Contemporary Teacher Leadership 102098

Individual Critical Reflection by Rachel Foster 17439190

The aim of our group was to develop a project based learning program that
would showcase how a community of practice could achieve improvements in
school culture through developing personal and social capabilities. Ultimately
our goal was to create a partnership between Auburn Girls High School and a
local Primary School to improve female participation in STEM subjects which
would ultimately increase student wellbeing through peer support facilitated
through project based learning. In theory our idea seemed simple, easy to
understand and implement however over the course of the project our ideas
seemed somewhat advantageous and needed some serious consideration and
time planning. Our team of passionate and committed pre service teachers
ventured on this path because we believe we could make a positive impact on
these students lives at Auburn Girls High School and give them an avenue to
explore that seemed somewhat left field for ethnically diverse girls. As a result I
believe we created a program that could develop personal and social capabilities
empowering women to explore all avenues of interest to them and create strong
foundations of personal and social growth.

The Program and Developing Social and Personal Capabilities

The context and background of our project stems from the fact that Auburn Girls
High School currently runs a successful STEM Robotics program which in turn
has led to a rapid intake of STEM subjects being implemented generally
throughout the school. The idea of our project was to build personal and social
capabilities through a community of practice sought to capitalize upon the
enthusiasm for STEM by using a project based learning program. This program
would help the students to develop their knowledge of robotics which being able
to teach what they had learned to other students, in doing so provide the
students with a wide range of beneficial skills, which already linked to other
programs within the school itself such as peer support.
Using a project based learning approach allowed us to design a program that
encompassed a wide variety of skills such as literacy, numeracy, collaboration,
communication and personal and social capabilities; this is evident through the
idea that once the students created their robots they would then share their
knowledge and expertise with students from the local primary school thus
allowing them to autonomously utilise their new skills and interests. In total I
believe the program our team created provided sound and influential tools for
not only the students undertaking the project but also the school to expand on
successful school wide initiatives.

Community of Practice and Teacher Leadership

Our team consisted of six pre service teachers who are passionate and dedicated
to making a difference in our students lives not only academically but also
socially and personally. Throughout the process we maintained strong
communication between each other sharing our ideas on not only the project
itself but also how it would be implemented and how it would in fact meet our
high criteria of success. Our team enjoyed the idea of designed a project that not
only allowed us to come together as a community of teachers but provided the
students to come together and work as a school community. Paul Rooney 2013
communicates the idea that “an effective school is one where strong connections
exist between the school’s structure, symbols and culture allowing them to
function more holistically and consistently across the institution” (pg. 13). This
way of thinking provided the foundation of our community of practice, we
together as a team created a program that encompassed not only the school
community but also integrated the local community outreaching to others to
share our culture and ideology within the school and showcase the importance
the school places on developing students social and personal capabilities
through STEM project (Klein, E., Taylor, M., Onore, C., Strom, K., & Abrams, L,
2015, pg.44).
Furthermore we came to understand through this process that working
collaboratively as a team paved way for change within the school itself not only
across individual classrooms but also through our grade levels of students; we
came to understand that throughout this process teacher leaders contribute
accumulatively to system-wide change (Boylan, M, 2016, pg. 66). Moreover our
ideas on teacher leadership inherently reflected throughout our project as we
utilised the idea that “the means by which multiple individuals enact
instructional leadership through mentoring peers and providing professional
development” (Lee, M, Hallinger, P and Walker, A, pg.671) it became obvious that
just installing a STEM project within the school was not the most beneficial for
the students we wanted them to build social and personal capabilities that they
could then use which is why we chose to incorporate the local primary school
and implement a mentoring process of the project so that they students could
then places their skills into action. But taking our ideas on teacher leadership
and implementing them throughout the project I believe strengthened our
community of practice.

Our team focused on improving social and personal capabilities at Auburn Girls
High School, however over the course of the project I believe we demonstrated
and appreciated the ideas on teacher leadership we had come to learn. For
instance by all striving to be present members of the group, bringing authentic
ideas and opinions and taking responsibility over our task gave us the
community of practice we aimed to instill at Auburn Girls High School. We
created team that reflectively understood the importance of maintaining
dialogue, developing relationships between the learner and the material being
studying and lastly gaining mutual respect for not only each other but the also
the project we were designing (Starratt, R, 2005, pg. 403). Lastly we also
successfully implemented different leadership roles within the group, each
individual had their own space and freedom to undertake a certain part of the
project but we all came together to implement and design the project this
process of distributing leadership improve our teams collaboration and
influence over the course of the project and allowed us to more effectively work
together as a team which as a result created a whole school project that would
have considerable benefits for its students and school culture (Lee, M, Hallinger,
P and Walker, A, pg. 671). Upon reflection I believe that as a team we created a
community of practice that not only successfully worked together to create a
program that developed social and personal capabilities of the students but also
demonstrated to us the skills needed and ideas to work effectively together as
teacher leaders to make change within a school environment.
References:

Boylan, M. (2013). Deepening system leadership. Educational Management

Administration & Leadership, 44(1), 57-72. doi: 10.1177/1741143213501314

Klein, E., Taylor, M., Onore, C., Strom, K., & Abrams, L, (2013) Finding a third
space in teacher education: creating an urban teacher residency. Teaching
Education, 24(1), 27-57. doi: 10.1080/10476210.2012.711305

Lee, M., Hallinger, P., & Walker, A. (2012). A Distributed Perspective on

Instructional Leadership in International Baccalaureate (IB) Schools. Educational
Administration Quarterly, 48(4), 664-698. doi: 10.1177/0013161x11436271

Rooney, P. (2017). A cultural assets model for school effectiveness. Cambridge

Journal of Education, 1-15. doi: 10.1.1080/0305764x.2017.1356266

Starratt, R. (2005). Cultivating the moral character of learning and teaching: a

neglected dimension of educational leadership. School Leadership &
Management, 25(4), 399-411. doi: 10.1080/13634230500197272

Link to Group Presentation: