My Community of Practice
I define myself as an educator, mother, family member and friend. I would love to add gym member to that list, but if you read my last blog... I can be a procrastinator, so I will join the gym tomorrow. These are all 'communities' I belong to.
My community of practice is the Primary Education Sector. Within this over reaching community there are sub groups, there is my community of practice within the Mind Lab, there is my Year 3 and 4 team that I teach with, the students and their whanau, and of course there is my school, just to name a few. According to Wenger (2000) this makes sense, as communities of practice are part of broader social systems.
I define myself as an educator first, because that is my practice. Even though I would prefer it didn't, being an educator tends to permeate itself into everything else that I am. However, I consider myself a learner within this community of practice.
After graduating, then leaving teaching to follow another career path, then having a family to raise, I reached full circle a few years ago when I decided to teach again. To move back to New Zealand from Australia and do a teacher refresher course with young children was no mean feat, but well worth the struggle! Within a few months I had landed myself a job at one of the most forward thinking schools in our city. Now calling myself a learner makes sense, right?
But I have decided being a learner in my community of practice is not such a bad thing. For one, I don't have years of teaching students who needed skills for the industrial age, ingrained in me. I can be open to teaching today's children, 21st century skills. Note...I said skills, not knowledge.
I feel that the team I work with is a perfect example of Wenger's (2000) definition of what a community of practice are, in that despite our mix of expertise we all have a common understanding of what we are trying to do as educators, we are constantly engaging in our teaching and learning experiences (and learning from them) and we combine our resources even as far as how we use each others strengths for the best possible practice. The experts in my community of practice pull my experience along and give me invaluable tips along the way, but I also add to their competence. (Wenger, 2000)
How? Because I'm passionate about helping children become innovators rather than consumers. I challenge the thinking within my community. I am helping to change the way we educate our future. Yes, sure, I'm a tiny piece of a global puzzle, but I'm still playing a part. My strengths lie in digital and collaborative learning and I try to infuse it into nearly all aspects of the curriculum. I feel like my purpose and function is to foster each child's potential but in a way that they can succeed in the future that awaits them. A difficult task in this ever changing world, as we don't even know exactly what we are preparing these students for. I think that is why skills have overtaken knowledge as the currency of education.
Some of my competent counterparts were wary of this new wave of teaching and how it changes learning and I had to accept of course, that 8 and 9 year old's still need to learn to read and write, and so perhaps a balance of old school and new, has its place.
In a small country like New Zealand, with a population of 4 million we are too far removed geographically to most markets, to be able to contribute. On the flipside, that means we can now import what we need, at a cheaper rate than it takes to produce right here in New Zealand.
So where does this leave us? We need our future to be innovators, inventors and designers in the world market. And if we don't change what we think we want our children to learn, we risk falling behind. We need to encourage our children to solve real world problems, and this is not such a bad thing as it makes the learning authentic.
References:
Wenger, E. (2000). Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems. Organization, 7(2), 225-246.http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/135050840072002
My community of practice is the Primary Education Sector. Within this over reaching community there are sub groups, there is my community of practice within the Mind Lab, there is my Year 3 and 4 team that I teach with, the students and their whanau, and of course there is my school, just to name a few. According to Wenger (2000) this makes sense, as communities of practice are part of broader social systems.
I define myself as an educator first, because that is my practice. Even though I would prefer it didn't, being an educator tends to permeate itself into everything else that I am. However, I consider myself a learner within this community of practice.
After graduating, then leaving teaching to follow another career path, then having a family to raise, I reached full circle a few years ago when I decided to teach again. To move back to New Zealand from Australia and do a teacher refresher course with young children was no mean feat, but well worth the struggle! Within a few months I had landed myself a job at one of the most forward thinking schools in our city. Now calling myself a learner makes sense, right?
But I have decided being a learner in my community of practice is not such a bad thing. For one, I don't have years of teaching students who needed skills for the industrial age, ingrained in me. I can be open to teaching today's children, 21st century skills. Note...I said skills, not knowledge.
I feel that the team I work with is a perfect example of Wenger's (2000) definition of what a community of practice are, in that despite our mix of expertise we all have a common understanding of what we are trying to do as educators, we are constantly engaging in our teaching and learning experiences (and learning from them) and we combine our resources even as far as how we use each others strengths for the best possible practice. The experts in my community of practice pull my experience along and give me invaluable tips along the way, but I also add to their competence. (Wenger, 2000)
How? Because I'm passionate about helping children become innovators rather than consumers. I challenge the thinking within my community. I am helping to change the way we educate our future. Yes, sure, I'm a tiny piece of a global puzzle, but I'm still playing a part. My strengths lie in digital and collaborative learning and I try to infuse it into nearly all aspects of the curriculum. I feel like my purpose and function is to foster each child's potential but in a way that they can succeed in the future that awaits them. A difficult task in this ever changing world, as we don't even know exactly what we are preparing these students for. I think that is why skills have overtaken knowledge as the currency of education.
Some of my competent counterparts were wary of this new wave of teaching and how it changes learning and I had to accept of course, that 8 and 9 year old's still need to learn to read and write, and so perhaps a balance of old school and new, has its place.
In a small country like New Zealand, with a population of 4 million we are too far removed geographically to most markets, to be able to contribute. On the flipside, that means we can now import what we need, at a cheaper rate than it takes to produce right here in New Zealand.
So where does this leave us? We need our future to be innovators, inventors and designers in the world market. And if we don't change what we think we want our children to learn, we risk falling behind. We need to encourage our children to solve real world problems, and this is not such a bad thing as it makes the learning authentic.
References:
Wenger, E. (2000). Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems. Organization, 7(2), 225-246.http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/135050840072002
Curiosity is the value missing in so many peoples lives. With curiosity comes innovation and challenge. Suggest educators drive curiosity as a conversation with students.
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