CONTENTSAnga – framework, support, structure, scaffold.
The 'anga' in raranga refers to a framework, or scaffold. In effective review, we structure the process to maintain our overarching purpose of working together towards improvement. Effective review enables us to explore our practice critically and to consider how we might become even better through knowing what we do well and what we need to improve.
Throughout the process, we were moving back and forth between preparing and gathering and could go on doing that forever. It's very easy to forget that eventually you have an obligation to make sense of it all and to do something with that information!
We seek to continually enhance our practice to provide relevant and meaningful learning opportunities for children. Review gives us a way of knowing what we do well and what needs to be improved in order to act on this knowledge. Our commitment to ongoing improvement contributes to the capacity of our learning community to determine its own direction and future. This is sometimes expressed as self-determination or tino rangatiratanga.
Knowing that the purpose of review is to improve our practice enables us to celebrate achievements and highlight aspects of practice for change. In doing so, we create an environment of enquiry in which we seek to acknowledge and act on areas for improvement rather than justify our practice through review.
Inevitably there will be challenges to face and change to manage when we engage in effective review that is underpinned by a commitment to improve our practice. The strength of our relationships will determine our ability to sustain these challenges and face change. Change is always easier to cope with when we have been part of the review process and especially when we are involved in the decision making. We can manage the changes together, knowing what led us to make decisions and why. We accept that there is more to learn and that we all play a part in building the capacity of our learning community to improve the quality of our curriculum whāriki for children. We embrace a culture of shared responsibility and critical reflection as we move forward together. We have a process that allows us to be confident in answering these questions:
- What aspects of our practice are we doing well?
- What aspects of our practice do we need to improve?
- What do we need to do as a result of what we have learned about our practice?
Our answers are informed by evidence that we have generated through preparing, gathering, making sense, and deciding. Improvement that takes place as a result of effective review is based on judgments that we have made about our practice in order to be accountable to others and to reach higher standards of education for our children.
[Effective review is not determined merely by how much or how well we gather information.] There needs to be a commitment to scrutinize such data, to make sense of it, and to plan and act differently as a result.
2001, page 101
It is our commitment to making sense of the information and deciding what to do as a result of the evidence that impacts on the extent to which review can bring about improvement.
