Comments for Shifting to 21st Century Thinking

Comment on Traces… (post-workshop reflections part 1) by Mary

Mary — Wed, 09 May 2012 03:40:52 +0000

Aah. Easy questions first, huh? =O I guess in terms of a definition, I think Etienne Wenger’s criteria are hard to go past…
1)a group or network of people with an identity defined by a shared domain of interest
2)Members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other.
3) Members develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems over time and sustained interaction.
(http://www.ewenger.com/theory/)

As for the “practice” – well, I guess teh “Interest” that wouldmake us a “Community of Interest” is the Shifting Thinking kaupapa – however we chose to define that.
Which I guess means that the “Practice” for a CoP would be the implementation or enactment of that kaupapa. Which would presumably be mostly in the workplace, but may also involve our personal development in other arenas.
I’ve been part of several online CoPs. One was as an online student / tutor, so the resource base and the shared practice was tied in with the course content – a combination of “student” practice and “professional educator” practice. In that case the artifacts we created included assessment activities which we peer reviewed, resources that we posted for others to access, and feedback we provided for each other. The threaded discussion facility (forums) were a big part of that.

Another experience was as part of a widely distributed team co-authoring a book. Again, similar parameters I guess.

And tehre have been a couple of others along similar lines – and although I am no longer actively involved in them, I retain some contacts from each of them as well as the embedded kaupapa in my continuing practice.

So, what might a “Shifting Thinking” CoP look like for us?
Depends a bit on the capabilities of your existing platform, I suppose. But some of the things that really make it work for me are
- Discussion forums, including the ability to sort by topic and start new ones / archive old ones
- shared ownership / co-construction
- clear protocols about purpose and nettiquette
- a repository for uploading resources and/or links
some blog-type functions for those who want to use them, or the capacity to link to existing ones.
The ability to link back to other platforms e.g. FB, Twitter, LinkedIn.

How does that sound for starters?

Comment on Traces… (post-workshop reflections part 1) by Rachel Bolstad

Rachel Bolstad — Tue, 08 May 2012 05:52:55 +0000

Thanks Mary. Regarding your first thought… well… what is a community of practice, from your point of view? What, do you think, defines what is the “practice” that would bind this community together? What is a community of practice for? What does it do? And, if you’ve experienced (or anyone reading this has experienced) examples of a community of practice, how did it work? what did it do? what might that look like for us?

Comment on Traces… (post-workshop reflections part 1) by Mary

Mary — Mon, 07 May 2012 23:58:29 +0000

Hi, Rachel
Here are some thoughts for you – like you, I’m not sure where they go yet…

- Community of Practice. How could we use the ST platform to develop a genuine Community of Practice? Is that what we want to do? (I think for me the answer to that last question is yes. But it may not be what everyone else wants.)

- C21st research. How does the ST experience to date tie in for you at NZCER with what you know of good practice in research models & methodologies (e.g. action research) and/or emerging research models & methodologies?

- C21st Education. How does the ST experience to date tie in for participants with what they know of good practice and/or emerging models & methodologies in education such as “learning” &/or “teaching” &/or equivalents (ako etc)

Comment on Problem finding by Silke

Silke — Sat, 05 May 2012 00:27:27 +0000

Hi David. Being a Problem Finder within Science could be just looking around in our physical world and put questions to what we observe: Why does toast become brown when it is toasted? Why is milk white? Why does water boil when you heat it? etc. But actually I think that the best teachers of how to be a Problem Finder will be smaller kids who are able to ask the most facinating and mindblowing questions. In Danish we have a song about this little boy who asks questions like “Why is the nail on my finger? Why dont I have eyes on my neck? Why do you always have to wear a hat (yes, the song is old!) ? etc etc ” until he is punished by the adults … So you need to find children who have their curiosity intact.
A question: Why is it important to understand? Why is problem finding and solution important? When do we support our children and ourselves in just observing without analysing or judging?

Comment on Finding discipline-related problems, asking discipline-related questions by Silke

Silke — Sat, 05 May 2012 00:10:59 +0000

How would a teacher decide if it is a good problem or not ? Hmmm … the question indicates that it is the decision of the teacher, not of the student … an assumption that may be relevant to question in the process of “shifting thinking”.

Two possible criteria for a question being “good” may be:

1. If the problem brought forward allows the “investigator” to explore the text or him/herself deeper (without being good at literature I believe that the purpose of exploring a text is that you get to know not only the text better but also yourself – why otherwise explore the text?! … unless of course your teacher tells you to )
2. If the problem is brought forward in a state of curiosity and investigation – i.e. the student who puts the question is sincere

I guess I would judge the value of the problem more on with which energy and intention the problem was put, and less on the nature of the problem.