Understanding the inquiring teacher: CoL teachers meeting #1

I was fortunate enough to meet with Fiona, our Manaiakalani facilitor who talked me through our first CoL meeting for 2019 that I had missed. Here are some of my notes:

We talked about the inquiring teacher and how there were 3 styles of teaching approaches.

In Dr Graeme Aitken's background paper "The inquiring teacher: Clarifying the concept ofteaching effectiveness" (2007) he discusses the 3 views of effective teaching:

• The 'style' view
• The 'outcomes' approach 
• The 'inquiry' approach

(My thoughts are that I can see both the 'style' view (ie that we think teachers effectiveness should be the focus) and the 'outcomes' approach (ie the data reflects the effectiveness of the teacher) currently working within our school system. The focus is on what the teacher does and whether kids get results).

The Inquiry model: “Since any teaching strategy works differently in different contexts for different students, effective pedagogy requires that teachers inquire into the impact of their teaching on their students.” (NZC, p.35).

There are two phases to the inquiry model: Inquiry 1 looks at knowing what is happening for the students in my classroom and inquiry 2 asks questions that explore teacher actions and that lead to student learning.

The cycle of inquiry establishes the process of inquiry one and two. It enhances the opportunity to learn for the teacher (learning about the impact of my own practice) and for the students (changed teacher practices aimed at increasing students engagement and success).

The approach to teaching effectiveness requires particular knowledge and skills and attitudes:

Knowledge and skills

• Pose questions that capture the main dimensions between teaching and learning
• Collect valid and reliable information
• Analyse data to identify patterns and issues (Aitken, 2007)

Attitudes

a. Advancing knowledge implies "a genuine willingness to re-search one's own teaching - to open it to ordered and intentional analysis and critique".

b. Ideas from all sources. Testing my beliefs, not just to reaffirm them.

c. Fallibility: No absolute truths, our hypothesis may fail but keep searching.

I need to have an understanding that our ideas and beliefs might be wrong but that's o.k. We are inquirying into the impact of our teaching on our students.

My Wonderings: What does IMPACT mean? What does it mean to different people?

All inquiry cycles are intended to:

• Be centred on a particular group of learners in your care in your context
• Seeing the words 'in your care' has triggered interesting thoughts.
• What does 'in your care' mean?

There are 8 attributes of an inquiring teacher: Efficacy, high expectations, curiosity, clarity, noticing, collegiality, criticality and resilience.

My thinkings out loud:
When I think about the challenges of student learning that I've come across, I have a few. One is when I ask the kids to argue why an issue is an issue, they research why other people think it's an issue. Dialogic conversation could lead to conceptual critical thinking leading to 'The Talanoa'. (The spoken word 'Brown Brother'). "We Pasifika people, are an oral people. We tell our stories through our voice, our music, our dance and yet you try and define us through reading and writing?" This is a persistent idea that gnaws away at me and I need to figure out how to word it better.

Back to understanding inquiry, when collecting data we need to look at:

1. Achievement (reading, writing, maths relative to national norms)
2. Rates of progress: Term 1 2018 to Term 4 2019.
3. Achievement and knowledge of achievement
4. Beliefs
5. Community and family voice
6. Systematic teacher observations of student engagement

Key takeouts:

• Don't try and think of solutions yet
• Think Globally
• Make the main thing, the MAIN THING.