Our team heads to Auckland to present to our peers about our 3 year project at Ulearn 2018.
It is satisfying to reflect on our professional development and the ongoing impact of our work. Sharing the “The Nail Project" with a wider audience gives us a chance to reflect on our journey. Here we are! An innovative group of secondary school teachers engaging in peer-led professional development. Our project was opt-in and bottom-up and sought to understand how digital pedagogy, blended with face-to-face teaching, enhanced the development of key competencies for students. As participants we view our peer-led experience as an agentic way to improve teaching practice – dynamic, iterative, complex and collaborative.” Here is the brief that our attendees signed up to see! The Nail project: an innovative way for a group of secondary school teachers to engage in peer-led professional development. It was opt-in and bottom-up and sought to understand how digital pedagogy, blended with face-to-face teaching, enhanced the development of key competencies for students. The participants view their peer-led experience as an agentic way to improve teaching practice – dynamic, iterative, complex and collaborative. This action research project saw 10 teachers across two schools collaborate to investigate the effectiveness of blended learning in engaging their students with learning. The teachers used the Teaching as Inquiry Model to carry out 12 case studies over three years. Their inquiry was: Which e-learning techniques make learning both engaging and effective? When and where do we turn the devices on? There were three key findings: Finding 1: They found effective ways to build the conditions for personalising professional growth using a group format by being collaborative and iterative. Finding 2: Teachers’ research-based professional practice shifted when viewing learning through the lens of key competencies, rather than the lens of achievement objectives. Developing key competencies through a student-centered approach to learning was successful for learners. Finding 3: Facilitation that is planned, responsive and agentic creates the conditions for professionals to build their capacity to engage in research-based practices. The participants in this learning community were committed for three years. The ways these findings give teachers a different lens through which to view the use of technology in the classroom. A unit planner that supports this practice is in production. Year 3 of the Nail project has seen our focus change and shift with an 'a-ha!' moment in term 1, a shared case study in term 2 and the final analysis of our work together taking place in terms 3 and 4.
Evaluation Time! WHEN: Tuesday 14th November 9 am to 3pm WHERE: NCG MLE. Meet at Reception (to sign in and get directions to the MLE) WHY: To draw together our collective thinking by reflecting on the evidence we have collected both as individuals and as a group. Specifically - we have undertaken an inquiry into blended learning practices...so what have you learned? What have we learned? So we will spend the day together (but separately) reflecting about our learning using the evidence we have collected from our teaching as inquiry approach. We will have available to you the resources from our project to assist your critical reflections. We are nearly there! Nearly to the end of the term, nearly to the end of the NAIL project, nearly about to be famous, maybe.We have recently been approached by Claire Sinnema (University of Auckland) to take part in an evaluation of the TLIF project - she wants to interview us for a case study. We have agreed to this and are going to work with her in a synergistic way as she will assist us with the ‘taking action’ and ‘checking’ phase of our inquiry.
The dates have been set so lock these into your planners now please Thursday 19 October - group members available for 1:1 interview for approx. 40 minutes per person Friday 20 October - we want to have a group meeting with Claire in attendance. 1.45-3.30pm Tuesday 24 October - group members available for 1:1 interview for approx. 40 minutes per person BUT there is F-L-E-X in there
We will be back into the onenote notebook in the next few days to tidy it up from last weeks' meeting. Nathan and Duncan you were missed. We have reached the point in our project where all the participants have completed a case study.
Stocktake time. At today's meeting we are reflecting on whether we are meeting the objectives of our project. How is our process? Are we getting the outcomes we want? We are turning a corner into our final year. Tell us your thoughts and your questions. So our inquiry is off and running! The online meeting felt productive with lots of thoughtful comments from you. We really appreciated your participation over the 24 hour period. Summary of your responses to Question One: How could we collect our [teacher] experience and questions along the way? You liked the look of the survey. Its length and structure seem useful and manageable to help capture some of the teacher voice. We will now create a survey using these questions as they are so that we can compare our results to the national data collected by NZCER. We think that the final question in the survey (where each teacher gets to make their own comments) will be very useful place to record your teacher reflections. The comments from some of you about the need to include a question about dynamics of having a classroom full of students using devices is a good point and it is an important and rich question. We think that it will form part of the story taking place in your classroom and will be better understood as a part of each teachers' presentation of their experiences. We will now get this survey on the go and it will be ready for you to complete later this term. Summary of Question Two: How could we understand more about how students are engaging with the learning? You analysed these questions in detail and you had queries around two areas: 1) the format of the questions You wondered if these questions would actually work well in the practical setting of the classroom. We have tweaked questions 1-3 so that they are more useful to our inquiry and removed question 4. 2) the mode for collecting student voice You had a range of examples about how to collect student voice. We strongly suggest that this is a chance to try something new and engage with new methods for collecting student voice that gives our students an active voice. Surveys and exit tickets are easy for us to administer and for students to complete - but they do not give students a chance to go 'off-script' and tell us what they are thinking and feeling whereas focus groups do. The next step is for the four teachers who are piloting the methodology for our inquiry to get stuck in and have a go at trying something in their classroom. We have refined three questions with prompts to use in a student focus group and created a suggested methodology to try. These have been shared with you in a google doc. And then the next step which will actively involve us all will be : MEETING #3 on November 24th from 9-11 am. Location TBC Remember to put in for relief early. It is during the next meeting Gerd, Esther, Duncan and Danielle will share with us what they have learnt and together we will use the reflections to inform the next teachers' cycle of Teaching as Inquiry. Meeting outcomes:
1) All members of NAIL give some rich feedback and reflection that helps to refine the method 2) Two tools are developed that can be be used in a pilot by Gerd, Duncan, Esther and Danielle in a class within one unit of work during term 4 2015 Our top tips for making the most of this process are: Use the comments section of this blog entry to make your contributions. You can use a pseudonym to identify yourself in the 'author' tab Remember to make it clear which question (Q1 or Q2) that you are commenting on. Create a conversation by adding on/ responding to those that have already posted We look forward to seeing what your thoughts are. At the end of Thursday we will summarise your contributions and begin working with the four volunteers who will be trialling this in their class this term. Gaye and Sarah Question One: How could we collect our [teacher] experience and questions along the way? The following survey would allow us to collect data on our own [teacher] experience and learning. Click on the link below : SURVEY LINK has been sent to you via email ( this link is password protected and only available to members of NAIL) We want you to think about how the questions within the survey allow us to capture our opinions, thoughts, understandings throughout this process. Two tasks to do: 1) Please add your responses about specific questions within the google doc using the comments tool 2) Summarise your reflections and suggestions using the comments response button on this post. Question Two: How could we understand more about how students are engaging with the learning? We think it would be appropriate for this project to use focus groups/semi structured discussion groups to find out from the students participating in this project what they think about what is happening in their classroom. It will allow us to ask BIG and RICH questions that can capture the patterns and themes emerge. “We have the chance to collect teacher voice and question the assumption that we know what the student voice is….time to dig a little deeper….it should be about what the students think” "Students are the experts of their own experience” “We need to step away and construct questions that allow students to articulate their learning experience” Developing some good questions: Here are some questions that we think could be useful : PLEASE READ, REFLECT and then CONTRIBUTE in the blog entry that is below.
FOR EACH QUESTION THINK :
MEETING 1: NAIL @ WOW Intended outcomes:
WHEN: September 18th: 9am - 11am. WHERE: WOW Boardroom, Quarantine Road, Stoke. RESOURCES: Prior to our meeting you were provided with the following resources: WHAT: Rachel Bolstad is from NZCER and she has a great deal of experience in conducting surveys and interviews as part of her research. She is coming to work with us to help us to create a valid, reliable and ethical survey tool and teacher interview tool. Hello everyone, We hope you had the chance to play, rest and reflect over the holidays. We are looking forward to continuing our explorations together this term. Going into meeting 1 we were well aware we had set the group a pretty lofty agenda to get through in just a few hours and it sure felt good to make the most of th e time we had together. Our priority was to ensure you all left with a sense of direction, a readiness to move forward and sense of belonging to NAIL. With Rachel's guidance, we spent much of our meeting thinking and circling around various methodologies for collecting student and teacher voice for our project that were both purposeful and valuable. “Think about how as a group we will shape the process so that is meaningful.”
“Traps can be trying to ask too much...making for a very complex survey where you end up with data you don’t use.”
"Students are our collaborators in this inquiry…..we have the chance to collect teacher voice and question the assumption that we know what the student voice is….time to dig a little deeper….it should be about what the students think”
We said we would do some thinking and generate some good fodder for our next meeting by:
Check out what we have been up to in the NEXT blog entry. REMEMBER we are encouraging you to give some rich feedback and reflection to help refine them for use this term by Gerd, Esther, Duncan and Danielle. At this stage some of you might be thinking that you need resources on blended learning - we can help with that via the blog and through working together. Just let us know! MEETING 2 REMINDER
WHEN: October 15th: an ONLINE meeting Meeting outcome: Feedback given to those teachers who are undertaking case study (critique and suggestions for blended learning unit plan) Our FIRST meeting as a group was held on Tuesday 21 July. 4.00pm. Panama Cafe.
We met together to discuss the aims and objectives of the TLIF and OUR PROJECT FOCUS: " A teacher-led inquiry into the three E's: e-learning, engagement and effectiveness. The key questions being investigated: Which e-learning techniques make learning both engaging AND effective for students with limited previous e-learning experiences? When and where do we turn the devices on? Note to those who were not at the last meeting our focus and taken a shift. We asked you to consider if this is for you and let us know if you are in or out (we are funded for 2 /3 years? What's in it for you? This is a project where you collaborate and innovate. You have relief time provided to complete the work involved and here you get to access external expertise to help. What are you signing up to do? We will meet face to face twice a term within the school day. Per year, you will carry out an exploratory case study over one unit of work with one year 9 or year 10 class where you incorporate e-learning into your face-to-face teaching . You are aiming to add an element of e-learning to your teaching that is both engaging and effective for students who may not have had much experience with technology Your case study:
THINKING AHEAD: 1) recruit new members (we have funding for 10 teachers across two schools) 2) access to expertise and training as a group 3) get stuck in |
Authorsgaye.bloomfield@ Archives
October 2018
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