Activity: 2 APC Current Issues In My professional Context

Organisational culture

Values and Guiding Principles at Pakuranga College

·         There 5 main core values emphasised at Pakuranga College: Strive, Respect, Connect, Reflect and Create.

•  Students are always encouraged to take responsibility for their own learning. Students are encouraged to aim for their very best performance in whatever they undertake whether it is in academic, cultural or sporting endeavours.
• Staff collaborate to build independent learners. Success in all endeavours is acknowledged and rewarded.
• College environment promotes respect. 
• The local community including business, sporting, cultural and other organisations are included in the development of our policies and priorities.
•  Students will celebrate and enjoy all forms of diversity in our college, nationally, and internationally. This includes cultural, gender, intellectual and physical difference. 

My contribution in my community of Practice:

• Another key aspect for successful teaching practice is building positive student and teacher relationships, in particularly beneficial to older students as stronger effects are found in higher grades (Roorda et. al. 2011).
• My Practices are around building Self-regulatory (Mega, et.al. 2014),  learning habits among students and keeping high expectations from my students, whether it's is around key competencies or for academic performance.
• As a tutor teacher I encourage all my tutees to actively get involved in extra-curricular activities as results showed that the amount of participation in extracurricular activities was positively related to academic achievements (Gerber, 1996). I foster the leadership skills among my students by assigning them leadership roles from small scales in group activities at classroom level to become cultural group leaders, sports in-charge, and home-work club runners or involved with specific school councils. As developing leadership skills helps in motivation.
• My teaching practice has evolved over the years, when I was a beginning teacher my style of delivery had been very traditional, chalk talk. My position in the class now has become more of a facilitator role, working either one on one or with small groups.
• Lately I have started spending more time around critical reflective process, gathering student voice and action research using teaching inquiry. As supported by the researchers, teachers and students gain a sense of empowerment as they deepen their relationships and negotiate new roles as partners and co-researchers making sense of learning in their classrooms (Bell, & Aldridge, 2014).
• My current teaching inquiry is around creating and promoting a culture of growth mind set using strategies from Dweck‘s research (1988).
• My perceptions towards  how collaborative approach can be an effective tool still depends upon where in the school the collaborative approach is used. If it is among members of same faculty team this approach does work. However it is very much shaped still from the people high up in the hierarchy, collaboration at individual level becomes effective only once you have strong emotional connection with a team member. This could be within the faculty supporting each other on similar need of topic resources or with colleagues in other faculties, with whom you open up to share strategies that when you implemented worked in your class. However in many times these later half of collaboration is carried out more among members on same students that they teach in different areas. 

Issues with collaborative approach:

:

• Serious collaboration--teachers engaging in the rigorous mutual examination of teaching and learning--is rare, and where it exists, it is fragile. When teachers work as colleagues, it produces greater coherence and integration to the daily work of teaching. Further it equips individual teachers, groups of teachers and school for steady improvement.
• Two fundamental conditions appear to be crucial to joint action among teachers: interdependence and opportunity. The key practices of colleagues are most likely to make a difference where they are an integral, inescapable part of day-to-day work. Joint work will beneficial if teachers find themselves truly interdependent with one another to manage and reap the rewards of teaching. When teachers' success and satisfaction can be achieved independently, the motivation to collaborate is weakened.

Current issues in my community of practice

• The school overall does value providing a caring and supportive environment for well being of all staff. There is a strong emphasis on staff and student voice in decision making. But as the education is driving many schools across the country into competing with one another, unfortunately the main criteria used for this is based around grades and performance. Which shifts the teaching practice towards assessment driven. A lot of teacher time is being used around number crunching and regular reflective written records needs to be maintained by staff, which is quite time consuming. 
• My perception on collaborative team work on shared vision and values is still at transient stage in high schools, as it is still working under the directions of  senior leaders rather than self-driven among colleagues. I do believe at organisational level collaborative approach needs to be developed with opportunities for reflective professional dialogues and professional training. Schools do need to invest more time and effort in this area as suggested by Hongboontri and Keawkhong(2014).
• Lots of new initiative but these initiatives needs to be integrated well. As suggested by research conducted by Timms et.al (2007) teachers generally regard their workload as increasing every year.

Comment from a teacher was: “What tires me out (after 30 years of teaching) is the ever increasing tasks that are placed into my “teachers’ work wheelbarrow”. Never does anyone take tasks off, so the barrow gets harder to push, more time consumed, and often on tasks not directly related to face-to-face, classroom contact with children”.

Addressing challenges in my community of practice

• Time being a major factor affecting the teaching profession, bearing this in mind schools try and listen to teachers voice by providing professional learning time to complete these kind of documentation. However this is done at cost of adding yet another job into your already full basket. 

• School is trying currently to link a new initiative to a previous one. Either by providing professional learning time or by spending some of the ToD time around collaboratively working on new initiatives.

•  Regular professional learning time is provided to staff on Friday mornings period one as this not only provide opportunities for collaboration but also gives us time to plan our teacher inquiry around our teaching practice. This additional time help us to plan our inquiry, analyse inquiry and receive feedback from critical buddies. Plus it is also used in sharing strategies around classroom subject practices, literacy resources and also for collaborating on e-learning strategies.

Changes occurring in my profession and how these changes are addressed by my community of practice

• Effective school wide e-learning programme: e-learning mentoring teams has been set up school wide, staff from each faculty has a role in this team. Collectively school wide vision for e-learning initiative is developed annually. E-learning mentors work with their own faculties to communicate school wide policies to be implemented and to collaborate resources in this field. 
• Any necessary professional development to colleagues in e-learning is provided by the faculty mentors or by students digital councils (students assigned to each faculty are also encouraged to support staff in their professional development around use of ICT tools in classroom). Student mentors and peer support leaders are also used to help and train new students to use google docs and other ICT tools. 
• The list is endless..... however overall I must say school is moving towards as Stoll, 1998 suggests 

"An understanding of and respect for the different meanings and interpretations people bring to educational initiatives, and work to develop shared meanings underpinned by norms that will promote sustainable school improvement."

References:

1. Bell, L. M., & Aldridge, J. M. (2014). Student Voice, Teacher Action Research and Classroom Improvement. Springer.
2. Dweck, C. S., & Leggett, E. L. (1988). A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality. Psychological Review, 95, 256 – 273.
3. Haddad, W., & Jurich, S. (2002). ICT for education: Potential and potency.Technologies for education: Potential, parameters and prospects. UNESCO and Academy for Educational Development, 28-4
4. Hongboontri, C., & Keawkhong, N. (2014). School Culture: Teachers' Beliefs, Behaviors, and Instructional Practices. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 39(5), 66-88. Retrieved from http://ro.ecu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2332&context=ajte
5. Gerber, S. B. (1996). Extracurricular activities and academic achievement. Journal of Research & Development in Education.
6. Mega, C., Ronconi, L., & De Beni, R. (2014). What makes a good student? How emotions, self-regulated learning, and motivation contribute to academic achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 106(1), 121.
7. Roorda DL, Koomen HMY, Spilt, JL, and Oort FJ. 2011 The Influence of Affective Teacher–Student Relationships on Students’ School Engagement and Achievement. Review of Educational Research 81 (4): 493-529. - See more at: http://www.parentingscience.com/student-teacher-relationships.html#sthash.bZiocgEb.dpu
8. Stoll (1998). School Culture. School Improvement Network’s Bulletin 9. Institute of Education, University of London. Retrieved from http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Understanding-school-cultures/School-Culture
9. Timms, C., Graham, D., & Cottrell, D. (2007). “I just want to teach” Queensland independent school teachers and their workload. Journal of Educational Administration, 45(5), 569-586.