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Understanding HīAko

Posted on March 2, 2021 by Rahera Ormsby

From a young age, Māui-tikitiki-a-Taranga was a nanakia visionary, inquisitive and he accomplished a number of great feats helping others to live better lives. HīAko aims to enable Māori learners to discover their potential, ‘te pitomata’ and promote kaupapa Māori ways of engaging with self, others, and knowledge.

The HīAko challenge itself is fast paced, high energy and fun and uses kaupapa Māori approaches to find solutions to real life, localised problems that matter to ākonga and their whānau as speakers of te reo Māori. HīAko provides ākonga with the opportunity like Māui, to think, explore and find solutions to real life issues in order to enrich the lives of others. Māui was far from perfect and he was a great disruptor, which is what is needed also in this space.

HīAko

HīAko is founded within pūrākau, demonstrating a unique approach to learning based on four Māori medium learning approaches:

  • Kia hīanga te ako – discover as you play, play to learn
  • Kia tamaiti te tū, kia Māori te tū – being a child whilst standing in your Māoriness
  • Mā te tamaiti tōna ao e hanga – the child will create his or her own world
  • Ko te tamaiti ko tōna whānau, ko te whānau ko tōna tamaiti – each child brings with them whānau, whakapapa, stories and knowledge that are unique.

What is HīAko?

  • HīAko is a learning programme which believes that whilst playing, huge learning is taking place.
  • HīAko encompasses learning reciprocity, learning enjoyment, learning discovery, learning creativity, and learning collaboration.
  • HīAko endeavours to awaken the potential within, so that new ideas and innovations may occur.
  • HīAko is Māori-centric, fun, and fast paced.
  • HīAko includes time for ākonga to collaborate together in teams to inquire, uncover problems that matter to them, which they would like to try and solve.
  • HīAko encourages teams to research and query solutions to their problems and link with whānau, kura, hapū and the wider hāpori to assist ākonga with their solutions.
  • HīAko is designed so ākonga get to play, tutu, learn, create and harness transformational change within a total immersion te reo Māori environment.
HīAko – powered by CORE Education – Tātai Aho Rau is a kaupapa Māori driven event for tau 6 – 8 ākonga from Māori medium and reo rua kura. Three HīAko events will be held during 2021. More information about the upcoming HīAko events and how to enrol your ākonga coming soon. Visit the website for more!

 

We would like to acknowledge Whare and Hohepa Isaac-Sharland, past facilitators of CORE who designed and delivered the HīAko programme and this content.

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young-innovators

Young innovators rise

Posted on August 18, 2020 by Suzi Gould
young-innovators
Photo by Mark Fletcher-Brown on Unsplash

We don’t have to look too far to see the swell of global crisis and a surge of young people responding with calls for action and innovative solutions. From global activist Greta Thunberg skipping school and inspiring an international climate change movement to Burnside High’s Thomas James inventing a wheelie bin robot for his elderly neighbour.

Young innovators are more visible than ever, and we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg. To thrive at a time of global change we need to tap into values-based innovation and support it in our schools, kura and learning communities. We must think more broadly about how young people are valued and the ways they are enabled to participate in society. What skills do we need to nurture, what spaces could we create, so that all young people can develop innovative mindsets to build better futures?

The time is right

With Covid-19 pressing pause across the globe and impacting our daily lives, we have a chance to slow down, examine our vision, be guided by our values, and develop equitable, inclusive solutions for building healthier communities.

We can draw on the gifts and talents of learners to help problem solve and lead the change we need to see. We can also learn a lot from a Te Ao Māori view of giftedness – that we are all born with our own unique gifts and talents, and that it is our collective energies that unleash these for the good of all.

Renzulli (2002) identifies or expresses a call to leverage “socially constructive giftedness” describing six components that give rise to this:

  1. optimism
  2. courage
  3. romance with a topic or discipline
  4. sensitivity to human concerns
  5. physical/mental energy
  6. vision/sense of destiny

In the national Education Conversation | Kōrero Mātauranga online survey (2019) one young person reminded us how important it is to leverage skills and passions: “Someone who is passionate about something can use that passion in the real world to make a positive impact on society.”

That we have to have people thinking about the future and using their gifts and talents to address wicked problems* and create positive social change sounds sensible. However, AUT University Professor of Education, Jane Gilbert (2015), says “In simple terms, if you want to produce innovators – as we claim we want to – everything you would do is the opposite of what we are currently doing in the education system”.

*A wicked problem is a social or cultural problem that is difficult or impossible to solve for as many as four reasons: incomplete or contradictory knowledge, the number of people and opinions involved, the large economic burden, and the interconnected nature of these problems with other problems. Poverty is linked with education, nutrition with poverty, the economy with nutrition, and so on. (“Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving – Wicked Problem”, n.d.)

 

In order to teach innovation, we have to innovate in our own teaching. Below are some suggestions and tools to support teachers and young people develop innovator mindsets.

Make space (for influence)

While there is a rise in gathering learners’ voices, it is not enough. Would it have been enough for Greta to have her voice gathered? Gathering student voices can perpetuate previous expectations of student leaders. Student voices can perpetuate the norm – those who are involved become more involved, those who aren’t become more discouraged or disengaged.

We need to make space for all young people to identify problems that matter to them and participate in decision making. Seventeen-year-old Jason’s quote in this UNICEF resource guide on the rights of the child, makes the best job of explaining this point, “If you had a problem in the Black community, and you brought in a group of White people to discuss how to solve it, almost nobody would take that panel seriously. In fact, there’d probably be a public outcry. It would be the same for women’s issues or gay issues. But every day, in local arenas all the way to the White House, adults sit around and decide what problems youth have and what youth need, without ever consulting us.”

Participation leads to better decision-making and outcomes. Even our very young learners have ideas and views to be listened to and acted on. The Lundy model of child participation offers a useful framework and checklist that ensures all children have the “space to express their views; their voice is enabled; they have an audience for their views; and their views will have influence”.

Participate and problem solve

“Like that it was our ideas and not something we just had to work on, it was something we were interested in and we got to meet new people. iNVENTIONATOR Student

When diverse groups of people come together to share problems that matter to them they develop an understanding of the different perspectives and values of others and are more innovative. Much of the learning is about how to work with other people, holding your ideas lightly, and experiencing different working models than your own.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) takes a people-first approach to planning learning. It asks us to think about who we will teach and what those learners bring with them before we think about what we will teach. UDL strategies support inclusion and offer a framework for equity and innovation.

“Without a systematic way to interrupt current practice in the classroom the impact of these barriers is repeatedly faced by each generation without significant forward motion to break the cycle once and for all.” Bae, S., Ofiesh, N. S., Blackorby, J. (2018)

“UDL has allowed people to see inequity in places and spaces where they hadn’t considered it before. That has given us a doorway to talk about inequities for Māori.” Janelle Riki-Waaka, CORE Education.

 

Māori innovators are on a rise, with record numbers engaged in research and development in 2019. Māori innovators also and made up nearly half the finalists in the 2020 New Zealander of the Year Awards.

Callaghan Innovation CEO Vic Crone (2019) cautions “the levels of participation are [still] not where they need to be. We’ve got to .. make sure pathways for Māori innovators are clear and compelling.” How might we unleash the powers of innovation in Māori ākonga, so we can cultivate, nurture, and channel their natural gifts for the betterment of everyone?

“Our gifted Māori are not only agents of change in our world, but they possess a sense of identity and mana that contribute to all societies; indigenous or otherwise. Therefore it is our duty to give them the tools to manifest positive change within both worlds.” (Whānau interview, Russell 2013)

Focus on how not what

How do you lengthen your stride and become an innovator? As Scott Doorley of Stanford’s d.school says, “The only way to learn it is to do it.” But there are some powerful frameworks and learning opportunities available to support you in this quest:

Te Tukanga Hoahoa Whakaaro

This framework for possibility and design takes a Te Āo Māori perspective capturing the essence of innovation in the stories of creation; Te Po, Te Whaiao, Te Ao Marama (From out of the Darkness, the World of Being, to the World of Light)

The Liberatory Design process

Liberatory design is a riff on Stanford d. school’s design thinking process to promote equity in design work developed in partnership with the National Equity Project. The goal is to provide a design process that develops one’s self-awareness as an equity-centered designer. You can download a liberatory design card deck to support everyone’s practice.

Make a start with iNVENTIONATOR

You can support your own young innovators to rise through iNVENTIONATOR, a team-based challenge powered by CORE in partnership with the Ministry of Education. It has been designed for students to co-create innovative solutions to real-life problems.

This year CORE and the Ministry of Education are offering two events FREE for gifted learners who want to PLAY. THINK. DREAM BIG!

Virtual event
16-19 November 2020 – four half day sessions

Spaces are limited, so register your gifted learners now! Find out more >

 

“I would like to be a part of INVENTIONATOR because I think it is important that my generation has innovative ideas to solve real-life problems as we’re going to be the ones who have to save our earth.” Student, age 11

References

Bae, S., Ofiesh, N. S., Blackorby, J. (2018) A Commitment to Equity: The Design of the UDL Innovation Studio at the Schwab Learning Center. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from https://slc.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj10231/f/udl_innovation_studio_white_paper_final_2.pdf 

Callaghan Innovation. (2019). Tech, Science and Mātauranga Māori a Powerful Force. Callaghan Innovation. Retrieved 18 August 2020, from https://www.callaghaninnovation.govt.nz/news-and-events/tech-science-and-m%C4%81tauranga-m%C4%81ori-powerful-force. 

How to Start a d.school — Stanford d.school. Stanford d.school. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from https://dschool.stanford.edu/how-to-start-a-dschool. 

Gilbert, J. (2015) Educating for a future we can’t imagine. Idealog. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from https://idealog.co.nz/issues/2015/03/educating-future-we-cant-imagine.

Kōrero Mātauranga. (2019). The voices of young people [PDF]. Kōrero Mātauranga. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from https://conversation.education.govt.nz/conversations/education-conversation/what-you-told-us/voices-of-young-people/.

Ministry of Education, N. Why UDL is valuable. Inclusive Education. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from https://www.inclusive.tki.org.nz/guides/universal-design-for-learning/why-udl-is-valuable. 

Renzulli, J. (2002). Emerging Conceptions of Giftedness: Building a Bridge to the New Century. Exceptionality, 10(2), 67-75. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327035ex1002_2

Wallace-Tidd, M., Strang, E., McCall, C., Edwards, M., & Barnett, A. (2015). Educating for a future we can’t imagine. Idealog. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from https://idealog.co.nz/issues/2015/03/educating-future-we-cant-imagine.

Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving – Wicked Problem. Wickedproblems.com. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from https://www.wickedproblems.com/1_wicked_problems.php. 

Resources  

Dumas, J. (2019). NZ’s Maori innovators are on the rise. bizEDGE. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from https://bizedge.co.nz/story/nz-s-maori-innovators-are-on-the-rise. 

European Union. The Lundy model of child participation [PDF]. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/lundy_model_of_participation.pdf. 

Lansdown, G. (2011). Every child’s right to be heard – A resource guide on the UN committee on the rights of the child general comment no.12 [PDF]. Save the Children UK. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from https://www.unicef.org/files/Every_Childs_Right_to_be_Heard.pdf. 

Liberatory Design — Stanford d.school. Stanford d.school. Retrieved 17 August 2020, from https://dschool.stanford.edu/resources-collections/liberatory-design. 

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Two boys sit at a table looking at a computer screen

Time to get real with reporting

Posted on May 29, 2019 by Katrina Laurie

How relevant is a six-monthly report by the time it gets home?

Yr 4 student using sentence structures to help them articulate their learning.
5yr old using Seesaw to share learning about creating a repeating pattern.

Adapting assessment practices to gather evidence of 21st Century outcomes/skills is becoming urgent!
Providing timely personalised feedback to students which lets them monitor their own progress and develop self-regulatory skills is becoming a high priority!
Connecting with parents/whānau to develop genuine collaboration to help build insights about student’s learning progress and challenges is vital!

Although this is easier said than done, and can feel overwhelmingly challenging, it is also achievable. One strategy is by leveraging digital technologies. “New possibilities for diversifying collection and judgement of evidence Smart technologies allow online, anytime, anywhere, and on-demand assessment” (Murgatroyd, 2018). The benefits by far outweigh the current six-monthly reporting model. Digital tools add to curriculum/assessment alignment challenges by enabling “just in time” assessment close to the learning and an opportunity to engage, deepen and extend the learning conversations.

What’s driving the need for this change? The CORE Education 2019 Ten Trends identify these societal influences when it comes to real time reporting:

  1. Demand for more timely, personalised feedback
  2. Greater emphasis on formative assessment and reporting
  3. Technological developments

Building assessment capabilities

Yr 4 student using sentence structures to help them articulate their learning.
Yr 4 student using sentence structures to help them articulate their learning.

Teachers need to build their own and their students’ assessment capabilities so that they can develop and bring to life formative assessment using digital technologies in their learning environment. Actively involving students is an important part and provides opportunity to develop the language of learning. “The evidence is unequivocal that self and peer assessment practices are strongly associated with student achievement.” (Hipkins & Cameron, 2018). We need to allocate time in our learning programmes for peer to peer assessment conversations and how we respond appropriately to feedback from teachers and peers.

The call for reporting on progress in real time will allow the learning gains of every student to be acknowledged.

Have you considered the following?

  1. Do learners know what is expected? Are they clear on the purpose?
  2. Do learners know what quality looks like? Do they know where they are at with their own learning progress?
  3. Are learners comfortable with giving and receiving feedback? Peer and self assessment/reflection?
  4. Can learners articulate their learning clearly and concisely?
  5. Can they manage their own learning by responding to feedback that was designed to move them forward?

Some practical strategies to get started with learners:

5 year old student using a support sheet to develop digital literacies to share learning.
5 year old student using a support sheet to develop digital literacies to share learning.

If you are starting out with developing the language of learning so students can articulate their learning you might want to support them with sentence structures.

  • I was pleased when…
  • I found out…
  • I now understand…
  • I worked hard to…
  • I practised…
  • It was hard but I managed to…
  • It was interesting when…
  • I used to…but now I…
  • The next thing for me to work on is…
  • I wondered if…
  • Sometimes I need to remember…
  • I tried…
  • Today I learnt…
  • I am proud of…
  • My question is…

Support students to develop digital literacies to move towards becoming digitally fluent (they can choose the digital tool fit for purpose). They will learn different ways to share their learning and the digital tools that enhance this. For example if you are using Seesaw you can develop how to use the different in-built tools (camera, video, voice recording, drawing, labels, links).

Deepening the learning conversations

Relationships between home and school are important! How can we get parents/whānau to engage in more meaningful feedback and conversations beyond responding with ‘that’s cool’ or a ‘like’. We want online conversations to amplify our face to face conversations. Students are our best advocates to move the online conversations to foster collaboration. Once the students have developed confidence with the language of learning they can ask for specific feedback. The following example shows how Clifton Terrace Model School in Wellington launched a school wide approach to deepen learning conversations through students posting on Seesaw.

deepening-learning-conversations-0-2

deepening-learning-conversations-2-4

deepening-learning-conversations-5-8

The next steps

Allow time for students to read the responses and  scaffold how to respond. Initially this could be a “thank you”, then move into using the Key Competencies. How do we respond to positive feedback? How do we respond to constructive feedback?

The principles of effective reporting and information sharing from the Ministry of Education clearly indicate the requirement to move to using digital technologies that enable parents and whānau to see their child’s progress on-line in real time.

To engage further in this conversation go to: https://edspace.org.nz/discussion/view/102871/ten-trend-real-time-reporting. You will find out about what other schools are doing around the shift to real time reporting. Join the conversation and share your thinking or what strategies you are using to approach real time reporting effectively. Will making a shift to real time reporting be a more effective use of teacher time and be more beneficial for students than a six monthly report?

Images taken by Katrina Laurie at St Anthony’s School (Seatoun), all rights reserved.

References

CORE Education. (2019). Real-time reporting. Retrieved from http://www.core-ed.org/research-and-innovation/ten-trends/2019/real-time-reporting/

Hipkins, R., & Cameron, M. (2018). Trends in assessment: An overview of themes in the literature [Ebook]. Wellington: NZCER. Retrieved from https://www.nzcer.org.nz/system/files/Trends%20in%20assessment%20report.pdf

Ministry of Education. (2019). Principles of effective reporting / Reporting to parents & whānau. Retrieved from http://assessment.tki.org.nz/Reporting-to-parents-whanau/Principles-of-effective-reporting

Murgatroyd, S. (2018). New approaches to the assessment of learning: New possibilities for business education. In A. Khare
& D. Hurst (Eds.), On the line—business education in the digital age (pp. 141–155). Switzerland: Springer

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innovation

Auahatanga | Innovation

Posted on April 2, 2019 by Derek Wenmoth

innovation

When Māori first made their way to Aotearoa they used a variety of innovative ways to navigate to places they’d not previously visited. Once on land, their challenge came in finding ways to meet their everyday needs using what was available in this new landscape. Over the ensuing years Māori became adept at using the local flora and fauna to build shelter, make clothing and provide food and medicines to sustain themselves.

Centuries later, the European settlers came, bringing a post-industrial approach to building a life in this new land. These early settlers also had to adapt and improvise to meet their needs – including finding ways of fixing and maintaining the industrial age tools they’d brought with them. Number 8 wire, brought with them for fencing, was readily available and often used as a substitute for the parts that were missing or not working well. Out of this grew the myth of the Number 8 Wire mentality; otherwise known as Kiwi ingenuity.

From these early times both Māori and Pākeha have been identified as practical, problem-solver types, able to invent, fix and create solutions, often through improvisation and clever thinking rather than having access to the level of resourcing available to others. New Zealanders are recognised on the global stage for this number 8 wire mindset, from Rutherford’s work towards the splitting of the atom to Rocket Lab’s launching of a rocket into space.

While we may have grown up thinking of ourselves as the nation with the Number 8 Wire mindset, in our modern world we have become increasingly accustomed to having our problems addressed for us by others who have the knowledge, skill and resources to do this. The Number 8 Wire may have been useful in fixing a mechanical tractor or milking shed machinery, but it’s unlikely to be of use on one of today’s electronically controlled cars or ‘smart’ building systems for example.

Reimagining Aotearoa’s future will require us to innovate in different ways. We will need to connect and strengthen our communities; to disrupt what we’ve known and innovate to find solutions that meet new challenges and effect change. This will be a challenge in a world of increasing complexity and exponential change where our problems won’t only be about how to address our immediate physical needs, but will extend to how to address issues and concerns that affect the way we live and survive as a society, locally and globally.

In the modern world, education becomes even more important for developing the next generation of innovators, problem solvers and creative thinkers. It can ignite a passion for learning and provide students with the tools they need to thrive and succeed in the innovation economy.

Innovation in education requires:

  • Risk taking – valuing the ability to push the boundaries, to think outside the square and to try things even when there’s no guarantee of success.
  • Failure – giving learners permission to fail, to learn from failure and to persist with ideas.
  • Open-mindedness – not limiting one’s thinking to the conventions that exist, but being prepared to embrace new ideas and new thinking.
  • Collaboration – while individuals may be acknowledged for their original ideas and creativity, bringing new thinking to the fore requires the effort of a team.
  • Support – learners need to know that their efforts are supported, that they won’t be penalised for something that doesn’t work but instead encouraged to try again.
  • Resources – innovative activities will require things to get messy at times, with learners requiring access to things that will enable them to experiment with their ideas. Often these resources will exist outside of the school, kura or centre, so community relationships and global connections will become important here.

Innovation is one of the CORE uLearn conference themes this year, The focus questions developed for this strand provide some provocations for participants to consider how they create a climate of innovation in their educational communities:

  • How can we prepare our young people to be innovators and change agents?
  • How might we intentionally teach in ways that promote creativity, innovation, wonder, joy, and a passion for learning.
  • What is the role of inquiry in learning? In teaching? How does this lead to innovation?
  • How do we bring new ideas to fruition in our schools/kura/organisations?
  • How might innovation look and occur from different perspectives and through different cultural lenses?

edSpace is CORE Education’s online network for educators to connect with others, discuss strategies, and share information – join edSpace here. Once you’re there, head to our uLearn discussion forum, and join the discussion about Innovation.

As young people around the world begin to mobilise in response to the growing concerns they have about the problems they see looming on the horizon, we need to think about how we prepare this generation of learners, through developing an innovator’s mindset, so that they become the solution builders.

References
The Genius of Kiwi Ingenuity https://www.motovated.co.nz/genesis-kiwi-ingenuity/
Innovation in the Classroom: Why Education Needs to Be More Innovative  https://philmckinney.com/innovation-classroom-education-needs-innovative/

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