Te Kōhungahunga—GDip ECE

Key teaching practices for the Graduate Diploma ECE are practical aspects of teaching that beginning teachers should be able to do from their first day.

Teaching Council Aotearoa New Zealand Values, Code and Standards

• Integrate the Teaching Council New Zealand values and Code of Professional Responsibility commitments into their professional practice.
• Maintain confidentiality, trust and respect.
• Make and meet professional requests appropriately.
• Actively make use of knowledge of children’s heritages, languages, identities and cultures to engage responsively with all children.
• Actively seek to recognise and address unconscious bias and racism in their own practice.
• Demonstrate commitment to the ECE service and the teaching profession.
• Demonstrate ethical behaviours in relation to informed consent, participation, beneficence and non-maleficence in all aspects of practice.
• Contribute to a professional culture that upholds the Teaching Council Code of Professional Responsibility.
• Clearly demonstrate appropriate professional boundaries with children, whānau and colleagues.
• Actively engage as an advocate for transformative education for tamariki and whānau, and for teachers and the profession.

Standard 1: Te Tiriti o Waitangi Partnership ǀ Te Hononga Pātui i Raro o Te Tiriti o Waitangi

Recognise mana whenua and whānau, hapū and iwi knowledges, and affirm tamariki Māori as Māori

• Act as a kaitiaki for the environment and living things, drawing on local knowledge about place.
• Offer new knowledge or resources to contribute to centre Tiriti-led practices.
• Demonstrate culturally affirming teaching practices.
• Design learning that starts from a position of supporting children’s cultural ways of knowing and being.
• Articulate the expectations of Māori whānau for their learners.
• Draw on the cultural contexts of Māori ākonga.
• Incorporate local Māori knowledge, Māori pedagogies and place-based learning into teaching and learning.

Model the use of te reo and tikanga Māori in all aspects of the learning and teaching programme

• Demonstrate growth in te reo and tikanga applicable to the local Māori community.
• Model appropriate practices such as pēpeha, mihimihi, and koha.
• Draw upon Te Whāriki and Tātaiako to inform Tiriti-led practices.

Standard 2: Professional Learning ǀ Akoranga Ngaiotanga

Provide evidence of ongoing critical reflection (including relating to role as a Treaty partner) that enhances learning and wellbeing for a group of ngā tamariki

• Use critical reflection to strengthen practices and pedagogies that enhances learning and wellbeing for ngā tamariki.
• Draw on feedback, prior reflection, research and professional literature when setting and implementing goals for developing own practices.
• Consider how own life experiences, cultural identity, ancestral and family histories and assumptions and beliefs impacts on interactions with teachers, children and whānau in the centre.
• Identify where there are gaps in own knowledge and actively seeks to address these.
• Articulate reasons for choosing specific teaching strategies and interactions.
• Articulate and provide a rationale for their philosophy of teaching and learning.
• Strive to achieve congruence between espoused philosophy and actual practices.

Collaborate with colleagues in respectful, open, and critical professional discussions

• Collaborate with others in professional discussions to implement and evaluate new ideas for children’s wellbeing and learning.
• Articulate the interface between Te Whāriki and own practices.
• Participate in team-wide professional learning opportunities when available and appropriate.

Standard 3: Professional Relationships ǀ Ngā Hononga Ngaio

Participate with children, their whānau and colleagues in culturally respectful dialogue

• Develop rapport with, and engages in warm, responsive and respectful interactions with children, whānau and colleagues.
• Proactively develop relationships with all children who attend the immediate setting.
• Seek different perspectives and to demonstrates through practice how the knowledge and histories that children, teachers and whānau bring are valued in the centre.
• Actively participate in the team, contributing to team culture and wider centre community activities.
• Explain and begin to use multiple approaches for working collaboratively with whānau.
• Develop relationships with whānau to gain insights into individual children’s learning.
• Share understandings and information about children’s wellbeing and learning with children, whānau and colleagues positively and professionally.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the centre context and structure and how these relate to the community it serves and influence teaching and learning.
• Interact with adults to promote positive images of children.

Draw on the TCANZ values, Code and Standards to address professional or ethical dilemmas

• Understand centre processes and systems for raising professional concerns and uses these appropriately when/if concerns arise.
• Use Code and Standards to inform decision-making about meeting professional responsibilities.

Proactively apply strategies to meet professional responsibilities and enhance personal wellbeing

• Take responsibility for proactively managing personal wellbeing.
• Demonstrate negotiation skills and ability to compromise.
• Explain and demonstrate strategies and approaches for building respectful relationships.

Actively foster respectful relationships, and listen carefully and responsively to children and whānau

• Take opportunities to advocate on children’s behalf with other adults.
• Be attuned to and affirm children’s learning dispositions.
• Attentively attuned to peer dynamics.
• Guide and support children’s interactions and behaviours with others positively and with empathy, using inclusive strategies.

Standard 4: Learning-Focused Culture ǀ He Ahurea Akoranga

Demonstrate in-depth understanding of individual children’s ways of being, knowing, doing and relating, and whanau contexts

• Use initiative to observe, scan for, and foster a safe, inclusive and engaging holistic environment for all children and their whānau.
• Accurately identify and respond equitably to all children’s play intentions, aspirations, and concerns.
• Effectively contribute to centre rituals and routines that support all children, their whānau, and teachers to manage daily transitions.
• Acknowledge Individual children’s unique expertise in interactions.

Explore diverse ways of working with Pacific peoples in order to sustain children’s languages, cultures and identities

• Develop and begin to use a diverse repertoire of effective teaching strategies to sustain languages, culture, and identity.

Draw on relevant resources, expertise and professional learning opportunities to respond inclusively to support children’s wellbeing, learning, growth and development

• Support all children with sensitivity and identify safe opportunities for them to take chances, overcome difficulties and persist with solving problems.
• Adjust practices to match individual children’s temperaments and styles.
• Promote and facilitate interactive relationships amongst the community of children.

Develop pedagogical approaches that address the affordances of the physical, emotional and spiritual environments

• Foster children’s awareness of their own and others’ physical and emotional safety.
• Address the limitations and maximise the affordances of physical and digital learning environments to achieve equity goals (e.g., gender, culture, diverse abilities).

Standard 5: Design for Learning ǀ Te Hoahoa Akoranga

Carefully observe children’s interactions with people, places and things

• Gain and use assessment information in a professional, ethical manner.
• Recognise children’s learning dispositions in action.
• Seek and use assessment information from children, parents and colleagues to notice, recognise and respond to children and their learning interests and dispositions.

Intentionally draw on theory and research to inform analysis of observations, working in collaboration with teachers, whānau and children

• Recognise and address the inter-related and holistic nature of children’s wellbeing and learning in assessment and planning practices.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the centre context and structure and how these relates to the community it serves and influence teaching and learning.
• Use a wide repertoire of observational techniques to support assessments and inform teaching decisions.
• Contribute to the assessment and documentation of children’s learning within the centre.

Provide a wide range of experiences that attune with and extend children’s interests

• Use understandings of children’s wellbeing and learning to inform their planning and teaching decisions.
• Demonstrate understanding of children’s individual learning progressions and supports their learning to become more complex and integrated over time.

Participate within a teaching team to critically draw upon theory, research and the curriculum to inform pedagogical approaches

• Use in-depth understanding of Te Whāriki, Tātaiako and Tapasa to guide planning and practice.
• Demonstrate appropriate and intentional use of child- and teacher-led learning experiences.
• Access and use the environment and resources, including those in the community, to support, challenge and extend children’s engagement and learning.
• Set up environment to enable children to independently access and adapt learning resources.

Standard 6: Teaching ǀ Te Whakaakoranga

Work with children in ways that support their wellbeing, growth, learning and development

• Demonstrate responsiveness to dimensions of diversity evident amongst centre community through interactions with children (e.g., gender, culture, linguistics, special needs, family make-up).
• Engage in sustained, genuine conversations with children around their learning interests.
• Engage in facilitation across all domain areas.
• Recognise and respond to children’s working theories in the moment and over time.
• Provide affirming responses that strengthen the development of children’s learning dispositions.
• Actively use co-construction as a teaching strategy to promote both own and children’s learning.

Maintain an awareness of the wider environment whilst working with a group or individual child

• Read and use children’s non-verbal communication skillfully.
• Recognise opportunities for, and facilitate meaningful play experiences.
• Foster children’s curiosity.
• Support children’s decision making, critical thinking and creativity.
• Offer clear feedback to children on their learning, using a credit-based approach.
• Support children to develop and practice negotiation and group participation skills.
• Plan and engage in sustained learning experiences with individuals and groups.
• Actively support children to develop and use strategies for independent and collaborative learning.

Work across the full range of the curriculum, engaging meaningfully with all children

• Recognise individual children as experts in particular fields and values and calls upon their expertise as well as on their own.
• Encourage children to re-visit prior experiences and make links with the wider world.
• Assist children to identify next learning steps.
• Use teaching strategies that promote higher order thinking and transferral of learning.
• Intentionally draw on a range of teaching strategies to work effectively with all learners, including EAL learners.