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.

The quality of assessment in early childhood education – ERO(external link)

Learning outcomes in Te Whāriki

Learning dispositions and working theories

In Te Whāriki, learning outcomes are combinations of knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Te Whāriki summarises them on pages 44–45, describing them as “more elaborate and useful working theories about themselves [the children] and about the people, places, and things in their [the children’s] lives” and as learning dispositions. These are holistic outcomes that integrate knowledge, skills, and attitudes and also thinking and feeling.

The Hirini Melbourne oriori (lullaby) in Book 1 includes the lines:

"Whāia te māramatanga   
O te hinengaro    
O te wairua     

Seek out the secrets of the
hidden well-spring of your mind
and know the sounds and
dreams of your spirit."

page 2

In Te Wheke, Rangimarie (Rose) Pere says that “Hinengaro refers to the mental, intuitive and ‘feeling’ seat of the emotions. Thinking, knowing, perceiving, remembering, recognizing, feeling, abstracting, generalizing, sensing, responding and reacting are all processes of the Hinengaro – the mind.”3

Learning dispositions and working theories are closely connected to ideas about identity. Étienne Wenger comments that “Education, in its deepest sense and at whatever age it takes place, concerns the opening of identities – exploring new ways of being that lie beyond our current state.”4 Te Whāriki describes learning dispositions as “habits of mind” or “patterns of learning” (page 44). Ron Ritchhart,5 writing about research in schools, also describes dispositions as “patterns” – patterns of behaviour, thinking, and interaction. Ritchhart links these patterns to a learner identity, explaining that the patterns reveal us “as thinkers and learners”. He argues for dispositions as outcomes for education because they turn abilities into action:

"What kind of learning lasts beyond a given year that we can grab hold of to guide our vision [of education]? I contend that what stays with us from our education are patterns: patterns of behavior, patterns of thinking, patterns of interaction … Through our patterns of behavior, thinking, and interaction, we show what we are made of as thinkers and learners … [I]ntelligent performance is not just an exercise of ability. It is more dispositional in nature in that we must activate our abilities and set them into motion." 6

Learning dispositions contribute to working theories about the self as a learner. Te Whāriki upholds the image of children as confident and competent learners by quoting on page 3 (opposite the imprint page) Margaret Donaldson and her colleagues reminding us of the critical role early childhood plays in helping young children shape an identity of themselves as confident and competent:

"By the time this [early childhood] period is over, children will have formed conceptions of themselves as social beings, as thinkers, and as language learners, and they will have reached certain important decisions about their own abilities and their own worth." 7

Assessment also contributes to working theories about the “self” as a learner. (See the research findings on pages 13–14 in this book). In Book 2, Sociocultural Assessment/He Aromatawai Ahurea Pāpori, Caroline Gipps comments on the role that assessment plays in identity formation. Writing about learners revisiting and commenting on the work in their portfolios, Ritchhart comments that “Visitors listen as the students explain their work and then ask questions about the meaning of the work for the students. Through the process, students develop an increasing sense of themselves as learners based on the review of their work.” 8

Learning dispositions are more complex than abilities.9 Inclination and sensitivity to occasion are added to skills and knowledge to become learning dispositions with three aspects: inclination, sensitivity to occasion, and ability. We can think about these three aspects of a disposition as being ready, being willing, and being able. Being ready (kia tatanga) is where a child demonstrates the general inclination, being willing (kia kaikaha) is demonstrated by the sensitivity to the occasion, and being able (kia matau) includes skills (ona pukenga) and knowledge (matauranga).10 All three aspects are necessary for turning ability into action.