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.

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

Continuity and change in the learning community – Te motukore me ngā nekeneke i roto i te hapori akoranga

Continuity and change in the learning community – Te motukore me ngā nekeneke i roto i te hapori akoranga

One way of looking at the assessment of continuity is as a record of the ongoing development of the learning community. Sometimes records of continuity will be from the viewpoint of the teacher, sometimes the child, and sometimes whānau and the wider community. It is not always possible to see the full picture of continuity because frequently only one perspective is documented.

In the exemplar “Like something real”, the assessments include a widening of the “real” community to include visiting experts: a truck driver and roadworks team. Ezra clearly found asking questions of the experts to be of of great interest. Likewise, the developing documentation in Fe‘ao’s portfolio (pages 27–37) illustrates the involvement of the family in adding to the continuity story. In “Te rakiraki”, Atawhai becomes a member of the learning community. His visit is documented along with a record of the difference he made to the children’s lives and learning. Exemplars in Books 2 and 3 show families and whānau becoming participants in an early childhood centre’s learning community.

Other examples of continuity and change in the learning community are found in the records of what happens in gardening projects. Often, the lens shifts from the project to the individual or small group and back again. In Book 5, the exemplar “Growing trees” records a centre’s first birthday celebration and the community planting and caring for trees over time. The exemplar “The mosaic project” in Book 2 describes what happens over two years as the children make mosaic pavers and pots for the centre’s environment.

Continuity and community are closely interconnected with identity. Mere Skerrett-White (2003) makes this clear, referring to Mason Durie’s aims for Māori: to live as Māori, participate as citizens of the world, and enjoy good health and a high standard of living. Of the first aim (writing about her research in Te Amokura Kōhanga Reo), she says:

"Kia marae, to live as Māori, is as much about language and identity as it is about culture and tradition. This study argues that intergenerational Māori language transmission raises self-assured young people who self-identify as Māori. Te Amokura Kōhanga Reo centralises the role of language to identity formation and ensures access to oracy and literacy in te reo Māori with increasing complexity."

page 297

Barbara Rogoff (2003) defines human development as “a process of people’s changing participation in sociocultural activities of their communities [emphasis added]. People contribute to the processes involved in sociocultural activities at the same time that they inherit practices invented by others” (page 52). In line with this sociocultural stance, she comments that “Often developmental phases are identified in terms of the person’s developing relationships and community roles” (page 150).