My Space and My Place

My Inquiry Focus for CoL 2018, has been "Integrating VTaL Visible Teaching and Learning with cultural visibility and responsive practices to raise Māori student achievement in NCEA years 11-13" in alignment with Achievement Challenge 1. The focus group for my inquiry this year was students who I taught DigiTech NCEA Level 2.

In order to appreciate what is meant by cultural visibility and responsive practices, it is important to understand the intent of Culturally responsive and relational pedagogy as outlined in the following image sourced from the Kia Eke Panuku site.

Throughout the year, I integrated various pedagogical practices relating to Cultural responsiveness into my teaching practice. This included, but was not confined to, the following:

Whanaungatanga
Mahi Tahi
Manaakitanga
Wānanga

In a previous post, entitled Connecting VTaL to Culturally Responsive and Relational Pedagogy, I outlined ways in which VTaL Visible Teaching and Learning could be incorporated within teaching and learning, to enable Culturally Responsive and Relational Pedagogy to be applied.

In order to give context to what happened throughout the year, in terms of the intent of my teaching practices, and the learning outcomes for students, I will give a brief description of how VTaL could be used with the following aspects of Culturally Responsive practices. I will then outline what actually happened in terms of learning outcomes for students, and describe other variables that impacted on the teaching and learning process. After which, I will outline 'What happened for the Learners?', "What evidence do I have for this?', 'What did I do to make this happen?' and 'Wonderings about what next'.

Whanaungatanga - Google+ Communities

The following is a description of how VTaL Visible Teaching and Learning can be integrated with Whanaungatanga - Where relationships of care and connectedness are fundamental.

Collaborative Learning Opportunities are provided for students:

Class discussions about context ideas
Sharing completed tasks in Google+ as a tool to guide the learning of others
+1 and Commenting on tasks shared in Google+
Peer feedback in Evaluations

The following blog post describes how Whanaungatanga was applied with the focus group this year:

Whanaungatanga - VTaL in Senior DigiTech StartUp and Deconstructing the Year Ahead

Mahi Tahi, Manaakitanga - Google+ Communities and Workspaces

The following is a description of how VTaL Visible Teaching and Learning can be integrated with Mahi Tahi Kotahitanga - Where power is shared and learners have the right to self-determination. Empowerment for students:

Students can use Student Check Lists to track their own progress within this unit of work
Wananga between kaiako-tauira to select standards according to their interest in IT and DigiTech. The standards available in DigiTech can be located within the DigiTech site under each NCEA Level (Assessment Information, and, Overview and Calendar)

The following blog post describes how Mahi Tahi Kotahitanga was applied with the focus group this year:

Wānanga - Tracking Sheets

The following is a description of how VTaL Visible Teaching and Learning can be integrated with Wānanga - Decision-making and practice in response to relevant evidence. Kaiako-Tauira Wananga are provided for students:

Use Class Task Lists and Student Check Lists to have discussions around progress and support for developing learning
Wananga between kaiako-tauira to select standards according to their interest in IT and DigiTech. The standards available in DigiTech can be located within the DigiTech site under each NCEA Level (Assessment Information, and, Overview and Calendar)

The following blog post describes how Wānanga was applied with the focus group this year:

VTaL - Reflecting on School Goal 3 in Term 1 for NCEA Level 2 DigiTech Students

Understanding the Variables

In April this year, I delivered a presentation at the EdTech GAFE Conference in Auckland about how VTaL Visible Teaching and Learning Tracking Sheets were being used to Track Student Progress. As part of the presentation, I gave a description of the background of who the learners were. This is shown in the following slide from the presentation.

The description of the Multi-level Senior DigiTech Class outlines a range of variables that needed to be taken in consideration, when planning to teach and prepare learning activities for the students within the class.

What happened for the Learners?

Learners achieved when they had my full attention. When I was with other learners from Level 1 and/or Level 3 during a lesson, the Level 2 learners often didn't focus consistently on completing tasks. I found this quite odd that all of the Level 2 students who were consistently present in lessons, all functioned in this same way. This was not the case with Level 3 students. There was often a range of focus and work output shown from the Level 3 students. Some worked well to complete tasks, while others did not. However, all of the Level 2 students worked at a particularly slow pace, which was not conducive to keeping up with assessment deadlines. This meant that the Level 2 students did not achieve in all standards across the entire year, even after having achieved the credits for the first standard. Culturally responsive and relational pedagogy was not enough on it's own to enable student achievement to continue.

After having discussions with an external provider, who through another program at school, was familiar with this same set of learners, we looked at ways of identifying the way in which students learn by using Gregorc Learning Styles. For the students who were present, I was able to have them undertake exercises and determine the their learning styles:

Learner 1 - Abstract Random
Learner 2 - Abstract Sequential/Abstract Random
Learner 3 - Concrete Sequential/Abstract Random
Learner 4 - Abstract Random

As shown above, each of the learners demonstrated a close affinity to being Abstract Random in their preferred learning styles. The following is a description of the characteristics of learners who identify as Abstract Random:

"Abstract – Random (AR)
Abstract – Random (AR) learners prefer an unstructured environment and learn holistically. They show strong visual preferences for taking in information and toward instruction. They prefer physically pleasing, personalized, flexible environments; emotional sensitivity and strong relationships with others; and flexibility in time, activity and demands. They may need repeated coaching to focus their time and activity on learning tasks, vs. on interpersonal relationships in learning or in teamwork environments. Can’t say “no” even when they should, and need incubation time before responding! (They aren’t “slow,” they’re just pondering – and instructors need to recognize this publicly.) Abstract-Randoms ask “If?”. Nickname: People Person, Absent-Minded Professor, or Crazy Artist (musician, etc.). Key words: Imaginative/Perceptive/Social."

Unfortunately, these characteristics are not conducive to independent learning strategies, that I had implemented using VTaL, in order to address the broad range of learning needs of three NCEA levels of learners in my Senior DigiTech class.

What evidence do I have for this?

The types of evidence that I had acquired throughout the year to identify formative feedback of their progress was tracking sheets for the different standards. I also asked students to share back to me, what they had identified as their preferred learning style.

Tracking Student Progress

Learning Styles

What did I do to make this happen?

The following are a range of strategies and interventions that I applied throughout the year to enable students to achieve:

Tuakana-Teina Learning Approach - This worked well with the NCEA Level 2 Students in terms of enabling the students to engage in learning, with the support of NCEA Level 3 Students to guide them as to how to complete the work.
Wānanga - Conferencing with Students - This worked well to inform the NCEA Level 2 Students (as well as the other two NCEA Levels) of where they were at within the standard that they were focussing on at any given time throughout the year. However, the overall impact of the conferencing had two different effects, depending on whether students exhibited high levels of motivation and effort to achieve, or whether they didn't. Whilst I was able to conduct conferences with the NCEA Level 2 students regarding their current level of achievement, this did not motivate the students to work any faster, or to work independently to complete work.
Group Learning Tasks - After identifying the student's preferred learning styles, I stacked some of the learning activities to be group focussed. This worked particularly well. However, once students had to progress beyond the group activity to conduct individual analysis of their previous work, students defaulted back to their previous learning approach of slow work output.
Whānau Contact - Discussions with Parents and Caregivers - I made contact with parents and caregivers to discuss their child's progress or lack of progress within their projects. Irrespective of having constructive conversations with parents, this did not translate into an improved work output or faster work output by students.
Catchup Sessions - Wednesdays After School from 3pm - 5pm, Labour Day - I ran after school catchup sessions as well as a full day catch up session on Labour Day for students to complete their projects. This was to address the issue of timelines and time required for students to complete work. However, it was always the students from the other NCEA Levels, who exhibited a highly productive work ethic and high intrinsic motivation, who attended these sessions. The NCEA Level students would have attended 10-20% of the catchup sessions that I had offered.

Wonderings about what next

The blog posts and photographs relevant to Culturally Responsive teaching and learning interventions, indicates that these strategies were highly effective in engaging the learners to participate in the learning process. However, the evidence shows that the Culturally Responsive teaching and learning interventions, in isolation, were not effective in enabling this particular focus group of learners to achieve. Regardless of this, I will continue to incorporate Culturally Responsive teaching and learning interventions in future units of work, if this continues to engage learners.

Some wonderings that I have about what next, includes teaching students how to effectively self manage, and well as investigating strategies to improve intrinsic motivation and effort, so that students can still progress through tasks and achieve, without requiring my full and absolute attention during lessons if I am tending to other learners.

I intend exploring more ideas around workflow for students, that further breaks down task criteria. This would entail connecting learning outcomes, learning instructions, evidence expectations and task criteria within Workspaces. Hopefully this will address the issue of students waiting to be verbally told what they need to do next within a project in order to proceed forward with work. I have begun experimenting with this approach in both my Year 10 and NCEA Level 1 JumpStart units of work, and intend continuing to investigate whether this is more or less effective in units of work that I will deliver next year. These can be viewed in my DigiTech with Ms Anderson subject site as follows: