REFLECTIVE PORTFOLIO-Community Of Practice Activity 1

Activity 1 Week 25
COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE



                                 

Kia ora my name is Vera Cheffers I have made a blog to reflect on my teaching and community practise and share with others.  I am studying with Mindlab Unitec Postgraduate Cert. in Digital and Collaborative Studies. This is one of my assignments to make a blog-reflective journal/portfolio.

For this first activity, I will also be writing about the community of practise, where I am working.

I am currently a playgroup facilitator in Whakatane New Zealand. I enjoy teaching, meeting people. I have a range of interests and hobbies. I particularly enjoy art and craft, photography, nature travel, dance and music. I have a diverse cultural background, my mum is Maori my Dad is from Devon and Cornwall, England. 

Most of many successful years of teaching practise have been in the primary school sector as a classroom teacher.  I have had many different roles. e.g. principal release and special needs teacher, Foundation Stage Coordinator etc. I have taught at schools in New Zealand and in London, U.K. I trained as a teacher in the 1980s at Palmerston North Teachers Training College and Massey University, New Zealand.

Learning to be a teacher is an on-going journey hence this blog.

I am reflecting on my teaching practice everyday and use different methods to achieve this. e.g. make observations, mental notes, written records, blogging, discuss with other colleagues and the children, appraisal goals and matching against the New Zealand 12 criteria with the Education Council, courses to improve my teaching methods and ideas

According to our class notes I want to define what reflective practice and community practise is in this context.

REFLECTIVE PRACTISE:"What is reflective practice?
Reflecting on practice is an active learning process whereby practice is analysed in its applied context. This is the point where theory and practice meet and are refined and developed. This reflective practice is underpinned by the notion of reflection-on-action, and continual learning for improved outcomes." Week 25 Class Notes Mindlab

It is important that teaching practise is reflective to make it more effective, not make assumptions and it is a powerful method for transforming and improving practise

Zeichner and Liston’s (cited in Finlay, 2008, p.4) mention five levels of reflection:

1. "Rapid reflection - immediate, ongoing and automatic action by the teacher.
2. Repair – in which a thoughtful teacher makes decisions to alter their behaviour in response to students’ cues.
3. Review – when a teacher thinks about, discusses or writes about some element of their teaching.
4. Research – when a teacher engages in more systematic and sustained thinking over time, perhaps by collecting data or reading research.
5. Retheorizing and reformulating – the process by which a teacher critically examines their own practice and theories in the light of academic theories.”

COMMUNITY PRACTISE:

"Wenger first coined the concept of “communities of practice”, which are defined as “groups of people who share a concern or a passion or about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interaction on an ongoing basis” (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002, p.4). A community of practice differs from other group types in terms of learning and knowledge and practice sharing rather than management objectives. In the school context, this occurs through informal learning via daily conversations, lesson reflections and other exchanges (Jurasaite-Harbison & Rex, 2010). A community of practice is defined by three distinct elements: joint               enterprise, mutual engagement and shared repertoire (Wenger, 2000).

• Joint enterprise: is a shared domain which is the “collectively developed understanding of what the community is about”.
• Mutual engagement: within the community, the members engage through interactions, building mutual trust in the relationships.
• Shared repertoire: is “the communal resources” that the community of practice produce (Wenger, 2000, p.229)

On the Wenger-Trayner website, the three elements have been termed as domain, community and practice, respectively." (Mind Lab Class Notes Week 25)

The community where I work is an organisation called Eastbay REAP Rural Education Activities Programme Whakatane.  This includes, work colleagues, the families, whanau and the tamariki, that I teach and tautoko. The supported playgroup is for children from 0-5yrs old. The area that REAP cover as a community is as far as Maketu, to Waimana, Murupara, Opotiki to Omaio.

As a community domain we collectively support, provide a service and educational programmes, designed together to suit the needs of the families and communities within this region.  For example, with education activities, transitioning of children into schools, awareness of improving literacy and mathematical skills, autonomy, independence in their own towns, life skills and bringing people together. Other support contacts include HIPPY Home Interaction Programme for Parents and Youngsters, Safe Kawerau Kids Injuiry Prevention Project (SKIPP), Strategies for Kids Information for Parents (SKIP)

There are other REAP organisations in New Zealand at our office in Whakatane, we have at the Management level-CEO, various coordinators of the departments for ECE, Primary and Community adult education. Finance team, Literacy Coodinator, ICT Technician, Receptionists, families in rural areas and all the different people who use the REAP building to hold courses and workshops.  There are also offices in Opotiki and Kawerau.

We are very connected to the various communities we serve and as the new playgroup facilitator my main role has been working alongside the Early Childhood team in this organisation, promoting our new supported playgroup to bring mums, carers and the children together, providing a play based programme following the New Zealand Early Childhood Curriculum.

I have called my reflective portfolio Mauri Ora  Wellbeing.  I think this embraces all of what I believe the future focused learning aims to achieve and that technology is part of the times that we are living with, if used in harmony and respectfully.

So happy blogging.


References:
Finlay, L. (2009). Reflecting on reflective practice. PBPL. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/files/opencetl/file…

Wenger, E.(2000).Communities of practice and social learning systems.Organization,7(2), 225-246 (Link to the article in Unitec Library).