Week 28 - Influence of Law & Ethics in Practice

Activity 4: Legal and ethical contexts in my digital practice

Step 1 (What):

Parents transported students to and from a sporting event involving their children and helped supervise other children at the event. Teacher (myself) was not attending the event because of the small number of children involved. While at the event parents took photographs of children competing and emailed them to myself to put in the school newsletter. My role was the organiser and teacher responsible for the children (from my class). I needed parents to transport, supervise and provide photos to share with school community.

Step 2 (So What):

Parents at school have signed a digital agreement in which they have allowed their children’s photographs to be used in our school newsletter, school blogs and in school assemblies. They have not allowed other parents to post or keep photos on phones of their children.

The ethical dilemma is that once the photos are shared with the teacher (and school), they should be removed from the parent’s phone. They do not have permission to keep photographs of other children on their phone or use them on their personal social media. It is my duty to protect the children in my care (and to remain professional and follow our school’s child protection policy agreement).

Solutions

I had an informal chat and asked the parent in question to delete the photos from their phone (which they did) and asked them not post any photos of other children on their social media accounts (which they had not done). I was slightly aware of potential negative reactions, but felt it was the professionally correct decision to make, not an emotional one.

Possible consequences of this could have been negative reactions from the parent (perhaps a feeling of being accused of potentially doing something with the photos?) and future refusal to help at sporting events by transporting and supervising children. Thankfully this was not the case.

Other solutions could have been to do nothing (rule of optimism and hope that they would delete them and not post to any social media) or to arrange a meeting with the principal and ask her to deal with the matter (more formal). Implications of ignoring the fact could have been that if photos had been posted on social media, it would be a failure to inform the parent on my part that led to this happening and could potentially be damaging to my reputation rather than to the parents reputation. Arranging a meeting with the principal would have taken the situation to a level that although keeping procedural and formal, could damage the relationship and trust between teacher and parent and lead to the parent in the future being unwilling to help or communicate closely about important matters.

Step 3 (Now What):

 Our Code of professional responsibility sets out the shared expectations of our profession that we aspire to and have agreed to uphold. It reminds us of our obligations and responsibilities to others and the need to demonstrate high standards of professional behaviour in all we do. In this instance, digital agreements made between parents, teachers and children needed to be upheld and followed. It is my duty as a profession to protect the children in our care and follow our child protection policy.

It is hard to see what else I could do in the future, the community likes to hear and see the news that children are involved in and often these events take place where a teacher can not always be present and require parent help and supervision. I think the next step is to have parents sign an agreement (when they are supervising children at out of school events) not to use photographs taken on personal social media accounts and to delete photographs from mobile devices that do not involve their own children following events within a week. Consequences could be less parental willingness to take photographs, but unlikely, or parents not being willing to supervise other children, again unlikely because the events involve their own children too.

*I have used Rolfe et al.’s (2001) reflective model above

References

Ehrich, L. C. , Kimber M., Millwater, J. & Cranston, N. (2011). Ethical dilemmas: a model to understand teacher practice, Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, 17:2, 173-185, DOI: 10.1080/13540602.2011.539794

Education Council. (2017). Our Code Our Standards. Retrieved from: https://educationcouncil.org.nz/sites/default/file...

Ministry of Education. (2015). DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY Safe and responsible use in schools. Wellington: New Zealand: Author. Retrieved from https://www.education.govt.nz/assets/Documents/Sch…

Rolfe et al.’s (2001) Reflective Model. Retrieved from https://my.cumbria.ac.uk/media/MyCumbria/Documents/ReflectiveModelRolfe.pdf

Week 25 Collecting Data and Evidence

Why collect data and evidence?

The Ministry of Education (n.d) points out “without evidence to back them up, hunches remain subjective.” The Ministry goes further, saying that well-planned data gathering can “reveal new patterns of insight, justify change and motivate colleagues, stakeholders, and school leaders into taking action.” (Ministry of Education, n.d).

In criterion 3 of Research assessment 2, as evidence of community engagement, we are required to include in your teacher inquiry plan how you plan to collect data from the relevant members of your community.

We plan to include both qualitative data from student survey forms and quantitative data from written assessments e-asttle measurements of written samples.

Using mixed methods (often a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods) will give richer data, hence our choice on a combination.

The choice of using Term 1 and Term 2 data from written samples means we do not need to re-collect data or re-analyse information that has already been collected and therefore reducing workload.

Survey/questionnaire

A survey or questionnaire is used to obtain opinions from respondents to provide information through a set of questions (Babione, 2015).

A strength of this approach is that a survey or questionnaire can be distributed and collected quite easily (Babione, 2015), especially since there are a number of online survey tools such as Google Forms and Survey Monkey which make it fairly straightforward to create, send and collect responses. A survey can be done with a small or large number of respondents and can include both quantitative and qualitative data. Some online survey tools also include some automatic data analysis features.

The downside can be that you are not always able to control the number of responses, especially for an anonymous survey, and the responses can be biased or the responses may not always reflect the real opinion of the respondents.

Now, consider the pros and cons of doing a survey and decide if you would like to use surveys as one of your data collection methods. If you wish, read  the section about surveys extracted from Efron and Ravid’s (2013) book (supplementary). The extract provides guides to help you write survey items with good examples. Additionally this checklist for developing a survey (Peters & Irish, n.d.) (supplementary) provides a list of questions to help you check your survey design. Remember to include the tool (the survey questions) in your assessment submission if a survey is one of your chosen data collection methods.

If you plan to conduct a large scale survey, for example, across the whole syndicate or the whole school, you can use the calculator on this web page (http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm) to determine the appropriate sample size for a survey (e.g. how many responses you should collect) to have the result within a certain margin of error (also called the Confidence Interval) and for a given population (i.e. the total number of students in your school).

Interviews:

Interviews are frequently used to obtain verbal perspectives and opinions from individuals or group about their understandings and experiences, thoughts, feelings, motivations, and the actions of others (Babione, 2015,p.124).Here is an example of an interview schedule including the purpose of the interview and interview questions.

A strength of interviews is that they provides a richer and deeper perspective about the situation and help to verify information from other sources.

A constraint of interviews is that it can take time to arrange and conduct the interview session and analyse the collected data. Because an interview is person-to-person interaction, interviewees might answer to please the interviewer instead of telling them what they really think and feel, especially if the interviewees are afraid of unfavourable consequences as a result of the interview.

If you choose to interview as your data collection tool you would like to use in your teacher inquiry plan, read this section about interviews from Efron and Ravid (2013)’s book (supplementary). The section outlines different types of interview, the interview process and how to develop the interview questions.Remember to include the tool (the interview questions) in your assessment submission an interview is one of your chosen data collection methods.

Observations

Efron and Ravid (2013) define observation in research as the act of purposefully and systematically observing the activities, people, and physical aspects of the educational setting.

The strength of observations is, as Babione (2015) points out, that observing humans in natural settings provides insight into the complexity of human behavior and interrelationships among groups. Observations allow you to collect data such as nonverbal behaviours, gestures, and body language, the dynamics of the setting that cannot be obtained through interviews or surveys.

If you choose observation as a data collection tool you would like to use in your teacher inquiry plan, read this this section about observation extracted from Efron and Ravid (2013). The extract explains the different types of observation, its process and how to develop an observation form such as a protocol form for qualitative observation and behaviour log, tally sheet and checklist for quantitative observation. Remember to include the tool (the observation protocol form/behaviour log/tally sheet/ checklist, etc) in your assessment submission if observation is one of your chosen data collection methods.

Artifacts and documents

Artifacts and documents are records that provide contextual information for a study (Babione, 2015). Examples of artifacts and documents include student work, school reports, demographic information, grades, test scores, portfolios or teacher journals.

The advantage of this data collection method is that the artifacts and documents may already be available during the course of your teaching and you don’t have to design an extra tool to collect the data.

If you choose artifacts and documents as the data collection tool you would like to use in your teacher inquiry plan, read this section about artifacts and documents extracted from Efron and Ravid (2013). The extract provides a checklist of suggestions and guidelines for gathering and using official and personal artifacts and documents.

Pre and post intervention data

This is part of what we plan to use. Pre-test data from Term 2 data and post test data in Term 3

What baseline data do you need to collect? Baseline data is data collected at the start of an inquiry project that allows you establish the current situation which will enable a point of comparison for data you collect throughout your inquiry.

The video on developing a quantitative research plan (supplementary) is relevant as we are including experimental methods in our data gathering (e.g. comparing pre-test and post-test student results).This will be used as we are developing an intervention designed specifically to raise student achievement in writing and skilled communication. We will give them a post test after the intervention in term 3.

For each data collection method you need to explain why you have chosen it, the data it will provide for you and why this data will be important.

Evidence of engagement with relevant community members to inform the inquiry plan

As part of the assessment 2 criterion 4 you need to show how evidence of engagement with relevant community members (e.g. colleagues or stakeholders) informed the inquiry plan or part of the plan. As discussed in week 24 class notes, the relevant communities for your Teacher Inquiry Plan can be your students, colleagues, whanau or school leadership. You need to seek engagement from these community members in the form of EITHER the data you gather from your data collection tools if you can OR the feedback about your teacher inquiry plan such as the plan milestones, the data collection tools, the ethical considerations, etc.

You need to record the engagement to show as evidence. It can be either a presentation of the data you collected from your data collection tools (if available) or written feedback (e.g. email correspondence, G+ reply posts, notes you made during a conversation with your community members) or a video recording of the feedback.

Additionally, Assessment 2 criterion 4 requires that you reflect how the engagement with the community has informed the inquiry plan or part of the plan. You need to explain what changes you made to your plan after considering the data or the feedback (e.g. did you change your research question or data collection tool(s)?).

References

Babione, C. (2015). Practitioner teacher inquiry and research. USA: John Wiley & Sons. (e-copy available in Unitec library).

Easton, C. (2012, April). Data for self-evaluation. SecEd. NFER. Retrieved from http://www.nfer.ac.uk/schools/data-for-self-evaluation-seced.pdf

Efron, S. E., & Ravid, R. (2013). Action research in education: A practical guide. New York, NY: The Guilford Press. (e-copy available in Unitec library).

Ministry of Education.(n.d.). Data analysis. Retrieved from http://elearning.tki.org.nz/Teaching/Teaching-as-inquiry/Data-analysis#js-tabcontainer-1-tab-2

Riel, M.( 2014, 28 April).T7: Data collection.[Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyILgB1R5Cc

Shaddock, A (2013). Using data to improve learning : A practical guide for busy teachers. ACER Press.

Week 24 - Planning your Teacher Inquiry Project

Linking your Literature Review to your Teacher Inquiry Project

Teacher Inquiry

Adopting the stance of teacher-researcher formalises these evaluative and reflective processes. As Wilson (2013) explains:

"Researching our practice presents the opportunity to problem-solve more intelligently, through drawing on existing research findings and by using rigorous methods to collect evidence which helps clarify our thinking. Experiences of participating in an informed way, and acting freshly, offer the teacher for whom teaching has become a routine a sense of freedom, of meaning, of worthiness and consequently increased self-esteem." (Wilson, 2013, p.5)

Concept of teacher as researcher

The concept of the teacher as researcher has long been discussed in academic literature. Schon (1983) developed the concept of the reflective practitioner, while Stenhouse popularised the idea of teachers acting as researchers, believing that ‘educational knowledge exists in, and is verified or falsified in, its performance’ (Stenhouse, 1984, p.110).

Lytle and Cochran-Smith (1992) built upon and extended Schon’s (1983) theory of the reflective practitioner to suggest that teachers also learn and create new knowledge by assuming an inquiry stance within their practice. Teachers conduct inquiry projects into their practice to create knowledge that is applicable and relevant to their teaching context.

The importance of teacher research/inquiry

There are two main themes that dominate discussions of why teacher research is important. The first relates to the importance of teacher-created knowledge for improvement in teaching and learning, and in particular student outcomes. The second centres on the idea of teacher professionalism.

Two models of Teacher Inquiry

Teacher inquiry is when teachers inquire into their own practice and use evidence to make decisions about ways to change that practice for the benefit of the student. 

Teaching as Inquiry

In Teaching as Inquiry educators investigate the impact of their decisions and practice on students. The Teaching as Inquiry cycle has three iterative stages shown in Figure 1. 

Figure 1: The process of teaching as inquiry (Ministry of Education, 2009)

The Spiral of Inquiry

We have decided to use the Spiral of Inquiry model, because this is the model that we are using as school through Interlead.

On TKI The Spiral of Inquiry is described as “a fresh rethink on the structure of teaching as inquiry.” (Ministry of Education, 2015). It emphasises involvement of learners, their families and communities and developing learner agency. It states that engaging in inquiry is a process of developing collective professional agency either within a school or across a cluster of schools. The approach is described in Timperley, Kaser & Halbert (2014). Figure 2 shows the stages of spiral of inquiry.

Figure 2: Spiral of inquiry (Ministry of Education, 2015)

"What’s going on for our learners?" and "How do we know?" are key questions that the spiral of inquiry addresses. By observing students (scanning) and finding an area to change (focusing), teachers can use intuition to consider the reasons for the current situation (developing a hunch), then refer to research (learning) to help determine changes needed (taking action). Checking is done during and after any changes have been made: "Have we made enough of a difference?" (Ministry of Education, 2005).

Second assessment (Teacher Inquiry project plan)

Steps and stages for developing my inquiry project

Topic area

How might students' use of blogs improve writing skills?

• How the literature on your topic supports your area of focus

-As outlined in the Literature Review, much research has been conducted looking at blogging and its impact on writing, in terms of engagement and in general improvement of finer points of writing (grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc.).

• Why your topic is particularly relevant to your school setting

-with our current focus on Manaiakalani outreach and the implementation of 1-1 devices and blogging to help improve writing and foster the links between home and school, this inquiry is very timely and relevant to our school.

• How your topic will support your community

-Our community is in the first stages of implementing the Manaiakalani model, initially in two classrooms throughout our school, with a future focus to having the whole school using and following the model outlined through Manaiakalani.

Defining our communities

Our Communities include:

* Students: My students specifically in Room 1, Year 7 & 8. Chosen because they are the students I am teaching and monitoring on a day to day basis.

* Teachers (Nick and Rosey, but Angela as well- although she is not part of the Mindlab group). Chosen because we are in the syndicate together (following similar plans) and can collaborate in syndicate meetings.

*Whanau- Y7 & 8 family (parents and caregivers). They care deeply and are involved in their children’s learning.

What is the context for the communities?

To bring the community onboard and involve them in what the learners are doing.

References

Aitken, G. (n.d.).The inquiring teacher: Clarifying the concept of teaching effectiveness.

Retrieved from http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/content/download/4823/38977/file/background-paper-the-inquiring-teacher.pdf

Aitken, G. & Sinnema, C. (2008). Effective Pedagogy in Social Sciences: Tikanga ā Iwi: BES. Wellington: Ministry of Education.

Barker, L., Pistrang, N., & Elliott, R. (2016). Research Methods in Clinical Psychology An Introduction for Students and Practitioners. West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons.

Lytle, S. & Cochran-Smith, M. (1992). Teacher Research as a Way of Knowing. Harvard Educational Review, 62, 447-474.

Ministry of Education. (2009). Teachers as learners: Improving outcomes for Māori and Pasifika students through inquiry.

Retrieved from http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-stories/Case-studies/Teachers-as-learners-Inquiry

Peters, T. & Irish, J. (n.d.). Introduction to Survey Research Methods. Retrieved from http://hms.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/assets/...

Ministry of Education. (2015). Before You Start.

Retrieved from http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Teaching-as-inquiry/Before-you-start

Schon, D. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic Books.

Stenhouse, L. (1975). An introduction to curriculum research and development. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Publishers.

Stenhouse, L. (1984). Artistry and Teaching: the Teachers as Focus of Research and Development. In D. Hopkins and M. Wideen (Eds.), Alternative Perspectives on School Improvement (pp. 67-76). Lewes and Philadelphia: Falmer Press.

Wilson, E. (2013). School-based Research: A guide for education students. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.