Week 32 - Reflective Practice

Week 32 - Reflective Practice

The last mission to wrap up my personal 32 week journey is to reflect and critically evaluate one key change in my own professional practice and share my plans and dreams for my future professional development or practice. I will use the reflective model from Rolfe et al. (2001). Sorry but I also found it hard to stick to the 400-600 word limit on this one.

Step 1 - What? One key change in my professional practice.

One key change in my practice has been the mission to more effectively implement personalised learning in the hope that this would encourage students to be more authentically engaged in deep learning.

Personalised learning is one of the 13 key future education concepts identified by the Hack Education project. This theme also fits well with the teaching code of standards value whanaungatanga. Which is defined as engaging in positive and collaborative relationships with our learners, their families and whanau, our colleagues and the wider community, Ministry of Education (2017).

Step 2 - Now what? Evaluate the identified change.

I will use Osterman and Kottkamp’s (2015, p.70) reflective model to evaluate the change to more effectively personalise learning.

Stage 1 - Identify the problem. In this case the problem I’ve found is that my students often seemed to be engaged with their learning at quite a surface level and are often not very able to articulate their learning and next steps. So I wonder how I could support them more effectively develop their learner agency and understanding of what and how they learn. I thought that exploring personalised learning might be a good strategy to help me achieve this goal.

Stage 2 - Observation and Analysis using data and insights to drive the change.
I conducted an investigation into personalised learning and have found that despite a lack of research done in this area personalised learning is an approach which through its implementation provides learners opportunities to develop their self-regulation, and maturity to drive their own learning thus teachers can empower learners to develop the skills required to develop their own learner agency and reach their potential and learning goals, Hargreaves, D. H. (2006).

From a Māori world view I found that the notion of Māori determining their own futures also fits well within the definition of personalised learning. Tino Rangatiratanga, the self-determination principle encompasses learner agency and engagement through meaningful control over one’s own life and cultural well-being which is also embedded in our Treaty of Waitangi, Katoa Ltd, (n.d.).

Stage 3 - Abstract re conceptualisation. What new learning, research or perspectives are relevant to consider for implementing change?

France, P. E. (2018) argues that sometimes our interpretation and and understanding of personalised learning falls short by putting student in front of devices to work at their own pace, but, this is actually depersonalising the learning. He also argues that gamification measures and encourages the results we want to see even if students are not really learning. One study was mentioned that found this kind of approach only had about 3% gains in math and none in reading. Hattie was also quoted with minimal gains from individualisation (0.23 effect size) and web based learning (0.18 effect size).

Stage 4 - Active Experimentation. We have to be careful that we are not using technology to isolate our children by over individualising their learning. We must make sure we are giving students time to collaborate and connect with one another. France presents 4 key questions we must ask ourselves as teachers when personalising learning through the use of technology:

1. Does the technology help to minimize complexity?
2. Does the technology help to maximize the individual power and potential of all learners in the room?
3. Will the technology help us to do something previously unimaginable?
4. Will the technology preserve or enhance human connection in the classroom?

I will continue to gain a deeper understanding of personalisation and use these questions to ensure I am using technology in the classroom more effectively.

Step 3 - What Next? My future plans for future professional development and practice.

I’ve learnt and gained so much from this Mindlab experience both professionally and personally. I have pushed myself outside my comfort zone on so many levels. I have reflected and taken action in many areas of my leadership and teaching roles, and enjoyed sharing this journey with colleagues. I have also truly valued the support and collaboration with other teachers on the course.

There are so many areas I could now dive into such as being more culturally responsive and looking further into how we can more effectively create and sustain learner centred pedagogy. I started a personal blog and I have also started to blog on behalf of my school to educate and connect with our community about digital citizenship. I hope to continue to build on this blogging and include our students and school practices more, in order to build and strengthen this partnership with our whanau and wider community.

Although it is the end of the Mindlab postgrad journey for me for now, it is just the beginning of many more opportunities for professional and personal development. I have found this process challenging and through this I have developed confidence and become more skilled and knowledgeable in making changes to enhance my teaching practice. I feel I am now much better equipped to undertake my current roles as a leader and teacher and have improved my practice considerably and am keen to continue. Thanks to the Mindlab team and my awesome colleagues -couldn't have done it without you all!

Mai i te Kōpae ki te Urupa, tātou ako tonu ai.
From the cradle to the grave we are forever learning.

References
France, P. E. (2018). Retrieved from Why Are We Still Personalizing Learning If It’s Not Personal? https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-07-02-why-are-we-still-personalizing-learning-if-it-s-not-personal?utm_content=buffer55e24&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=EdSurgeBuffer

Hargreaves, D. H. (2006). A new shape for schooling. London: Specialist Schools and Academies Trust.

Ministry of Education (2017). Our code, our standards. Retrieved from https://educationcouncil.org.nz/content/our-code-our-standards

Osterman, K. & Kottkamp, R.(1993). Reflective Practice for Educators.California.Corwin Press, Inc. Retrieved from http://www.itslifejimbutn otasweknowit.org.uk/files

Rolfe et al. (2001). Reflective Model. Retrieved from https://my.cumbria.ac.uk/media/MyCumbria/Documents/ReflectiveModelRolfe.pdf

The Mind Lab by Unitec. Hack Education. Retrieved from https://hackeducation.co.nz/

Week 31 - Cultural Responsiveness.

Week 31 - Cultural Responsiveness.

This weeks mission is to demonstrate my critical understanding of indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness. Then, I will critically evaluate how my practice or school’s practice has been informed by indigenous knowledge and culturally responsive pedagogy in a couple of areas. I will be using a reflective model from Rolfe et al. (2001).

Step 1 - What? What is my understanding of indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness and the two areas that I want to focus on for discussion?

I found that Gay (2010) defines culturally responsive pedagogy as teaching to and through students’ personal and cultural strengths, their intellectual capabilities, and their prior accomplishments. This is achieved through close interactions among ethnic identity, cultural background, and student achievement.

I found that these ideas were similar to the teacher development initiative Te Kotahitanga that captured key Māori whanau narratives. These narratives identified classroom caring and learning relationships being at the centre of educational achievement for Māori. Therefore the success of this initiative success was based around teachers actively rejecting explicit deficit theorising to instead assume agency (Savage, et. al., 2011).

The two areas of practice that I would like to discuss in terms of being culturally responsive are planning and assessment and school-wide activities.

Step 2 - So What? What does culturally responsive practice look like?

Russell Bishop in his Tedtalk (2012) outlines 6 key principles for being a culturally responsive teacher:

• Caring for Maori students as Maori on a daily basis.
• Caring for their performance and having high expectations.
• Manage classrooms, and the pedagogy promotes the following element.
• Interactions with Maori that provide academic feedback and feedforward and negotiated co-construction of learning. Learners amongst learners is the prevailing phenomenon. 
• Effectively use a range of strategies. 
• Use evidence of student performance to guide teaching and students also know this and are involved.

It is all about being relationship centered (caring and learning relationships). A culturally responsive pedagogy is based on relations.

Dr Ann Milne, CORE Education (2017), provides a culturally sustaining pedagogy continuum that I will use to reflect on the two areas of planning and assessment and school-wide activities. The continuum starts with having no awareness or paying lip-service to cultural aspects, through to the middle where we might make token attempts or limited changes. At the optimal end of the scale we would be aiming for taking action to normalise ‘being authentically Maori’.



In terms of our school-wide activities I think our school has taken a very proactive approach as a relationship centered school, our school culture is very supportive and encouraging of teachers to be culturally responsive. Our timetable is essentially optional (apart from having to take an English and Math Module each semester), so there is a lot of agency for our learners and we have a strong Learning Advisory programme that helps to build supportive relationships between our teachers and students. We also integrate curriculum, are very aware of using Universal Design for Learning strategies and often co-construct learning. We also have a great relationship with our local IWI and this has influenced many school wide activities and decisions ranging from how our cobble stones have been laid to the naming of our learning communities and spaces.

In terms of how we as teachers at this school personally plan and assess learning I think I like many teachers have room for improvement and I would put myself more in the middle of the continuum, I think primarily due to my lack of a deep understanding of Māori culture as this has not really been part of my worldview growing up with parents who are from Switzerland. Despite being very openminded and growing up in NZ I still have much to learn due to having a very european upbringing.

Therefore, despite our school environment being setup to be culturally responsive I feel like I often personally drop the ball. My knowledge and confidence with Māori Language and Kaupapa is not great, we have these beautiful Māori names, however, I’m often not confident with using them and I lack a real authentic understanding of the terms and concepts. I know I have more to learn in this area. What am I really doing to improve in this aspect of my practice? This course is a good step in the right direction in developing my self-awareness of this issue.

Step 3 - Now What? What can we do to move up the continuum?

I think I do personally need to focus on this area more and I could do this by formally reflecting and setting myself some practical goals based on some of the key Effective Teacher Profile Elements identified in the Te Kotahitanga initiative. I could start by using more Te Reo Māori and exploring relevant Māori culture within my classes rather than shy away because I lack confidence. I realise I default to a very European worldview and to move up the continue I must take more explicit action to develop a deeper understanding of Kaupapa Māori. Being a student centered school maybe I could also ramp up and expand the ways in which I am trying to connect and learn with Māori students in my classes in order to gain a better understanding of being Māori. I could simply start by spending more quality time getting to know my Māori students to gain a better understanding of this world view, the strengths and treasure this uniqueness, therefore, actively working together to reject Māori deficit theorising.

References

CORE Education.(2017, 17 October). Dr Ann Milne, Colouring in the white spaces: Reclaiming cultural identity in whitestream schools.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cTvi5qxqp4&feature=em-subs_digest

Edtalks.(2012). A culturally responsive pedagogy of relations. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/49992994

Gay, G. (2010). Culturally responsive teaching (2nd ed.). New York: Teachers College Press.

Rolfe et al. (2001). Reflective Model. Retrieved from https://my.cumbria.ac.uk/media/MyCumbria/Documents/ReflectiveModelRolfe.pdf

Savage,C, Hindleb, R., Meyerc,L., Hyndsa,A., Penetitob, W. & Sleeterd, C.(2011) Culturally responsive pedagogies in the classroom: indigenous student experiences across the curriculum .Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 39(3), 183–198: (Available to download from Unitec Library)

Week 30 - Trends Influencing NZ or Internationally

Week 30 - Trends Influencing NZ or Internationally
This weeks mission is to look at trends influencing NZ or Internationally that is relevant to my practice. I will be using a reflective model from Rolfe et al. (2001).

Step 1 - What?

I conducted some research into trends and feel like I already have a good handle on many of them as I am a digital technologies specialist that tries hard to use applied learning, support computational thinking, and creative inquiry etc. However when watching the video from New Media Consortium (2017) ‘wicked problems’ were mentioned and this captured my attention as I have not explicitly been focused on these and am unsure about how these might impact my current teaching and learning in the classroom. Have I really been using authentic and complex contexts based on wicked problems?

Step 2 - So What?
I went on to have a closer look into wicked problems and in the NMC/CoSN Horizon Report (2017) I have found some definitions of problems ranging from solvable challenges that we both understand and know how to solve; difficult challenges that are more or less well understood but for which solutions remain elusive; and wicked challenges, the most difficult, which are complex to even define.

So if these problems are complex to even define how do we help students develop the skills and knowledge to deal with these? What is required to successfully consider these in our daily teaching and learning? I found some suggestions and useful information on a Forum from the Ministry of Education Enabling E-Learning website suggest they are difficult because they involve:

• incomplete or contradictory knowledge
• the number of people and opinions involved
• the large economic burden
• interconnected nature of these problems with other problems

Some tips from the website include making sure we look at the potential behaviours that are linked to social problems, and identify what behaviours/action we want to endeavor to change. Also that we can break down the problem, into more a manageable ‘project size’ where students work in teams to collaboratively address elements of real world issues. Also in our NZ context it might be appropriate to include a whole-system perspective that requires us all to be invested and respectfully integrates Māori understandings of our natural world. So some good ideas from here that I could implement.

Step 3 - Now What?
In my teaching I could probably make sure I start with more socially fuelled and value ladened topics and then break down these real world problems into smaller ones that can be tackled by our students. For example next semester I am part of a learning module that integrates Digital Technology with Physical Education and Health. We could look at the positive and negative impacts of technology on our hauora (health and wellbeing) and the impact of hauora on our technological advances. We can look into how we can more explicitly incorporate these kinds of wicked problems into our teaching contexts.

References
Source: Daggett, B. (2014). Addressing Current and Future Challenges in Education. Retrieved from http://www.leadered.com/pdf/2014MSC_AddressingCurrentandFutureChallenges.pdf

Rolfe et al. (2001). Reflective Model. Retrieved from https://my.cumbria.ac.uk/media/MyCumbria/Documents/ReflectiveModelRolfe.pdf

New Media Consortium. (2017, August 29). NMC and CoSN Release the Horizon Report: 2017 K-12 Edition [Video]. Retrieved from Youtube

Freeman, A., Adams Becker, S., Cummins, M., Davis, A., and Hall Giesinger, C. (2017). NMC/CoSN Horizon Report: 2017 K–12 Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.

Ministry of Education. Enabling e-learning (n.d.). Forum: Wicked problems and real world issues. Retrieved from https://vln.school.nz/discussion/view/961940.

Week 29 - The Use of Social Media in my Teaching or Professional Development

Week 29 - The Use of Social Media in my Teaching or Professional Development

I will use the reflective model from Jay and Johnson’s (2002) to critically discuss the use of Social Media in my teaching.

Step 1 - Descriptive
There are many benefits of using social media such as being a communication channel, engagement tool, and a collaboration platform (Faizi, Afia & Chiheb, 2013). In my current teaching role I have not really used much social media, there are a few barriers that seem to make it quite difficult such as our student's ages. I teach in a Junior High School and the recommended age for most social media use is 13 so ethically it doesn’t seem to be a good idea to encourage the use of social media with our students. Another barrier is that most social media is blocked at our school and can’t be accessed through our school wireless.

Step 2 - Comparative
After looking into other teachers practice I have found that when faced with the age and access barriers the teachers have engaged the caregivers. I also realised I hadn’t really thought of blogs as social media and I am currently using these very successfully to empower the students to share their learning with a wider audience. This was also found by (Magette, 2014) who stated that use of social media can lead to an engaging learning experience.

On the flipside social media use can become a distraction if it is not managed well and is implemented with a clear learning purpose as outlined by the Teachers Practice video. Mao (2014) who found that teacher attitudes and beliefs about technology can be one of the biggest barriers to effective technology integration and that students are generally very positive about the integration of social media.

Step 3 - Critical Reflection
So how might I change my attitude or more proactively problem solve and work through the barriers to include more strategic social media use? I have had a think about the tools that might be available in my context and realised that this year we are implementing a new learning management system that includes many social media features like a live news stream and that we will be opening up to our caregivers and community later in the year. So I could be using these features like updates and discussions more proactively with posts and comments focused on the learning and not just using the more formal and less collaborative assignment features. I could be exploring more of the interactive features to get the students collaborating and sharing more amongst themselves and the wider community using our LMS in a more proactive and engaging manner.

References
Education Council. (n.d.). Establishing Safe Guards. Retrieved June 21, 2018, from https://vimeo.com/49216520.

Faizi,R., Afia,A. & Chiheb, R. (2013). Exploring the potential benefits of using social media in education. International Journal of Engineering Pedagogy. 3(4), 50-53.

Jay, J.K. and Johnson, K.L. (2002). Capturing complexity: a typology of reflective practice for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 73-85..

Magette, K. (2014). Embracing social media : a practical guide to manage risk and leverage opportunity. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Mao, J. (2014). Social media for learning: A mixed methods study on high school students’ technology affordances and perspectives. Computers in Human Behavior, 33, 213–223. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2014.01.00

Melhuish, K.(2013). Online social networking and its impact on New Zealand educators’ professional learning. Master Thesis. The University of Waikato. Retrieved on 05 May, 2015 from http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstr eam/han…

Week 28 - Influence of Law & Ethics in Practice

Week 28 - Influence of Law & Ethics in Practice

Professional and personal digital worlds are quickly becoming more and more blended and sharing of personal and professional information happens so quickly using digital tools - how much control do we really have in this process and where do we draw the line?

Recently I was on a school trip and a teacher suggested we should take a selfie and share this with a few of her students who were also on this school trip via an Instagram group. Before I knew it the picture was taken and shared by this teacher. After this occurred I felt quite uncomfortable about what had happened.

I will use a model from Ehrich et al. (2011) to try to explain the moral decision-making process involved in unpacking this ethical dilemma.

Step 1 (What): Step one starts by describing the critical event that has triggered the ethical dilemma which I have explained above.

Step 2 (So What): The next step involves exploring the key competing forces that impact decision making from their own bias viewpoint:

Organisational Culture - The teacher obviously thought this was a great way to connect with some of her students. The reasoning could include that connecting with students is part of our school's vision statement which includes being connected and community-minded and includes the importance of social and emotional aspects. The teacher probably genuinely thought that this was a great way to connect and share aspects of the trip with her students.

Public Interest - The public and school community including the caregivers might not be so supportive of a teacher sharing a picture with a private group with students and could see this as inappropriate and intimate in nature. Why was the picture not shared with all of the students involved in the trip and just a few select students?

Professional Standards - The Education Council (2017) outlines our standards which include ‘2.2 Engaging in ethical and professional relationships with learners that respect professional boundaries.’ An example of a possible breach is given which states fostering online connections with a learner outside the teaching context like ‘friending’ without a valid context. So this example could be interpreted by people as similar to the example and thus be crossing this professional and ethical relationship boundary line.

School Policy - I have also checked our Staff Social Media Policy which also provides guidelines that state that personal use of social media by staff must also be governed by confidentiality and professional standards. We are also warned to consider whether it is appropriate to extend or accept friend or connection requests with parents, students, or others involved in the school.

Step 3 (Now What): This step involves discussing how the Code and Standards should be interpreted to assist in the ethical decision-making process. In the future, as this type of digital sharing may be perceived by others as crossing a professional boundary next time I would state that I would prefer not to be in the photo and not to be shared with students. I would also explain why so the teacher who instigated this idea would also stop and consider this ethical dilemma for themselves. PPTA (2014) have also provided some guidance on the use of Social Media and also highlights the obligation to maintain appropriate student/teacher boundaries when using any social media.

References:

Education Council (2017). Our Code Our Standards. Retrieved 21th June, 2018 from:https://educationcouncil.org.nz/sites/default/files/Our%20Code%20Our%20Standards%20web%20booklet%20FINAL.pdf

Ehrich, L. C. , Kimber M., Millwater, J. & Cranston, N. (2011). Ethical dilemmas: a model to understand teacher practice, Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, 17:2, 173-185, DOI: 10.1080/13540602.2011.539794

New Zealand Post Primary Teachers’ Association (2014). Digital Communication. Retrieved 21 June, 2018 from: https://www.ppta.org.nz/dmsdocument/139

Week 22 - Finding, Managing and Using Research Resources

Week 22 - Finding, Managing and Using Research Resources

Carrying on from last week we are now looking at pulling together relevant research as part of our literature review and we have been provided a few tips and ideas to keep us going.

This week included pointers and tips about how to find, record, manage and analyse resources to help prepare and work on our literature review project. We have also been reminded about using a dedicated reference management software such as Mendeley, Zotero, EEWOWW, and Citeulike etc.

I've found Mendeley works quite well for me so have continued to use this one and have installed the Chrome extension too which allows for quickly adding a reference to my library.

We were asked to start by reading an annotated article by Jennifer Duncan-Howell. Extra annotations were added to provide an indication on how to analyse and evaluate literature, and how to extract the key information for the literature review:

• Reading the abstract to get an overview of the article and research question it addresses.
• Finding the key problems the research is trying to address
• Looking at themes and definitions
• Checking out some of the articles that were referenced
• Asking yourself if you agree or not about definitions and why etc.
• Questioning surveys, how they were conducted, who involved, how many etc.
• How does a finding relate to your research theme in a positive or negative manner?
• Questioning the interpretation of the findings.
• Finding relevant links to your research question.

We were also introduced to a Synthesis Matrix to help us organise our literature. I had a look the example that was shared and have come up with my own simple version of it as follows, which basically lists the sources across the top and then I can add details about the key ideas for each source down the columns so that I can complete the sections and then look at the big picture and complete the analysis and synthesis by comparing and contrasting themes, patterns and findings. This is the structure that I came up with and I think it will be quite helpful for me to organise my research and literature review:

Topics: Personalisation, Agency and Engagement
Research Question: What factors of personalised learning might impact learner agency and engagement?

	Source 1	Source 2	Source 3	Source 4
Definition of personalised Learning
Benefits of Personalised Learning
How personalised learning impacts Learner Agency
How Personalised learning impacts Engagement
Challenges of personalised learning
How to implement Personalised Learning

Week 21 - Inquiry Question

Week 21 - Inquiry Question

This weeks challenge is to develop my research question that I’ll be using for the base of my literature review. Last week I came up with my topic - “Agency and Engagement”. This article by Martyn Shuttleworth explains a literature review. I will use the suggested break-down question template adapted from Riel (2014) to turn my topic into a research question.

Step 1 - Topic to Breakdown Inquiry Question
My Inquiry Topic: Personalisation and Agency and Engagement.
Action Plan: If I personalise learning...
Measuring the Reaction:  how will this affect learner agency and engagement in digital fluencies...
Group of People:  for learners at RJHS

Step 2 - Breakdown Inquiry Question to an Initial Teacher Inquiry Question
How does personalised learning (how) affect agency and engagement in learning digital fluencies (affect) in a range of learners at RJHS (in)?

Step 3 - Change Initial teacher inquiry question into an initial literature review question
Now I need to broaden the scope of the question to remove the context/subject/target group etc so that it is easier to find relevant literature.

So my final ideas for my research question:
How does personalised learning impact learner agency and engagement?
OR What factors of personalised learning might impact learner agency and engagement?

I would appreciate any comments or feedback.

References

Riel, M. (2014, Feb 18).T6-Beginning the first cycle of action research.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwWPwyv60E4