In Term one we had the Ugly Shakespeare Company come and perform a humourous and adapted version of Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’, and we hope to have them back in 2021 for their version of ‘Romeo and Juliet’.

The staffing for 2020 was Scott Aitken, Chris McLaren, Sasha Johnson, Sarah Richardson, Luke Taylor, as well as Liz Prebble and Joanne Clark who taught one English lesson each. The English department’s hard work, professionalism, wonderful sense of collaboration and friendship are truly appreciated, especially in this topsy-turvy year.

Despite the anxiety and frustration produced by Covid-19 and the lockdown, there were some real highlights for us in the English department. Not only did we have some fun with online meetings during lockdown, as evident by the image, but there were some hatches and matches. At the end of Term 3, Sarah Richardson went on maternity leave and, with husband Mykal, brought beautiful little Benjamin, (pictured) into this world and earlier in the year, Miss Johnson got engaged to her long-time partner Harry.

In Media Studies, Zoe Evans and her group won the Best Documentary award at the New Zealand Broadcasting School Shorts award and will do a Fine Arts degree at the University of Canterbury. The documentary can be found here. Tim Geldard got into the exclusive New Zealand Broadcasting School to follow his passions, too, and 2019’s student Shardey Harris got a wonderful new role at Whitebait Productions as Director’s Assistant with What Now. As their teacher, it is extremely satisfying seeing students' progress in their studies, careers and passions.

A Personalised, Self-Determined, Culturally Responsive, Connectivist Curriculum for Increased Cognitive Engagement - The Executive Summary

With an ever-increasingly unpredictable world through emerging technologies, natural disasters, pandemics, and social uprisings, there has never been a more expedient time to equip students for 21st Century learning. Sir Ken Robinson once said that education does not need to be reformed, it needs to be transformed, and it needs to be personalised.

The purpose of the research project was to - using the ADDIE instructional design model with an Agile mindset - develop, implement and evaluate a personalised, self-determined learning, culturally responsive, connectivist close-viewing film unit. The primary goal was to see whether the project elements would work in a New Zealand context, to further engage Year 10 and 11 learners, especially Māori ākonga. The other goals were to, eventually, create a more cohesive flow of self-determined learning from Years 7 & 8 through to Years 9 & 10. Significantly, the project endeavoured to shift the locus of control from the teacher to the learner in the process.

Personalised learning (PL), as stated by Leadbetter (2005) allows students to follow their passions, abilities, interests, and strengths in learning by empowering each learner to have personalised instruction the best possible way, through customising the curriculum and thus turn the old education model of ‘one size fits all’ on its head. This is not only better for the individual, but it is better for society and better for the economy, too, as there will be fewer failures. Nevertheless, Leadbetter (2005) warns about deep versus shallow learning.

At the heart of self-determined learning (SDL) is the learner who has agency with respect to how, what, and when they learn. Like personalised learning, the long-term benefits of SDL are for the learner, society, and the economy as they will be in a better position to thrive in the workforce.

Siemens (2005) maintains that learning, knowledge and understanding through the extension of a personal network is the epitome of connectivism, where “Personal knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into organisations and institutions, which in turn feedback into the network, and then continue to provide learning to individuals.” A connectivist model is ideal for enabling SDL collaboration with its aspects of harnessing the affordances of technology, whilst its innovation interaction level, or the creation of content, is a key feature of digital fluency.

An adapted version of The Effective Teaching Profile (2004) that came out from Te Kotahitanga was used to help the project become culturally responsive. It works extremely well because of the greater focus on relational and collaborative practice, the power shifting from the teacher towards the students in their learning, where the teacher becomes more of a facilitator of learning, the guide on the side, as opposed to the sage on the stage.

For the project, students were able to personalise their filmic texts to practise with and for their final assessment. Everything was in Google Slides embedded in a Google Site which included learning outcomes, success criteria, instructions, YouTube clips, examples, exemplars, videos for rewindable learning, and an SDL matrix where students could choose the tasks they wanted to do, and due to the COVID-19 lockdown, a work completion grid. They were to research aspects on film, collaborate with their peers, and post their learning on blogs and make blog comments. They also had the options to show their learning through podcasts, Screencastifys, online video animation tools, like Powtoon, as well as various forms of writing. This was the antithesis of the teacher telling students what to study, how to study it, and how to show their learning.

A CARR licence system was used to help students with their SDL. It had four levels: restricted, learners, full, and expert with respective incentives for students’ learning responsibilities, behaviours, and effort. For instance, expert licence holders could work outside the learning space, make themselves a hot drink, and could listen to music at appropriate times.

A Case Study methodology was used due to the complexity of all the elements and rich data available. This included observations, formal and informal interviews and surveys. The majority of students were more cognitively engaged through the research project compared to the more traditional teacher-directed model of learning and greatly favoured the project elements.

However, some students preferred being told what to do and reported it ‘stressful’ in having to choose their own texts and found it intimidating. This is stated in the literature which posits that SDL can create inner conflict for learners as they are not used to taking responsibility for their learning. Therefore, alongside the personalised and self-directed learning, there will be a suggested framework of texts and learning options for students to help scaffold them into the new ways of learning. However, my experience was that once the less motivated students gained some SDL confidence, they were more engaged with their learning and needed less teacher direction. This way, students get the best of both worlds, but ultimately, they have the power of choice.

Some of the other findings were:

Overall, students at and above the curriculum levels found PL, SDL far more engaging
Some students at or below their curriculum levels wanted more scaffolding but liked the extra power of choice
Relationships with students became deeper and richer as they reveal more about their interests and passions
Students brought their prior knowledge to texts and were likely to analyse them more critically which they felt led to higher achievement
Having more choices led to task remixing and innovative creation content
Personalisation led to greater differentiation which freed up teacher time for students needing more help

The next iterations include giving students a pre and post-test on SDL skills, refining the application of the CARR licences and blog reflections, and better embed mastery goals and the work completion grid into the learning.

Personalised, self-determined learning and connectivism that is culturally responsive are catalysts for greater engagement and educational transformation for learning and life in our ever tumultuous world.

References:

(2005). Connectivism – Foundations of Learning and Instructional .... Retrieved June 21, 2020, from https://lidtfoundations.pressbooks.com/chapter/connectivism-a-learning-theory-for-the-digital-age/

(n.d.). Effective Teaching Profile / The Development of Te .... Retrieved June 16, 2020, from https://tekotahitanga.tki.org.nz/About/The-Development-of-Te-Kotahitanga/Effective-Teaching-Profile

(2018, July 24). “Experiences in self-determined learning” — a free download .... Retrieved June 9, 2020, from http://danielschristian.com/learning-ecosystems/2018/07/24/experiences-in-self-determined-learning-a-free-download-pdf-blaschke-kenyon-hase-eds/

(2005, January 1). The Shape of Things to Come: Personalised learning through .... Retrieved June 21, 2020, from https://charlesleadbeater.net/2005/01/the-shape-of-things-to-come-personalised-learning-through-collaboration/

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