The culture and professional environments of the school, societal issues and ethics all impact on a school’s ability to change. This reflective entry will explore the impact of these factors on our digital and collaborative learning innovation.
Stoll (1998) describes school culture as a lens through which the world is viewed, it can often be captured by the phrase ‘it’s the way we do things around here’. Culture is often neglected but it can be what makes change so difficult within a school. One aspect that impacts school culture is the age of the school. Nga Iwi school opened in 1972 with the name “Ngā Iwi o te motu kia kotahi ai”, meaning 'People of the land be one'. The age of the school has both positive and negative impacts on our culture and its impact on change.
The name ‘Ngā Iwi o te motu kia kotahi ai’ is very apt when considering the community that supports Nga Iwi primary. We have a diverse community and the school celebrates and fosters it through community events, language weeks and having physical spaces that represent the diverse cultures within our school. Through our innovation of real-time reporting we are hoping to get this diversity reflected in our classroom practice and reporting. Having a school that is already immersed in it’s cultural diversity should work favorably in this innovation, however there are other factors that put up barriers to this change.
As a school ages, change becomes more difficult, and we believe this plays an important factor in our innovation. Many of the staff began their teaching career at Nga Iwi school and have remained there for the entirety of it. This brings with it positives as they have developed strong relationships with the community, however it also means ‘the way we do things around here’ is strongly embedded and difficult to change. In discussing the change to real-time reporting we have had many teachers state that ‘it’s not what the families want’ before fully engaging in the idea. This resistance to change is compounded by recent political agendas.
According to Stoll (1998) national education policies can impact on the culture of a school. In 2010 national standards that focused solely on reading, writing and maths were introduced into NZ primary schools. National standards are no longer used to measure student achievement however it’s impact is still being felt. Our current written reports focus on reading, writing and maths despite NAG2 stating that schools must report on a child’s progress across the curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2017). The change to real-time reporting and the opportunities it presents to report across the curriculum and to include diverse ways of knowing are met with resistance from some staff. For some of our colleagues it is simply very difficult to imagine a different type of reporting. For example when discussing the ways we can use real time reporting teachers were putting forward ideas such as:
To put running records onto seesaw
Set a time once a term to report on reading, writing, maths.
Teachers are looking at ways of moving written paper reports to seesaw rather than seeing seesaw as a way to change what and how we report. This requires a cultural shift within the school that may take some time to achieve.
School culture is one aspect which impacts change, we also need to consider societal issues. Nga Iwi Primary is a decile one school. Real-time reporting requires that whānau have a device, access to the internet and knowledge on how to use seesaw. According to TKI Not having access to these things is an issue of equity(TKI, no date). Many of our whānau only have access to one device, usually a phone from which to access information. A recent survey found that 10% percent of our whanau do not have access to a digital device connected to wifi. We address access to devices in class by providing ipads and chromebooks, however the students don’t have access to school devices at home. Royal Road school addressed this by setting up times where parents can pop into the school library to access computers (TKI, n.d). In a report into the success of real-time reporting at Park Estate School it was found that time needs to be set aside for teachers to support parents and build relationships with them in order to enable them to access their child’s learning (TKI, n.d). Although we are just at the start of our innovation we need to ensure continued commitment to building relationships and supporting parents to get online.
This commitment to whānau aligns with our ethical responsibility as teachers. The code of professional responsibility states that we must have a commitment to families and whānau as outlined by the diagram below:
Real-time reporting allows us to achieve all three objectives however it requires us to ensure we are enabling access to the community and that we ourselves as teachers are meeting our commitment to the teaching profession by ‘engaging in professional, respectful and collaborative relationships with colleagues’ (Council, 2017, p12).
References:
Council, E. (2017). Our code, our standards. Wellington, New Zealand: Education Council.
Ministry of Education (n.d) The National Administration Guidelines. Website. Retrieved from https://www.education.govt.nz/our-work/legislation/nags/
Ministry of Education (n.d) Connecting with whānau via digital Seesaw learning journals
Retrieved from https://elearning.tki.org.nz/Leadership/Real-time-reporting#js-tabcontainer-1-tab-3
Stoll. (1998). School Culture. School Improvement Network’s Bulletin 9. Institute of Education, University of London. http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Understanding-school-cultures/School-Culture
Te Kete Ipurangi. (n.d). Real-time Reporting Website. Retrieved from: https://elearning.tki.org.nz/Leadership/Real-time-reporting#js-tabcontainer-1-tab-4
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