Learner Agency

TE AHO O TE KURA POUNAMU

For most schools, establishing a hybrid learning practice involves integrating remote learning into an existing face-to-face programme. At Te Aho O Te Kura Pounamu, more commonly known as Te Kura, the situation is flipped: Te Kura was originally created to provide a remote learning programme for ākonga unable to access face-to-face schools, so it’s the face-to-face learning that is new there.

When Te Kura first began delivering remote learning in 1922, this meant postal correspondence between ākonga and kaiako. A century later, Te Kura’s web-based learning platform enables ākonga to access a wide range of personalised online learning options anytime, from anywhere, and at their own pace. The majority of content is located on a web platform called Desire to Learn (D2L), but learning options often include offline activities which can be recorded online. For example, an ākonga might ride their bike for PE and upload a photo taken during the ride. Ākonga are also encouraged to pursue offline learning in their own interest areas, such as learning to build a table or bake a cake. This is known as “Leaving to Learn,” because they are leaving the D2L platform. Leaving to Learn can range from learning independently using YouTube tutorials to shadowing a mentor to participating in a formal Gateway programme for NCEA credits. Whether an ākonga is fishing with their whānau or taking dance lessons at a local studio, they can record their progress, obstacles and ideas on the D2L site as they go, with options to upload written, visual, or audio evidence.

Dual-enrolled ākonga use Te Kura’s programming to supplement the learning that they do in face-to-face schools, alternative education programmes, or teen parent units. Full-time ākonga, who are enrolled only at Te Kura, have access to a learning programme known as Big Picture which includes:

• A flexible timetable – secondary ākonga can take as few as 3 courses if they are not ready for a full course load. Ākonga of any age can easily pick up extra courses (or specific modules from a course) based on interest, or combine courses of different curriculum or NCEA levels based on strengths. Ākonga can start new courses at any time throughout the school year

• Regular contact with subject kaiako and with kaimanaaki, a pastoral support role similar to a form teacher. Generally a kaiako’s timetable will include 0.8 subject delivery and 0.2 kaimanaaki time

• Opportunity to attend a face-to-face huinga ako (live session with local ākonga and kaiako) once or twice a week

• Opportunity to attend online huinga ako, online clubs and groups, and subject-specific online synchronous learning sessions

The D2L site itself has been personalised for Te Kura and branded as “My Te Kura.” Although the software is Australian, its customisable format has allowed Te Kura to shape the My Te Kura site to include NCEA credits, plentiful use of reo Māori throughout, and a Te Kura-specific section called My Korowai which is a place for ākonga to check in about wellbeing, goals, and Leaving to Learn.

The entire setup is based on flexibility and designed with learner agency in mind. Ākonga often come to Te Kura because they are struggling at face-to-face schools or unable to consistently attend, and over the past few years Te Kura’s enrolments have been steadily rising as attendance levels drop at face-to-face schools. ERO’s 2021 report on Te Kura acknowledges that Te Kura is being relied upon more and more to provide a place for ākonga, especially ākonga Māori, whose needs are not being met by their local schools. As disengagement and alienation from the regular school system are on the rise, it is crucial that Te Kura provides programming adapted to the growing cohort of ākonga who are falling through the cracks elsewhere. 

Te Kura recognises that it is not always realistic for ākonga to balance mandatory synchronous learning sessions with personal lives that include obstacles such as childcare duties, chronic health issues, part-time jobs or even elite sport training schedules. So while synchronous options are always made available, the majority of the learning at Te Kura is asynchronous. Kaimanaaki support ākonga to make personalised programmes according to their abilities, interests and availability. Offline learning is heavily encouraged and tracked on the My Te Kura D2L website. At NCEA, there is a lot of freedom of choice as to which standards from each subject each ākonga completes. Kaimanaaki work with ākonga to set learning goals and create a programme that will allow them to achieve these. Older ākonga are encouraged to attend STAR (Secondary Tertiary Alignment Resource) courses and Trades Academies programmes, and ākonga of all ages are encouraged to attend any locally available face-to-face learning opportunities, including holiday programmes, art classes, and library programmes. The result is that everyone’s learning programme is unique. A group of ākonga who are all taking the same Level 1 subjects can get their credits from completely different combinations of Achievement Standards and Unit Standards which may be assessed online or in person at external courses. Of course, since much of Te Kura’s programming is designed to be accessed online from home, a lack of internet and device access is a common barrier. In order to help mitigate this, Te Kura provides refurbished laptops and an internet subsidy to ākonga who meet financial need criteria.

Ākonga appreciate the flexibility provided by this programme. Miriam, aged 16, describes how her previous school “wasn’t really working for me.” She says “with normal school I felt a lot of stress with deadlines… whereas with Te Kura you can take things in your own time, and if you’re not working well on something you can take some time off and work on something else and then come back to the other thing.” She also describes how the flexible setup “has really helped me decide what path I want to take” because there are fewer mandatory subjects and more flexibility with option subjects than at a typical school. She describes how you can try a subject and change it if it isn’t working for you, and how flexible option subjects are great for steering yourself towards a potential career path. 18-year-old ākonga Dylan agrees: “You can pick what suits you and what you need to learn in order for your course to go forward.” Dylan describes trying various STAR courses – barista, first aid, health and safety, and a Gateway programme at Mitre 10 – in addition to his online courses. Since he’s used to being agentic at Te Kura he found it frustrating that the health and safety course was “a bit hand-fed,” but overall he enjoys being able to combine hands-on learning in self-chosen areas of interest with his online learning.

Dylan’s experience is not uncommon – as part of Leaving to Learn, older ākonga are strongly encouraged to engage in Gateway programmes, STAR courses, and job shadowing. 17-year-old Sam, who did a nine-week Gateway programme as a trainee mechanic, says “it’s good to see what you might be doing on a day-to-day basis as a mechanic, what your average day might look like… to see the environment, see what I’m heading into.” He says that the programme “really did confirm my passion” and has enabled him to start moving towards that career with confidence. Stuart Crawford, Sam’s supervisor at his Gateway placement, describes how Sam was motivated, enthusiastic and didn’t mind doing menial tasks when business was slow. “He had the right attitude,” Stuart says. “Sam picked it up really well.” 

Te Kura uses hybrid learning to take a new approach to attendance: instead of being based on physical presence, attendance at Te Kura is based on “engagement.” Engagement covers a range of learning activities including submitting online work, working offline and uploading evidence to the D2L site, attending a face-to-face event or Huinga Ako (drop-in session), participating in an external course or programme and uploading evidence to the D2L site, and having a conversation about learning with your kaimanaaki (form teacher). 

As we move into a world where attendance at face-to-face schools is less and less consistent and where hybrid learning offers quality learning opportunities offsite, schools need to re-think how attendance is measured and move beyond traditional headcount methods. Low attendance has been a major issue for schools across Aotearoa New Zealand for several years now. Education Counts’ attendance statistics from 2011-2022 show that Māori and Pacific ākonga have consistently been the largest groups who are present at school less than 70% of the time, and attendance is lower for ākonga Māori who are enrolled at English medium schools compared to ākonga Māori attending kura kaupapa (Māori medium schools). This is especially concerning since 97% of ākonga Māori are attending English medium schools. Hybrid learning may provide a way to better serve ākonga who face barriers to in-person attendance and could help schools improve their practice when it comes to supporting Māori and Pacific ākonga. Te Kura’s innovative engagement-based system provides a model for how this can be done, and we may see face-to-face schools picking up similar practices in the future.

Not only is engagement at Te Kura a more flexible measure than traditional attendance, but ākonga can begin a Te Kura programme or pick up a new subject at any point in the year without having missed any synchronous content. This is becoming more and more important as we move into a future where attendance rates at face-to-face schools are continuing to drop and more and more ākonga are leaving face-to-face education and coming to Te Kura mid-year. Often these ākonga have missed a lot of school and are nervous about coming into something midway, so being able to begin their online subjects at the beginning helps with both comfort and motivation.

Ākonga at Te Kura need to take a certain amount of agency with their learning in order to be successful because there are few set synchronous learning times. As Derek Wenmoth says, “to be successful as a distance learner requires a considerable degree of self-awareness, self- management and self-directedness.” Kaimanaaki support ākonga to stay focussed and engage regularly via 1:1 check-ins, and ākonga who enrol for reasons that make them likely to need more support (such as being a young parent or having been excluded from their previous schools) have access to support staff called kaiāwhina (helpers) who support and encourage ākonga to engage with their learning. Because most contact between kaiako and ākonga is one-on-one, it is easier for individual ākonga to have their needs heard than it is in a busy classroom environment. Ākonga also have input into which topics they explore and can align their personal learning programmes with their passions and interests.

Another factor promoting ākonga agency at Te Kura is the introduction of kaiāwhina, a relatively new pastoral support role. A group of kaiāwhina were initially recruited for Te Kura's TK400 programme, a fixed-term programme run in Tāmaki Makaurau in response to the pandemic with a focus on re-engaging ākonga who had stopped attending their face-to-face schools. Prior to this there was one kaiāwhina working for Te Kura, also based in Tāmaki Makaurau. The additional pastoral support made such a significant difference in ākonga engagement and wellbeing that the kaiāwhina recruited for this temporary programme were encouraged to stay on and more kaiāwhina were recruited around the country. There are now 30 permanent kaiāwhina positions nationwide at Te Kura and this area of staffing continues to grow.

The kaiāwhina role is a non-teaching role with the purpose of giving vulnerable ākonga a supportive adult who is not their kaiako, meaning that ākonga can discuss struggles with their mahi, wellbeing or motivation with someone who is not marking them. Kaiāwhina are mentors and are often described as taking an auntie or uncle role. Kaiāwhina Rita describes the purpose of the role as “to be present, to be encouraging, to be consistent, to follow through… just to let them know I’m here.” Her colleague Leilani adds that kaiāwhina are “advocates for the ākonga, as well as the conduit between the ākonga, the kaiako and also the whānau.” TK400 Project Lead Catherine Anthony explains how with the encouragement and companionship of kaiāwhina, ākonga who were initially reluctant to engage feel empowered to attend online and face-to-face synchronous learning which had not previously appealed to them as “there wasn’t that point of connection or trust.” She emphasises that “we deliberately hire kaiāwhina who have empathy, good people skills, experience at working in a culturally responsive way, and the ability to build relationships and meet students and families where they are at.” Although the role is about tautoko (support),  ākonga who have kaiāwhina working alongside them tend to gain confidence and take more and more agency over their learning over time. Kaiāwhina work with ākonga who have come to Te Kura for reasons that flag them as vulnerable, such as having been excluded from a previous school or having stopped attending a previous school due to social anxiety. Rita adds that “a lot of our students have experienced bias in the classroom, and discrimination.” For these ākonga, learner agency is an issue of safety - as Rita says, “if they don’t feel safe [in the school environment], they’re not going to give in any way.” Learner agency can also be an issue of confidence: these ākonga often feel a sense of failure in leaving their previous schools and a resulting lack of self-belief makes them nervous about submitting work. They would rather not try than risk being told that their work isn’t good enough. Catherine describes a recent situation where an ākonga had finished some work and was afraid to hand in, but ended up submitting it with the patient encouragement of her kaiāwhina. “Kaiāwhina improve engagement because they are so good at forming relationships and sensitive to the complex family backgrounds and challenges facing many of our families.” Kaiāwhina make an effort to ensure that ākonga feel seen as individuals and it is this that sets them up to become more agentic with their learning. Becoming more agentic in a larger sense is tied into this. Leilani describes how ākonga can find emailing teachers quite confronting and says that she and the other kaiāwhina work on teaching ākonga “adulting lessons, like, opening your bills… just do it!” Rita seconds this, adding “it’s not about pandering to them, it’s about being real… if something is difficult, let’s see if we can do it this way.”

Incorporating the kaiāwhina role is innovative practice for a year 0-13 context. Kaiāwhina Leilani describes seeing kaiāwhina supporting classes at Te Wānanga O Aotearoa several years ago and wondering why they weren’t used the same way in secondary schools, because in any group learning context it is helpful for learners to have not only a teacher but what she calls a “guide on the side.” As more schools move into a hybrid learning model and away from a teacher-led, classroom-based model, more widespread use of kaiāwhina could be a practical way for schools to ensure that learning offsite doesn’t mean learning unsupported.

Perhaps the strongest success stories of learner agency at Te Kura are cases where ākonga who came to Te Kura because they were disengaged at mainstream schools regain the confidence and motivation to return to mainstream. Many TK400 ākonga chose to return to face-to-face schools which they had previously struggled to attend, rather than remaining with Te Kura when the programme ended. Where this happened, it was because they had increased self-belief, resilience and a drive to learn. They felt ready to engage actively with their learning in face-to-face contexts again. One parent, quoted in ERO’s report on TK400, said, “She has become responsible for her own learning, and it has boosted her confidence. It is too easy for students to lose their way or give up when it gets overwhelming, but Te Kura had kept her on track.”