Whakamana In The Document Te Whāriki?

• Key Point 1 – What is Whakamana in the document Te Whāriki?

Whakamana is about being empowered and strengthed, it is the purpose of the document Te Whāriki. All the strands that are in Te Whāriki begin with mana, for example, mana atua – well-being and mana whenua – belonging. The strands have all been shown as areas of mana or sources of strength for helping children to sustraina lifelong learning process. As an upcoming ECE whakamana is an important thing to remember, to enourage the children to be empowered and use their strength wether its physical strength or emotional strangth. (Lee, Carr, Soutar & Mitchell, 2013).

• Key Point 2 – What does an empowering education environment look like?

An empowering learning environment is where teachers use strategies that help them in in their teaching to strenghten a child’s learning muscles. This is important and relevant to me as upcoming ECE teacher as it means if I use my iwn strategies as a teacher, these will help for the educational environmet and helping it to be as empowering and effect for the child as possible. (Lee, Carr, Soutar & Mitchell, 2013).

• Key Point 3 – Mana tangata – contribution

Mana tangata is a strand in Te Whāriki, for māori people

A way to help the children to be able to define what gender they are is by using colors, for example, pinks is for girls and blue is for boys. Another way was by getting the teachers, all women to wear particular clothes and make sure that women and men on the wall were showed doing non-traditional roles. It is important for me as a ECE teacher in training to know to encourage children to know which gender they are, by using activities and communication to help the child to be able to define their gender easily but also making sure the activities and communication is enjoyable and fun for the child so they are still interested. (Stephenson,