Margaret Carr

A framework for teaching learning: the dynamics of disposition

This paper draws on examples from New Zealand early childhood settings to illustrate a dynamic approach to learning dispositions. It sets out three dimensions along which a ‘learning curriculum’ can strengthen valued responses to learning opportunities: increasing their frequency and robustness, widening their domain, and deepening their complexity and competence. It is suggested that learning environments can be variously affording, inviting or potentiating (powerful) and that in potentiating learning environments teachers explain, orchestrate, commentate on, model and reify learning responses, and frequently the families and children participate in these processes as well. Although the question of ‘what’ learning dispositions is set aside, the paper argues that it is better for teachers in early childhood settings and classrooms to be explicit about valued responses and their trajectories than to leave them implicit, and therefore often unacknowledged and unattended.

Choosing a Model. Reflecting on the Development Process of Te Whariki: National Early Childhood Curriculum Guidelines in New Zealand∗

Abstract This paper reflects on the process of developing national curriculum guidelines for early childhood from the experience in New Zealand. Developing national curriculum guidelines in New Zealand during 1992 involved accessing current knowledge of child development, of learning, and of international early childhood practice. The development also involved complex interconnections between the nature of early childhood in New Zealand and its history (the setting), the opinions, ideas, and practice of current practitioners (the consultation), and decisions about which framework should be constructed (the model). The latter three aspects of the curriculum development process are the subject of this paper. Four possible models are briefly outlined, and then the New Zealand model is described. ∗Paper presented at The First Warwick International Early Years Conference University of Warwick 22nd–26th March 1993.

Technological Affordance, Social Practice and Learning Narratives in an Early Childhood Setting

This paper investigates the relationship between the affordance of the materials and the tools in one activity in an early childhood educational setting and the learning of the group of participating four-year-olds. The affordances are analysed as transparency, challenge and accessibility. The childrens learning is analysed as emerging learning narratives that comprise intent, response to difficulty, and patterns of responsibility. Two major themes emerged from the investigation. The first is that historically- and socioculturally-determined social practice played a central role in the affordance of the activity. The second is that the relationship was a transactional process in which, through mediated action, the learners edited, selected from, and altered the educational setting, while at the same time the activity changed the learners. The research findings are set within the literature on affordance, learning narratives and social practice, with particular but not exclusive reference to early childhood settings.

Young children reflecting on their learning: teachers’ conversation strategies

A two-year research project with teachers in nine different early childhood centres was designed to explore and extend opportunities for young children to reflect on their learning. This was described as children becoming ‘wise’ about their learning journeys; the aim was to find ways to assist them to articulate their understanding of what they had learned and how they had learned it. The location for extending these abilities and dispositions was children and teachers talking together as they revisited and reviewed documented learning events. This paper highlights the strategies that worked well for thoughtful conversations, and comments on those strategies that did not. It argues for the value of children as co-authors in conversations about their learning; these conversations can contribute to their developing views about how they learn and assist them to construct continuities of the learning that is valued in this place.

Learning and teaching stories: Action research on evaluation in early childhood in Aotearoa-New Zealand

SUMMARY During the past decade a number of countries have developed national curriculum statements and frameworks for schools and/or early childhood services. New Zealand is one of these. Margaret Carr and Helen May co-ordinated the early development of Te Whaariki, the New Zealand early childhood curriculum. The development of Te Whaariki posed particular challenges towards ensuring that the processes for assessment and evaluation are in the interests of children and their families and fit alongside the Principles of Te Whaariki itself. This paper provides a brief, summary overview of the Principles and framework of Te Whaariki, and of subsequent assessment and evaluation research. Our framework of “Learning and Teaching Stories,” a “user-friendly” approach to assessment and self evaluation, was trialled in an action research project located in six early childhood centres in three different regions of New Zealand. The paper discusses action research as a process for self-evaluation, and the implications of the findings of this phase of the project for early childhood self-evaluation practices.

Understanding the Te Whariki Approach : Early years education in practice

1. Acknowledgments and an Introduction 2. Setting the Stage for Te Whariki 3. The Development of Te Whariki 4. Cultural Identity and Language 5. Principle One: Nga Hononga / Relationships 6. Principle Two: Kotahitanga / Holistic Development 7. Principle Three: Whakamana / Empowerment 8. Whanau Tangata / Family and Community 9. Weaving: Documentation, Assessment and Planning 10. Teachers as Researchers 11. The Future

Let me Count the Ways. Analysing the Relationship between the Learner and Everyday Technology in Early Childhood

The first part of this paper outlines four ways in which the relationship between the learner and everyday technology might be analysed, using early childhood studies as examples. The four different individual-technology relationships are described as: affording, anchoring, distributing or appropriating. They are associated with four different learning outcomes: skills and problem-solving strategies, working theories or schemas, personal style and abilities, and membership of a learning community. Each succeeding example describes an increasingly complex model of the relationship between a learner and everyday technology that departs from a focus on the individual as the site for learning. The second part of the paper then sets out a fifth example in which the relationship is analysed as a combination of all four processes: affording, anchoring, distributing and appropriating. In this fifth example the learning outcomes are described as learning narratives (a combination of learning dispositions).

Young children developing meaning-making practices in a museum: the role of boundary objects

A kindergarten, housed in a museum building in the centre of the capital city of New Zealand, has provided a unique opportunity for young children, teachers and university researchers to explore opportunities to learn with, and from, a museums artefacts and exhibitions. The authors have researched the ways in which the children constructed meaning from the displays and the knowledge offered by the museum. This article explores the childrens learning when they visited one of the special exhibitions during the first year of an action research project. We highlight their developing boundary-crossing competence and meaning-making practices and explore the role of ‘boundary objects’ in this learning. This article focuses on some of these objects and considers the way in which (associated with dialogue) they contributed to highlighting and strengthening the learning opportunities in the museum.

Some Thoughts about the Value of an OECD International Assessment Framework for Early Childhood Services in Aotearoa New Zealand.

To fairly and truly judge what a person can do, you need to know how the talent (skill, knowledge) you are assessing is situated in – placed within – the lived social practices of the person as well as his or her interpretations of those practices. ... many a standardized test can be perfectly ‘scientific’ and useless at the same time; in a worst case scenario, it can be disastrous. (Gee, 2007: 364)

An affordance network for engagement: increasing parent and family agency in an early childhood education setting

Research from the United Kingdom suggests that early childhood centres that operate from a multi or integrated service model, offering opportunities for parents to attend to a range of their needs and aspirations, increase the ability and the inclination of families to engage with their childs learning at the early childhood centre. Integrated service models of early childhood education are a relatively new concept in Aotearoa New Zealand and it is only within the last three years that the government has introduced initiatives based on integrated services in early childhood education. This article reports on one initiative at one early childhood centre involved in the implementation of integrated services: the establishment of a playgroup for parents and caregivers with babies and toddlers. The authors analysed the impact of one of these initiatives, applying the notion of an affordance network for engagement as opportunities that are available, inviting, and personalising: a framework that described affordances that progressively increased the possibilities of agency for the families.