Activity 3: Contribution of teacher inquiry topics to my communities of practice.

Play and or project based learning is the basis of my inquiry. 

How will play and project based learning foster positive dispositions towards lifelong learning?

How will play and project based learning build resilience, foster curiosity, and student agency?

Using innovative learning spaces effectively is my second inquiry topic.

How do I design a space that will have the greatest impact on students with the limited resources available?

A community of practice is sometimes defined by three distinct elements: joint enterprise, mutual engagement and shared repertoire (Wenger, 2000).

• Joint enterprise: is a shared domain which is the “collectively developed understanding of what the community is about”.
• Mutual engagement: the members engage through interactions within the community, building mutual trust in the relationships.
• Shared repertoire: is “the communal resources” that the community of practice produce (Wenger, 2000, p.229)

In order for a community of practice to thrive,the members have to ensure that they are collectively working on all three elements. 

• How do the two chosen topics relate to issues in your professional practice?

The issue is we have identified is the behaviour of the children especially the boys. Our response is that something has to change because if we don't do something different we will continue to get the same behaviour.

The other issue is that historically the age children were judged to be ready to learn was around 7 years of age. During the World Wars, women were needed to work in occupations left vacant by men who were in the services. Most other countries raised the age of school entry to 6 or 7 years after the war years when the servicemen returned home but New Zealand did not.

Wallis (2016) says 3 - 7 years is a unique stage of development in which the child has unique needs specific to this age group. These needs relate to the development of social emotional skills, which as well as developing resilience, play a crucial role in the subsequent development of cognitive skills such as literacy. 

 How could Wegner’s model help you to identify some of your meaningful Communities of Practice?

Wenger (2000) describes social learning systems as social competence and personal experience with three distinct modes of belonging through which we participate in social learning systems: engagement, imagination and alignment.

One of our key priorities for play based learning is to foster student agency through engagement and curiosity in our students. But students are not the CoP, the staff are. I have a group of teachers who are in my pod and I am going to be the pod leader. We are all very interested in the vision of play based learning and want to learn about it together. As a group we will be engaged, be using our imaginations to create meaningful learning opportunities and will be all travelling on the same whaka of discovery. As well as this I have a CoP with my study group where we discuss what we are doing every week as we work together as a Mindlab whanau. 

References:

Wallis, N. (2016) retrieved from https://www.eventfinda.co.nz/2016/nathan-mikaere-wallis-0-7-years-child-brain-development/te-anau

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

Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.