Defining My Community of Practice - Week 25

Activity 1:
My community of practice

I am part of four interrelated communities of practice that overlap and influence each other. They are part of the constellation of communities of practices at our school. They each have their own domain, community and practice as each takes care of a specific aspect of practice (Wenger, 2000). They are important social units of learning that contribute to the overall competence needed in order for our school to effectively operate.

I am part of:

• an innovative teaching team with two other teachers.
• the leadership team with two other team leaders and the principal.
• the maths and assessment team.
• the whole school teaching team.

The community of practice that I am involved with that has the strongest social learning system (Wenger, 2000) is the innovative teaching team as a result of our daily sustained interactions both public and private and our constant shared reflections.

Community

Our community is comprised of three teachers working collaboratively in the same space teaching eighty-two Year 5&6 students with a modern learning pedagogy but not a modern physical environment. We are constantly interacting and reflecting with each other throughout the day. As a result, we reflect for action - before lessons, in action - modifying and adjusting throughout the day and on action - after school (Grushka et al, 2005).  This has been very powerful in regards to nurturing our community (Noax, 2009). However, this sustained interaction says Wegner (2015) takes time which requires a huge commitment from each of us. The benefits have been that we are constantly reshaping and improving the design of our practice and our definition of competence (Wenger, 2000). As a result, we host many visiting teachers from other schools. This provides our community with feedback and rich connections with other like-minded communities who face the same issues as us.

Practice

Our biggest challenge defining our practice has been timetabling within a collaborative approach.  After three years of trial and error, research, discussions with similar communities from other schools who work collaboratively and through shared self reflecting we are getting closer to being able to offer what we feel is the best approach to cater for the diverse interests and needs of the children in our care that the current space we have allows. For the first time, we are not questioning and changing our approach to timetabling. Now our reflections on our practice are focused on how we best group our children for optimal learning with all the options that a collaborative approach allows.

Domain

We have found that Thousand et al’s (2006) four models of collaborative teaching (supportive, parallel, complementary, and team teaching) naturally occur in our domain often without consciously choosing an approach as two of us in the community have been mutually engaged now for three years and can interact productively by being open and able to constantly ask for help within the community. It has been challenging as we have had various other teachers who were only temporarily part of the community. It takes time to develop what Wenger (2000) calls dimensions of progress within the community. We are now developing this relationship with a third member.   

Another issue our community faces this year is significant roll growth with inadequate space resulting in impacting on our capacity to team teach and complement each other with the delivery of the curriculum. Wegner (2015) discusses that in a domain the community value their collective competence and learn from each other. It is gold when we can co-construct delivery and jointly rapidly reflect (Findlay, 2009) to modify aspects within the lesson.

This community of practice has the potential to grow to be highly competent in delivering a future-focused curriculum. My worry is sustainability as lack of resources and space make our approach to innovative teaching and learning very demanding.

References

Finlay, L. (2009). Reflecting on reflective practice. PBPL. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/files/opencetl/file…

Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: maximizing impact on learning. London: Routledge.

Knox, B.(2009, December 4). Cultivating Communities of Practice: Making Them Grow.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhMPRZnRFkk

Thousand, J. S., Villa, R. A., & Nevin, A. I. (2006). The many faces of collaborative planning and teaching. Theory into practice, 45(3), 239-248.

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

Wenger-Trayner, E. and Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015).  Introduction to communities of practice.  Abrief overview of the concept and its uses.  Retrieved from http://wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/

Practicing Teacher Criteria

12(iii). critically examine their own beliefs, including cultural beliefs, and how they impact on their professional practice and the achievement of ākonga

 5(i). actively contribute to the professional learning community