Activity 4: Your Professional Community.

Activity 4: Your professional community.

Community of Practice

“Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.” (Wenger & Trayner-Wenger, 2015).

Wenger (2015) says the community of practice is made up of three characteristics.

                        I.        The Domain

                       II.        The community

                      III.        The Practice

My community of practice in regard to Wenger’s concept of community of practice.

My community of practice is our maths department, which from time to time, meets to discuss the pedagogical issues for year 9 to year 13. Although, our group of maths practitioners are experienced members of the department, we still have issues within the department that needs to be resolved to facilitate better imparting of mathematical knowledge to the students. Our Head of Department and assistant Head of Department are always involved in sharing their knowledge and practice with us. I find that we in return share what and how we teach our classes. The members of my community of practice are always talking and reflecting to improve students’ learning outcomes.

This year we have become a BYOD school. Last year, when we were told of this, our assistant HOD asked us if we were interested in discussing how, we as a maths department, would approach BYOD for 2016. This issue became a huge problem solving activity for us. After discussing the pros and cons of which platform and which devices to use, we than embarked on learning about how to use ‘OneNote’ for teaching of maths.  There were members in the department, who were legitimate peripheral participants. The expert members such as my assistant HOD and I took charge to share and help other members of the department to teach the basics of OneNote software. However, during lunch and morning intervals it became a norm to talk and discuss about ‘OneNote.’ Although “OneNote” platform can be used by anybody, our focus was to adapt it for the use of teaching of mathematics and collaboration.

What are the current issues in your community of practice? How would you or your community of practice address them?

Last year we as department put lot of effort and energy in planning how the BYOD program would run. We were told by the senior administration that there would be an influx of students with Chromebooks as that is what they were using in the intermediate school.  My school is a decile 2 school with students coming from low socio economic status. Not everybody can afford to bring a device to school. Most classes have about three to five devices at most. This is a problem, because, the lessons have to be taught in more traditional way. To resolve this issue, differentiated teaching seems to be a likely solution. However, this creates more work for teachers. We now have to cater for those students with the devices and those without one.

Another way to solve this would be to carry out a project-based learning in class. So that only five devices (one per group) in the class will be required to do research. 

What are the challenges that you face in your practice? How would you or community of practice address this?

Some of the challenges that I am facing are:

·         Lack of motivation and engagement of students in maths class

·         Work incompletion by students

·         Students struggling to bring a device to school and unavailability of computer labs.

Students’ lack of motivation and engagement is an ongoing issue in schools and my school is no exception. I feel the way the content are delivered to the students, is not motivating and exciting enough to engross them in a given task.

To overcome the issue of motivation and engagement in class, I believe, I need to introduce group collaboration to problem solve in Mathematics. Moreover, research says that games and gamification have a huge potential in motivating and engaging students to learn content and complete set tasks that is built within the games. Students’ out of school digital gaming experience, can be utilised to motivate students with Game based Learning in schools (Fredrick, 2014). Fredrick also claims that gaming is a tool that brings about engagement and develops critical thinking for students. For students to be engaged and motivated there needs to be more play and discovery.  My plan is to provide at least two periods per week in the computer lab playing maths related games for my year 9s. Their progress will be tracked using assessment data using a spreadsheet. At present, I am struggling with the fact that students are not able to afford a device in class. Secondly, the computer labs are always, booked by teachers doing internal assessments and it’s difficult to get a booking. 

What is your specialist area of practice? How does your specialist area of practice relate to the broader professional context?

My specialist area is Mathematics. I have been a Mathematics teacher for the last 17 years. However, since last year, I have included another area of specialisation and that is teaching Physics to year 12’s and 13’s. Having graduated with double majors in both Mathematics and Physics, I have always taught Maths. In New Zealand, there is a huge demand for these two specialist subjects. I taught from year 9 maths to year 13 Calculus. Having experience in both these subjects, students from different classes flock to my room for help. Physics demands a good command of maths plus communication skills. Since I am, the only year 13 Physics teacher, I am, left to my own prerogative. Last year I went to Physics Teacher’s day. There, I made some friends who have been very helpful in providing me with some guidance and directed me to some excellent resources to teach year 13 Physics. Since I have no one to share my concerns, I reach out to the wider community of Physics teachers to seek help and clarification.

Fredrick, K. (2014). Play along: gaming in education. School Library Monthly, 31(2), 24–27. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com.libproxy.unitec.ac.nz/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA404037230&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=fulltext&issn=2166160X&p=AONE&sw=w

Wenger, E., & Trayner-Wenger, B. (2015). Communities of practice: a brief introduction. April 2015, 1–8. http://doi.org/10.2277/0521663636