Keynote - Part 7

Transcript

Dr Mere Berryman
There’s another really important piece of evidence. What’s important about this is again Phase 3 and Phase 4, the significant difference that was shown in the NZQA data is being maintained by both Phase 3 and Phase 4, and we know that Phase 4 has been in this less time than Phase 3. Well there’s Phase 5, and I want to say Phase 5 hands up. I want to say Phase 5, the purple arrow is you on the backs of Phase 3 and 4. We don’t have to go around and learn another bit and learn another bit and learn another bit. We’ve got smarter because we’ve been able to learn alongside Phase 3 and Phase 4. This term every one of the phases has begun the leadership co-construction meetings and they’re going very well. And next year you will all start your co-construction meetings in the HOD’s and HOF’s departments, with our support.

So Phase 5, there you are, 17 schools. You began last year and I’ve just been around your schools and you are looking sweet, you are humming. You probably won’t be able to see these but you’ll recognise them. I picked up this piece of evidence in one of the phase 5 schools last week. This is pre-Te Kotahitanga and I looked at it and I thought amazing. And according to this teacher and we’ll take it thank you very much, this is as a result of what she’s learned through the Te Kotahitanga process over the year. So I want to draw your attention to those. There are some more of this amazing artwork as you go down the steps, you will see it there. And I want you to see what difference she’s saying working with her Te Kotahitanga team has made. So, numbers are fine, but there’s evidence everywhere and teachers are really looking for that change and I commend you. So what do we know? We know that Te Kotahitanga, the effect of implementation of Te Kotahitanga, the effective implementation of Te Kotahitanga, is challenging, and why wouldn’t it be? Because we’ve taken a very traditional model of education, I would say the most traditional model of education, and we’ve turned it on its head. We’ve moved from a very traditional form of pedagogy like this, to something which is much more exciting. Because it allows students to bring their cultural toolkit into the classroom and have that validated, as an active constructor of knowledge.

Māori students told us that in 2001. We know we’ve got to have some of that traditional transmission, call it what you want. But we also want some of this. Some of this when we can actually use our experiences to determine the learning. We’ve moved from a spiral down, where evidence was being used to show how badly, poorly, put it what you want, disproportionately Māori were achieving in our educational system, to looking at a spiral up model, where evidence is showing the difference that you are making. We know now, with more certainty than ever, that the effective teaching profile can make a difference and that it’s working for Māori students and we must never take our eye off that ball, but it can also work for others. And from the data that I showed you, we can see that this iterative model, this iterative model of Te Kotahitanga, has applications for other settings. Because we know that the New Zealand Māori population is growing. I heard it referred to as the ‘browning of the nation’. My family are not so sure that it’s actually working in that direction, but I’ll go with it.

We also know that there is greater diversity within New Zealand, and also across the world, than there has ever been. And the other thing, and I don’t want to make this depressing, but it’s more highly political and higher stakes than ever before. I need the lights for a little bit of intimacy down here. You ever feel like you’re being watched? Well, here’s a piece of evidence that blew me away. If you feel like you’re being watched, well you are. This is a piece of evidence from the October hits on the Te Kotahitanga website. The depth of the colour green identifies the amount of hits, so the deeper the green, the more hits. So everybody in New Zealand’s watching us, but look at who else is watching us. Because they’re all looking for answers. They’re all looking for solutions. And guess what? You hold the key to some of these solutions. Right, I also said that it was higher stakes than ever and it is. Because this is about our future. It’s about my mokopuna, it’s about Russell’s, it’s about Te Arani’s mokopuna, it’s about your children and your mokopuna. It is absolutely about their future.