Our Overarching Strategy
We have three Achievement Challenges that we believe are important for the students in our Kāhui Ako, but our main driving pedagogy is Relationships Based Learning.
Achievement Challenge One: Relationships Based Learning: Our goal is to improve relationships and teacher capability across the Kāhui Ako.
Achievement Challenge Two: Social and Emotional Learning: Our goal is to enhance well being by developing social and emotional skills so akonga can successfully participate in learning and contribute to the community.
Achievement Challenge Three: Coherent Pathways: Our goal is to enrich learning opportunities by ensuring coherence and continuity of learning for ākonga.
Why do we need to adopt this overarching strategy?
Evidence from a relationship-based teaching and learning approach, such as Culture Counts Plus, supports our thinking that the way teachers form relationships with tauira and whanau, develop effective teacher pedagogy, and the way leaders lead will make a difference for all of our akonga.
Within Culture Counts Plus, “The findings of Emeritus Professor Russell Bishop’s research, drawn from authentic ‘voices’ of students, families, teachers and school leaders, are focused on the relationships and interactions that occur between teachers and students in the classroom that maximise student success. Together these relationships and interactions have been used to develop and research the effectiveness of a ‘Relationships-based Teaching Profile’. The family-like context for learning in the Relationships-based Teaching Profile focuses on relationship areas such as, agency, care and trust, high expectations, a consistently well-managed learning environment, and a shared knowledge of what the student needs to learn. The interactions within the family-like context for learning consist of teachers drawing on the prior learning of students, the adoption of formative assessment (feedback and feed-forward), the use of co-construction techniques, and student-teacher power sharing.” Culture Counts Analysis of Voices Report, Laurayne Tafa (2017).
What are our indicators?
We have collected baseline voice data from students, whānau, teachers and leaders across all schools in our Kāhui Ako. The voices below have been grouped based on the ‘voice’ or role of the stakeholder. The findings are presented within the context of the enablers and barriers that were found in the discourse:
- An enabler is something that is being practised that will support the effective implementation of Relationships-based Learning and the Department of Education Strategic Plan to achieve identified targets.
- A barrier is something that is not being practised, or is being done poorly, that will have a detrimental or negative impact on the effective implementation of Relationships-based Learning and the Strategic Plan achievement of identified targets.
The change of voice from ‘deficit’ to ‘agentic’ will demonstrate a change in teacher practice and will be evidenced in an increase in student engagement and academic achievement.
By developing a sustainable cycle of voice collection, analysis, teacher observations and coaching we will impact on engagement and achievement across the Kāhui Ako.
Achievement Challenge One: Relationship Based Learning
Why Do We Need To Take On This Challenge?
To accelerate student achievement and improve educational outcomes to maximise progress and achievement particularly for indigenous and marginalised students.
RBL is a methodological approach used to collect, collate and analyse student, family/community, school staff narratives, or voices, is aligned with Emeritus Professor Russell Bishop’s method where interviews are conversations about student’s classroom experiences, the meanings they make of these experiences and what may be considered to improve students’ classroom experiences to inform learning and the maximisation of learner progress and achievement.
For Who?
Students who are marginalised educationally are those who are disadvantaged by what they bring to learning settings being seen as deficiencies rather than these qualities being seen as positive attributes to build upon to promote their learning e.g.indigenous students, migrants, refugees, faith-based groups, students with learning difficulties, students of difference. In summary, all students currently not benefitting from participation in modern education systems.
“Maori students, supported by their whanau were very clear that it it was the relationships they had with their teachers that had the greatest impact upon their learning.”
Achievement Challenge Two: Social and Emotional Learning
Why do we need to take on this challenge?
Well being is vital for student success and strongly linked to learning in NZ and international research shows that many school factors influence student success. Although there is no single measure for student well being the factors that contribute to it are interrelated and interdependent.
The South Taranaki Kāhui Ako community is concerned that the well being of our learners, whānau and staff is not as high as it can be. Our belief is that, as a result, this lower than optimal well being impacts negatively on the progress, learning and achievement for our learners.
Our next step is to take a baseline measure of well being by using the NZCER WellBeing Survey, which will allow us to analyse with greater certainty what aspects of well being should best be focussed on for improvement and therefore, advance our strategic initiatives.
The findings of ERO:
ERO states that the desired outcomes for student well being:
- Students have a sense of belonging and connection to school, to whānau, friends and the community.
- Students experience achievement and success.
- Students are resilient – have the capacity to bounce back.
- Students are socially and emotionally competent, are socially aware, have good relationship skills, are self-confident, are able to lead, self-manage and are responsible decision makers.
- Students understand their place in the world, are confident in their identity and are optimistic about the future.
‘Children and young people learn best when they feel accepted, when they enjoy positive relationships with their fellow learners and teachers, and when they are able to be active, visible members of the learning community.’ Ministry of Education.
For who?
All stakeholders – learners, staff, principals, BOT and community.
Achievement Challenge Three: Coherent Pathways
Why do we need to take on this challenge?
To enrich the learning opportunities for our ākonga by ensuring coherence and continuity of learning, both over the years and across settings.
To improve retention, reduce disparity, and for all school leavers to have viable pathways to contribute meaningfully to our community.
So our students throughout their schooling will be confident, connected, actively involved, lifelong learners.
For who?
All ākonga, but with key transition points.
All secondary school students leave school with qualifications which enable them to go into viable pathways to employment.