102098 Contemporary Teacher Leadership Assessment 2

Assessment 2 - Part One: Group Video Presentation

YouTube URL Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlW80_pjjCM

(Uploaded on the 3rd November 2019)

Group: 15B Tuesday 5pm
Tutor: Paul Rooney

Assessment 2 - Part Two: Individual Critical Reflection

The following critical reflection outlines my interpretation and understanding of this
unit and the roles we will undertake as teachers. The focus will be on group collaboration
and the importance of change, with both negative and positive aspects discussed.
References will be implemented to relevant literature which was accessed throughout the
unit and assessment completion, and the impact made on my understanding of being an
agent of change, a teacher.
The group aimed to design, develop and produce a project-based learning program
that would focus on developing students’ sustainability knowledge and practices through a
whole school approach. This would have a proximity effect, and act on the teachers and
community around the students, spreading the benefits of sustainable practices. A main
point that the group members of our team took from this unit was the need for change and
adaptation to a changing teaching profession and the world outside the classroom. I believe
that teachers need to become agents of change and instil this into their students, as the
world around us is for ever changing, and we must adapt and think ahead, and the way to
do this to break the norms of society, and lead into a future of higher education and
innovation. Supporting this, Vandeyar (2017) stated that:
“We tend to think that the norms we follow represent the 'natural' way human
beings do things. Those who behave otherwise are judged morally wrong. Beliefs are
developed during the early stages of life and determine our ideas about the world.”
I believe this is the main issue with our society, that not many people want to take
the path untravelled, not because it can be harder, but due to the society we live in today
being judgmental, as to think and do outside the norm is seen by others as unusual and
weird. It was Schraw & Olafson (2002) who stated the unlike knowledge, beliefs tend to be
resistant to change, but are linked and a way to change one’s beliefs is too add to their
knowledge.
According to Nespor (1987), knowledge can vary according to additional information
and diverse expectations whereas beliefs tend to maintain their assumptions unless there is
a shift due to new knowledge forcing a reinterpretation of one’s understanding. In support
of this, Garibaldi (1992) states within modern society, students’ and teachers’ beliefs about

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the world around them, have been influenced by information provided by just the face of
society.
My interpretation of this information became the driver to this project, and that we
must adapt and change as teachers, become agents of change, set an example and influence
our students to find their own path by providing education and skills that go beyond the
classroom. A way to do this is to actually take the classroom beyond the confines of the
physical school classrooms. This is one of many reasons why we as a group chose to cover
the area of sustainability, as this is an important aspect of the world we live in, which not
many people take seriously.
The idea to choose sustainability for the group came about when I spoke of a
brainstorm lesson I had with a year 12 D&T (Design and Technology) class in my first
placement at the end of 2018. I had noticed every lunch time, every free period a certain
teacher had available in the school, they would go around the school grounds picking up
cans and bottles for the ‘Return & Earn’ scheme, and pickup other litter. This made me think
if there was a way to stop or reduce this issue. I introduced this question to the class and
gave them 15 minutes to come up with some solutions and work together. After the 15
minutes was up, they spoke about what they come up with, and had drawn some good
diagrams on the board. All the ideas were good but had the same basic thought; signs,
warnings and fines. Only one student thought of making the bins more fun. This is when and
idea clicked on using the bins as voting machines for questions, lunch music choices, where
to spend the ‘Return & Earn’ money on in the school etc. This turned into a week long PBL
project and the results were quite impressive, and changed students understanding and
beliefs of sustainability. But what I did not know until that week had ended, some students
were also learning in chemistry about why it is not such an easy task recycling plastic bottles
and cans.
This is what inspired me and the team to use sustainability as the topic choice for our
group project, and was the driving force for the project proposal. For sustainability is
emphasised as a priority for study by the Australian Curriculum, which relates and connects
relevant aspects of sustainability practices across learning areas and subjects (Australian
Curriculum, 2019). A bonus is the topic is capable of being used in a cross-curriculum style of
learning for the students, and has no limitations for which subject areas can cover it. We
concluded that sustainability was the topic of choice as it offered cross-curriculum
possibilities with teaching students, and will make the learning of this topic more engaging
and relevant to students when it is covered across multiple subjects at once. Beane (1995)
supported this, stating that students are stimulated to incorporate learning events into
their patterns of knowledge and meaning when cross curriculum learning is implemented,
expanding and deepening their world understanding and of themselves. There is an
additional motivation for schools and the education sector to undertake significant cross-
curricular integration, allowing the process of teaching to be conducted more easily and
efficient. This is due to the fact that integrating knowledge through cross-curriculum
execution means that the necessity to reteach knowledge already learnt elsewhere in the
school by students is no longer required.

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As teachers, I believe that we must start communicating with each other, making
our profession, duty and our lives less demanding. I am not saying that teachers need to
do less work, quite the contrary, we need to free up time and be more efficient to lead
and make significant changes for an improved education for our students and future
students. Any fact can be looked up by students these days on their mobile phones, and
students do not need a teacher to learn facts, but they do need a teacher to develop the
skills to use those facts. Knowledge and skill go hand-in-hand and are not interchangeable.

Teachers should be capable of finding and implementing links between different

curriculum areas. If we are teaching sustainability in Science for improving ways of
recycling bottles, reference the history of how it has been done thus far (History),
reference the health and safety aspects (Personal Development & Health), reference a
new design for a bin to improve recycling habits of people (Design and Technology),
reference prototyping of said bin (Industrial Metal and Wood), reference the statistics of
recycled bottles (Mathematics). We as teachers should make these links clear to all
students.

To be agents of change, lead and support cross-curricular teaching and learning,

we as teachers must share; like the teams shared skills and knowledge in this unit.
Teachers need to share what we teach, observe how each of us teach and what
techniques we implement, including recognising the issue of repetition of learning for
students’ and teachers’ benefit. As students of teaching, we know how to think like
students more than teachers. Teachers who have been in the profession for years have
forgotten what it is like to be an actual student. We must think like a student when we are
planning with other faculties of the school what we are going to teach. For any teacher, a
discipline issue waiting to happen is a student who is bored. Most of us would be bored if
four different teachers educate us on the same thing in different subjects each year. As
teachers we must change, innovate, lead and most importantly, communicate and share
with one another.

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References:

Australian Curriculum. (2019) Sustainability. Retrieved

fromhttps://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/cross-
curriculumpriorities/sustainability/
Beane, J., A. (1995). Curriculum Integration and the Disciplines of Knowledge. Phi Delta
Kappan, 76(8), 616-622.
Garibaldi, A. (1992). Preparing teachers for culturally diverse classrooms. In M. E. Dilworth
(Ed.), Diversity in teacher education: New expectations (pp. 23-39). San Francisco,
CA: Jossey Bass.
Nespor, J. (1987). The role of beliefs in the practice of teaching. Journal of Curriculum
Studies, 19(4), 317-28.
Schraw, G., & Olafson, L. (2002). Teachers' epistemological worldviews and educational
practices. Issues in Education, 8(2). Retrieved from
http://web7.epnet.com.ezproxy.uws.edu.au/citation.asp?
Vandeyar, S. (2017). The Teacher as an Agent of Meaningful Educational Change. Kuram Ve
Uygulamada Egitim Bilimleri, 17(2), 373-393.