Activity 3: Contribution of Teacher Inquiry Topics to my Communities of Practice

I am finding this a difficult concept to reflect on....perhaps because I know little about Communities of Practice and I've struggled with teacher inquiry this year - creating an inquiry that 'gets the most bang for buck,' but here are my thoughts...

Something that came up a lot in our recent parent surveys at school was the use of digital communication to involve parents in their child's education. This is something relevant at the moment, with programmes like 'seesaw' or 'dojo' and is something I would love to inquire into. Something like.... 'how do digital communication tools impact on parents' involvement in their child's learning?'

One 'issue' I have is my working relationships with whanau, especially as a New Entrant teacher. I ring parents, write notes to them or text them on our school phone, but never about their child's learning; always a message about behaviour or a reminder. We all know that positive home-school relationships and productive partnerships strengthen children's learning and success, especially for Maori (Ministry of Education, 2013). Is digital communication the more effective means? Will using digital communication tools to share children's learning enhance achievement?

Linked to is parents, staff and children's understandings of the use of digital technology as a tool for learning. Another inquiry... although I'm not sure how to word it. Also in our recent survey, many parents said they did not want nor see the need for children to use digital technology at primary school. This is a big issue for me as I become the lead teacher for digital technology next year. Do parents understand the purpose for digital technology? In a school with little digital tools and little use of what we do have, how do I support staff and families to see the importance of digital technology in learning as I have from this course?

As Sweeney (2015) discusses, we have set up Communities of Practice within our school this year, by setting up teaching teams of similar year levels, rather than syndicates. Each team has an inquiry (as well as individual inquiries that contribute the team inquiry). I think what is missing though is that we do not 'nurture the group' (Knox, 2009). I believe we still work on our own. Knox (2009) says that CoP is about what matters for the members, and ultimately for our children; that CoP need a sense of identity, which again is missing from our team.

Because these inquiry topics are coming from our community voice, I hope that by making time to work collaboratively with my team, and perhaps developing a team inquiry in these areas, we can create that identity and a shared domain of our practice (Wegner, 2000). With effective collaboration, this will benefit all (Sweeney, 2015). I have truely valued working collaboratively on the course thus far and have learned so much more I believe, than if I did it on my own. Sharing or leading my team in these inquiries will also support their knowledge and understanding of digital technology as a tool for learning.

References:

Knox, B. (2009, December 4).Cultivating Communities of Practice: Making Them Grow.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhMPRZnRFkk

Ministry of Education. (2013). Ka Hikitia: Accelerating Success 2013-2017.  Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education.

Sweeney, R. (2015). Building collaborative Teaching as Inquiry teams using spiral of Inquiry. Retrieved from http://blog.core-ed.org/blog/2015/06/building-collaborative-teaching-as-inquiry-teams-using-spirals-of-inquiry.html

Wenger, E.(2000). Communities of practice and social learning systems. Organization,7(2), 225-246.

Activity 2: A Change in My Practice Towards Future-oriented Learning and Teaching

Change... 

This is something our school is currently undergoing; a change towards integrated curriculum through inquiry. This year I have been a part of a lead team of teachers who have been involved in PLD around integrated curriculum. We have begun supporting all staff in this change with the intention to roll out our framework next year. 

Thus, after looking at this week's reading I have chosen to reflect more deeply on...

Theme 3: a curriculum that uses knowledge to develop learning capacity

Bolstad, Gilbert, McDowall, Bull, Boyd & Hipkins (2012) talk about 21st Century skills as already happening, not a vision for our future. I tend to agree, but rather than 'already happening' I think they are present in our school, but not yet explicitly taught to prepare our young children for the unknown future. To me, key competencies are a direct link to developing learning capacity.

Currently at our school, we mostly teach content knowledge, especially in our 'Topic.' For example, what makes an insect an insect in our learning around insects in our Term 1 topic this year. Thinking and Managing Self are key competencies in our school curriculum, we plan for and attempt to teach key competencies but I believe in my teaching, I give more weighting to content. Why? How important is it that children know what makes an insect an insect? How does that support them in their future? 

There is a shift in our school's thinking around what is knowledge and the idea of explicitly teaching key competencies and dispositions or skills in our new inquiry framework alongside content. The ideas around 21st Century skills in Mind Lab, triggered deeper understandings for me about the relevance of key competencies and dispositions and their purpose or importance in teaching and learning. These ideas helped me to make sense of our new inquiry framework and planning template.

An example of our integrated inquiry planning template with content, key competencies and skills clearly defined - Trudy Francis C21 Learning Ltd, 2017.

Earlier in my teaching career at my current school, we underwent PLD around the use of key competencies in writing with the same facilitator taking our current PLD - Trudy Francis. This is a step in the direction of developing learning capacity. Instead of a focus on content in writing, I changed my practice to include ideas like persisting to edit writing or taking a risk to share writing and accept feedback. A lot of my writing 'content' was based on writing about persistence or risk taking and then applying it to the writing process. This was a huge shift in my practice towards future-oriented teaching and learning and the change in student voice, student participation and students seeing themselves as writers with a voice were huge! Not only did I see children begin to use the language of key competencies, but their success in writing increased too. I am unclear why this was... did children develop the skills that enabled them to become better writers? If so, when children's learning capacity is developed through skills or key competencies, they are more successful. 

We already have the knowledge and understanding of 21st century knowledge. It's there; it's a part of our talk, a part of some of our planning, a part of our professional development, and a part of our writing programmes but it's still hiding. It's not visible, children do not explicitly understand the skills/dispositions or how to use them. Coaching staff next year in this change is my chance to greater develop my understandings in developing children's learning capacities and also support staff to change their practice in doing this.

Bring it on!

Reference:
Bolstad, R., Gilbert, J., McDowall, S., Bull, A., Boyd, S., & Hipkins, R. (2012). Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching — a New Zealand perspective. Report prepared for the Ministry of Educationve. Retrieved from https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/schooling/109306

Francis, T. (2009). C21 Learning Ltd. Retrieved from http://www.c21learning.com/cms/page.php?view=home_page

Activity 1: My Reflective Practice

Wow.... 16 weeks of Mindlab done and dusted, 4 assignments handed in and here I am, writing a blog for the first time and thinking how am I going to keep myself on track for the next 16 weeks?

I have never written a blog before, let alone a professional, reflective blog. So this way of reflecting on my practice is very new, but exciting. 

Currently any written professional reflections I make are typed on a word document, printed out and then put into my Registered Teacher Criteria evidence folder. I agree with Finlay (2008) when she states that reflective practice can become 'bland and mechanical' due to time constraints. This is how I reflect; I go through the same motions and my reflections become superficial. I often make little to no formal reference to theory, but rather focus on practice. 

An example of my current reflective journal template

Our class notes and reading this week had us look at Zeichner and Liston's (cited in Finlay, 2008, p.4) five levels of reflection. 

• rapid reflection
• repair
• review
• research
• retheorizing and reformulating 

I frequently reflect rapidly and within the repair level. I am always 'thinking on the spot' and then jotting down notes or thoughts onto my planner for the next day or changing what I am teaching in the moment. I think this is a very natural part of being a teacher. It is practice based reflection, not involving theory. Because I teach alongside another New Entrant teacher, we are constantly reflecting with each other in informal conversation, discussing what changes we need to make in our teaching practice based on student cues. If I have a real 'hunch' abut something or something is not quite meshing with my current understandings about teaching, that is when I will reflect more deeply in my journal, which is at the review level. This I do not do often and above I have outlined why and how I go about this. 

For myself, I see a starting point in Gibbs' (1988) model for reflection (cited in Finlay, 2008, p.8). This lends itself well to the teacher inquiry cycle and is a clear process in which to reflect in the review level and perhaps the research level. It goes a step further than what I do already; it asks that you analyse, perhaps through theory, and create an action plan. This will help me to reflect more deeply and make effective change in my practice. 

Gibbs' Reflective Cycle, (cited in Finlay, 2008, p.8)

How could I reach a higher level of reflection?

I believe our teacher inquiry process fits in the level of research. I collect student data and reflect on research and readings to shape and inform my inquiry goal and essentially change my practice. However I have found, after looking deeper into teacher inquiry in this course, research reflection will not effectively support change in practice if the scanning, focusing and developing a hunch stages of spiral inquiry are not given justice. This is something that as I step into a Team Leader role next year, I am very conscious of. I will endeavour to support my team in their research reflection by giving time to these parts of the spiral inquiry, so that we can together reach higher levels of reflection. Hopefully, when we become more skilled at this, our reflections may step into the retheorizing and reformulating level where we align academic theory to teaching practice (Finlay, 2008). 

Reference:

Finlay, L. (2009). Reflecting on reflective practice. PBPL. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/files/opencetl/file…