Implementing Te Whāriki Curriculum in Early Childhood Education: Challenges and Solutions, Study notes of Pedagogy

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A perspective.

Anne Meade

PhD in ECE, and registered teacher with ECE and school teaching qualifications

 Aspirations for children:

 To grow up and competent and confident

learners and communicators, healthy in

mind, body and spirit, secure in a sense of

belonging and in the knowledge that they

make a valued contribution to society.”

( Te Whāriki , 1996, p. 9)

 To become “strong individuals with mana.”

(Tilly Reedy)

   An example of pedagogical guidance.  Programmes for infants must provide:

 One-to-one responsive interactions  An adult who’s consistently responsible for each infant  Sociable, loving and physically responsive adults who tune into an infant’s needs  Programmes adjust to the infant’s rhythm  Partnership between parents and other adults involved. (Excerpts, Te Whāriki , p. 22. Influenced by Pikler principles.)

Learning leads development

Developing the symbolic life of the child

Learning by active participation. the highest form of learning.

Photos from Daisies EE&C Centre, with permission

Te Whāriki outcome: children learn strategies for active exploration, thinking, and reasoning. (Exploration) Children develop skills in using the counting system and mathematical symbols and concepts. (Communication)

 The ECE Taskforce in NZ (2012) identified persistent issues in its implementation for:  Māori and Pacific children, and  Children with special educational needs.

 Other critiques include:  An overemphasis on recording dispositional outcomes at the expense of ‘working theories’  ERO’s evaluation reports show, e.g., enacted curricula are often a truncated whāriki  One approach – narrative assessment – dominates  Progressions in learning are seldom explicit in documentation of learning.

Implementing Te Whāriki curricula and

pedagogy – room for improvement

To me, the report on Working with Te Whāriki (ERO,

2013. indicates that many ECE educators need more professional knowledge to:

 work with Te Whāriki, a non-prescriptive curriculum framework, and design their own curriculum that is fit-for-purpose for those families who are enrolled

 implement a rich, broad, complex curriculum for all

 report the learning progress and outcomes to parents regularly, as well as to schools when the child transitions to school.

 Challenges in developing systems measures

include:

 How would we assess: strengthening of mana?  Would ECE for 3 and 4 year olds be privileged at the expense of infants and toddlers if measures of learning outcomes were used before starting school?  Who could or would develop indicators for valued outcomes like, “ Has strategies for active exploration ”?  How would we ensure that assessments don’t put positive dispositions toward learning at risk?  What about the “tapestry for life”? (Tilly Reedy)