Activity 3:
Contribution of teacher inquiry topics to my communities of practice.
This definition for Communities of Practice I think best sums up my experiences with it, “groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion 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). This definition for me made me realise that I am involved in a number of Communities of Practice and it helped me to identify the communities of practice that relate to my professional practice.The three main areas of A Communities of Practice are Relationships, domains and practice and I believe that all three of these are present in the community of practice that I am involved in professionally.The most notable professional community of practice was when we as a staff at my school decided to do a teaching enquiry and my personal focus for my inquiry was raising achievement in mathematics and how I can achieve this by encouraging engagement through the use of digital technologies. The school's overall goals with this inquiry for our students were to:
● engage the students in their learning
● that students ‘own’ their learning and own how they go about this
● experience success regardless of what level of ability they are at
● enable them the skills to solve problems across curricula
● facilitate and change student mindsets (attitudes) particularly amongst
the boys
● most importantly make it fun, as learning should be fun
My teaching enquiry aim was to explore digital
technologies for increasing engagement in mathematics using technology.
Two inquiry topics I might be interested in exploring are:
1. What are the best ways to integrate digital and collaborative learning into my current programs of teaching and learning
2. What is the best way to make coding fun, engaging and ultimately inspire students to really engage with it?
I have found that the biggest issue I have faced this year with my students was engagement in what they are doing, and their teacher dependency for everything, I have been working on making them less dependent on me and more in charge of their own learning and boosting their confidence but this is an ongoing battle. I think that if students are engaged in what they are doing, if they are really enjoying what is happening in the classroom then this will help in boosting their confidence and ability to work without constant assurances from me as the teacher, to take more responsibility for their learning-to enjoy it and their successes.
These issues I believe relate to my current community of practice and can be utilised and worked on using the model that we based our teacher inquiry on:
This model helped to formulate my previous enquiry and I believe that it may help me to formulate this new inquiry.
References:
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