Reflecting on Change in my Practice (Rolfe's Model)
WHAT (Identify one key change in your professional practice)
The
key change in my professional practice is regarding the way I use inquiry
and collaborative problem solving and professional learning to improve my
professional capability to impact on the learning and achievement for our
learners (Our Codes, Our Standards - Ministry of Education (2017)).
While I have shifted, in my professional practice, the biggest
shift has been in the use of reflective tools to critique progress during
stages of Inquiry. I have seen how this critical reflection affects practice and outcomes.
SO WHAT
STAGE 1-
(Problem Identification) Our 'hunch' (Timperley et. al. 2014), was that the way to get our learners to
articulate, was to provide speaking or writing frames. Literacy leaders identified
key graphic organisers to use to model
how to frame ones thinking and hence articulate the key literacy learning. However
at the mid-year data analysis meetings, the learners had still not been able to
reach their intended goals. Each class’s students were producing different
results. While we believed, we had a, shared understanding of the purpose of
graphic organisers and how we would scaffold this, it was clear that we did
not. We had fallen into the trap of
being in the drama too much, and not being able to step back and reflect.
STAGE 2:
(Observation & Analysis) We
began rebuilding the norms and providing forums for teachers to reflect on our
own practice, using reflective tools to support this reflection (i.e Jay &
Johnson’s Reflective Model or Rolfe’s Reflective Model). We compared literacy practice
to practice in Maths, where we were implementing ‘Developing Mathematical
Inquiry Communities’ with a problem solving approach. We delved more deeply
into elements of this teaching style. This analysis began to form more of a
picture, where the students did most of the discussing, problem solving, and
resolving of problems, and the framework sat beside this, not leading this
thinking. This ability to sit back, notice and use the reflective tools to dig
deeper (What, So What, Now What) or ‘how is this effecting the students?’,
rather than just describing the problem further, allowed us to observe trends
and
STAGE 3:
(Abstract Reconceptualization) We needed
to reconceptualise the way we designed our tasks for literacy, which required
us to rethink the planning for these areas. While we would still do this
collaboratively, it would require our literacy lead team to inquire further, using
key conversations from team meetings, and voice from learners about which
elements of the writing program. Again, the ability to use information from critical
reflection enabled us to identify new ways of doing things.
STAGE 4:
(Active Experimentation) We
identified Early Adopters (Rogers, 2010) who inquired further into practice
that they had researched. These teachers were part of the Mindlab Course, and
were supported to discuss their use of technology, and more importantly how
they planned for this with their students. Our leadership team inquired further
into ‘Flipped Learning’ and how this blended model could assist us to provide
an environment where our learners had more platforms to discuss, or just have
conversations about their learning. We believe that providing several
opportunities for teachers/leaders to lead, share and reflect on practice, whether individually or collaboratively, has provided
us with ‘rich’ discussions about our practice, and what our pedagogy should
look like to support learning in the 21st Century.
NOW
WHAT:
We
have seen the benefits of collaborative Inquiry, which is allowing us to become reflective of our practice and open to
suggestions to improve that practice. I have also identified my role in being
approachable, and ensuring that I am inviting feedback to be able to use
reflective tools in an inquiring manner, to constantly critically reflect on my
practice, leadership and engagement with learners.
We
understand the need for our whole school to be on the same 'waka' and that
while we have the majority of our staff engaging with this pedagogy, or in
Inquiry at this level, it is imperative that we build these sustainable,
reflective models into our practice and systems to ensure this high level of
reflection continues.
REFENCES:
Rogers, E. M. (2010). Diffusion of innovations. Simon and Schuster.
Timperley, H., Kaser, L., & Halbert, J. (2014). A framework for transforming learning in schools: Innovation and the spiral of inquiry (Vol. 234). Melbourne: Centre for Strategic Education.
