Activity 6 - Contemporary Issues or Trends in New Zealand or Internationally

Create a blog where you identify and evaluate two contemporary issues or trends that are influencing or shaping NZ or international education which you find most relevant to your practice. Elaborate in your own words how you would address those issues or trends in your context within your learning community or professional context.

The first issue I believe is shaping New Zealand education is the evolution of education in our country. The New Zealand Curriculum is providing us with a mandate to apply ideas based on pedagogy that acknowledges the rapidly changing world in which children now live and learn. We are in a position to feel supported by the education system in viewing students as individuals who have different areas of expertise and potential to excel in a much wider range of areas of learning and function within society. We are charged with promoting thinking and through critical, reflective processes encouraging students to develop new, innovative ideas. We want children to recognise their own thinking and reflect on this within constructivist environments in our schools. Our classroom and schools can be forums where learning evolves from open-ended questions in context for our students today.

Information is easily to hand via digital resources and students are supported to make sense of information by making connections to their own prior knowledge and then big ideas related to real life concepts. Recall and memorisation of facts and figures to achieve a high score out of one hundred is no longer necessary. I believe this movement toward creating and connecting ideas has been under way for some time and consistently gaining impetus as our definition of knowledge in the schooling context has evolved to meet the requirements of our students in the 21^st Century. These changes are very exciting for an educator who has worked with the previous curriculum documents and their plethora of achievement objectives operating under a system of summative assessment and regurgitation of researched facts in key areas of learning.

This year I have incorporated rich mathematical activities (RMA’s) into the learning. Grootenboer (2009) investigated the use of RMA’s and highlighted how important they were, however he also agreed with Hayes, Mills, Christie, & Lingard (2006) when they stated that the teacher was still the most important factor in ensuring the activities were rich. Developing rich tasks in all areas of the curriculum to encourage skills necessary in today's workplace is essential. Collaboration, critical thinking and problem solving are essential competencies modern students must develop.

My most immediate next steps in development include reflecting on processes that promote development of some of the pedagogical ideas mentioned earlier so they become accepted as powerful and meaningful structures within our school. I am interested in discussing ideas around shared vision with staff and the school community in terms of what we believe is important for our students now and in the future.

The second area influencing education in New Zealand that interest me is the change in leadership. During the LDC component of this course I became more aware of my own leadership styles. I firmly believe leadership is enriched when it is shared. Spillane et. al. (2004) and Harris, (2007) all promote distributed leadership. Distributed leadership creates an environment in which the abilities of individuals are acknowledged and utilized.  It is likely to be an environment where staff feel valued and appreciated. I believe an effective leader should be able to not only share their skills but also be willing to learn from and be led by others. A leader who is able to share leadership roles is in a position to elicit the talents of individuals for the betterment of the school. Validating members of staff can only lead to a more intrinsically motivated team. I believe this approach to leadership can also enhance the interpersonal relationships between staff and will make it easier to work toward creative solutions to conflict should this occur.

Personally I am trying to distribute the leadership around my syndicate, giving all members of the syndicate leadership opportunities. For example, offering newly qualified teachers leading inquiry units, taking control of PE activities and working with students to develop both the students and their own passions.

References

Grootenboer, P. (2009). Rich mathematical tasks in the maths in the Kimberley (MITK) project. In R. Hunter, B. Bicknell, & T. Burgess (Eds.),Crossing divides. Proceedings of the 32nd annual conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia, Wellington, NZ (Vol. 2, pp. 696–699). Palmerston North, NZ: MERGA.

Harris, A. (2007) ‘Distributed leadership: conceptual confusion and empirical reticence’, International Journal of Leadership in Education, 10(3): 1–11.

Hayes, D., Mills, M., Christie, P., & Lingard, B. (2006). Teachers and schooling making a difference: Productive pedagogies, assessment and performance. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.

Spillane, J.P., Halverson, R. & Diamond, J.B. (2004) ‘Towards a theory of leadership practice: a distributed perspective’, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 36(1): 3–34