Descriptions
of the Mäori medium programmes from which the results were derived
The following
summaries were provided by Stuart McNaughton, Margie Höhepa, Lyn
Doherty and Cath Rau from information derived from teacher questionnaires.
Children's scores for reading and writing tasks presented in this publication
need to be seen in context. That is, their performance on the tests
and running records have occurred within a context made up of teachers
who have been trained and experienced in varying ways, who are promoting
particular ways of teaching and learning using particular resources
to support programmes, who have varying degrees of fluency in the target
language, and working in schools with particular histories. The results
are important for making judgements about teaching, but they need to
be seen as coming from and reflecting these contexts.
In this section some general characteristics of the classroom programmes
are described. The patterns in the tasks and running records then can
be seen in terms of this aspect of the context. In the future, the context
may well be different. In the present, it would be inadvisable to generalise
from the results that have come from this particular set of circumstances
to others, for example classrooms which operate in the two languages
with English still being the main means of instruction. There will be
similarities, but the further classrooms are different from the ones
from which these results came, the more any applications of the scores
need to be treated very cautiously.
The
classroom programmes
The majority of the 23 teachers who responded to the questionnaire (59%)
had had two or fewer than two years of teaching. In each school there
was at least one teacher in the junior school who had nine or more years
of experience. Most of these teachers' teaching practice had primarily
taken place at the junior school level. Two thirds of the teachers had
spent two or fewer years in a Mäori medium or immersion classroom
and one third had spent three or more years in these situations.
The
reading and writing programmes
In some respects, the programmes which each teacher described for her
junior classroom were similar to the way the curriculum is operating
in mainstream schools (as described in Reading in Junior Classes 1991,
Smith and Elley, 1994). Programmes integrated personal uses with teacher
reading and personalised guidance within groups. In these aspects there
was considerable similarity across the schools. All the teachers reported
using the activities of guided/instructional reading, shared reading,
independent reading and language experience. Reading to children was
a major feature also. Teachers described a specific time and focus for
these activities. They occurred several times a week and teachers devoted
similar amounts of time per day to each of these. For example, each
of the teachers reported between 10 and 20 minutes spent in guided reading
with groups. They all judged this activity to be important or very important
in their programme.
Schools and teachers differed in their deliberate use of peers or buddy
systems and 12 teachers reported this did not occur in their classroom.
Another major difference between schools and teachers was in the writing
programme. In some schools the writing programme was a strong component
of an integrated programme. Teachers deliberately used the reading programme
to support and extend children's control of written language describing
how it provided a context to learn relationships between sounds and
letters, extend vocabulary and understand connections between forms
of written language and vice versa. These teachers noted a number of
activities such as writing stories, reviews, diaries, comprehension
work, poems, taping written stories and so on. Four teachers at two
different schools noted that writing was not a major part because of
the need to focus on children's oral fluency in the Mäori language.
About half the teachers reported that there were not enough resources
to support reading activities, especially shared reading, independent
reading and reading to children.
Professional
development
Teachers
were asked to indicate what professional development they had received
or ~undertaken specifically in reading and writing in the past two years.
Reading was identified as the curriculum focus over this period in five
of the six schools. Most in-service took place in school, at syndicate
or whole school levels, led usually by fellow staff members with some
involvement from advisers.
Of the 23 teachers, seven reported having attended one- to two-day courses
in writing and eight in reading taken by advisers and which were designed
for programmes being delivered in English. One of the respondents was
released from a partial immersion classroom to take Reading Recovery
in English with some of the mainstream students in the school, for which
she had recently been trained.
Only one school reported that they had attended a course specifically
designed for Mäori programmes (six days in total). This was not
inclusive of those who received training in administering He Mätai
Mätätupu nine of the 23 teachers) and those who participated
in Te Puni Kökiri book levelling project, Ngä Kete Körero:
Framework (1993-1995) (six teachers) which included in-service for teachers.
