L&P1 2a Curriculum, Teaching As Inquiry & Epistemic Relations

We believe that it is important to get an overview of what we (the profession) are saying about education and asking of those working and learning in it. We encourage you to look for where there are connections and where there are gaps. Who is represented in these documents and who is not? What is the focus of each of these documents and what is that pathway for learners that has been designed?

Te Whāriki: The early childhood curriculum framework

He whāriki hei whakamana i te mokopuna, hei kawe i ngā wawata.

A whāriki that empowers the child and carries our aspirations.

Services are expected to design their own curriculum drawing on the broad definition in Te Whāriki, where curriculum is described as:

“the sum total of the experiences, activities, and events, whether direct or indirect, which occur within an environment designed to foster children’s learning and development.”

All early learning services are required to meet the Curriculum Standard as part of their licensing requirements and this is assessed by the Education Review Office on a cyclical basis.

In designing this curriculum, our role as Kaiako is to respond to:

• parents’ aspirations
• children’s language culture and identity
• their strengths and interests
• current research and practice
• and the aspects of learning that sit within the strands of Te Whāriki

Te Whāriki places the child in the middle of the curriculum – as the learner engaged with the learning environment, surrounded by various levels of learning: home, family, and the service; the adult environment and networks; and the nation’s beliefs and values about children and their learning and development.

…key aspects of sociocultural perspective include:

• Having a holistic (the whole child) view of curriculum;
• Seeing teaching and learning as connected;
• Developing space for child-initiated learning;
• Being a co-constructive teacher and learner; and
• Working in partnership with families/whānau.

Te Whāriki – the revision

The updated Te Whāriki consists of two documents in one: Te Whāriki: He whāriki mātauranga mō ngā mokopuna o Aotearoa Early childhood curriculum and Te Whāriki a te Kōhanga Reo. The first (which retains the title of the original 1996 document) is for use by all early learning services except kōhanga reo affiliated to the National Trust. The print edition of the two documents is formatted as a flipbook. The curriculum for ngā kōhanga reo, previously described as part B is now identified as Te Whāriki a te Kōhanga Reo.

The two documents describe alternative curriculum pathways of equal status. Both share a common framework of principles and strands.‘Te Whāriki’ can be used as a short title for either document/curriculum (or, informally, the combined documents) as long as it is clear from the context what is meant.

The revision was deemed important to reflect:

• High participation in ECE
• Younger children in ECE for longer
• Māori medium pathways
• Ethnic and cultural diversity
• Digital tools
• Global consciousness
• Changes in theory and practice
• Communities of Learning | Kāhui Ako – personalised learner pathways
• Systems challenge of equity and excellence

… the aspiration for children, bicultural structure, principles, strands and goals remain the same. In this way Te Whāriki remains a unique and visionary framework for lifelong learning. 

Te Whāriki as a bicultural curriculum

The next section is drawn from pages 18-21 of Te Whāriki, the four principles that form the foundation of Te Whāriki. Look closely at the ways in which each principle to those elements specifically speak to our bicultural responsibilities.​

Whakamana|Empowerment:

This principle means that every child will experience an empowering curriculum that recognises and enhances their mana and supports them to enhance the mana of others. Viewed from a Māori perspective, all children are born with mana inherited from their tīpuna. Mana is the power of being and must be upheld and enhanced.

Kotahitanga|Holistic development

Human development can be thought of in terms of cognitive (hinengaro), physical (tinana), emotional (whatumanawa), spiritual (wairua), and social and cultural dimensions, but these dimensions need to be viewed holistically, as closely interwoven and interdependent. For Māori the spiritual dimension is fundamental to holistic development because it connects the other dimensions across time and space.

Whānau tangata|Family and community

The wellbeing of each child is interdependent with the wellbeing of their kaiako, parents and whānau. Children learn and develop best when their culture, knowledge and community are affirmed and when the people in their lives help them to make connections across settings. It is important that kaiako develop meaningful relationships with whānau and that they respect their aspirations for their children, along with those of hapū, iwi and the wider community.

Ngā̄ hononga|Relationships

It is through responsive and reciprocal relationships with people, places and things that children have opportunities to try out their ideas and refine their working theories. For this reason collaborative aspirations, ventures and achievements are valued. Connections to past, present and future are integral to a Māori perspective of relationships. This includes relationships to tīpuna who have passed on and connections through whakapapa to, for example, maunga, awa, moana, whenua and marae.

Teaching as Inquiry (TIA) 

As kaiako we are called to critically reflect on our classroom practice so that we can examine the impact of our teaching actions on the learning of our ākonga. Today, as you begin your mahi to become a kaiako, we want you to think about who you are as inquirers and how this inquiry mindset is a valuable stance for our role as kaiako.

The 8 Passions according to Dana (2009)

Dana was able to categorise the inquiries of her teachers as centred on

• The child
• The curriculum
• Content knowledge
• Teaching strategies/techniques
• Beliefs about practice
• Personal professional identity
• Social justice
• Context

But how will you know…?

How will you know if you have improved?

• Will you try out techniques, strategies, approaches? (Style)
• Will you inspect results? (Outcomes)
• How will you know what has caused this improvement (or what isn’t working)?

What Teaching As Inquiry (TAI) is…

A research-informed investigation into the relationship between your teaching actions and children’s learning. (NZC p35)

Systematic intentional study of one’s own professional practice. (Cochran-smith 1993)

Effective Pedagogies

 According to the NZC 2007, P35

• Creating a supportive learning environment
• Encouraging reflective thought and action
• Enhancing the relevance of new learning
• Facilitating shared learning
• Making connections to prior learning and experience
• Providing sufficient opportunities to learn
• Teaching as inquiry

Epistemic Relations

What is a person?

One view of education is that it must produce (manufacture?) the kinds of people that society (aka the economy) needs. In this view, what constitutes a person (or a variety of official types of person) is predetermined by the economy – it is the responsibility of the education system to produce these kinds of people.

In another, somewhat contradictory view of education, the purpose is to support each child to flourish in the ways that are appropriate for them, to become a unique person. In this, what constitutes a person is always an open question, each person is thought of as being in a state of being in becoming. The nature of a person is never known in advance but is always in a state of movement from who they just were to a new person in emergence.

The question of what constitutes a person, what is a person?, lies at the heart of your work as a teacher. Teachers who subscribe mostly to the first view, have pedagogical practices that are different to teachers who subscribe to the second view. Of course, other views of education exist including hybrid versions of the two given above.

What is a sociological perspective?

…adopting a sociological perspective means looking at a particular social context in terms of the social practices contained within it, how they inter-relate and the holistic effects the enactment of social practices have on people and the environments they live in. In this perspective we are not concerned with the effectiveness of a practice in achieving its own goals (except insofar as this effectiveness itself is also part of analysis of effects in the social field)

To illustrate the sociological perspective, consider a particular pedagogical practice such as the use of materials to support children to learn about multiplication. This practice may be very effective in producing children who are much better at multiplication than other practices, but this is not the concern in a sociological perspective. In this perspective, we want to know about things like what such a practice means to the identities of children (especially those who despite such an effective pedagogy, do not grasp multiplication), what the practice conveys to children about how to be legitimate in the classroom and, by extension, in society and life. We might also consider the effects this has for the teacher who promotes such a practice within the school. Connections might also be made between the nature of the practice and the prevailing ideological climate in general society.

Legitimation Code Theory

A very recent development in sociological theory is called Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) which centres its work on the concept of legitimation (for more see the website https://legitimationcodetheory.com/ ). The originator of this theory, Karl Maton, calls it a ‘practical theory’ because its aim is to provide teachers, schools and researchers with practical tools with which to analyse their practices, those of the fields they work in and to make effective changes to them.

In LCT, a social field, your classroom for example, is thought of a configuration of knowledge and a configuration of people. The way knowledge is thought of and the way people are thought of are inter-twined and can be set up in different ways.

…the NZ Curriculum provides a structure for knowledge. …

…knowledge at one level develops from the knowledge gained at lower levels.

LCT also provides two sub-concepts that are helpful when thinking about epistemic relations (this is just how knowledge is thought of in your classroom) – ontic and discursive.

Thinking ontically and thinking discursively

An ontic epistemic relation means that you regard knowledge as something to be generated from an engagement with the real world in which you find yourself.

A discursive epistemic relation means that you regard knowledge as already known and presented to you in the form of a discourse, an organised ‘plan’ of what the knowledge is, what it means and how it is structured, learned and reproduced.

…ontic and discursive relations are not mutually exclusive. 

Using the concepts of ontic and discursive epistemic relations

…  different learning areas of the NZC have different epistemic relations. Mathematics may have a strong discursive epistemic relation and performing arts a strong ontic one for example.

Where in your teaching programme do you provide opportunities for students to engage with real issues, to come to their own conclusions and solutions about them, and to experience real success and failure. Where in your teaching programmes, do students gain real knowledge about themselves and the actual nature of te world they live in? These are all important questions about the balance of discursive and epistemic relations in your work with students.