Week 19 / Contribution of Teacher Inquiry Topics to my Communities of Practice

Week 19 / Contribution of Teacher Inquiry Topics to my Communities of Practice

Reflection Objective: To critically reflect on how two potential and inspiring digital and/or collaborative learning related teacher inquiry topics would contribute to my communities of practice

Method: I will use the model from Jay, J.K. and Johnson, K.L. (2002) to reflect in three stages.

Step 1 - Descriptive
I have identified two possible inquiry topics:

1. How can I more effectively support students to develop their learner agency and take action to engage in deep learning opportunities?
2. How can I more effectively lead, support and inspire staff with the implementation of digital fluencies and digital technologies curriculum. 

Wenger (1998) defines a community of practice (CoP) as a “group of individuals participating in communal activity, and experiencing/continuously creating their shared identity through engaging in and contributing to the practices of their communities”.

(Wenger, 2000, p.229) suggests that a CoP is defined by and comprises of the following three aspects:

Joint enterprise (domain): is a shared domain which is the “collectively developed understanding of what the community is about”.

• Mutual engagement (community): the members engage through interactions within the community, building mutual trust in the relationships.
• Shared repertoire (practice): is “the communal resources” that the community of practice produce.
• Another definition from (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002, p.4) suggests CoPs are “groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interaction on an ongoing basis”. 

My CoP

• Domain - I currently lead the school wide digital fluencies initiative and am always looking for more effective ways to implement this and support staff. We also would like to more effectively develop learner agency and help students to access deeper levels of learning in this area.
• Community - consists of the Advisory Teachers who are implementing this initiative, as well as Hapu and IWI leaders, myself and the Senior Leadership Team. We currently engage and interact through leadership meetings, Hapu meetings, informal chats and drop-in sessions, and PD sessions. We could investigate how we can use these opportunities more effectively to develop a more active and effective CoP. 
• Practice - We can continue to develop and share relevant resources, our challenges and successes with each other via our learning management system, shared Google drive, emails and in our conversations and interactions. 

Step 2 - Comparative

Current barriers that prevent staff from being more active and engaged include time and work pressures, we are a relatively new and large school whose culture of learning is still developing.

Another barrier might also be the confidence levels of the teachers in this area, many might be reluctant to assertively engage with the future focused contexts and digital technologies as also found in research by Jamieson-Proctor, R. M., Burnett, P. C., Finger, G., & Watson, G. (2006). Another study as discussed by Hsu, H., Wang, S., & Runco, L. (2013). Even when confidence was high in use of digital technologies, meaningful technology integration and new literacies practices were scarcely observed in their classroom practices.

Staff members are keen to pursue more student driven, personalised approaches that we can explore next term to try to mitigate the confidence and engagement levels of staff, as the staff can learn alongside the students who are taking more of the lead.

Step 3 - Critical Reflection

To continue to grow my CoP I must seek ways to more actively engage and explore the domain and use the CoP to work through the barriers and challenges together to improve our practices as a collective. As Bruce Knox suggests the success depends on the energy of the community that the community generates.

References
Hsu, H., Wang, S., & Runco, L. (2013). Middle School Science Teachers' Confidence and Pedagogical Practice of New Literacies. Journal Of Science Education & Technology, 22(3), 314-324.

Knox, B (2009) - Cultivating Communities of Practice: Making the Grow. Retrieved: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhMPRZnRFkk.

Jamieson-Proctor, R. M., Burnett, P. C., Finger, G., & Watson, G. (2006). ICT integration and teachers’ confidence in using ICT for teaching and learning in Queensland state schools. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 22(4).

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.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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