Week 32 - Activity 8 - Key Changes in my Practise

Week 32 - Activity 8 - Key Changes in my Practise

A reflective practitioner assumes a dual stance - on the one hand, the actor in a drama and the other hand the critic who sits in the audience watching and critiquing the entire performance. (Osterman et al 2015)

Schon (1983) explained, professional knowledge is grounded in professional experience: “Competent practitioners usually know more than they can say. They exhibit a kind of knowing-in-practice, most of which Is tacit”
I have identified these two great extracts from the class notes that resonate with me at the end of my Mindlab journey and the continuation of my professional learning journey. Using Rolfe et al Reflective Model (2001) I will examine one of the criteria for Standards for the Teaching Profession from the Ministry of Education. (amongst other things no doubt)

• Learning-focused culture - Develop a culture that is focused on learning, and is characterised by respect, inclusion, empathy, collaboration and safety.

The What….
As a Digital Technologies teacher, I have been fortunate to be in a situation where the use of technology is the norm and this has become easier for me with our school becoming full BYOD this year. However, the curriculum goal posts have been constantly shifting, even more significantly last year. Moving forward into the near future, schools have to be more tech focused and forward thinking. This is frightening for many teachers and they are relying on others to be the agents of change. In staff meetings about future directions our school could take they often respond with the right kinds of vocab “sounds exciting”, “Future focused for the kids of tomorrow” but then invest nothing into it and why would they. Teachers are busy enough without another massive shift in the way they’ve always done things (and been successful at) The Hack Education crowdsourced data research project demonstrates that you can generate useful data and showed that people are positive about the direct learning could take if certain changes were allowed to happen either through funding or shifts in mindsets.

I feel that for my students, what has traditionally felt like an individualised subject, has the potential through 21st Century learning tools and techniques to become a perfect arena for collaboration, innovation, creativity and enjoyment.

The So What…..
Coming into the Mindlab in July 2017 I already had a tool bag fairly full of knowledge about how to operate many of the technologies that the Mindlab presented at the face to face sessions but what I didn’t have so much of was the how to use them in a classroom to effect better learning outcomes. My newer understanding (and I’m constantly developing this) is altering the way I want my students to learn. One of my most notable differences I feel is, that I have stopped being the answer every time a student asks. We speak out loud as a class about the incredible tool and resource we have at our finger-tips and being the agent of our own learning no matter how small the question. I sometimes now feel like I am doing very little in a class because the kids are much more self reliant and willing to help each other. This is a work in progress for both them and myself but you can observe the change in behaviour in action almost every class. It might be as simple as someone telling another what website they just found to someone sharing a doc and working on it together across the room and for homework from their homes.

Mindlab has inspired me to use collaborative tools with purpose to provide an equal access point to our learning. We encourage each other to use it and I talk about my own learning as if I was part of the class. They understand I’m on a learning journey with them and we are all at our own level of understanding. We utilize each other as a resource to further our own progress. This sounds lovely but of course not all the students are as invested in the journey as much. However even for the less motivated, they can’t help but be involved in the slightly different vibe in the class and their behaviour is also affected in positive ways for them.

The Now What……… and the What Next…...
This is the multi-million dollar question for me. I have champions with me in our school, one a former Mindlabber and one who’s just started. Both want to educate and innovate in ways that are meaningful. We need to be appreciative of the opportunity we have had in the Mindlab course and respectful of the position we have over staff who haven’t seen what we’ve seen, or read and discussed what we have. I feel I have a responsibility to gather other staff and demonstrate some new ideas that we could adopt together and try out. Our school does have a large group of staff with positive growth/change mindsets. We wouldn’t be in the awesome position of using Google Suite as everyday learning tools if it wasn’t the case. What next is taking a model like SAMR and giving it teeth in the day to day learning tasks of my students. I have done the work on 2 large units of and complete flipped them to give students the agency to self pace, build their own learning tasks inside of the task itself with a common understanding of the end goal. I want to gamify some learning tasks but in a way that is not trivial and forced. I want to broaden opportunities for learning both individually and collaboratively and let kids on my classroom be independent, connected learners moving forward in and beyond school. Thanks Mindlab for helping me reignite that passion.

Most of all I want to continue to be force for good in my classroom.

Source: Osterman, K. F., & Kottkamp, R. B. (2015). Reflective practice for educators : professional development to improve student learning.(2nd ed.) New York: Skyhorse Publishing.