Assessment driven transformation
Relationships First® in partnership with Emeritus Professor Russell Bishop
Get started in 2024
Let’s talk!
Transforming Education with Culturally Responsive Assessment
Relationships First is an evidence-informed wrap-around framework that works to increase equity through transforming classroom, leadership, and system practices, creating a culturally responsive context for learning.
Central to this transformation is a focus on assessment for learning, ensuring that all students, particularly indigenous and marginalised learners, receive the feedback and support they need to achieve their full potential.
Since 2012, in New Zealand | Aotearoa we have worked with 16 Kahui Ako , 175 schools and 3,850 teachers – impacting approximately 50,000 students.
Relationships-based Leadership, Assessment-capable Learners
Relationships First supports educators to build relationships with students, with a specific emphasis on marginalised students. Through a robust assessment framework, educators are equipped with the tools to monitor and support student progress continuously, using assessment for learning to inform teaching practices and provide targeted feedback.
Cognition Education’s programme is based on over a decade’s worth of research into what works best for indigenous and marginalised students, looking at the factors necessary to transform their schooling experience from one of failure, to one of success. This research is considered to be one of the most powerful contributions to educational research and practice in the past 50 years, highlighting the critical role of formative assessment in improving educational outcomes for indigenous and marginalised students.
Cognition guides schools through iterative cycles of development and change, with an ultimate focus on building capability. These cycles integrate comprehensive assessment strategies to inform instruction and support continuous improvement in teaching and learning.
Ultimately, leaders engaged in Relationships First walk away from the programme with the pedagogy and skills to create and sustain unprecedented change for marginalised learners. This includes the ability to implement effective assessment for learning strategies that drive student achievement and equity.
Programme overview
The 4 components: Research/Profile, Voice, Impact Coaching and the Guiding Coalition work in unison, with PLD, learning days, coaching and data collection arranged depending on each schools’ needs – meaning each journey is different. This methodology is also aligned with our way of working – The Collaborative Impact Approach.
“Our focus on the Relationships First Programme and the observation experience has been positive for teachers, and for many it has shed a new light on a different way of teaching”
DANIEL WILSON
PRINCIPAL, NAYLAND COLLEGE
Explore the evidence of impact
WATCH
Nayland College
READ
Inaugural project
READ
About Russell Bishop
READ
Tai Tokerau cluster
Contact
Level 8, 139 Quay Street, Auckland 1010
New Zealand
