The most significant change made in my own attitude and philosophy towards teaching came when I started in a Manaiakalani school and gained an understanding of the pedagogy guiding the programme. As I have already reflected in the earlier entries, the sum of my use of digital technologies in my first couple of years of teaching was very surface-level. I had an understanding of the tools and knew of some simple ways to use them, but what I was missing was the pedagogy or the ‘why’ behind what I was doing with digital devices in my class.
The Manaiakalani pedagogy is made up of 3 components: Learn, Create and Share. The Learn component looks like teaching and learning being visible using a Google Site. Create is done primarily using the Google G Suite apps on Chromebooks, and the use of blogs is a fundamental part of the Share component of the pedagogy. (Manaiakalani Education Trust, n.d.). It was once I had begun in this new role and started to gain an understanding of what the Manaiakalani pedagogy looked like, that I realised that there were parts that our school wasn’t doing well and needed support with. Blogging, for instance, was an area that needed some leadership and direction in order to get it moving. The content was there - teachers were planning and delivering awesome learning content, but there was all of the behind the scenes work and implementation that needed to be done at the start of the year. Although this work didn’t technically come under my role, it was an opportunity for me to take leadership as well as gaining some valuable experience on how these systems of established.
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| Manaiakalani's Learn Create Share pedagogy |
Transitioning out of my own classroom and into a role of facilitation has been a really valuable experience. I started my new role by spending time shadowing some of my experienced colleagues in the classes they were facilitating in. This was a really valuable experience, as I found that I was able to take bits and pieces from what I was observing and experiencing from being alongside each of them. Some had been in facilitation for a number of years, some had spent a lot of time in the classroom, and some had recently come out of leadership positions in the classroom. This meant that each of them brought different perspectives to the role and looked at their facilitation through different lenses. Having the exposure to these differing approaches meant that I have been able to decide on my own style and approach with the best bits of all of what I have seen.
Working in this role has also presented me with opportunities to work with senior leadership teams, making suggestions and problem solving, in addition to core parts of my role. An example of this was supporting a school to create a new school website that could be managed internally by a member of staff, rather than having to contact a third party to get changes made. The idea started with me replicating what the school had on their then website, using a Google Site. I showed the concept to the leadership team and explained the benefits that using a Google Site could bring in their context. In the end, I worked with the school’s tech leader to upskill them and prepare them to be able to manage the Site for themselves. It is now their current school site and they have autonomy over the content and the upkeep - something they had been wanting to happen for a long time, but didn’t have the means to make this happen for themselves. This type of change is referred to as ‘Adaptive’ change, where the change has been established by stakeholders within the school, with the knowledge and understanding being passed on to allow it to be supported internally (Osborne, 2014).
References
Manaiakalani Education Trust. (n.d.). Manaiakalani Pedagogy. The Manaiakalani Programme. Retrieved July 14, 2022, from https://www.manaiakalani.org/programme/pedagogy#h.vwynzcsw76k2
Osborne, M. (2014). Inviting innovation: Leading meaningful change in schools. Set, 2, 3-8.
https://www.nzcer.org.nz/system/files/journals/set/downloads/set2014_2_003.pdf
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