Education - Knowledge & Followership

Introduction

Well to cut a long story short, I'm not actually too sure about who might be interested in reading about my thoughts and why anyone might even be slightly interested. But, I figure, if I give you an idea of why I've started this blog and what I might be bleating on about you can then decide if you would like to read on, or you would rather close this and go check Facebook or do something else.

I'm currently a New Zealand secondary school teacher who in a past life didn't really enjoy secondary school so left a bit early and completed an IT degree. I then worked in the IT industry initially before training to become a teacher. So the journey is a little bit ironic in that I ended up becoming a teacher after busily trying to escape school.

However, I have always loved being creative and having fun with techy stuff so my specialist teaching area is digital technologies (apparently I'm also supposed to be able to teach math but have avoided this due to panic attacks about recalling times tables. Being a bad speller is bad enough as a teacher having to write on whiteboards without a spellcheck in my brain). Anyway, at this point I'm currently employed as a Learning Leader specialising in eLearning and am a foundation staff member at a new Junior High School. I'm still trying to figure out what exactly my job entails at this school as my job description has changed and evolved somewhat since I started.

It has been a crazy couple of years being part of starting a new school and during these past 2 years we started with about 600 students and have grown to about 1000 students. It would be a wee bit of an understatement to say that we have been a bit busy and it's a little mad but myself and four other work colleagues have started a postgraduate course in collaboration, elearning and leadership. The idea is that I'll put my thoughts and learning into a blog, this will serve as a way to organise my thoughts and reflect and share what I've learnt with anyone else who might be interested. I have always thought I should try this blogging business out and have started down this track in the past with some of my students but have not really ever carried on with them. I would really like to see this one through till the end of the course. I am interested to see how it might help me reflect and improve my teaching and leadership practice and how it might be received by others.

I am pretty petrified about publishing this and am pretty much pooping my pants (trying to be PC and a good role model about this but you can probably imagine what I'd actually like to say about this process). I was more of a sit at the back of the room doodling under the radar type of gal at school. Writing was not really my buzz I would have rather poked my eyes out with a stick than go to my English class and I failed miserably at writing essays for my History class. So, I'm sorry in advance about the quality of the writing and thank goodness for red squiggly underlines and right-clicks (actually I've had to retrain myself to do 2 finger taps now that I'm using an Apple). I have also learnt a lot from English teachers like the words a lot are two separate words not one and to not end student report sentences with "she is capable of" because you can't end sentences with a preposition whatever that actually means I'm still unsure so I just changed the sentence.  It's a great strategy I've used many times and so is procrastination. So speaking of which I'd better get cracking on with a reflection of the first session.

Basically for the first half of the course there are two separate themes running throughout each session. One is leadership and the other is digital collaboration.

Week 1 Digital Collaboration- What is Knowledge?

So we had discussions in groups and some of us discussed "what is knowledge" (ying) and other discussed "what is education" (yang). We used playdoh (yes we are adults and despite some initial reservations we actually enjoyed this) to represent these ideas. We then looked into some research around these ideas and refined them. Finally a ying group and a yang group came together to create a collaborative representation and videoed or photographed the final outcome.

We looked at the ideas that many of us are familiar with such as knowledge not being a noun, that it is more like a verb. It is not simply absorbed, we take action when learn and do stuff with knowledge. I also feel that the context of learning is social and that we develop some kind of shared understandings when we learn and that we all bring something to the experience and can learn from each other, similar to the māori concept of ako. I believe education is about acknowledging our part in the interdependence of ourselves with others. Ideally education should motivate and support people in becoming happy well adjusted members of society in our own country and in the wider connected world. But I guess the more complex issue involved is actually how exactly can do we do this successfully and in a sustainable manner in our schools today. I feel like this is what we as educators are often pondering and grappling with at times.

Week 1 Leadership - Followership

So we were then asked to reflect on what kind of follower we thought we were during the task of creating the video. Ideas from Kelley (1998) were presented:

• Sheep - passive and seek motivation and need their leader to do the thinking for them.

• Yes-people - positive and support the leader but still need their leader to do the thinking and they will ‘do’.

• Alienated - negative followers that think for themselves but pick holes in the leadership

• Survivors - sit on the fence and are passive, won’t be the first to jump on board with the leader but won’t be the last either. Maintain the status quo.

• Effective - think for themselves, positive engery, accept leadership and still have own opinions which they can still disagree with and offer alternatives and help when needed. 

I guess we would all like to think we are effective followers, but if I’m honest with myself at times I’ve probably had a turn in all the above categories in different situations in my life. During our little video challenge I did at times express my own ideas however, I was pretty awkward. I was also nervous as I didn’t really know most of the other people in the group so tended to hang back. Others confidently took the lead and were doing a great job in all aspects and the techy bits too. So I guess this is kind of my default which is, as long a team is heading in the right direction I’m happy to do what I can to help when needed, I guess I try to be a good follower by sitting back at times so others can take lead. But on the flip side maybe at times I could step up more often and allow others time to follow.

The other bit of homework was to reflect on what I consider a good leader to be like. So rather than particular dispositions springing to mind I thought about one of the best leaders I’ve even known in the school context and I would describe her as the following, based on how awesome she made me feel as a follower:

• A great communicator
• Down to earth
• Forthcoming about decisions and how they were made
• Inclusive of others
• Respectful of others
• Empathic and could see issues from all angles and points of view
• Resourceful
• Supportive

So these are all traits I guess I aspire to develop myself as a leader. I’m sure we will unpack these ideas more in the coming weeks and I’ve spent waaaaay too long sitting in this position, my back has totally seized up so I will leave it there and move on to some final coments.

Final Comments

So being a bit of a nerd I’ve gone back to check that I’ve completed all my tasks. One of the tasks for homework was to reflect and consider sharing my knowledge with a wider audience, so check it out, I've nailed this one right!

However, another task for (optional) homework was to reflect on how my understanding of the purpose of education is visible in my classroom. First of all yes you know you are a nerd when you feel the need to complete optional homework (which they call “reflect after” learning lol).

Well this is an interesting idea as I don't really have a classroom.  We work in an innovative learning environment (ILE) which I think might be the most recent acronym for open plan flexible learning spaces, there have been a few including MLE etc. I used to have a computer lab back in the day (just over 2 years ago) and quickly worked out that I’ll just go with a portable lab idea. When a class is about to start I simply burst out of a nearby cupboard with my nerd trolleys that store all the specialist gear needed like robots and laptops etc. So basically CLOWs (Computer Labs on Wheels) instead of just COWs. Each term I might be timetabled in another part of the school with no computers or gear which might freak out some digital teachers but that’s all good I just take over another cupboard. I guess we don’t really use the walls (not really that many of them either being open plan) much either as it always feels a bit temporarily and shared I never really feel like our class 'owns' it. So keeping my understanding of the purpose of education visible in my classroom is probably not so much about what is actually visible like things on walls in my classroom it is probably more invisible like the atmosphere of the class. This comes through in my communications, attitude and focus of learning and how I engage with the learners and this climate becomes my “classroom”. Oh man I hope some of that actually makes sense when you read it!  I really need to call it a day and go to bed.

So I just asked google how long a blog post should be and apparently top ranked blogs average about 2416 words for a blog post. I have not quite hit the mark yet but this is so close enough and I even added a picture so this should be some bonus points.  It took me way too long to write this, and I’m not sure if I can keep this up each week but anyway I’ll give it a go. But it could end up much like diets I’ve started on a Monday only to give up by Tuesday. It is awesome if you have read all of this so thanks very much for entertaining my ideas for this time (even if you did just skim read and jump to the bottom, I’ll forgive you). So the challenge is on. Will I write another one? Does anyone care or find this interesting? I guess time will tell. Have an awesome day and you can now get back to checking Facebook.

References

• Kelley, R. (1988). In praise of followers. Harvard Business Review, 66(6), 142–148.

• I would also like to take another look at some of Gert Biesta's ideas about education