Week 20/21

Research and Research Questions:


After my last blog reflection (Week 19) I thought some more about my Research and Research area that I had identified in the blog post (Leading change and Leadership and key competencies) and I reflected on our Strategic goals at my school. (Strategic Goal 2: Create Educationally Powerful Relationships with Parents, Family and Whanau to encourage engagement in learning)

One of the areas we had identified was educationally powerful connections with whanau. We get so many whanau to sporting and cultural events but the moment we have a learning focus then we do not get the same response of parents.
So our question is How do we create educationally powerful connections? What difference will this make to our results if we do?
With our SAF work with TeIwi Ngaro Dunn we have chosen our focus learners (year 5) and 16 parents from that group. We are interviewing the students and whanau to find out more about how we can connect better and how we can create those educationally powerful relationships.
So because I was doing all this work anyway I thought I want my Mindlab research to be on this topic. I emailed the mindlab helpdesk to ask if I could  change my research topic to Whanau Engagement. They approved the topic as it has a collaboration focus. 

Agile User Story:

As a leader at Tuakau School  I want to create educationally powerful relationships with the whanau of the target group (yr 5)  students in order to work together to raise  Mathematics achievement.

As a ____________(somebody) I want to be able to do ____________(something) so that I can achieve___________(some result)

Qualitative Questions:

How can  creating educationally powerful relationships between home and school impact student achievement in Mathematics?

 The potential of Kaupapa Māori is based upon six intervention elements or principles http://www.katoa.net.nz/kaupapa-maori

• Tino Rangatiratanga - The Principle of Self-determination
• Taonga Tuku Iho - The Principle of Cultural Aspiration
• Ako Māori - The Principle of Culturally Preferred Pedagogy
• Kia piki ake i ngā raruraru o te kainga - The Principle of Socio-Economic Mediation
• Whānau - The Principle of Extended Family Structure
• Kaupapa - The Principle of Collective Philosophy

How do I  ensure these are integrated into my Literature Review and Teacher Inquiry project plan? 

 Read, analyse and critically evaluate relevant research and write a literature review on Whanau engagement. 

Turning your inquiry topic(s) into an break-down inquiry question

Your Inquiry Topics	Break-down Template	Your  break-down inquiry question
Whanau Engagement	If I/we …(describe the plan action),	If we create educational  powerful relationships with whanau
	To what extent/ how will it affect….. (the reaction you plan to measure/evaluate)	how will it effect achievement in Mathematics
	in…. (in which group of people).	for our Year 5 target learners

Turning a break-down inquiry question to an initial teacher inquiry question

Your  break-down inquiry question	Initial teacher inquiry question template	Your teacher inquiry question
If we create educational powerful  relationships between home and school	How ….(described the plan action)	How does Educationally powerful relationships between home and school
how will it effect achievement in Mathematics	affect …..(the reaction you plan to measure/evaluate)	affect achievement in Mathematics
for our Year 5 target learners	in...(in which group of people)	for our Year 5 target learners.

Turning the initial teacher inquiry question into an initial literature review question

Your initial Teacher Inquiry question	Your initial literature review question
How does Educationally powerful relationships between home and school affect achievement in Mathematics for our Year 5 target learners.	What impact does whanau engagement have on achievement? (outcomes) How does educationally powerful relationships with school and home impact achievement?

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

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

Step 1: Descriptive:

The two  inquiry topics that I am interesting in exploring further are both in Leadership. The first is  Leading change (week 9). I am interested in the challenges that occur in leading change and techniques

that can be used to successfully lead change.

The other topic I am interested in exploring is Leadership and the key competencies. How do good Leaders promote teacher leadership and knowledge as a verb.

My community of practice for both of these inquiries is the leadership team at Tuakau School. Knox, B. (2009, December 4) describes a community of practice as a group of people who share a passion for something they know how to do, and who interact regularly to learn how to do it better. Our leadership team includes myself who is currently a walking DP, Vanessa Hira who is also completing Mindlab, Aimee Courtney who is new to our leadership team and school this year and Margaret Kaa our Principal who is retiring at the end of Term 2.

We are all passionate about leadership and we do all interact formally and informally in our quest to lead Tuakau School in a better way.

The three characteristics of Community of Practice are:

Domain: We are all members of the leadership team and lead the main curriculum areas in the school. Being members of this group distinguishes us from the rest of the staff and we value our collective competence and learn from each other. (as defined by Wenger-Trayner, E., & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015).

Community:  In our COP we join in discussions, help each other and share information on leadership. We have build relationships that are based on trust and we are able to challenge each other and share our understandings while respecting the input from each other.

Practice: The leadership team are developing a shared set of practices to deal with issues and solve leadership problems.

Step 2: Comparative:

I have chosen both of these topics as they will be relevant for all of the people in our community of practice. Aimee is a new leader this year so learning about leading change and the challenges involved would benefit her. With Margaret retiring there might be some time that I am Acting Principal so I will have more opportunities to lead change and therefore this topic would be important for me. Vanessa could be stepping up to a DP role so leading change will be part of her portfolio so deciding on models and techniques for leading change will be beneficial.

Research that will help with this topic would be Kotter, J. (1996). Leading Change. Also Coherence by Fullan & Quinn, 2016,

The second topic I want to consider is Key competencies and Leadership. This is something that is relevant to all of our leadership team. We all lead a team. Vanessa leads seniors, myself the middle syndicate and Aimee the juniors. We all need to examine the curriculum and explore ways to support teachers to become leaders in their classrooms.

Freeth, W. (2013) says A change of culture goes hand in hand with a change of conceptualisations of knowledge and of leadership. Leaders not only need to see their role differently, but engage and relate differently with their day-to-day realities.

Additional piece of research for this inquiry would be BES - School Leadership and Student Outcomes: Identifying what works and why.

Step 3: Critical reflection:

Leading change: Using Fullan and Quinns model our implications in leading change are so relevant to our community of practice. Reflecting on where we are now I think the most important areas are Cultivating collaborative cultures and Deepening Learning for ourselves as leaders and for the teachers we are leading.
Time is going to be a factor, making sure we allow time to choose a model and all unpack it together in our COP. 

Leadership and the key competencies: We need to as leaders gather voice from our teams and find out how confident our teachers are at being leaders in the classroom. What does that look like at Tuakau School? . We all have a focus on the key competencies but how deep is that embeded? How does that build up across the school? Do we need to create a framework of expectations across the school?

In our community of practice we need to develop a shared practice around the key competencies.

References:

Finlay, L. (2009). Reflecting on reflective practice. Practice-based Professional Learning Centre, Open University. 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

Freeth, W. (2013).Towards Reconceptualising Leadership: The Implications of the Revised New Zealand Curriculum for School Leaders. TLRI.  Retrieved from http://www.tlri.org.nz/sites/default/files/projects/Towards%20reconceptualising%20leadership.%20A%20Case%20Study.pdf

Knox, B. (2009, December 4).Cultivating Communities of Practice: Making Them Grow.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhMPRZnRFkk

Wenger-Trayner, E., & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015). Introduction to communities of practice: A brief overview of the concept and its uses. Retrieved fromhttp://wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/

Week 18 - Future-oriented Learning and Teaching

Activity 2: Reflecting on changes in my future oriented teaching practice

I will be using Gibbs reflective cycle as a framework for this reflection. (Finlay, 2008, pg 8)

Step 1: Description: 
Today I will be focusing on Theme 3: A curriculum that uses knowledge to develop learning capability.  "Knowledge is seen as more like a verb than a noun. Knowledge is about creating knowledge and using knowledge, and bringing it to solve problems and find solutions to challenges. "(Bolstad, R et al,  2012, pg 32)
At Tuakau School myself and a colleague designed an inquiry model that developed learning capability. This reflection relates to my leadership of embedding this model into practice at my school. 

Step 2: (Feelings)
I knew the importance of changing our curriculum. "Reproducing existing knowledge can no longer be education's core goal" (Bolstad, R et al,  2012, pg 9) and thought that this inquiry model would be a great way to redesign the understanding of knowledge for our tamariki. I just had to lead this change and ensure all the staff at our school also knew the importance of redefining knowledge.
During our mindlab session on Inquiry we shared our model and Tuakau College saw our model and asked if they could share it with their senior management so I was excited about the possibility that our tamariki would be able to use this model after they leave us and that they will be able to continue to display "learning to do" one of the UNESCO pillars of learning. (Bolstad, R et al,  2012, pg 32) 

Step 3: Evaluation:
What was good about this experience: Having a school wide model of student inquiry was positive. Everyone using the same language and seeing the students enthusiasm and ownership for their learning was so positive. The ways students used their learning was great. Letters to the prime minister, talking to local council members and sharing their learning with others. 
What was bad about this experience: We spend alot of time working with the junior school in how to implement this model for the younger children. Teachers were quite frustrated and overwhelmed with the thought of it. But we overcame this by breaking the model down and scaffolding it with students. The junior teachers would teach the skills for one part of the model each term. eg. Term 1: Asking questions. This would mean the children learnt the model and would be scaffolded to redesign knowledge understanding and would be able to do in independently further up the school.

Step 4: Analysis: 
Analysing my leadership of this change initiative I displayed transformational leadership. 
(Bass and Riggio 2005) state that “ transformational leaders empower followers to pay attention to their individual needs and personal development, helping followers to develop their own leadership potential”  
This was displayed when I worked with the junior team. I allowed them to design an implementation model to introduce the Inquiry model to the younger children and scaffold them to re-design knowledge and how to use their learning to make a difference. By doing this it enabled the laggards "who are so worried they stay awake all night, tossing and turning, thinking up arguments against it" (Robinson, L 2009, pg 6) to become innovators. They had control over where, and which part of the inquiry model they introduced and this was very successful.

Step 5: Conclusion: This was a successful innovation. One of the other reasons for this was that the inquiry model was designed with the Team Leader of the yrs 4-6. So this teacher was an innovator who implemented this so well in the Senior area of the school. The teachers in this are became supports to other teachers and the children were role models sharing their learning with the younger children in the school.

Step 6: Action Plan:
Future implications:

• Planning for how we can unpack our inquiry model with our parents and whanau. 
• Working with Tuakau College so we can use the Tuakau Inquiry Cycle across both schools.

References

Bass, B, & Riggio, R.E. (2005). Transformational Leadership (Second Edition), Routledge

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

Finlay, L. (2009). Reflecting on reflective practice. PBPL. Retrieved from
https://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

Robinson, L. (2009). A summary of Diffusion of Innovations. Changeology. Retrieved from http://www.enablingchange.com.au/Summary_Diffusion…