"It's a little tricky": Collaborating with families to assess the learning dispositions of infants and toddlers

Abstract

Te Whāriki (Ministry of Education, 1996a), the New Zealand early childhood curriculum, promotes learning dispositions as a key learning outcome, which teachers are expected to assess. This thesis argues that Te Whāriki's principle of involving families and communities in assessment is challenging to implement, particularly in centres guided by Gerber's (1979) Resources for Infant Educarers (RIE) philosophy. This challenge emanates from competing tensions in the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings, and related views of teaching and learning, of RIE and Te Whāriki. This thesis investigates how teachers in a centre guided by RIE understand the imperative to involve families when assessing the dispositional learning of infants and toddlers. An interpretive, qualitative, case study methodology was employed to gather data from semi-structured interviews with five teachers, a range of centre documentation, and researcher field notes. Claxton and Carr's (2004) sociocultural notion of a potentiating environment informed the thematic analysis. Themes that emerged from the findings include the centre and home as disposition-enhancing environments, the role of the teacher in fostering dispositions, and the nature of teachers' collaboration with families in assessment. The findings were interpreted using Carr's (2002b) sociocultural notions for assessment: competence, continuity, and community. Findings revealed RIE as a powerful influence on teachers' views of learning dispositions, assessment, and the involvement of families, and highlighted tensions between RIE and Te Whāriki. RIE appeared to influence teachers to focus on particular learning dispositions consistent with RIE, limiting their attention to dispositions valued by Te Whāriki. RIE also influenced teachers' conception of assessment as observation and summative documentation, limiting their ability to formatively assess dispositional learning in ways consistent with Te Whāriki. Finally, adopting a primary caregiving approach, which supports the implementation of RIE, was seen to influence teachers to approach assessment as an individual responsibility, limiting their ability to promote two-way partnerships with families in assessment, as per Te Whāriki. This thesis concludes that implementation of RIE in early childhood settings governed by Te Whāriki requires teachers to be critically reflective about the potential consequences on dispositional learning, assessment, and the involvement of families. Resulting implications for teaching practice, teacher education and research are discussed.