Week 19 - Communities of Practice

Week 19 – Communities of Practice

August 28, 2018

This week’s reflective blog follows the Jay and Johnson’s Model (2002)

Descriptive:

I am particularly interested in ‘Personalised Learning’ 'Growth Mindset' and 'Innovative Learning Spaces'.  I would like to research more into this area and see if there are any learning tools that may assist these concepts of learning. 

My CoP, my regular and most significant and influential, Comunity of Practice is my work place.  We are  team of 7 wahine Māori that share joint enterprise, mutual engagement and shared understanding in all that we do.  We fall under these terms because we are committed to our kaupapa and strive to achieve excellence to create amazing role models who will be excellent teachers for our tamariki.  We support each other academically, spiritually and emotionally.  We are always looking at ways of doing things better, how we might cater for all learning needs in our programmes.  We have formal and informal discussions with experts that help us to grow the delivery of our programmes from strength to strength.  We are developing our CoP by using our contacts and resources from a wide variety of networks.   

Comparative:

When I was a student teacher I remember being taught and educated under the ‘one size fits all’ model  where we all had to fit into this model that was built to house us all.  When I look at year groups and the content that we are delivering in our teaching degree I tend to have a few questions .  Are we giving our students enough information to complete their assessments?  Do they have enough prior knowledge?  Have we scaffolded their learning?  Am I forgetting something?  Is there information on line?  How can we personalise the learning of our ākonga? It is simple and familiar “in the sense that it is about trying to build learning around the needs of individual pupils, something that has been practised by many good teachers for years”.

Our programmes are distance learning with three weeks of contact time with students.   We also communicate through zoom video conferencing on a regular and needed basis.  For the majority of the time our programmes are taught on-line with other communications done through online portals like email, student portal, facebook messenger etc.  It is about being mindful of the individual learning needs of students and finding opportunities to share.   I want to shift our practice to include Innovative Learning Spaces and or Growth Mindset.  Diehl (2013) says Growth-Minded Choices come from beliefs that those we lead can be motivated to improve and grow their practices.  These two points are big signposts that show a need for more attention.

Critical Reflection:

I have found the campfire space that Collis talks about in different spaces within a learning environment a innovative and positive space for our students to share, and develop a general understanding about a concept.  I see my role in this environment as the facilitator that invites the students to be the expert.  This term is known as the concept of AKO.  I would  scaffold their learning with the necessary resources so that the student has the opportunity to develop that positive growth mindset.  The intention is to achieve success by creating the right learning environment and to scaffold their growth mindset.

“...it’s still not easy to attain a growth mindset. One reason why is we all have our own fixed-mindset triggers. When we face challenges, receive criticism, or fare poorly compared with others, we can easily fall into insecurity or defensiveness, a response that inhibits growth. Our work environments, too, can be full of fixed-mindset triggers.” (Dweck, 2016)

References

https://app.themindlab.com/media/75909/view

Diehl, E. (2013). Leading Change with a Growth Mindset. Community.mindsetworks.com. Retrieved from http://community.mindsetworks.com/blog-page/home-blogs/entry/leading-change-with-a-growth-mindset

Dweck, C. (2016, January 13). What Having a “Growth Mindset” Actually Means. Retrieved July 26, 2016, from https://hbr.org/2016/01/what-having-a-growth-mindset-actually-means