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/