Inquiry Question #2: Inquiry Focus

Inquiry Question2 : From what you know already about your classes and your school’s profile and leadership goals for the year, share a possible inquiry focus.

My initial inquiry draft#2 is:

How does taking teachers on a journey of growth in Tapasā affect their pedagogical implementation?

Our school is made up of at least 68% Pasifika students.  We have strategies that we think we know and use around how to be culturally responsive to the needs of our students but there hasn't really been an inquiry to show how we can better adapt best evidence practice when engaging our Pasifika learners.

Part way through 2020, after reading a document containing student voice from our school, I decided that I wanted to turn that voice into action.  From this has came the Tamaki College Pasifika Initiative.  There are multiple levels of the initiative and one key aspect has been to implement the Tapasā into our teaching and learning.

I have been thinking about how to support those staff who are not Pasifika in implementing the Tapasā.  In saying that, there is an assumption that Pasifika teachers know how to teach Pasifika kids and although this may be true, relying on Pasifika staff to 'deal' with our Pasifika students.  So I'm am broadly thinking about who I would want to work with.

My inquiries in the past have focussed on a class and how I would implement interventions to accelerate achievement.  And these have usually been positive.  From my experience, I have noticed that as a Pasifika teacher myself, the students can relate to my teaching style and therefore respond positively.  I feel I am 'good' at teaching Pasifika students and therefore doing another inquiry whereby I teach the students I am inquirying into isn't condusive to the bigger picture.  We know that students engage with people who look like them and can connect with them.  My wonderings are: how can staff who don't look like me (ie. Pasifika) teach kids who look like me (ie. Pasifika).

I feel as a HOD and a passionate advocate of Pasifika education at Tamaki College, I would like to support non-Pasifika staff to connect with our Pasifika students better using the well documented and value added strategies shared in the Tapasā.  

My style of teacher support is to understand my teachers underlying assumptions and beliefs and to collaborate on a ‘framework’ that will allow them to look at their perceptions of our Pasifika students differently and build a repertoire of skills to support the learners in front of them.

Although our specific blogpost is supposed to frame our focus as a desired change in student learning and NOT a change in teaching, I am still working out how supporting our teachers will enhance and/or accelerate student learning and whether this needs to be a focus.

Initial Plan

My initial Planning will be to:

• Invite staff to join my inquiry
• Share with them the purpose of my inquiry and how it could support them
• Make a plan to regularly catch up with them
• Capture learnings through voice recordings and/or video observations.
• Pick out and align learnings from the Tapasā. 
• Document carefully our meetings
• Look at the different models that we could apply such as the growth mindset and the iceberg model.
• Identify trends and patterns from our meetings and share with my team.