Thursday, December 8, 2016

Week 5 - Leadership Growth Mindset

Reflection:Reflect on how you think a growth mindset could affect the change initiative you investigate in your LEADERSHIP 1 assessment.
I would love to use growth mindset more in my classroom. It has always been something that I have been interested in implementing in the classroom but have never had the time before. I also didnt relise how important this was to install in the children as they perservere.

This will be an important part of my assignment as this is something that I would like to plan in the future

especially in my senio classroom where children need to keep perservering through the big change in workload.

Notes:MindsetsMindsets are beliefs; how you think about yourself, your intelligence and talents, what it is you can and cannot do. Ultimately, this affects how you perceive other people and their abilities, talents and capabilities, what they are and are not capable of.
In class we will begin by completing a quiz to explore your own mindset

IntelligenceIn the session we will address the question of whether Intelligence is innate and, therefore, cannot be developed beyond what you are born with. Claxton (2008) notes that "intelligence [has] become defined as the kind of mind that responds most readily to the peculiar demands of school."

Dweck's Theory of intelligence
Dweck (2006) descried two different views of intelligence. The previous view is that there is a fixed intelligence that can be measured using an IQ Test. No matter how much you learn, or how hard you work, your intelligence stays the same. Her view of intelligence is that the brain is malleable: it is like a muscle that can get stronger and work better as you learn and stretch yourself. Over time, you can get smarter. This leads to two contrasting views of mindset, fixed and growth:

Fixed MindsetPeople with a Fixed Mindset believe that the abilities and capabilities they have are fixed traits. Their intelligence is set, they are talented at certain things and not others. They believe that it is whether or not someone is talented at something is what allows them to be successful at something or not. Intelligence is fixed and can be measured.

Growth Mindset
People with a Growth Mindset believe that their intelligence, and abilities can be developed and grow. Through hard work, dedication and time, people can learn new talents, learn new things and become more intelligent. Teaching a growth mindset encourages learning, develops relationships and self efficacy. The brain is malleable, it can grow, stretch and expand. The harder you work, the more you can learn.

Ways to Develop a Growth Mindset
By changing the language we use. The power of 'not yet' in the classroom. "I have not learnt this yet" shows a growth mindset, rather than saying "I can't do this", or "I failed" which shows a fixed mindset. Changing the way we talk in the classroom, 'What we are learning' rather than 'Here is the work to do'. What is it that we value? Do we value the end product or the learning process? (Dweck, 2006)

Week 5 - Digital Collaboration Computational Thinking

Reflection:Reflect how and why would you use Computational Thinking in your classroom?
Computational thinking is all about solving problems and would be excellent when teaching coding. Students need to think about how computers actually work and why things work like they do. This fits into geometry extremely well as alot of the computational thinking aligns with direction and position. I would include computational thinking as part of my problem solving in maths.

Notes:
Computational Thinking

Computational Thinking is a problem solving process. It is a fundamental skill for everyone, and involves solving problems, designing solutions and systems to solve open ended problems based on multiple variables. We illustrate the concept in this week's session with the following quotes:

“Everyone should learn how to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think.” (Steve Jobs, cited in Sen, 1995)

"Computational thinking is a way humans solve problems; it is not trying to get humans to think like computers." (Wing, 2006)

“The impact of computing extends far beyond science, however, affecting all aspects of our lives. To flourish in today's world, everyone needs computational thinking.” (Carnegie Mellon University, n.d.)

Computational Thinking Means... Solving problems
Applying abstraction and decomposition
Thinking algorithmically - what’s the process?
Thinking conceptually - what’s the model?
Understanding how things repeat and scale
Dealing with errors
...among other things (depends who you read)

Pair Programming
Pair programming is a common technique in agile software development. One member of the pair is the ‘driver’ (does the typing, and focuses on tactics) while the other is the ‘navigator’ (can review and suggest, and focuses on strategy). When pair programming you should change your roles within the pair on a regular basis, and also change your partner on a regular basis.

Week 3 - Digital Collaboration Virtual and Augmented reality

Reflection: Consider ways that you may be able to use Virtual or Augmented Reality in your classroom or school? What would it add? How would it change the learning?
Augmented and virtual reality seems like a highly motivated way to get children hooked into their learning. The first of these is when they do their self portraits at the beginning of the year they can use Aurasma to include a video about themselves as well. Also when researching a topic they can go on a virtual tour of the place they are studying without actually going there.

Notes: To thrive in today’s innovation-driven economy, workers need a different mix of skills than in the past. In addition to foundational skills like literacy and numeracy, they need competencies like collaboration, creativity and problem-solving, and character qualities like persistence, curiosity and initiative.

Numerous innovations in the education technology space are beginning to show potential in improving education and helping address skills gaps. To help lower the cost and improve the quality of education,education technology is being used to:
• Find creative solutions to fundamental challenges in many countries, such as a lack of well-trained teachers and broadly accessible technology infrastructure
• Make education available to a broader audience at a much lower cost or provide higher quality instruction at the same price
• Enable easier scaling up of promising models within local markets and the transfer of best practices across markets in ways that can be sustained over the long term
• Gain insight into how and what students learn in real time by taking advantage of the greater variety, volume and velocity of data
• Increase teacher productivity, freeing up valuable time from tasks such as grading and testing,which can be used for differentiated teaching of competencies and character qualities

but when educators add education technology to the mix of potential solutions, we find they are most effective if applied within an integrated instructional system known as the closed loop. As in engineering or manufacturing, the closed loop refers to a system that requires an integrated and connected set of steps to produce results. In the educational world,the closed-loop instructional system works similarly.At the classroom level of the closed loop, educators create learning objectives, develop curricula and instructional strategies, deliver instruction, embed ongoing assessments, provide appropriate interventions based on student needs and track outcomes and learning. All these efforts must be linked together as well as aligned with the goal of developing 21st-century skills.

When education technologies are layered throughout the closed loop, we argue that technology-based solutions such as the sample profiled here have the potential to enable teachers, schools, school networks and countries to scale up solutions in ways not possible before and potentially to deliver better outcomes and learning.

Increasingly, best-in-class curricula aim to teach multiple skills at the same time. For example, teachers might use word problems to teach multiplication,directing students to think critically and solve problems while developing both literacy and numeracy skills.Education technology has the potential to become an option for teachers in delivering this combination of foundational literacies, competencies and character qualities.

Disruptive Technologies
"Disruptive technologies typically demonstrate a rapid rate of change in capabilities in terms of price / performance relative to substitutes and alternative approaches, or they experience breakthroughs that drive accelerated rates of change” (Manyika, et al. 2013).

"The more overdue a disruption is, the more sudden it is when it finally occurs, and the more off-guard the incumbents are caught"...“eliminating the bottom 99% of workers in [the teaching] professions” (Gade, 2014)

One of the world's largest...
...taxi companies owns no taxis (Uber)
...accommodation providers owns no real estate (AirBnB)
...phone companies owns no telecom infrastructure (Skype)
...retailers has no inventory (Alibaba)
...movie houses owns no cinemas or physical stores (Netflix)
...media companies owns no content (Facebook)
...software vendors doesn’t write the apps (Apple / Google)


Which careers are a safe bet?In 2015 the BBC set up a web page entitled "Will a robot take your job?" http://tinyurl.com/willarobottakeyourjob

WHAT THE EXPERTS THINK ABOUT JOB CREATION AND DESTRUCTION [Excerpt from the PDF document online]
The speed of technological and social change is increasing. This raises the divisive question: could the costs of change outweigh the benefits for extended periods? In a 2014 survey of 1,896 experts conducted in the US, around half envision a future where robots and digital agents displace significant numbers of blue and white collar jobs. The other half expect that technology will create more jobs than it displaces. The survey identified key themes with reasons to be hopeful and reasons to be concerned:

REASONS TO BE HOPEFUL
• While advances in technology may displace certain types of jobs, historically they have also resulted in net job increases
We adapt to changes by inventing entirely new types of work, and by taking advantage of uniquely human capabilities • Technology will continue to free us from day-to-day drudgery, and allow us to define our relationship with ‘work’ in a more positive and socially beneficial way
• Ultimately, as a society we control our own destiny through the choices we make.

REASONS TO BE CONCERNEDSo far automation has impacted most on blue-collar employment. However, the coming wave of innovation threatens to upend white-collar work as well • Certain highly skilled workers will prosper in this new environment but far more may be displaced into lower paying service industry jobs at best, or permanent unemployment at worst
Many educational systems may not be adequately preparing us for the work of the future, and some political and economic institutions appear to be poorly equipped to adjust.

The Reality ContinuumFrom Milgram, Takemura, Utsumi & Kishino (1994). Between the two extremes of the real environment and a completely virtual one, the continuum goes from overlaying reality with a few additional elements on the left, to the occasional introduction of real elements into a digital environment (e.g. the user’s hand) on the right

Virtual Reality Creates immersive, computer generated environments which replaces the real world
The user is completely immersed in an artificial world and cut off from the real world
Senses are mediated by the virtual world
Popular VR headsets include Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard. Google Expeditions, which you can use with Cardboard, is a virtual reality teaching tool that lets you lead or join immersive virtual trips all over the world — get up close with historical landmarks, dive underwater with sharks, even visit outer space! It was released free to the public on 27 June 2016 but is not totally free, especially for the whole class and with full features. Google Tilt Brush is another recent VR application that supports the creation of 3D virtual art..
Augmented Reality Closer to the real world
Adds graphics, sounds and smells to the natural world as it exists
User can interact with the real world, and at the same time can see both, the real and the virtual co-existing
User is not cut off from reality
Sense of presence in real world is maintained

Gada, K. (2014). The Education Disruption : 2015, Retrieved from http://www.singularity2050.com/2014/07/the-educati...Manyika, M. et al. (2013). Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy. McKinsey & Company.Milgram, P., Takemura, H., Utsumi,A. & Kishino, F. (1994). Augmented Reality: A class of displays on the reality-virtuality continuum. In Proceedings SPIE 2351, 282-292.

Week 3 - Leadership Implementing Technology Innovation in the Classroom

Reflections:Reflect on how SAMR and/or TPACK model might help you in planning your DCL1 assessment
I think I will use the SAMR model R model when planning my assignment as this is something I have seen before and am more confident with.

This model will help me think about how I am using technology in the classroom and if it i just a substitute or aslight improvement. What I am really aiming for is to have it as a transformational tool where the children are able to share their ideas with others and create something for aspecific audience. At the moment I feel Iam just at the Augmentation stage and am aiming to imporve this Notes:

SAMR




The SAMR model was developed by Ruben Puentedura and disseminated through Apple education initiatives. It is a very simple layered model of ways that technology can be integrated into teaching and learning. For further information see Puentedura's Weblog and the TKI page on Using the SAMR model. Mark Anderson provides a very similar 4 layer model that focuses more on teacher confidence in delivering digital learning





TPACKTechnological Pedagogical Content Knowledge. TPACK is a framework developed by Punya Mishra and Matthew Koehler that identifies the knowledge teachers need to teach effectively with technology.The TPACK framework is somewhat more academic that SAMR and extends Shulman’s idea of Pedagogical Content Knowledge.






Digital Technology – Safe and responsible use in schools. A Guide for SchoolsDigital challenges can be broadly categorised as:
• Cybersafety: Involves conduct or behavioural concerns. Examples include cyberbullying, smear campaigns, accessing inappropriate content, creating spoof websites or sexting.
• Cybercrime: Involves illegal activity. Examples include sexual offending, accessing objectionable content or online fraud.
• Cybersecurity: Involves unauthorised access or attacks on a computer system.

In general, preventative approaches that rely on technical or other protections simply do not work. These methods have a role but must be balanced with strategies that promote:
• development of skills and knowledge for safe and responsible use of digital technology
• opportunities for students to be involved in decisions about the management of digital technology at the school
• development of a pro-social culture of digital technology use, and
• cooperation of the whole community in preventing and responding to incidents.

Digital information is different from its physical counterpart in many ways. It can be rapidly duplicated, easily distributed and is able to be stored in multiple locations.These factors mean that it can be hard to control and completely eliminate.

Prevention Preventing incidents involving digital technology is better than having to respond to them. In general, prevention approaches that rely on technical protections, such as content filtering or activity logging, simply do not work. An effective prevention strategy is comprised of activities that are:
• promotional: guiding young people’s learning in the digital world, and• protective: mitigating or buffering risk by protection, support or intervention.1
When things go wrong, the objective is to respond in a way that:
• minimises student distress or harm• maintains student and staff safety i.e. does not make things worse.
There are two guiding principles for responding to incidents that schools need to consider:
• Focus more on the behaviour involved in an incident, and less on the digital technology
• Always act in a way that maintains the integrity of digital devices and the information stored on them.

Week 4 - Digital Collaboration Learning Theories

Notes:

Top Ten Learning Theories for Digital and Collaborative learning 2015


Dr David Parsons, National Postgraduate Director, The Mindlab by Unitec, Auckland, New Zealand


Instrumental conditioning Burrhus Skinner (1904 - 1990)
Behaviour leads to reinforcement
needs rapid feedback and work at own pace
Positive Reinforcement

Connectionism Edward Thorndike (1874 - 1949)
Law of effect: reinforcement increases the strength of a connection, punishment does not change it.

Progressive Education John Dewey (1859 - 1952)Co-operation between school and home
Hands on learning
" Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing this is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results."

Constructivism - social development Lev Vygotsky (1896 - 1934)social learning precedes development
"the teacher must adopt the role of facilitator, not content provider"

Constructivism - Equilibration PiagetEducational environments should provide the opportunity for discovery by students.

Situated Cognition/Learning John Seely -Brown (1940) Allan Collins, Paul DuguidLearning is embedded in the activity, context and culture it was learned.
Learning while interacting with others through shared activities and language
Learning is about performance in situations rather than accumulation of knowledge.
"instead of pouring knowledge into people's heads, you need to help them grind anew a set of eyeglasses so they can see the world in a new way."

Community of Practice Jean Lave and Etienn Wenger (born 1950s)three components
1. domain
2. community
3. practice
Learning is unintentional and situated within authentic activity, context and culture
Learning based on social relationships; co-operation

Olsen, M.& Hergenhahn, B. (2013). An Introduction to Theories of Learning (9th ed.) Boston, Mass: Pearson



Constructionism in 21st Century classrooms (Video)A brief overview, by Margaret Pierciey, of constructionism, as outlined by Seymour Papert and Marina Bers. Covers the 4 basic subconcepts of:
Learning by designing within a community - initiate and design projects which are meaningful or useful to themselves or communities. Taking time to discuss along the way gives opportunities for new thinking. (debugging). Sharing what they have learnt and letting them inquire about what they need to know gives rise to an emergent curriculum. Interact and collaborative - peer mentors
Technological tools for learning
Powerful ideas and wonderful ideas- power of computers in the classroom lies in their potential to assist children in encountering powerful ideas and engaging them with experimenting and testing their ideas.
Learning about learning with technology - documenting and sharing the successes and achievements of a constructionists learning experiences are important 

Collaborative LearningCollaborative learning is a learning process that brings learners together (including the teacher) and enables students to be responsible for their own learning as well as the learning of their peers.
Collaborative learning is aimed at having students fully appreciate the process of building knowledge together and improving learning outcomes by collective knowledge and collective capability.


Dillenbourg (1999) identifies the difference between collaboration and cooperation as defined by a degree in the division of labour. In cooperation, partners split the work, solve sub-tasks individually and then assemble the partial results into the final output. In collaboration, partners do the work 'together' (Dillenbourg, 1999). Similarly, Kozar (2010) uses the analogy of a pot luck dinner where cooperation is defined as the guests bringing separate dishes to contribute to the meal, and collaboration as a messier chaotic process where guests cook together to create the meal, but gain new knowledge or experience from the interaction.

Dillenbourg P. (1999) What do you mean by collaborative learning?. In P. Dillenbourg (Ed) Collaborative-learning: Cognitive and Computational Approaches. Oxford: ElsevierKozar, O. (2010). Towards Better Group Work: Seeing the Difference between Cooperation and Collaboration.English Teaching Forum, 48(2), 16-23.

Learner at the Center of a Networked World
1. Learners need to be at the centre of new learning networks.
2. Every student should have access to learning networks.
3. Learning networks need to be interoperable.
4. All learners should have the literacies necessary to utilize media as well as safeguard themselves in the digital age.
5. Students should have safe and trusted environments for learning


Aspen Institute Task Force on Learning and the Internet, Learner at the Center of a Networked World, Washington, D.C.: The Aspen Institute, June 2014.



Week 4 - Leadership Research-informed teaching

Notes:Research-informed teaching enhances the student experience, improves student learning outcomes and enriches the education experience.
Developing Research Informed Practice Develop a personal commitment to review research to determine what is likely to works best and to determine what ‘best-practice’ models exist.
Encourage your peers to work with you to empower a collective of teachers who collectively participate in research and literature reviews.
Disseminate information and research findings with your students and your peers to raise awareness of research informed practice and decisions in your school.
Encourage your students to be reflective of their actions and decisions so that they learn to self critique and take greater responsibility for their learning outcomes.
Develop a class culture of referring to credible sources of data and let the class develop a sound understanding of how to evaluate data/content soruces.
Be a consumer and promoter of evidence
Pose questions without pre-determined answers or expectations. Identify ways to enhance a commitment to investigation.





Creativity and InnovationAccording to Tucker (2008), there is a relationship between being creative and innovative. Creativity helps coming up with ideas and being innovative means bringing them to life. Hatching ideas is the ‘creative’ part; bringing them to life successfully in the form of a new product or service or management method is what makes a raw idea an innovation.

Warlow (2007) defines the following attributes of an innovator:
Curious; constantly questioning things
Open to new ideas; putting oneself in situations where one can receive stimulation
Dare to be different; being prepared to act against accepted or conventional wisdom and challenge the unchallengeable
Be ready; as innovative ideas can strike at any time, there is a need to capture them before they disappear from the mind
Persistent; time is needed in finding the solutions which are innovative
Collaborative; ideas can be thought of when working with others

The World Economic Forum (2016) in analysing 21st century skills, identified creativity and collaboration as competences, but curiosity is a character quality, as is initiative. To be innovative, we need not only competencies but also character qualities.


Tucker, R. B. (2008). Driving growth through innovation. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.Warlow, R. (2007). Being an innovative entrepreneur. Retrieved April 2, 2010 from http://ezinearticles.com/?Being-an-InnovativeEntre...

Knowledge is adaptive"Early in the 17th century, two astronomers competed to describe the nature of our solar system. Galileo built a telescope and found new planets and moons. Francesco Sizi ridiculed Galileo’s findings. There must be only seven planets, Sizi said. After all, there are seven windows in the head—two nostrils, two ears, two eyes, and a mouth. There are seven known metals. There are seven days in a week, and they are already named after the seven known planets. If we increase the number of planets, he said, the whole system falls apart. Finally, Sizi claimed, these so-called satellites being discovered by Galileo were invisible to the eye. He concluded they must have no influence on the Earth and, therefore, do not exist (National Institute for Literacy, 2010, p. 2)." (as cited in Benseman, 2013. p.15)

Knowledge is adaptive, as Benseman (2013) states "what is self-evident today is tomorrow’s fallacy or tale of ridicule" (p. 15). In sum, the quality of Research informed teaching (RIT) evidence is ensured by accessing peer-reviewed literature "Although the research evidence is rarely clear-cut or irrefutable, it does provide a sturdier platform to base our teaching than the alternatives of old habits and hearsay” (p. 15).

Benseman, J. (2013). Research-Informed Teaching of Adults: A Worthy Alternative to Old Habits and Hearsay?. Unitec ePress. Number 2. Retrieved From http://www.unitec.ac.nz/epress/index.php/research-...


The case for evidence based teachingKrokfors et al. (2011, p. 2) quotes Griffiths (2004) who identified four main ways that research relates to teaching:
1. research-led, where the curriculum content is based on the research interests of Teachers
2. research-oriented, where the process of learning content is seen as important as the content itself and hence, an emphasis on learning inquiry skills
3. research-based, where the curriculum is based on inquiry-based activities rather than acquisition of content
4. research-informed teaching, which consciously draws on systematic inquiry into the teaching and learning process itself.

Although teachers’ responses in their interviews suggested they wanted to be learner-centered, our classroom observations quite clearly showed that instruction was highly teacher-directed. If teachers controlled the classroom, and they intended to be learner-centered, how could a teacher-directed system of instruction result? Our answer harks back to the concept of socialization. We concluded that teachers are so intensely socialized into a teacher-centered form of instructing that they teach in teacher-centered ways, despite intentions to be learner-centered (2001, p. 110)


One possibility is to identify ‘effective teachers’ and study their teaching for indications of what effective teaching involves (see for example, Benseman, 2001; Looney, 2008; Medwell,Wray, Poulson, & Fox, 1999). The challenges of this approach lie in the question of who identifies the effective teachers and the criteria for their selection.

draw on learners’ perspectives on what they see as effective teaching/teachers. These studies survey large samples of learners about what they believe helps them learn most effectively. They can identify particular characteristics (such as the ethnicity or gender of the teacher), their teaching behaviours (such as specific teaching methods) or their learning environment (such as various aspects of logistics in educational settings) that learners identify as helping them learn

Learner-driven studies are particularly useful for showing us what learners value and are therefore probably useful for telling us what factors are likely to increase their participation rates and retention for example, but they also have their limitations. The difficulty with this approach is that learner ratings (typified in smiley-face type evaluation sheets) do not necessarily indicate learner impact in its entirety as measured in other outcome indicators(Scriven, 1994)

The justification for this strategy is usually expressed as ‘common-sense’ or a vague“research tells us that people learn in different ways and they prefer different learning styles” (Apps, 1991, p. 40). However when learning styles research is examined more closely,a quite different picture emerges.

Week 2 - Leadership Key Comptencies

Reflection:
How might teachers’ and students strengths in developing capabilities in thinking, using language, symbols and texts, managing self, relating to others, and participating and contributing, be recognised and celebrated?
Key competencies are always in the back of my mind when teaching and I plan to make sure we celebrate these more by unpacking each key competency and using these as class dojo points in 2017. Rather than just celebrating good behaviour, we will celebrating thinking, participating etc.
This can also be celebrate at home with parents as they also have access to the class dojo and see what they have been doing well in class.
I feel that maybe setting up myself as part of the class I may also be able to model and get the children to notice my own behaviours.

Notes:
Towards Reconceptualising Leadership: The Implications of the Revised New Zealand Curriculum for School Leaders

Wayne Freeth; University of Canterbury,Christchuch,New Zealand
Vanessa de Oliveria Andreotti; University of Oulu, Finland
- making a distinction between knowledge conceptualised as a noun and a verb.
- knowledge conceptualised as a verb is something we do something with, rather than something we have; it is linked with performativity rather than truth, and it is more like an ‘energy’ than building blocks that can be accumulated.
- knowledge conceptualised as a noun tends to enable autocratic and bureaucratic styles of leadership, while knowledge conceptualised as a verb may enable democratic,distributed and transformational styles of leadership, which are necessary for the effective implementation of the NZC, particularly in terms of the principles of inclusion and community participation in the co-construction and the co-ownership of the curriculum.
- Another important aspect of the NZC that is emphasised by the conceptualisation of knowledge as a verb is the role of teachers as leaders in the construction of the curriculum and in responding to the needs of diverse students.
- teacher leadership is different from leadership associated with administrative or managerial roles, as it moves away from top-down, hierarchical reward/punish (transactional) practices towards practices of shared decision making,teamwork and community building (Urbansky & Nickolaou, 1997; Wynne, 2001).

become socially conscious and politically involved

• mentor new teachers
• become more involved at universities in the preparation of pre-service teachers
• are risk-takers who participate in school decisions. (Wynne, 2001, pp. 2–3)

Summary of characteristics of principals who promote teacher leadership
- Communicate a clear strategic intent
- model futuristic thinking; provide a safe environment for exploration and experimentation; show the linking of visioning to knowledge creation
- Incorporate the aspirations and ideas of others
- demonstrate confidence in teachers’ professional capabilities; help teachers clarify their personal values; 
- explore the alignment between strategic and educational values
- Pose difficult-to-answer questions.
- heighten the level of professional dialogue about educational practices; encourage individual commitment from alienated teachers
- Make space for individual innovation
- Create opportunities for individual expression; encourage identification of – and confrontation of institutional barriers
- Know when to step back demonstrate trust; illuminate how power can and should be distributed; acknowledge the importance of the individual professional; attest to the central place of teaching in school decision-making
- Create opportunities out of perceived difficulties demonstrate ways in which knowledge may be created; encourage thinking outside the box
- Build on achievements to create a culture of success.
- model positive problem solving; create an ethos of teachers as guardians of the school culture; demonstrate that from little acorns, big oak trees can grow


Knowledge as a noun or as a verb?If ‘knowledge as a noun’ is represented by the colour red (and the metaphor of milk) and ‘knowledge as a verb’ is represented by the colour yellow (and the metaphor of weaving), which colour would you paint each statement?
Ideas about societySociety is something to be fixed into onenormative order, which creates the desire forcertainty, consensus and harmony (one lens)Society is complex, multiple and always changing: ideas of what is real and ideal are constructed by different communities(multiple lenses)

Ideas about truthAnswers are always partial, provisional and context dependent
Answers are right or wrong independent of context

Ideas about difference
Consensus (elimination of difference) is the only desirable outcome of conversations and clashes of perspectives (conflict) need to be ‘resolved’Consensus is desirable in certain contexts,not in others; the capacity to live with and learn from dissensus is a ‘key competency’ which requires seeing conflict as an opportunity for learning

Ideas about identitiesIdentities are fixed and based on cumulative(innate or learned) attributes related to culture/nationality or ethnicityIdentities are socially ‘constructed’ and context dependent, and therefore multiple and open to reconstruction and negotiation (fluid)

Ideas about languageLanguage creates our ‘realities’ and the meaning of words is constructed in contextLanguage describes reality objectively and the right meaning of words is defined bygood dictionaries

Ideas about teacher educationTeacher education is about preparing students to reproduce existing ‘best practices’Teacher education is about preparing students to respond to the changing needs of diverse learners and societies (for ‘next practices’)

While distributed leadership could bring about more cohesive and collaborative curriculum development,existing traditional and hierarchical modes of leadership (supported by accountability processes) create a strong constraint. In addition, teachers are often overloaded. many resisted deeper, philosophical thinking in relation to the meaning of curriculum and its contested nature in schooling contexts (McGee, 1997).