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…

Week 17 / My Reflective Practice

Activity 1: My reflective practice

.
I am going to use the following model  (adopted from Jay and Johnson’s 2002 reflective model)  to examine my own reflective practice:

Descriptive: What is my current reflective practice:

As a walking Deputy Principal my current reflections are on my leadership practice. I reflect on the change initiative I have introduced or lead. What happened and how did staff respond? What could I have done differently and how might that improved the change initiative?

This happens informally in my head and also formally as part of my appraisal. I have an external appraiser who often will question decisions and aspects of my leadership. I then will explain why I made those decisions and what theory I used to base that on and we will then discuss what I could do next and and the expected outcome.

Our whole staff use reflection to collect evidence for the Standards for the Teaching Profession. We use a reflection model offered by Driscoll (1994) It has a simple ‘what’, ‘so what’ and ‘now what’ process, which enables us to look at the whole event.

Our reflections have generally been individual. Teachers reflecting on aspects of their practice.

Comparative: Reflect on alternatives and other viewpoints in light of research.

Examining my reflection in terms of  Zeichner and Listons (1996) Five Levels of Reflection (cited in Finlay, 2008, p.4):

My reflection informally and formally on my appraisal blog involves levels 1, 2 and 3. Rapid reflection, Repair and Review)  My leadership inquiry involves level 4 (Research) as I collected student, teacher and parent voice to collect data on the effectiveness of the change initiative. My Mindlab inquiry (assignment 2) involved Level 5.  (Retheorizing and reformulating) I critically examined my own practice in light of leadership theory and I critically examined what we did during the change initiative and how this would impact our future leadership.

Most of my formal reflections have been solitary except for my leadership inquiry where I work with my external appraiser and those conversations are much more critical reflection.

Ghaye (2000) (cited in Finlay, 2008, p.7)  calls this a reflective conversation. " a mentor and a student seek to solve problems collaboratively"

Critical Reflection: What are the implications for your reflective practice when viewed from these alternative perspectives?

To provide more opportunities for collaborative reflection. We need to add a session to our Leadership meetings where we get to critically reflect on our practice with the leadership team. Each team member can share their reflections of a current change initiative and the team can seek to solve problems collaboratively.

For the teachers in our school we need to timetable in time for them to meet in  Professional Learning Groups where they can have opportunities for reflective conversations and collaboratively discuss their teacher inquiry and reflections and  solve problems together.

Time is the biggest factor to quality reflection so I need to timetable regular time each week to allow time to retheorize and reformulate my practice. This means deepening my reflections by examining my practice and theories in light of research. I need to prioritize time for this.

We need to unpack our  What? So what? Now What? reflection model with staff.. We need to add reflective questions under each stage. I think we can compare this model to Jay and Johnson's reflective model and the Description section would be the 'What"

Add some questions that ask the reflector to describe the current situation, how are they feeling about that and what is working/not working.

The second "So what" section would be getting voice from others on what is happening, examining research, thinking about what is not working and how to fix it.

The 3rd stage "Now what" would be the critical reflection. What are the implications from the voice and research?

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

SkillsTeamHullUni. (2014, March 3). Reflective writing.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoI67VeE3ds

Zalipour, A. (2015). www Reflective Practice. Retrieved fromhttps://www.waikato.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/360861/Reflective-Practice-June-2015.pdf

Week 7

Digital: Blended Learning
Blended Learning Models

Reflection on our school and what techniques are used.
Discussion : We think Te Waahi is using Rotation model and Flex model. Students move on an individual and fluid pathway eg. SDL 

Leadership: Week 6: Leadership Theories, Styles and Attributes

Leadership Theories, Styles and Attributes

Leadership Assessment 1

In your LEADERSHIP 1 assessment you'll need to write (either individually, or in groups of two or three) a cohesive essay where you critically analyse the leadership of a change initiative that you were involved with in the past. Identify the leadership theories, styles and attributes used and evaluate their effectiveness. When reflecting on the leadership attributes and styles used, provide evidence where possible (e.g. interview class or team members who were involved). You can choose the leadership theories freely, they just have to be ones that are recognised in research literature.

You then plan your leadership of a future digital and collaborative change initiative. Indicate how insights gained from reflecting on the past initiative have influenced your plan for leading the future initiative. Remember that the focus of the plan is your leadership - not the initiative itself.

Look at the rubic and keep it simple. Describe the change-simple/critically reflect- followship is important. Develop a plan. 

(Could use Rogers diffusion of innovation theory)

When thinking about a change initiative that we have done in the past I want to think of something that we introduced in 2017 when I was Acting principal and Vanessa was DP. Ideas could be.... 

Moving to digital planning.

Introduction of Google docs

Introduction of chromebooks to yrs 5/6

Video on leadership styles

• Transactional
• Transformational
• Pedagogical
• Distributed
• Servant (Agile)
• Tū Rangatira
• Situational

Leadership Styles

Situational leadership (Hersey, Blanchard & Johnson, 1969) is interesting from the perspective of linking theory and style. It suggests that leaders adjust their leadership styles based on the 'readiness' of their followers. Situational leadership theory argues that for leaders to be truly successful, they must adjust the way they lead their teams, to suit two factors:

• The ‘task maturity’ of the people they are leading (that is, how competent a person or team is at the task at hand)
• The details of the task 

The Situational leadership model suggests four quadrants. Each quadrant denotes a different leadership style. In situational leadership theory, leaders place more or less emphasis on the task, and more or less emphasis on the empowerment of the people they’re leading, depending on what’s needed to get the job done successfully

How to find your style of leadership quiz:

My results: 

Authoritarian 35
Procedural 35
Transformational 32
Participative 35
Laissez-Faire 28

I was a 3 way split with Authoritarian/Procedural/Participative
Authoritarian:
The leader has a lot of power over team members & has the right to reward good performance or punish members if they don't reach the agreed standard.
Participative:
Builds consensus through participation: the leader makes the final decision, but the team to contribute to the decision-making process.
Procedural:

Work “by the book”: team members follow procedures precisely. 

Focuses only on getting the job done, & can be quite autocratic. 

Little thought given to the well-being of team members

Task Orientated vs relationship orientated: both procedural & transformational leaders are usually needed. "managers" focus on tasks while "leaders" focus on people.

Quiz at

Reflection:
I can see where the results come from. I am not very good at delegating and like to get tasks done so can become very solurtion focused and authoritarian. The quiz talks about this working well for short term situations if you have a very motivated team. The problem being that when the leader is absent the work stops. Not a style to be used long term.
I also can see the procedural. I get problem and task focused and have a need to get the job done. I can think very quickly and see what needs to get done and sometimes I dont have the patience to wait and get everyone else onboard and involved.  Can be autocratic when I become so focussed on getting the job done. Cons is that it can be demoralizing for staff. 
I also am equally participative. 
I do see that as I do discuss things with my teams, and get their opinion on things. The leader asks the team's opinions & uses these to make decisions. The team is kept informed & are allowed to discuss & propose changes to policy.
This is important to me. But sometimes as a leader decisions need to be made quickly or tasks completed quickly where I slip into other roles but my prefered style is participative. 

Pre task for Leadership: Week 4

Article: Research-Informed Teaching of Adults

Read first 5.5 pages and conclusion:

Reflections:

Top 10 learning theories for Digital and collaborative learning

Top 10 learning theories for Digital and collaborative learning