Week 19: Contribution of teacher inquiry topics to my communities of learning.

Undertaking Mind Lab studies is a journey that reminds, encourages and challenges me to be more proactive in a number of ways to consider, acknowledge and respect all those people who contribute to the learner’s education. For that reason, I have inquired into working with them in whatever way possible to support the learner’s life long learning.

This reflection is based on Jay and Johnson’s model to discuss two inquiry topics in relation to my Communities of Practice (CoP). Since the start of Mind Lab, I’d been wondering:

1)     How do I imbed digital leadership to support stakeholders - students, aiga, teacher and Samoan community to enhance Years 5, 6 & 7 bilingual students learning?

2)    How do I integrate gamification to support Years 5, 6 & 7 Bilingual students learning?

The stakeholders I am working with are culturally, linguistically, economically and psychologically diverse. As a leader, I should have searched for much better ways for us all to come together as a devoted group that focusses on the learners’ education, the core of our learning focused partnership. Emails, newsletters, face to face conversations and phone calls are means to inform them about the student’s learning – assessment, successes, sport, EOTC., 3 Way conferences, behavioural concerns and more. It was never a 100 % response as required due to communication break down. I suspected that parents/aiga didn’t get the newsletters or the correct message, resulting in less or no respond.

I respect parents who lack technology knowledge to access online communication and doubt if I can propose for the school to allow us (Samoan bilingual staff) to provide technology trainings to support them. It is to effectively communicate with the group, share and learn form each other to support the learner/s. Some parents are expert others who can help in this sense.

I trust the community of practice (CoP) notion according to Lave & Wenger (1991), for it is an exercise where members’ passion and expertise can be shared. They maybe willingly interact regularly to improve more (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002, p.4) on supporting the learners. At times, I really feel for the parents’ economical situations which disallow and shy them away from continuous participation and contribution to their children’s education. It’s frustrating as they fail to be there for their children since language draws a huge barrier disabling an effective communication among the stakeholders. I highly respect my community of practice for committing to their children’s learning through an informal and unofficial correspondence (Jurasaite-Harbison & Rex (2010). Nevertheless, students, parents, aiga and the Samoan community still cooperate to sustain their collaboration in supporting the learners’ education as revealed and clarified in the Knox (2009) video, via EDpuzzle. They correspond, interact, build and share experiences and knowledges to achieve the shared leaning goal/s of the group – “students’ educational achievement” as Cambridge, Kaplan, and Suter (2005) support.

I think if gamification in a more careful and relevant context is considered, it can greatly impact on my community of practice goal. As mentioned before, the devoted group of people who decide and mutually agree to take the risk, for the children’s learning to flourish; is my community of practice’s intention. However, they the members, should be firstly well equipped to be able to assist at any time possible. This is not the case with my stakeholders.

As a matter of fact, lots of bits and pieces are not in place. For instance, my community of practice are cooperative and respectful for they all trust me to produce some effective methodologies that can assist us all to accelerate the students’ life long learning. I have to open up and use the authentic opportunities made available through Mind Lab learning. Do not hesitate to take the risk for we all learn from mistakes.

References

Cambridge, D., Kaplan, S. & Suter, V. (2005). Community of practice design guide: A Step-by-Step Guide for Designing & Cultivating. Retrieved from https://net.educa use.edu/ir/library/pdf/NLI0531.pd...

Jay, J.K. and Johnson, K.L. (2002) Capturing complexity: a typology of reflective practice for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 73-85.

Jurasaite-Harbison, E., & Rex, L. (2010). School Cultures as Contexts for Informal Teacher Learning. Teaching and Teacher Education, 26(2), 267-277.

Knox, B.(2009, December 4). Cultivating Communities of Practice: Making Them Grow. [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtu be.com/watch?v=lhMPRZnRFkk

Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.