialed in six communities, over three years.
This paper describes the direction Mātanga set so that Māori learners, from Early Childhood to Secondary Schooling, could enjoy and achieve education success without having to compromise their cultural identities. While implementation across the chosen communities varied, to understand the role of tribal self-determination and critical leadership in the promotion of Te Hurihanganui (The Overturning), we examine implementation in one community where the blueprint was implemented with greater integrity. In this community, revealing acts of settler silencing that are still at play today helped to re-conscientize hearts and minds so that the status quo of disparities for Māori learners could be better understood and resisted. Then, new cultural connections, supported by iwi initiatives and tools as Critical Change Elements, ensured that despite having less than three years of implementation, a more socially-just, transformative system had begun to emerge. Some elements continue today despite funding having long concluded.

Authors: Mere Berryman, Elizabeth Eley and Tanya Savage