Ten Trends Emerging Across Kāhui Ako

The trends established are the result of a detailed evaluation completed by the National Panel drawn from 3044 interviews, and from their monitoring and reflecting on the growth of Kāhui Ako.

It's in response to a lack of wider sector awareness of the significant cultural change that has been developing in Kāhui Ako schools for the past six years. That shift has seen schools actively and deliberately collaborating, teachers leading and learning from each other, good practice being deprivatised, educational pathways being established across the sectors from Early Childhood to tertiary, and the entering into authentic engagement and partnerships with iwi around the construction of a local curriculum to preserve and tell the stories of mana whenua and their places.

Three significant learnings for us at Te Taura Here:

1    Leveraging research-led, teacher-led professional learning

One trend observed is empowering teachers to support their colleagues in translating educational research to beneficial shifts in the classroom practice. This is demonstrated by the emergence of research-based strategies in classrooms.

Research-informed practice is evident in our kāhui's mahi, as seen in several of the 2021 outcomes reports. A wero for our community is to keep increasing the level of research-led mahi in 2022.

2    Moving from self-managing to collaborating

Belonging to a kāhui ako has provided us with the opportunity to think and work together in ways that create new possibilities for learners, teachers, leaders and the wider community. It has required moving mindsets from self-managing to collaborating, and from separate entities to communities, while still maintaining the uniqueness and identity of each school.

Amplifying new ways of working is at the top of our agenda for 2022. We have always said that kāhui work must align with school goals – having done that, 2022 is right time to step forward together and expand the ways we work collaboratively.

3   Collating, circulating and critiquing

The success of the kāhui ako model requires deliberately developing collective intelligence. Strong collaboration requires exchanging and pooling ideas, along with the opportunity to critique and extend those ideas by talking and reflecting together. This means an ongoing commitment to noticing the emergence of new patterns.

A wero for us is to turn up the meta-analysis and to ask, what have we learned across the kāhui so far and what does it mean for us? A good place to start is the 2021 project outcomes report, to look for the connections and build on those – many are reflected in the 2022 collaborations document.