Week 16 - LEADERSHIP - Applied Practice and Research

(*My thoughts and comments)

Critical Reflection

Since we are on the last week of this particular course, it is time to reflect. We've asked you to critically reflect on your leadership practice multiple times during this course, still, the concept might be foreign or vague to many. During this week's class well reflect how do we think criticism differs from critique? How could you be more critically constructive in your future reflections? And how much did you reflect-on-action and for-action in your assignments?

• “reflect-on-action” (ie past experience),
• “reflect-in-action” (ie as an incident happens), and
• “reflect-for-action” (ie actions you may wish to take in future experiences)

"Critical reflection is an extension of “critical thinking”. It asks us to think about our practice and ideas and then it challenges us to step-back and examine our thinking by asking probing questions. It asks us to not only delve into the past and look at the present but importantly it asks us to speculate about the future and act." 

Upcoming 16 Weeks In a Nutshell

Many of you have been wondering what the online part of the programme will look like. Here are the upcoming 16 weeks in a nutshell:

First 3 Weeks of PRACTICE Course

• First you need to set up your blog (if you haven’t already done so) or choose an alternative medium for your online reflections
• Then you write three blog posts (one per week) on specific topics
  • These will be explained in the portal
• After that, you will be moving on to the RESEARCH course and begin to work on your teacher inquiry project
• During the course, you’ll need to gather some evidence of your online participation

Next 8 weeks of RESEARCH course

• First you need to decide on an overall topic that you would like to investigate for your teacher inquiry,
• Then you research literature around that topic
  • Define the research question for the Literature review
  • And then you write your literature review
• After that, you can plan the rest of your teacher inquiry project
  • Using the literature from your literature review as evidence to support your inquiry plan
• During the course, you’ll need to gather some evidence of your online participation

Last 5 weeks of PRACTICE course

• First you need to get back to your weekly blog writing (but hopefully you never stopped!)
• Then you write five blog posts (one per week) on specific topics
  • As before, these will be explained in the portal
• After that, you’re done!
• During the course, you’ll need to gather some more evidence of your online participation

Applied Practice in Context & Research and Community Informed Practice

The course aims and learning outcomes for these two upcoming online courses are quite generic, since we share them with other applied practice programmes at Unitec. 

During the PRACTICE course, you get to critique and critically analyse your practice from a variety of viewpoints. The outcome of that process is published in short and precise blog posts. 

The intention of the RESEARCH course is to help you understand how to use the literature to critically engage with your chosen topic and ensure that your Teacher inquiry plan is based on good evidence and your own critical reflection.

“Good research is a thinking person’s game. It is a creative and strategic process that involves constantly assessing, reassessing, and making decisions about the best possible means for obtaining trustworthy information, carrying out appropriate analysis, and drawing credible conclusions.” (O’Leary, 2004).

Why Literature Reviews?

According to the Spiral of Inquiry model (2014) “We also want the scanning process to be informed by current research from the learning sciences.” 

In the Teaching as Inquiry model (MoE, 2009) “Teachers search their own and their colleagues’ past practice for strategies that may be more effective, and they also look in the research literature to see what has worked in other contexts.”  

Research Questions - Collaborate Ultra

During this week's session, we will be using Collaborate Ultra to share ideas about good research questions. You can find a guide for using Ultra for webinars at this link tinyurl.com/TML-BBCUltra. but for this session, the facilitator will guide you.

Inspiring Teacher Inquiry questions

Please share the inspiring and challenging Teacher Inquiry Question ideas with this Padlet tinyurl.com/teacherinquiryquestions 

Flipped Preparation Task

Flipped preparation link howshouldiblog.blogspot.co.nz

References

MoE. (2009). Teaching as inquiry. Retrieved from http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-stories/...

O’Leary, Z. (2004). The Essential Guide to Doing Research. London: SAGE Publications.

Timperley, H., Kaser, L. & Halbert, J. (2014). A framework for transforming learning in schools: Innovation and the spiral of inquiry. Centre for Strategic Education