Staring into the space between teaching and learning

I have often defined myself as a highly reflective practitioner, especially on my CV. My reflective practice has taken many forms in the past. For example, I like to write on the school blog and enjoy writing about what I have been doing in the classroom. My recent posts have been based around the change of practice in terms of Project Based Learning. These reflections have often been more of a stream of conscious and not embedded in any model of reflection.

Finlay talks about levels of reflection. When I look at my own reflection I believe I review and research but often this review is based on my feelings and disregards the voice of my students. In Jay and Johnson’s model of reflection, I would say that I do manage the descriptive stage of reflection. I will often talk about how I am feeling and what I feel is going on. How could I further extend the descriptive aspect of my reflection, including more student voice on how it is working for them?

Mark Banes, talks about using our students as a focus group could this be a good way of eliciting who is this style of teaching working for. Certainly in some of my attempts at trying to shift my practice toward a Project Based approach I have liked the idea of “embracing the chaos”, being self-critical on this students feedback was taken at the end of the projects. They often claimed to be confused, what if I had asked them for feedback after each lesson. This may have been a way of having me think about how I could improve further on what is not working in the classroom. Would this be sustainable and how would it reframe my practice?

When thinking about the idea of engaging in research is often a difficult area for school teachers. In an information-rich era, how can we discern from what is sound pedagogical practice and what is simply trending? I like really like to listen to the Teachthought podcasts and the work of John Spencer also greatly appeals to me when I have sought to redesign my lesson plans.

One way we have been very lucky at Otago Girls to be working within cross-curricular professional learning groups (PLG). Within these groups, we go through the spiral of inquiry. This process allows us to spend a long time going through a deep and sustained insight into our classroom practice. Having a multi-disciplinary group means we get a better understanding of the similar issues we face in our Kura. With our PLG we are also expected to present our findings and action into the rest of the school which again highlights the importance of having a genuine audience. We held our event after school in a world cafe style event and this led to some questioning of our practice and actions taken. It was unfamiliar to staff to be in this position of vulnerability, as we look to distribute more leadership across the school it is not just the position of heads of departments and senior leadership to critique classroom practice. This is a shift in mindset for teachers though and although it is easy to self critique it takes a bit of training to critique others.

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/oct93/vol51/num02/Through-the-Lens-of-a-Critical-Friend.aspx

http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Pedagogy-and-assessment/Evidence-based-leadership/The-spiral-of-inquiry

https://www.edutopia.org/article/value-of-authentic-audience-monica-burns

http://www.spencerauthor.com/

http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-resources/NZC-Online-blog/Spiralling-into-collaboration