The 3-Step Gamechanger
I did not invent Learning Stories. What I have done is use the basic steps of writing a Learning Story to make it possible for families to move from hopeless circumstances to hopeful actions and heal from multigenerational trauma. I call that a 3-Step Gamechanger.
When their government asked educators in Aotearoa New Zealand to develop a national curriculum for early childhood education, they developed the world’s first bilingual, bicultural curriculum. In a departure from the Western settler-colonial worldview that has been the dominant paradigm and theoretical lens for observing learning for centuries, they tried something different. New Zealanders used socio-cultural learning theory instead of developmental learning theory as the foundation of a nationwide approach to teaching and learning.
Known as Te Whāriki, this curriculum framework represents a fundamental shift toward a meaningful focus on who the learner as the foundation for the community of the future.
Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach to what a child should be expected to learn and how they are supposed to learn it (think Common Core in the United States), the Te Whāriki Early Childhood Curriculum focuses on learner dispositions that are the key to meaningful learning in diverse community contexts.
Whether you follow the English or Māori version of the document, Te Whāriki builds on the strength and character of each child’s whānau, or extended family. Nurturing the child’s identity formation in a meaningful way is the key to a transformational Learning Story. What the child learns, and how they learn it, is secondary.
When the developers were asked to come up with a way to evaluate the learning that was happening for young children, they came up with Learning Stories. The complexity of socio-cultural learning cannot be captured tidily with a checklist. Learning Stories are formative assessments that play an integral role in the development of the curriculum itself.
The curriculum includes the transformation that unfolds through the process of recognizing who a child is and what they might be ready to learn about next. To do this, Learning Stories utilize a quantum leap strategy that I refer to as a 3-Step Gamechanger: Notice, Recognize, and Respond.
Notice refers to what you can easily observe with your senses, or what is evident to people of a certain cultural group because of their shared history. In programs for early childhood education, we notice what we see a child doing. We notice the quality of a child’s efforts, the look on their face, the way they move their body, and how long they persist. We notice our own feelings too.
A Learning Story is not a clinical scientific report. For those of us who were trained to write “objective” observations of children’s behavior, we get to loosen up. There is a recognition that any time we pick up a pen, our subjectivity guides us in making decisions about what to write. With Learning Stories we have to be honest about our subjectivity, and give up pretending to be so objective that we neglect to say all that we can about our experience.
Recognize refers to the process of recording what we think a child may be learning about based on our observations of their actions. One thing about Learning Stories for children is that they are written to a child in a natural way like a story being told directly to them. Speaking to children directly about who they are has a different feel than if we were collecting data in a clinical way. It matters. It’s personal.
We have to consider the child’s point of view as we write, so we do not tell them what they are learning like we know everything there is to know about their experience. We write about what we wonder, and what we think they might be learning. When we don’t know something, or cannot know something, we ask questions.
Respond refers to the process of inquiry into what a child might be ready to learn about next. This is what makes Learning Stories an iterative process. We wonder what they might be ready for, and make suggestions based on what we know about them and their family. We share our ideas with the child and their family, and ask what they think. We ask the family to add to the Learning Story in writing, and we try out the ideas they share with us in response to our ideas.
In our own time, an entire nation has seen a fundamental shift in priorities for education. Parents and grandparents are reading Learning Stories with the young children of their family seated on their laps. The children feel the warmth of their elders, feel and hear the resonance of voices sharing something that matters more than anything — what someone who cares about them has to say about who they are as a learner.
Hearing the grown-ups repeat the same caring words over time, showing an interest in them and engaging with them about the most interesting things about them transforms their daily life into a story of sharing and celebration that provides the basis for how they think and feel about themselves and their family for the rest of their lives. As families read and reread a child’s Learning Stories with their child, their way of being teaches a child to remember how important they are, and affirms the truth of a child’s being in a profound way.
The stories themselves, and the memory of those who contributed will be a source of strength in times of trial, and a source of comfort when they are honored again at weddings and graduations. These are stories of how the people who care for a child recognize the meaning and purpose of a life, and the courage of a person to follow the beat of the family hero with their own heart. Stories like this encourage dispositions toward learning that everyone needs to persist in the most challenging times, and succeed in learning anything.
