What I’ve been reading and thinking about as I read “Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through projects, passion, peers and play”. Mitchel Resnick (2017) The MIT Press
Reading both for pleasure and for learning has always been one of my values, and while challenging amongst the busy days of education, it is both my sanity and inspiration.
Having been steeped in curriculum design, delivery and assessment for a long time the recently released curriculum refresh Te Mātaiaho is both challenging and exciting. This caused me to think about the way I view teaching and learning in the wider context but also within the learning area of technology.
In his book Lifelong Kindergarten , Resnick describes the gifts of Froebel, the way children learn in in kindergarten and how this approach to education is suited to developing the creative and critical capabilities required in our society.
Creative and critical thinking is identified in the Values and Key Competencies of the refreshed New Zealand curriculum framework Te Mātaiaho as being fundamental to coming together and thriving in our society through
“using creative, critical, and metacognitive processes to make sense of information, experiences, and ideas. These processes can be applied to purposes such as developing understanding, making decisions, shaping actions, or constructing knowledge. Intellectual curiosity is at the heart of this competency.
Ākonga who are competent thinkers and problem solvers actively seek, use, and create knowledge. They reflect on their own learning, draw on personal knowledge and intuitions, ask questions, and challenge the basis of assumptions and perceptions.” (Te Mātaiaho Ministry of Education, 2022 page 20)
Processes such as Resnicks Creative Learning spiral, Stanford University Design Thinking model and our own culturally located design thinking, Te Tukanga Hoahoa Whakaaro support our students to develop critical and creative thinking through real world activities that seek to create new solutions, knowledge and ways of doing things within local, national and global contexts. At the heart of design thinking are the people, the designers, collaborators, end users and wider stakeholders in all developments. Technology in the New Zealand curriculum is based on intervention by design; people designing with people for people, our environments and society, just as the process models mentioned above are people centred beginning and ending with people. The processes are cyclic, iterative and interdependent just as is curriculum design and development.
Therefore, in transferring this process into our local curriculum design using the refreshed framework guided by the whakapapa, whakataukī and pou of the framework we can begin to see how to weave together a coherent and culturally sustaining curriculum model. The framework explained by Dr Wayne Ngata begins with a central idea of laying down the shared vision, a Kaupapa, then moves clockwise around the framework. Mātairangi gives us the philosophy and direction for our curriculum design and delivery. The grounding pou Mātainuku and Mātaitipu draws our focus to creating the foundation for and vision of our learners who begin as kākano and grow into tipu in their learning journey to maturity where they nurtured in communities to thrive. Mātairea calls us to consider the progression of our leaners as they move through the phases of learning and design from the outset how we will support them to make this journey as we focus on Mātaiaho, the strands of learning woven together in coherent curriculum. We are called to action and how these elements of Mātaioho and Mātaiahikā are the national and local curriculum interwoven to give meaning and life to the learning. Mātaiahikā requires us to work closely with ākonga, whānau, hapū and iwi and our wider local communities to ensure that our ākonga are grounded firstly in their local stories and knowledge as they prepare to launch forth into the national and global stage giving them the strength within their identity, languages and culture to be resilient citizens of Aotearoa.
For me the curriculum framework and the technology processes I use to co-design learning within schools always begins and ends with our tamariki and rangatahi:
Ko te tamaiti te Pūtake o te Kaupapa,the child – the heart of the matter.
– Cheryl Pym, Associate Director, Education Support Services, University of Otago College of Edcuation
