Week 29 - Legal and ethical contexts in my digital practice

Activity 5: Legal and ethical contexts in my digital practice

This week we are thinking about ethical dilemmas in particular in relation to social media.  Within our school most teachers have a personal facebook page, as do many of our students.  My personal decision has been that my personal facebook page is for me only and I don't accept any friend requests from students or parents. At the request of some of my former students who want to stay in touch, I've created a separate "Miss Hatch" facebook page that I will accept friend requests from students on.  However, other teachers in our school accept friend requests from students and parents and use this as a way to communicate with them.  On one occasion, at a party where there were several teachers from school one teacher took photos of teachers drinking (several of them had been drinking a fair amount) and posted them on facebook, tagging in teachers.  Even though a lot of teachers don't accept requests from students, the fact that some of the teachers tagged did have students on their facebook caused some issues.   Eventually the teacher was asked to remove the photos and now it is an understanding in our school that we ask each other if we are going to post anything that could be viewed as inappropriate to facebook or any other kind of social media.

Even though these photos were taken outside school and only showed teachers engaging in activities that were legal and not inappropriate we felt that they weren't appropriate for students to see as it could be considered that drunken photos on social media that students can access appears unprofessional and could breach the commitment to the profession as stated in the Code of Ethics for Certified Teachers which states "teachers shall exert every effort to maintain and raise professional standards, to promote a climate that encourages the exercise of professional judgement, and to achieve conditions which attract persons worthy of trust to careers in education."  As teachers we need to be aware of the influence we have over students and particularly when dealing with emerging adolescents, we need to set a good example to them.  While they are fully aware that teachers are humans and are perfectly allowed to drink alcohol, it's unprofessional for those pictures to be accessible to them. 

Week 28 - Indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness in my practice

Share your own views on the indigenous knowledge and culturally responsive pedagogy.

This week I am reflecting on indigenous knowledge and culturally responsive pedagogy.  In some ways I know this is an area where I know I am not as strong as I would like to be.  As I grew up in the UK and have only been in New Zealand for four years I know that my indigenous knowledge is something that I need to work on further.  What I have come to understand is the sense of community and location that is important particularly to Maori communities and that it is important to get to understand local traditions and customs as there are considerable variations throughout the country.  For me, that is most evident in the local Whanganui pronunciation of 'wh' which is something I took a while to understand.  In terms of culturally responsive pedagogy, for me it comes down to building strong relationships with all your students and knowing what is important to them and their whanau as well as providing them with a safe space to express themselves and bring whatever they hold important into the classroom.  Students need to feel that all aspects of their culture and identity are valued and supported.  Te Kotihitanga project emphasises the importance of strong teacher-student relationships to help raise Maori achievement (cited in Gutschlag, 2007) as well as the need to build on student's prior knowledge and cultural frame of reference (Introduction to Culturally Relevant Pedagogy video, 2010).

Critically reflect on how you or your school addresses cultural responsiveness in practice in two areas:

Learning Activities

In our school we are given a lot of freedom to design learning activities based on the needs of our students.  Within our cluster, we have taken a lot of care to ensure that learning activities enable students to take them in their own direction and explore in a way that suits them and their needs. We try to provide lots of open ended learning experiences where students can use their own prior knowledge and preferred ways of learning and communicating to complete assignments and we are always eager to have input from the students about ideas they have.  We use what we know about students to try and design learning activities that no only address their educational needs but also enable them to express their ideas in a way that works for them. Ka Hikitea document (2008) says that  "students do better in education when what and how they learn reflects and positively reinforces where they come from, what they value and what they already know. learning needs to connect with students existing knowledge". Ka Hikitea (2008).

Planning and Assessment

This is something I feel in our school that we don't do so well on, particularly when it comes to assessment.  Our writing assessments particularly spring to mind as they are school wide and often don't reflect the experiences or needs of our students.  In one particular example, students have to write a set of directions from a fictional map (which is taken from an English fiction novel) including descriptions of the places someone might pass.  This is so far from the experience of the majority of our students and doesn't relate to their own experiences.  Our assessment assignments need to be reexamined with our current students in mind in order to make them more suitable and reflective of the students' experiences. 

References:

Gutschlag, A Some Implications of the Te Kotahitanga Model of Teacher Positioning New Zealand Journal of Teachers' Work, Volume 4, Issue 1, 3-10, 2007

Source: Edtalks.(2012, September 23). A culturally responsive pedagogy of relations. [video file].Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/49992994

Teaching Tolerance. ( 2010, Jun 17).Introduction to Culturally Relevant Pedagogy.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGTVjJuRaZ8

Bishop, R, Berryman, M., Cavanagh, T. & Teddy, L. (2009). Te Kotahitanga: Addressing educational disparities facing Māori students in New Zealand. Teaching and Teacher Education, 25(5)734–742.

Week 27 - Contemporary Issues or Trends in New Zealand or internationally

Activity 3: Contemporary issues or trends in New Zealand or internationally

Identify and evaluate two contemporary issues or trends that are influencing or shaping NZ or international education, which you find most relevant to your practice.

One of the key issues in education at the moment is how best to 'modernise' our education system to meet the changing, and often unknown, demands our students will face in the future.  Sir Ken Robinson (RSA Animate video - Changing Education Paradigms) argues that the traditional method of education was designed to produce workers for the industrial system, however, those jobs are in decline and we need to prepare students for a world in which problem-solving and innovation are more important that rote memorisation of knowledge.  Students need to know how to access, evaluate and apply information to solve a multitude of problems.  KPMG's Future State 2030 infographic shows how different the world will be in 2030 to now highlighting that we can't teach students in the same way we always have if we want them to be ready for the future. 

In order to address this issue, in my cluster within the school we are developing a learning programme which gives students opportunities to solve problems in their own way and provides support for them to do this.  They have lots of opportunities to engage with information that isn't just designed for students but is widely available for anyone.  This gives students the chance to evaluate what they are reading and judge what is useful and how they can use it.  We also need to give them opportunities to engage with the wider community beyond their school, their local community and beyond their country.

Another issue in global education that applies very much to my own practice is how we engage students in education. The traditional education system was centred on the teacher who held all the knowledge and imparted it to the students.  However, as Sir Ken Robinson highlights (Changing Education Paradigms, 2010) this turns many students off learning.  We need to encourage divergent thinking or the ability to see multiple answers and solutions to a problem. This can help to engage students as it values all their ideas and views.  Robinson argues that our current education system discourages divergent thinking.  This also links to the idea of setting students up for the future as in order to be successful in the changing world they will need to be able to collaborate and be able to be innovative.

In order to address this in our community of practice we are focussing on collaborative learning experiences for our students, encouraging them to solve problems in their own way and provided open ended learning experiences.  Students are able to tackle a problem in a way that makes sense for them and we are trying to get them to be creative.  It is a challenge to get them to move away from traditional ways of learning as they've already been at school for a number of years and are used to having information provided to them by the teachers but they are getting better! They are also enjoying the freedom to explore aspects that interest them and solve problems in their own way rather than the way prescribed by the teacher.

References:

The RSA.(2010, Oct 14). RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U.

KPMG Australia. (2014, May 22). Future State 2030 - Global Megatrends. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im5SwtapHl8

Week 26 - Professional Community

What is the organisational culture (collective values/principles) that underpins your practice? How would you contribute to fostering a positive professional environment in your community of practice?

The organisational culture of our school very much focused on meeting the needs of the emerging adolescents we teach.  We aware that students of this age are going through a period of change and are finding their way from childhood towards adulthood.  In this, we are trying to develop their independence and encourage positive decision making in a supportive environment.  As a staff we are encouraged to build positive relationships with our students in order to help them reach their full potential.  We also work collectively as a school community to support each other in meeting those needs.  

In order to contribute to fostering a positive professional environment I ensure that I am developing positive relationships with the students and with the staff.  In terms of the staff, this means sharing resources and ideas, providing support, helping solve problems where required.  The better you get to know your students and colleagues, the better able you are to support them.

What are the current issues that you face in your community of practice? How would your community of practice address them?

One of the biggest challenges for our cluster at the moment is creating our innovative learning environment and developing a coherent, future focused learning programme for our students.  We have the problem of how we go about creating this programme but also the challenge of our perception among the rest of the school.  We have given the students much more choice about what they do and how they do it and others in the school have commented that it appears chaotic and lacking discipline.  Our way of addressing these issues are through educating and involving the rest of the staff in what we are doing and why we are doing it.  By engaging others in the conversations about our learning programme we hope to bring them into the community, enable them to learn about what we're doing and also hopefully get further ideas from them about what changes we could make.   Developing a sense of what Stoll and Fink (cited in Stoll, 1998) describe as collegiality or a sense that "we're working on this together" (Stoll, 1998) should help to engage the wider school staff and mean that they're involved, rather than critiquing from the outside.  It will also help develop a sense of openness - "we can discuss our differences" (Stoll , 1998) as ideas can be properly discussed in an open forum.

Another issue we are facing as a school community is how to better manage behaviour of our students.  In the last year we have had a number of staff changes throughout the school and as an intermediate school, half of our school population changes every year.  In order to better support our students to make positive choices we've implemented the Positive Behaviour for Learning programme (PB4L).  This has very much been a school-wide initiative which has incorporated a number of Stoll and Fink's  influencing cultural norms of school improvement (cited in Stoll, 1998), particularly : “Shared goals - “we know where we’re going”, responsibility for success - “we must succeed”, collegiality - “we’re working on this together”, continuous improvement - “we can get better”, support - “there’s always someone there to help” and celebration and humour - “we feel good about ourselves”” (p.10).  All students and staff are involved and it has also required us to develop our school values which are now embedded in everything we do. 

References:

Stoll (1998). School Culture. School Improvement Network’s Bulletin 9. Institute of Education, University of London. Retrieved from  http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Understanding-school-cultures/School-Culture

Week 25 - Communities of Practice

My Community of Practice
Communities of practice are described as "groups of people informally bound together by shared expertise and a passion for joint enterprise" (Wenger & Synder, 2000).

According to Wenger, humans have always "formed communities that share social practices reflecting their collective learning: from a tribe around a camp fire, to a medieval guild, to a group of nurses in a ward, to street gang, to a community of engineers interested in brake design." (Wenger, 2000).  Participating in these communities is what helps us define competence in that particular context - what makes a good teacher for example is defined through engagement with the community of practice.

Using this definition my communities of practice are:

• My cluster - the four classes I work as part of on a daily basis.  We are working to develop our Innovating Learning Environment and are focused on collaborative teaching and learning.  As part of this community we are also engaged with others outside our school (such as Mindlab, other schools in similar situations and advisors from Core Education).
• My school - as a whole school we are continually striving to improve outcomes for our students and to ensure we are providing them with the best education possible.  This means engaging with the students, whanau, outside agencies as well as with the rest of the staff.
• Other teachers - through social media it is now much easier to engage with the wider teaching profession using facebook groups, twitter and blogs.  It's a great way to share ideas, discuss issues impacting on us and our students and to gain a different perspective.

What is your specialist area of practice?  How does your specialist area of practice relate to the broader professional context?

My specialist area of practice is ICT and collaborative learning.  Within my school I assist others with ICT assistance for them and for their students and also sharing ideas about how to better integrate ICT into their own classroom practice.  In terms of collaborative learning, I am working with a smaller group within the school to develop a collaborative teaching and learning programme which we will eventually be able to share with the rest of the staff.  Both areas are key within the broader professional context as schools look to ensure they are equipping students for the changing demands of the 21st century and beyond. At the moment I still feel like our group within school is at the beginning stages of this journey but we do need to share more with the wider community including our school staff and engaging with other schools as this will help us shape our ideas and also allow others to learn from our experiences.

What is the purpose and function of your practice?  In what ways do you contribute to the community of your practice?
The purpose and function of my practice is to provide a safe and supportive learning environment for my students in which they are exposed to quality learning experiences that enable them to become lifelong learners and provide them with the skills they will need to be successful and valuable members of their community.  

I contribute to the community of my practice primarily as a classroom teacher and a member of my cluster.  This involves me engaging with my students, their whanau and my colleagues to ensure I am providing learning experiences that meet their needs. I also engage with other teachers in the school to share ideas and knowledge which will benefit our students.  Through engagement with colleagues from other schools, through Mindlab and Core Education I have also been discussing ways to improve outcomes for our students which I have then been able to take back to my school.


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

Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.