Planning for an Effective Teacher Inquiry!

Why focus on inquiry and on Māori and Pasifika student achievement?

The New Zealand Curriculum and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa explain why an inquiry approach to teaching is so important. Since any teaching strategy works differently in different contexts for different students, effective pedagogy requires that teachers inquire into the impact of their teaching on their students (Ministry of Education, 2007b, page 35).

The New Zealand Curriculum describes a cyclical process of inquiry that it calls “Teaching as Inquiry”. The purpose of the Teaching as Inquiry cycle is to help students achieve worthwhile learning that will lead them to become “confident, connected, actively involved, and lifelong learners” (Ministry of Education, 2007b, page 8).

For 2023 I have decided that my learning goals will be to increase my  pedagogical knowledge and skills in  Reading area by further  exploring culturally responsive pedagogies and how I could apply them to enable my Māori and Pasifika students to achieve their full potential.

Therefore, I have chosen The  achievement challenge number 1

Raise Maori student achievement through the development of cultural visibility and responsive practices across the pathway as measured against National Standards and agreed targets for reading Years 1-10.

As said good inquiry happens in teams, as such I had a good discussion with my syndicate team and also with my Senior Syndicate Leader. My Team leader is a Tongan and she works with the local Pasifika team as well and that’s just a blessing for me because she has a wealth of Pasifika Knowledge. Thus, Hevaha Tua’koi has shared some great insight and experience in relation to Pasifika learners. I also had a discussion with the Deputy Principal  Zhydah Petersen and she happily shared her experience with me in relation to our Maori and Pasifika learners at school. After much discussion and thoughts and with the help of these two senior leaders I came up with this Inquiry Focus and I feel it is quite powerful and this will give me a real challenge on how to use culturally responsive teaching and learning in the classroom.

My Inquiry Focus for 2023 is:

Will a focus on cultural visibility and prior knowledge accelerate student confidence and capability in Reading?

References

Ministry of Education (2007b). The New Zealand Curriculum for English-medium     

    Teaching   and Learning in Years 1–13. Wellington:Ministry of Education.

    Available at http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz