Week 19/ Contribution of teacher inquiry topics to my communities of practice

(Used  Jay and Johnson’s reflective  model (2002))

CoP is “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” (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002, p.4).

Descriptive

Inquiry 1: How can implementation of digital tools create engaged community of writers who can articulate their learning?

Community:  Junior team comprised of year 1 and 2 teachers.

Domain: This year my team has a shared goal where we all want to see our learners becoming more independent and self-managing writers.

Practice: At the moment the issues our junior teachers are facing is students lack of interest and their inability to manage themselves during independent writing task. We have our weekly meetings/informal meetings where we share our classroom experiences with each other. Any new ideas and resources gained from the professional development or courses is openly shared. Teachers are very open minded and willing to try new things that others have implemented successfully in their classes.

Inquiry 2: How can collaboration within the classroom improve my student’s learning ?

Domain: Everyone has a shared understanding that collaboration lacks within our classroom and how fostering it can help in accelerating our students learning.

Community:  Junior team, Mind lab colleagues from other teams

Practice: My CoP is aware of ‘collaboration’ as we have been working collaboratively to plan for our Maths and teaching as inquiry (TAI) in our teams. Also, each term we come together and share our TAI journey within our houses. But within our classroom, we all agree that we do not give enough opportunities to students to collaborate with each other.

Comparative

This year all the Junior teachers are working towards our overall team inquiry question which is all about increasing student’s motivation, engagement and developing self- managing skills. I have been discussing with my colleagues regarding how some tools are relevant. All of us agree that students are more focused when using the digital tools and hence they are excited to implement it in their classes. However, the research says that technology has little or no effect on student engagement if it not used in the right context. Also, teachers have identified the importance of collaboration within the classroom. They haven’t heard of the 21 CLD learning activity rubrics before (ITL Research, 2012) except for the Mind lab teachers but have been using the similar steps in our DMIC Maths programme. We are thinking of giving opportunities to our students to collaborate in different curriculum areas as well. However, when examining the effectiveness of collaborative learning, researchers have noted that students face some challenges such as unequal individual participation in group tasks (Freeman & Greenacre, 2010) and teacher encounter challenges while organising collaborative activities, such as designing appropriate group tasks, composing groups, managing class time. (Gillies & Boyle, 2010)

Critical reflection

After reflecting from different perspectives of my CoP and relevant research, I think the outcomes of these inquiries will be great as increased student interaction and collaboration is the key to student’s academic success. This can be achieved by integrating technology into the classrooms. By embracing technology, teachers will be able to provide a rich learning environment which will offer an engaging

learning experience worthy of 21^st century learners. Also, in order to foster collaboration, we will follow the ITL research rubrics and create learning activities that are complex. Complex activities require “positive interdependence” (Johnson, Johnson & Holubec, 2008), where completing the task and being successful require  the team to work together and share knowledge.

References:

Freeman, L., & Greenacre, L. (2010). An examination of socially destructive behaviours in group work. Journal of Marketing Education, 33, 5–17.

Gillies, R., & Boyle, M. (2010). Teachers’ reflections on cooperative learning: Issues of implementation. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26, 933–940.

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.

Johnson, D.W., Johnson, R., & Holubec, E. (2008). Cooperation in the classroom.

Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W. M. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Week 18/ Reflecting on changes in my future oriented teaching practice

Using the Gibb’s model of reflection (Finlay, 2008), I will reflect on some of the changes in my teaching practice over the last 18 weeks. I will focus on the subtheme 1: The role of current and emerging technologies (Bolstad et al. 2012).

Through Mind lab, I gained an insight on how fast technology is growing in education. I learnt the need and importance of integrating technology into the classroom and to provide students with the opportunities where they can develop the 21^st century skills.

 “If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow” (John Dewey). Thus changes in technology demand deliberate changes in pedagogy.

The journey in this course so far has brought a change in my mindset and inspired me to explore and experiment some of the learnings over these 18 weeks within my class.

As we don’t have any digital curriculum in our school, at the beginning, it was quiet laborious and overwhelming to plan and link technology within different learning areas. But after successfully embedding technology into my teaching practice, I noticed some positive impacts of it.  Students were highly engaged and motivated to learn. Their understanding of the concept was much better and it was evident from their active participation in discussions. Also collaborating with my mind lab peers and trying something new that they implemented successfully in their classes was helpful to improve my digital practice. Sahin (2011) notes that teachers have a responsibility to their 21st century learners to integrate technology into the classroom. It can be time consuming and daunting but in the end, technology in education can open doors to new discoveries, new experiences and new ways of learning and collaborating.

  

Through Mind lab, I got the courage to challenge myself and use digital tools in my teaching practice to make teaching and learning more fun and effective. Altogether, I see that now I have become a lot more confident and proficient in my abilities to use technology in my class than ever before. According to Noel Bitner and Joe Bitner (2002) “Teachers must learn to use technology and must allow it to change their present teaching paradigm.”

The way the technology is evolving in today’s world, classroom  practices should "keep  pace  with  the  world  outside"( Cain ,2004).

Also in order to prepare our learners for future to cope with the changes brought by emerging technology, it’s important that our students learn to search and discover knowledge, actively communicate with others, and solve problems so that they can become productive life-long members of our society. Bray , Brown and Green (2004 ) suggested that ,ICT has the potential to enhance creativity, facilitate learning, and encourage exploration and independent learning.

Reflecting on my current digital practice, I have to think about not making technology as the focus of my class and neither as a barrier, but use it in a more holistic way.

I need to look at not using technology as a supplement thing but using it to support more creative and inquiry based learning. I also need to use technology with a constructive mindset as it encourages teachers to use technology to “expand classroom boundaries, connect students to real-world events, and guide students to become independent learners” (Teo, 2009a, p. 7) through active and cognitive learning.

References:

Bitner, N. & Bitner, J. (2002). Integrating Technology into the Classroom: Eight Keys to Success. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 10(1), 95-100. Norfolk, VA: Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education. 

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

Bray, M., Brown, M.,& Green, T. (2004). Technology and the diverse learner: A guide to classroom practice

. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press.

Cain, T. (2004). Theory, technology and the music curriculum. British Journal of Music Education, 21(2), 215-221

Sahin, I. (2011). Development of survey of technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK). Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology, 10(1), 97-105.

Teo, T. (2009a). Examining the relationship between student teachers' self-efficacy beliefs and their intended uses of technology for teaching: A structural equation modelling approach. Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology. 8(4), 7- 15.