Overview

The teachers were convinced that learner capabilities needed to sit alongside curriculum content in importance. However, they had been unable to explain and report on the extent, nature, and value of all this learning and were looking for way to do this.

It’s a different way to learn. You’re not learning from the teachers — you’re learning from your classmates and everyone around you, and when you talk about it together, that’s when you’re actually learning.

Student at story hui

The teachers discovered the story hui approach and believed they could use it with their students as a form of narrative assessment. The teachers knew that in order for their students to be engaged, relationships needed to be further enhanced and student voice needed to be at the forefront of their own learning achievements. They believed story hui might heighten what their regular formative assessments were already capturing.

The initiative to explore story hui was to give voice over to students where they could take charge of their successes and teacher voice took more of a background position.

What was novel about their approach was that they included the students in the inquiry project team so that teachers and students were sharing their learning stories. In that way, all participants took part in the reflection, data collection, and action to improve learning.

As a result, the balance of power shifted, and students and teachers had more open and trusting relationships. Teachers could ask more of the students in their learning. Using storytelling in this way shifted the classroom culture to one where many more successes were celebrated, and everyone developed a changed view of what success could be.

Sharing successes raised achievement levels across the curriculum as a consequence of the development of trusting relationships between students and teachers due to the story hui process.

The inquiry story

The inquiry project included three teachers and a pilot group of 12 students in an innovative learning environment, and two research supporters, and took place from mid-2017 to mid-2018.

What was the focus?

The focus was on giving students their voice to explain successes they had experienced or how they were behaving differently. The teachers also wanted to learn what would happen to their practice as a result of using this form of narrative assessment. Their inquiry question was:

“What changes happen to current teacher-led practice when we give students ownership and agency by using narrative as an assessment-as-learning tool?”

Using the story hui approach, which they had modified for use with students, all the participants prepared their own learning stories, rather than the teachers writing them about the students.

What did the teachers try?

Outside the classroom, the teachers took part in a series of story hui workshops with the two research support advisors and the students who had been chosen to be part of the project. They shared their own learning stories at these workshops, using a ‘most significant change’ evaluation method that identifies within each story the most important themes leading to success. Sharing their stories and what they learned from each other helped establish a sense of ako between the project members.

Between these workshops, the teachers and students met regularly for story hui about the successes they were experiencing. As a follow-up to these story hui, students shared their learning stories with their parents and whānau. One of the story hui trials led to them being used for whānau conferences about students’ behaviour change, in which the students took the lead.

Story hui have their own tikanga, and all the participants had to adopt a specific role, such as storyteller, drawer, listener, timekeeper, or questioner. They all respected the key principle of story hui; ‘The mana stays with the storyteller’. Participants asked facilitative questions, didn’t judge or give advice, didn’t interrupt the storyteller, thanked the storyteller at the end, and, if they were drawing, gifted the story back to the teller. Teachers were bound by the same rules, so they were only able to speak for a small percentage of the time and had to step back from a facilitation or guidance role.

What happened?

Teachers got to know all their students holistically and became more in touch with them as individuals. They learned to use all students’ cultural backgrounds and experiences to support their learning, rather than that of just a few. It also became obvious to the teachers that this was because the students felt safe and trusted the teachers enough to share.

Teachers started to create opportunities for students to have their voice heard in a more spontaneous manner.

The students’ attitudes to the teachers changed from seeing them as experts who will tell them what they need to know, to being people who can learn alongside the students and who have their own struggles and fears.

As they became more familiar with the story hui process, both teachers and students started to ask different questions. Previously, teachers had generally asked leading questions that would elicit the information they wanted to hear, and questions weren’t necessarily connected to students’ responses. Now, the questions build on information the storyteller presents and are more connected to what students have said. Students have also adopted this approach; they now make connections through questioning and influence the discussion pathways.

Teachers moved from guiding students’ learning stories in terms of the curriculum, to focus more on the process rather than the product. Students still shared their curriculum successes, but, through questioning, they also shared capabilities that were not recognised or known parts of the pathway to successful outcomes. Students valued every success as important, no matter how big or small.

Students quickly took ownership of the storytelling, particularly with their parents or whānau, and spontaneously used the story hui approach outside the classroom or whānau conferences. Teachers adjusted their understanding of their role as leaders in the process after they found they were learning from the students and sometimes being a novice.

What did they learn?

Teachers learned that they needed to talk less and listen more. Being unable to direct the discussions at the story hui meant they learned the benefit of leaving more space for student voice.

They learned that not asking leading questions to guide the storyteller to a particular answer or outcome encouraged the students to share more and go more deeply into their stories. Teachers learned how to use questions to help students reach this depth. Their way of asking questions during story hui has become their regular way of asking questions in the classroom.

The principle of reciprocity inherent in ako doesn’t separate the learner from their whānau, and the teachers have now gained more empathetic relationships with students and their whānau through the story hui.

Students’ view of success changed, and they are now more open to a broader perspective about what success means for them and that it is not always academic.

The story hui process had a significant impact on the teachers’ professional lives. It confirmed the importance of taking the time together to listen and question, build an environment of real trust, and be in strong, committed, and unified teams. They found it was important to be vulnerable with each other, to tell their educator stories, and support each other to reflect deeply on their practice.

Inquiry team

• Kerri Thompson — Project leader
• Sandra Howard — Teacher
• Rochelle Burglass — Beginning teacher

They were supported by:

• Anne Kenneally — Core Education
• Liz Stephenson — CORE Education

For further information

If you would like to learn more about this project, please contact the project leader Kerri Thompson at kerri.thompson@tamateaint.ac.nz or Sandra Howard at sandra.howard@tamateaint.ac.nz.

Reference list

Benson, J. (2017) Learner Agency, a literature review: Why, How and What? CORE Education, Forthcoming.

Davis, K. (2006) ‘It’s much more muddled-up than that.’ A study of assessment in an early childhood centre. (MEd. Dissertation. University of Canterbury, New Zealand.) Retrieved from https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10092/3828/Thesis_fulltext.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Davies R. (1996). An evolutionary approach to facilitating organisational learning: An experiment by the Christian Commission for Development in Bangladesh. Retrieved from https://mande.co.uk/special-issues/most-significant-change-msc/

Dart J., Davies R. (2005). The ‘Most Significant Change’ (MSC) Technique: A Guide to Its Use. Cambridge, UK

Education Review Office. (2015). Educationally Powerful Connections with Parents and Whānau. Retrieved from http://www.ero.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/ERO-Educationally-Powerful-Connections-FINAL.pdf

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Education Review Office. (2016). School Leadership that works: a resource for school leader. Retrieved from http://www.ero.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/School-Leadership-that-Works-Nov-2016.pdf

Kenneally, A. (2016). Capturing the ‘Voice’ of the learner. CORE Education blog, retrieved from http://blog.core-ed.org/blog/2016/12/capturing-the-voice-of-the-learner.html

Ministry of Education, New Zealand (2009). Narrative assessment: A Guide for Teachers: a resource to support the New Zealand curriculum exemplars for learners with special educational needs. Learning Media Ltd

Ministry of Education. Story Hui. Retrieved from http://elearning.tki.org.nz/Professional-learning/Story-Hui2

Stevenson, L. (2015). Story Hui — a Design for Social Good. CORE Education blog. Retrieved from: http://blog.core-ed.org/blog/2015/04/story-hui-a-design-for-social-good.html