Ahakoa he aha te rākau he hua kei roto: Reviewing the Teaching Council’s draft Inclusive Teaching Practice Guidance through a children's rights oriented lens

Abstract

In this article we review the Draft Inclusive Teaching Practice Guidance (ITPG) from the Teaching Council (2025a). This is the Council’s third guidance book, after providing Tātaiako for Māori learners, and Tapasā for learners from the Pacific. The main focus of the ITPG for registered kaiako/teachers is strengthening their inclusive practice, and while it is very much about disabled learners, it also views inclusion in the broadest sense. We review the ITPG against the opportunities for supporting active participation of all learners, and where it sits alongside the revised Standards for the Teaching Profession released in 2025. The ITPG does not take an explicit rights oriented approach like many previous inclusive practice frameworks, but instead works to provide an interpretation of the Standards for kaiako working in Aotearoa New Zealand to use. However because of this lack of an explicit rights orientation, there is a very real danger that kaiako will view embedding the ITPG in practice as something they can opt in or out of doing as they feel fit, rather than this being an important professional obligation grounded in the inalienable right that all tamariki and rangatahi possess to an equitable and inclusive education. Without this obligation, it is possible for teaching practice to be overwhelmed by other institutional and policy drivers of practice. Thus in a more rights focused, mana enhancing political context, the ITPG could become a critical means for transforming inclusive practice. However, so too could it easily be made irrelevant by marginalising, discriminatory, exclusionary policy and power dynamics in play within Aotearoa New Zealand’s education system, such as we collectively find ourselves navigating at the moment.