Week 32 – Reflective practice – key change in professional practice

Week 32 – Reflective practice – key change in professional practice

For my Week 32 blog entry I will again use the Rolfe et al reflection model...

Step 1 (What): Identify one key change in your professional practice.

Based on the Education Council’s (2017) ‘Our code, our standards’, I have chosen to reflect on my professional practice using Future-Focused learning as the basis of my reflection where we Develop a culture that is focused on learning, and is characterised by respect, inclusion, empathy, collaboration and safety.

Step 2 (Now what): Evaluate the identified change

Stage 1: Problem identification

The 21st century skills have really been an important aspect of my teaching and learning with my students. Moving from using exercise books to fully becoming a digital classroom has been a mind boggling situation. But mindlab has really opened my eyes in terms how digital devices can be used to enhance and improve student learning. My students really focused on Collaboration with devices where students become reflective learners by providing feedback and feedforward. I can tell you that collaboration is a big part of future focused culture because collaboration is noticed everywhere in the real world, whether you work in construction, teaching, medicine collaboration is needed to work effectively with others. At first using a device to collaborate in new learning became an issue because they didn't know how to use the device in that way.

Stage 2: Observation and analysis

My own inquiry involved trying to support my students to become collaborative learner when using their device. I used the SAMR framework to help my students identify for themselves whether they were using the technological device effectively enough to work collaboratively with their peers where they are confident enough to provide feedback and feedforward to improve their learning. I also found that I was questioning myself whether I knew how to effectively collaborate during student learning. Reflecting critically about my teaching practise using the Gibbs framework(Finlay, 2009), Jay and Johnson framework (2002)  and the Rolfe(2001) framework have really open new insights that have improved my instructions and the way i teach.

Stage 3: Abstract re conceptualization

Collaboration is the way of learning because we are all use to this idea of working together as a team you will achieve better results. This works if the learning talk is rich and reflected upon where informed critical feedback becomes available. This is something i look into improving in the near future. Effective collaboration is also determined by effective leadership approach when working students and this is an area i will focus on. Using purposeful frameworks that help support your teaching really helps students identify where they are at in learning and where they want to be moving forward.

Stage 4: Active experimentation

My teaching inquiry has been a bit of an interesting experience because completing mindlab assignments has put a minor strain on my progress on my inquiry. But my teaching inquiry has really informed my practice in terms of how to approach digital learning and collaboration for my new students. My new students will be the early adopters of using technology for learning. Flipped learning play are significant part in my inquiry where task design became all about collaboration through discussion while trying to understand content for themselves.

Step 3 (What next) Share your next plan(s) regarding your future professional development or your future practice.

I guess my next steps would be to look into effective collaboration using technological devices as well as trying to fully understand what flipped learning is about because I feel i have only skimmed the surface of this learning approach.

Reference List.

Education Council. (2017). Our Code Our Standards.Retrieved from: https://educationcouncil.org.nz/sites/default/files/Our%20Code%20Our%20Standards%20web%20booklet%20FINAL.pdf

Finlay, L. (2009). Reflecting on reflective practice. PBPL. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/sites/www.open.ac.uk.opencetl/files/files/ecms/web-content/Finlay-(2008)-Reflecting-on-reflective-practice-PBPL-paper-52.pdf

Jay, J.K. and Johnson, K.L. (2002) Capturing complexity: a typology of reflective practice for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 73-85.