Current issues in my professional context. Culture change within a whole school rebuild.

According to APA the socio-economic status of a family is the "combination of education , income and occupation". The socio-economic status of a community reflects the collective background of the families residing there.

The basic data that informs the socio-economic status of the community at my high school is that it is a decile 3H school.

A cursory glance of how the MOE website calculates decile ratings gives the following information:

_{Deciles are a measure of the socio-economic position of a school’s student community relative to other schools throughout the country.}

_{Socio-economic indicators for decile ratings}

Deciles are based on 5 socio-economic indicators for a community.

Percentage of households with income in the lowest 20% nationally.

Percentage of employed parents in the lowest skill level occupational groups.

Household crowding.

Percentage of parents with no educational qualifications.

Percentage of parents receiving income support benefits

retrived from http://www.education.govt.nz/school/running-a-school/resourcing/operational-funding/school-decile-ratings/

The data available from the MOE website gives other indicators such as the numbers of students above and below the national standards plus the number of maori/pasifika/asian students and their academic success. Significantly there is also a high number of families that choose to access their education at other schools rather than their community one. What is also not reflected in the data is that the school has a large transient  population with  35%  of its year 11 population not starting at Year 9. Hattie indicates that school mobility has the biggest negative effect after depression on learning outcomes for pupils. (Hattie, 2009)

The school is striving for a culture of "actively involved learners"with the emphasis on modern learning methodologies, cultural responsive/ relational teaching pedagogies and discursive practice. This is manifested by professional development  on He Kakano, Ka Hitikatea and Ka Eki Panua which has been a focus for some time and mainly focuses on Maori achievement.

Significantly, the community is also characterised by a significant influx of students with English as a second language. These are mainly families from a Filipino background who have come into the community due to the Christchurch rebuild. These students and their families have made a distinct change to the feel of the school.

The professional environment in the school highlights individualised learning pathways. This has seen a significant shift in students exiting the school before the end of Year 13, accessing positive outcomes either through employment or further education such as trades training. This has not always been the case, on arrival at the school  in 2007 student "success" was  only viewed as individuals staying on  to complete Year 13 with a University course place confirmed.

The issues that arise from the socio-economic status are that there is a large workforce requirement for local industry and services close to the school. These families often have low pay, take on more than one job, work long hours and have little time for family commitments. This is indicated by a poor turnout at parent evenings and school functions.

In terms of addressing the culture of the school we would be unique in the following sense.

The school is undergoing  a whole school rebuild process earmarked for completion in 2018.

The school has a New Board of Trustees appointed in June and a new Principal in May of this year.

The school has recently gained Year 7 and 8 cohorts from a closure of an intermediate school thatsome of the parent community did not want to close and a large number of the community that did not want their children to attend.

The impact of the professional environment is that I along with others feel that:

We are  collegial (working on this together), continuously improving, risk taking and supporting the move to the new school premises. This is the main focus at the present time.

However the rebuild process by its very nature has marginalised staff with no clear goals, management taking responsibility for success and no mutual respect or openness in the decision making behind the design.

The  teaching culture at the school is therefore based on  Balkanisation where teachers are neither isolated nor work as a whole school and smaller collaborative groups form across departments. Hargreaves (1994) .

Moving forward. The school is in a period of fluidity where staff and students are unclear, uncertain and  may be forced to work (rather than collaborate) together as they move into buildings designed with modern learning practice in mind.

What is essential is that the culture of the school is developed with the local community to ensure that the school is the prefered choice of families both local and further afield.. In essence the school has to clearly meet and exceed the needs of the local community. It is vital that the elected Board of Trustees communicates a clear vision to the community with the values being co-constructed  across all stakeholders. This would then determine the starting point to inform the school's structure, systems and physical environment, which in turn will impact on the way people relate and work together, ultimately determining how the culture of the school will be seen and perceived.

Ian R

Sept 2016 

References

 APA (2016) Education and socioeconomic status.retreived from http://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/education.aspx

Hattie J (2011) Visable Learning for Teachers, retrieved from,http://visible-learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effect-sizes-learning-achievement/

Hargreaves D. (1995). School culture, school effectiveness and  and school improvements. School effectiveness  and school improvements , 6 (1) pp 23-46.

MOE decile ratings retrevied from 

http://www.education.govt.nz/school/running-a-school/resourcing/operational-funding/school-decile-ratings/

Stoll L.(1998) School Culture retrieved from

 http://strongersmarter.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/stoll_article_set3_2000_pdf1.pdf

 

My community of Practice.

Communities of Practice:  "A community of practice is a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do, and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. This definition reflects the fundamentally social nature of human learning."

 http://wenger-trayner.com/resources/what-is-a-community-of-practice/

A Community of Practice connects groups of people who share your passion and are prepared to offer help or advice to make great things happen. They are willing participant ready to share in the success and anguish of developing their shared knowledge. They interact collaboratively for the mutual benefit of all group members, to share and grow their expertise in an area of competence. Bruce Knox in his video ‘Cultivating Communities of Practice: Making Them Grow’ defines a Community of Practice as “a group of people who share a passion for something they know how to do and who interact regularly to learn how to do it better.” Their purpose to “create, expand and exchange knowledge and to develop individual capabilities.”

My role as a classroom teacher at a high school leads me to interact with many members of staff, often on a social / perfunctory level and usually within the boundaries of the staff room or on the way to/ from our learning areas. Occasionally a staff meeting will bring us all together but more often than not we operate in departments/learning areas/year groups.I also foster strong relationships with employers and parents/whanau/caregivers to give my students opportunity to gain work experience and employment opportunities through our gateway course. However these cannot be seen as communities of practice as even though we often engage we rarely do things together 

My community of practice I identify with is a group of people who share a passion for the development of 3d printing in our high school.This group involves the participation of students, staff, parents / whanau and local employers in the community. We interact and participate to evolve the use of 3d printing and regularly" learn how to do things better." while looking to make improvements in the manufacture and performance of engineered products. Often, this is in the form of project based learning and problem solving. The role of the employers is to present actual problems in their own fields and offer a different experience and knowledge to the group.

Areas of Competence.

Joint enterprise:

What :Our community has a developed understanding of what we are about so that everyone can contribute. We regularly meet to ensure that everyone is held accountable and has a shared awareness of recent developments Students explore their ideas through prototyping and use feedback from peer and self review. I acknowledge the mana that the employers and parents have as critical friends, however it is interesting to observe the change in ako (when the teacher student roles are reversed) especially when new ideas are presented and breakthroughs occur. The competence I bring is that I ensure that everyone can contribute as my own knowledge and experience is limited. 

So what: Once the group started to take its own direction I felt I had less of a leadership role as the student/parent/employer relationship became embedded. I facilitate now rather than lead and as the community develops it is becoming more aware of its gaps in its knowledge

Now what: As the group is growing, splinter groups have appeared and are deciding on their own agenda/direction and look for new members to join their community. Other aspects to this are going outside of the local area and gaining further knowledge and competencies with national and global online communities to fill the gaps of knowledge that the communities are slowly recognising. Individuals need to be encouraged to join and need to have clear guidelines to keep learning at the center.

Mutality

What: the community has been operating for over 9 months and after a slow start the relationships are building. The local employers in particular were slow to reciprocate the ideas flowing through and a sense of pointlessness pervaded the community. Certain individuals did not feel they were able to contribute effectively as they considered their knowledge to be irrelevant.

So what; Students were encouraged to visit the employers workplace and see for themselves the opportunities for employment. Also employers were encouraged to give positive feedback on a regular basis despite on occasion very little progress. Trust was also established by giving certain ideas a go. Even if failure occurred the employer and student accepted that this was a positive learning experience.

Now what:The main objective is further establishment of trust within my community of practice so that I can let the student to student and student to employer relationship blossom with my overarching supervision is e. There are further gains in the student /parent area and the necessity for everyone to speak truthfully.

Repertoire

What: the concept of 3 d printing is not new, the potential for new applications and solving problems is growing. With the new perspectives of combining different properties in the plastic filament there are ample opportunities to reconsider assumptions and patterns. 

So what:The difficulty of the degree of self awareness within the community is that the progress made in this area is exponential. I rely on others to bring new knowledge viewpoint and experience to the community and have to activelty participate to understand its own state of development.

Now what; The ability to keep gaining momentum and embrace the hidden possibilities will be essential. Also the ability to reflect on current employment trends.

In critically defining my community of practice I acknowledge and need to engage with the wider range of communities that exist across a school wide. The mind lab course has provided me with insight experience and knowledge that can contribute to these communities, however it is sharing the passion that will determine membership of that community.

Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

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