Activity 1: My practice within the community

When thinking about our communities of practice, teachers are part of many communities - their school, Kahui Ako,Manaiakalani Outreach Programme and online communities.  But when considering the three elements of a community of practice as defined by Wenger (2000) we need to look more closely at these.  

Our School

In our school I am a leader who works with teachers to build relationships, shared understandings and collaborative expertise. As part of school, we have shared achievement challenges and have developed action plans to meet these challenges.  Within our weekly meetings, teachers are expected to share what’s working well and what they are finding challenging.  Similarly, we develop shared expectations of our learning and what achievement looks like throughout our school.   From this we are distributing our expertise throughout our team. In addition, we have a shared site so resources are available for all the team.    However, this implies that all the team have the same vested interest on all tamariki.  As Wenger (2015)  states that it takes time and constant communication to support this.  Moreover, I believe that this is a challenge as staff change, the community of practice changes.  Therefore, reviewing expectations and evaluating our belief are essential to keep the community of practice dynamic and reflective of its members.

Our Cluster - Kahui Ako and Manaiakalani Outreach Programme

Currently, I am part of two school clusters: a Kahui Ako and Manaiakalani Outreach Programme.  Members of these clusters have a commitment to our shared vision and action plan, we worked together to build relationships and understandings, and have a shared resource bank through a blog for our Kahui Ako and a website for Manaiakalani Outreach Programme.   Together we take part in professional learning through termly workshops,  staff meetings and moderation.  In addition, we have facilitators working with individuals, lead teachers and smaller schools to support the enhance our collective expertise.    However,  as we are cluster of 13 schools both large and small and across primary and secondary, it can difficult to ensure that all the members of the team feel that connectedness our vision and feel that their learning needs are being meet. To extend this further, we as a cluster are only in the initial stages of building environments where teachers from different contexts are able to learn, support and challenge each other's’ thinking.   Even though school leaders are working effectively, it’s a newer concept for schools across the cluster to create a repertoire of resources.  Our Kahui Ako is beginning to develop sites to support Te Reo Maori learner.  As a school learner, I have utilised this resource to lead meetings for my team.  As we develop as a community of practice over a sustained period of time, we will continue to build on our relationships and more teachers will feel confident to work effectively  across schools.      

Online Community

Currently, I’m part of a variety of online communities - twitter, facebook, google+.   Our mindlab community has a shared domain of interest as learners within our community, there are activity discussions and resources shared. Presently, in my twitter communities I’m an active lurker who retweets articles that inspire or interest me.   Nevertheless, I believe that the lines within our domain of interests are murky within twitter.  To some extent, we all have the interests of learners at the centre,  some of the members are actively engaging in dialogue and are actively sharing practice.  Upon reflection, online communities are a newer way to engage and share with likeminded people, and it’s outside of my comfort zone to be an active member of an online community.  

References

Wenger, E.(2000). Communities of practice and social learning systems. Organization,7(2), 225-246.

Wenger, E. (2015). Introduction to communities of practice. A brief overview of the concept and its use.