Translating policies into practice: culturally appropriate practices in an Atayal aboriginal kindergarten program in Taiwan.

Many aboriginal cultures follow their collective wisdom in order to adapt to their living environments. The Atayal natives in Taiwan focus on the natural world, such as the stars, and birds and other animals, as their guide. They have used their cultural heritage to build and exercise knowledge without the help of books and training. Their perceptions and collective knowledge may differ, however, from the information presented in modern textbooks. In addition, ways of learning, doing, and acting in the aboriginal culture also often differ from those followed by the mainstream culture. These cultural conflicts, when not addressed in mainstream schools' curriculum and instruction, may result in aboriginal children's academic and socio-emotional failure.

The Atayal (Taiyal) tribe lives in the northern region of Taiwan, on either side of the Central Mountain range, and includes the Sedolek group and Tseole branches. Most of the Atayal people make their living farming the mountainous hills and hunting animals. The Atayal people are famous for their weaving and knitting skills, their unique Kou-Wa instrument that accompanies dances, and their seashell-decorated clothes, including hats, skirts, and leg wrappers. A unique aspect of their culture is the tattoo face. Traditionally, the tattoo face is an honor for those men who have hunted enemy heads; it represents bravery. Women who have demonstrated weaving skills also would earn a tattoo face. No one would like to marry a woman who does not have a tattoo face. The Atayal people believe that the tattoo face is the only way to maintain their identity, and allow their spirits to be recognized after death. Wearing the tattoo face had been prohibited since the Japanese colonial era, however. The only tattoo-faced Atayal people are elders 80 years old or older.

The Atayal group has two beliefs that are very different from other aboriginal groups. One is the "gaga" concept; the other is the "rutux" belief. Gaga concerns social morality, and refers to regulations a member of the community must follow. If anyone offends gaga, then he/she will be punished by rutux, a supernatural spirit. The rutux may scare you into sickness. When Atayal people drink and eat, they drop some food to share with the rutux. When Atayal people leave the mountain, they need to jump over a fire to separate themselves from the rutux.

In recent years, the Taiwan government has realized the importance of aboriginal education, both for the economic advancement of the country and for the fulfillment of its democratic ideals. Taiwan's system of compulsory education, which runs from grades 1 through 9, has resulted in a well-educated workforce for the country's rapidly growing economy. The Taiwanese government has taken steps to implement improved education planning and policies for children of all ages. Although the current education policy has increased the amount of resources and funding allocated to meet the demand of compulsory education, many factors still pose challenges for aboriginal children and communities. Educational resources are not distributed equally between cities and rural areas (urban schools are better equipped). Teacher attrition is higher in aboriginal schools, and the government has not done enough to educate aboriginal parents about the importance of early childhood education. In addition, aboriginal parents cannot afford to send their children to quality preschool and kindergarten programs.

While teaching a course on "Designing Kindergarten Curriculum" at a teacher-training program in Taiwan, I realized that I had seven aboriginal preservice teachers in my class; previously I had none. Those students brought my attention to the Kui-whai kindergarten program of the Atayal tribal natives. During the class discussion on multicultural issues of curriculum design and pedagogy, two of the aboriginal students shared their perception that the Kui-whai kindergarten program is an effective curriculum model for aboriginal children. Some of these students also were parents of Kui-whai kindergartners. The Kui-whai kindergarten, part of the Kui-whai primary school, is located in Fu-Shin, a village on La-La Mountain in Tau-Yuan county, where the Atayal natives live. The Taiwan Ministry of Education has selected the village as one of its educational priority regions. I conducted an ethnographic study in this kindergarten from February through June 2004. During this time, 22 children were enrolled in this kindergarten classroom. My ethnographic study shed some light on how government policy affects the curriculum and pedagogical practices of this kindergarten.

The Taiwan Government's Policy Toward the Education of Aboriginal Children

In recent years, the Taiwan government has established policies to support minority education on the island. Critics claim, however, that many factors still pose challenges for aboriginal children and communities. Chang (1997) maintains that the Taiwan government's policy has contributed to both the success and the failure of indigenous education.

Since 1998, the Taiwan Ministry of Education has formed and promoted the following five educational goals for educational priority regions:

* To establish strategies that facilitate effective use of resources

* To reduce the existing differences between cities and rural areas by providing a wide range of support services to culturally disadvantaged regions

* To protect minority ethnic groups' educational rights and improve their educational achievement

* To strive for social justice and ensure equity of educational opportunities

* To upgrade human resource qualities and levels of education to counter the existing differences among regions.

The educational reform movement in Taiwan focuses on the equitable treatment of aboriginal children in educational institutions and on preparation of aboriginal children for future employment. In 1997, the Constitution of the Republic of China (Taiwan) officially acknowledged the country's responsibility to preserve aboriginal culture and language and stated, "Our country confirms the multi-cultural perspectives, to promote and maintain the development of aboriginal culture and languages." The Atayal language does not exist in a written format. They have been forced to give up their language and speak Mandarin. The new law allows the Atayal people to reconnect to their own language. One of the Atayal preservice teachers in my class remarked,

For a long time, the government only allowed us to speak Mandarin. Young tribal people therefore cannot speak the Atayal dialect. Because the government is promoting our dialect and culture now, we are asking elderly people in our community about our lost language and customs. I feel that by respecting our language and culture, we develop our confidence and self-esteem.

The village of Fu-Shin was selected as one of the educational priority regions, based on the aboriginal education law, officially established on June 17, 1998, which allows for the provision of financial assistance to regions inhabited by aboriginal groups for the establishment of kindergartens and child care centers. This law intends to provide aboriginal children with access to early childhood education programs as well as to grade schools, with the hope that the education system will be able to preserve and expand upon aboriginal cultures. Since 1999, the Ministry of Education in Taiwan has allocated funds to implement five projects in educational priority regions, which includes Kui-whai.

The Impact of Government Policy on Curriculum and Pedagogy of Kui-whai Kindergarten Program

In this section, I will discuss the goals of the five projects that resulted from the Taiwan government's policy on the education of aboriginal children. Based on my research at the Kui-whai kindergarten program, I will integrate the implications of each of these projects for the children, teachers, and parents in this kindergarten program.

Project 1: The first project intends to establish a comprehensive educational system for aboriginal children that includes: appropriate educational regulations, administrative system, vocational education, special education, connections between different levels of school systems, educational evaluation and monitoring system, and early childhood education. Kui-whai's full-time kindergarten was first established under this project funding. Referring to this project, a parent stated:

The new policy allows us to send children to kindergarten for free. Otherwise, some children may not have education at all. Our tribal community has many single parent families or children living with grandparents, or re-married double families.

To bring the children to Kui-whai each day, a teacher assistant rides in a van from 5:30 a.m. until 9:30 a.m., picking up children from different locations around the mountain. For some children, the only decent meal they will eat all day is provided at school. To educate aboriginal children, schools and teachers are no longer just engaged in teaching and learning; they are also attending to the basic survival needs of these children.

Project 2: The second project intends to improve preservice and inservice teacher training, as well as improving job prospects for aboriginal youth. Lily, one of the Kui-whai kindergarten teachers and half aborigine, has taught for the past six years, along with an assistant teacher. With the support of this funding, she completed her master's degree. Lily has made positive changes in her classroom practices and designed authentic learning experiences to motivate Atayal children and their communities.

Project 3: The third project is designed to enrich the curriculum and instruction of aboriginal education to promote the teaching of aboriginal languages and cultures, promote multicultural curriculum and teaching, and evaluate the effectiveness of curriculum and instruction. This project incorporates children's culture into the classroom practices and recognizes it as a form of knowledge, thereby helping to address the conflict between mainstream and aboriginal cultures (Gay, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Thomas, 2002). In the past six years, the Kui-whai kindergarten, driven by this newly established policy, has adopted a bilingual and bicultural approach to its literacy and arithmetic curricula.

Project 4: The fourth project is designed to promote parenting education, which includes research on parenting styles and practices of aboriginal groups, as well as policies and laws related to aboriginal parent involvement and education. At Kui-whai, Lily invites her students' parents to participate in their children's birthday celebrations, teach traditional dances and songs, demonstrate how to cook customary meals, and join in on various other cultural lessons inside or outside the classroom. She even visits each child's home regularly on days when school is not in session. Lily talks to the parents about their children and records the important things that parents share regarding their children. The practice of regular home visits reflects the commitment of the Kui-whai kindergarten program and the teachers' dedication as they extend their expertise and guidance to children's families and the community.

Project 5: The fifth project is designed to integrate multicultural perspectives in every aspect of schooling and for all grade levels, with the goal of promoting respect and understanding among ethnic groups. This project addresses educators' and researchers' concern that Taiwan's education system has failed to integrate aboriginal perspectives in the curriculum, leading to a variety of problems for aboriginal children in mainstream schools. For example, Chi and Liu (2002) reported that Atayal aboriginal children encountered more adaptive problems than children who were of the Hart (the mainstream) race. Aboriginal children's traditional culture, community environments, family background, and learning styles are not compatible with the Han schooling system. Therefore, there is a growing realization among educators and policymakers that in order to provide equal educational opportunities to aboriginal children, the curriculum and pedagogy for aboriginal education must be culturally responsive. Lily is continually developing many teaching resources for aboriginal curriculum at the kindergarten level. She states:

I have changed my daily ritual incrementally. I used to set one hour in the afternoon for them to learn the [Atayal] dialect (the mother tongue) and the rest of day to learn the mainstream cultural content in reading, writing, and arithmetic skills.

She continues,

Now, I embed their mother tongue and Atayal culture into daily lesson plans. I invite different local Atayal tribal people and parents to teach children in Atayal dialect on how to make an arrow for hunting, to make Atayal food in bamboos, to make "helgn," a type of Atayal food, to catch fish and shrimp, to find wild plants to eat, to sing Atayal songs and Atayal dances. I also bring students to services in the indigenous church. Our field trips include visits to indigenous police station, stores, local mushroom farms, and peach orchards.

Lin (2003) concludes that it is more effective to use Atayal children's own culture in the curriculum, suggesting that if it is not possible to change the mainstream curriculum structure, then one should at least try to connect students' home culture to the mainstream culture. With the evidence from the Kui-whai kindergarten, it can be concluded that Lily's curriculum and pedagogy are more effective, because she encourages the Atayal children to use their own cultural schema to construct their educational lessons in academic areas, such as reading their own stories, writing about their daily experiences, and learning the concept of numbers through manipulating objects in their everyday environment.

In recent years, the Taiwanese government and private news agencies have disseminated more positive information regarding aboriginal cultures to the public, gradually replacing the age-old stereotypes held by Taiwan's mainstream people.

Reflection

When I visited this kindergarten classroom, looking at those cheerful young aboriginal children, I knew that their parents and teachers harbored many hopes for them. The challenges they face in mainstream schools are complex, involving many economic, political, cultural, and societal factors (Banks, 1994). When teachers neglect the problems of cultural conflict or cross-cultural issues, however, the cultural minority children feel frustrated and their process of adaptation to the mainstream classrooms becomes more difficult (Gay, 2000; Ogbu, 1992). A preservice teacher in my class once shared the following observation:

As teachers, we cannot neglect the fact of cultural differences. Rather, we need to respect diversity and celebrate it. I failed some courses at university often because of my poor verbal and written communicative skills in Chinese and lack of confidence to speak up individually in public, I failed a freshman Chinese course because in our language, we often put [a] verb at the end of each sentence that is completely different with the mainstream Chinese language.

The Kui-whai curriculum highlights what can be accomplished when different sectors of a community cooperate. Aboriginal people have rather large families, and so they are not used to communicating individually or competing with each other. Their primary way of communication is through group dance and songs. If the curriculum integrates such ways of learning and doing, it will facilitate aboriginal children's interactions with people outside their tribal groups and ensure their success in educational institutions.

The Kui-whai kindergarten program successfully adapts new policies and translates them into bicultural and bilingual curriculum and pedagogical practices. Lily and her teaching assistant design culturally responsive pedagogy that involves students, parents, and community, such as inviting parents to teach part of the lesson in the Atayal language and integrating cultural perspectives. Lily's emphasis on developmentally and culturally appropriate curriculum derives from her belief that the successful education of aboriginal students is possible if the responsibility is shared by teachers, parents, and the local community. As Lily says, "Love them, remind them of their responsibilities, and let them be responsible." For teachers in the Kui-whai kindergarten, the most important issue is to make education meaningful to those involved (Lipka & Brinthaupt, 1999; Raymond, Butt, & Townsend, 1992).

Conclusion

Government policies can very well be translated into culturally appropriate classroom practices, but commitments from teachers and parents are also critical to this process. The education of aboriginal children in Taiwan is a vehicle for achieving educational equality for children of all ethnicities. Culturally sensitive government policies can help aboriginal children become contributing citizens. Through their cultural ways of learning and doing, aboriginal students can learn new ways to communicate and interact with mainstream society, gain autonomy in making important life decisions, and build their motivation.

Note: According to the latest figures from the Aboriginal Committee of the Government of Taiwan, Republic of China (2002), approximately 84,600 Atayal natives live in Taiwan.

References

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Chang, J. C. (1997). Between politics and education: Regional cultural education in Taiwan. Paper presented at the Education of Regional Cultural History international Conference, Taipei, Taiwan.

Chi, H., & Liu, S. (2002). The learning world of Tai-ya children. Wha-Lian Normal College Journal, 10, 65-100.

Gay, G. (2000). Ethnic and cultural diversity in curriculum content. In G. Gay (Ed.), Culturally responsible teaching: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 111-146). New York: Teachers College Press.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465-492.

Lin, M. H. (2003). Action study on cultural relevant pedagogy--Social study class in a Tai-ya tribal fifth grade classroom. Unpublished master's thesis, Wha-Lian Normal College, Taiwan.

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Raymond, D., Butt, R., & Townsend, D. (1992). Contexts for teacher development: Insights from teachers' stories, in A. Hargreaves & M. G. Fullan (Eds.), Understanding teacher development (pp. 143-162). London: Falmer.

Thomas, D. E. (2002). Culture and schooling: Building bridges between research, praxis, and professionalism. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Witherell, C., & Noddings, N. (Eds.). (1991). Stories lives tell: Narrative and dialogue in education. New York: Teachers College Press.

http://tourism.pu.edu.tw/nativetravel/web/ abo//Atayal/Atayal-7.htm 4/10/05

http://others.apc.gov.tw/popo/9401/ aprp5123.htm 4/8/05

Cecilia Lingfen Chang is Assistant Professor, Department of Child Development and Education, Kindergarten Teacher Training Program, Ming Hsin University of Science and Technology, Taiwan.