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

Research-Informed Teaching of Adults: A Worthy Alternative to Old Habits and Hearsay?

Research-Informed Teaching of Adults: A Worthy Alternative to Old Habits and Hearsay?
John Benseman
Dept. of Education

Research informed teaching (RIT)

1. research-led, where the curriculum content is based on the research interests of teachers
2. research-oriented, where the process of learning content is seen as important as the content itself and hence, an emphasis on learning inquiry skills
3. research-based, where the curriculum is based on inquiry-based activities rather than acquisition of content
4. research-informed teaching, which consciously draws on systematic inquiry into the teaching and learning process itself.
It is the last of these four, research-informed teaching, using relevant research findings to shape and re-shape our own teaching, that is the focus of the article.

interesting quote
"Teaching is a surprisingly private affair, where the main audience of learners tend to only relate what they witness anecdotally and without the benefit of appropriate analytical tools."
As Guernsey and Ochshorn (2011, p. 1) observed, “often these activities take place out of sight, witnessed only by principals or directors taking stock of a teacher’s skills, sometimes based on no more than a few jots about what they see from the doorway.”


A second finding in these studies is that these teaching techniques did not relate very well with current research findings. Brown (2004, p. 1) suggests that teachers’ reliance on what they have experienced rather than research findings is due “in large part because many have had little education about and understanding of adult learning principles.”

Although teachers’ responses in their interviews suggested they wanted to be learner-centered, our classroom observations quite clearly showed that instruction was highly teacher-directed. If teachers controlled the classroom, and they intended to be learner-centered, how could a teacher-directed system of instruction result? Our answer harks back to the concept of socialization. We concluded that teachers are so intensely socialized into a teacher-centered form of instructing that they teach in teacher-centered ways, despite intentions to be learner-centered (2001, p. 110).

A second approach is to draw on learners’ perspectives on what they see as effective teaching/teachers. These studies survey large samples of learners about what they believe helps them learn most effectively. They can identify particular characteristics (such as the ethnicity or gender of the teacher), their teaching behaviours (such as specific teaching methods) or their learning environment (such as various aspects of logistics in educational settings) that learners identify as helping them learn. They can also focus on general groups of learners or specific sub-groups, such as the unemployed (Benseman, 2001), literacy learners (Ward, 2003), refugees (Benseman, 2012a) or different cultural groups (Pratt et al., 1999), which gives these studies a specialist slant to their findings. This approach is also commonly employed in national and institutional ‘best teacher’ awards.

Learner-driven studies are particularly useful for showing us what learners value and are therefore probably useful for telling us what factors are likely to increase their participation rates and retention for example, but they also have their limitations. The difficulty with this approach is that learner ratings (typified in smiley-face type evaluation sheets) do not necessarily indicate learner impact in its entirety as measured in other outcome indicators

A third alternative is to refer to ‘practitioner wisdom’ of teachers who are perceived to be effective by their peers. These accounts are often insightful and useful (see for example, Nugent, 2011), but may or may not match the relevant research.

Another alternative to those discussed above is that of research-informed teaching (RIT) or its near-cousins, research-informed practice and research-based practice.

The paucity of research in other sectors inevitably means that inclusion criteria for RIT need to be relaxed somewhat to ensure reasonable numbers of studies. In the absence of research volume, or even with questionable quality research, it is argued that that even “imperfect evidence, used wisely, is better than no evidence at all” (Spencer et al., 2012, p. 136).

In sum, the quality of RIT evidence is ensured by accessing peer-reviewed literature (irrespective of its ontology), duplication and consensus of results (the degree to which there is agreement in the research about the findings) and “ultimately a preponderance of quality evidence gathered in rigorous research studies” (Stanovich & Stanovich, 2003, p. 6).

Notwithstanding major paradigm shifts, research-informed practices have a far greater chance of standing the test of time and leading to improvements in outcomes and ultimately better professional performances.
Teaching is a complex activity, involving the interplay of multiple factors in multifarious contexts. It is also involves creativity and even a certain amount of X factor that can never be quite isolated or nailed down to an analytical floor. But it also involves multiple components about which we have an increasing body of good quality research. Although the research evidence is rarely clear-cut or irrefutable, it does provide a sturdier platform to base our teaching than the alternatives of old habits and hearsay. The challenges lie in assembling the ‘preponderance of research evidence’ to inform teaching practices, to present it in forms that practitioners can understand and utilise and then to develop strategies that help teachers integrate it into their daily work with learners. Rising to these challenges is neither straightforward nor easy, but achieving it will almost certainly provide more

Week 3 in class sessions

SAMR:  SAMR model

TPACK:  3 knowledge areas
Tpack explained

"Distruption in Education"
The more overdue a disruption is, the more sudden it is when it finally occurs, and the more-off guard the incumbents are caught"

The rise of the "celebrity teacher"  is entirely possible


Technology disruption