Communities of Practice

The inquiry topics I have narrowed my focus down to are “Key Competencies in Leadership”, “Leading Change” and “Teacher Inquiry into Student Learning”. My plan is to hopefully narrow this down to two by the conclusion of this blog. A community of practice that is cultivated and effectively operates can result in improved practice, “Communities of practice are a practical way to frame the task of managing knowledge. They provide a concrete organisational infrastructure for realising the dream of a learning organisation.” (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002, Preface, para. 2). Communities of Practice have three elements – ‘Community’, (Mutual Engagement), ‘Domain’ (Joint Enterprise) and ‘Practice’ (Shared Repertoire). For the purposes of my inquiry topics, my community would be the senior management team and team leaders that I work with. There would also be contact with different teachers across the team and our Learning Assistants. The domain would be the platform of the inquiry and the shared learning about this. The practise would include the combined community skills, knowledge and experiences we have when we work together. We will need to work collaboratively to share and learn. From my perspective as part of the Senior Management team, the inquiry will help staff to complete their appraisal through an inquiry process. For the team leaders, the inquiry process will first need to be learned through professional development and then passed down to the teachers within their teams. For those who have already had professional development in the use of inquiry into student learning, the process will be easier as they already have a basic understanding. They may be able to support the others who have less experience. These staff will be the early adopters and will move ahead to help put procedures in place. Early adopters are also useful for helping those less knowledgeable or skilled in seeing the benefits and advantages. In the early part of the setting up of the new appraisal process within our school, not all staff could see the benefit of using teaching as inquiry to inform practise. However after recent professional development, the senior management and team leaders were able to build a deeper understanding and could see the benefits of using this approach. Hopefully this enthusiasm will filter down to other staff. The purpose of the Teaching as Inquiry cycle is to improve outcomes for all students. The cycle is developed to be a framework that teachers can use to help them learn from their practice (Ministry of Education, 2009). If we are expecting our students to meet the key competencies of the New Zealand curriculum, how can we as leaders of curriculum show these and also supporting our staff? (Ministry of Education, 2009b). (Murphy, 2017) talks about leaders needing key dispositions, knowledge and skills to develop and lead change within schools and how the key competencies underpin these. With this in mind, I think upon reflection that this helps me to narrow down my inquiry to two topics - “Key Competencies in Leadership” and “Leading Change”. These combined could be effective in my helping support staff to learning to use teacher inquiry to improve student learning. 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 (2009a). Teaching as Inquiry. Retrieved from http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-stories/Case-studies/Teachers-as-learners-Inquiry/Teaching-as-inquiry Ministry of Education (2009b). Key Competencies in Leadership. Retrieved from http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-stories/Media-gallery/Key-competencies/Key-competencies-in-leadership Murphy, M. (2017). Key Competencies in Leadership. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/225809358

Supporting Future Orientated Teaching and Learning

Changing the Script: Re-thinking Learner’s and Teacher’s Roles My experience was with my year 3/4 class during reading time. They were all close to reading at their expected curriculum level, however they were not always engaged and their comprehension (literal and inference) was not improving. We had been on a trip to a local farm and the children had been fascinated by all the animals and how animals “worked” on a farm. I decided to design my reading programme around this interest. This fits in well with the concept of teacher’s needing children to ‘generate’ knowledge rather than the teacher’s merely ‘transmitting’ knowledge (Bolstad et al, 2012). I was feeling very optimistic at the start of the unit as the children were very keen and it also meant they could work with peers of their choice rather than in their usual ability groups. The programme required some thought during set up. Rather than focusing on the reading, I wanted the main focus to be on the gathering and synthesizing of information about their topic. I set up initial workshops on identifying what they would need to research, how they could collect this information and record it, and what to do with the information they curated. I spent quite a bit of time with the children initially working on where they could get their information from. We discussed the pros and cons of websites and ‘googling’ and from here set up key words to search for both in books and online. The children enjoyed putting the ‘skim and scan’ skills they had learned the term before into good use. The students became very focused at reading time. Although I was working with the children as a whole class each day, we also did focused workshops on topics where need was high. This meant I was still working with all the children as I did not want this to become a ‘hands off independent’ activity. I felt this greatly improved my teaching practice in the area of assessing their needs, working out which groups had similar needs and then planning workshops around these. It also meant I improved my pedagogy in working with mixed ability groups. The children needed support in recognizing their strengths and using these to the benefit of the group. The links with my chosen theme revolve around sharing power with the learners (Bolsted et al, 2012). The children brainstormed all types of farm and working animals and from there chose their animal of interest. This helped to decide their groups and some were very good at recognizing when they felt their group mate was not always a good choice, and made adjustments to this. I was concerned that their interest would be limited by their own personal experiences (Bolsted et al, 2012), however this actually made them more determined to fill their own knowledge gaps. I have found that children’s knowledge and skills in ICT can be very shallow. While they can play games and do simple activities, there tends to be a lack of depth in research – especially in the area of relevance, reliability and integrity of the information they discover (Delafosse, 2011). By designing some of my workshops around these principals, the children became more discerning in their collection of information and began to question what they though may be unreliable or not relevant. As stated in the presentation created by Delafosse (2011), they began to validate their information and to collaborate and communicate between groups to help each other. Rather than being about facts and content, the programme became about building skills. In conclusion, I have used this concept again when planning my reading programme. The more the children experience the programme, the more adept they become at building their skills. This in turn meant our workshops became more focused and built on the skills the children had used the first time. Implications for future use are ensuring the children have equitable use to devices for research, and as the facilitator I need to be very aware of pre-planning some of the resources they will use. I found the children were sometimes distracted by more visual websites that had a lot of videos. I will need to do some work on teaching the children that videos have useful information in them too if we know where and how to look for it. 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 Education. Retrieved from https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/schooling/109306). Delafosse, S (2011). Teaching in the 21st Century. Video retrieved from Mindlab website: https://app.themindlab.com/media/68050/view

Reflecting on Reflection

Reflection on teaching practice has always been an essential part of good practice. Reflection requires teachers to be more self-aware, to critically reflect on their teaching, and to improve on their pedagogy. But isn't a good teacher always reflecting? Re-assessing assumptions, self evaluating, and adding to ongoing, life-long learning. So is enforced reflection by school management (usually as part of the appraisal process), turning reflection into something else we are expected to do, rather than a process which improves an individual's practice? Dewey referred to reflection as thinking about a situation which arises from "doubt, hesitation, or perplexity". Schon developed these ideas and felt reflection should be the act of reflection rather than the process of writing down what you went through as you reflected. How many times have teachers under pressure of many deadlines, quickly typed up a reflection because it was required rather than really putting thought into an act they need to reflect on? Is this reflection or just more paperwork? As an experienced teacher I find that I constantly reflect on all aspects of my practice - what went well what I need to add/change/delete in a lesson, where to move the lesson to next based on the children's responses. Having to record this process would be quite time - consuming and happens all day, every day. Which one do I record? According to Zeichner and Liston (1996), this form of reflection is "rapid reflection" or "repair", where the teacher makes ongoing or immediate actions or decisions to alter a lesson or behaviour based on student reactions and interactions. "Review", "Research" or "Retheorizing and Reformulation" are more related to the process of a teaching inquiry. I think these are slowly becoming mixed and muddled, but I feel the two are very different processes. A good reflective practictioner means we not only have to reflect on our basic pedagogy, planning or assessment techniques, but also on our relationships with our students, or as Russell Bishop calls this, our cultural responsiveness. I think a good example of this I have seen lately is when I was formulating the list of maths target children this year. This information was based on their 2017 OTJ. It was concerning to see that although the OTJ was based on a variety of tests, assessments, and in-class work and participation that although some children had very similar results, those that were Maori or Pasifika were more likely to have been given an OTJ of below or Well Below. On reflection, the OTJ seems to have been based on a deficit theory and as part of the next steps for the target children, I inserted a goal that teachers had to look at (a) how they were differentiating teaching for Maori and Pasifika children and (b) that PD may be required for teachers on assigning OTJ. This will be very important this year as our school moves away from using National Standards and into assessing against Curriculum Levels. However, this is a reflection - I have put steps in place to monitor what I have found and made suggestions, but it is still merely a reflection. Should this be taken further and an inquiry be put into place, then this would involve a lot more steps and a different approach (for example, hypothesis, readings linked to the topic, a trial of putting something into place, a reflection on how things are going, making changes, additions to plans, etc). I am finding reflection different this year as I am not in a classroom. As Deputy Principal/SENCo, my reflections this year have so far revolved around systems in place, and working smarter and more efficiently in a new position. This week's readings and having to write this blog, now have me reflecting on how I am going to be required to do reflections as part of my appraisal this year. Something I will have to find out about! References: Finlay, L. (2008). Reflecting on reflective practice. The Open University. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/sites/www.open.ac.uk.opencetl/files/files/ecms/web-content/Finlay-(2008)-Reflecting-on-reflective-practice-PBPL-paper-52.pdf Bishop, R (2017). Video from Ted Ed on Culturally Responsive Practise #JWrigg #AucklandSouth #Blogpost1