Intro / Project description
Kia Puāwaitanga aims to support Year 9 and 10 learners to flourish by responding to the changing literacy, assessment and NCEA expectations through the development of educationally powerful connections between this school and its home communities. Using school evidence and past literacy initiatives, we have identified how literacy learning could be improved for Years 9-10, low-progress learners. A structured, home-school collaborative approach to accelerate skills for reading and writing has been agreed and key staff and community members are spreading these understandings and practices to taitamariki and whānau. Changes are being monitored and outcomes will be reported on.
Aims
Educators, taitamariki, and whānau are challenged by the changing literacy, NCEA and assessment expectations required of them. This becomes increasingly important for those entering secondary schooling. Kia Puāwaitanga aims to respond to this challenge by using educationally powerful connections with the wider school-community to promote a better understanding of these requirements and respond more successfully with taitamariki at years 9 and 10. Through whānau relations (whānautanga) our inter-dependent aims include experiencing increased understandings and feelings of value and support to promote:
- Greater motivation, wellbeing and engagement with learning.
- Increased sense of belonging in the learning environment.
- New ideas being interpreted through and learned in association with cultural knowledge.
- Motivation and wellbeing directly working together to influence our ability to learn and retain new knowledge.
The overall aim is that by the time taitamariki have to sit these assessments they will have the confidence and skills to apply this knowledge.
Why is this research important?
The changing literacy and assessment expectations will continue to influence the future pathways of taitamariki. Our young people are our future leaders and whānau and iwi want to contribute to more positive solutions for their tamariki-mokopuna.
Kia Puāwaitanga will work to ensure these changing requirements don’t continue to detrimentally influence the expectations through which many educators, taitamariki and whānau view them and subsequently respond to them. Disrupting the beliefs of those who suggest “they/I can’t” to “they/I can” is essential towards changing the current disparity of school leavers that continues overall, to see Māori achieve lower than their non-Māori peers.
What we plan to do
Existing school data is providing an understanding of the current situation from which we will establish the need to promote a two-way sharing of high expectations and literacy knowledge between the school and its home communities. This includes identifying and working with two purposively selected cohorts of learners at years 9 and 10. Each cohort provides the range of abilities across the cohorts and includes students from Māori medium (bilingual) and English medium settings.
- Data
Pre and post measures, specific to the chosen literacy interventions are being gathered when taitamariki engage with the interventions. These measures will be contextualised and understood within the school’s wider related data. Post intervention, interviews-as-conversations will be gathered to understand the experiences of participating taitamariki, whānau and māhita.
- Analysis
Quantitative data will be presented together with three collaborative stories to show the different experiences and realities of each group, to verify interpretations and to clarify outcomes for the school and its community.
