Key teaching practices and indicators

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

1. Recognise mana whenua and whānau, hapū and iwi knowledges, and affirm Māori children as Māori
2. Model the use of te reo, tikanga, and Mātauranga-a-iwi in all aspects of the programme

  • Demonstrate continued growth in te reo me ngā tikanga applicable to the local Māori community.
  • 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.
  • Planning starts from a position of supporting children’s cultural ways of knowing and being.
  • Draw upon Te Whāriki and Tātaiako to inform Tiriti-led practices.
  • Model appropriate practice such as pēpeha, mihimihi and koha.
  • 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.

Standard 2: Professional Learning ǀ Akoranga Ngaiotanga

3. Provide evidence of ongoing critical reflection (including relating to role as a Treaty partner) that enhances learning and wellbeing for a ngā tamariki
4. Collaborate with colleagues in respectful, open and critical professional discussions

  • Use critical reflection to strengthen practices and pedagogies that enhances learning and wellbeing for ngā tamariki.
  • Consider how their life experiences, cultural identity, ancestral and family histories and assumptions and beliefs impact on their interactions with teachers, children and whānau in the centre.
  • Draw on feedback, prior reflection, research and professional literature when setting and implementing goals for developing own practices.
  • Identify where there are gaps in own knowledge and actively seek to address these.
  • Articulate reasons for choosing specific teaching strategies and interactions.
  • 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 their own practices.
  • Participate in team-wide professional learning opportunities when available and appropriate.

Standard 3: Professional Relationships ǀ Ngā Hononga Ngaio

5. Participate with children, their whānau and colleagues in respectful dialogue
6. Draw on the TCANZ values, code and standards to address a professional or ethical dilemma
7. Proactively apply strategies to meet professional responsibilities and enhance personal wellbeing
8. Actively foster respectful relationships, and listens carefully and responsively to children and whānau

  • 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.
  • Is attuned to and affirms children’s learning dispositions.
  • Attentively attuned to peer dynamics.
  • Seek different perspectives and demonstrate 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 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.
  • Interactions with adults actively promote positive images of children.
  • Guide and support children’s interactions and behaviours with others positively and with empathy, using inclusive strategies.
  • Understand centre processes and systems for raising professional concerns and use these appropriately when/if concerns arise.
  • Use Code and Standards to inform decision-making about meeting professional responsibilities.
  • Take opportunities to advocate on children’s behalf with other adults.
  • Take responsibility for proactively managing personal wellbeing.
  • Demonstrate negotiation skills and ability to compromise.
  • Explain and demonstrate strategies and approaches for building respectful relationships.

Standard 4: Learning Focused Culture ǀ He Ahurea Akoranga

9.Demonstrate in-depth understanding of individual children’s ways of being, knowing, doing and relating, and whanau contexts
10.Explore diverse ways of working with Pacific peoples in order to sustain children’s languages, cultures and identities
11.Draw on relevant resources, expertise and professional learning opportunities to respond inclusively to support children’s wellbeing, learning, growth and development
12.Develop pedagogical approaches that address the affordances of the physical, emotional and spiritual environments

  • 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.
  • Interactions acknowledge individual children’s unique expertise.
  • Develop and use a diverse repertoire of effective teaching strategies to sustain languages, culture, and identity.
  • 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.
  • Foster children’s awareness of their own and others’ physical and emotional safety.
  • Address the limitations and maximises 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

13.Carefully observe children’s interactions with people, places and things.
14.Intentionally draw on theory and research to inform analysis of observations, working in collaboration with teachers, whānau and children.
15.Provide a wide range of experiences that attune with and extend children’s interests.
16.Participate within a teaching team to critically draw upon theory, research evidence and the curriculum to inform pedagogical approaches.

  • Use in-depth understanding of Te Whāriki, Tātaiako and Tapasa to guide planning and practice.
  • Gain and use assessment information in a professional, ethical manner.
  • Assessment and planning practices recognise and address the inter-related and holistic nature of children’s wellbeing and learning.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Use understandings of children’s wellbeing and learning to inform their planning and teaching decisions.
  • Planning shows understanding of children’s individual learning progressions and supports their learning to become more complex and integrated over time.
  • Planning demonstrates understanding of 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

17.Work with children in ways that support their wellbeing, growth, learning and development
18.Maintain an awareness of the wider environment whilst working with a group or individual child
19.Work across the full range of the curriculum, engaging meaningfully with all children

  • Engage in warm, open, sustained, genuine conversations with children that co-constructs understandings.
  • Integrate non-verbal communication effectively in conversations with children and adults.
  • Responses affirm and strengthen the development of all children’s ideas, learning dispositions, play strategies, and their working theories in the moment and over time.
  • Engage in meaning facilitation of children’s play and learning across all domain areas.
  • Foster children’s independent exploration and skills in trying things out.
  • Support children’s decision making, critical thinking and creativity.
  • Recognise individual children as experts in particular fields and value and call 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.
  • Actively support children to develop and use strategies for independent and collaborative learning.
  • Articulate and provide a rationale for their philosophy of teaching and learning.
  • Strive to achieve congruence between their espoused philosophy and their actual practices.
  • Plan and engage in sustained learning experiences with individuals and groups.
  • Support other teachers to engage children in sustained learning experiences by using initiative and stepping in where needed.
  • Support children to develop and practice negotiation and group participation skills.