Activity 5: Professional Connections

Professional Connections

Figure 1

Departmental community

Figure 2

Secondary schools are a maze of connections evolving daily and prone to the problems of the hard ground upon which we sometimes scatter our seeds. Departmental connections are interesting place to start. These connections are ‘intra-disciplinary’, by that I mean we connect within our department under a broad umbrella of Technology, but with significantly different expertises in an area of the curriculum traditionally thought of as vocational. The developments of the NCEA has placed the subjects under the domain of Technology with responsibility of developing a design thinking philosophy. Within this domain, aspects of each specialism, connect with ITOs in each area e.g. Competenz for engineering, MITO for automotive, BCATS for construction and so on. Each of these ITOs holds specific responsibilities for developing the skills of individuals studying under these umbrellas and so they set the standard and moderate the outcomes for the trades. So, the teacher in the classroom is intensely impacted by the way in which each discipline defines the learning for each trade, and since learning a trade leads to different occupation teachers can become very isolated in the style of teaching they adopt to promulgate the learning from each discipline. The impact of this can be to focus entirely on the outcomes required for assessment as opposed to the individual student and their need to learn and understand, evident in the competition to acquire credits at all costs and the competition between teachers for a fair share of the time to be able to teach and assess each student. Yet the design thinking evident in developing products for people is inherent in trades. A building isn’t built if it is not required, food not made, an advert not bought. Trades exudes authentic learning in New Zealand, since trades are occupations much sought after and ministry goals to increase the number of students acquiring these skills is resulting in positive outcomes:

“A growing number of students are gaining their NCEA Level 2 through Vocational Pathways.

A recent analysis of 2014 results shows 40 per cent of students born in 1997 who achieved NCEA Level 2 achieved one or more Level 2 Vocational Pathways Awards.” Vocational Pathways update

The impact of this is an epistemological change in direction for our department thus our tamariki (children). There are many units and credits available to students in the domain of technology that require significant amounts of evidence generation, usually in the written form. There is a politically motivated need to develop literacy to ever increasing levels, but I posit there is a greater need in New Zealand for trades people who, whilst literate, do not need to decontextualise their experience of literacy, in fact by using Google apps for education tools, we can actually contextualise this aspect of their learning and integrate disciplines to create stories and projects to be proud of. Hence we have a community in tension being pulled in different directions. NCEA, via the NZC and ERO expect a particular style of teaching to address such issues as 21st CLD, literacy, numeracy. Whilst New Zealand needs skilled craftspeople who can build a building, wire and plumb a house, landscape and serve good quality safe healthy food. The dream sold all students is that success at school is measured by credit acquisition, subject endorsements and university entrance. The reality is that not all students will attend university and for us in the technology department, a community of vocational teachers, a better measure would be the number of students who leave school and are gainfully employed thereafter. A worthy step forward for our department would now be a measure of the number of our students who achieved a vocational pathway endorsement for their achievements in 2015.

Changes to our collective community practice are explored as an aspect of and impact from the eLearing network and since the Technology department is an area of the curriculum that is constructed of specialists from other disciplines we frequently use coaching techniques to support one another.

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eLearning network

Figure 3

The second area of professional connections impacts practice in a two way manner. As a technologist and proponent of setting student learning goals that relate to citizenship, decision-making, skills and inquiry skills where knowledge acquisition is derived from experiential, social and personal learning, Mathison and Freeman (1997). Google apps for education allows me to explore issues across the school and identify tools to assist in solving problems.

Figure 4

Yager, et al. (1981), Heath (1989), Hurd (1991), Fagan (1989) are proponents that technology related subject areas have a predisposition to learning in a particular style. GAFE empowers staff across the school to engage with technologies that enable students to create evidence of learning over and above the humdrum written form illustrated in Figure 4. Technologists are taught how to deal with tools and engineers problem solve to solve problems. Members of the ICT committee community are influenced by this practice in endorsing such initiatives as the innovative teacher award for our school. As a committee, we argue for a budget to support innovative teachers who want to develop new methods and pedagogy in the classroom. In this way, we can further focus on the GAFE suite and wider to encourage the development of individuals professional learning and developing a wider resource for the school making full use of the features in figure 5.

Michael Fullan (2013)  has argued that new pedagogies ought to be stratospheric addressing the issues of bored students and frustrated teachers. Using the influence of the ICT committee to impact the technology department community and address practices therein, is a way to encourage and coach staff to alter their practices. In this way, pedagogy can be challenged to incorporate devices that can be found day to day in trades occupations and build a database of a specific set of apps for each subject. SAMR, whilst lacking academic rigour, is a useful starting point to consider when blending such apps into activities. For our technology community there is an uneven distribution of expertise in this area. As HOD too much time has been dedicated to supporting other areas of the school whilst our community can benefit from these technologies also. Studying the diagram below we can easily see where the expertise lies.

This illustrates the lack of impact on other members of the department for wider use of apps e.g. Google Classroom and other areas. Google Docs is used by department members with students but that is the extent of the usage. BYOD is a problem with our school and our department. In a recent survey conducted with the students from the Automotive class, 100% returned a strongly agree to the statement: “Do you think the school should provide all devices for students to work on”. In fact this a bite the bullet moment.

“”One to one" is the key, not optional BYOD as this will only add to teacher workload as they double up on paper and digital approaches - teachers will also use this as a handy excuse to not evolve their approaches, and fair enough too if it's all a bit "here and there". Teachers are bloody busy, they deserve nothing less than one to one if they are going to learn and leverage new strategies, they need to be able to do so efficiently. Bite the bullet, just do it.” Amos (2016)

Hence, we have bought a set of tablets for each of the teachers. Most students bring a phone but it is not necessarily the latest micro iPhone 27 with edge technology and can find your car in a rain forest 12,000 miles away. Many of our students bring the latest hand me down from a family member complete with cracked screen. So, in our department, we want to research innovative teaching strategies, apps and websites for each vocational area to move from unconscious incompetence to at the very least conscious competence. The Mindlab has helped this HOD to do exactly that and now I am in a position to lead change in our technology community as a direct impact of the work done by the ICT committee.

A good starting point will be a challenge set to our departmental staff based on this infographic developed for the school.  Teachers will be asked to critically reflect on activities from 2015 that were problematic in some way and they will be asked to develop more engaging activities for students that make use of at least 5 of the apps mentioned herein. This may mean 5 different activities using 5 different apps. Outcomes will be interesting.

References

Amos, Clare. "Blue Sky High - Five Things Every Secondary School Should Implement...Now". Learning Leading Change 2016. Web. 6 Feb. 2016.

Fullan, M. (2013). The new pedagogy: Students and teachers as learning partners. Learning Landscapes, 6(2), 23-29.

Mathison, S., & Freeman, M. (1998). The Logic of Interdisciplinary Studies. Report Series 2.33.

New Zealand Immigration,. "Jobs In New Zealand For Skilled Migrants | Move To NZ". Newzealandnow.govt.nz. N.p., 2016. Web. 5 Feb. 2016.

The Education Gazette,. "Vocational Pathways Update". 2016. Web. 6 Feb. 2016.