Learner Identities in the Early Years: An Introduction to Four
Themes
Why Story?
Co-Authoring and Dialogue
Making Connections Across Boundaries Between Places
Recognising and Re-Cognising Learning Continuities
Appropriating Knowledges and Learning Dispositions in a Range of
Increasingly Complex Ways
Reconceptualising Assessment
Constructing and Sustaining a Passion for Learning
Margaret Carr is a Professor of Education at the Wilf Malcolm
Institute of Educational Research at the University of Waikato, in
Hamilton, New Zealand. Before she joined the Faculty of Education
at Waikato, she was a geographer at Victoria University in
Wellington, New Zealand, where there was a strong focus by the
professors on social and cultural change. This formed a
background for her interest in the role of education in society,
and in Hamilton she gained a qualification in early childhood
education and worked as a kindergarten teacher before becoming a
lecturer in education at the university. Her PhD thesis was
entitled ‘Technological Practice in Early Childhood as a
Dispositional Milieu’. New Zealand has provided a number of
opportunities for professors to research with early childhood
teachers on topics chosen by the teachers, and Margaret has
frequently published with teachers. Learning Stories as an
assessment practice was developed for the 1996 Te Whariki
bicultural curriculum (later revised in 2017); the development of
narrative assessment is told in the 2001 Sage book, Assessment in
Early Childhood Settings: Learning Stories, and further developed
in the 2012 Sage book Learning Stories: Constructing Learner
Identities in Early Education. The latter book was co-authored with
Wendy Lee, and this partnership has combined academic and
professional wisdom in many publications and presentations over
many years.
Wendy Lee is passionate about Early Childhood Education (ECE) in
New Zealand and has developed a deep interest in issues related to
the curriculum and leadership. She is a strong advocate for
Learning Stories and the power of documentation to strengthen
learner identity of children. Over the past 50 years, her career
has focused on building strong, reflective and robust learning
communities through her roles as teacher, unionist, lecturer,
community development worker, city councillor, manager,
professional development facilitator and researcher. Today, as
director of the Educational Leadership Project Ltd she and her team
provide training and advice to ECE centres throughout New Zealand
and in a wide range of other countries. Over the past 20 years, she
has had the privilege of collaborating with Professor Margaret Carr
on a number of ECE research projects, including co-directing the
National Early Childhood Assessment and Learning Exemplar Project.
This produced the Kei Tua o te Pae books on assessment for
improving learning in the NZ ECE sector. As the influence of
research in the area of Learning Stories and Assessment in New
Zealand grows and extends more into ECE practice, Wendy has been
increasingly requested to present its influence to a wider
international audience including teachers in Ireland, England,
Scotland, Germany, Japan, Belgium, the USA, Kazakhstan, Canada,
Australia and China.
′Margaret Carr and Wendy Lee weave together a powerful book full of
respect for children′s ideas, interests and identities as learners.
Using theoretically informed and practically focused discussion and
examples, they provide extensive evidence of the role of narrative
assessment as teachers, children and families co-construct stories
of competence′
- Sue Dockett, Professor of Early Childhood Education,
Murray School of Education, Charles Sturt University
′What a fabulous read! Any practitioner already engaged in
collating learning stories or learning journeys as a means of
recording children′s achievements and progress should absorb this
life-enriching read of a beautiful book′
-Early Years Educator
′Illustrated in colour, this is a fascinating and timely book which
will make rewarding reading for both experienced practitioners and
for students on degree and higher degree level courses. There is
much here to think about, reflect upon and discuss as we endevour
to equip young children with the skills and dispositions they need
to live in a global democratic society′
- Early Years Update
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