Discussions around my inquiry with an expert #1

Today I had the opportunity to sit down with Jannie Van Hees, our literacy expert to sound out my inquiry as I was feeling a little anxious about how to approach it.

Below is the dialogue that I had with Jannie.

Is it o.k that my inquiry is something I didn’t know about at the beginning and to say that?

• Novel/ Pioneer/ Original 
• No intervention
• It's o.k to say that I didn’t know what I was going to do until I did it.

Where can this my inquiry fit in the big picture with regards to the follow?

• Talanoa 
• Key competencies

How should I identify my group I want to do?  

Depends on the goals.  How pedantic should choosing the group be

• Choices:
• One that I have a relationship with
• One that I have no relationship with 
• Neutral

• Observations about the Water safety crew- individually (hows it going as a group) PMI
• Floundering away with the lack of knowledge
• They have a high level of compliance
• Not challenging - keep it confidential for now
• Hows it going as a group? What are the pluses? Minus?

Should I also look at how teachers collaborate to plan the course or should I just stick to the students?

You should be kind to yourself.   It's about managability’. You could look at collaboration as teachers and how they adjust.  Talk individually to the teachers.

In what ways can I collect data?

Video one focus group.

Look for the idea chain:

• One dominates idea chain
• Two quick to say oh yea thats good
• When someone grabs an idea and goes yes  but doesnt look at other possibilities
• Leave it with the group.
• Teach talanoa
• Video the group, let them look at the footage.  2 points that you are doing well and 2 not so well.
• I want to meet with the kids fortnightly
• Look at the footage and says what stands out?
• Format:  What are 2 stand outs going well.  What are questionable?

Put it into a shared space to see if the kids get a chance to review themselves.

You are learning to enhance your own learning capabilities through working with others who have a like mind and that more minds are better then mine.

Whats the trends across the group?  Whats the trends that I see?  What are the implications for you?

Then throw in the Talanoa.

Want the kids to experience learning in a collaborative way about something that matters to them.  

My intention is to see the journey and to discern from that new learning that will enable me to replicated.

If countries have the virus in Taiwan is low deaths (masks - bus full of tourists, compliment), Italy high deaths - high percentage of other people (slapping, hugging, kissing - don’t tell me what to do).  We think we are our own person but we are very cultured.

We came together as a group of teachers to do something different here because we needed to.  I asked myself ‘will this work for what we say is the needed journey for these kids if we want to make a significant change for the way we deliver learning 

Does project based collaborative ways of learning in a Talanoa environment, is this the persuasive difference maker for the learning journey’s of our kids.  

This would be typically how year 9’s do it.  This is how we’ve delivered learning in the past.  What were some of the issues arising.  This was the causality of why we needed.  But again, just because we are going to make a change, doesn’t mean it’s going to totally work. 

Genuine inquiry into a real situation of the unknown.