Scottish Learning Festival #SLF15

Day 1

Excitement on the train as I head towards Glasgow to my second ever Scottish Learning Festival

 

When I arrived after a slight hiccup at Central Station, I couldn’t find platform 17 to get the train out to the SECC! I joined my GTCS colleagues at our stand in the show village.

Lots of interesting stuff in how PLAN C can support teachers of computer science to adapt pedagogy to make the learning up to date and relevant. Commonality in all STEM subjects are the language barriers from natural to formal language.

 Next stop keynote from Angela Constance MSP

Great aspirations for our education system but how do we achieve this?

The idea of sharing your inspirational teacher is wonderful but will that encourage more people to teach? It is always good to hear the direction of travel but the devil is in the detail!

After a wee stint on the GTCS stand – which was great fun, I went to hear Education Scotland’s take on Transforming Learning and Teaching for the 21^st Century.

I am liking the phrase (below) repeated a few times throughout the festival by Education Scotland

It just reminds us to be continually looking for improvements, some may be small incremental, some may be a whole cultural change but who can help us improve our practice to be the best we can be.

 

Next stop was to support the boss @GTCS_Tom and Lindsey

Before I worked with GTCS I had an ‘itch’ around values, I think we need to discuss our values more, make them more up front and be honest about what it means to be a teacher. What behaviours, dispositions and actions are essential for us to say we are ‘professional’ and what is the basis of our not only ‘why did you come into teaching?’ but then ‘why do you stay in teaching?’

Explicitly linking my journey with values I then attended Learning for Sustainability. LfS is not just Eco schools, outdoor learning, getting your hands dirty (I don’t do dirty hands!) but the values that underlie our practice who we are as teachers, the commitment to social justice, trust and respect, integrity and professionalism. 

And so bring to an end day 1 of the Scottish Learning Festival. I decided to go to the #SFLteachmeet to lurk and listen to colleagues discussing their practice, and having a chat with @MissJ0nes about the forthcoming Pedagoo #enquirymeet.

Day 2
My joy for today was I got to stand up all day and talk to people! Yeh! I know it sounds lame but going from school into an office environment it is amazing the things you miss!

Day 2 started with the HGIOS 4 launch, I am always interested in the partnership model and how the is achieved in the ‘real’ world. The aspiration cannot be argued with but within the busyness of school and learning and teaching how do we create time, space and energy to create and sustain partnerships

What do we need to stop/change doing to create the space for partnerships?

HGIOS 4 looks like an excellent tool for self-evaluation and was described by @GTCS Ellen as a ‘white shark’, it looks beautiful and impressive but has teeth to get into what we need to do to support improvement.

For the rest of the day I was at the GTCS stand talking with practitioners, aspiring practitioners and being asked mental maths questions by some primary pupils. @MartinOsler was impressed with the mental maths, he had to do the calculation and share his thinking then he was ‘schooled’ in different ways to do mental maths by 8 year olds! Great learning and sharing learning strategies.

For me, a great couple of days, my highlight was being on the GTCS stand, being able to talk with teacher and other educators, it is such a buzz to share learning experiences and help dispel some myths around Professional Update.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Professional Conduct and Ethical Decision Making

Most professions have a clear and transparent set of agreed ethical principles that is agreed upon and adhered to by the members of that profession which guides their decision making.

For teachers in Scotland this can be found in key documents;

·         Code of Professionalism and Conduct (CoPAC)

o   Sets out the “key principles and values for registered teachers in Scotland” (p4) giving “a baseline professional standard”. CoPAC links teachers fitness-to-teach with public accountability and gives guidance on the behaviours, skills and dispositions expected of teachers.

·         Social Justice Social Justice Professional Values and Personal CommitmentTheme 1: Professional Values and Personal Commitment within

o   Standard for Registration

o   Standard for Career-long Professional Learning

o   Standard for Leadership and Management

Professional Conduct is a complex area as teachers have to examine their attitudes, beliefs and professional relationships. They have to consider their own belief system and how their attitudes and behaviours impact on their practice and also how they conduct themselves in a professional arena. Some teachers find they have a poor understanding of themselves, themselves as a teachers and the responsibility that is entailed within this role. Some fail to live up to the expectation of the profession and are challenged by the professional responsibility and personal integrity that must be evident in their practice. The restrictions on teachers in conduct, both in an educational environment but also in their own personal lives, may be an issue and teachers can find themselves being constrained or confronted by the obligations to model moral conduct that befits a person in a position of trust and respect. From personal experience, those who do not have the ‘required’ values or behaviours have to be respectfully challenged. This can lead to situations that are emotionally fraught as it can be very difficult to challenge a long held view or core trait that composes that person as an individual. However, if this is not challenged, are we really carrying out our professional duty of care to the individual?

Professional Conduct is rarely given space to be discussed throughout a teacher’s career, spanning ITE through to exiting the profession. However our ethical decision making and professional conduct underpins our relationships with student, colleagues, parents and partners, so is it not worth discussing? If we neglect our ethical decision making and professional conduct we become victims to interpretation where teachers become selective in the rights and responsibilities they enact in their classrooms. Opportunities to explore ethical decision making and professional conduct through time during in-service would support teachers to re-construct their professional identities. Teachers would be made uncomfortable and be challenged by some ethical dilemmas and therefore may choose not to engage.  Of greater importance however, is the responsibility for those delivering the in-service to also demonstrate professional conduct and a commitment to supporting teachers develop their own critical awareness of ethical decision-making.

 

 

 

 

A Book that Changed my Teacher Journey

My favourite book that has ‘disrupted my thinking’ and changed the direction of travel as a teacher is ‘Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher’, Brookfield, (1995).

You know when a book arrives through the post and you unpack it and flick through it; well, I had read the first two chapters before I knew it and was excitedly telling my daughter all about it while she rolled her eyes!

For me, Brookfield gave me ‘permission to question’. Chapter 2 “Becoming Critically Reflective: A Process of Learning and Change” discusses how we need to;

“find lenses that reflect back to us stark and differently highlighted picture of who we are and what we do” (p28)

This stopped me in my tracks and took a little bit of thinking, not so much in the validity of the statement but how can I do this? What other lenses are available? Do I create my own? Do I borrow? What other perspectives are valid? Which aren’t as valid but are worthy? What am I missing? Brookfield goes on to discuss four lenses which are autobiographical, students, colleagues and theoretical literature. These lenses helped me to ‘challenge my assumptions’ and to support me as a reflective practitioner, to stop and analyse situations from multiple views before making big or small decisions. Please don’t think that I am so tied up in viewing through multiple lenses that I become incapable of acting but it becomes a’ habit of mind’ to take a wider perspective and very quickly make an informed decision that takes into consideration than more than one point of reference.

In chapter 9 ‘Storming the Citadel – Reading Theory Critically’ Brookfield discusses how you can use educational literature to;

“investigate the hunches, instincts, and tactic knowledge that shape our practice” as this leads to a “understand better what we already do and think” (p185)

This was my validation and permission to pursue what I ‘thought’ was right but had not had the confidence to put out there. There are so many endorsements within this chapter which supported my dispositions in teaching and leading such as (p186)

Theory lets us ‘name ‘our practice

Works wonders for our morale and self confidence

Theory breaks the circle of familiarity

I felt Brookfield was speaking directly to me and supporting me to discuss education from a theoretical point, affirming my instincts as a teacher and leader, to use research to provoke and challenge current practice, both my own and practices within my learning community.

In this chapter Brookfield goes on to discuss how literature can be engaged with, to develop a criticality of mind so that when I read an article I engage by questioning and do not accept the ‘facts’ without interrogation of  the purpose, the voice being heard, the validity of the methodology, ethical and moral issues, the bias.

“To be critically reflective teacher means that we regard both our personal and collective experiences and our reading of formal theory, research or philosophy an important elements in our critical journey” (p194)

If you are starting on the journey of engaging with educational literature, I would recommend this book as a great starting point.