Kei Tua o te Pae
Kei Tua o te Pae/Assessment for Learning: Early Childhood Exemplars is a best-practice guide that will help teachers continue to improve the quality of their teaching.
The exemplars are a series of books that will help teachers to understand and strengthen children's learning. It also shows how children, parents and whānau can contribute to this assessment and ongoing learning.
We are making improvements to our download-to-print functionality. So if you want a printed copy there are PDF versions available at the bottom of the main cover page.
Pathways to bicultural assessment – He huarahi ki te aromatawai ahurea rua
Pathways to bicultural assessment practice will have the following features:
- Acknowledgment of uncertainty: Teachers will be willing to take risks and to acknowledge that the pathways are not clearly marked out. Advice from the community and reciprocal relationships with families will provide signposts and support.
- Diversity: There is not one pathway; there are multiple pathways. However, all early childhood settings will be taking steps towards bicultural assessment practice.
- Multiple perspectives: Listening to children, whānau, kaumātua, and others from the community is part of the journey.
- Celebration of the journey: The pathways are paved with respect and commitment. The community celebrates the advantages for all of working at the interface of two worlds. All share in celebrating successes and achievements.
- Commitment to the belief that “our development is our learning is our development”: Development and learning are the same process when they are both seen as sited in relationships of mutual participation and respect.
- Meaningful contexts: Learning is about making meaning. Bicultural assessment contributes to making meaning within contexts that make sense in the wider world of people, places, and things.
Te Rōpū Kaiwhakangungu, advisers to the Early Childhood Learning and Assessment Exemplar Project, developed the diagram on the opposite page describing possible pathways towards bicultural assessment.2 This vision for wise bicultural practice has two aspects: outcomes for children and outcomes for assessment practices. The continuum is dynamic (moving forward) and allows for multiple points of entry based on the knowledge, skills, and experience of the learning community. While the speed of development may be affected by a number of factors, for instance, staff changes and other demands, all centres are encouraged to continue to build bicultural understanding and practice.
