Key teaching practices and indicators

Teaching Council Aotearoa New Zealand Values, Code and Standards

• Understand their responsibilities in upholding the professional commitments to all elements of the code.
• Maintain confidentiality, trust and respect.
• Meet professional requests appropriately.
• Use professional language (i.e., avoids slang, provides accurate language models for children).
• Actively seeks out knowledge about the diversity of the heritage, language, identity and culture of all children in their practicum setting.
• Reflect on  the implications of unconscious bias and racism in their own practice.
• Work to put in place appropriate professional boundaries with children and whānau.
• Gain and use pedagogical information in a professional, ethical manner.
• Request permission to view  and use assessment information about children to inform their teaching.
• Initiate discussion for half-way report.
• Follow centre policies.
• Reflect on and set goals for their role as advocates 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 awareness of centre policies pertaining to Te Tiriti o Waitangi
• Pronounce words correctly, especially children’s names
• Actively support centre Te Tiriti-based policies and practices
• Incorporate elements of te reo and tikanga Māori into their own practices on a daily basis
• Model kaitiakitanga, respect and care for the local physical environment and living things
• Demonstrate a commitment to culturally affirming teaching practices and locally relevant curriculum
• Draw upon Te Whāriki and Te Whatu Pōkeka to inform Tiriti-led practices

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

• Reflect on, and adapt, own professional practices, informed by knowledge of the local context, research, theory and course content.
• Draw on prior reflection and seek feedback when setting and implementing goals for developing own practices.
• Actively work to develop own content knowledge to support and extend children’s interests and learning dispositions.
• Strengthen own understandings of the connections between children’s wellbeing and learning, Te Whāriki and relevant theories.
• Beginning to articulate teaching strategies, theories and values that underpin their practice.
• Contribute to discussions about Te Whāriki, children’s wellbeing and learning.

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

• Communicate positively, professionally and caringly with children and their families about what they have observed.
• Interactions with colleagues and parents are characterised by respectful, positive attitudes.
• Actively work to develop relationships with all children who attend the immediate setting.
• Demonstrate attunement towards and link children’s efforts to their developing learning dispositions.
• Increasingly attuned to peer dynamics.
• Demonstrate openness to hearing different perspectives and to valuing the knowledge and histories that children, teachers and whānau bring.
• Actively participate as a member of the team and seek opportunities to become involved in the life of the centre and centre community.
• Relate well to children, families/whānau and teachers from different cultural backgrounds.
• Take opportunities to find out about individual children from teachers and parents.
• Take initiative and approach parents and whānau in a relaxed, professional manner.
• Explain multiple approaches for working collaboratively with whānau.
• Beginning to share information about children’s wellbeing and learning with parents in positive, professional manner.
• 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 range of strategies to proactively manage personal wellbeing.
• Demonstrate negotiation skills and ability to compromise.

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

• Observe children and scan wider environment to enable optimal responsiveness to children’s play, learning, and wellbeing.
• Accurately identify and partner with children in their play intentions, aspirations, and concerns.
• Effectively support individual children to manage daily transitions.
• Interactions are built on a view of children as competent and capable.
• Affirm children for taking chances, overcoming difficulties and persisting with solving problems.
• Developing and beginning to use a repertoire of effective teaching strategies to sustain languages, culture, and identity.
• Support children when taking chances, overcoming difficulties and persisting with solving problems.
• Encourage children to take increasing responsibility for their own actions and toward others.
• Requests and reinforcement of limits are framed in terms of what children can do (providing children with alternative strategies/ behaviour).
• Adapt physical and digital environment 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.

• Demonstrate increasing understanding of Te Whāriki, and beginning to use to guide planning and practice.
• Make connections between children’s wellbeing and learning, and relevant theories of learning and development.
• Beginning to recognise children’s learning dispositions in action.
• Share emerging understandings of children’s learning, based on observations.
• Developing confidence in using a repertoire of observational techniques to support assessments and inform teaching decisions.
• Use observational data to inform planning for curriculum experiences.
• Engage with the complex, non-linear nature of children’s learning.
• Beginning to contribute to the assessment and documentation of children’s wellbeing and learning within the centre community.
• Seek assessment information from children, whānau and colleagues to notice, recognise and respond to children’s perspectives, interests and learning dispositions.

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 around their wellbeing, interests, and learning.
• Use non-verbal communication effectively and sensitively attunes/ responds to children’s non-verbal cues.
• Responses affirm and strengthen the development of children’s ideas, learning dispositions, and play strategies.
• Recognise opportunities for, and facilitate meaningful play experiences, drawing on a range of resources and domain areas.
• Actively listen to children’s contributions, provide adequate time and space for children’s input, and provide children with opportunities to make choices.
• Foster children’s curiosity.
• Praise and encouragement are specific.
• Encourage children to revisit prior experiences and make links to the wider world.
• Attune practices to fit individual children’s temperaments and styles.
• Facilitation of curriculum experiences takes account of participatory needs and aspirations of all children, including EAL learners.
• Offer clear feedback to children on their learning, using a credit-based approach.
• Assist children to identify further learning opportunities.
• Recognise individual children as experts in particular fields, and values and calls upon their expertise as well as on their own.