Legal and Ethical Contexts In My Digital Practice

Whakatauki

Te whakaaro nui, nga mahi mohio.

Conscious thought, conscious actions.

Expect It When You Least expect It!

When you work with students in a school you can forget that taking those students out of the school environment immediately exposes them to the vagaries and whims of a world that is not governed by shared policies and procedures. When students enrol at our school parents sign documentation that either permits or negates the use of their child’s digital image within school newsletters or on the school learning blogs. This documentation is regularly reviewed and adjusted accordingly. With the issues that can arise around misuse of images and also awareness around sensitive situations such as domestic violence or child custody cases we take the documentation seriously.

We have a number of ways in which we aim to educate students and whanau about some of the ‘pitfalls’ of the digital world. Parents and students sign a document called the Kawa of Care. The Kawa of Care identifies some of the ways in which digital tools are best managed for online safety and it is an agreement about responsible use of devices. We undertake ongoing programmes within the classroom on a cyber smart curriculum. Parents are also encouraged to attend evening sessions that allow them to discuss and explore issues relating to their child’s online safety.

A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of taking my class of Year 7 & 8s away on an outdoor education camp. We spent an evening at a hot pool complex and it came to my attention that there was a photographer roaming around the complex taking unsolicited photographs of my students. These were then to be available on line for order!

I spoke with my students about this and we discussed why this was of concern.  They readily saw the potential for misuse and some also felt that they had been pressured into posing for the photographs. I immediately located the photographer and asked that he remove any and all images of my students. He was a little taken aback so I explained to him our school policy. He agreed to do so but he was not apologetic nor did he seem to concede the invasion of privacy his photographs presented. I then followed this up with a face to face and a written letter to the management of the complex explaining our concerns. Their response was much more empathetic and responsible and it resulted in key changes to the way in which the private photographer was allowed to work within the complex.

It can be difficult to know exactly where to draw a line when you are ‘off site’.  I found this line easier to draw because I was aware of a recent case in which a South Island secondary school teacher had overlaid student images onto pornographic images of children he had found on the internet. The devastation of that manipulation of digital images highlighted for me the enormous responsibility we have to ensure the students in our care are not unwittingly caught up in the nefarious use of their personal image or data. This situation was all about ‘promoting the wellbeing of learners and protecting them from harm’ as stated in the Education Council (2017) Our Code Our Standards web booklet.

Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Responsiveness In My Practice

Whakatauki

Ki te mohio ki ahau, ko to mohio ki ahau.

To know me is to recognise me.

My Understanding of Indigenous Knowledge & Cultural Responsiveness

Indigenous knowledge is about developing meaningful educational contexts built on the prior knowledge, values, attitudes, aspirations and rich cultural contexts of our school community. Cultural responsiveness is about building meaningful, purposeful, explicit learning relationships with learners, underpinned by deep knowledge of the learner and the skills and experiences they bring to their learning, with the immutable expectation of success.

To know each student, to build professional and personal relationships with them and their family/whanau, can be seen by some teachers as an enormous expectation and sometimes as an imposition. In my experience it is a privilege. Our work with students and whanau must be built on a model of relational trust.  How else are we to have the difficult learning conversations without causing harm?  How else are we provide praise and positive feedback without causing embarrassment or seeming disingenuous?

Indigenous Knowledge & Cultural Responsiveness Within My School: What is working well?

As a school we have made a number of decisions that build upon both indigenous knowledge and cultural responsiveness within our school-wide activities and learning activities. We plan our key units using a Maori perspective as our ignition, building on prior knowledge from our student and whanau, and including members of the wider school community when possible. Increasingly we look to do this from the tangatawhenua perspective as local iwi gain clarity around their educational plan for this rohe. We also look to the fluctuating diversity within our student population and aim to  include other cultural perspectives, values and knowledge within units.

We expect teaching staff to incorporate cultural links into the classroom and to expand their own understanding of what it means to teach within Aotearoa / New Zealand in accordance with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi and the Education Council’s Practising Teacher Criteria (2017). Within  our school this means: all students and teachers learning and using their pepeha, incorporating te reo in oracy and literacy, providing opportunity for akonga to pursue further study to express themselves in their culture through the arts or language. It also looks like key community gatherings for whanau hui, hangi, noho marae, kai hapori, and kapa haka festival.  

How do we know that these approaches are working? Student and whanau voice is gathered at regular intervals and within this we hear the message that it is positive to be a learner in our school and in particular students feel proud to be a Māori learner in our kura. Our Māori staff feel supported and safe to contribute their own knowledge and to have ‘difficult’ conversations that may arise.  Increasingly links are developing with tangatawhenua with the recent construction of a local marae and this is an exciting development for all schools in our area.

Indigenous Knowledge & Cultural Responsiveness Within My School: What would benefit from improvement?

Assessment is an area that would benefit from review. We are held in bondage to the National Standards reporting systems and the traditional grade and grind paper reports. Whanau and ako are regularly examined under the miserly microscope of marks and “must do next”. There is an irony there when we have a section that we fill in for ‘how to help at home’ when actually we might benefit more from a conversation that enlightens us as to how home can help school.  

If we looked at conversations with family, whanau and ako as our ignition point in planning programmes of teaching and learning I wonder how different classroom delivery might manifest itself.

Contemporary Trends

Rethinking How School Works &

Technology is accelerating progress but causing discontinuities.

Whakatauki:

Ka huri te moana, ka noho tonu.

The ocean changes and yet stays the same.

Communication & Coding

The accelerating changes within technology; accessibility, application and implementation within the classroom, is the trend that strikes a chord with me. The recent release of the draft Digital Technologies document by the New Zealand Ministry of Education (2017), promoting computer coding as an integral element in the classroom, highlighted again the gasping rush of breath as our government recognises the inevitability of a digital future that is unfolding faster than we can keep pace.

To be or not to be left out of the loop? That is the imponderable question. Learning the language of algorithms and empowering our populace through an understanding of the principles and structures of computer coding should be a core curriculum subject. It is a common language within all countries and as such it may become a key in future communication, human to humans, between humans and machines, between artificial intelligences (A.I.) and humans, and inevitably machine to machine,  A.I. to A.I. We cannot know the future pace of change within technology as much of it will be developed by technologies themselves. There is every possibility that even if students learn coding, the coding of this decade could look like the Dead Sea scrolls within ten years. Languages may well be developed by A.I. as a way to communicate exclusively between themselves. I recognise a Rosetta Stone when I see binary code and despite the development of technologic languages that may evolve, even linguists need a common reference point.

Limitations of Technology

The limitations of technology within a classroom setting are those posed by infrastructure, classroom practice and the technology itself. Providing equitable access, (one of the issues identified in the 2016 OECD report, Trends Shaping Education)  to digital tools can be difficult however in my own school we are part a Manaiakalani Outreach programme.  Through this programme a number of schools have been able to establish an educational trust, Toki Pounamu, that underwrites the costs of digital tools within classrooms.  These laptops are bulk bought, have ongoing technical support, and are either paid for in full or paid off by whanau so that they are owned by the students.

The updated and upgraded infrastructure within my school setting has put paid to earlier dissonance around slow processing and interrupted connectivity.  An expectation that students will be equipped for their digital world has been supported by whanau and management.  This support has resulted in ongoing skill building workshops/toolkits for teachers. The practice in the classroom

The goal of advancing learning through a digital platform has been very successful to date. The amount of learning for teachers such as myself who come from a paper based teaching background to working within a digital environment has been akin to moving from the abacus to the calculator in the space of a day! Now I would not willingly choose to relinquish the affordances of a digital classroom. I have a lot more to learn and, as it ever was, there will be no arrival point in the learning but at least I have glimpsed the train stations as they hurtle past and I have moved a few students forward with me and waved many on as they leave me in their wake.

References:

MInistry of Education, (2017)Digital Technologies /Hangarau Matahako, Wellington, New Zealand

OECD (2016), Trends Shaping Education 2016, OECD Publishing, Paris.

Retrieved from Mindlab2017     http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/trends_edu-2016-en

Current issues in my professional context

Current issues in my professional context

Whakatauki:

He waka eke noa

A canoe which we are all in with no exception.

Socioeconomic status of my community

The school in which I primarily work has the Decile Rating 8.  In Aotearoa /New Zealand decile ratings are based on census data for households with school-aged children within each school’s catchment area. The information is formulated against income, occupations and education of parents, how many people per household and parents on an assisted income.

I am interested in the shift towards a risk index for funding rather than a decile rating as we currently rely on school organisations like the Parent Teacher Association (P.T.A.) to provide extra resourcing. The risk index currently being proposed by the government will provide for the student needs within the school. The decile rating is often not indicative of the real picture of needs within a school. It does not take into account families with ORS or high needs students, the level of household debt prevalent in many of our homes, or the shift in employment or income that can happen within the five year interval of a census.

School Community

Our school is under a Ministry imposed enrolment scheme. This means that when our roll reaches a particular number then only children who live within our school zone, or who have siblings currently enrolled at our school,  are permitted to enrol. This creates some difficult conversations at times as we are considered a desirable school to attend.

Our school community has a strong history of support for the school with a proactive P.T.A. and effective Board of Trustees. Parents readily involve themselves with extra curricular activities and class excursions. Every year we hold a Grandparents Day that is attended by extended whanau from beyond our immediate community. We hold a community hangi every second year that is attended by the majority of families and in the alternate year we have an evening picnic/ barbeque and games night. We want, and strive for, an engaged relationship with our community.

We have stable staffing and this provides a strength within the school. Our Principal is a proponent of lifelong learning and this applies to staff as well as to students.  An area in here that I think could be developed further is in encouraging and engaging our parents and whanau as lifelong learners.

Our student cohort is at the centre of everything we strive for. We believe that we are all in this together and that we are all striving for success. This is evident in the student voice collected throughout the year as part of our appraisal process. Students vocalise their learning goals, personal, cultural and academic. We also recognise that some of our students and their families have many material advantages that others do not. Part of our work is around building a sense of equity and a social conscience.

Organisational Culture

I believe that the norms described by Stoll (1998 ) are embedded within the culture of our school but we work constantly to maintain this. We hold high expectations of ourselves as teaching professionals and of our students. We seek to build relationships first and to educate the children in both academic areas and the key competencies. We have had two consecutive Education Review Office (E.R.O.) reports with a five year review cycle.

Each week we hold professional learning community meetings focussing on developing our understanding and application of curriculum, teaching as inquiry, and curriculum review. As a staff and school community we are always aiming for improvement. There is a consistent cycle of review in curriculum and of teaching and learning programmes.

We believe strongly in the biculturalism of Aotearoa/New Zealand and provide a range of opportunities for Māori students and all students to develop in te reo and tikanga Māori.  This includes all staff and students being expected to be able introduce themselves with their pepeha or mihimihi, language development classes (He Kakano) and kapa haka, the development of key units from a Māori perspective, and an expectation that students and staff will use and respond to basic classroom commands and greetings, and include basic te reo within their written work.

At no time do we ever feel that we have ‘arrived’. Every student brings with them an ever changing kaleidoscope of need, expectation, and next steps.

References:

School Deciles Sourced from http://www.education.govt.nz/school/running-a-school/resourcing/operational-funding/school-decile-ratings/

Stoll. (1998). School Culture. School Improvement Network’s Bulletin 9. Institute of Education, University of London. Retrieved from http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Understanding-school-cultures/School-Culture