We’re almost half-way through the year, and so this is a great time to pause and take stock of how far we’ve come and where to next. We started the year off with 1. The formation of cross-curricular Professional Learning Groups. The cross-curricular make-up of PLG groups is to ensure that everyone has opportunities to benefit from the rich and varied experiences of different teachers, and the different perspectives and approaches that other subject's disciplines can bring to a common challenge. 2. You honed in on a small group of priority learners in your class(es). You focused on 2-3 students in a class or across your classes who you thought should be your priority for whatever reason your professional judgement told you. The academic, engagement and wellbeing data you gathered from and about those students will have helped give you a clearer understanding of specifically what category of challenge it is that these students seem to be facing. 3. You shared and compared your data. In your group collaborative doc / template, or whatever format you’ve chosen to use, you’ve shared the data and information you have regarding:
4. You have found a common focus area. For many PLGs, you share the challenge of weaker levels of student engagement, so for the purpose of this example, I will use engagement as the focus. Because engagement is such a large abstract challenge, many of you have broken this down into types of engagement and shared the indicators or signs you’re seeing of a lack of engagement of these different types:
5. Brainstorming the signs you may be seeing of lack of engagement in your class(es) is a good way to narrow down to a manageable focus for yourself and your group. Remember, you don’t have to be a superhero. Pick the low-hanging fruit! Here is an example of one’s PLG group’s engagement brainstorm. The stars represent the indicators that they felt were the most significant / important ones for them to focus on. Ultimately, this group chose to focus on one sign of disengagement - the willingness to take (perceived) risks in learning. "How might we encourage students to take risks so that they feel comfortable expressing ideas, demonstrating engagement? " Remember that these three areas often blend into each other, so as this group tries different approaches, they may (or may not) find that some work on wellbeing may be a part of this challenge too. 6. Hunch forming. This is often the uncomfortable part of the inquiry process because this inquiry is about what WE can do DIFFERENTLY in order to improve learning experiences and outcomes for students. How might what WE’RE doing in our practice be contributing to this? It's also the fun part, where you get to brainstorm and share ideas with your teammates for how you might go about encouraging students to participate more, for instance, or help them get started with work more quickly. This is where referring to the 7 Principles of Learning resources and research might help you with ideas / strategies to try. (New Learning). [link to 7 P's here] ![]() 7. Take action! You have an idea for something new to try to see if it improves the indicators you’re seeing in class. Try it! Consciously watch and reflect on how it went. Record what happened in your collaborative doc. If it was a success, your team deserves to know! How do you know it was a success? (Checking) If it was a flop, you deserve help from your team to unpack why that might have been and to support you in your next prototype or iteration. You’re doing great! The inquiry structure or framework is not meant to make any extra work from what you would normally be doing as the reflective and conscientious teachers that you are. It is merely a guide for a way to progress through an inquiry process to ensure you can maintain momentum (which is always a challenge in the busy life of a teacher) and have a reference point to different modes of thinking for when you may hit a tricky patch or lose focus. Almost all of your PTCs will be ‘ticked off’ across the year through your inquiry journey and the recording and sharing of it with your colleagues. Discussing how it’s going with your appraiser before and after and observation lessons will also support its value and meaningfulness to you with your registration, your classroom teaching and your understanding of and relationships with your students and colleagues. ~ Rowan Taigel
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Given our glowing new GreenGold Enviroschools status, I thought it appropriate to try to apply some gardening wisdom to teaching practices! Both are about growth and, at core, relationships. Here goes, using permaculture principles nicked from the New Zealand Gardener image used with kind permission of the ODT Observe and interact Getting to know your garden will help you make better decisions. An easy one. Substitute “garden” for ‘students’ (and “self”, “colleagues”, “community”). I like this version too: “The farmer’s footsteps are the best fertiliser.” Catch and store energy: Not just water and sunlight, but also biomass and fertility. Ideas here anyone? Perhaps reuse and recycle resources - colleagues’ and one’s own? Having great morning tea food and conversations? My grandfather’s version was “Don’t bust your boiler”. Obtain a yield. Every plant should have a useful role to play. Hmm. Probably a good approach to scrutinising one’s teaching resources. Or maybe it could be restated with a bit more faith as “Every human does have a useful role to play”. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback. Listen to both positive and negative feedback from nature .. and from people! Enough said! Use and value renewable resources: Make the best use of renewable natural resources. This one seems very close to the advice to catch and store energy. Both come from a deeper respect for the processes and complexity - of natural and human productions, culture, and thought. Produce no waste: Recycle, reuse and compost. In nature, there is no “waste”. Everything is valuable to something. That understanding applies equally to experience: all is learning. Design from patterns to details: Look for and replicate the patterns you see in nature. Our inspiring Curriculum could be seen as the larger pattern, from which our units and lessons flow. The whole and the parts imply each other. Integrate rather than segregate: Create synergy between plants. And departments, all staff, learners…get those chatty girls working on something they’re all passionate about! Use small slow solutions: Good design takes time. Good design also needs imagination and some courage, but develop inquiry cycles based on careful observation and preserve what works well already. Use and value diversity: A more biodiverse garden is a healthier garden. Our core value of “respect” is active, not passive. ![]() Use edges and value the marginal: Nature doesn’t waste space, so plant “edges” of ponds or plants to increase biodiversity. This could be about noticing those quiet or quirky kids and paying them nurturing attention. This and the previous principle are also about allowing the”‘wild” to remain in our gardens/lives, in some areas. Giving ourselves personal time to play and just “be” is creative, energising, required. Creatively use and respond to change: Be flexible! Rigidity does not last long in nature. Flexibility needs grounding. The pace of change in our material and cultural worlds (eg especially climate change, technology replacing humans and deep human interaction) requires us to hold even stronger onto core values of caring for each other and the world to which we all belong. ~Nicky Chapman Words in bold and italics taken directly (p 37) from McCarrol, J. 2016 New Zealand Gardener Fresh from the Garden. The ultimate guide to growing your own organic fruit and vegetables. Auckland: Fairfax Magazines.
Images sourced from Google free to use images. Choose your mode:
click on the image above to play the video The alternative is to read the transcript below, with the accompanying screenshots of each slide. ![]() To me, teaching as inquiry is fundamentally about examining the conditions and environment we have created for learners, and ensuring they are ideal to support learners to connect, learn and grow. To use a gardening analogy; we need to support the growth of the seeds we’ve been given. We can’t exchange them, genetically modify them or discard them. Not all flowers like direct sunlight and not all like shade. Some need more watering than others. But with the right climate and conditions, each seed can grow to be the best version of itself. ![]() Why Spirals? Like the Teaching as Inquiry cycle on the left, the Spiral of inquiry is designed to be a continuous cycle of teacher reflection and improvement. It is designed to promote equity and innovation. At the end of the day, the most important thing is that you use an inquiry framework or process, be it Teaching as Inquiry, Design Thinking or Spirals. This is to ensure you have a foundation or anchor for your inquiry, that you can refer to a structure if you become stalled or stuck, and that you record and reflect upon new information and changes you’ve made. A framework helps us to make sure we haven’t skipped anything important, jumped ahead too quickly or made any assumptions we could or should have avoided. Following a framework means we are most likely to see positive change and outcomes from our inquiry because we have been methodical with our process and it is founded upon the research of the latest science about learning. ![]() Teachers can’t afford to waste time and energy putting strategies into effect that have no impact on student outcomes. The Spiral of Inquiry is geared towards making sure that our response to student needs is targeted and effective; that it will have an impact and make enough of a difference for our learners. ![]() Unlike the Teaching as Inquiry framework, Spirals of Inquiry is specifically designed to be collaborative. By working as an interdisciplinary team, our students will benefit from the changes teachers are making to their practice in more than one subject. No matter whether certain students are a PLG’s “priority learners” or not, all students in classes will benefit from the changes teachers are making to address their priority learners’ needs. ![]() Spirals reminds us to use strategies and approaches that suit the learners in front of us, not the ones we had last year. We often will not try a new or different approach because it is a natural feeling to want to know that it’s actually going to work before we do it. No-one wants to waste their time doing something that is not going to work, only to go back and do what they’ve always done anyway. The reason we keep using strategies that we always have, is that they’ve generally resulted in decent outcomes for most learners. But is that good enough? Is there an acceptable number of students who will not experience success or high achievement in our subject? What is that number? The way to be most sure that any new strategy will have improved outcomes for learners (be they in wellbeing, engagement or achievement) is to do the initial groundwork first. Effective scanning and exploring of information about and from our learners means we can be sure that what we are going to try will have a positive effect and will make a difference. While this group couldn’t be 100% sure this idea would work, they had done enough research, asking people what might encourage or support them to change their habits, that when they decided upon a strategy, they knew there would be a positive outcome. ![]() Spirals of Inquiry is designed to support and promote reflection and action for equity, quality and innovation. If you think about the diagram with the trees to the left, your priority learners are represented by the shortest person in the picture. Whether they are a priority because they experience more challenge around basic literacy than other students, are more challenged by their ability to focus in class, or their ability to relate what they’re learning to their own lives, or perhaps their ability to feel safe, comfortable and confident in the learning environment. An approach that improves conditions for this student, will still be beneficial and useful to everyone. ![]() There are no hard and fast rules to Spirals of Inquiry. While there are different steps in the process listed on the left, and we tend to read around a circular object in a clockwise direction, it is important to remember that these are less like phases, and more like “modes” of thinking. A common scenario is that firstly, we actually will notice something is not working so well for a student and we might have a hunch as to what the reason is behind this. We take action with an idea for what we think might work. It may work to a certain extent, but still not as well as we’d hoped for. So, instead of reverting to what we’ve always done again, this is where doing some scanning, or gathering of more information about and from the student and their learning needs and experiences will be useful to us. From this information, we should be able to find a pattern or trend in the information that leads us towards an area or aspect that we feel we could focus on to make the biggest difference. ![]() From this information, we should be able to find a pattern or trend in the information that leads us towards an area or aspect that we feel we could focus on to make the biggest difference. Gathering information on engagement might mean having a colleague come and observe a lesson in your class, where they focus on your priority learners and make note of when they seem to be engaged or disengaged. It could be that you call home and talk to parents about how your learners feel about school and where and when they find the most enjoyment and experience the most success. Perhaps we find out that our priority learners seem to be achieving well in areas of their life where they have the ability to be more physically active or hands-on? Perhaps they are experiencing success in areas or subjects where they feel the teacher knows and understands them more. ![]() Going into scanning mode may mean that you’re seeking evidence to support your hunch. If you don’t find it, then you need to adjust your idea or understanding about what is leading to the learner’s challenges. It is best to approach scanning with an open mind as to what you may or may not find. ![]() It’s important that we have gathered information about and from our learners regarding not only their academic abilities, but also their wellbeing and engagement. In order to see the greatest impact and improvement, we need to channel our energy into a concentrated focus, rather than dispersing it across many initiatives. We need to have decided which area to focus on for the learners which will make the biggest difference to their learning experiences. While there may be many things which may require attention, we have to prioritise these, we’re not superheroes! You’ll have more success at making an object move higher or faster if it’s already moving. What is the student already able to do, or where are they experiencing success currently that you can utilise in the aspect of achievement, engagement or wellbeing that you’re going to focus on? Do you know or have an idea of what it is you’re hoping to see as a result of your change in practice? What are the specific indicators? A student “being better” at something or being “more engaged” doesn’t really mean anything as an outcome. What does being better look like? What will you see or hear if a student is now more engaged? (Checking) ![]() There’s a million things that matter in your subject and classroom, and hundreds of things that you can actually control about your own practice, your environment and your subject area. Your inquiry focus should be a small and concentrated area in amongst all of this that is targeted and manageable for the busy human being that you are. ![]() When zeroing in on a focus, this is one of those times when it really is all about you. Remember; we can’t change the student, nor should we want to. The only thing we can change is our own practice. Designing an inquiry question is important as it keeps you focused on your goal and can be an anchor when life and the demands of school mean that sometimes we lose sight of what we’re doing. How are WE contributing to the situation? ![]() In this example, we may have realised that our students' outlook towards risk-taking or attitude in the face of academic challenge is what’s holding them back. This is the thing we’re wanting to change (the bit in yellow). What we don’t know yet, is how we’re going to go about improving that. That’s what our inquiry’s all about. We may have a few ideas or a hunch as to how to go about improving this, but we will probably also have to undertake some new learning or PLD in this area... ![]() Again here, as a team, we may have realised that a commonality between all our priority learners boils down to a weakness in their social and emotional skills in the school or classroom setting. We know that they’re going to need to be able to work with others in order to achieve many things at school and in the workplace, so our TEAM inquiry is around how we might provide more meaningful opportunities for students to develop these important skills, which will ultimately affect their ability to succeed academically and at life. ![]() You’re a team. Use your collaborative doc to share what you’re doing and to support each other. Everything you do, enact, share and reflect upon “counts” or aligns with the 12 Practising Teacher Criteria you need evidence and reflection around in order to be re-certified as a teacher. Undertaking this collaborative inquiry is not an add-on. If the inquiry process is your way of being, then you will naturally amass a portfolio of evidence which will serve to support the renewal of your teaching certificate. ~Rowan Taigel. 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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