My Professional Connections

The above map shows connections between myself and my wider educational professional community. At the center are the educators who are involved in secondary education especially those involved in science. The borders of the map include those more involved in science research and research on digital online collaboration. I will discuss the following questions in relation to my map and the community that surrounds it, with potential for further expansion ideas over time.

1. What other professional communities intersect with or lie at the borders of your own profession? What impact do these communities have on your practice and professional community?

2. What are or what would be the benefits and challenges of working in a more interdisciplinary environment?

Professional communities that intersect at the borders of my profession include:

Scientists and science communicators @nanogirl:

• The impact of these communities is that they generate more collaboration and knowledge supports around science and how to use next steps to ensure authentic learning is done with the learner in mind and not just because driven by assessment. That skills should drive assessment not concepts.

Science is always at the center of these groups. This combines many facets of these communities including researchers, students, teachers and science communicators. In terms of my practice, collaboration with these groups allows me and my students to see people using science in real world authentic contexts and provides relevance to what is being taught in the classroom increasing motivation and engagement. They show the practical application of scientific skills and give me new ideas as an educator. An example of this is #teachmeetnz in collaboration with the science learning hub.

Opportunities for Learning and Linking Practice to Authentic Contexts

• Generate new programs within the local community that allow for further opportunities connected with developing student learning through authentic contexts.

Global communities are becoming more and more connected with the schools. Future opportunities could see students and myself as an educator connecting with our wider world so that they may understand and enhance our learning. Connecting students with more leaders in their areas of study could help them to engage and take hold of potential future learning they want to invest in. In terms of practice, it directs the learning to more real world contexts.

By connecting to professionals within global science my practice will give students the learning opportunities that will help them in the real world.

In terms of extending the network, I am aiming to bring students to the science research facilities and in conjunction with the researchers developing science research projects between students and the researchers based on current research, which they will need to present. This will reinforce the skilled based nature of science and developing learning around resilience and problem solving.

Benefits and Challenges of Working in a More Interdisciplinary Environment:

My own subject area is interdisciplinary as science involves numeracy (graphing and use of equations), literacy (written reports, developing questions) and history (how scientific theories develop) as examples.

For myself, as an educator, interdisciplinary learning makes sense. My perspective is to teach literacy and numeracy skills using science contexts. This may better engage students as they are provided with far reaching authentic problems, texts, visuals and other information that they previously attained with a reduced perspective. Presently, students have 7 different lessons with no linking between them, but with this new approach, they would have a coherent link between each lesson in the day.

As a teacher, it reinforces the key competencies of the New Zealand Curriculum with a wider range of contexts – teachers can work together across the curriculum upon topics that connect subject areas. 

Challenges arise in that we must now cover more curriculum strands within our already packed area of specialization. Teachers who may not have experience with English may now have to become more familiar with another subject area. Personally, I do not find this a challenge because I enjoy adding  learning and with consulting specialist teachers this can be overcome as an issue.

Challenges may arise when you have students who are far below standard and unequipped with the basic skills to enable them to focus on two subject areas simultaneously – they may be needing specific support just to write simple sentences so applying this to science, may cause them to feel overwhelmed when they may be able to only write some new words. Differentiation of learning and the teacher knowing their learners through discussing with other teachers could assist in dealing with these challenges or preparing for them in advance.

In summary, we are all connected educators and social media and digital technology has further facilitated this. New ideas can be created and developed within these connections.

As we move forward some important goals for extending these connections should include:

1) examining how to take further steps to develop connections with communities that can introduce new ideas to your practice.

2) exploring further usage of online digital technology to ensure learners see how what they are learning is relevant to them.

3) ensuring that connections are wide ranging and challenge your practice.