Week 19

Contribution of Teacher Inquiry Topics to my Communities of Practice

I have chosen to critically reflect on Developing a Growth Mindset and Computational Thinking within the context of creating digital formats for reluctant writers.

I’m still undecided if this will be for my Inquiry but I’m interested to critically reflect and decide how these topic could be part of my contribution to my Communities of Practice. I will be involved in two Communities of Practice.  I am our lead teacher for our Kāhui Ako Community of Learning for Writing which Wenger (2002) explains as a place where we have a collective understanding of our role, where we do things together, talking and producing artefacts.

As part of our Digital Technology Team at our school we are exploring the new Digital Technology Curriculum which is where we coordinate perspectives, actions and realise higher goals (Wenger, 2002) We also look at it and plan how it can be incorporated into our curriculum in a Real Life practical way. The CoP’s that I am engaged with will support and link in with my two areas of critical reflection - Developing a Growth Mindset and Computational Thinking within the context of writing for reluctant boys. Because our CoL is focussing on writing and our digital team on applying the new curriculum the two ‘dovetail’ nicely together.

My team at CoL are very supportive of this new initiative and are interested in the outcome.  They recognise it as an opportunity for across school joint activities. As Wenger (2002) states that for this to be successful we must trust in each others ability to contribute.  They are interested to see how using digital technology and computational thinking can work within the context of writing and are especially interested in how this might be beneficial in motivating boys to engage in writing. My in school digital technology team are supportive to see how computational thinking activities can work within the framework of writing. I realise for it to be successful I need to be mindful of identifying the factors that would increase the chances of success (Zhao, et al. 2002).  My CoP have established a healthy infrastructure with knowledgeable and communicative people who will help me understand my classroom needs. (Zhao, et al. 2002).

Using the Jay and Johnson (2002) model of reflection has given me a chance to critically reflect on how these inquiries could develop.  Discussion with my CoP groups have posed some important things to consider. Things such as time constraints setting it up, access to resources, target groups and other teacher buy in.  I’ve also been encouraged to think about the level of expertise of the students and most importantly how would I assess it’s success. These were all considerations that I hadn’t really thought about. To me, this encapsulates the purpose of a CoP in that “the spirit of learning, knowledge and collaboration” is valued (Cambridge et al, 2005, pg 1).

References

Cambridge, D., Kaplan, S. & Suter, V. (2005). Community of practice design guide: A Step-by-Step Guide for Designing & Cultivating. Retrieved from https://net.educa use.edu/ir/library/pdf/NLI0531.pd…

Jay, J. K., & Johnson, K. L. (2002). Capturing complexity: A typology of reflective practice for teacher education. Teaching and teacher education, 18(1), 73-85.

Wenger, E.(2000). Communities of practice and social learning systems. Organization,7(2), 225-246.

Zhao, Y., Pugh, K., Sheldon, S. & Byers, J. (2002). Conditions for classroom technology innovations. Teachers College Record, 104(3), 482-515. Retrieved from https://www.rtsd.org/cms/lib/PA01000218/Centricity/Domain/96/Conditions%20for%20Classroom%20Tech.pdf