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)

Involving families and whānau in assessment – Te kuhunga mai o ngā whānau

Families and whānau know their children well. They must be included in the mutual feedback loops that contribute to informal and formal assessment in early childhood settings. In the case of infants and toddlers, parents and whānau are often able to fill gaps in the teachers’ understanding or to explain the learning with reference to events and circumstances beyond the early childhood setting. They are able to widen the horizon, to extend the view of the other adults in the child’s life. This book, for instance, features documented assessments of Michael (pages 19 to 21) as he develops a sense of identity at his centre and at home. Through his relationships with the people in those settings, he is able to actively take on multiple roles – a helper, a brother, and a friend. The feedback loop in this case includes Michael’s twelve-year-old sister Roberta, who provides a written assessment of what her eighteen-month-old brother is able to do and is enthusiastic about.

Huhana Rokx (2000) points out the value of collectivism and interdependency in Māori tradition. Teaching and assessment by peers is commonplace. In a discussion of Māori methods of teaching and learning, Arapera Royal Tangaere (1997) describes the concept of tuakana–teina as it is derived from the two principles of whanaungatanga and ako1:

"Tuakana means older sibling (brother to a boy or sister to a girl), and teina a younger sibling (brother to a boy or sister to a girl). Therefore the idea of the learner taking on the responsibility of being the teacher or tuakana to her or his teina is acceptable and in fact encouraged from an early age. This is the essence of love and care for one another in the whānau. It reinforces the principles of whanaungatanga."

page 12
  • 1 “The word ako means to learn as well as to teach. In the Māori world therefore it is an acceptable practice for the learner to shift roles and become the teacher, and for the teacher to become the learner.” (Royal Tangaere, 1997, page 12)