Legal and ethical contexts in my digital practice

With such a changing world including changes in society, education, social roles, rights and responsibilities, global connectivity and ethnic diversity - ethical dilemmas are on the increase. For teachers - arriving at a decision that is respected by all stakeholders as being fair and just is difficult and we are required to go through a process for each incident or possible problem as 'one size does not always fit all'. Hall (2001) suggests asking this question "What I ought to do, all things considered?" when exploring ethical problems. It does make it difficult to provide clear guidelines for teachers with such an individual, case by case approach to issues. Our school has clear policies and procedures to guide most events and activities but they are fairly black and white and do not lend them self to the approach suggested by Hall (2001). 

A possible ethical dilemma linked to digital or online access... 

Digital platforms have publicised the work of students and the feedback they receive from teachers, peers and members of their whanau and wider community. This in itself is a possible ethical dilemma as it exposes the work of students who may or may not feel comfortable about having their work made public. Sometimes this could have a negative impact for students whose opinions and thoughts are different to the majority, or for students who are not able to produce the same quality of work as others and who previously would have had a more private channel between the teacher and themselves. As teachers we see collaboration as a healthy sharing and growth of many skills required to learn and work in the 21st century. These assignments have highlighted the possible ethical dilemmas that modern teaching practice could pose.

The Code Of Ethics for Certified Teachers guides our schools social media policies - some points in particular on our commitment to learners relate directly to this possible dilemma:

Teachers will strive to:

• cater for the varied learning needs of diverse learners,
• promote the physical, emotional, social, intellectual and spiritual wellbeing of learners,
• protect the confidentiality of information about learners obtained in the course of professional service, consistent with legal requirements.

While these points support digital and collaborative practice in eduction - especially as these practices encourage and cater for the sharing of diverse ideas - perhaps greater consideration could be given to a students thoughts about sharing their work on an online platform, receiving public feedback on their work and even consciously noticing whether technology has enhanced the quality of work and wellbeing for the child.

I chose to use the set of questions from Hall (2001) as a guide as I worked through this ethical issue.

• Which stakeholder should be given priority? Why?
• What restrictions are there to your actions?
• Which courses of action are possible?
• How should the course of action be implemented? 

Also this Code of Ethics diagram illustrates 4 important domains that need to be considered when addressing ethical issues in an attempt to make the decision fair and just with "all things considered" Hall (2001).

References:

Education Council. (n.d). The Education Council Code of Ethics for Certificated Teachers. Retrieved from https://educationcouncil.org.nz/content/code-of-et...

Hall, A. (2001). What ought I to do, all things considered? An approach to the exploration of ethical problems by teachers. Paper presented at the IIPE Conference, Brisbane. Retrieved from http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Developing-leaders/What-Ought-I-to-Do-All-Things-Considered-An-Approach-to-the-Exploration-of-Ethical-Problems-by-Teachers

Indigenous Knowledge & Cultural Responsiveness in my practice

My critical understanding of indigenous knowledge (IK) and cultural responsiveness (CR) ...

Warren (1991) talks about indigenous knowledge being local knowledge and the basis for local-level decision-making. It is knowledge that is passed down from generation to generation. Cultural responsiveness is both visible and invisible ie; it can be visible through music and art or invisible through values, beliefs and feelings (Teaching Tolerance, 2010). It is how we draw out and include culture in our classrooms that make us culturally responsive teachers. The best example that springs to mind is through the use of comprehension strategies in a guided reading group when we as teachers draw out prior knowledge and make connections to the child's world as we learn to read.

How has my school been informed by IK & CR pedagogy in 

• vision, mission and values?

Our School has recently involved the community in a revamp of our vision and values. The parents, teachers and students have been involved in selecting the words that best represent us as a school to define our beliefs of what is important. The opinions were sought via digital survey and via written submission. On reflection some groups may have preferred to orally share their ideas and a meeting could have been arranged to welcome this input from these groups in our community. 

• resources?

Our resources are both tangible in the form of books and digital devices - and also in the form of people as in teachers, teacher aides and other experts. This is an area I think we could do better to improve our practice as a culturally responsive school. Not only in the resources we purchase but by inviting families into our classrooms more often, asking representatives to help transition children from their previous schools, early childhood centres, visiting children in these centres and enabling students to bring their prior knowledge, values and beliefs along with them. 

The Pacifika evaluation tool:

Participation, Engagement, Achievement

The school involves parents and families to support students and the schools activities by:

• encouraging parent helpers in our classrooms and for out of classroom activities
• being involved in 3 way interviews - teacher, parents, child
• having home/school homework links
• regular communication via newsletter, face-book, text message
• inviting whanau 1 every term to be part of our celebration of learning in each classroom

The school ensures it's vision, mission and core values reflect cultural responsiveness by:

• involving the whole community in a review of the vision, mission and core values
• collating data collected and changing signage, in class teaching and learning focus to reflect new vision and values.

References:
Teaching Tolerance.( 2010, Jun 17).Introduction to Culturally Relevant Pedagogy.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGTVjJuRaZ8

Warren, D. M. (1991). Using indigenous knowledge in agricultural development (No. 127). World Bank.

Practice - Broader Professional Context

Focusing questions:

What are the Key issues facing the NZ education system and what should be done?

Three key issues facing the educations system as outlined by the Education Review Office (Evaluation at a Glance, 2012) are:

1. Shifting the focus to student-centred learning.
2. Knowledgeably implement a responsive and rich curriculum.
3. Using assessment information to know about, and plan for, students' learning.

The issue most relevant to my practice is 'Shifting the focus to student-centred learning'. As a leader in my school I am constantly involved with driving best teaching and learning practice and encouraging teachers to consider what's working and what's not. We have recently made big gains in seeing this happen effectively across the school through the introduction of 'TAPs' (Teacher Action Plans). Each teacher, each term, and for each of the three core subjects - reading, writing and maths, completes a 'teaching as inquiry' process by recording all children into below, at and above groups and drills down on data to determine what's important to each group and what's worth spending time on. Reflection at the end of each term is a big part of the success of this process. Teachers springboard their whole term from this one action plan - it keeps everyone focused on the students.

The global mega-trends: 

1. Individual Empowerment 
2. Diffusion of Power 
3. Demographic Patterns 
4. Food, Water, Energy Nexus

1 contemporary issue/trend in NZ/internationally that I find most relevant to my practice....

I find Demographic Patterns the mega-trend most relevant to my practice. Factors such as greater economic opportunities as people seek to raise their standard of living mean that migration rates are rising.  Other reasons such as climate-change driven migration will also increase in the future. Transport is more accessible meaning the world is becoming increasingly multi-cultural and schools are faced with rising diversity and the "need to prepare students for a global life." (p 30, OECD, 2016) Our school has had a recent surge in ESOL funded children who require specialist teaching and a supply of appropriate resources. School climate and culture changes are anticipated and this issue being a global mega-trend - is only just beginning! The future focus in our school will be to consider how we can better prepare for students from different cultures, how we utilise teacher and teacher aid resources, and what is our responsibility in sharing and teaching community values?

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

Socioeconomic factors, school culture and professional environments.

The socioeconomic status:

Although Windsor North School has a decile rating of 9 and is zoned it doesn't seem to marry with our school community as we have a large number of out of zone pupils, along with our in zone pupils seeming to come from a growing number of lower socioeconomic families. Our ESOL roll is increasing rapidly as with many other Southland schools and plans for a regional initiative to grow our population will see many more multi-cultural families arriving through SoRDS (Southland Regional Development Strategy) where up to 10.000 people are anticipated to transfer into Southland by 2025.

The organisational culture:

I like the reference to the climate of the school being 'how does it feel?' (Academy for SELinschools, 1998). As a walking DP I am frequently observing lessons across all levels of the school and find myself repeatedly commenting about the 'great feel' in our classrooms. The culture runs deeper though - it's how we do things and over the past 2 years we have recorded many of these things by generating a 'what does writing/maths/reading etc look like at WNS?' These delivery plans were generated by collecting and agreeing on what we value and what we put time and effort into. It is a great resource for new staff and is also valuable to revisit and self reflect upon from time to time. I am thinking that the MOE's introduction of CoLs (Communities of Learning) would need very careful consideration of the different cultures in different schools and the variance in what's important due to differing values and traditions embedded there.

Our school opened 140 years ago in 1877 and is steeped in tradition but has a recent infusion of modern practice with a new management team 4 years ago. The school has a leadership team that encourages reflective, collaborative, improving practice with a focus on developing 21st century skills in both teachers and students. Most staff and community members have embraced the changes as our school goes through the 're-culture' process (Stoll, 1998).

The professional environment:

On reflecting on the various readings this week (Stoll, 1998) I feel I could have placed more importance on understanding our school culture as a starting point in leading change towards school improvement. I see the important role of leadership in relation to school culture and appreciate that culture is "shaped by its history, context and the people in it". (Pg 9 Stoll, 1998).

However it is heartening to see that we embed every one of the 'Norms of Improving Schools'! - especially in that we have 'mutual respect', 'collegiality' and a big dose of 'celebration and humour'.

References:

Academy for SELinSchools. ( 2015, Apr 28).What is school culture and climate? [video file].Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-_NvhlcusQ

Stoll. (1998). School Culture. School Improvement Network’s Bulletin 9. Institute of Education, University of London.

Critically defining my community of practice...

After reading 'Reflective Practice' (Finlay, 2008) I am able to clearly identify with a community of practice where reflection is an 'active' learning process and a community where practice and theory meet.

Domain

This community of practice is the junior syndicate at my school. I lead the team of 5 teachers and 2 teacher aides and we work closely together in proximity. The reason for this community of practice is to align our experiences with the competencies each of us defines as being 'best practice' and to constantly reflect on the effectiveness of these practices.  The shared domain is the achievement and well-being of our students.

Community

We meet on both a regular formal and informal basis. We work as a team by sharing teaching and learning spaces and children. We help each other and share information using digital technology and keep each other well informed by sharing programmes and planning via google docs, google sites, email, as well as face to face encounters. 

Practice

We carry out our work in ways that have been agreed and with a shared repertoire of resources. We share experiences and stories and reflect and modify our practice based on these. This creates a lot of enthusiasm and energy. Success is on the 'energy' that the community generates (Wenger-Trayner, 2015).

All this generates a sense of belonging and 'connectiveness' in my role as syndicate leader.

The extent of my contribution involves setting the meeting agendas, modelling and fostering positive energy and vibes - with changes in staff the latter can be hard work!

Some thoughts as I reflect on the readings this week:

• Reflective practice is problem solving - a 21st century skills we are endeavouring to promote in our classrooms.
• Reflection 'in' action - is about using initiative and having the confidence to use it. 
• 'Critical' reflection can have connotations as being negative - I liken this to a 'critical friend' peer observation programme I once participated in as the name always seemed a bit daunting and negative but changed to a much more positive experience when we called it 'peer support' observations. 

We are all constantly striving for self-improvement and improvement as a community of practice - Reflecting on what this actually looks like has been helpful - especially when considering that it should not overwhelm actual practice.

Finlay, L. (2009). Reflecting on reflective practice. PBPL. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/files/opencetl/file…

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

Wenger, E., & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015). Communities of Practice a brief introduction.   Retrieved from http://wenger-trayner.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/07-Brief-introduction-to-communities-of-practice.pdf