Week 18 - A Change in My Practice Towards Future-oriented Learning and Teaching

Activity 2: A Change in My Practice Towards Future-oriented Learning and Teaching

Create a reflective entry to critically reflect upon how you have positively changed your practice during your postgraduate journey to address one of the themes or subthemes from the required reading “Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching: A New Zealand perspective”.

I am find teaching at this time an exciting experience. There seems to be more change happening now than at any other time in my career.  Perhaps it’s just me, as this year I have been involved in Mindlab, as well as, working in the role of Within School COL teacher.  I have been confronted by research and thoughts of the future at every turn.  As teachers, we are committed to constantly learning new things, to question our pedagogy and to stay current with shifts in educational paradigms.  This is also my first full year as an entirely eLearning class, I have been supported by Mindlab in this journey.

The themes and subthemes of our reading this week are:

• Theme 1: Personalising learning
• Theme 2: New views of equity, diversity and inclusivity
• Theme 3: A curriculum that uses knowledge to develop learning capacity
• Theme 4: "Changing the script": Rethinking learners' and teachers' roles
• Theme 5: A culture of continuous learning for teachers and educational leaders
• Theme 6: New kinds of partnerships and relationships: Schools no longer siloed from the community
• Subtheme 1: The role of current and emerging technologies
• Subtheme 2: Role of collaborative practices

To choose one aspect was difficult as I could also see how some were intertwined and my practice has been influenced by so many.  I decided to focus on Theme 4: "Changing the script": Rethinking learners' and teachers' roles, due to the self directed learning focus I have had this year.

Learner Agency has always been a passion of mine, I have believed that children that are engaged in their learning with meaningful activities will progress well.  I also saw our role as facilitators, guiding children through the minefield of new skills they need (especially in this digital age with the access to knowledge that abounds).  

Mindlab has provided me with access to the research and ensured that I read and reflected on it.  Mindlab has exposed me to a variety of ideas to assist learner agency in my class, once again, ideas that I had dabbled with on my own but now had real knowledge to back up that dabbling.  As an example, I had tried a few experiences using the flipped classroom and blending learning approaches.  The week that we looked at these consolidated my thoughts and allowed me to be more concise with my teaching using thise approaches.  I have now embedded them into my practice.

Both of my leadership assessments have looked into the role of the learner and teacher.  The written aspect of these assessments have allowed me to plan and research in a way that I would not have undertaken if I had embarked on them without Mindlab.

Now…. I have knowledge of the research to back up my beliefs and wonderings.  I am now INFORMED.

Ministry of Education.(2012). Supporting future-oriented learning and teaching: A New Zealand perspective. Retrieved from https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/schooling/109306

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

Week 17 - My Reflective Practice

Week 17

Activity 1: My Reflective Practice

Create a reflective entry in which you critically evaluate your reflective practice.

I have always said that a good teacher is a reflective teacher.  They are constantly thinking about their experiences, analysing them, devising next steps, and putting them into action in the future.  I know I do this all the time, usually in the car heading to and from work.  

As a teacher I will record the next steps for the children in my class, I will write down my ‘noticings’ relating to the learning of the children, however I do not record the teaching and learning of myself, this stays in my head for further thought. The process of writing these musings down will be difficult for me, I have been naturally reflecting in my head for so many years, the act of writing them down seems insurmountable and tedious, the written word is not natural for me, especially if I know someone is going to be reading it.

My journey of reflective practice began through the Teaching as Inquiry model from the Ministry of Education (2009), and more specifically the spirals of Inquiry (Timperley, H., Kaser, L., and Halbert, J. (2014, April), introduced to our He Waka Eke Noa Community of Learning by Rebecca Sweeney.  My inquiries so far have focussed on the child/ren rather than myself.  It would be a good start to run an inquiry focussed on my teaching practice and improvements thereafter.

This weeks readings have been of great benefit to my mindset of written reflections.  They have clarified my thinking and shown me that reflective practice is more complex and detailed than it seems.  Whilst I believe all teachers are constantly reflecting, I now realise that the effectiveness may be lacking due to the neglect of writing them down, and the lack of understanding of how it can truly transform our practice.

Our reading, Reflecting on ‘Reflective Practice’ (Finlay, L. 2009) outlines a variety of models, each with their own characteristics.  Different models apply to different contexts, or individuals, depending on the experience to be reflected on.  They are often cyclic or intertwined but they all take reflections from being simply retrospective to being analytical, structured and change orientated.  Reflective practice can also include examining your values (Zeichner & Liston, 1996)

In conclusion, my journey will be confronting; others’ reading my reflections, hard at first; creating the routine of writing things down, but rewarding in the end; as the task becomes the norm.  I should probably start with finding a great speech to text app so I can record my ‘musings’ in the car.  

Timperley, H., Kaser, L., and Halbert, J. (2014, April). A framework for transforming learning in schools: Innovation and the spiral of inquiry. Centre for Strategic Education, Seminar Series Paper No. 234.

Ministry of Education.(2009). Teaching as Inquiry. Retrieved from http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-stories/Case-studies/Teachers-as-learners-Inquiry/Teaching-as-inquiry

Finlay, L. (2009). Reflecting on reflective practice. PBPL. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/files/opencetl/file…

First post

Gosh, this is my first post for my Mindlab reflections.

Yay