“A classroom culture where a kid is feeling culturally comfortable…their identity is being shown and also interwoven into the classroom curriculum.”

Leaia Pelesala
Within school teacher for Te Puke Intermediate

The Poutama Pounamu experts explain the approach to collecting evidence about pedagogy and the importance of developing teachers’ and leaders’ observational skills. This new real-time evidence becomes the focus for teacher learning.

The relational trust that is built reflects the whakawhanaungatanga approach: building culturally responsive relationships of trust and respect to advance a kaupapa.

Disciplined observation

Observation focuses on the evidence of observable behaviours and interactions in the lived curriculum of the classroom.

“It’s hard because your colleagues are the people that you work with and you don’t want to take that in with you. So, you do have to put your professional hat on and get into that frame of mind that this is like a scientific process. You want it to be robust so you’re trying to follow the process the same every time. You’re trying to gather evidence that’s reliable and relevant.”

Ange McAllister
Fairhaven School, Across-school teacher, Te Kāhui Ako ō Te Puke

Professor Berryman explains the challenge of shifting from assuming the effects of classroom practices to carrying out disciplined observation.

“We really want to understand the pedagogy. We really want to understand what excellent looks like and what basic looks like and what every point in between looks like. The better we can gather evidence of what we see, the easier it is to actually go back to that continuum and say: ‘Well, I saw this, and I saw this, and actually when I put those two things together, those are the behaviours that we talked about as pretty basic and what does that mean? What does that mean?’”

Professor Mere Berryman
Director, Poutama Pounamu

Learners at the centre

“It’s a real disrupter to come into a context and actually have to position yourself, not as the colleague, not as the friend, but as the student – the student in the classroom.”

Leaia Pelesala
Within school teacher for Te Puke Intermediate

Along with the different perspectives illuminated through the Rongohia te Hau survey, the validity and reliability of the observational data are critical to moving beyond assumptions about culturally responsive teaching that may be strongly held, but not actually working for Māori or other students.

“It’s a privilege to go into other teachers’ classrooms and to see them in action. But for us the learning is when we get together afterwards, and we moderate. Because really that’s a debate: Have we got the evidence? What do you think? Have you got the evidence to prove that? It’s helping us to clarify where people sit on the continuum and what the continuum looks like as well. It is little things you notice. You start to pinpoint how is this landing for the child?”

Ange McAllister
Fairhaven School, Across-school teacher, Te Kāhui Ako ō Te Puke

Building collective efficacy

“It’s a really important point to make for the people who are undertaking the process of collecting the evidence, but also for the teachers themselves who are being observed, to understand that we’re not actually interested in individuals in this process. We’re interested in understanding what collective practice looks like, so while it is about them, it’s not really about them as individuals.”

Therese Ford
Expert Partner, Poutama Pounamu Research and Development Centre

That such a challenging change process builds deep ownership and collective efficacy amongst teachers and educational leaders reflects the professional learning and development facilitators’ expertise and ways of working.

The evidence about the ‘how’ matters

The Poutama Pounamu research and development team model the way in which the Rongohia te Hau assessment tool is used ethically and responsively. The survey results and the observational data inform co-construction meetings through which facilitators, senior leaders, middle leaders and teachers collaborate to drive ongoing improvement. Evidence is used in ways that are respectful of teachers, focussed on learners, and effective in developing culturally responsive teaching.

Through building pedagogical leadership skills for culturally responsive teaching in principals and other educational leaders, the strategy for sustaining and continuing improvement is advanced.

Evidence-based co-construction meetings

Professor Berryman explains the early shift in approach to the use of evaluation for culturally responsive pedagogical change:

“While this is proving challenging for some, for others, developing co-constructed approaches to school-wide evaluation has provided an important alternative to conventions of evaluation that are misunderstood, somebody else’s responsibility or too focussed on accountability and compliance.

The use of evidence-based co-construction meetings by teachers, facilitators, senior leaders and middle leaders is helping all to understand and take explicit ownership for both the evidence and the solutions.

…Importantly this approach is creating contexts for learning where Māori students are enjoying the learning experience, where they are engaged with learning and where their achievement on national qualifications has begun to show marked improvements.”

(Berryman, 2013, p.160.)

Find out more

Berryman, M. (2013). Leaders’ use of classroom evidence to understand, evaluate and reform schooling for indigenous students. In M. Lai, & S. Kushner (Eds.), A Developmental Approach to School Self-Evaluation, Advances in Program Evaluation 14, pp. 147-161. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Berryman, M. & Bishop, R. (2011). The Te Kotahitanga Observation Tool: Development, use, reliability and validity. Waikato Journal of Education, 16(3), 81-94.

Berryman, M., & Wearmouth, J. (2018). Development of an observation tool designed to increase cultural relationships and responsive pedagogy to raise the achievement of Māori students in secondary classrooms in Aotearoa New Zealand. Journal of Education and Development . 2(2), 32-45.

Education Review Office. (2016). School Evaluation Indicators: Effective practice for improvement and learner success. Wellington: Education Review Office.
See links to School Evaluation Indicators: Domain 2 Leadership for equity and excellence. pp. 22 – 25.