Week 30 Activity 6 Using social online networks

Week 30 Activity 6: Using social online networks in teaching and professional development
Create a blog post where you critically discuss the use of social media in YOUR teaching and professional development.
Following these steps might help
Think about your own practice. Some of you may already be an active social media user either in personal or professional purpose while others may prefer to be more precautious towards the potential exposure the social network tools can entail.
Either way, using these questions to guide your thoughts:
How much have you utilised the social media in your teaching practice? In what way?
I have used social media at times in my teaching practice. I have not used it extensively although I have used G-Suite, Moodle and other ICT/e-learning platforms to deliver content to my English classes. In the past I have been coordinator of a classroom which had available one-to-one iPads for students. I did use Twitter and a Facebook page to connect students with their learning as well as connecting with each other. I was aware that my Year 9 class were using some social networking sites to connect with each other. I was keen to harness this experience so that students could engage in conversations about their work and what they had found out when researching a topic. The Innovating Pedagogy (2016) site suggests that social media, “can offer a range of learning opportunities, to access expert advice,encounter challenges, defend opinions and amend ideas in the face of criticism” I certainly had these ideas as goals for our digital class and hoped that by using these tools we could be a model for other teachers who taught their subject in this class.
One way in which I used social media was through the Twitter platform. We used it for film study and I encouraged students to tweet each other about aspects of the film we were studying.

I imagined that students would embrace this platform enthusiastically. The reality was that students of this age and demographic needed to be taught the skills of online interaction when it came to school study. A number had experience of social networking but it was of the cryptic and sometimes abusive kind, therefore, we had to introduce into our cyber safety course how students should interact with each other in a social networking environment. The establishing safeguards clip from Netsafe points out that it is important that teachers establish a clear purpose for introducing social networking into a classroom. Once that is done then to ensure everyone, students and teacher, are clear about the aim of why social networking has been introduced into the lesson.
One area that I did have some success with, and whether this could be in the realms of social media, was the use of Google apps with teachers in my learning area. We began to use the Google docs for our meeting agenda and minutes. We shared resources, used shared folders and I started to make use of the Google Calendar and invited members of the department to meetings etc. However, this requires a strong commitment from the department to use these tools so that we all benefit from the technology. The use of G-Suite is also something that I encouraged and all teachers in the department are using this.
References
Melhuish, K.(2013). Online social networking and its impact on New Zealand educators’ professional learning. Master Thesis. The University of Waikato. Retrived on 05 May, 2015 from http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/han...
Seaman, J., & Tinti-Kane, H. (2013). Social media for teaching and learning. Babson Survey Research Group. Retrieved from http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/social-media-for-teaching-and-learning-2013-report.pdf
Sharples, M., de Roock , R., Ferguson, R., Gaved, M., Herodotou, C., Koh, E., Kukulska-Hulme, A., Looi,C-K, McAndrew, P., Rienties, B., Weller, M., Wong, L. H. (2016). Innovating Pedagogy 2016: Open University Innovation Report 5. Milton Keynes: The Open University. Retrieved from http://proxima.iet.open.ac.uk/public/innovating_pedagogy_2016.pdf
Silius, K., Miilumäki, T.,Huhtamäki, J.,Tebest, T., Meriläinen, J., & Pohjolainen, S.(2010) ‘Students’ motivations for social media enhanced studying and learning.’ Knowledge Management & E-Learning: An International Journal, 2, (1). Retrieved on 7th May,2015 from http://www.kmel-journal.org/ojs/index.php/online-p.

Week 29 Activity 5 Legal and ethical contexts in my digital practice

The ethical dilemma that I have faced and I am sure other teachers have is the plagiarizing of content by a student who then passes the content off as their own work. This is especially problematic in English. There are dozens of sites which a student can access which have essays, short stories, poetry and nonfiction writing. Students are becoming more adept at covering their tracks for this kind of behaviour. If one googles say, “ethical and moral issues of student plagiarism” there is a plethora of sites one could go to research this issue. Here are a few of the titles on the first page of a Google Search -

The search returned a potential of 415,000 hits just on this one search. One particular paper called, “An Ethical Dilemma: Talking about Plagiarism and Academic Integrity in the Digital Age” by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas and Kelly Sassi (English Journal 100.6 (2011): 47–53) tells of an encounter with plagiarism which I am sure a number of teachers, especially English teachers, will recognize. It entails a fictional discussion with a student and a teacher who had been assessing the student’s writing and while at first was gratified that the prose and ideas were sophisticated and mature eventually became suspicious and did a Google search of the work only to find out it was almost word for word like a newspaper article of a few weeks back. The confrontation with the student was acrimonious and unsatisfactory.because the student could not see the issue because she had taken the offending passages from a blog post signed Anonymous.

The ethical issue is pretty plain - a student has taken verbatim someone else’s ideas and basically( especially these days) has done a copy and paste without acknowledging the source of the work and more to the point passing it off as their own. I have had to address these issues in my own practice and without doubt it is very difficult. At times a quick Google Search has shown up an IMDb site for film analysis or a newspaper opinion piece for a transactional piece of writing. This can be dealt with fairly smartly. The offending student is questioned about their writing methods, how they gathered any evidence, where from etc. Then the site material is presented and more often than not the student owns up, and in accordance with the school plagiarism policy, they are dealt with.

It’s more difficult is a Google Search does not turn up anything. An example is a student turns in a piece of writing but is not able to show any process, drafting or rough copies but says he just wrote what came into his head. My understanding is that evidence is needed before a student can be accused of plagiarism. Since no evidence can be found but the writing is too good for this particular student going on past writing there is a dilemma.

Our school policy is clear about the procedure. The following is from our assessment procedures handbook which is given to students:

“In the first instance the teacher is to discuss the rule breach with the student and make him/her aware of the process that will be followed. The teacher will then approach the HOLA/HOD who will discuss the rule breach and meet with the student concerned. The HOLA/HOD will then consult with the Principal’s Nominee who will consider the circumstances and, if necessary, gather any further information required. The PN will make a recommendation to the Principal whose decision is final.   At each level, the decision is communicated back to the student and the student’s parent or caregiver.

Process involved:-

Student   Teacher   HOLA/HOD      Principal’s Nominee      Principal

Possible breaches of the rules include plagiarism, impersonation, false declarations of authenticity, using notes or other forms of cheating in exam or test situations, communicating with others, disruption, dishonestly assisting or hindering others, and any other similar practices.

Where a student has been found to have breached the rules a ‘Not Achieved’ grade must be reported for the assessment of that standard.

The Principal's Nominee must allow the candidate an opportunity to make an explanation and will decide on any disciplinary action to be taken in accordance with the school's written procedures.

Candidates have the right to appeal any decision made by the school relating to any possible breaches of the rules under the school's documented appeal process.”

The above issue is an ethical issue and has become more commonplace in recent times.  The course of action to be implemented has to be worked out with guidance from the Ministry by each school.

References:

Sassi, E. E. T. and K. (2011). An Ethical Dilemma: Talking about Plagiarism and Academic Integrity in the Digital Age. English Journal 100.6 (2011): 47–53, 47–53(100.6).

Wendy Sutherland-Smith Monash University, A., & Sue Saltmarsh Charles Sturt University, A. (n.d.). Plagiarism, ethics and education: where to now?

Week 28: Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Responsiveness

Week 28: Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Responsiveness

The definitions do resonate with me. I have been teaching for over 40 years and it has troubled and concerned me that students from Maori and Pasifika backgrounds have not succeeded in the education system as well as students from other cultural backgrounds. I am particularly taken with Russell Bishop’s (2009) notion of cultural debt when it comes to specifically Maori education. That it is “an artifact of post-colonialism” strikes a chord with me because indigenous peoples around the world have not fared well in post-colonial societies. One just needs to look at the Australian and the United States experiences to see the results of colonial takeover.

I am especially taken by the knowledge that if we, as a society, do not address these disparities then we all bear the consequences through burdens on the health system as well as the prison and social welfare systems. Russell Bishop points out the cost of one individual in our prisons compared to the cost of educating that individual at school.

It is too easy to suggest that Maori and Pasifika students do not achieve because it is their own fault, that there is a deficiency of some kind, but Bishop contends, and I agree that these students “are as educable as any other group.” I have heard the term “agentic’ when it is applied to students but the term is a novel one for me when it is used in relation to teachers. The following quote from the Te Kotahitanga report nicely sums up this position ‘Non-agentic’ positions, as defined in the Te Kotahitanga report, are those in which teachers locate the problems of M!ori educational achievement with the students themselves, or their families or cultural background.  ‘Non-agentic’ positions are also termed ‘deficit theories’, in that they blame the victims and attribute these problems to ‘some deficiency at best, a pathology at worst’ (p.6). (Gutshlag, 2007) Agentic teachers, therefore, are those who do not subscribe to the above. Gutshlag goes onto to suggest this is too simplistic but for our purposes this definition will suffice.

The school I work at has over 50% of the student roll defining themselves as Maori, Pasifika and Asian. We are conscious that we lose too many Maori students too early and even though that is not the case for Pasifika students their pass rates with NCEA indicate issues with accessing the curriculum.  The school has adopted a culturally responsive education which does have its critics but many of us believe it makes sense because it does away with the notion of “deficit” thinking which has been a feature of our schools and society in the past when we have responsive pedagogy and introduced a culturally responsive programme of teaching and learning based on Russell Bishop’s work in Te Kotahitanga:

Culturally responsive and relational pedagogy. The programme comes out of Te Kotahitanga but we affirm that it is good for all students whatever their cultural background.

Effective teachers of Māori students create a culturally appropriate and responsive context for learning in their classroom.

In doing so they demonstrate the following understandings:

a) they positively and vehemently reject deficit theorizing as a means of explaining Māori students’ educational achievement levels (and professional development projects need to ensure that this happens); and

b) teachers know and understand how to bring about change in Māori students’  educational achievement and are professionally committed to doing so (and professional development projects need to ensure that this happens);

As already stated, the school has begun the process of developing understandings of a culturally responsive pedagogy by instituting workshops especially around Kia Eke Panuku which has as its goals, “open, safe, and challenging conversations about Māori succeeding as Māori and, “What culturally responsive pedagogy can look, sound, and feel like” (School document,2016). This process is ongoing and takes place as an inquiry:

The school ensures its vision, mission, and core values reflect cultural responsiveness and also ensures that students maintain the integrity of their own cultural values and identity by the keeping in mind the aims and goals as outlined below from our action plan:

• “This is all based on an ownership model. It’s about who connects and why. This is not a compliance model.
• This is based on the aspirations and targets of Ka Hikitia and our school Charter. It is about doing what we know is effective in, through, and about classroom pedagogy.  
• We aim to become a ‘community of success’ where data (achievement, retention etc) is trending up and ‘gaps’ are closing.
• We will learn to be ‘brokers’ to help others understand this kaupapa and what we can do in the classroom to become better teachers.
• The core business of this kaupapa and process is inclusion.
• It is about developing a depth of understanding about theory and practice that is culturally responsive and relational, i.e., is based on connecting with learners and sharing power.
• The literature that sits behind this is credible and homegrown (Berryman, Bishop, Ford).
• This process deprivatises classrooms and practice.
• We are not doing this only to ‘fix up our Māori kids’. We are doing this to become better teachers.

Practice 1 Week 27 The Broader Professional Context

Week 27 The Broader Professional Context

A trend which is most relevant to my practice came from my reading of “Global Trends:Alternative Worlds” and is situated in the section entitled “Game Changers”. This trend is concerned with the new technologies. This contemporary issue is linked to an issue from the ERO report (2012) which states that an important focus for New Zealand education is that of priority learners.  

ERO says that, “Priority learners are groups of students who have been identified as historically not experiencing success in the New Zealand schooling system.  These include many Māori and Pacific learners, those from low socio-economic backgrounds, and students with special educational needs.” (ERO, 2012)

I believe these two issues are linked because those learners that are priority learners and do often come from Maori and Pasifika backgrounds are often the ones who do not have access to the new technologies of computers, laptops and a fast and efficient internet.

In essence, this equates to a digital divide. This interests me because teaching in a low decile school has highlighted these issues. The Global Trends document points out that in the next 15 or so years technology will be an important facet of the world economy. If our students cannot access technology, especially digital technologies they are in danger of remaining in a poverty trap which they will find very difficult to extricate themselves.

Both these issues are important to me because I teach English and I use G-Suite and other applications to deliver content. “Global Trends” warns readers that it is important educate citizens (students and teachers) of the dangers of how big data could be used to disadvantage society but it also sends out an encouraging message about harnessing data for the benefit of society. That means that more than ever our priority learners will need the skills and the digital literacy to negotiate their way through these issues.

The talk given by Sir Ken Robinson, “Changing Education Paradigms”, explores these issues in an oblique way. His thesis is that schools are based on the 18th and 19th centuries models of industrialisation and that model no longer fits the current paradigm. He contends that a lot of students are bored at school because they do not perceive the current curriculum is relevant for their purposes. This model is now outmoded and to continue with it is to do a great disservice to our young people. This is even more the case for priority learners for whom the intellectual model of education which has driven much of the last century’s education does not work.

It is important therefore that we as educators challenge the current model and put our energies into not only our priority learners but also those who do not feel connected to their learning.

References

Education Review Office. (2012). Evaluation at a Glance: Priority Learners in New Zealand Schools. Retrieved 18 May 2016, from http://www.ero.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/Evaluation-at-a-Glance-Priority-Learners-in-New-Zealand-Schools-August-2012.pdf

KPMG International. (2014). Future state 2030: the global megatrends shaping governments”. KPMG International Cooperative: USA. Retrieved from http://www.kpmg.com/Global/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/future-state-government/Documents/future-state-2030-v3.pdf

National Intelligence Council. (2012). Global trends: Alternative Worlds. National Intelligence Council: US. Retrieved from https://globaltrends2030.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/global-trends-2030-november2012.pdf

OECD. (2016). Trends Shaping Education 2016, OECD Publishing, Paris. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/trends_edu-2016-en

Practice 1 Week 26 Activity 2: ‘ Issues in my professional context’ Socio-economic factors

The school that I work in draws from a low socioeconomic community. The school is placed as Decile 2 on the MInistry of Education website. The community we draw from are a mixture of European Pakeha, Maori, Pasifika, Filipino and other ethnicities. The percentage breakdown is as follows:

School roll	703
Gender composition	Boys 391; Girls 312
Ethnic composition	NZ European/Pākehā Māori Asian Pacific Other ethnicities	47% 27% 13%  9%  4%

The above data is from the ERO report from August 2015 and some of the figures above have changed. Our ELL Department has assessed our students and 13% either spend some time in the department or an ELL teacher works alongside students in the classroom.

The above data suggests that our school draws from a diverse community. The characteristics of the community are that it is inner city, a lot of rental properties, a large number of people transitioning, most parents in factory and service industries which means minimum income for many and a number of parents under employed. Many of the Pasifika and Filipino parents have minimal English and rely on their children to assist with communication in English.

The American Association of Psychology (2016)’s Education and Socioeconomic Status indicates that children from this kind of community will have challenges at school.

“Research indicates that children from low-SES households and communities develop academic skills more slowly compared to children from higher SES groups (Morgan, Farkas, Hillemeier, & Maczuga, 2009)”.

I could not help but be struck by the findings about SES households in a number of studies but especially in the one above which suggests the following about the school community I teach in-:

• Children’s reading and writing are compromised because of lack of books in the homes
• Children are not read to as much as in more affluent homes
• Children often lack the requisite equipment such as laptops, calculators etc
• There is a real digital divide in the community - most Pasifika homes do not have access to internet and/or digital devices
• There are many challenging behaviours which are evident in classroom and playground environments

The school has been through challenging times - we have had three principals in as many years. There has been a drop in roll and a subsequent capna of staff. Since 2011 there has been an 85% staff turnover.

On the face of it, this would appear to be a grim environment to work in. However, with a new principal and the following vision:

We are fully committed to developing a Curriculum that has students at the heart of it (Student-Centred) and is authentic, stepped and pathwayed- and the delivery of which is fundamentally underpinned by culturally responsive and relational pedagogy.

We have also adopted the phrase “agentic learners” to describe the kind of student-learner we wish to foster at the school.

The school culture, even though, there have been leadership changes and high staff turnover with a corresponding  drop in role, has always maintained an ethos that we are educating to break the poverty and deprivation cycle. We reason that if we can get students to at least Year 12 their future looks more secure than if they had dropped out of school before the age of 16.

As has already been mentioned the issues arising from the socio-economic status of the school are clearly outlined above. In this respect our school is no different than many other schools of a similar nature. However, there is always a willingness on behalf of staff not to give up on our students. With our new principal this has led to some real soul searching within the staff as to how we can overcome the results of economic deprivation which is the lot of many in our community. The school has been listed for a rebuild and this has given staff and management the opportunity to look at ways in which we can attract students who bypass our gate to go to other schools. We realise that a lot of this is perception so as part of the rebuild there are groups from the school going out into the community to appraise them of the new plans.

Stoll (1998) refers to schools on a continuum of sinking through to moving. Not so long ago we were at the sinking end of the continuum but it is heartening to realise that we are now moving. The staff are now  “working together to respond to changing context”. (Stoll, 1998).

Gargiulo (2014) outlines the following strategies his school introduced to assist with improving student engagement:

1. Providing lunches and breakfasts.
2. Student Achievement Conferences
3. Positive Behaviour For Learning
4. Trades Academies
5. Focus literacy programsmes
6. Foundation for youth development mentoring programs

For a number of years even before the roll drop and subsequent downward school progresson we had introduced at one time or another all of the above. If I was to critique these initiatives I would critique them in terms of how they were introduced. Some of the programmes were introduced with little or no buy in from the staff. For example, Student Achievement Conferences. We can all agree I am sure that empowering students to take an active part in parent-staff conferences is a sound educational move but if it is done too quickly and without proper preparation parents and students will deem them pointless. We have had to go back to square one with a number of these programmes because although we are convinced about the worth of them we realise groundwork is essential.

References

APA. (2016). Education and Socioeconomic Status. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/education.aspx

Gargiulo, S. (2014). Principal sabbatical report. Retrieved from http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Leadership-development/Professional-information/Principals-sabbatical-reports/Report-archives-for-2007-2014/Secondary-award-recipients-2014/Gargiulo-Salvatore

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

Practice 1: Community of Practice

Practice 1: “My community of practice”

After reading the Class Notes, create a blogpost where you critically define your practice with reference to Wenger’s (2000) concept of community of practice.

Our Community of Practice

Up to the end of last year I was the Head of English at a low decile inner city secondary school. The department had, because of a drop in roll numbers over five years, reduced from up to ten colleagues down to four in my last year. Wenger suggests that “communities of practice depend on internal leadership” (p231) and this became more evident to me the longer I was in a leadership role. My colleagues felt under pressure because although we had fewer students we still had the operational, everyday issues that any secondary school department has. This was a real challenge for me because I also saw part of my role was to not only keep faith in the direction the school was going but also to encourage and guide our team in that direction. Was I successful? To some extent I believe I was. I regularly asked for feedback from my colleagues around this issue as well as encouraging discussion about the school’s direction during meetings.

The school has over the years drawn from a growing Polynesian and Asian community. Many of the students on arriving at the school had low reading and writing levels. Wenger also suggests that “Communities of practice deepen their mutual commitment when they take responsibility for a learning agenda…….” The learning agenda we needed to take initial responsibility for was literacy. The mantra some years back from the Ministry and was made explicit in “The Literacy Learning Progressions report (2008) -”We feel this is a great idea and making literacy explicitly wider than the English area is to be welcomed.  We are all literacy teachers and we need to acknowledge and work with this.  We think this will make a lot of sense for the primary schools but are worried it could disappear into a box in the secondary schools.”

This seemed like a great learning project at first but teachers who taught other subjects did not feel comfortable with this description so we, in the English Department, found that we mentored and ran workshops for staff. Some of these workshops went well, others not so much. The ones that did were the ones in which the English Department shared practical ideas which could be put to immediate use in classrooms - these were word/vocabulary lists, words in context, sentence starters, vocabulary games etc. As much as I agree with the MInistry’s definition of who is a literacy teacher, the realities of which learning area delivers on this became obvious. However, I am still of the opinion that teachers, whatever subject they teach are literacy teachers, in their own field. On reflection, I would have encouraged all teachers to take up the challenge rather than have the department step in and do a lot of the work. Wenger talks about boundaries and suggests that it is important to have a balance between “core and boundary processes” which are also “highly linked to other parts of the system”, in this case, the rest of the school. Looking back and relating Wenger’s ideas to our practice I can see that there was a real opportunity to apply this thinking to the school’s literacy strategy.

Wenger writes about “shared repetoire” - resource sharing, teaching with IT, discussing events, producing and sharing best practices. These were practices that we implemented to varying degrees of success. I consider that the teaching with IT was a strength in the department but the sharing of resources was somethng we could do better.

Literacy Learning Progressions: Report on feedback on the draft document. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/literacy/43632

Wenger, E.(2000).Communities of practice and social learning systems.Organization,7(2), 225-246 (http://org.sagepub.com.libproxy.unitec.ac.nz/content/7/2/225).