What an amazing term.
To build analogy from Katherine's talk about her experiences in and around Nepal; at times this term things have felt as smooth and enjoyable as a 23 minute flight along the Himalayas on a cloudless, sunny day... and at others, it has felt like a rough, 14hour ride in an old truck, along windy cliff-top tracks wearing blindfolds! But here we are! I have enjoyed my first term at OGHS immensely and have been blown away by everyone's positivity, dedication, hard work, and unfailing belief in and support for our girls. You are a collective inspiration! Have a wonderful holiday!
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When I first started out in teaching (1990), I remember being very clear that I didn’t just want to be a teacher, I wanted to be a really good teacher. I wanted to be the sort of teacher that students remembered. The sort that students said made a difference for them. I’d like to think that I succeeded in this for some students but it would be fair to say that there were others who I failed to reach. There seemed to be a certain level of acceptance among some teachers at that time that as long they had presented the learning to the students, it was up to the student themselves to choose whether or not to access that learning. I vividly remember one of my (less successful) colleagues telling one of her classes that she didn’t care if they did the work she had set them or not, she still got paid anyway. As far as she was concerned, she had discharged her teaching responsibilities and the idea of what had been learned did not feature. She saw herself as a teacher of English not a teacher of the students in her classes. She directed what the learning was to be and students had little or no say in this. As a result many students had little or no engagement in this learning. ![]() Skip forward nearly 30 years in time to a classroom not too far away... What I saw going on there completely turns this approach on its head. This learning was student centered. In this class, the teacher had identified the skills and knowledge the students needed to develop and learn - just like my earlier colleague had done - but it was how she made the learning happen that was different. She provided a context of learning students could relate to (in this case a Buzzfeed quiz), gave them choice in deciding what to do their quiz on, taught them the tools they needed to write the code for their quizes, encouraged them to collaborate to identify bugs and iron them out and enabled them to produce a product and supporting evidence that provided them with all they needed for an NCEA assessment. Because of the nature of the task, students repeated the coding they had learned with each new question, thereby reinforcing their learning through numerous applications. When I spoke to them they said they had found coding really challenging at first but now they were really enjoying it. Every single student in that class was engaged with the work at hand, and every single student was achieving. Students felt they had a say in what they were learning and how they were learning. They had a sense of agency. https://www.slideshare.net/dwenmoth/shifting-the-ownership-of-learning Approaches to teaching reflect the educative purpose of the prevailing curriculum and the understandings about education that exist at any particular point in time. Dr Julia Atkin provides some insight into the evolution of curriculum and the educative purpose that has sat behind each iteration. http://ile.education.govt.nz/the-national-curriculum/ The world we are preparing students for is vastly more complex than it used to be and as secondary school educators we now have the responsibility and, according to Joan Dalton, the challenge of “providing individual pathways that allow each young person to find their future through the development of their whole selves and the role they are going to play in society.” We cannot do this by continuing to do what we have always done. We must engage all of our students in their learning journey. To do so requires us as teachers to be “connosieurs” of teaching - a term used by one of my favourite educators, Ken Robinson, and illustrated in the following clip. There are many resources and much advice about the most effective strategies we can use as teachers to optimise the learning that happens for our students. What these resources and pieces of advice cannot do for us however, is to tell us what will work best for the specific students who sit in front of us each day. This is where Spirals of Inquiry come in. Helen Timperley, Linda Kaser and Judy Halbert in the Centre for Strategic Education publication A framework for transforming learning in schools: Innovation and the spiral of inquiry, outline the main difference between the spirals approach and the teaching as inquiry approach that we have used in the past: ![]() One of the important differences in this new framework is the involvement of learners, their families and communities, underpinning and permeating each of the phases shown, from the beginning and throughout the whole process. This requires a shift from student voice to developing learner agency, as the students help to identify and address issues in their learning environments. In the past it has often been adults who have decided what is right or wrong with learners, and what is good for them, without involving them in either identifying issues or developing solutions. Deciding what is going on for learners without their input lacks respect and is unlikely to be productive. The key to making the spiral of inquiry work is for everyone to approach the framework with a mindset of curiosity and genuine inquiry into what is going on for learners, and then to move forward from there.
There are many times I wish I could be back in the classroom, making a difference for the students I teach. I know that I would be challenged by a new approach to inquiry in this context and in making it work for my learners. But this is exciting work. It is meaningful work. It is transformative work. Spirals can also be applied in a leadership context and this is our next task, to develop and operate an inquiry. In researching the Spirals approach, I have found that, as well as making sense to me, it has great congruence with the restorative approach we are using in the school. The process sits squarely in the “With” sector - problem solving, respectful, collaborative, responsibility. Together, we can make this work.
~Linda Miller |
AuthorsWe'll have a variety of authors from OGHS over the year sharing their thoughts and experiences about education, teaching and learning Archives
June 2019
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