Te Waharoa

Te Waharoa is a metaphor for our values, vision and conceptual framework of our teacher education.

Te Puna Akopai, the School of Education, holds a vision of transformative initial teacher education, where our graduates are agents of change for teaching, learning, and wellbeing. Central to our programmes is a commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi. This is the foundation for how we engage with student teachers and how we build the strong partnerships with centres and schools that are central to enacting our collective vision.

Thank you for joining with us in initial teacher education and the work of ensuring high quality future teachers for the profession.

Te Waharoa is a taonga to Te Whānau o Ako Pai, and a reflection and reminder of the substantial and foundational legacy of Te Whare o Akopai, Wellington College of Education, Karori, for our initial teacher education programmes.

Te Waharoa archway with Mātauranga going up the right hand side pillar, Whanaungatanga along the top of the arch, Te Reo Ngā Tikanga on the right hand side pillar, with Wairua in the middle of the archway. Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Mana Whenua, Tangatarua underpinning everything along the bottom.
Te Waharoa archway with Mātauranga going up the right hand side pillar, Whanaungatanga along the top of the arch, Te Reo Ngā Tikanga on the right hand side pillar, with Wairua in the middle of the archway. Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Mana Whenua, Tangatarua underpinning everything along the bottom.

Te Waharoa

  • Mātauranga - incorporates Māori worldviews, emphasise criticality, and insist on depth of knowledge.
  • Mana Whenua - is culturally located and place-based.
  • Te Reo me Ngā Tikanga - builds and sustains te reo and tikanga Māori.
  • Tangatarua - fosters tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti identities and aspirations, including those of Pacific and migrant communities.
  • Whanaungatanga - promotes inclusion, relationality, and collective success.
  • Wairua - enhances the spirit of education, including creative and embodied learning.

Our conceptual framework: A glimpse

The features of Te Waharoa – te koruru (the carved face on the gable), ngā maihi (the bargeboards), ngā raparapa (the projecting carved ends of ngā maihi), and te ara hāpai (the pathway beneath) – structure the conceptual framework of this programme.

Te koruru: We are committed to transformative education

Transformative education is a central goal of our programmes and encompasses both the transformation of teacher professional identities that student teachers develop, as well as their ability to transform education in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Important interconnected aspects of transformative education in our programme include:

  • Deep teacher knowledge for informing change: including research-evidenced knowledge, contextual and cultural understandings, pedagogical and content/disciplinary/domain knowledge, and knowledge about the place of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the effects of colonisation, and tikanga and te reo Māori.
  • Education for now and the future: including being able as teacher to critically consider the future of learning and teaching, curriculum and educational systems and tools and processes of the digital age to prepare tamariki and ākonga for their present and their future lives, preparing children and young people to engage with future challenges, wicked problems, and the digital age.
  • Social, cultural, and ecological justice: including helping student teachers to take a critical stance to social justice and change, to understand educational achievement as related to historical and structural oppression, to focus on tenets of sustainable and equitable living, and to consciously contribute to addressing persistent social and environmental challenges through education.
  • Inclusive education: including through promoting full participation of those with diverse abilities, specific learning needs, cultures, languages, and identities.

Te ara hāpai: Our graduates are reflexive, adaptive, and ethically sensitive

Transformation requires change. We aim to develop teacher identities through the knowledge and experiences of the programme.

  • Reflexivity: Reflexivity is the ability to critically reflect on practice and make change to practice. It is central to advancing social, cultural, and ecological justice goals.
  • Adaptive expertise: Adaptive expertise is teachers’ ability to flexibly adapt their knowledge and skills when making teaching decisions. It involves adjusting teaching actions in light of the teaching situation and differentiating teaching strategies to accommodate learners’ diverse needs and abilities.
  • Ethical sensitivity: Teachers in all educational contexts must be sensitive to the ethical commitments and challenges of practice and take seriously their responsibilities towards children and young people.

Ngā raparapa: Signature pedagogies for skilled practitioners

Our interconnected pedagogical approaches ensure that graduates become skilled practitioners. The pedagogies enhance emotional, imaginative, cultural, and participatory knowledge and competencies and can help transform teacher identities.

  • Culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogies (te reo me ngā tikanga) involve understanding cultural characteristics, experiences, and perspectives of ethnically diverse students and their funds of knowledge and mobilising these effectively within teaching.
  • Creative, relational, and embodied pedagogies (whanaungatanga, wairua) emphasise learning that includes and goes beyond ‘thinking’ and encourages imagination and innovation. Our student teachers will experience creative, embodied, and relational pedagogies as they connect coursework to their personal and teaching experiences.
  • Critical pedagogies of place (Te Tiriti o Waitangi, mana whenua, tangatarua) are responsive to environmental, cultural, and social issues of local contexts, and to addressing injustices. These pedagogies promote shared responsibility and develop a love of the environment and equip student teachers with expansive knowledge for global citizenship.
  • Domain and disciplinary pedagogies (mātauranga) recognise and foster relevant discipline-specific teaching and learning approaches for each sector. Pedagogies in early childhood care and education take a sociocultural perspective, where children are viewed as capable and competent, active and agentic participants in their learning. In primary and secondary programmes, disciplinary-specific pedagogies are based on collectively-evolved knowledge and practices. We focus on inquiry-based approaches to support deep learning and critical thinking.

Ngā maihi: Learning to be a teacher in a collaborative community of expertise

Professional Practice placements enable student teachers to practise teaching within a collaborative community of expertise alongside experienced teachers in Kāinga Akopai (centres and schools that host our student teachers), teacher educators, and parents and whānau. Three elements underpin learning in a collaborative community of expertise:

  • High quality professional practice: Demonstrates effective teaching practices and professional behaviour; enables examination and development of beliefs, dispositions, and teaching skills; helps the development of nuanced views of diverse learners and enable adaptive expertise; scaffolds reflection to foster deep understanding of key interrelationships between practice and theory.
  • Whānau Ako| Professional learning communities: A professional learning community is a group of educators who meet regularly to engage in professional learning to enhance their practice towards helping all children succeed. All our student teachers participate in regular Whānau Ako hui with peers and a teacher educator kaiārahi.
  • An inquiry stance: Inquiry features in our programmes as both a pedagogical approach and as an approach to professional learning (teaching as inquiry). Student teachers learn how to use inquiry approaches to foster children’s learning. They also learn how to conduct their own inquiries into their teaching for professional development.