Post-observation reflection

Can my students articulate what success looks like?

I recently had an observation of my middle school class. Overall the feedback was positive. My observer agreed that I was creating a positive atmosphere in my classroom, with the students energized about their learning and able to articulate the kind of feedback and feedforward they had been receiving.

However, a few were unable to articulate what the 'final destination' was with the art unit.

While I loathe for the learning to be completely linear and think it is important to maintain some flexibility and room for individualized learning plans, this made me realize that the classroom korero and student reflection in their visual diaries need to focus more on the big picture.

While the outcomes might look different for various students, it is important that they are able to articulate what success looks like.

With this in mind, I set up a google form for my junior class to capture what they thought success would look like for their art unit. This gave me insight into the overall understanding of the class. Some gave me multi-structural (Pam Hook) responses, listing art elements which we had been working within the class, and a few were able to give more relational answers making connections to the ideas and techniques of the artist model.

This made me realize that I need to review my learning design to cover the 'communicating and interpreting' strand of the visual art curriculum in more depth.

This will be a challenge though given the size of our junior classes and the short amount of time I get with them.

I am going to try a similar approach with my middle school class and see whether the extra period I get with them makes a difference in comparison with the junior cohort.

learning focused relationships & ako

We had an interesting conversation in our staff meeting this morning. There was a small presentation where the focus was on 'learning-focused relationships'. An aspect that was picked up on in discussions was how all interactions needed to center around the learning and the point you don't necessarily need to care about your students on a personal level to have learning focused relationship (source: clarity in the classroom).

A member of staff pointed out that this was in contrast with concepts like ako which look at the whole learner.

While I can see that good teaching and learning isn't necessarily permissive, from my perspective it is totally essential that I know my learners and what makes them tick. For some learners, it has been the key to unlocking any kind of engagement in learning, and in fact, it was the turning point for the student showing positive behavior in my classroom.

Also from a pedagogical point of view, my visual art classes learning operates as a form of inquiry. To be able to support my students' individual lines of inquiry well, it is really important for me to know the students, how they tick and what their passions are.

I wonder if learning-focused-relationships is a eurocentric concept and whether it is the best lens for support diverse akonga?

Learner agency - who drives the learning?

I've been thinking about learner agency and who drives the learning. My online art history class uses a knowledge building approach. For us, this looks like lots of discussion, lots of student led activity, and generally working as a bit of research team. We're always trying to delve deeper into ideas to improve everyone's understanding.

Last week we had a power cut at my school during the scheduled video conference time. I was able to email my students on my cell phone to let them know to work together online without me using the structure on the class blog as a guide. I had a response from a student (I'm paraphrasing here) letting me know that she had tried to elicit a bit of verbal korero, but the others weren't comfortable taking the lead in the VC without my guidance.

This got me to thinking, have I unconsciously made the video conferences too teacher-centric? Or is this just the kind of learners I have this year? I am conscious that I am pushing a lot of their boundaries and expectations of what learning is.

Teachers using a Knowledge Building approach what are your thoughts?

Inquiry goals - leveraging engagement

This year I have decided to keep my teaching inquiry relatively simple and streamlined with one goal relating to face to face learners and one goal relating to learners in the online class that I teach.

I have 2 goals

1. To use 'assessment for learning' to leverage engagement in junior and middle school classes
2. To use a knowledge building approach to engage online learners

With the first goal, my hunch or motivation relates to many learners coming into art with a 'fixed mindset'. They feel that it is not something they are good at and that it is not for them. I really want to shift the focus from this to a mindset where students are continually reflecting on 'how am I doing' and 'how am I improving'. My theory is that I need to look at ways of making the progress more visible to students and creating opportunities for those reflective conversations to happen.

I am trialing a 'digital visual diary' in the form of a Google Slide. I am trying to keep this as simple and user-friendly as possible. The idea is that students will update their slides at the end of a lesson with their work in progress. In terms of learning design, I am trying to center the classroom talk around progress. This is taking deliberate planning though. I am needing to carve out pockets of time for students to write goals, reflections and recording their work.

My hope is that students will develop more of a growth mindset about their learning in art and through feedback and feedforward from their teacher gradually take more and more ownership of their learning.

With the second goal, my hunch is based on prior experience of using a communal inquiry-based approach. Students who might have struggled with a traditional transactional approach coupled with the potential isolation of being an online student thrived with the knowledge building approach. They reported feeling connected to the class and a part of a community. I still remember one student who identified as not being an exam student. They went on to pass their exams and even get an endorsement! They told me later that being able to collaborate creatively with other students really helped them.

I am looking to get more deliberate and reflective with the knowledge building pedagogy. My experience and instinct tell me that it is powerful, but I want to explore 'how' and 'why' gathering evidence from my class. I want to improve my practice as a teacher and build on what works.

I am quite excited about a newly formed community of practice for knowledge building teachers in NZ, where hopefully we will be able to share our problems of practice and our expertise.

Computational thinking?

I have to admit that I am struggling to figure out how I can connect computational thinking to the Visual Arts and Art History and how I can meaningfully fit this into an already full teaching inquiry.

I had a professional development session that left me cold on computational thinking, and perhaps I started off on the wrong foot, but it didn't seem to me to encourage creativity or the higher level thinking skills that I am working to develop with my classes.

When I compare computational thinking, to a progressive inquiry-based pedagogy like knowledge building, it just seems a bit reductive.

Maybe I've missed something?

Can my colleagues in the creative fields win me over to computational thinking? I just can't currently see how it will fit with my pedagogical philosophy and the kind of thinking I am trying to foster within my classes.