Reflective questions & Endnotes
He pātai hei whakaaro iho & Kōrero tāpiri

Reflective questions

• Which assessments from our setting make valued literacy (in the widest sense) visible to teachers, children, families, and whānau?
• What opportunities for experiencing literacy practices (oral, visual, and written) from the wider community are in evidence in the children’s assessments?
• In what way do our literacy assessments and their contexts indicate that we are on the pathway towards bicultural practice?
• How do teachers include the literacy practices that children are experiencing outside the centre in their assessments?
• Are there opportunities for children’s portfolios to become “literacy” artefacts? How does this happen?
• What opportunities do children have for participation and literacy learning in the routines and practices associated with maintaining our centre, and is this view of literacy represented in assessments?
• Do our assessments reflect bilingual opportunities and contexts?

What aspects of assessment practices and of the wider Te Whāriki curriculum strands are represented in the literacy exemplars in this book (that is, applying different lenses)?

Endnotes

¹ Gunther Kress (2003). Literacy in the New Media Age. London: Routledge. “It is no longer possible to think about literacy in isolation from a vast array of social, technological and economic factors. Two distinct yet related factors deserve to be particularly highlighted. These are, on the one hand, the broad move from the now centuries-long dominance of writing to the new dominance of the image and, on the other hand, the move from the dominance of the medium of the book to the dominance of the medium of the screen. These two together are producing a revolution in the uses and effects of literacy and of associated means for representing and communicating … Together they raise two questions: what is the likely future of literacy, and what are the likely larger-level social and cultural effects of that change?” He adds, “The world told is a different world to the world shown” (p. 1).

² Margie Hohepa and Stuart McNaughton (2007). “Doing It ‘Proper’: The Case of Māori Literacy”. In Literacies in Early Childhood: Changing Views, Challenging Practice, ed. Laurie Makin, Criss Jones Diaz, and Claire McLachlan. Australia: MacLennan and Petty, 2nd. ed., chapter 15, p. 221. They comment that: “Our discussion draws on sociocultural and critical approaches to literacy. We assert that the acquisition of linguistic knowledge is interdependent with the acquisition of cultural knowledge (Hohepa et al. 1992). In keeping with this assertion, literacy knowledge is viewed as culturally constructed within social activities and practices, and defined by social and cultural meanings carried by those activities” (p. 218). See also Wendy Hanlen’s chapter on “Indigenous Literacies: Moving from Social Construction towards Social Justice” in the same volume, chapter 16, pp. 230–242; and a chapter by Alma Fleet and Jane Torr on “Literacy Assessment: Understanding and Recording Meaningful Data”, chapter 13, pp. 183-199. See also Margie Hohepa, Graham Hingangaroa Smith, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, and Stuart McNaughton (1992). “Te Kōhanga Reo Hei Tikanga Ako i te Reo Māori”. In Educational Psychology, vol. 12 nos. 3 & 4, pp. 333–345.

³ Criss Jones Diaz and Nola Harvey (2007). “Other Words, Other Worlds: Bilingual Identities and Literacy”. In Literacies in Early Childhood: Changing Views, Challenging Practice, ed. Laurie Makin, Criss Jones Diaz, and Claire McLachlan. Australia: MacLennan and Petty, 2nd ed., chapter 14, pp. 203–216.

⁴ Ministry of Education (1996). Te Whāriki: He Whāriki Mātauranga mō ngā Mokopuna o Aotearoa/ Early Childhood Curriculum. Wellington: Learning Media. Goal 2 of the Communication/Mana Reo strand, page 76.

⁵ ibid., p. 72.

⁶ ibid., p. 72.

⁷ ibid., pp. 56–62.

⁸ ibid., p. 70.

⁹ ibid., pp. 84–90.

¹⁰ Some sources with specifi c reference to literacy and the New Zealand context include: Stuart McNaughton (1995). Patterns of Emergent Literacy: Processes of Development and Transition. Oxford University Press: Auckland; Stuart McNaughton (2002). Meeting of Minds. Wellington: Learning Media; Joy Cullen (2002). “The Social and Cultural Contexts of Early Literacy: Making the Links between Homes, Centres and Schools”, in Learning to Read in Aotearoa New Zealand, ed. Paul Adams and Heather Ryan. Palmerston North: Dunmore Press.

¹¹ Alan Luke and Peter Freebody fi rst developed these ideas in 1999 as “A Map of Possible Practices: Further Notes on the Four Resources Model”, in Practically Primary, vol. 4 no. 2, pp. 5–8. See also Peter Freebody and Allan Luke (2003), “Literacy as Engaging with New Forms of Life: The ‘Four Roles’ Model”, in The Literacy Lexicon, ed. Geoff Bull and Michele Anstey, Frenchs Forest, NSW: Prentice Hall, 2nd. ed., chapter 4, pp. 52–65.

¹² Ministry of Education (1996), op. cit., p. 9.

¹³ ibid., p. 76.

¹⁴ ibid., p. 78.

¹⁵ ibid., p. 76.

¹⁶ ibid., p. 78.

¹⁷ ibid., p. 76

¹⁸ J. K. Rowling (2001). Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.

¹⁹ Ministry of Education (1996), op. cit., p. 80.

²⁰ ibid., p. 78.

²¹ Dawn Bentley (1999). The Icky Sticky Frog. Victoria, Australia: The Five Mile Press.

²² Luke and Freebody (1999), op. cit.

²³ Ministry of Education (1996), op. cit., p. 50.