Classroom Focus: Making considered choices

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Taking action in ways that address identified issues.


This competency is about being actively involved in communities. Communities include family, whānau, and school and those based, for example, on a common interest or culture. They may be drawn together for purposes such as learning, work, celebration, or recreation. They may be local, national, or global. This competency includes a capacity to contribute appropriately as a group member, to make connections with others, and to create opportunities for others in the group.


Students who participate and contribute in communities have a sense of belonging and the confidence to participate within new contexts. They understand the importance of balancing rights, roles, and responsibilities and of contributing to the quality and sustainability of social, cultural, physical, and economic environments.


The future of this competency is to reflect on the sorts of learning students might need to access if they are to be and become "confident, connected, and actively involved, lifelong learners" (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 8).


Addressing this question we envisaged that learners would need:

  • space in which they could take initiative and directly experience what it feels like to be and become a "person who can...";

  • to be able to make meaningful connections between the task at hand and other aspects of their lives, and of their cumulative, ongoing, and lifelong learning;

  • to be "challenged and supported to develop themselves in contexts that are increasingly wide-ranging and complex" (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 12).


Being busily engaged is not enough: the learning must also stretch students. These conditions for effective learning apply in the first instance to students' learning, but they also apply to the professional learning that teachers experience as they explore ways to help realise the NZC vision for students now and in their futures.



See: Teaching for Present and Future Competency: A Productive Focus for Professional Learning: R Hipkins and S. McDowal

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