Alignment of educational experiences

As children move from their early childhood settings (be they home- or centre-based) to school, certain changes in their environment may be expected—the bigger the change, the trickier the transitionary experiences are likely to be.

Curriculum documents help to shape ideas about what teaching and learning entails within each sector. While there is alignment between Te Whāriki’s strands and the key competencies of the 2007 curriculum, (see Figure below) they are not so evident within the New 2024 New Zealand curriculum for mathematics and statistics. Te Whāriki, the early childhood curriculum, emphasises play-based experiences, flexible routines and reflects a holistic and organic approach to learning that is led by the child’s culture and interests. In contrast, the primary school curriculum is more structured, pre-determined and subject- focussed. With recent changes to the Te Mātaiaho, the refreshed mathematics curriculum (2024), an hour of learning each day is now expected to be dedicated to maths, specific detail is provided in a year-by-year teaching sequence, learning experiences are expected to include explicit and intentional teaching and even the lesson structure is provided in order to guide teachers with “what to teach and when and how to teach it” (p. 11). With this disconnect in curriculum documents at the early childhood-to-school junction, it might, therefore, be expected that children experience a similar clash in learning experiences as they shift from a play-based, organic and student-led early childhood environment to that of a more pre-planned, structured and subject-driven primary classroom.

In some ways, the jolt experienced when transitioning from one learning environment to new, unfamiliar surroundings that require new ways of being might be likened to the culture shock experienced when travelling to a foreign country. Hence, it is likely, that children will seek out the familiar, just as I did while travelling. What then can early childhood centres, schools and teachers do to provide the familiar? Hartley et al. (2012) dedicate a whole chapter of their book “Crossing the Border” to the idea that offering activities, language, routines and practices that are “mutually familiar” in both early childhood and school settings will help to blur the differences across the boundary and aid the transitionary experience for learners. For example, they describe how the creation of a transitionary book that documented a group of kindergarten students’ school tour served as a visual reference for those children and enabled them to see themselves in school before they actually made the move. Indeed, most centres and schools in New Zealand are probably already making conscious efforts to blur the boundaries between sectors for their learners. For example, by providing lunch-box days in early childhood centres, by organising school orientation visits, with public displays of the early childhood portfolios brought by children from their early childhood centres, and ensuring that similar songs or stories transfer between the local kindergarten to the new entrant classroom—to name just a few.

Alignment of Educational Experiences Overseas

In the four countries I visited, the approaches to learning and the structure of the learning environments were blended somewhat during the kindergarten year: kindergarten served to mitigate the conflicting worlds of early childhood and school curricula. There was a distinct scarcity of formal work or worksheets in favour of hands-on explorations and inquiries, use of materials and manipulatives, games and task-focussed tabletop activities. The learning was definitely pre-planned and deliberate but the experiences were still playful. Some of the teachers described how they intentionally planned the year to become progressively more structured with gradually longer periods of task-focused time while also easing out of extended periods of “free play”. In some instances, even the length of time at school was a gradual experience. For example, in Australia and in Alberta, Canada, students only attended kindergarten for half the time (half days or 2 ½ days per week). In British Columbia, Canada, the first ten days of kindergarten are used to intentionally ease students into school via gradually increasing the hours they attend each day. One further and important feature of the kindergarten year in Canada and also in Western Australia was that the kindergarten is part of the school, both geographically and administratively. For the students, this meant the gradual “easing out of the old” occurred at school—there was no further transition for them.

Alignment of Educational Experiences in New Zealand

Many schools in New Zealand have also adopted play-based learning into their early years of learning to ease the transition for students. However, the adoption of play-based approaches is likely to become trickier with the increased expectations laid out in the new curriculum. For teachers working with younger students in a school year (e.g., those who turn five in June at a school where the cut-off for new entrants in July), they have only six months to unpack both the teaching statements for 6 months and 1 year with their students. The intentional and gradual shift from free-play to structure is much easier to plan for and implement with a class of students who have all started school at the same time but is not so easy when the addition of students is continuous and ad hoc. Teachers who are feeling the pressure from these expectations may find that there is no longer room in the school timetable for any play-based cushioned-landing into school.