Step 1 (What): Identify one key change in your
professional practice
The key change I
have identified within my practice is from the Standards for the Teaching
Profession within Our Code, Our Standards (Ministry of
Education, nd) and this
is:
Teaching - Teach and respond to learners in
a knowledgeable and adaptive way to progress their learning at an appropriate
depth and pace.
A key
change in my professional practice that I have acquired from the Mindlab course
is the knowledge and skills to adapt my teaching practice toward the future
focussed learning that is underpinning the direction of the new educational
model, in particular personalised and self-regulated learning.
Within the code, the Teaching
Standard requires educators to ‘Teach in ways that enable learners to learn from one another, to
collaborate, to self-regulate and to develop agency over their learning (Ministry of Education, nd).
Mindlab
has given me the confidence to build on my practice. Previously, I had
identified a need to change the way students engage in their own learning, and
take more ownership and agency within this. I already had strengths in guiding
students to build a collaborative class community and to learn from one
another, and I wanted to teach the students in a responsive and adaptable way
to self-regulate.
Step 2 (Now what): Evaluate the identified
change
When I identified
the required change (that students needed to develop self-regulation skills), I
immediately ran into barriers in the educational setting I was working within.
Firstly, senior leadership did not want me to teach outside the current curriculum
model that was the status quo. As it was identified in Osterman & Kottkamp, (2015, p.71), the conflict occurred between my need to
cover the material and the desire to engage students in challenging and
personally relevant learning experiences.
Secondly, as I began to gain the knowledge and understanding
gained through the Mindlab course of how to implement and set up students for
success in self-regulation within the classroom, I ran into the next barrier; realising that there was a discrepancy
between what I would like
to do (my espoused theories) and aspects of my practice (Osterman & Kottkamp, 2015, p.71-72).
As I worked
through the four stages of the Cycle of Experiential Learning model (Osterman & Kottkamp, 2015), Problem
identification, Observation and analysis, Abstract reconceptualization and
Active experimentation, I became excited during Stage four, (Active
experimentation), as this was when I saw the success of implementing this
change taking place as I implemented the new change and strategies into my
classroom programme.
Step 3 (What next) Share
your next plan(s) regarding your future professional development or your future
practice.
The
confidence I have gained from making this change within my practice has
clarified and become a foundation skill set for my classroom programme. Although
this change was not
initially
encouraged by leadership at my school, the outcomes speak for themselves. A
coincidental benefit at the same time that I was implementing this change, was
the change in government and the ensuing change in assessment practice for
schools.
What this
means is that schools are no longer locked into a cycle of reporting National
Standards, and therefore are opening to change and new ways of teaching and
learning. This meant that personalised learning has become a new catch phrase
in my school, with professional development beginning to address this. I have
found that I am many steps ahead of my colleagues (with the exception of other
‘Mindlabbers’ on staff), due wholly to what I have learned and practiced along
the Mindlab journey, and can be a supportive agent for change in this
transition.
Assignments
and reflective practice has allowed me to continually feed back into my own Teaching
as Inquiry cycle, such as how to resource and use rubrics for feedback, develop
and refine formative feedback methods, include student voice as inclusive practice,
and develop self-regulated lifelong learners, engaged in their own style of
learning within a supportive and collaborative classroom community of learners.
REFERENCES:
Osterman, K. F., &
Kottkamp, R. B. (2015). Reflective practice for educators : professional
development to improve student learning.(2nd ed.) New York: Skyhorse
Publishing.
