TML Wk 19: Communities of Practice

Descriptive:

Wenger (2000) states a community of practice can be defined as "groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly". These communities have three characteristics, domain, community, and practice.  I am part of several CoPs and for this reflection I will contextualise my participation and leadership within our school senior leadership team and consider the following 2 inquiry areas from our MIndlab study to date:

1. Digital: Maker Movement + computational thinking (Tinker Time)
2. Leadership: Teacher inquiry into student learning

The senior leadership team as a CoP consists of 4 senior leaders and 6 team leaders.  The team leaders are responsible for ensuring that Tinker Time (our school's take on the Maker Movement inclusive of computation thinking) takes place within their teams.  The team leaders also are responsible with the facilitation of weekly collaborative inquiry meetings within their respective teams to reflect, plan and adapt their weekly teaching in order to have a positive impact on student outcomes.  

My involvement as the principal and lead learner/change maker is to create systems and structures to ensure that these 2 initiatives are happening and empower the team leaders (and senior leaders) to monitor the implementation of these initiatives.

Comparative:

1. Tinker Time: The video below was made this week by visiting educator Michael Davidson of MakerEdNZ.  At our school we have integrated Tinker Time as our take on Maker Space and incorporation of computational thinking.  Many schools have visited to see how we have invested in technologies and have our Tinker Kits rotated through the classes.  
2. Collaborative Inquiry: Teaching as Inquiry has been modified at our school over the last 3 years.  We have implemented a spiral of inquiry approach in the past that was individual, however last year moved to a more collaborative approach where staff worked in teams (rather than individually).  Staff were able to then start reflecting and supporting each other with changes to their practice.  When responsibility is shared, substantive decision making occurs and interdependent relationships are fostered for collaboration (ITL research, 2012).

Critical Reflection:

After discussions with my CoP (senior leadership team) and also informal discussions with my CoP (Mindlab crew) I can reflect: 

1. Tinker Time: Currently staff go through the process of letting the students participate in Tinker Time, however there isn't a deep investment from staff with the importance of how this links to the digital technologies curriculum.  There is also a disconnect between the WHY we are implementing Tinker Time with how student interactions with this type of technologies contributes to promoting our future orientated outlook at our school.  I would like to investigate the views of staff into the barriers for them with implementation.
2. Collaborative Inquiry:  Based on feedback from last year's teaching as inquiry/collaborative inquiry where teams once a term investigated student outcomes and possible ideas for changes in their practice and reflection, a new system has been created to enable weekly critical reflection of teacher practice and the impact that this has on learner outcomes.  I would like to investigate how to support and develop team leaders facilitation and coaching skills to really ask the hard questions of their team members to reflect on whether their adaptations are having an impact.

Word count: 546

References:

ITL Research. (2012). 21CLD Learning Activity Rubrics. Retrieved from https://education.microsoft.com/GetTrained/ITL-Research

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.

Ministry of Education (2017).  Digital Technologies Hangarau Matihiko. Crown, Wellington.  Retrieved from  https://education.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Ministry/consultations/DT-consultation/DTCP1701-Digital-Technologies-Hangarau-Matihiko-ENG.pdf

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

TML Week 18: Future-Orientated Learning & Teaching

Figure 1: Gibbs' reflective cycle

Step 1: Description - What happened?
As a connected educator/leader who has a future-focused disposition and considering myself as a change maker already, I am interested  now in reflecting on theme 3: A curriculum that uses knowledge to develop learning capacity.  I am interested in our current pursuit for developing a new teaching model at our school focused on a visual metaphor of GEMS (Growth, Empathy, Mana and Self-belief). This change is a current process that we are in the midst of implementing.

Step 2: Feelings - What were you thinking and feeling?
Myself and the senior leaders believe our GEMS acronym will provide continuity for our staff, learners and community to understand what teaching and learning at our school is about.  We can relate the GEMS to aspects of the New Zealand Curriculum (2007) key competencies, and have adopted the GEMS into our behaviour management plan, learning inquiry model, staff performance management and values.

Step 3: Evaluation - What was good and bad about the experience?
We are currently energised by the GEMS and adapting these to many aspects of our school context.  We are finding that having a strong focus is giving us opportunity to bounce creative ideas off each other and relate the GEMS to different cycles.  For example, in our performance management we talk about Growing Everyone, Maximising Success.  In our learning model we talk about Get thinking, Exploring, Making meaning and connections, Sharing & shining. The changes at present have not been shared out with the learners or community (this will be the next phase after consultation, co-construction and iteration with the teaching staff). 

Step 4: Analysis - What sense can you make of the situation?
There is a sense of synergy across the leadership team and this is beginning to extend to the wider staff as we share our initial concepts and see feedback on the development of each metaphor within contexts.  The staff initially have indicated in favour of this strong metaphor/acronym and in relation to GEMS as a learning model for inquiry (described above) this moves us closer to knowledge not being taught in separated learning areas and equipping our learners to do things with knowledge and within context in order to develop learning capabilities (Bolstad et.al. 2012).  We believe our GEMS will help support and develop learning capabilities.

Step 5: Conclusion - What else could you have done? & Step 6: Action Plan - If it arose again what would you do?
We are within the process of implementing this change, so at present we are too close to have perspective of whether we would do this differently.  What I have learnt with our change process is that we seek and consult with our staff to gain feedback to adapt and be agile.  We trial ideas, reflect and iterate.

Word count: 535

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  

Finlay, L. (2009). Reflecting on reflective practice. PBPL. 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