Co-construction meetings
The primary mechanism for the in-school intervention is the establishment of a series of co-construction meetings to establish professional learning communities at a number of levels within the school. Professional Learning Communities are groups of educators whose primary focus is the improvement of student learning and educational outcomes through collaborative problem-solving, based on evidence of students’/groups of students’ educational performance in relation to established goals. These meetings are also prime opportunities for leaders to interrupt deficit explanations about Māori student achievement and to seek alternative explanations, in order that teachers and other leaders are able to work in an agentic manner.
| Co-construction Hui Level | Functioning | Who participates |
| School Level | Term by term problem solving and goal setting pertaining to progress of Māori students towards schools' AREA goals (attendance retention, evidence and achievement). | Principal (Chair), BoT Chair, Senior Management Team members, other staff. |
| HoD/HoF/Deans Level | Using evidence gathered at departmental level, HoDs/HoFs/ Deans co-construct ways that they can support their staff to support Māori student learning. | Chaired by Principal, HoD/HoFs/Deans in turn. |
| Departmental/Class-based Level | Using evidence of Māori student performance in their classes, teachers co-construct ways that can change their teaching so that Māori students can more effectively improve their learning and outcomes. | Chaired by HoD/HoF/Dean (or appropriate delegate) teachers in departments. |
Co-construction meetings and associated follow-up activities ‘provide for iterative sense-making opportunities’ that take leaders beyond superficial understandings of language, culture and identity and their place in Māori learner success. They also have an explicit focus on developing pedagogical leadership and teacher practices that will build strong relational trust, leading to improved outcomes for and with Māori learners. In this way, a distributed leadership pattern is supported within each school that ‘will provide intellectual challenge in a ‘’job-embedded’’ situation’. This pattern of support, alongside the networking programme, ‘will cater for the different circumstances and contexts of principals, senior leadership teams and schools.’
| Principals and the BoT Chairperson will be supported to: Goal
Pedagogy
Institution
Leadership
Spread
Evidence
Ownership
|
Some of the activities that principals and BoT chairs will be supported to lead include:
- setting vision and goals in relation to Māori achievement
- changing the organisational structure and policies to support pedagogic reform
- spreading the reform to include all concerned
- ensuring ownership of the reform
- selecting new staff who will commit to the reform
- changing school policies and processes that limit Māori student achievement
- overseeing the compatibility of assessment and reporting with the school’s aspirations to include parents and community in the education of their students
- integration of all professional development in the school so that all PD is focused on achieving the school’s goals
- ensuring that funding is reprioritised so as to achieve the school’s goals
| The Senior Leadership Team will be supported to: Goal
Pedagogy
Institution
Leadership
Spread
Evidence
Ownership
|
Senior management team members may ensure this happens by:
- inducting new teachers into the school culture
- ensuring quality data management systems are in place and working
- reforming the timetable to allow pedagogic interventions to take place in a quality, sustainable manner
- ensuring that the discipline system works in a way that is supportive and caring of learning classroom relationships
- ensuring that all professional development initiatives work in concert towards the school’s goals
- supporting teachers who are having problems coming to terms with the transformation of the school’s culture
- participating in school HoD/HoF co-construction meetings.
| HoDs/HoFs will be supported to: Goal
Pedagogy
Institution
Leadership
Spread
Evidence
Ownership
|
Some of the ways that HoDs/HoFs may ensure this happens is as follows:
- setting Māori achievement goals for their department/faculty
- gathering evidence of the participation and achievement of Māori students in their department/faculty
- from this evidence, determine the implications for Māori students, for teachers in the department/faculty and for self as pedagogic leaders
- acting as a pedagogic leader for staff to support individual teachers’ pedagogy emerging from evidence of student outcomes and from evidence of teacher observations
- acting as a general pedagogic leader (emerging from aggregated teacher observation data)
- reprioritising funding and resourcing at appropriate levels
- supporting the use of assessment for pedagogic purposes
- participating in co-construction meetings for HoDs/HoFs
- conducting co-construction meetings for subject departments for cross-curricular groupings.