Reflective Entry 2: - How Aspects of Law, Regulations and/or Policy Impact on Teacher Inquiry
As an experienced teacher in a New Zealand Primary School, my appraisal is heavily influenced by the document ‘Our Code, Our Standards - Code of Professional Responsibility and Standards for the Teaching Profession,’ These are the expectations for all teachers practicing in Aotearoa and it states clearly “ Teachers should “use inquiry, collaborative problem solving and professional learning to improve professional capability to impact on the learning and achievement of all learners.” (Education Council, 2017, p.18). At my school, the standards heavily influence the way we inquire into our practice and use evidence to examine it. We see this in school policy regarding appraisal where it says “Each teacher has an e-portfolio where evidence and reflections are collected around progress on their goals, teaching as inquiry which is linked to each teacher’s Accelerated Learning Plans and how they are meeting the requirements of Tataiako, the Professional Standards and the Registered Teacher Criteria” (2016).
The standards elaborate on this statement in the following table.
The school’s interpretation of this standard is evident in our policy, using professional learning elaboration as a guide. They present professional development opportunities for all staff and many smaller needs based opportunities for groups of teachers at different stages in their careers. Using this regulation (TIA) as a catalyst, all staff at our school are expected to engage in an inquiry specifically designed to raise the achievement levels of our students, as mentioned through accelerated learning plans.
Professional relationships and learning are further catered for with regularly scheduled meetings throughout term time where the focus is on our collaborative inquiries, what we have done, how and why we have done it and the outcomes we have seen. This forms the discussion points in our termly appraisal meetings. One of the things that I particularly like about the way we engage in TAI at our school, is that it is not just a means to ‘tick the box’ in our appraisals. The process is genuinely about inquiring - if something doesn’t work, rather than dedicate all our attention to why it didn’t, we have a solution’s based approach, where we look at what changes to make, or what to do next to get closer to our desired outcome of higher student outcomes. There is no negative consequence if something doesn’t work, just a next step. Morale is high during TIA meetings and collaboration amongst colleagues in an embedded part of our practice. This allows honesty and critical thinking from all teachers as we all strive to reach the desired outcome.
The Wider Context
ERO says that effective appraisal systems displayed the characteristic of appraisal being aligned with other processes e.g. teaching as inquiry, It would seem that many schools have guidelines linking TAI to their appraisal systems. While I cannot claim that these are effective appraisal systems, I did ask 10 different colleagues at different primary school about their appraisal system. From these schools (10) that I was able to elicit policy and guidelines about appraisal policies from, it would appear that largely our school is not that different from others within our Kahi Aho, and the wider cluster of schools in the area. All have a policy regarding teacher appraisal with supporting guidelines that all mention Teaching as Inquiry as one of the actions to be undertaken by teachers. None of the above-mentioned schools specifically said in their policies that TAI was a policy, however, in all, the guidelines have unpacked this further. The TAI mean different things in different schools and in my opinion, depend largely on where the school is in their own journey.
Many have moved away from the Spiral of Inquiry after realising that the spiral does not always fit
the context being inquired into. While it is in our curriculum, the other dimension of ownership of inquiry questions plays a part in the model used to inquire. Two schools mentioned that the inquiries were totally up to the individual teachers and were related to their own identification of a need for themselves, however, the remaining 8 teachers I spoke to all had the same message, the inquiries had to be linked to the PD the school was currently undertaking. These teachers all believed that therefore the inquiry was not there own and some (3) were particularly vocal about the fact that they did not see how their inquiries were something they were doing, more something that was being done to them. Interestingly, my own school has had a lot of traction in the past few years and I believe that this year we have finally nailed it, by providing time to reflect and discuss within teams and allowing the teams to choose their own collaborative inquiry in a wider context.
I look forward to seeing how TAI develops over the next few years with a new moratorium on COL’s and now an accord to look at teacher workload.
References:
Education Council (2017). Our Code, Our Standards. Retrieved from
Education Council (n.d) Appraisal as a catalyst for improved learner outcomes: Two years on.
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