A few photos from Oporto, Portugal

Check out that sun!

The Railway Station was extraordinary, the internal tiling magnificent.

Here I am with Klara, exploring the city!

Here we are by the river, check out the new hats!!!

We are now on the boat, exploring the river.

Such a beautiful place!

Portugal, our first stop!

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Six members of the ELP team set off  to spend four weeks sharing the work of Learning Stories in Germany. This is part of ongoing work we have been doing in Germany over several years. The work began in the early 2000’s when Margaret Carr and I visited Germany on the invitation of the Youth Institute. The Head of the Institute had read Margaret’s book on Assessment and was very interested in the work around dispositions. Learning Stories are now found all over Germany and in many different forms. Many reciprocal visits have subsequently taken place in Germany and New Zealand. This is the second major trip to Germany. Seven of the ELP team went to Germany 2 years ago for a month long trip around Germany sharing our work.

Our first stop was Oporto in Portugal. 

ELP team from left to right: Jo Colbert, Kathryn Delany, Alison Brierley, Lorraine Sands, Robyn Lawrence & Wendy Lee

The European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA) Annual conference was being held here and we all were successful in having our papers accepted and so we presented two Symposia. These were:

Symposium 1

Strengthening the community of learners using action research as the key pathway to pedagogical change.

All three papers submitted for the EECERA Conference stemmed from action research. They describe the experience of building strong learning communities in three very different contexts:

1.     An Early Childhood Setting, with a teacher-led service.

2.     A Playcentre Setting, with a parent-led service.

3.     A group of Early Childhood centres working within and beyond their own settings.

All of the settings discussed here were committed to strengthening their community of learners and building a stronger, professional learning community. The three papers were:

Awi mai awhi atu. Helping me, helping you.

Fostering social competence in a mixed-age early childhood centre.

This paper was presented by Alison Brierley

Mātauranga: building knowledge, wisdom and understanding in a leaderful community

This paper was presented by Jo Colbert

He iwi whānui o ngā kaiako ākonga

A Community of Teacher Learners; Aspects of effective professional development.

This paper was presented by Kathryn Delany

Symposium 2

Building a Research Culture of teachers working with Infants and Toddlers in Early Childhood Settings in NZ

As Project Facilitators working within the Educational Leadership Project (ELP) in Aotearoa New Zealand we put together three perspectives that each consider some of the ways in which we are working with infants and toddler communities to both strengthen and enhance a research culture to strengthen early childhood learning. The three papers were:

·      Growing Leaders from Infancy

·      Enhancing and Strengthening Courage and Bravery Through the Support of a Trusted Companion in a Leaderful Community

·      Constructing Identities as Professional Lifelong Learners

This work illustrates the transformational  power of professional learning and it consolidates the support of everyone in the wider community to become life long learners in the 21 century.

The notion of both teachers and children as researchers is being embedded in the fabric of early childhood education in New Zealand and these three papers presented exemplars in which both children and teachers are the co-constructors of their own learning. Teachers’ voices highlighted aspects of shifts in practice based on researching pedagogy, transforming competence, and exploring leadership. The three papers were:

Growing leaders from infancy

This paper was presented by Lorraine Sands

Enhancing and Strengthening Courage and Bravery Through the Support of a Trusted Companion in a Leaderful Community

This paper was presented by Robyn Lawrence

Constructing Teacher Identities as Lifelong Learners and Researchers

This paper was presented by Wendy Lee

Margaret Carr was the first keynote speaker of the conference!

Margaret was introduced by Margy Whalley

The main conference lecture theatre

Me enjoying morning tea, time to catch up with people!

Conference Dinner held in a spectacular location high on hills overlooking the river.

 I think I will add a few photos from Oporto in a couple of days. Cheers, Wendy

A return to a special place in my childhood - Fiji

My fabulous Dave gave me 6 'Ts' for my 60th birthday which I celebrated on Christmas Day last year. The six 'Ts' were:

• Theatre
• Treatment
• Trinket
• Taste
• Treasure and finally
• Travel

The travel was a brilliant trip to Fiji. A place that held special memories for me as I lived there (and in Samoa) for most of my early years until I was 8 years old. It was my first return since leaving there as a child.

You will see from the photos that I am posting on the blog - I will add more to my Facebook page, that a wonderful time was had. Although we were only there for one week, it was so relaxed I felt like I had been away for a much longer period.

The holiday consisted on swimming, lying around reading books, snorkling, experiencing lovely relaxed dinners, early morning swims on secluded beaches, visiting a traditional village and experiencing indigenous culture, visiting a school in the village, exploring some of my old childhood haunts - all in all the perfect holiday!

Swimming, one of my most favourite things to do in life!

I am very keen on reading with a cocktail in the other hand as well

Early morning swims, only for the keenest on the boat.

Our early morning swims were fabulous, we were taken to secluded isolated beaches to swim.

Beautiful sunsets!

Relaxed and delicious dinners.

Even managed a visit to an infant school, all the children were on holiday!

The visit to the traditional village on one of the outer islands involved much music, dancing and also a kava ceremony!

Returning to that favourite activity, snorkling was wonderful, the fish were so tame some were nibbling me!!

As well as a great variety of tropical fish, there were beautiful corals to see.

Back to that very comfortable place next to the pool with book in hand!

Dave off to do a little kayaking.

The Captain was a very very successful fisherman - busy catching our dinner!

Dave enjoying kava with the Captain of the boat.

And me, well back to what I like to do best, relaxing in the pool!!

I am very keen to return one day to Fiji with my siblings and also the 'children' we played with and were friends with. I think we could revisit the places of our childhood and our earliest memories could be shared and this would rekindle the wonderful experiences we had as children. I know for me just visiting the places brought back so many memories for me.

Book Launch at Pen Green

Conference at Pen Green 'Learning Stories: Constructing Learner Identities in Early Education'

Margaret Carr and I have just returned from England. We were privileged to have our book launch for "Learning Stories: Constructing Learner Identity in Early Education" at Pen Green. This was wrapped around a Conference focused on the book.
As always we enjoyed a very warm welcome and enjoyed the opportunity to work with a variety of teachers from throughout England.

   

Here we are at Pen Green!

 

 

 

 

Margaret working with a group of early childhood students

A group of us headed to Wellington for the 'Yeah Baby Conference' last weekend, and thoroughly enjoyed the conference, listening to a range of very interesting and inspirational speakers. It was great to be there. On Saturday night we were invited by Toni and Robin to join them at an evening with 'The Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra. 

We set off for Cuba Mall, enjoyed lovely pizza and then into the San Francisco Bathhouse we went! It was a combination of music land comedy. I thoroughly enjoyed their sense of fun and humour, the gear they wore gave me considerable joy - all in all a fun night enjoyed by all!!

Bonus event of the night was the 'surprise' entrance of Bret McKenzie. Bret was one of the original members of the band. Bret maintained his usual low key demeanor as he joined in all the fun!!!!!

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success

It is sadly not just the Americans that are ignoring what is happening in Finland, despite their outstanding outcomes for children!!!

Dec 29 2011, 3:00 PM

 The Scandinavian country is an education superpower because it values equality more than excellence.
Everyone agrees the United States needs to improve its education system dramatically, but how? One of the hottest trends in education reform lately is looking at the stunning success of the West's reigning education superpower, Finland. Trouble is, when it comes to the lessons that Finnish schools have to offer, most of the discussion seems to be missing the point.

The small Nordic country of Finland used to be known -- if it was known for anything at all -- as the home of Nokia, the mobile phone giant. But lately Finland has been attracting attention on global surveys of quality of life -- Newsweek ranked it number one last year -- and Finland's national education system has been receiving particular praise, because in recent years Finnish students have been turning in some of the highest test scores in the world.

Finland's schools owe their newfound fame primarily to one study: the PISA survey, conducted every three years by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The survey compares 15-year-olds in different countries in reading, math, and science. Finland has ranked at or near the top in all three competencies on every survey since 2000, neck and neck with superachievers such as South Korea and Singapore. In the most recent survey in 2009 Finland slipped slightly, with students in Shanghai, China, taking the best scores, but the Finns are still near the very top.

Throughout the same period, the PISA performance of the United States has been middling, at best.
Compared with the stereotype of the East Asian model -- long hours of exhaustive cramming and rote memorization -- Finland's success is especially intriguing because Finnish schools assign less homework and engage children in more creative play. All this has led to a continuous stream of foreign delegations making the pilgrimage to Finland to visit schools and talk with the nation's education experts, and constant coverage in the worldwide media marveling at the Finnish miracle.
So there was considerable interest in a recent visit to the U.S. by one of the leading Finnish authorities on education reform, Pasi Sahlberg, director of the Finnish Ministry of Education's Center for International Mobility and author of the new book Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? Earlier this month, Sahlberg stopped by the Dwight School in New York City to speak with educators and students, and his visit received national media attention and generated much discussion.

And yet it wasn't clear that Sahlberg's message was actually getting through. As Sahlberg put it to me later, there are certain things nobody in America really wants to talk about.

Go to this link to get the full article 
What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success - The Atlantic

Erato - Call Your Girlfriend

Jen Bais in Adelaide shared this with me, I think it is so brilliant!