Mindlab by Unitec: Reflecting on My Learning and Practise

18 January 2016 (APC Week 25, Tasks1-3)

My Reflective Journal
Kia ora, my name is Marla Jane, and I am a primary school teacher in South Auckland, New Zealand. 

   I have been teaching at my current kura (school) for nearly eight years now; I have had the good fortune to have taught across the school as a classroom teacher for akonga (students) from Year 2 to Year 6 during my time as a kiako (teacher) there. 

   I've been teaching within the senior syndicate for the past few years, so I get to work with students from Year 4-8 as we move into innovative learning environments and full immersion digital platforms through the Papakura Kootuitui initiative in 2016.

   As part of my role within our community of learning, I have been actively involved in co-developing ICT-related practises, most recently around our class blog and learning hub website.

   To keep up-to-date with the goings on in education in the 21st Century, I also keep a pinterest board and interact with other educators through my own Google+ and Twitter accounts 'in my spare time'. 

   Then, of course, we arrive at this blog, which I've created in the past year to keep track of all my professional learning: from professional learning and development in the workplace, through to educational conferences; and most recently, during the Mindlab By Unitec PGCert course. 

   Beyond my obvious strong interest in "all things ICT", my other passion is for Visual Art - from teaching and learning about it, through to sharing my creations with the wider 'globe'.

My Learning and Practice

   I have created this blog post to reflect on the last 24 weeks of my PCGCert studies at Mindlab by Unitec. To begin, let me start with 'a critical discussion' of two of my own Key Competencies that I believe have been developed the most during my studies the past several months.

My Original Reflection - cut and pasted from our Google Form made in August 2015.

   Reflecting on my initial comments in August 2015, one of the most striking contrasts for me over the past several months has been how my pre-existing 'Participating and Contributing' competency has proven to be a real asset when undertaking both e-Learning and professional networking.   

   My locus of interest has greatly expanded over recent months - from discussions with my fellow post grad students, through to my relatively new use of Twitter as a way to foster networks and source innovative ideas in ever-changing professional leading and learning contexts. 

   Along with this post graduate course itself, experiencing ULearn'15 allowed me to confidently approach educators from a wide variety of professional settings. 

    Another noticable change has been in how my 'Thinking' key competency has been opened up even further by this discourse and sharing of such a broad, expansive and increasingly globalised view of education as it is now occuring in the present tense.
 
   Other key changes that I have noticed within my own pedagogical practise since starting this course include how my use of online networking and cloud-based tools and resources have all effectively become an intrinsic part of how I gather, learn, create, share and reflect on my teaching and learning.

My Response to Finlay’s (2008) article 
In Lynda Finlay's (2008) article "Reflecting on Reflective Practise", she paraphrases Zeichner and Liston (1996) as saying that the reflective practise can effectively occur at five different levels:

1. rapid reflection - responding to the immediate contexts within the learning setting;
2. repair - adjusting teacher responses and behaviours in light of different student cues;
3. review - thinking, verbalising or writing about aspects of one's teaching;
4. research - engaging in a longitudinal view of one's pedagogy through a process of traingulation of assessment data, professional readings and other professional sources of information;
5. retheorising and reformulating - adjusting one's professional thinking and pedagogy in response to all of the above.

This particular hierarchy of reflective thought aligns well with my own learning experiences around the professional reflections at this juncture. Within my own professional teaching and learning, the model that we endeavour to use is identifed as Teaching As Inquiry.

   This process aligns with my professional obligations in regards to meeting my own goals within my teaching practise, and the model itself essentially provides me with a clear picture of "where I am, what has worked, what didn't work, and what my nexts steps would be". The process of review is complimented by my being able to discuss these different steps within my syndicate and as part of my professional appraisal cycle. 

Source: Teaching As Inquiry (TKI website image)

Teaching As Inquiry effectively gives me a clear, definable platform on which to best develop the professional skills and reflective approach needed in an ever changing world of learning and leading.

   Looking at Finlay's discussion around the concepts of reflexivity and critical reflection also align well with how the practise often necessarily occurs within learning environments where 'value-added' appraoches are explicit in the pedaogogical setting in which teaching occurs.

   "Reflexive practitioners engage in critical self-reflection: reflecting critically on the impact of their own background, assumptions, positioning, feelings, behaviour while also attending to the impact of the wider organisational, discursive, ideological and political context." (Finlay, 2008)

   It is necessary that we understand the contexts in which we teach, and the wider influences on both ourselves and our learning community of learning - from our immediate students who need both our informed empathy and guidance, through to the over-arching educational bodies that govern our practise.

   As we seek to provide our learners and our colleagues with the tools they need to live and learn within a globalised educational context, it is important that each of us is able to confidently approach and then master the skills we all need to be 'digital citizens' of the new millenium.

References Cited
(not directly cited unless undelined as above - citations include suggested readings for creating your own reflective learning journal.)

Dawson, F. (2012, October 10). Reflective practice. [video file].

Finlay, L. (2009) Reflecting on reflective practice. PBPL. [PDF file]
Galanis, M (2014, November 4). Blogging in Education. [video file]
Godin, S. (2015). The tribes we lead. Ted.com. [Web blog post].
Goins, J.(2015). How to Write Scannable Content for Your Blog. [Web blog post]
Gunelius, S. (2015). The Secrets of Blog Post Length. About.com Tech. [Web blog post]
Gunelius, S. (2015). Legal Issues Bloggers Must Understand. About.com Tech. [Web blog post]
Gunelius, S. (2015). 3 Expert Tips for Better Blogging. About.com Tech. [Web blog post]
LSU Center for Academic Success (2013, March 26). Think about Thinking - It’s Metacognition!. [video file].
Trinity,A. ( 2010, April 19,). Reflection Models. [video file].
Walker, J. (2012, February 17). Brief Intro to Metacoginition. [video file].
Zeichner, K. M., & Liston, D. P. (1996). "Reflective teaching. An introduction. Reflective teaching and the social conditions of schooling".