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Week 32 – Blog 8 – Final Reflections
“Unless teachers develop the practice of critical reflection, they stay trapped in unexamined judgments, interpretations, assumptions, and expectations. Approaching teaching as a reflective practitioner involves fusing personal beliefs and values into a professional identity” (Larrivee, cited in Finley, 2008. P. 2).
This statement is true for professionals everywhere, including my role as an evaluation co-ordinator at the Royal NZ Police College. Every day I come to work and are challenged by “unexamined judgments, interpretations, assumptions, and expectations” I come across in my work, including my own, and then I have to decide what I am going to do about them. The purpose of my two person team is to inform continuous improvement across the college and anywhere training takes place across NZ Police.
Having spent the previous 35 years of my life out of NZ in various parts of the world travelling, working and studying, I knew that on my return to NZ in July, 2015 I would be in a different cultural orbit and I would need to proactively address my professional and cultural blindside. I did not know what I needed specifically but when I became aware of the Unitec Postgraduate Certificate in Applied Practice – Digital and Collaborative Learning, I knew this was the pathway to finding a way to inhabit a critically reflective space for my own professional practice within NZ Police.
One way I thought I could do this in a structured way was to complete the Unitec Postgraduate Certificate in Applied Practice – Collaborative and Digital Learning. Having spent between 2002 and 2013 analysing, designing, developing, implementing and evaluating eLearning and then 2013-2015 working strategically for the Community Policing Team for Hampshire Constabulary in the UK, on my return to NZ I found some things were similar and some things were very different to when I first left NZ in 1980.
The main thing I had missed was the emergence of bi-culturalism and the honouring of the Treaty of Waitangi. One of the reasons I had left NZ was my general discomfort over the lack of bi-culturalism and its implications, many of which were not discussed in the 1960’s and 70’s when I was growing up in rural NZ. Having two Maori foster brothers also highlighted the inequalities and underlying racism present but never addressed in everyday life. Both left our home before they had grown up – one to return to his alcoholic abusive parents (he was deaf in one ear from beatings when he was younger) and the other to a life of crime (I last saw him in court when I was a journalist and he was in the defence box for theft of a car).
Issues of power imbalances and the “historic links between culture, ethnicity, class and the education system” (Gutschlag, 2007. P. 9) are not abstract concepts for me. Having lived through my foster brothers experiences such as when we went into shops together as children and they were watched suspiciously and complained about and I and my sisters were not. At school finding their strengths was not a priority as much as maintaining the status quo. Although one foster brother went onto attend a Maori Boys college – Hato Petora, he started running away and finally left the college and our shared family home to find his mother and his own form of creative expression – stealing cars.
What have I learned from this course is that I do not have to leave the country to deal with our shared and divergent cultural history and expressions of it in the here and now, but rather through the assumptions of reflective practice which enables the “reflective conversation” where the instructor becomes a “communication specialist engaged in a discussion of personal meaning”, and where “responsibility for the success of the learning endeavour belongs no longer to either the learner or the facilitator but is shared by both” (Osterman and Kottkamp, 1993. P. 15).
What will I do differently as a result of my immersion in this course? I will apply the set of tools and skills I have been exposed to through the encounter with Mind Lab to the evaluation discourse, all the while applying myself and encouraging others to achieve “reflection-on-action (after-the-event thinking) and reflection-in-action (thinking while doing)” to further enhance what I bring to my professional role as an evaluation co-ordinator (Finley, 2008. P. 3).
Two graphics and a table I will be pinning up to my wall and consider daily in my professional practice (and sharing with others where appropriate) are figures 1 and 2 below highlighting the skills and questions that can be applied to facilitate self-reflection:
Source: (Finley, 2008. P. 5).
Source: (Finley, 2008. P. 8).
Although there is very little aligning with teaching theories and practice as taught on the Mind Lab course with what I do in my own professional practice, none the less, the exposure to the national and international discourse in areas focused on throughout the course have been invaluable to providing me with a sense of confidence and purpose moving forward in my own professional practice. Exposure to holistic models of reflective practice are applicable across any area and enable me as a practitioner to reflect in real time on any area that is new, emerging or challenging, or anything in between. An example that will be used by me moving forward is Jay and Johnson’s (2002) Typology of Reflection reproduced below:
Table 1.
Source: Jay and Johnson (2002. P. 77)
The confidence to critically reflect, explore and expand personally and professionally are the main gifts of the Mind Lab course which I – and hopefully my organisation, will benefit from for years to come.
References:
Finlay, L. (2008). Reflecting on reflective practice. The Open University. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/sites/www.open.ac.uk.opencetl/files/files/ecms/web-content/Finlay-(2008)-Reflecting-on-reflective-practice-PBPL-paper-52.pdf
Gutschlag, A.(2007). Some implications of the Te Kotahitanga model of teacher positioning. New Zealand Journal of Teachers’ Work, 4(1), 3-10. Retrieved from http://www.teacherswork.ac.nz/journal/volume4_issue1/gutschlag.pdf
Jay, K., & Johnson, K. (2002). Capturing complexity: a typology of reflective practice for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(3), 73-85. Retrieved from https://teachsource.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/jay-and-johnson-on-reflection.pdf
Osterman, K. & Kottkamp, R.(1993). Reflective Practice for Educators.California.Cornwin Press, Inc. Retrieved from http://www.itslifejimbutnotasweknowit.org.uk/files/RefPract/Osterman_Kottkamp_extract.pdf
Week 31 Blog 7. Crossing Boundaries
This blog discusses cross-disciplinary work I am involved with. As an evaluator within New Zealand Police, my role is primarily at the police college covering all five schools (or areas of organisational focus) as shown below in Figure 1.
I also occasionally carry out evaluations for district community projects, which uses an integrative approach. An example provided is the Youth Leadership Programme being run in Wellington District. This is a new programme for 2017 and needs evaluating to evidence it is fit for purpose. What being ‘fit for purpose’ is means different things to the different groups involved in the programme at different levels of influence and experiences as beneficiaries of the programme. Figure 2 highlights the main stakeholder groups and their different levels of collaboration and participation.
The circles highlighted in orange are intended beneficiaries of the programme so they need to be included as many of the intended outcomes will be potentially be captured by feedback from them.
The circles in blue are different police areas (or disciplines) contributing a mixture of resources, including human, equipment and/or financial.
The green area represents our external partners who are connected to the police through CART – a not-for-profit organisation working with and for hard-to-reach and difficult-to-deal-with communities.
In this instance the interdisciplinary relationship is principally between evaluation approaches of CART and of NZ Police in identifying what works well, what needs to be improved, and what lessons have been learnt that are shareable in other areas. This is in line with what Mathison & Freeman (1997. p.11) define as the purpose of an integrative approach, which “seeks to transcend the disciplines into a more interconnected view of the universe”, and “places students in a participatory role in the formation of integrated views”. In the instance of the course participants on the youth leadership programme it means they are active contributors to programme content choices and what is emphasized in goals where appropriate.
The differences in levels of integration and features in an interdisciplinary approach are outlined in Tables 1 and 2 below.
Source: Mathison & Freeman (1997. P. 10).
Source: Mathison & Freeman (1997. P. 13).
Working with CART to co-produce and achieve an evaluation approach which will work for both Police and CART in terms of outcomes has not been without its challenges, as what is defined as success for the police is not necessarily the same outcomes as those sought by CART. This has resulted in the need for additional meetings to highlight where we converge and where we differ on the overall purpose and measure outcomes that will define success. This has meant we need to understand the mission of each organisation and what we are trying to jointly achieve in working with young people in developing their leadership skills.
Jones (2009. P 1) notes the benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary practice, which may include “expanding student understanding and achievement between all disciplines or enhancing communication skills” as benefits and have disadvantages, “such as integration confusion and time-consuming curriculum preparation”. To overcome these challenges joint planning, decision-making, and goal-setting has focussed on where our commonalities are, which is achieving positive outcomes for young people at risk and developing them so they may support their peers. It is important in considering our joint approaches that the entire programme and not just the evaluation component is sustainable over time. Figure 3 provides a model for achieving successful interdisciplinary collaboration.
Figure 3: A conceptual model for successful interdisciplinary collaboration. Source: Mulligan and Kuban, (2015).
The different area are further explained in Table 3 below.
Table 3. Qualifiers for a three-faceted conceptual model for successful collaboration. Source: Mulligan and Kuban, (2015).
All of the qualifiers for successful collaboration between CART and Police have been negotiated and agreed over time, although they still need tot be formalised into an MOU to refer to moving forward through the different stages of the youth leadership programme. This is on the agenda for next steps moving forward.
References
Jones, C.(2009). Interdisciplinary approach – Advantages, disadvantages, and the future benefits of interdisciplinary studies. ESSAI7 (26), 76-81. Retrieved from http://dc.cod.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1121&context=essai
Mathison,S.. & Freeman, M.(1997). The logic of interdisciplinary studies. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, 1997. Retrieved from http://www.albany.edu/cela/reports/mathisonlogic12004.pdf
Mulligan, Laura MacLeod and Dr. Adam J. Kuban. (2015) A Conceptual Model for Interdisciplinary Collaboration. Retrieved from: http://acrlog.org/2015/05/14/a-conceptual-model-for-interdisciplinary-collaboration./
Week 30 – the use of social online networks in professional development
This week in my blog I am going to do a case study on the most successful use of social media for professional development I have ever seen in policing, which is my professional focus as an educator.
Background:
Melhuish (2013. P. 27) provides a useful definition of the difference between a community and a social network: “…in a community, one’s relationship and commitment to the group is to the fore… Whereas, in a social network site, the individual user is at the heart of the structure and everyone experiences the network through a profile and set of connections that revolve entirely around them”.
One way of using social online networks for professional development is to use the Internet of things as a way to crowdsource and access knowledge informally in ways previously unimaginable before the advent of the Internet and social media (Sharples et al, 2016).
Social Online Networks Case Study:
The case study this week is a focus on UK-based Inspector Michael Brown, who used social media and crowdsourcing to initially master his chosen area of professional development and then used the medium of tweeting under the name of @mentalhealthcop and blogs https://mentalhealthcop.wordpress.com/ to communicate nationally and internationally on all issues relating to the policing of mental health.
Now working as the Mental Health Co-ordinator at the UK College of Policing as a result of the effectiveness of his social online networks to educate police officers on mental health related issues, Michael communicates throughout the 43 Police Forces in England and Wales, with over 35,000 followers on Twitter and an award winning blog that has been running for over 5 years (Brown, 2017). He has also been awarded and OBE, is a winner of the Mind Charity’s Digital Media Award and the Royal College of Pyschiatrists Presidents Medal in 2015 for “a significant contribution to the lives of people with mental illness” for his work in this area (Brown, 2017).
Mainly focusing on the legality of using sections 135 and 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983 (MHA) and the Policing and Crime Act 2017, Michael is able to advise on what is and is not legal in plain English for frontline officers having to make difficult decisions. This is an extremely useful focus for professional development as it is very easy for officers to act illegally in this area because of the complexity of the acts and the need to manage disorder issues that cross over into managing public safety. Many officers have had their careers derailed by trying to act to ensure public safety is upheld, only to find their actions were illegal.
Similar to government funding cuts internationally, the area of managing mental health related issues has been a growing demand as mental health related disorder issues rise across the UK with police being the default safety net. One example of the complexity is that section 136 of the MHA applies only to the ability to arrest on public property and not within a private dwelling so trickery is often used to get the offender out into the street in order to arrest them to protect the person and/or the people in the private dwelling. Unfortunately this type of arrest could not be upheld in the eyes of the law if it was challenged. Again, unfortunately, the persons under arrest for this type of disorder would be unlikely to know their rights.
Hopefully the tweets captured and the links provided below explain why this is such a good example of the use of professional development for police officers
Michael Brown OBE @MentalHealthCop
Tweets captured on 22 June, 2017:
References and related articles by Michael Brown:
https://mentalhealthcop.wordpress.com/
https://mentalhealthcop.wordpress.com/2017/03/02/the-paca-series/
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/inspector-michael-brown/mental-health-policing_b_7284278.html
References:
Brown, Michael. (2017). MENTAL HEALTH COP: A VENN DIAGRAM OF POLICING, MENTAL HEALTH AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE. Retrieved from https://mentalhealthcop.wordpress.com/
Melhuish, K. (2013). Online social networking and its impact on New Zealand educators’ professional learning. Master Thesis. The University of Waikato. Retrieved from http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10289/8482/thesis.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y
Sharples, M., de Roock , R., Ferguson, R., Gaved, M., Herodotou, C., Koh, E., Kukulska-Hulme, A., Looi,C-K, McAndrew, P., Rienties, B., Weller, M., Wong, L. H. (2016). Innovating Pedagogy 2016: Open University Innovation Report 5. Milton Keynes: The Open University. Retrieved from http://proxima.iet.open.ac.uk/public/innovating_pedagogy_2016.pdf
Blog 5 – Ethics
Ethics, law, regulations and policy in practice underpin in equal measurement all aspects of professional life for employees of NZ Police:
“As employees of New Zealand Police we are individually and collectively responsible for how we conduct ourselves” (NZ Police, n.d. p 2)
The greatest challenge with codes of ethics in policing is how to make them real. Research has shown that having a code of ethics is not enough to prevent unprofessional behaviour – but if it becomes part of everyday decision making when appropriate. If the public loose confidence in the police, they are less likely to help the police uphold the law (College of Policing, n.d.).
Although I have not had an ethical dilemma whilst in the NZ Police, whilst I was a member of Hampshire Constabulary training staff in the UK I had a huge dilemma of finding out a police colleague was bullying a volunteer member of staff.
I knew both people well and knew that the colleague exhibiting bullying behaviour had bullied other colleagues and because of his senior position had never been challenged. Several members of staff had gone long term sick rather that face the bully. The volunteer member of staff was more resilient as she was not accountable to the person who had being bullying her. However unacceptable my colleagues behaviour was, without evidence it would be very difficult to tackle the problem, as other people had tried in the past.
Fortunately the volunteer member of staff had collected the necessary evidence so I went to the most senior member of staff I could and had a confidential information. To make the issue more ethically complicated, in an informal conversation with me previously the bully had told me about his experiences in battle as a former soldier and I was pretty sure he demonstrated all the undiagnosed symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder.
I then had to weigh up the pros and cons of disclosing this conversation to the senior member of staff I went to as it contextualised the behaviour that had been displayed – i.e. The man was a bully but he also had a potentially undiagnosed medical condition that affected his decision making at work.
I decided to repeat the conversation I had with the bully. This, combined with the evidence from the volunteer provided enough evidence for the bully to be told that he had to seek professional advice for his issues, which were likely to be related to PTSD.
The challenge by senior leadership that he could not bully triggered him attending a military medical support team and he left the police after 6 months of being on sick leave. He now helps other people with a similar condition.
The NZ Police Code asks Police staff to “consciously exhibit behaviour which is aligned to Our Values:
PROFESSIONALISM
RESPECT
INTEGRITY
COMMITMENT TO MÃORI & THE TREATY
EMPATHY
VALUING DIVERSITY” (NZ Police, n.d. p 2)
In addition, all student police officers are attested as a constable of NZ Police through an oath, found in Section 22 of the Policing Act 2008 (personal communication with my supervisor – Inspector Steve Bruce 19-06017).
To help inform ethical decision making, police have created the SELF test, which is comprised of 4 questions:
SCRUTINY – would your decision or behaviour withstand scrutiny and be seen as appropriate by others?
ENSURE COMPLIANCE – does your decision or behaviour comply with the Code and other Police policy, general instructions and procedural expectations?
LAWFUL – is your decision or behaviour lawful?
FAIR – is your decision or behaviour fair and reasonable? (NZ Police, n.d. p 7)
Cases where individuals within the police have failed to adhere to the ethical standards and code of conduct reasonably expected of them by the public reflect on the whole of police. They undermine trust and confidence in the police as a whole, with a single newspaper headline having potential negative impacts on a generation. Miscarriage of justice and deaths in custody are two areas of common concern.
Other areas of equal seriousness and disproportionate impact on the public trust are incidents such as the Louise Nicholls Case.
According to FBI ethics research, two windows of vulnerability exist in law enforcement: the first one to five years and from fifteen years to retirement (personal communication, NZ Police internal training for supervisors retrieved 19 June, 2017).
The NZ Police Code of Ethics is available in English and Te Reo.
References:
College of Policing (n.d.) Code of Ethics. Retrieved from http://www.college.police.uk/What-we-do/Ethics/Pages/Code-of-Ethics.aspx
NZ Police (n.d.) New Zealand Police Code of Conduct. Retrieved from: http://www.police.govt.nz/sites/default/files/publications/ourcode.pdf
Acknowledging and respecting the cultural “other”
The latest edition of Mana magazine No. 135 for June and July 2017 – http://www.mana.co.nz calls itself the Racism Issue. On its front page – white print on a red background, the following lines are written:
Maori are 380% more likely to be convicted of a crime and 200% more likely to die from a heart disease and suicide. Maori are paid 18% less and 34% leave school without a qualification. Maori die earlier and suffer more. It’s not fair.
Inside the magazine, discussion focuses on inequalities within the health care system, such as differences in the access to, and quality of care for Maori (Mana, No. 135 p24), but the problems are obviously entrenched far more widely than that.
The author of the article, Te Aniwaniwa Hurihanganui, cites research carried out on the different ways racism affects health outcomes for Maori, including unfair treatment experienced by health professionals who are Maori and also different outcomes within the system because of being Maori, particularly with regards to compliance.
She cites one researcher’s study highlighting comments from individuals who had negative experiences with some health professionals on the basis of their skin colour:
“Participants reported seeing Pakeha whanau being treated with kindness , respect and being well communicated with, only to have the healthcare professional come over to them and almost immediately change their facial expresssions, and tone of voice to one that was more hostile and drawn back” (Mana, No. 135 p28).
But whether it is in health care or the criminal justice system or education, the institutional racism and unconscious bias experienced by Maori is part of the overall systematic distortions that can exist and even flourish when it remains unchallenged.
How to address and resolve unconscious attitudes and beliefs that distort the fundamental equalities that through the International UN Human Rights Articles as well as the Treaty of Waitangi are in law not meant to exist is another issue entirely.
Where to begin can usually be best answered by ourselves. Our own professional practices in the language we use and the actions we take can countered effectively through reflection and professional discourse, similar to that encouraged on this course.
Whether it is health, the criminal justice system, or education, equitable outcomes will never be achieved by doing what it is we have always done. Being part of a structure that through reproducing systems that work for middle New Zealand and can normalise racism can be hard to challenge and harder to change. But we can start with ourselves and widen the circle of “true justice and equal access to the things we all need to live” (Mana, No. 135 p31).
This means that for me as a researcher I need to respect the cultural structures of the other even if they don’t always immediately make sense to me. I also need to be respectful of not appropriating or inadvertently offending the cultural heartland or mana of the other, whether it is through gender, ethnicity or religion.
Wong (2006) notes that when researchers decide to work in a different cultural context of their own, they will face ethical, moral and cultural challenges throughout their project.
As we are increasingly working simultaneously with multiculturalism in a bi-cultural society, Wepa (2015. P 75) notes that we do not have to know everything about every culture; instead we need to “be authentic” in our own roles and to “support people to practice their cultural traditions”.
References:
Hurihanganui, Te Aniwaniwa, (2017) Body and Spirit. Mana: The Maori Perspective. No 135. June / July 2017.
Wepa, Diaane (2015) Culture and Ethnicity: What is the question?. Cultural Safety in Aotearoa New Zealand. Edited by Dianne Wepa. Cambridge University Press, Port Melbourne, Australia.
Wong, M. (2006) Researching in a Maori Cultural Context: the moral, ethical and cultural obligations. Challenging the Notion of the “other”: reframing research in the Aotearoa New Zealand context. Edited by C. Mutch. NZCER Press, Wellington.
Cyber Crime and How to Avoid Being A Victim of it
The novelist Aldous Huxley said in an introduction to the 1965 radio version of his book Brave New World that: “Eternal vigilance is not only the price of liberty; eternal vigilance is the price of human decency.”
As users and teachers of users of the World Wide Web it is important that we understand what the Internet of Things actually means in practice, which is that everything we say and do online can potential be traced and retrieved: Our identities , our passwords, our friends, our financial details, our deepest secrets. It means that the silly things we say and do whenwe are young and have a smart phone and any kind of social media account can come back and haunt us when we least expect it.
Think of the reputations that are won and lost on memories placed online that have long past their sell by date if the WWW could forget, which it cannot. This means that we should not forget how vulnerable we all are – our families, our friends, our entire communities, can be hacked and our personal information hijacked.
This means learning to pause and consider the implications of any activity we may be engaging in online: If it was boardcast out for our families and friends, or even the people we don’t know personally on our street or in our neighbourhood, how would we feel then?
And for the young people who rely on us to teach them how to protect themselves, how would they feel if they know how poorly most of us are doing teaching those young people how to protect themselves online when the majority of us cannot even protect ourselves.
In the world every three minutes online identify thief occurs. This means someone somewhere is a victim of identify thief. One person in 10 is a victim of Online fraud. This means learning the new skills we need and passing them on to anyone who needs them, including the young people who as digital natives may be able to code apps, but may not be astute enough to know what phishing, hacking, identity thief and online fraud look like and feel like and how to be able to prevent them happening to themselves and their families.
This means that teaching how to protect your self and those you are responsible for in the classroom when online, should be treated with the same seriousness as learning to cross the road to save your own life, as well as those nearest and dearest. For being online means the elder is not always the better!
Learning to save our own lives and that of others we care about should be a core skill taught at school and assessed as we do any other core subject. This is because if these skills are not learned at school, where will they be learned?
Some of the simple steps that can be taken include knowing the signs of illicit online activity, when and how to respond, whether it is online bullying or avoiding opening spam emails. The following links should be central reference points for all New Zealander’s of all ages online:
Our main website for advice and guidance on cybersafety and cybersecurity issues
NetBasics
Short video episodes take you through the issues and risks faced everytime you go online
The Scam Machine
Build a personalised news story based around someone you know and learn the ways scammers target people online
Reporting online crime online
Week 26: Building a collaborative problem solving culture
Within one of the multitude of communities of practice I currently inhabit (thank you Shuzanah Abdeen), I was signposted to an excellent ted talk by Rutgers Bergman: poverty_isn_t_a_lack_of_character_it_s_a_lack_of_cash?
https://www.ted.com/talks/rutger_bregman_poverty_isn_t_a_lack_of_character_it_s_a_lack_of_cash?utm_source=tedcomshare&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=tedspread
Lots of challenging thoughts here – particularly like the references in the talk to Orwell’s quote about how poverty “annihilates the future”. The speaker also talked about how we “treat the symptom but ignore the underlying cause”. This is why I think problem based learning is powerful and appropriate for all ages in addressing the current cultural paradigm that wraps its tentacles around our thinking and causes great ideas that might change the world to be smothered at birth.
We dont live in the Age of Enlightenment which was informed by the phrase ‘Sapere aude’ – “Dare to know” (Kay, 1996). But we do live in the age of discontent and entitlement and also of knowing that a culture of capitalism is driving the juaggernaut of our own age but t is not checked by a corresponding culture of responsibility.
In thinking about what I can and cannot achieve in the face of the comprehensive nature of the intrusive culture of modernity, I realise I can only influence at the intersection of the multiple circles I inhabit.
I need other minds to spark my own, and other ways of thinking that may be alien to my own to reach a consensus on how we can collectively move forward in a way that hurts the less and benefits the most.
In my space as an evaluator in the adult education sector at the NZ Police College, culture is blue and strongly resists change for many good reasons.
The thing is we now know that culture is neither benign nor toxic: it is our awareness of the choices we have open to us to change and the decisions we make about those choices. It is a collection of tapu and noa – that which is sacred and often invisible to us, and that which is common and everyday, and which, because we are looking at it everyday, may also become invisible to us.
Luckin et al(2017. P. 19) when identifying barriers to collaborative problem-solving when it is a core 21st skill (bound up as it is with communication, team work and problem solving) include lack of confidence and skills in this area among teachers and students, skepticism about its validity, as well as lack of time in an exam driven curriculum.
Even though skills such as communication, team work and problem solving are known to be core skills needed in the work place, research has shown that even though collaborative problem solving might be more effective than other approaches such as stop and test, implementation is impeded:
Luckin et al (2017) cite the example of the Education and Endowment Foundations (EEF) Teaching and Learning Toolkit. Despite being 4th on their list of 34 effective interventions for 5 to 16 years olds, the foundation has not funded any collaborative problem solving projects in the 100plus projects that have been funded too date. Instead, Luckin et al (2017, p17) cite Qin, Johnson and Johnson 1995 study, which “undertook a meta-analysis of 46 studies undertaken between 1929 and 1993 examining the effect of collaborative versus competitive problem-solving. Collaboration, as opposed to competition, led to superior quality problem-solving, producing an effect size of 0.60.”
This study is worth reviewing in detail as it includes the barriers to implementing collaborative problem solving and also provides guidance on assessment measures that can be taken to verify collaborative problem solving in an educational setting.
What this blog has intended to show is that whilst research can point out what works, if the culture in which the research is embedded does not support a paradigm shift, often including the reasons outlined by Luckin et al on page 19 of their report (barriers to implementation), no shift can take place.
Culture, although an impersonal societal muscle, holds its shape until such time as change agents or animateurs (bricoleurs), can hold the space for a new shape to form and be embedded.
References:
Gay, Peter (1996), The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, W. W. Norton & Company, ISBN 0-393-00870-3
Luckin, Rose et al. (2017) Solved! Making the Case for Collaborative Problem-solving. Retrieved from: https://www.nesta.org.uk/sites/default/files/solved-making-case-collaborative-problem-solving.pdf
Week 25. Reflections on my community of practice.
I am fortunate to be involved with several communities of practice at a strategic level as an evaluator at our college.
This includes 5 schools: Response and Operations, Recruits, Initial Training, Leadership, Management and Command, Prevention, and 1 administrative and standards function – Teaching and Learning, comprised of professional educators supporting the subject matter experts who are police officers.
This means I exist at a considerable number of boundaries of learning, which Wenger (2000: p.233) believes are important for because different communities connect and learning opportunities are presented: “Inside a community, learning takes place because competence and experience tend to converge for a community to exist.” Boundaries emphasise tensions between competence and experience which need an interplay with the as yet unknown elements of ourselves and our professional practice. This makes a place of what Wenger (2000: p. 233) defines as “raw opportunities” between being stretched and being exposed. The generative tension requires competence and experience to
• Interact at some intersection of interest;
• Keep an open mind on differences as well as common ground;
• Suspend judgment not once but over and over to see the competence of the community on its terms – not yours;
• Being able to bridge the different competencies and experiences so that new ways of being in the world, of knowing, of making meaning are formed.
(Wenger, 2000: p.233).
Like an eddy formed out of converging currents, communities of practice require Cultural brokers to hold the space where new ideas, possibilities and confirmation and reassurance around existing ones can merge in a spectrum of light.
This light must be both familiar and unknown, and out of the tension competence and expertise, must, according to Wenger (2000) create new meaning, new ways of holding down the world, of anchoring in our professional lives on the cusp of regenerative hope and scope for responding effectively to the fresh challenges daily life presents. In this place of expansion and contraction we do not need to know everything, we just need to be embedded in a multitude of networks where we can fish for the construction of new competencies that are lined with existing ones to ensure the gap between what we now know and what we may need to know to continue to operate effectively in our professional spaces continues to be aligned.
My role is to understand the cycle of learning for each programme at course at the college where I work, and the effectiveness of that against agreed learning objectives.
To ensure that my evaluation and assessment decisions remain impartial and objective, I meet colleagues formally once a month but am able to connect with them informally to reflect on practice and problem solving around our learning programmes whenever required.
The overall objective of my professional role is to ensure continuous improvement is practiced in our shared work space through identifying what is working well, what needs improving and what lessons can be shared with our wider workgroup at the college.
In our formal monthly community of practice sessions, we discuss current issues that one person brings to apply action learning principles as developed by Reg Revans.
We also apply reflective practice on why we are doing what we doing in the way we are doing it. This enables the community of practice group to act as critical friends and apply the Johari Window illumination to blind spots in our own individual and shared professional practice.
This aligns with Wengers’ (2000: p. 229) description of communities of practice as “basic building blocks of a social learning system because they are the social ‘containers’ of the competences that make up a system”. 3 elements included are:
1. Joint enterprise binding practitioners and holding each other accountable – “to be competent is to is to understand the enterprise well enough to contribute to it” (Wenger, 2000. P. 229).
2. Mutual engagement which “establishes norms and relationships of mutuality that reflect” the interactions (Wenger, 2000. P. 229).
3. “Produce a shared repitore of communal resources” (Wenger, 2000. P. 229).
Involving competence and experience creates a mutually beneficial commitment to engagement which is able to be sustained over time.
References:
Wenger, E. (2000). Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems. Organization. Vol 7 (2): 225-246. Retrieved from: http://journals.sagepub.com.libproxy.unitec.ac.nz/doi/abs/10.1177/135050840072002
Mastering The Art of Walking Dragons 