Culturally Responsive Practice
Relationships First
Impacting 50,000
students since 2012
Get started in 2023
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What is Relationships First?
Cognition Education’s Relationships First programme is a culturally responsive practice that focuses on accelerating and sustaining the achievement outcomes of indigenous and marginalised students, to maximise the achievement of all learners.
Since 2012, in New Zealand | Aotearoa we have worked with 16 Kahui Ako, 175 schools and 3,850 teachers – impacting approximately 50,000 students.
Improving teaching and learning for all
Developed in collaboration with Emeritus Professor Russell Bishop, 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.
Relationships First supports educators to build relationships with students, with a specific emphasis on marginalised students. Cognition Education’s programme is based on over a decade’s worth of research into what works best for indigenous and minoritized 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.
Cognition guides schools through iterative cycles of development and change, with an ultimate focus on building capability.
Our team helps your team to grow Relationships-based Leaders of Learning; leaders who know how to build a culture of success and promote effective learning. Ultimately, leaders engaged in Relationships First walk away from the programme with the pedagogy and skills to create unprecedented change for marginalised learners.
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.
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“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
About Russell Bishop
READ
Tai Tokerau cluster
READ
Inaugural project
Contact
Level 8, 139 Quay Street, Auckland 1010
New Zealand
