The Intercultural Approach in Japanese Speaking Learning Activities

The aim of the study was to get deeply the implementation intercultural approach in Japanese speaking learning activities at senior high school. The research method is qualitative using direct observation. While the process of collecting data used documentation, video record, field note, the interview is appropriate with the research setting. The result of research found that Japanese speaking activities inside and outside the classroomhave some components, namely learning method implementation, the role of teacher and students, the role of native speaker teacher, and the material of learning. It has combined the linguistics aspect and culture to increase students’ comprehension of Japanese language and culture.

INTRODUCTION
needed. In addition, it is very difficult to express cultural knowledge that is not spoken with language, such as assessing the value of native speakers, mindset, the pattern of action, etc., and it is to share the knowledge with students. This is the main difficulty in cultural education(X. Li & Umemoto, 2010).In Japanese, there are several cultures that need to be considered, namely: 1) words contain cultural meanings, 2) speeches are influenced by 3 cultural aspects (topics, codes, aspects and times), 3) non-verbal culture.
Based on the result of observations through informal interviews and preliminary observations at State Senior High School 75, Jakarta is known that it has some uniqueness. The first, Speaking Japanese learning at State Senior High School 75 North Jakarta has an independent learning concept, it is not only to transfer of knowledge from teacher to student, but also the teacher relates the material with the theme of the real world situation and it encourages students to connect between the knowledge that they have and their application in their daily lives. The learning process takes place naturally through patterns of speaking activities in the form of project-based, presentations, question and answer, role play and others. Based on the result of interviews with Japanese language teachers, it is known that Japanese is a subject of local content, students need more challenging learning activities so that they can increase their motivation to like Japanese.
Secondly, students' speaking activities are carried out individually, in pairs ( ペアー ) and in groups (グループ / guruupu). Third, the learning process is studentcentred learning rather than teacher centred learning (TCL). Fourth, the result of observations found that the Japanese speaking ability of some students classified as fluent in communication. This can be seen from their communication with native speakers who are quite good. Since 2014 until now, State Senior High School 75 has received five native speaker teachers from Project Nihongo Partners of The Japan Foundation. Not all schools get privileges assisted by foreign speakers from The Japan Foundation. The Nihongo Partners program recipient schools are established with the agreement of The Japan Foundation (JF) and the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture. Before it approved and determined, the school will go through a selection process first. Before the selection process, they will be applied to the application process from the school.
Fifth, the student achievements had the opportunity to go to Japan using students exchange program in the Japan-East Asia Network of Exchange for Student and Youth (Jenesys) from the Japanese government. Then, 18 students are from State Senior High School 75 also had a 9-day study tour to Japan through the Japanese Ministry of Tourism program. Among all middle-level schools in Indonesia, there are only 2 selected schools have the right to represent Indonesia, one high school in Bali and State Senior High School 75 Jakarta. This activity is certainly very helpful for students to communicate with the real conditions of Japan. Tanaka in his research stated that abroad study activities can be one of the learning options outside the classroom that allows students to interact with the target language environment (Tanaka, 2007).The view for Japanese learners on the network of native speakers and interactions outside the classroom has an important role to play in supporting their abilities (Campbell, 2011;Shvidko, Evans, & Hartshorn, 2015) Sixth, students are very interested in Japanese activities such as Japan Club, Kobayashi in their research explaining that language group can improve students' ability to communicate especially in speaking because students can help each other to improve their speaking skills through drama activities, debate, discussion or practice public speaking (Kobayashi, 2016) and in context concept (Taguchi, 2015).Although it is counted still new, Japan Club State Senior High School 75 Jakarta has made quite a proud achievement, such as ever winning the North Jakarta Level Japanese Calligraphy Contest (Shodo), Roleplay Competition champion in LabSchool, National University, and so on.
Based on the problem, this study will discuss more deeply the intercultural approach in Speaking Japanese learning activities at State Senior High School 75 North Jakarta. The objectives of this study are: 1) To get a complete description of learning activities with an intercultural approach carried out both inside and outside the classroom, 2) To examine in full, detailed and in-depth the learning methods of speaking Japanese with an intercultural approach; 2) Study in full, detailed and indepth about the roles of teachers and students in learning activities.

Research Approah
The research method is a qualitative approach using ethnography method. A researcher who conducts qualitative research is usually oriented towards existing theories. In qualitative research, the theory is limited to the notion of a systematic statement relating to a set of prepositions derived from data and retested empirically. In this case, it is referred to as the paradigm term(Y. Li, 2014).Paradigms are interpreted as a collection of assumptions that are logically shared. Concepts or propositions are ways of thinking and ways of research. According to Bogdan dan Biklen, the characteristics of qualitative research include: 1) qualitative research is descriptive, it means that data is decomposed in the form of statements or images; 2) the researcher is a key instrument; 3) data analysis tends to be inductive, and 4) "meaning" is essential something for a qualitative approach (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007).

Data and Data Sources
In this study, data and sources of data are descriptive data which includes decomposed data in the form of interviews and documentation, from established informants namely Japanese teacher, native speaker teacher and students from State Senior High School 75 Jakarta during the learning process of speaking Japanese. These learning activities take in the classroom or outside the classroom. Li added that there are several methods in the introduction of Japanese culture teaching, namely: 1) Commenting, it means that the teacher does not only focus on textbooks but it is very instrumental in providing explanations about words is containing culture, 2) Comparing, it compares between mother tongue and Japanese which includes linguistic and cultural aspects, 3) Intuitivism, students play an active role in seeking information about Japanese society and culture through various sources, and 4) Case Study, it presented the Japanese atmosphere, for example Roleplay (Y. Li, 2014).In addition, the research data is also in the form of supporting documents such as lesson plan, photos, videos, and student work.

Collecting Data
The data collection techniques in this study consisted of participant observation, interviews and documentation studies.

Data Analysis
In accordance with the research methods and procedures chosen, data analysis was carried out directly with the researchers. More clearly Emzir(2012) says that in qualitative research, data analysis tends to (1) consist of text analysis (2) involves the development of description and themes, and (3) contains a statement of the meaning of broader findings. The data analysis procedure of this study uses the Spradley data analysis model, namely: 1) domain analysis 2) taxonomic analysis 3) component analysis and 4) theme analysis (Marta & Rafli, 2016)

Learning activities Using an Intercultural Approach Inside and Outside the Classroom
After analyzing the domain worksheets, taxonomic analysis, and complementary analysis, the results of learning activities using an intercultural approach can be seen inside and outside the class in picture 1 below: Learning activity in Japanese speaking class show in the three activities, namely introducing, main or core activity, and closing activity. In introducing activity are done in various ways that are interactive, inspiring, fun, challenging, motivating so that all talents, interests, physical and psychological development of students are channelled well. While the technique for implementing Japanese speaking's core activity can be with a variety of methods that have been prepared by the teacher adapted to the material to be studied including the 5M process (observing, asking, exploring, associating, communicating). At SMAN 75 the meeting is usually opened with greetings (aisatsu) then the introduction of the material begins with the introduction of new vocabulary and pronunciation. The use of integrated listening or reading and listening material as input for the learning process is done in various ways. There are many forms of reading, namely reading in the form of IT, reading in the form of discourse, or reading picture situations. In this input section, the teacher compares the conditions of pictures/photos/ videos in Indonesia and Japan (between cultures) first as an opening. For pictures of conditions in Japan explained by native speaker teachers in Japanese, and the class teacher translates them. The part of reading is also like observing, analyzing. One example of the input is as an introduction to the material. For example, there is a situation of an image, then read and observed. When associated with the material, students are asked to observe, analyze, which will later be concluded. In this section native speaker teachers who teach using Japanese. Here you can see the interaction and communication between teachers and students. The use of a picture or video media is in line with the results of Neff & Rucynski (2013) research that through such video or picture/photo material FL students can better understand cultural nuances that may not be directly seen in their daily lives or learned foreign languages.
The use of Japanese culture is not only done by Japanese teachers in the classroom but also it is used in the interacting process outside the classroom so that the language environment becomes maximum. The process of speaking activity in Japanese subject in the class show in the ways of learning activity. Intercultural in Japanese learning in language in line with Li that during the Japanese learning process, we not only have to look at language learning, but pay attention to the differences between mother tongue and Japanese culture, and then recognize and learn these differences so that they can grow integrated strong, who knows about Japan's condition. Foreign students can learn Japanese and do business successfully in that language, they not only have language skills but also have cultural knowledge and sensitivity (Kumayama, 2010). Because Japanese culture and mother tongue are very different. It is an absolute necessity to study language in a cultural context (Bayramova, 2016;Krasniqi, 2019;ELMES, 2013). Then it proceeds using drill can be in the form of question and answer or group discussion. After students begin to understand the assignment is a project, then the results are presented in Japanese in front of the class. Due to a large number of students and the small amount of time in class, it is usually continued at the next meeting. After all group or student appears, then the teacher and students reflect the learning process in the closing activities by identifying positive values obtained from the material that has been studied.
While learning activity is done outside the classroom through Japan Club which are greatly assisted by the teachers. Japan Club members are students who are interested in Japanese. Students' reason is interested in Japanese and joins the Japan Club are; the first, they like anime, the second, they want to go to Japan, the third, they like Japanese fashion, and the fourth, they love Japanese. Japan Club routine activities can improve Japanese language skills, including watching Japanese films, remembering Japanese songs, getting acquainted and chatting with Japanese friends.
Use of Japanese both in and outside the class are free to communicate with anyone. The teacher usually makes a habit in using the Japanese language in the school. The students used greeting (aisatsu) or asking for news (o genkidesuka) in Japanese every time when they meet the teacher and native speaker. In March 2017, several Japanese language club members at State Senior High School 75 took a study tour in Japan with Ms Marta. It can be as media for students in order that the students can feel directly using and remembering Japanese, talking with Japanese people, who certainly improve their ability to speak Japanese and Japanese Culture Practices (Nihon Bunka Taiken) such as cooking Japanese food, writing calligraphy (shodo), making bento etc. This activity is usually carried out outside the classroom.

Learning Method of Speaking Japanese Through Intercultural Approach
The learning methods used to vary and are student-centred. For example, group learning, initially a group consisting of several students present in front of other groups. Then it replaced with a presentation before the group itself. Therefore, good teamwork is expected to emerge. Whereas to fulfil the competency of speaking, the example of the most frequently used method is drilling, then students try to practice it. Osamu explained that drill exercises would be very good if it assisted by learning media such as images, goods or original objects or imitation model objects. And also, the purpose or target of learning will be achieved well if the Mim-mem method is used before or after the practice of vocabulary or sentence (Osamu, 2000) In addition, the kaiwa method (direct conversation) or role-play dialogue used the actual setting of conditions. The teacher sets the theme according to the learning material, then she/he makes the situation appropriate to the theme, the flow of the conversation, making role play, students practice in pairs or groups, finally, students present it in front of the class. For example, the theme of a restaurant, a conversation between guests and waiter in a restaurant, before students appear to complete their appearance by bringing food, trays, aprons and other equipment from home. Thus, the atmosphere of the restaurant is made like being in a real restaurant.
For cultural material, students usually practice Japanese culture directly, such as cooking Japanese food, writing calligraphy, making bento, etc. This activity is usually carried out outside the classroom. New innovations method combines the linguistic and cultural approach in accordance with Abdyhalykova (2016) as evidenced by his research that information and computer technology can improve efficiency and create conditions for independent learning. Innovative methods are an integral part of the modernization of the entire system. According to him traditional research is only directed at the transfer and maintenance of knowledge, skills and abilities, and does not show adequate performance. Modern language education is intended for the formation of multicultural identity, self-analysis skills and systematization of new knowledge. For this purpose, a competency and cultural approach are used. Teachers must familiarize themselves with the most progressive approach, then combine it and use it in work. This is the innovation process.
From the description above, after analyzing the domain worksheets, taxonomic analysis, and compound analysis, the results of the implementation learning method of Japanese speaking using an intercultural approach in Figure 2 below:

The Role of Teacher and Student in Learning Activity
The teacher is as a facilitator and motivator in designing strategies and learning environments by providing various learning experiences in the learning process of Japanese speaking, for example, students practice the speaking. The teacher speaks using Japanese at Japan Club. The teacher gives an explanation as usual with a different method from other teachers, namely learning languages as well as culture. In the classroom, the teacher uses a lot of Indonesian because not all students generally understand Japanese. Whereas, the presence of native speaker teachers is very helpful in the learning process inside and outside the classroom. The main role of native speaker teachers is to carry out the activities of introducing Japanese language and culture inside and outside the classroom as conversation partners and assistance in teaching and learning activities for Japanese teachers and students. Native speaker teachers contribute to creating positive attitudes of students, which are considered to produce better achievement in language learning (Adara, 2019;Getie, 2020).
The role of students in Japanese speaking learning is very important in achieving learning success. Students pay close attention to every material explained by the teacher, then try as much as possible to be active to practice the Japanese speaking ability. The native speaker teacher can help the student to talk anything, ask anything about Japan. If there is the Japanese language that forgets, they mix with English. Saeed suggest that student interaction plays an important role in class because students can improve their speaking skills in a classroom setting, the best way to produce language effectively is to encourage students to participate in verbal interactions in the classroom (Saeed, Khaksari, Eng, & Ghani, 2016) If a quiz or test is taking place, students work honestly. As for activities outside the classroom such as when students join the program to Japan, they also dare to practice Japanese with anyone, especially during school visits, they get to know each other, interact and communicate. Until now, they still communicate with each other via e-mail, line or Facebook. Thus, it is useful to practice Japanese language skills, also can know the current conditions about Japan. Every time there is an art performance or the language anniversary, Japan Club members always displays role play. For cultural activities, students also actively participate, such as in Japanese calligraphy activities, making Japanese sushi dishes, okonomiyaki and others, learning to make bento. From this activity can add to the vocabulary of the new Japanese vocabulary in addition to those obtained in the material in the class.
From the description above, after carrying out the analysis on the domain worksheet, taxonomic analysis, and compound analysis, we can find out the results of the teacher and student role in the learning activities in the following figure 3:

Picture 3. Teacher and Student Role
The theme analysis is done to find out holistically the cultural setting being studied, looking for relationships between domains and overall relationships, which are expressed in themes that are in accordance with the focus and purpose of the research. Previously, the teacher chose the learning method that would be used based on the students' needs. While the activities in the class include the beginning, core and closing activities. In summary, it can be concluded in a schematic theme or pattern diagram of the following cultural setting.

CONCLUSION
Based on the research findings presented, there are several components discussed in the research findings. Components consist of learning activities with an intercultural approach carried out both inside and outside the classroom, speaking Japanese learning method with an intercultural approach, the role of teachers and students in learning activities. Teachers, native speakers and students are important elements in developing speaking learning activities through an intercultural approach. Unlike the previous research, this paper found that learning activities, the role of teachers, native speakers, and students are as conversation partners synergized to create environment learning by using Japanese speaking starting from small things inside and outside the classroom. Many things still need to be discussed further. Language teachers also need to think of an intercultural approach in other language skills learning such as reading and writing. What if it applied in intermediate and advanced language learners, to what extent the combination of language and culture aspect is taught.


Child-Centred Teaching: Helping Each Child to Reach Their Full Potential

Research has shown that schoolteachers often prepare children for success in standardized reading assessments by ‘teaching to the test.’ Concurrently, research exploring children’s emergent literacies and ‘school readiness’ has shown that early childhood teachers often feel pressured to ‘prepare’ children for school and may do so by focusing on print-related literacies, to the detriment of earlier stages of the oral-to-print continuum. This raises the concern that teaching children as a group, preparing them for the next ‘stage of education,’ will disadvantage children who are working below or above expected levels of development. Our study explores the teaching approaches used with a group of foundation-year children who achieved more advanced reading outcomes than children from four adjacent classrooms in their first year of schooling. We collected the reading and letter-identification outcomes of 16 children in the teacher’s foundation-year class and interviewed her about her practices. Findings showed that the teacher used her knowledge of what the children should achieve in standardized assessments as a minimum expectation and moved beyond the content of such assessments when warranted, as determined by informal assessments. As a result, every child in the class met, and many exceeded, minimum reading standards by year’s end. We conclude that using an individualized, child-centred pedagogy, informed by a combination of standardized and informal assessments, allowed the teacher to support her students to develop a range of reading abilities and to reach their full potential.

Introduction
Access to high-quality early childhood learning experiences has a long-term impact on children's intellectual and social development, and well-being [1]. However, a growing discourse surrounding early years education positions quality early childhood programs to be viewed from a human capital perspective, placing quality outcomes within an economic perspective that focuses on what education is supposed to produce [2]. Biesta [3] argues that contemporary measures of quality education focus on academic achievement across a controversially small and selective number of domains and subject areas, often privileging literacy and numeracy over children's social and emotional wellbeing. Within the domain of literacy, the focus on academic achievement has also led to problematic repercussions for children's early reading development, narrowly defining 'reading' as the ability to achieve the expected outcomes that are assessed via standardized tests [4], for younger and younger age groups [5]. Framed within this problematic discourse, our study sought to investigate how a teacher may circumvent such narrow and limiting expectations-expectations that would fail to address the diverse needs and potential of every child and ensure equity and access for all children.
In this paper, we explore how a foundation-year (The first year of compulsory schooling in Victorian primary schools in Australia) teacher's child-centred approach worked

School Readiness
As children transition into the first year of compulsory school education (CSE), they are often assessed to determine the extent to which they are developmentally and academically 'ready' to adapt to the classroom. While there are varying views of what it means to be ready for school, readiness is often controversially defined in terms of children's cognitive and academic abilities, including a focus on discrete skills such as the ability to name letters and numbers, or knowledge of vocabulary [9]. The issues surrounding academic readiness is shared by early childhood and compulsory schooling educators, with a recent study by Rouse, Nicholas and Garner [7] finding that both early childhood and CSE teachers listed academic readiness as a key challenge for young children when transitioning into their first year of schooling. These reported challenges may in some part be due to the CSE system that teachers work within, given that in the first months of formal schooling in Victoria, Australia, children are assessed on their reading, writing, speaking and listening competencies, including their ability to recognize letters of the alphabet. Children's results from these assessments are then used to generate an overview of their school entry achievements, providing diagnostic information to inform program planning and resource allocation [10].
The assumption that children are to be 'prepared' to achieve particular outcomes for reading at specific stages of their schooling also appears to have had the adverse effect of compartmentalizing the teaching of skills needed for early reading success. For example, 'preparing' children to perform well (1) upon school entry (English Online Interview [10]) and (2) by the end of the foundation-year, when assessed on their ability to "recognise the letters of the English alphabet, in upper and lower case and know and use the most common sounds represented by most letters" [11], has led to a compartmentalized focus on letter recognition for pre-school aged children [7,8]. This compartmentalized focus exists despite a government-commissioned inquiry into the teaching of literacy [12] (p. 31) finding that "the basic building blocks of reading" are a combination of four "integrated sub-skills" (emphasis added), which include "whole-word recognition; and the ability to derive meaning from written text" in addition to "letter-symbol recognition" and "lettersound" knowledge.
There is no question that assessments are useful tools for teachers when planning for teaching and learning [6]. However, in light of research that has found that some teachers teach to the test [4,5], with some early childhood educators targeting specific readingrelated outcomes in isolation [7], there is concern that pressure to ensure that children (and schools) will perform well in national literacy tests may devolve the teaching and learning of reading into a narrow objective to meet particular reading outcomes, 'readying' children from a younger and younger age to meet expected outcomes in their future schooling. We argue that such an objective is one that adopts a narrow, grade-age-centric approach to teaching that fails to account for and address the diverse needs and potential of every child, which may also lead to an increase in the achievement and equity gaps that are present in current K-12 education.

A Child-Centred Approach
In Australia, a child-centred approach to teaching and learning is promoted in Early Childhood Education and Care, and in schools [13,14]. Child-centred education takes a "strengths-based" view [13,15]; identifying a child's current "skills, capacities, dispositions, interests and motivations" [15] (p. 7) and the strategies that work for that child, and uses that knowledge to plan for teaching and learning. A child-centred approach requires that a teacher shifts their focus from "how best to teach or how to cover the curriculum", to understanding and supporting student learning [13] (p. 17). To garner such knowledge, child-centred education is based upon the understanding that "assessment is central to developing, sustaining and delivering student-centred learning" [13] (p. 18).
The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership stresses that adopting a child-centred approach to teaching and learning must go beyond high-stakes, standardized assessments. They state that a child-centred approach must be based on the understanding that assessment is not about the high-stakes examination and comparison of student performance. Rather, it is about effectively using assessment tasks to identify areas of need and develop strategies for the improvement of student learning . . . implementing and analysing results from a range of assessment tools. [13] (p. 18) However, research that has pointed to a tendency for some teachers to teach to the test, including readying children for school, highlights concern that, in practice, a narrowed approach to the teaching and learning of reading often exists in early years education. As such, these practices could potentially inhibit children from gaining access to learning experiences that will help them to reach their full potential.
In this paper, we explore the practices of an early years teacher to investigate whether the more advanced reading outcomes that her students achieved by year's end was due to her adopting a child-centred approach to teaching. Mandy's class of children did not appear to be high achievers upon school entry (further detailed in Section 1.4). Indeed, a quarter of the children were the lowest performing compared with the other four foundation-level classes, raising the possibility that some may have been working below expected levels of development. However, while many of the children in the other four foundation-level classes achieved reading outcomes that were above the minimum standard by year's end, Educ. Sci. 2021, 11, 280 4 of 19 Mandy's class achieved the most advanced outcomes across the five groups. This study investigates how those outcomes may have been facilitated by exploring whether Mandy planned for teaching that would take the children beyond what may have been possible, had she simply planned that they meet foundation-level outcomes.

The Study Context
The concept of readying early years children for academic success, basing educational practice on the content that children will encounter in assessments rather than on children's assessment results, was a practice that was evidenced in Nicholas and Paatsch [6]-the study that preceded this paper. The teachers of the five foundation-year classrooms that featured in Nicholas and Paatsch [6] used school-mandated standardized letter-identification assessments at the end of each child's first year of schooling. Results from the year that preceded the study showed that only 54 percent of foundation-year children were able to name each upper-and lower-case letter of the alphabet (52 letter symbols) and give a common sound for each (52 letter sounds) [6]. Consequently, at the beginning of the following year (the year of the study), the teachers agreed to adopt a 'letter-a-week' focus that would take more than three quarters of the year to realize, and held fast to that plan irrespective of children's outcomes when tested periodically throughout the year. While it can be argued that this approach appeared to be successful, given that 75% of children in Groups (classes) B-E learned all letter names and common sounds by the end of the year (see Figure 1), it remained unclear how and why the children from Group A (Mandy's class) were the only group to all receive a full score. This was especially intriguing given that none of the children from Group A appeared to demonstrate greater skill at recognizing letters of the alphabet upon school entry compared to the other four classrooms, with Group A's 1st quartile of children providing the lowest performance of the five groups ( Figure 2). appear to be high achievers upon school entry (further detailed in Section 1.4). Indeed, a quarter of the children were the lowest performing compared with the other four foundation-level classes, raising the possibility that some may have been working below expected levels of development. However, while many of the children in the other four foundation-level classes achieved reading outcomes that were above the minimum standard by year's end, Mandy's class achieved the most advanced outcomes across the five groups. This study investigates how those outcomes may have been facilitated by exploring whether Mandy planned for teaching that would take the children beyond what may have been possible, had she simply planned that they meet foundation-level outcomes.

The Study Context
The concept of readying early years children for academic success, basing educational practice on the content that children will encounter in assessments rather than on children's assessment results, was a practice that was evidenced in Nicholas and Paatsch [6]-the study that preceded this paper. The teachers of the five foundation-year classrooms that featured in Nicholas and Paatsch [6] used school-mandated standardized letter-identification assessments at the end of each child's first year of schooling. Results from the year that preceded the study showed that only 54 percent of foundation-year children were able to name each upper-and lower-case letter of the alphabet (52 letter symbols) and give a common sound for each (52 letter sounds) [6]. Consequently, at the beginning of the following year (the year of the study), the teachers agreed to adopt a 'letter-a-week' focus that would take more than three quarters of the year to realize, and held fast to that plan irrespective of children's outcomes when tested periodically throughout the year. While it can be argued that this approach appeared to be successful, given that 75% of children in Groups (classes) B-E learned all letter names and common sounds by the end of the year (see Figure 1), it remained unclear how and why the children from Group A (Mandy's class) were the only group to all receive a full score. This was especially intriguing given that none of the children from Group A appeared to demonstrate greater skill at recognizing letters of the alphabet upon school entry compared to the other four classrooms, with Group A's 1st quartile of children providing the lowest performance of the five groups ( Figure 2).

Theoretical Framework-A Vygotskian Perspective
This study made use of Vygotskian theories of child development [16,17] to investigate whether Mandy (an early years teacher) had adopted a child-centred pedagogy when planning for the teaching and learning of reading in her foundation-year classroom. As such, the analytical framework was designed with an aim to explore whether the teacher used an approach in which children's existing strengths, capabilities and understandings were the starting point for extending their learning rather than focusing on what children needed to know to meet external literacy benchmarks. In the following sections, we outline the Vygotskian theories that framed the study. Educ. Sci. 2021, 11,

Theoretical Framework-A Vygotskian Perspective
This study made use of Vygotskian theories of child development [16,17] to investigate whether Mandy (an early years teacher) had adopted a child-centred pedagogy when planning for the teaching and learning of reading in her foundation-year classroom. As such, the analytical framework was designed with an aim to explore whether the teacher used an approach in which children's existing strengths, capabilities and understandings were the starting point for extending their learning rather than focusing on what children needed to know to meet external literacy benchmarks. In the following sections, we outline the Vygotskian theories that framed the study. Teaching to a grade level or to a test, whether motivated by such incentives as to 'ready children for school' or simply to improve school-state-national outcomes, treats education and learning as discrete stages of development that are characteristic of a given age-group; an immovable and stable "thing" [16] (p. 40). Likewise, teaching with the aim of preparing children for the next stage of their schooling, a practice that Gagné [18] (p. 16) terms the "age-grade lockstep," privileges discrete age-appropriate or 'grade' appropriate literacyand numeracy-related outcomes above others, prioritizing outcomes that can be standardized and statistically measured. However, Vygotsky's research showed that chronological age cannot be used to reliably determine a child's level of development [16]. Moreover, he found that each stage of a child's development has a 'history' that is contingent upon earlier stages of development, making it erroneous to believe that cognitive development can be fostered by targeting discrete skills in isolation, taught or improved via repetition or discovery [17]. Rather than being a composite of discrete skills, Vygotsky found that cognitive development involves a "complex merging" of elementary and higher order thinking [17] (p. 43); a process of development that necessities returning to earlier thinking processes/skills "but along a spiral, returning on a higher plane to a point that was passed" [17] (p. 53).
When planning for the teaching and learning of reading, it is therefore critical that earlier stages of development, the development of more elementary cognitive skills and thinking processes, are not overlooked in the rush to teach children how to read at ageappropriate levels or above. Rather than teaching to the next stage of education, teachers must know their children well and use that knowledge to teach to the next stage of development for each individual child, not progressing to the next stage of development until foundational skills and thinking processes have been established. Likewise, when age or

Teaching to the Child, Not the Grade
Teaching to a grade level or to a test, whether motivated by such incentives as to 'ready children for school' or simply to improve school-state-national outcomes, treats education and learning as discrete stages of development that are characteristic of a given age-group; an immovable and stable "thing" [16] (p. 40). Likewise, teaching with the aim of preparing children for the next stage of their schooling, a practice that Gagné [18] (p. 16) terms the "age-grade lockstep," privileges discrete age-appropriate or 'grade' appropriate literacy-and numeracy-related outcomes above others, prioritizing outcomes that can be standardized and statistically measured. However, Vygotsky's research showed that chronological age cannot be used to reliably determine a child's level of development [16]. Moreover, he found that each stage of a child's development has a 'history' that is contingent upon earlier stages of development, making it erroneous to believe that cognitive development can be fostered by targeting discrete skills in isolation, taught or improved via repetition or discovery [17]. Rather than being a composite of discrete skills, Vygotsky found that cognitive development involves a "complex merging" of elementary and higher order thinking [17] (p. 43); a process of development that necessities returning to earlier thinking processes/skills "but along a spiral, returning on a higher plane to a point that was passed" [17] (p. 53).
When planning for the teaching and learning of reading, it is therefore critical that earlier stages of development, the development of more elementary cognitive skills and thinking processes, are not overlooked in the rush to teach children how to read at ageappropriate levels or above. Rather than teaching to the next stage of education, teachers must know their children well and use that knowledge to teach to the next stage of development for each individual child, not progressing to the next stage of development until foundational skills and thinking processes have been established. Likewise, when age or grade-appropriate outcomes have been met, teachers must aim to support children's continued development.

Engaging with Parents
Underpinning all of the above was Vygotsky's [17] (p. 41) most critical finding into the study of higher-order thinking: "that every symbolic activity of the child was at one time a social form of cooperation". Vygotsky proposed that learning and development, from birth through into adulthood, is a longitudinal process of "converting means of social behavior into means of individual-psychological organization" [17] (p. 41). As such, higher-order thinking, including the ability of "high-ability" children to "find, solve and act on problems," manipulates abstract ideas and makes connections "to an advanced degree" [19], arises from engagement in social experiences, while lack of skill (to varying degrees) can often be attributed to a lack of exposure to such experiences.
The opportunities and experiences children are exposed to include those derived via preschool education, as well as the opportunities and experiences children encounter within the context of their home. Research has shown that when parents are engaged in their children's learning, children have more advanced learning outcomes [20], including positive academic achievements in literacy [21], most especially when parents engage their children in a range of informal literacy activities at home before the start of primary school [22]. Likewise, a lack of such experiences disadvantages children whose parents are less able to take an active role in their child's literacy learning, highlighting the importance of school-parent collaboration. Parental engagement promotes shared responsibility for education between parents and teachers and recognizes that the learning process transcends the school environment, into the home [23].
This understanding of child development emphasizes the importance of learning every child's 'funds of knowledge' via informal, qualitative assessments that look beyond the academic, to uncover the experiences and knowledges the child has gained via their everyday experiences [24]. Doing so helps teachers to determine if children have been exposed to, and have engaged in, the necessary experiences that will help them to develop the skills needed to progress to the next stage of development and identifies strengths that can be leveraged to facilitate development. In sum, the Vygotskian theories outlined above have highlighted the need for teachers to (1) use a range of assessments, (2) include parent-teacher communications, (3) track children's capabilities over time, (4) differentiate their teaching, and (5) use approaches and practices that respond to the individual needs of each child.

Our Research Question
To what extent did the case study exemplify an individualized, child-centred pedagogy in supporting children's reading development in their first year of schooling?

Materials and Methods
This study used a single case study to investigate the individualized child-centred approach that a primary school teacher may have adopted to support children's reading development in a foundation-year classroom. We explored the case study within a bounded system, over a one-year period, through detailed in-depth data collection, involving multiple sources of information [25]. This data collection included (1) the classroom teacher's interview data, (2) children's letter-identification knowledge, and (3) children's reading level outcomes.

Participants
Sixteen children (9 males and 7 females) and one classroom teacher (Mandy) participated in this study. All children were enrolled in the first year of compulsory schooling (i.e., the foundation-year), in the same class, in a Victorian government school. At the time of data collection, the school had a student enrollment of 524 students, with most parents being skilled office staff, sales staff, service staff or tradesmen and women. Four percent of students from foundation to grade 6 were recorded as having Language Backgrounds Other Than English (LBOTE), including Hungarian, Italian, Afrikaans, Filipino, and Croatian, with the majority being Vietnamese and Tagalog. Mandy had over ten years of teaching experience, having taught children at the foundation level for five years and five years in years 1 and 2 (composite). Ethical approval was granted by the Deakin University Human Research Ethics Committee (DUHREC) and the Victorian Department of Education and Training (DET). Written informed consent was gained from the school principal, the classroom teacher and the parents of the 16 children who participated in the study. Pseudonyms and codes have been used for participants throughout.

Method and Analysis
Information, detailing how Mandy's program reflected and/or expanded upon schoolmandated expectations was collected as part of this follow-up study, via a one-on-one interview. Standardized assessment outcomes for the 16 children in Mandy's class were also collected. As detailed in Nicholas and Paatsch [6], all foundation-year teachers at the study site used school-mandated standardized assessments to assess reading-related outcomes. This included the PM Benchmarking Reading Assessment [26] and English letter-identification assessment [10], used to track student outcomes and progress, and to inform teaching. All foundation-year children were provided with leveled home readers based upon their PM benchmarking results, and a set of individualized sight word lists (six words at a time from the Oxford Word List [27]). Each teacher planned to engage each foundation-year child in a small-group guided reading lesson for 15-20 mins at least once a week and provided opportunities for daily whole group modeled/shared reading within a one-hour reading block each day.

Teacher Interview
A one-hour interview with Mandy was conducted at the end of the school year to explore the ways in which she may have provided individualized, child-centred practices to support the development of children's reading and letter identification abilities. The interview was audio-recorded and then transcribed for later analysis. The purpose of the interview was to gain reflective insights into Mandy's practices in supporting the reading development of all children, and her perceptions of the efficacy of these practices in influencing children to reach their full potential.
The one-hour interview data was analyzed using thematic analysis [25] where the transcription was coded to categorize the content according to words and phrases, mapped against the Vygotskian themes outlined in Section 1.5. Patterns were identified within the data for each key theme, the outcomes of which are described in the Results. Two of the researchers analyzed the data separately and then compared their coding, reaching agreement on any that differed in the first wave of coding. Table 1 presents the five main themes and definitions that resulted from this process. Examples of each theme are provided in the Results. Engaging with parents Content that mentions the interactions and engagement between the teacher and the families in sharing the child's goals and learning outcomes.

Mandated Standardized Assessments
At the time of data collection, the school had developed a mandated assessment schedule for foundation-year students that measured two aspects of reading: Children's (1) letter knowledge, and (2) contextualized word recognition/understandings. This coordinated approach was reflective of the finding that "the basic building blocks of reading" are a combination of four "integrated subskills", which include "whole-word recognition," "the ability to derive meaning from written text," "letter-symbol recognition" and "letter-sound" knowledge" [12] (p. 31).
Letter-symbol and letter-sound identification was assessed using the test that had been developed as part of the Department of Education and Training's (DET) English Online Interview [10]. Each child was presented with a sheet of randomly placed letters of the English alphabet in both lower-and upper-case forms. Children were asked to name each of the 52 letter symbols and to give the most common sound for each. Children were awarded one mark for each correct name and on mark for each correct sound. Scores were tallied from a total score of 104.
Children's contextualized word recognition/understandings was assessed using the PM Benchmarking Reading Assessment [26]. The PM Benchmark Reading Assessment assessed children's independent and instructional reading levels (Levels 1-30) and identified the strategies, skills and knowledge that they used when reading in context. Children's fluency, reading comprehension and retelling abilities were also assessed as part of this assessment. The school had established that, as a minimum benchmark, foundation-year children were expected to read a level 5 text at an instructional level by year's end, and a level 20 text by the end of year 2 (see Table 2). Individual PM Benchmarking Reading, and letter identification assessments were collected for the 16 children who participated in this follow-up study. The assessments were conducted at five time periods throughout one school year: (1) beginning of the foundation year; (2) end of Term 1; (3) end of Term 2; (4) end of Term 3; and (5) at the end of the foundation year (end of Term 4). Results were presented in tables and as line graphs to track children's progress over time.

Results
In the following sections we detail the results of this study. Section 3.1 provides the outcomes of the teacher interview according to the key emerging themes. Section 3.2 provides the outcomes of the children's PM Benchmarking Reading and letter-identification assessments. Section 3.3 provides an analysis that integrates all data sets.

Interview with Mandy
Findings from the interview showed that Mandy adopted a child-centred approach to teaching with her foundation-year class, teaching to each child's individual capabilities, rather than narrowly focusing on foundation-level benchmarks alone. She made routine use of standardized assessments, beyond the school-mandated data collection points, as a means of determining and tracking children's progress towards meeting minimum expectations. In addition, she used informal assessments to track and further extend children when minimum expectations had been met. Further analysis showed that the five themes listed in Table 1, used to assess the extent to which Mandy may have adopted a child-centred approach, often intersected as she spoke about her teaching.

Children's Capabilities
When speaking about her planning and teaching of reading, Mandy often acknowledged the diverse reading capabilities of each child and their rate of progress, identifying that One [child] in particular found reading quite challenging and learning letter sounds quite challenging-It took him a lot longer than most of the other children in the class.

While at the same time,
There are children who will be working towards the expected level that typically you have at the end of Grade One and Grade Two. There might be some working towards that level.
This was in spite of the fact that the children began the year with comparable skills: I happen to have a class where none of the children could read at the beginning of the year. Typically, you get maybe one or two that can read a little bit, but not even a level one. I had not one child that could read at the beginning of the year.
These reflections highlight the need to routinely monitor and track children's progress throughout the year when adopting a child-centred approach, so that teaching and learning can be tailored to meet the ever changing needs and potential of each child, in a timely manner.

Assessment of Learning
Throughout the interview, Mandy often spoke about how she used both standardized and informal assessments to inform the way she responded to the individual reading needs and potential of each child. The assessments enabled her to plan her teaching, while also allowing for child agency in their own learning.
In particular, Mandy noted the importance of informally assessing children during their transition and orientation activities in the months prior to commencing school, looking beyond traditional 'reading-related' skills. She believed that this was a way of getting to know the children and to start thinking of how she may support their learning once they started school, noting that this was a practice that all the foundation-year teachers at her school shared.
In the year prior to them coming to school, in the orientation days . . . we do informal assessments as we're walking around, just to see what their social skills are . . . what their fine motor is like, how they engage with the different tasks, with cutting, with completing puzzles, with the play equipment in terms of the drama area if they engage with that . . . I guess what we look for is what kind of supports they're going to need, to get used to a different way of engaging in their day [and] we look to see whether there are children who might find that challenging.
Mandy noted that she also used standardized assessments at the beginning of the year, such as the English Online Interview [10], alongside the informal assessments listed above, to plan for teaching and learning that would support all children's reading development at the beginning of the school year.
At the beginning of the year, we have scheduled meetings where the parents bring them to school, so that we can do the English Online Interview-that gives us data about their oral language development, their reading skills and their writing skills.
Mandy stressed the important role that standardized assessments played in her planning for teaching and learning throughout the year. She used children's standardized assessment results, such as reading level assessments, to determine whether her teaching should aim to (1) support children to meet grade-level expectations, or (2) further extend children to move beyond minimum expectations. For example: If they can read a Level five or above, they're working, you know, 12 months ahead or more. So that sort of gives me the idea or a measure that I can use that helps me to work out whether they're working above expected level or not.
Throughout the year, Mandy drew on informal assessments of children's reading levels and capabilities conducted during guided reading lessons and during one-on-one conferences, in addition to the standardized assessments noted above. She reported the importance of these assessments for framing her teaching practices and engaging the children in setting their own learning goals. She introduced one-on-one conferencing, a practice that differed to the other four foundation-year classes, as a way of supporting children to be agents of their own learning, and to routinely monitor each child's reading development and progress on a regular basis.
I introduced the conferencing so that I could have a one-on-one opportunity just to see where each individual child was at and give them goals that were specific to them.
During the conference, she used quick informal check-ins to monitor their reading-incontext behaviors, sight word knowledge, and to monitor which letter symbols and sounds each child had grasped and which they were yet to learn: I did another letter ID, a quick letter ID, if they didn't know all their letters at that stage. And just see how they're going, how they've progressed since the last time we'd done the assessment. I was doing those assessments more frequently than the other prep [foundation-year] grades.
She also created/introduced an informal assessment that would aid in monitoring progress and support children to move beyond the 26 most common English letter-sound matches that were the focus of the letter-identification standardized assessment: Once they knew the common letter sound matches for the 26 letters of the alphabet, I didn't stop there. Then we moved on to being aware that letters can make more than one sound. That there are diagraphs, if you put a 'c' with the 'h', it can make a/tS/sound. It can make a/S/sound like in 'machine'. We moved on, and so they continued to have goals when it came to letter sounds and decoding.
These reflections highlight how standardized and informal assessments can be routinely integrated into a child-centred teaching program, used to monitor learning and inform teaching throughout the year. Such an approach plans for teaching that aims to support children in meeting grade-level expectations, and to extend children who are working beyond such expectations.

Teaching Approaches and Practices
It was evident from Mandy's interview responses that the approaches and practices she adopted in her teaching were shaped by her use of standardized and informal assessments and a child-centred pedagogy. Mandy incorporated an extra hour into her literacy block, beyond the two hours adopted by the other four foundation-year classes, in order to collect data about each child's reading capabilities on a more regular basis, and to set timely goals. She taught one hour of writing, in keeping with the other foundation-year classes at her school, and taught reading for a two-hour period. The first hour of reading followed the same approach that the other foundation-year classes used. She conducted a whole-group shared/modeled reading lesson, followed by two small-group guided reading lessons while the remainder of the class worked on reading tasks independently of the teacher, and ended the hour with a whole-group reflection. This was followed by a second hour of reading-an approach that the other four classes did not adopt: Mandy also collaborated with the children to set up a book corner, where children were able to choose books of interest, rather than only those at their reading level.
I had a reading corner where I had lots of different books and at the start of the year I just threw all the books in the middle of our circle and they [the children in the class] helped create sort of themes. They grouped the books . . . and once every week or fortnight, they'd have books that they chose from the corner that they'd have in their locker, under their desks . . . I always made sure during the week that they had time for independent reading, they could read from the books that they had chosen, books that interest them.
A key practice of Mandy's that differed to the other foundation-year teachers was her use of one-on-one conferencing, a practice that Mandy incorporated into the second hour of her two-hour reading block. This involved Mandy meeting with each child on a fortnightly basis (at a minimum) to assess and talk about their learning, and re-assess their (1) reading-in-context, (2) letter-identification and (3) sight-word goals. The conferences enabled each child to identify their level of success against their own personal goals, and to plan for further learning, as detailed in Section 3.1.2. For children who found it challenging to set goals, Mandy offered support: I didn't want them to feel overwhelmed. So, you know, if they didn't know any letters, I would say, 'How about we start with this letter because it's in your name? That would be a good one to start with. What do you think?', and they'd always say yes.
These reflections show that Mandy adopted a strong child-centred pedagogy when planning for the teaching and learning of reading. She made plans to meet with each child in a one-on-one context on a regular basis and involved the children in discussions about their own learning, their progress and the setting of goals. When planning for the teaching and learning of reading, Mandy designated set times to collect data about each child and used that data to inform her teaching.

Differentiating and Responding to Individual Learning Needs
The theme 'Differentiating and responding to individual learning needs' is closely linked to the previous theme of 'Teaching approaches and practices', as Mandy often spoke of differentiation as a teaching approach. For example, Mandy spoke of how she would assess each child's reading against the reading continuum, and from there she would design individual goals that would also inform her teaching. She also acknowledged that within a classroom children will have a range of different reading capabilities and that all children need opportunities to progress their own reading competence along this continuum. It is here that there is evidence that the themes intersected.
Mandy specifically described how she differentiated her teaching to respond to individual needs and goals: Depending on what their needs might be, through my assessments and observations and through my conversations with them during conferencing, I wanted to differentiate on a one-to-one basis . . . The one-on-one [conferencing] allowed me to really differentiate down to an individual child's level [which] I might have missed if I was just focusing on those small [guided reading] groups.
As with her teaching approaches and practices more broadly, Mandy was committed to ensuring her teaching was differentiated to support each child's continued progress. Thus, while not explicitly speaking of differentiation, she targeted her teaching to each individual child's strengths and capabilities, commenting that, For the children who got those [letter sounds] really quickly . . . I moved on to, 'Some letters can make more than one sound'. So, for example, the A can make an /eI/ sound like in 'angel'; it can make an /6/ sound like in 'was', and so that became their new focus-being aware of and identifying letters that might make lots of different sounds. And so our conversation would be about that.
These reflections highlight the critical role that one-on-one conferencing played in Mandy's planning for the teaching and learning of reading, and the level of flexibility that was enabled when Mandy chose to create and incorporate informal assessments into her teaching. The one-on-one conferences and informal assessments used by Mandy allowed for a differentiated approach to the assessment, teaching and learning of reading in her foundation-year classroom-an approach that catered to the diverse needs and potential of each child.

Engaging with Families
Mandy's interview data showed that she recognized that a child's home experiences is a source of learning and development. For example, Mandy commented that If you've taught a sibling who read a lot at home, they always read their homework reader, you kind of expect that their sibling, when they come up, they're going to be ready for that kind of thing and display skills to maybe pick up reading quicker than other children.
There was therefore a connection between Mandy's beliefs and the importance she placed on her partnership with parents. Teacher-parent partnerships were of key importance to Mandy, including how she might communicate their child's individual goals as well as their successes so that the experiences the children had in class could extend into the home. One of the strategies Mandy used to engage with parents was to regularly send communications home via the child's home reader: I put [the child's goals] in their home reader so their parents would know what their current focus was as well. [This is the] only thing I'm doing differently . . . putting a little note in their reader telling the parents what their goals are, but even just that, the parents have noticed that this is a difference.
Mandy also spoke of parents 'noticing' what their children were achieving and sharing these noticings with her during impromptu catch-ups.
I have had a lot of parents come and talk to me about how pleased they are to see how well their child was doing with reading in particular. Parents were noticing . . . and they were 'blown away' by their own child's competence. Using that kind of language implied to me that they noticed that their child was reading at a higher level than they would expect for a prep [foundation-year child]. They were so proud of their children and they were commenting on that.
These reflections show that Mandy actively sought to partner with parents, so as to work together in supporting children's reading development. In addition, Mandy viewed parental 'noticings' as another form of feedback-evidence (1) that others were also noting the progress that the children were making and (2) that her work was being recognized and acknowledged.

Children's Reading Outcomes
In addition to interviewing Mandy about her practices and approaches, we also collected the reading level and letter identification outcomes of the 16 children in her foundation-year class to explore whether a connection may exist between Mandy's practices and children's outcomes. In contrast, the children's letter identification knowledge upon school entry and at the end of Term 1 showed that there was evidence of differentiated ability with this isolated skill ( Figure 4). Results show that upon school entry, children ranged in ability with one child unable to identify one letter sound or name, and two children at the other end of the spectrum able to identify 81 letter names and/or sounds. At the end of Term 1, 3 of the 16 children (19%) could identify the name and most common sound of all lower-and upper-case letters of the alphabet, one child was only able to identify the name and/or most common sound of 22 letter symbols, and all the other children showed a range of abilities.    Evidence of a broad range of abilities was apparent in children's reading levels at the end of Term 2 with levels ranging from level 1 through to level 11, with the highest percentage of children at levels 2 and 6 (25% respectively). At the same time, most children had learned the name and most common sound of all lower-and upper-case letters (81%), with the remaining three children unable to identify only one to two letter sounds or names. The pattern of performance in reading ability continued to be evident at the end of Terms 3 and at the end of the year (end of Term 4). Further scrutiny of the data shows that all children had reached the minimum reading level for foundation-year (level 5), with 4 of 16 children working towards minimum expectations for children at the end year 1 (level 15), and 8 of the 16 children reaching or surpassing the minimum expectations of reading level for end of year 2 (level 20).

Mandy's Pedagogical Approach
Mandy's pedagogical approach of focusing on the child rather than the skill to be taught enabled her to gain deep insights into each child's skills and capabilities, and to extend 12 (75%) of the children to achieve reading outcomes beyond the expected level for reading, as set by the school. The children's letter-identification outcomes alone show that most of the children had received a full score of 104 (learning all upper-and lower-case letter names and common sounds) by the end of Term 2, with the remaining three children unable to identify only one to two letter sounds or names. This outcome was comparable to the other four foundation-year classes' end of year outcomes (see Section 1.4: Figure 1), showing that Mandy's approach had supported the children in her class to achieve the same outcome six months earlier than the other four classes. This was despite the fact that none of the children from Mandy's class appeared to demonstrate greater skill at recognizing letters of the alphabet upon school entry compared to the other four classrooms, with the 1st quartile of children in Mandy's class providing the lowest performance of the five groups (see Section 1.4: Figure 2).
Mandy demonstrated awareness that each child had different experiences and prior knowledges from which to draw when developing and extending their skills in reading. She was able to maintain her commitment to teaching to the expected level set by the school and adhere to the school curriculum, but she used this to purposefully remain with or returned to the same goal when warranted and/or continue to develop and challenge each child to explore further ways of progressing their competencies. Purposefully incorporating frequent data collection points and one-on-one discussions with children into her planning, allowed Mandy to continually work to each child's ever changing and developing capacities and potential, allowing her to support all children in her class to achieve minimum standards, and many to reach beyond what was expected for their year level. By drawing on each child's existing skills and tapping into their interests, passions and motivations when selecting texts during independent reading, Mandy, in partnership with parents, was able to support children to move forward in their learning, rather than focusing on what was necessary for the teaching and learning of reading at the foundation level.
While Mandy recognized and saw value in the standardized assessments undertaken across the year as a way of benchmarking students, her approach to informally assessing children's skills, knowledges and conceptual understandings was integral to creating individualized learning opportunities and to reframing the learning focus for each child in a timely manner. This approach enabled her to hear each child's voice, to set challenges and to progress each child's reading development in ways that may not have been possible had she not incorporated an additional hour of reading and one-on-one conferencing into her teaching.

Discussion
This study has shown that enacting an individualized child-centred approach in the teaching of reading can support foundation-year children to demonstrate a level of skill that may not have been possible were a teacher to teach to the minimum reading benchmarks expected of a foundation-year child. As demonstrated in the data, while none of the children could read a level 1 text at the beginning of the school year, children were able to develop their reading competencies at their own rate, through a targeted focus on the specific needs and potential of each child. By the end of the school year, all children had achieved the school-determined minimum reading level for the foundation year (level 5), but more importantly, fifty percent (8 of 16) of the children had achieved the school's reading benchmark level for year 2 (level 20). A similar pattern of differentiated abilities was evident in results from the letter identification assessments across the school year. The interview data appeared to show that engaging children in conversations about their reading goals, in partnership with parents, created an environment where children sought and were supported to extend and challenge themselves, rather than plateauing when they had attained the benchmarked level. Engaging with parents by sharing and discussing their child's individual goals and achievements created a partnership in which there was a shared responsibility for the children's learning, and children's individual achievements were celebrated [23].
This study has shown that when teachers teach to the individual child, and they understand the English curriculum/stages of development, there is less emphasis on whether a child will meet the minimum standards expected of a grade-age level. Rather, emphasis is placed on the individual child's abilities, and the supports that will enable them to reach their potential. Had Mandy solely relied on the 'letter-a-week' approach that all foundation-year teachers had adopted, one that took more than three quarters of the year to realize, it could be argued that the children in her class would not have achieved the letter-identification outcomes that they did halfway through the year, an outcome that was comparable to the end of year outcomes of the other four classes. Mandy's oneon-one conferences allowed her to monitor child progress, move onto new letter foci (or beyond) or to remain/return to letters that had already been covered in the 'letter-a-week' program when warranted, using a three-pronged approach that placed equal emphasis on (1) reading-in-context, (2) letter-identification and (3) sight-word goals. This appeared to have a positive influence on children's reading-in-context abilities, with all children meeting the minimum standard (i.e., able to read a level 5 text) and fifty percent of children achieving a reading standard that was two years above the reading benchmark for the foundation-year.
This study has shown that children may be afforded more freedom to move between levels of attainment and to break free of the "age-grade lockstep" [18] (p. 16) when teachers adopt an individualized child-centred approach. Child 5M's reading outcomes ( Figure 3) provide a pertinent example of this. At the beginning of the year, 5M had yet to demonstrate an ability to read a level 1 standardized text and showed median skill at identifying letters of the alphabet compared to his peers ( Figure 4). However, he was one of the first children to identify all upper-and lower-case letter symbols and common letter-sound matches by the end of the first quarter of the school year, and was reading a level 23 text at the end of his first year of schooling (slightly higher than the expected benchmark for the end of grade 2). This is an important finding, showing what can be achieved when a teacher frequently monitors and teaches to a child's level of development rather than being influenced by supposed academic readiness, or planning to focus on a 'letter-a-week' to help the child achieve minimum standards by year's end [28,29]. Mandy's approach supports Vygotsky's notion that learning cannot be fostered by targeting discrete skills in isolation but rather that children need to be provided with experiences that require them to integrate a range of thinking processes [17], tarrying with and returning to key content, concepts and skills "on a higher plane" [17] (p. 53), along the way.
In all, these findings suggest that Mandy had an understanding that the characteristics of the children in her class were varied and individual, despite the fact that they were within the same age group, supporting Vygotsky's concept that child learning and development is not tied to chronological age, nor is it stable or immovable [16]. These understandings are essential to ensuring that the learning and teaching of reading is equitable in classroom environments and highlight the importance of adopting an individualized approach to reading to ensure that equitable access to learning and development is provided for all children, especially those who are reported as not being 'academically prepared' for commencing school. Reductionist approaches that focus on 'preparing' children for success in reading using a drill, skills approach (such as teaching a 'letter-a-week'), irrespective of children's needs and potentials, risk leaving children behind when they need more time to develop understandings, or risk holding children back when they are ready to make further progress in their learning.

Limitations of the Study and Future Directions
One of the limitations of this study is that it only included one interview with one teacher at the end of the school year. It would have been useful to collect longitudinal data from the teacher in addition to the student data, to observe Mandy's practice during one-on-one conferences and to further understand her own reflections on her practices over time. Such investigations would provide greater insights into the full context of Mandy's teaching and to understand how she provided equitable access to all children in her class throughout other times of the day to support their learning.
In terms of the oral-to-print continuum of development, we know that Mandy assessed the children on their oral language and phonological awareness knowledges in the children's first month of schooling, using the English Online Interview [10]. We also know that all 16 children met minimum standards for reading and basic letter-sound knowledge as determined by the school curriculum and reading benchmark targets. What remains unknown, however, given the data that was available to us, is whether Mandy engaged the children in learning activities that would support further development of phonological awareness, for children who did not have grade-expected capabilities upon school entry that are characteristic of the given age group [16]. More information of how (and whether) Mandy engaged children in activities that are typically considered to benefit pre-school aged children's emergent literacies would have detailed the degree to which Mandy accounted for each of the stages of development from the oral-to-print continuum, according to student need. Furthermore, such data would have provided insight into whether there was more that she could have done for the children who achieved the minimum benchmark for reading, to support them to achieve more, and as such, truly reach their full potential. Clearly, further research is warranted, and as such, the results of the present study should be generalized with caution.

Conclusions
This study has provided useful insights into the connection between teacher practice and learner achievements, showing that when a teacher knows each child on an individual basis and uses that knowledge to plan for teaching that focuses on what each child can achieve with support, children become agents in their own learning [20]. Rather than focusing on what children should achieve to meet an external set of reading standards, this teacher focused on what each child could currently do, and how they could work together, along with the children's parents, to support the child's further development. This case study has shown how important it is to (1) monitor children's progress on a frequent basis, (2) use standardized assessments to monitor children's progress towards meeting minimum expectations rather than to pre-design teaching programs, (3) incorporate informal assessments into the program that move beyond the narrow foci of standardized assessments, and (4) partner with parents. Doing so ensures that teachers are teaching each child (not 'the grade'), addressing children's diverse learning needs, and supporting each child to reach their full potential.


The Visibility of an Indigenized Curriculum during Covid 19 New Zealand. An Exploration of the Experience from Indigenous Academics

The 2020 Covid19 global pandemic disrupted teaching practices of 8 universities and 16 Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics (ITPs) in New Zealand. This disruption led to the curriculum being transferred from internal classes to online delivery. It unleashed a surge of research activity and publications in the education sector. However, little research was conducted to investigate the effect to the academic experience and even less research explored the impact to Indigenized curriculums. This paper explored websites for the visibility of Indigenous programmes and Indigenous academic experiences. It does this by: 1) describing the 8 universities and 16 Polytechnics for context; 2) identifying the type of Indigenous Schools/Faculties in universities and ITPs and whether Indigenous programmes of study were visible; 3) two authors providing personal accounts as Indigenous academics moving from internal teaching to online delivery. Specific mention is made of an Indigenous avatar named “Digi Hami from NZ.” The exploration utilized a Māori-Centered and social research approach. The analysis drew main themes and suggested that some universities and ITPs were better prepared in the transition and the virtual mode of teaching was unable to retain the same quality and depth of learning required for an Indigenized curriculum. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/wjer World Journal of Educational Research Vol. 8, No. 4, 2021 90 Published by SCHOLINK INC.

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Published by SCHOLINK INC. sector. This article briefly addresses this lack of consideration by answering these questions: 1) What Indigenised programmes were visible online in the 8 universities and 16 ITPs?
2) How did Covid19 impact on Indigenous academics' ability to teach Indigenous knowledge during the 2020 Covid19 Lockdown Level 4?
The next sections discuss the methods, the universities, and ITPs. It forms the foundation from which a journey can be told of Indigenous stories and how Covid19 impacted on Indigenous academics and the programmes they taught. It starts with locating the research approach in an Indigenous framework.

Māori-Centered Research
This research applied a Māori-centered research approach. In doing so Māori knowledge was the focus of the research because the researchers were researching a Māori phenomenon. This approach enabled the design, implementation, and interpretation of results to be heavily laden with Indigenous knowledge. (Cunningham & Durie, 1998;Smith, 1999;Hudson, Milne, Reynolds, Russell, & Smith, 2010). Table 1by Cunningham and Durie (1998)

Social Research Methods
The research also utilised social research methods. It applied quantitative and qualitative methodologies to explore the impact to the Indigenised curriculums and the challenges Māori academics encountered during Covid19. The following data displays tables that: i. Shows the 8 universities and 16 ITPs to place the discussions in context. Therefore, a search of websites, education institutions, and government documents was done to gather this data.
ii. identify the type of Indigenous Schools or Faculties in each university and ITPs and whether they deliver Indigenous specific academic programmes of study during Covid19. It also provides qualitative descriptions of the data and singled out identifications of mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge).
Identifying this information proved challenging because "mātauranga Māori is a modern term for a body of knowledge" (Royal, 2009, p. 31) and finding it within the 8 universities or 16 ITPs was difficult to locate as searches did not yield automatic results whereas the term Pōwhiri, which is a ritual of encounter (Moorfield, 2021), was an example of excising mātauranga Māori that was visible.
Therefore, the concept of Pōwhiri was adopted to gather information on whether an Indigenise curriculum was visible.
iii. two authors provide personal accounts as Indigenous academics moving from internal teaching to online teaching. The two Indigenous academics teach in a tertiary sector, one from a university, and one from an ITP.   (2021) stipulate that these universities are ranked in the top 3% of 500 universities in the world. Also, that they have 22 of their subjects ranked within the top 50 universities and a strong reputation that captures a large cohort of international students who chose to study in New Zealand (ibid, p. 1). The names of the 16 ITPs in New Zealand are displayed in Table 3. These ITPs provide a range of educational services such as agriculture, business administration, IT, arts, trades, sports science, health and wellbeing, and nursing to deliver vocational education and training for various sectors in society.

Method One-Universities and ITPs
However, current government restructuring has seen 16 ITPs amalgamated into one organisation named Te Pūkenga (Indigenous name) and English name New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology (NZIST) (The Tertiary Education Commission, 2021).  Table 4 and Table 5 show the results of data collections. It highlighted the number of faculties/colleges, the specific Māori or Indigenous faculties, schools, and units and whether a degree or certification in Indigenous knowledge was offered. It also uncovered a myriad of governance subsidiaries and ITPs referred to their units as either department, schools, center's, or faculties. For clarity and simplicity all governance structures were captured as departments. Where there was information not visible the abbreviation "NV" if subject areas represented Māori knowledge these were included. Often subject areas were good indicators of the associated department, and this data was collected over a two-week period in 2021. Note. NV = Not Visible. Table 6 and Table 7 highlighted whether an online course was offered during Covid19. These tables also indicate whether the tertiary institution mentioned Pōwhiri and as stated earlier this concept was applied to identify mātauranga Māori being taught during Lockdown Level 4. It also displays which universities and ITPs offered an indigenised curriculum and the value of Indigenous knowledge in the institutions were shown by the establishment of Māori units, departments, or faculties.  Note. NV = Not Visible.

Method Three: Personal Account
Two Indigenous academics gave a personal account of teaching in an indigenized curriculum online during Covid19 Lockdown Level 4. One academic has worked for about two decades in a university environment in New Zealand. This academic continues to teach Māori knowledge in an indigenized curriculum. One academic works in the ITP sector for over two decades in computing and information technology. This academic continues to teach computing technology and had adopted an Indigenous approach in delivery and practice. They also created "Digi Hami" the "Indigenous Avatar".

Content Analysis
A quantitative and qualitative data analysis approach was used to analyse the data. Content analysis was selected as a process to describe and classify data. (Powers & Knapp, 2006) It enabled the characteristics of the data to be examined by looking at the content in terms of what is written, how it is written, and whether it applies to the focus of the research. The online information and programmes for the universities were relatively easy to access. For the 16 ITPs the access was challenging and required more than three searches to find information. Many times, the outcome produced data that could not be used, for example, the number of units delivering Māori knowledge were invisible and unable to be ascertained at the time the search was undertaken. Compounding this lack of visibility, was the emergent content in the literature regarding ITPs merging because of a government sustainability initiative (TEC, 2021) and that we were conducting this research in 2021 and content from 2020 may have been removed.
Consequently, assumptions were made by the researchers to indicate that this government initiative had an impact on the way Māori knowledge was visible or invisible that resulted in inconsistent websites in this sector. Also, the search yielded restrictions to the access of public documents in the universities and ITPs and in some cases required student or staff login to undertake further investigation; thus, limiting the broader analysis of content available.

Results & Discussions
The results were grouped together under the themes: Covid19 Visible, Mātauranga Māori Visible, Online Delivery Visible, and Pōwhiri Visible. These themes were in synchronicity with the method of approach to showcase the exploration of the New Zealand experience. Where specific information was not visible when the searches were conducted this was indicated on the table. This was also the approach for information that was visible and the main search engines used was Google. The following explanations provide an overview of the content that was analysed.

Covid19 Visible
Information to students and staff about Covid19 was given specific consideration and deemed of high importance. Subsequently, the 8 universities and 16 ITPs provided online delivery of course content and details of what students could expect under Covid19 conditions. They also uploaded online dedicated web pages to Covid19 information with some making specific commentary on lockdown operational procedures. Some universities provided a lot of information that was accessible to the public and others required student or staff to login. There were also links made available on the university websites to government pages and QRC code. This coincided with government's direction during the pandemic when class delivery ceased in 2020.

Mātauranga Māori Visible
The search to locate mātauranga Māori produced interesting findings. Seven universities displayed information on mātauranga Māori that was strong when it coincided with the visibility of Māori units and/or degreeprogrammes. The concept of Pōwhiri was visible in 50% of the universities; this reinforced the value of mātauranga Māori in these institutions during Covid19 lockdown. Subsequently, many universities offered an Indigenise programmes that taught Māori knowledge.
The ITP sector provided a mixture of courses related to mātauranga Māori. There were 13 out of 16 ITPs that identified mātauranga Māoribeing visible. Also, 9 out of 16 ITPs displayed Pōwhiri as visible equating to about 65% and like the universities showed a commitment to Indigenising the curriculum.

Online Delivery Visible
The 8 universities provided a range of online courses during Covid19 Lockdown Level 4. The quality of the online delivery was not sort in this research. Rather, the acknowledgement in the content on the websites was the evidence of this occurring. The information for 11 out of the 16 ITPs were easy to access regarding how they provided online courses during Covid19 Lockdown Level 4. Being able to access this information can be attributed to the ability of the institutions to retain 2020 data in 2021 and/or archive this type of information. Subsequently, the information from the remaining ITPs was not visible during the time of data collection.

Pōwhiri Visible
During Covid19 it became clear across the websites that Pōwhiri on-campus was cancelled for all universities. This seem to indicate that online Pōwhiri were replacing internal encounters. For example, Massey Univesity cancelled their Pōwhiri during Lockdown Level 4 and alerted all staff, students, and the wider community. (Massey University, 2020) and also held one of the first conferences online where a Pōwhiri welcomed the attendees (HDCA, 2020). Also, some institutions made available online types of Pōwhiri while other universities were not that specific in making visible this type of information.
The ITPs also cancelled on-campus Pōwhiri. Some delivered virtual online Pōwhirilike Waikato Institute of Technology by putting students and staff into a Zoom session and simulated Pōwhiri protocols. This type of adjustment enabled Pōwhiri to be visible and reinforced the values of mātauranga Māori and the indigenisation of the curriculum.
Consequently, for those students whose qualifications required them to undertake classes in tribal villages and with elders this type of online learning was absent of these things. It became apparent that to try and offer this type of learning online would require the elders in the tribal villages to come on board, have strong internet connections, understand online technology and software, and deliver their knowledge through these mediums using specific software. Subsequently, I did not entertain placing this type of pressure on the Indigenous communities given the issues with keeping their communities safe and the personal cost for them to prepare these things. More importantly, the onus was on me, the Indigenous academic, to make this teaching work than expect that type of work from the elders in our community. As an Indigenous academic it is of utmost importance to respect our elders and the communities they represent, and resist placing pressure on them. Therefore, activities like Pōwhiri and going into tribal villages for students to learn about Te Ao Māori (the Māori world) by experiencing the culture and staying on a marae (tribal communal houses) were suspended until such time the elders, the tribal villages, the universities and the nation were allowed out of their "bubbles" and safety procedures in place.
Indigenising a curriculum using Indigenous avatars was unknown to me until lockdown. Whilst in lockdown I experienced an increase in meetings and saw for the first time 'Digi Hami' in a Zoom meeting. I was impressed at the animations appearing behind Hami (name of creator) as it also showed videos and pictures of students in classes, and "Digi Hami" walked across the screen teaching and talking. It is well documented in literature regarding the Indigenous Māori people of New Zealand that Indigenous students feel at ease spiritually and physically when they see an Indigenous lecturer on campuses or educating them. For me, it opened a wealth of ideas on how this concept of Indigenous avatars could assist in delivering an Indigenous curriculum in a world of Covid19. However, very little effort was given to test this idea because energy and time for me was spent using existing resources to deliver courses online, making sure the WIFI signal was strong, attending various meetings for the groups I affiliated to, providing academic support to the students and staff, and the academy.

ITP Experience
Hearing across the YouTube live podcast television the voice from our leader Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern telling the nation of Level 3 Lockdown impelled me to setup workstations at home. The first workstation I setup was Workstation A: the lecturer. This setup initially involved attaining basic equipment from work like a headset then purchasing using personal funds for a webcam, a 3X2 meter green filter screen cloth, an old adjustable coat hanger rack to drape the filter cloth over that enabled me to create a green screen for the Zoom virtual background. Using Zoom was new for me. Lockdown Level 3 allowed me to return to work and obtain a spare lab computer with a USB dongle WIFI to assist with the establishment of Workstation B: the student. Setting up two workstations helped me to understand the teaching environment using skillets from professional software engineers and HCI experts in which we would replicate the internal class environment online. By having Workstation A: the lecturer, and Workstation B: the student, I could begin the process of generating online teaching

Concluding Comments
Covid19 Lockdown Level 4 forced many institutions to transfer from internal teaching to online teaching. There were some universities and ITPs that eased into this transition while others struggled to put online systems in place. The universities and ITPs provided courses during the lockdown period, support to the students enrolled in their courses, and performed adequately in the global pandemic.
Although the wellbeing of students and the ability for students to access courses online was highlighted as a priority in the research, unfortunately the same emphasis was not attributed to the academics.
The impact to Indigenised curriculums was relatively silent during Covid19 Lockdown Level 4.
Utilising the concept of Pōwhiri to bring a voice to the silence in the research highlighted that most universities and ITPs valued educating students on Māori knowledge, the Indigenous knowledge in New Zealand. Also, some universities went a step further in valuing Māori knowledge by having established faculties and schools. For the ITPs this value was continued in the various certification made available for students to choose from. When reconsidering the personal accounts from an Indigenous academic in the university and an Indigenous academic in the ITP sector it can be deduced that Indigenous academics were silent during lockdown because they were busy adjusting to the teaching conditions and making their programmes work in unprecedented conditions.
The tables, data, and commentary allow the New Zealand academic experience to be told. The data also enabled the Indigenised programmes to be visible for the 8 universities and 16 ITPs, identified the range of courses that was available, and the personal commentaries spoke to the impact on Indigenous academics and their ability to teach Indigenous knowledge during lockdown. Since Lockdown Level 4 in 2020 New Zealand went into lockdown again in 2021 and restrictions to teaching was placed on the Auckland campuses for universities and ITPs. Even though it was at a lower level, the ongoing requirements to teach an Indigenised curriculum to students online still requires investigation. A possible way forward maybe to utilise the technological developments like "Digi Hami" the Indigenous Avatar to address these challenges given that Covid19 appears to be a global pandemic that will be around for a long time. This article opens the doorway for other Indigenous stories to be spoken and experiences during the Covid19 global pandemic be written about and discussed on a world stage.