Te whiriwhiriDeciding

It involves:

• deciding on what needs to happen, based on our judgments
• planning to implement and monitor any changes that arise
• sharing the outcomes of our review.

Me pehea to tatou whiriwhiri? | How do we decide what to do next?

Practice recommendations

We are responsible for the decisions we make and the actions we subsequently take in review. Our decisions are informed by the judgments we have made. Knowing what we do well and what we need to improve, we can then plan to bring about improvement. As a result of review, we may have to do things differently, learn some new ways, or let go of practices we were comfortable with. We may develop some recommendations to guide us as we move forward or take immediate action.

Example

Aratika Educare made the following decisions about their practice:

We are now aware of the need to find alternative methods of inviting parents to contribute in their own ways. We need to draw from profiles that emphasise effective learning and plan to emulate these across all profile entries from now on. This includes things like the use of reflective questions or blank pages for families, as well as shared video, rather than just templates for families to record onto or to attach photographs/artwork to.

It was agreed that there were some strong messages about information and consultation – both formal and informal.

It was a surprise to us that parents didn't always know that they could talk with us any time, and we also wanted to provide them with as much information as we could in both planned and responsive ways. We agreed that we needed to be more aware of the differing communication needs of the parents of our younger children.

The Director added: We were also thinking about social opportunities for parents and felt that these were more important than we may already have realised. They are so important to our parents. How can we creatively provide for families in this way? How can we develop a teacher-planning mindset that ensures that social opportunities are planned for? This is likely to be the focus of our next review!

Review process

Through the review, we also learn about the effectiveness of our review process in helping to evaluate our practice. We have an opportunity to consider which aspects of our review process worked well and which need further development. These findings lead us to consider ways in which we can improve our future reviews.

Example

Aratika Educare learned a great deal about the design of their survey and the way they asked questions of parents.

We realised that we hadn't asked any direct questions about the children's profiles in the survey, yet we felt this was important information for us to have. In saying that, a lot of parents commented positively about the profiles and others ticked that they were 'highly pleased' with the information they received about their child and made no comment – so we don't know if that referred to the profiles, face-to-face interviews, or what. You only get answers to questions you ask in a scale like this!

Te whakatakoto kaupapa | Developing a plan for change

Developing a plan

Developing a plan is an important aspect of review because it helps us transform our thinking into action. We act on decisions we have made. To do this, we have to come up with practical solutions that will address any issues raised through review and/or take us into another review.

We want to be sure that our resulting actions are both reasonable and practical. If there are resourcing or budget implications, we will need to explore these before we make plans that cannot be realised. In addition, we want to ensure that we identify the changes to practice that arise from the review and monitor this over time. Ultimately, we are concerned to ensure that any changes that we make to practice have a positive impact on children and their learning.

Example

Aratika Educare developed the following plan for change. A template of this plan is provided in Appendix 2.

Appendix 2: Planning templates

Review focus

How effective are our communication and consultation processes with whānau and parents?

What did we learn?

• That our profiles are not always consistent in the information they offer.
• That our profiles do not provide sufficient scope for parent contributions.
• That the profiles do not always highlight the most important aspects of learning.
• That parents of under 2-year-old children value highly a daily diary and that all parents have high expectations for information about their children's learning.
• That we do not all share the same understanding about methods of consultation and communication.

What decisions did we make and why? What changes do we need to make to our practice?

• For every child aged up to 1 year, there will be 3-monthly formal meetings with parents.
• That parents would like more social opportunities to talk to staff.
• For children aged over 1 year, there will be 6-monthly formal meetings with parents, with an additional meeting when the child moves from the under 2s centre to the over 2s centre. Additional opportunities will be made available for parents to meet with staff outside these times when parents give notice that they would like this to happen.
• Together with parents, we will develop a pamphlet in which expectations are set out for all parties in terms of seeking information about the children's learning. Information sharing will take place in a range of settings from informal chats to the formal meetings outlined above.
• We will develop clear standards for the depth of information and the frequency of recording that will apply to all children's profiles. We will develop these together, taking into account the results of our analysis. Each staff member will receive a copy of this standard, and the associated policy will be updated, too. Peer support will be established to help staff to develop profiles, and this support will be included in our professional development plans.
• We will increase the prominence of the daily diary for children under 2 years old.

What will be the impact of these changes on people, processes, resources, or the environment?

There will be challenges for us all as we respond in increasingly diverse ways to families and share our collective knowledge accordingly. Staff will need to change their practice in relation to the profiles and arrange to make the best use of their non-contact time for this purpose. Release time will need to be provided for peer support and for preparing for, and taking part in, parent-teacher meetings. This will impact on our budget. There will also be implications for the staff roster.

How will these changes benefit children and their learning?

We anticipate that the increased forms of communication will impact positively on everyone because we will share the same understandings. Children's learning will be enhanced because we will have a wider repertoire of information to draw from in our assessment practices. Families will know that they can talk to staff, and there will be a greater degree of 'continuity'.

Who will be responsible for initiating the changes?

• The review team and staff will draw up criteria for the profiles, based on what has been learned.
• Teachers in the under 2s centre will present the diary records in a more prominent place and ensure that they are recorded in daily.
• Management will update the policy and set up the parent-teacher meeting plan. They will provide increased teacher release time of 30 minutes per child per term to allow for meeting preparation.
• Management will prepare the pamphlet in consultation with the review team.

What is the time frame for implementation?

The review plan will be implemented immediately and take up to 6 months to be fully actioned.

How will we monitor the impact of these changes?

A review of our learning and teaching practice is already planned this year as part of our biannual review plan. We will increase its profile and, with our increased understanding of sociocultural theory, ensure that parent communication is an integral part of any review of learning and teaching practice.

Ongoing monitoring

Ongoing monitoring of our plan helps us to know the impact of our actions on practice over time. We can do this by revisiting our plan at regular intervals to check that agreed actions have been taken. We may also want to undertake a subsequent review to find out the extent to which these changes are contributing to positive learning outcomes for children.

Sometimes, through review, we identify a need to make a change that is likely to have a significant impact on our service. This will require us to look at how we might manage this sort of change. It is important that we also recognise and celebrate our successes. Celebrating helps us to balance the challenges that come with change.

Example

Aratika Educare reflected on their review:

We realised that teachers and parents in our services have so much to offer each other. We could have settled for 85% of our families being highly satisfied (as we found through our poorly designed survey), but this review took us to another level. Now we know that it is not so much about people being happy with the status quo but knowing that what we do makes a difference for learning. This is tough sometimes, but we were able to recognise and celebrate the ability of our learning community to work together to find this out!

Te tuari i nga hua o te arohaehae | Sharing the results of review

The nature of our review will determine who we share the outcomes of our review with and how. We ask:

• Who do we need to share with?
• What will we share?
• When do we share our review findings?
• How will we share our findings?

We consider the best ways of conveying the most important outcomes of the process. This will differ for each review. Some services have specific ways of sharing findings using templates, while others develop approaches that suit their particular context.

Example

Aratika Educare chose to present their findings in the form of a booklet:

"We look forward to sharing these results with everyone in the form of a booklet and also to implementing and reviewing our plans over the next 6 months. We know that we can't assume that our plans from the review will stay the same forever, and we want to keep improving so that we can be the best we can. Our parents are ready, willing, and able, and we're in a space where we can set that up together!"

Hei whakaaro iho | Some questions to think about

• What resources did we use to help us? How did the resources help us? Are there other resources that we could explore for next time?
• How prepared were we? What more could we do to prepare next time?
• What indicators did we access/develop, and how well did they help us to focus our review? Did we draw on them in our analysis?
• Did we gather the most appropriate information? How could we develop our review process to support this?
• What kind of analysis did we do and why? Is there another approach that we could consider that would provide a wider perspective that we hadn't thought about?
• How well did we draw on our analysis to inform our judgments?
• To what extent does our evidence support our review findings?
• What consideration did we give to sharing our decisions?
• How will we plan for actions to take place as a result of our review?
• How will we ensure that these actions take place?