"E Ho'omau!" a study of Hawai'i teachers navigating change through generative praxis
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This study aims to make visible the practices of a group of teachers who are part of a community shift in Hawai'i, described here as the "Hawaiian Indigenous Movement for Education and Native Intelligence" (HIMENI). Revitalization of indigenous knowledge systems and practices has grown over the past thirty years in Hawai'i. The aims and outcomes that HIMENI teachers pursue are rooted in Hawaiian worldviews, and are aligned with Hawaiian cultural values; in some cases they differ greatly from the aims of conventional schooling. Study participants were enrolled in an inservice teacher education program and came from diverse schools across the state. During the five-year span of the ethnographic study, eight themes emerged, revealing a values-based conceptual framework that was coherently guiding HIMENI teachers across various learning contexts to strengthen the alignment between their principles and teaching practices. As they led their students through encounters with locally- and globally-valued knowledge, the eight themes helped them navigate change and build new teaching knowledge generatively—through embodied, contextualized knowledge that flowed in conversation with theory to shape practice. The HIMENI teachers' practices and pedagogies show clearly what "generative praxis" can look like, and what it can accomplish; a pedagogical model for generative praxis is proposed. HIMENI teachers cultivate generative praxis through their professional work, and also nurture its growth among their K-12 students. Analysis of the conceptual framework illuminates parallels between locally-recognized concepts and broadly-recognized constructs from the learning sciences that inform teacher practice, such as ecological models of context, embodied cognition, communities of practice, adaptive expertise and design thinking. Generative praxis is also aligned with enduring learning theories such those proposed by Vygotsky, Dewey, Bruner etc. Taken as a whole, the set of practices and processes used by this group of HIMENI teachers may be seen as an instantiation of "generative praxis"—an orientation to knowledge that powerfully promotes context-adaptive, dynamic knowledge development for teachers and learners alike. Standing alongside "content knowledge" and "pedagogical content knowledge"—two widely-recognized categories of knowledge for teaching—generative praxis gives us a new term to describe a third essential knowledge base for teaching: contextualized, iterative knowing-in-action. The teaching profession must acknowledge and cultivate generative praxis (by any name) if teacher educators and teachers are to successfully navigate the rapidly diversifying languages, cultures, knowledge(s) and routes of access to knowledge that are part of US contexts for learning in the 21st century.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2013 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Johnson, Zanette Joelle |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, School of Education. |
| Primary advisor | Goldman, Shelley |
| Thesis advisor | Goldman, Shelley |
| Thesis advisor | McDermott, Ray (Raymond Patrick), 1946- |
| Thesis advisor | Nasir, Na'ilah Suad |
| Advisor | McDermott, Ray (Raymond Patrick), 1946- |
| Advisor | Nasir, Na'ilah Suad |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Zanette Joelle Johnson. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the School of Education. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2013. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2013 by Zanette Joelle Johnson
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