Who am I ?

Hi I am a secondary school science teacher who has recently moved from a large co-ed school to a smaller independent girls’ school and is figuring out how to make connections within my new community. I joined the postgraduate programme at Mind Lab when I was teaching at my previous school. I have learnt so much in such a short space of time and still have so many ideas that I want to try out in my classroom. This last assignment has come at an interesting time for me as it has enabled to me to reflect on the new environment and community that I find myself teaching in.

Communities of practice

Wegner defined a community of practice as: “groups of people who share a concern or a passion or about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interaction on an ongoing basis” (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002, p.4). The value of communities of practice concept is the ability to connect your own personal development to your professional identity as well as the strategy of your organisation (ie the strategic plan and goals of your school and its community).

Three Areas of Communities of Practice (Wegner et al., 2002):

1.       The shared Domain of interest. At my school the shared domain of interest is providing the best possible education for girls’ at the secondary school level with a focus on the ‘whole girl’, a holistic view that encompasses academic, sporting, cultural and social aspects of life. The school motto Whaia to te Rangi – Seek the Heavenly Things is a reminder that students’ spiritual wellbeing is equally important. The staff, students and community try to work together to ensure that all of the girls are happy, enriched, challenged and supported. As a science teacher my focus is on developing students’ curiosity about the world around them.

2.       The Community in which people interact and learn from each other. The school I work at is an independent school with boarders, international students and day girls. This means that the community spreads well beyond the physical boundaries of the school to relationships with families and friends in rural parts of New Zealand and overseas. This means that like Wagner’s analogue of a plant needing to be nurtured and cultivated to grow, these relationships need to be continually valued and supported. My school faces many of the challenges that Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, (2002) cite around geographical distribution: connectedness, cultural and communication differences. Some of these challenges are alleviated by a common interest in girls’ education and several initiatives such as: boarder weekends in, opportunities for parents of boarders and international students to meet all of the their child’s teachers at the end of each term, chapel services for families, dedicated ESOL classes and liaison teacher, opportunities for staff and student exchanges and hosting with ‘sister schools’ overseas. There are many different forms of communication home (facebook, twitter, Instagram, email, skype and the traditional school reports and news letters etc).

3.       The Practice - Members of the community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources. For example, experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems. I am part of the science faculty and we have fortnightly meetings to reflect on learning programmes, adjust schemes and discuss new initiatives. We try to distribute opportunities for professional development across our team so that we can share our experiences and expertise and resources. ICE time and staff PD sessions allow for cross-curricular connections and development in areas that are relevant for all of the staff and the students that we teach, for example the well-being programme. My external communities of practice are the Mind Lab Postgrad programme which I am thoroughly enjoying particularly because we are encouraged to apply the concepts and ideas that we learn in the classroom. I started this course with little pedagogical knowledge and feel that I am much more able to make choices about my teaching practice that are supported by current research and an understanding of ‘best practice’. The other main community of practice is my Teaching as Inquiry cluster which is a group secondary school science teachers who support each other to under-take an inquiry into their teaching practice with a focus on priority learners. The premise for this group is that any teaching strategy used will “work differently in different contexts for different students” and that “effective pedagogy requires that teachers inquire into the impact of their teaching on their students.” (Ministry Education, 2007, p.35).

References

Ministry of Education. (2007) The New Zealand Curriculum. Wellington. Learning media.

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

Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.