supporting tiriti-based curriculum delivery in mainstream early ...

these are discussed in Chapter Four. In the following section I show how action
research occurred in Case Study One and Case Study Two as they sought through
the research project to implement Tiriti-based curriculum.
Case Study One
There were 10 action research meetings that took place over a year. These
were held once a month in the evening either before or after the centre staff
meeting and lasted between one and two hours. After initial meetings to set up the
research the centre staff brainstormed their vision of Tiriti-based curriculum, which
I recorded and made into a chart for them. I observed the teachers in their
interactions with the children and shared what I discovered with the teachers during
the action research meeting where we discussed the evaluation of Tiriti-based
curriculum which the staff had carried out.
One of the challenges for me during the research was participants‟
attendance at meetings. In Case Study One there were six participants who became
the core group of researchers. There were three of us who attended every meeting.
Of the rest of the core group the other three missed two meetings each. Another
full-time staff member of the centre was only able to attend three meetings but
supplied written feedback for the group, as well as her reflective journal.
However, meetings were attended by 18 people in total. These were early
childhood students on practicum, teachers from other centres in the group, and the
two owners who came to the first two meetings and were later interviewed by me.
Meetings were held approximately once each calendar month in the evenings,
generally either before or after staff meetings at the end of the working day.
Subsequent to the action research meetings, several other meetings took
place; one to evaluate the research, and another for discussion on a conference
presentation I was giving about the research. Later on there was a whole-of-centre
meeting as well as individual discussions with participants about both the initial
report and the subsequent one. Finally, a focus group (which is discussed in the
next chapter) enabled dialogue between myself and two participants from Case
Study One about what had occurred with their Tiriti-based curriculum since the
action research cycles were completed.
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