Week 25 Act on your Plan

This inquiry is in response to the community needs for depth of learning within student inquiry and more authentic contexts for students. This led to investigation into PBL and  I noted a gap in the research between providing guiding principles from Kokotsaki et al for teachers to implement effective PBL and digital integration and the actual scaffold for teachers to be effective. My hunch is that a planning framework which incorporates the research based guiding principles can gain depth, opportunities for higher order thinking, student agency and all the other benefits you can reap from PBL.

The action we have taken thus far was the community of Year 5/6 teachers coming together to create this planning framework . The planning framework is robust and rigorous achieving the goals we set out. The teachers received the challenge well and I feel had the right prior classroom experience and skills  to be able to work collaboratively on this. Out of 6 teachers, 5 of them particularly commented on the process as being very helpful and felt this would reduce workload during the term, they were eager to start use of the plan.  1 teacher continued to question the process, wondering if we were removing student choice by using a planning framework and I continue to be concerned as to the role of this teacher as a alienated follower and their effects on their co-teachers or the rest of the group.

What led to success and what did I learn from this? 

We planned in context, we brought all our resources together prior to planning and this allowed the teachers to be knowledgeable enough to plan. Both the team leaders were organised and onto it with enthusiastic which fed into the team getting on board. I approached the meeting with a visionary and pacesetting style to “form a highly motivated team and get results” (Goleman, 2000)  The choice of community was key, they were ready to be successful at this challenge. I looked for the team that had the most early adopters  that have shown a real expertise with digital fluency within the classroom working within the Redefinition stage of the SAMR model. For them PBL is the next step. Collaborative leaders foster growth in stakeholders and themselves (De Witt, 2016). I was prompted to reward early adopters by telling them they will be the experts and become peer educators (Robinson, 2009) to the rest of the school. It was also successful as I ensured the initial 4 stages of Kotter's 8 step process for leading change were built on, in this action we are enlisting a volunteer army, after building and forming a coalition.

What could I improve on for next time? 

Idea generation is difficult and creating a culture involves fostering those techniques and allowing mistakes J Doran . It is difficult as a facilitator when teachers offer suggestions that are not in line with your thinking to not respond or allow another response to take over. This does not create a culture of idea generation or collaboration. All ideas need to be included and then merits analysed by looking back into the research. Also when working on a collaborative document, many teachers stand back and allow a few to add the ideas discussed to the document. Maria Assunção Flores suggest the use of roles during meetings to encourage more collaboration and development of interpersonal skills. Culture that suggested owning your ideas and adding in should be developed. I would use these techniques in other stages of the spiral of inquiry - such as in the scanning phase to garner ideas and information from others. 

]