Week 18 - Future Oriented Learning and Teaching
This week we have been set the challenge to reflect on changes in our future oriented teaching practice. Last week’s reflection model was about multiple perspectives. This week I will be using the Gibb's Cycle of Reflection from the reading Reflecting on Reflective Practice (Finlay, 2008, p. 8)
1 - Description
We have been asked to read the Executive Summary of “Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching: A New Zealand perspective” (Bolstad, Gilbert, McDowall, Bull, Boyd & Hipkins, 2012). This includes many future focused themes that I am familiar with as our new school was founded on many of these findings. One of the themes that fits well with the changes to my practice I have been trying to implement would be ‘Personalising Learning’.
2 & 3 - Feelings and Evaluation
I initially was very excited about helping students to develop more in-depth reflections about themselves as learners during our induction weeks with loads of outdoor education opportunities. However, I was disappointed to find that the new approaches had very limited success. Despite providing engaging digital tools (such as cameras, drones, Google Tour etc), setting up interdependent groups, discussing meta-cognitive prompts and scaffolding the activities, when undertaking learning, students still seemed to focus on the tasks and recounting what and when they did things rather than how and what they learnt.
4 - Analysis
I conducted more research around why this might have happened and found that using personalised goals and constantly self monitoring the progress towards the goal might have proved to enhance this process as discussed by Yıldız-Feyzioğlu, E., Akpınar, E., & Tatar, N. (2013).Working with learners to truly understanding why reflection is important would have probably helped to set this up to be more successful. I also now realise that when implementing servant leadership it is important to acknowledge both sides of a humble service-oriented side and an action-driven side, both co-existing and complementing each other as discussed by Sousa, M., & Dierendonck, D. (2017). In the future personalising this goal setting rather than simply providing prompts, tools and helping learners with the activities without some way for the learners to monitor and reflect on how well they are progressing was not ideal.
5 - Conclusion
It might seem quite obvious looking back on what I could have done differently to help our learners but I guess sometimes we put so much energy into what we are planning to do much like the learners and we must put the time into working out how the learners might have more agency to take action and personalise the learning themselves to come up with their own goals and reflective practices. As a learner if I am clear from the beginning about what I am hoping to achieve and how I might get there and routinely check this along the way I am probably more likely to take appropriate action to drive my own learning in the right direction.
6 - Action Plan
When implementing changes and supporting learners and followers I now realise I should try to help and support people in setting their own learning goals and progress indicators so that they are more engaged, and support them to monitor their own practice and learning so they can make changes as needed to gain a better understanding of themselves as learners and reflect more deeply. I now also realise aspects of this process I have just completed would also be a great to share with our learners.
References
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
Finlay, L. (2009). Reflecting on reflective practice. Practice-based Professional Learning Centre, 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
Sousa, M., & Dierendonck, D. (2017). Servant Leadership and the Effect of the Interaction Between Humility, Action, and Hierarchical Power on Follower Engagement. Journal Of Business Ethics, 141(1), 13-25.
Yıldız-Feyzioğlu, E., Akpınar, E., & Tatar, N. (2013). Monitoring students’ goal setting and metacognitive knowledge in technology-enhanced learning with metacognitive prompts. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(3), 616–625.
I selected the same theme. I feel like this has been the biggest shift that resonated with me since I started my teaching career 10 years ago. You're right, with all the new digital technology, it's hard for us - and students - not to get so focused on that, that we can be at risk of losing track of reflecting on our learning and progress with the task. This model could be a useful template for your students as you say. I enjoyed reading your post, thanks!
ReplyDeleteThanks or sharing your blog post Sandra. I can learn from your analysis as one of the things I think I can better is help students to set goals rather than 'just reflect'. They do tend to look more at the what than the how and why.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your insightful post Sandra. I like the idea of personalised goal setting for learners over excessive teacher scaffolding. Too often learners are following a recipe to complete tasks without understanding and reflection upon the learning process itself. I think your action plan for implementing goals and progress indicators to help students monitor their own learning is a great idea.
ReplyDeleteAlways an insightful and reflective read. I also think that not only do we need to assist our learners to be reflective on their learning we must also consider how we offer the reflective tool as a form of agency. How do we give the students the agency if teachers are still unsure or unskilled in their own reflective tools and strategies? With so many amazing reflective processes out there, do we need to practise these first as a collective of teachers in our own practice or with co-teachers so our students can learn the purpose, why, and how it can be done from us first? I would love to see an app on a kids ph that could help them be more engaged and seek rewards for goals achieved! How amazing would that be!!!
ReplyDeleteA great reflection Sandra. I too have chosen personal learning for my reflection. Teaching English my students have been researching and preparing a collaborative presentation. They have been using reflective pieces on the on the texts they have read/viewed and then using them for their reading responses. I have been sharing reflective tools with them so they have had some guidance for their responses. Like you, I have enjoyed watching them complete tasks and monitoring their own learning.
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