For a life-long learner, the journey is the reward.

This final Mind Lab post is about my 32-week learning journey through the Postgraduate Programme in Applied Teaching, how it's changed my practice and how this relates to the New Zealand Practising Teacher Criteria (Ministry of Education, n.d.).

I've always considered myself a life-long learner, but truth be told, there were cobwebs growing in my teaching and learning, and it was making me pretty darn uncomfortable and diminishing my passion for teaching. Initially, I created this blog to chart my learning journey through Mind Lab but, in hindsight, it was also about putting together all the ideas that had begun to formulate for many years about learning and teaching (Ako) that spurred me to join the course in the first place. 

After a decade of teaching, there were things I had noticed that made me question what I was doing and how I was doing it. I could see that some teaching practices were not reaching all learners as effectively as I wanted to but I didn't know how to change them, and in the busy environment of day-to-day teaching, there was little time or opportunity to do so. Having high expectations of my teaching, this was very frustrating.

One of the issues that can affect collaborative teacher efficacy is that we tend to confirm our known collective bias within education (the old 'echo chamber' effect) unless there are both a climate and culture of innovation that continuously challenge the status quo with quality research or new information. Change is uncomfortable, but without change, there is no innovation and stagnation ensues. The opportunity to step into Mind Lab opened the door to another dimension of PTC 12 'Use critical inquiry and problem-solving effectively in their professional practice,' that of collaboration both inside and outside of my immediate circle of influence and community of practice. 

Quality collaboration enables change to happen more rapidly and effectively because immediate feedback, reflection, and evaluation are ongoing. This year at our school, we've used a teaching as inquiry model within collaborative groups for our school appraisal process. Being pushed to explore collaborative practice, leadership, and digital innovation from the assignments at Mind Lab, helped me to create a much deeper teacher inquiry, and create more innovative and better informed collaborative projects. The fortuitous combination of challenge and opportunity augmented my ability to became a better collaborator. 

Being exposed to current research-based practice from the postgraduate course extended my understanding of PTC 1: 'Establish and maintain effective professional relationships focused on the learning and well-being of all ākonga.' As I began to collaborate more deeply and in a variety of connected ways, the boundaries of my communities of practice grew wider (Wagner, 2000) and in unexpected ways.  After avoiding social media for years, I joined Twitter chats and became exposed to innovative and very high caliber educators from NZ and beyond. Their expertise began to pinpoint areas I needed to address and offered resources for me to do so. Spurred on by their energy and experience, I began to innovate my teaching practice, deepen my reflections and grow PTC 8: 'Demonstrate in practice their knowledge and understanding of how ākonga learn,' and Criteria 4: 'Demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of professional personal practice.'

The other area that has benefited from research-informed practice is embedded in PTC 3: 'Demonstrate commitment to bicultural partnership in Aotearoa / New Zealand, ' and PTC 10: 'Work effectively within the bicultural context of Aotearoa NZ'. By reading more research and collaborating in discussions, I began to question my leadership role in Te Reo me ona Tikanga Māori and its effectiveness. 'Working effectively' took on an augmented meaning and PTC 5, 'Show leadership that contributes to effective teaching and learning' also became a focus for me. How truly effective was my leadership in this area? What could change and improve? This challenge led me to experiment with ways to innovate our professional development at school through digital tools and games, and encourage teachers at my school to use both the bicultural and digital components in teaching. 

I've also begun to see the distinction between culturally inclusive and culturally responsive teaching. One is the inclusion of cultural contexts for learning (learning about the language or culture, e.g. using days of the week in Māori), the other is actively learning through cultural contexts. Being a culturally responsive teacher is about immersing learners in cultural contexts where these are the vehicle for learning not just topics of learning. This is an example from my class this year. This emerging distinction is providing more ideas for my leadership role and will be an area of focus for me next year.

My immediate future professional development dream is to take all of this learning and continue to develop it but within a more collaborative teaching model such as team-teaching. It's been relatively easy to incorporate my ideas and my new discoveries with a single cell classroom. Can I now create a daily collaborative teaching and learning environment using all that I've discovered this year so that innovative practice and learning flourishes? How might I involve those within my immediate community of practice- my school- in the wonderful opportunities that 21st Century praxis has to offer?

The education landscape is being transformed not by just by new demands in our society, but most importantly because our learners need us to help them create a better future than what we have done so far.

Challenge accepted.

References:
Ministry of Education (nd). Practising teacher Criteria and e-learning . Retrieved from http://elearning.tki.org.nz/Professional-learning/

Wenger, E.(2000).Communities of practice and social learning systems. Organization, 7(2), 225-246