Mindlab by Unitec: Cultural Responsiveness within a NZ Context

29 February 2016 (APC Week 31 - Task 9)

In "A Culturally Responsive Pedagogy of Relations" (2012),  Russel Bishop specifically mentions the underlying issues of Maori educational engagement, whilst noting there are similar issues for Maori as for most indigenous people around the world. Bishop explains that these challenges are "essentially an artifact of... post-colonialism"  which are still "having an enormous impact on our country." 

As previously discussed at length in my own previous blog posts on developing a culturally responsive approach within innovative learning environments, there is a significant need to address the ability for "Maori to learn as Maori" both within our schools and our wider educational communties of learning. This is also clearly stated in “Ka hikitia: accelerating success” (The New Zealand Ministry of Education, 2013). 

As directed in our New Zealand Curriculum document, we are expected as educators within Aoteroa New Zealand to provide our akonga (students) with learning opportunities that reflects the bicultural foundations of our nation. 

Source: NZC Update 16 - NZ Minstry of Education (2012)

New Zealand's founding document Te Tiriti o Waitangi (The Treaty of Waitangi) is explicitly bicultural in both it's intent and delivery. As such, our duty of care extends well beyond our professional specifications: ethically and morally, we are bound as leaders within our educational communities to reflect and respond to this bicultural responsibility with due care and consideration regardless of our school's ethnic composition. 

I see this as an opportunity we all have: to embrace the bicultural aspects of our country that make it unique in the global context and thereby empower our young nation and it's learners. As we develop our own understanding of who we are, we are better able to extend this basic human courtesy to those we all live and work alongside. This helps each of us to gain a more inclusive and holistic approach to what it means for each of us to be leaders and learners within Aotearoa New Zealand.

In my current school, we have around 75% of our students who identify as Maori. We primarily address cultural responsiveness within our kura by creating and maintaining an inclusive educational environment that actively encourages a holistic sense of hauora (wellbeing). We do this by providing our akonga with opportunities to learn about and participate in activities that reflect the importance of Te Reo and Tikanga Maori (Maori language and cultural traditions). This approach also extends to identifying and celebrating other cultures present within our school as part of our learning experiences.

My own professional challenge within this educational setting has been to continue to build and grow whanau -styled learning relationships that are both genuine and lasting, whilst also meeting the expectancies in a predominantly non-Maori educational system. Having genuine empathy and understanding is key to our student's learning being both positive and enduring. 


References Cited 

Edtalks. (2012, September 23). A culturally responsive pedagogy of relations. [video file]. 
Ministry of Education (2012) "The Treaty of Waitangi Principle ". NZC Update Issue 16.

Ministry of Education (2013) “Ka Hikitia: Accelerating Success 2013-2017 ”.

Topic: Authentic Engagement of Indigenous People -

Recommended Reading/Viewing

Edtalks. (2012, May 30). Mike Hogan: Culturally responsive practice in a mainstream school. [video file].

Cowie, B., Otrel-Cass, K., Glynn, T., & Kara, H., et al. (2011). Culturally responsive pedagogy and assessment in primary science classrooms: Whakamana tamariki. Wellington: Teaching Learning Research Initiative.

Findsen, B. (2012). Older adult learning in Aotearoa New Zealand: Structure, trends and issues. Presented at Adult Community Education (ACE) Conference.

Harrison, B. & Papa, R. (2005).The development of an indigenous knowledge program in a New Zealand Maori-Language immersion school. Anthropology and Education Quarterly; (36) 1,57-72.

Shaw, S.,White,W. & Deed,B. (2013) (Ed.) Health, wellbeing and environment in Aotearoa New Zealand.South Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press.

Shields, G. (2015). Support indigenous knowledge in New Zealand school libraries.

Mindlab by Unitec: Global and Local Trends in Education

08 February 2016 (APC Week 29, Task 6)

Reflecting on Some of the Current Trends in Education

When we're considering 'where to next', it's important that we consider the issues and trends that are likely to influence education over the next ten to twenty years. Looking first at the international trends helps us to see the bigger picture as it were. 

In the "Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds" report released by US National Intelligence Council (2012), they found four significant 'megatrends' that will likely have a huge influence on the geopolitical framework our education systems take place within.

Screenshot from "Global Trends 2030" pp.7 (Source)

The use of online digital media is now widely being used to allow for both collective and individual empowerment at a scale that has been previously unequalled. 

We're able to find out and share ideas online like never before, with learning-based and social media websites allowing individuals  to collaborate in a manner that is likely to be a potential source of both innovation and fundamentalism. In essence, we're all at a bit of a nexus - those clinging on to traditional modes of thought may find the 'future is wide open' and wish to keep the status quo.

Essentially, it has become imperative that educators and administrators alike climb onboard the collaborative technology train as digital immigrants, as the millenials are living and learning as digital natives. (Prensky, 2001).

However, the efficacy of this process before now has been inversely affected by changing demographic patterns - such as high transience in low socio-ecomomic areas within New Zealand impacting on these students in particular gaining equaitable access to the technology that facilitates this process. 

This has seen schools in low socio-economic areas to sign up for apparent 'social enterprise' models in order to provide their students with both the digital tools and internet access they will need to empower their students in the twenty-first century. 

With this model of enablement, there is the risk of gearing educational outcomes within these schools to enhance philanthropic input from private organisations. But, given the real need for access to the tools and skills our young people will need in the coming years, it is essential that we take a collective approach to providing more equitable learning pathways for millenials and their decendants.

By contrast, those schools in more socio-economically advantaged areas are still free to develop curricula that more adequately reflect the wider learning needs and/or educational interests of the community around them, thereby engendering the underlying values and principles of the New Zealand Curriculum document.

In conclusion, it is important that we fully grasp the increasingly globalised nature of living and learning in the current day. We need to make every effort we can muster to adapt our way of thinking and doing (i.e.: theories and pedagogies) to better allow us to provide our students with the insights and learning styles they will need to answer the issues that will arise in the coming decades.

In my next blog entry, I will look at how the rise of social media may provide us with an effective and engaging platform for empowering both ourselves and our learners over the coming year(s)...

References Cited & Recommended Reading/Viewing
Bolstad, R., Gilbert, J., McDowall, S., Bull, A., Boyd, S., & Hipkins, R. (2012). Supporting future-oriented learning & teaching: A New Zealand perspective.Wellington: Ministry of Education.
Education Review Office (2012). The three most pressing issues for New Zealand’s education system, revealed in latest ERO report - Education Review Office.
KPMG Australia. (2014, May 22). Future State 2030 - Global Megatrends.
US National Intelligence Council (2012). Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds. Washington, DC: United States National Intelligence.
OECD (2015). Education at glance 2014.
Pearson. (2013, April 26). Global trends: The world is changing faster than at any time in human history.
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants - Part 1. [pdf] 
Science News (2014, Nov 26). New Mega Trends.
The RSA.(2010, Oct 14). RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms.

Mindlab by Unitec: My Professional Context

01 February 2016 (APC Week 27, Task 5)

My Professional Context 

As part of the process of becoming a “self-aware” teaching professional, it is important to be fully cognizant of the broader contexts in which we learn and lead in the 21st century. 

   By defining our own roles, pedagogical approaches, inter-relationships and the way these are all interwoven, we begin to develop the understanding we need to effectively move within our own community of learning. 
    As we develop our a sense of ako or 'reciprocity', we begin to understand our own context within the educational framework in which we operate as leaders of learning, and this allows us to better develop the relationships, skills and content knowledge we will need within an increasingly global learning environment.
     As part of this change process, the increased use of online sources to facilitate new, innovative learning processes compels educators to increasingly develop an interdisciplinary approach to leading and learning. 
    "Interdisciplinary programs may be founded in order to facilitate the study of subjects which have some coherence, but which cannot be adequately understood from a single disciplinary perspective." (Wikipedia, 2016)

 TEDx Talks (2001, April 6). TEDxBYU - David Wiley - 

An Interdisciplinary Path to Innovation. [video file].

No longer are the school teacher and their physical school sites the proverbial font from which "all necessary academic content" (i.e.: curriculum) pours forth. 

    The exponential growth of information sharing via the internet allows learners to discover their own understanding from a digitised, globalised and publicised network of knowledge available to them.  

    Professional educators now need to venture into the same open access context, and the same freedom to venture forth into innovative approaches to the questions we all may have.

   With a sense of stewardship and global citizenship both, teachers can indeed be the leaders who guide our young people to asking the questions that will lead to the break throughs previously limited by environmental boundaries...

My Professional Connections

For this blog post, I have created a 'professional connection map' to help me to begin to visualise the extent of the connections have made (and could potentially develop further on in future) to help me to begin to visualise the wider context in which I learn and teach. 

     For this 'mind mapping' activity, I have used a digital tool via Coggle. I chose this tool because it allowed me to sign via my Google+ account, which made it very user friendly - thanks Michelle for the inspiration!

"My Professional Connections Map" (click on image to enlarge)

An interesting observation I made when creating this 'professional connection map': the process initially started out in a rather linear or "hierarchical" manner at the outset, much as one might expect at the start of one's career. Yet as I visually mapped the links between the different elements or "stakeholders" in my professional connections in the current day, the more interwoven and web-like the illustration became...

I think this activity was an important reminder professionally of how the advent of digital collaboration and devices are increasingly changing our world view and pedagogical approaches - at the micro as well at the meta level - in the same way... Welcome to "Global Citizenship" in action!

NB: My previous entry for RCIP already covers my professional reflection around several of the various connections noted in my mindmap: which I offer again as my evaluation in regards to how these "stakeholders" can and do impact on my practise and Community of Learning. The Manaiakalani Outreach and the Papakura Kootuitui initiatives as discussed in this previous blog entry particularly relate to our school's move into Digital Learning and Collaboration contexts. 

Further Reading 
(around the concept of interdisciplinarity i.e.: in educational settings.)
Mathison,S. & Freeman, M. (1997). The logic of interdisciplinary studies. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, 1997. [PDF file].

Mindlab by Unitec: My Professional Community of Practise

25 January 2016 (APC Week 26, Task 4)

My Professional Community

This blog post is intended to be around defining my own professional learning and leading context using Wenger's concept of community of practice: a group "of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly." (2015)

   Within my own community of practise, I am going to critically review the following three areas:

1. current issues within our community of practise;
2. challenges faced within my professional practise; and
3. changes that are occurring within the context of our profession, and how we might address these. 

 Within our 'Decile 1A' South Auckland kura (school), we face many issues; ranging from socio-economic challenges (i.e.: truancy, absenteeism, transience) through to the need to specifically cater for a predominantly Maori student body. [I have also discussed the wider contexts for this in my recent RCIP blog entry.]

    This also brings us to some of the contextual challenges we face as a community of practise - how do we bring value-added learning outcomes within a socio-economically 'disadvantaged' setting?

   In recent years, digital learning platforms have increasingly offered us an effective tool for overcoming these obvious geographical and physical limitations. Our leaders of learning have worked alongside our coummunity to bring greater ICT-based learning opportunities into our kura and devices onsite for our akonga.

   Whilst this support from our wider community and leadership has seen a huge shift in the resources we have available to our learners, this has been a reflection - and perhaps a response - to the huge changes occuring within our profession in recent years.

   Shifts in the tide of political agar in which we learn and teach have had huge implications for all of us. For example, while National Standards gave a standardised tool for the government to measure our student's progress over time 'longitudinally' against their peers nationally. This has led many local communities of learning once again losing their self-directed autonomy or sense of tino rangatiratanga, once implicit in the once innovative New Zealand Curriculum document.

   In the coming years, the ability to foster and grow effective, lasting (inter)relationships - within and between communities of practise and learning (locally, nationally and globally) - will be the most likley basis on which we can best share the resources and skills our young people will need to succeed and thrive in the new millenium.

References  Cited
(including additonal / suggested readings for understanding and defining your own community of practise.)
Hodkinson, P., & Hodkinson, H. (2004, May 11th). A constructive critique of communities of practice: Moving beyond Lave and Wenger. Paper presented at “Integrating Work and Learning- Contemporary Issues’ seminar series. OVAL Research.
Lave, J. (1991). Situating learning in communities of practice. In L. Resnick, J. Levine, and S. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition.[ E-reader version](page 63-82).
OPENiPhotojournalism. (2009, Sep 15). Etienne Wenger talks about 'walking the landscape of practice'. [video file].
Team BE. (2011 Dec 28, 2011). Communities versus networks? [Web blog post].
Wenger-trayner.com. (2015). Introduction to communities of practice | Wenger-Trayner. [PDF file].

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".