Week 19 Contribution of Teacher Inquiry Topics to my Communities of Practice

Graphic illustration by Nitya Wakhlu, produced at the Experience Engagement conference in October 2015

I will follow Jay and Johnson’s (2002) '3 steps of reflection' model to reflect on how two potential digital/collaborative learning related teacher inquiry topics would contribute to my Communities of Practice.

Step 1

My Communities of Practice:

• Members of the Languages Department at my school
• Colleagues at my school interested in my teaching approach 
• Wellington Languages Cluster members
• The New Zealand community of Language teachers
• The New Zealand community of Japanese Language teachers

Each of these COPs share Wegner’s (2000) characteristics of a COP of Joint enterprise, Mutual engagement and Shared repertoire with opportunities for face-to-face meetings, conferences and through email lists, wikispaces, webinars and twitter feeds.

Domain

Many subjects are moving towards an Inquiry learning approach. However, in Language class learners need to develop a vocabulary and grammar knowledge base developing their skills level by level. They can not jump from Level 3 straight to Level 5. This predicament has led me to two possible inquiry topics.

Possible topic 1: Does inquiry based learning provide learners with more authentic learning and improve their skills?

Possible topic 2: Does Gamification motivate learners to enhance their knowledge and skills?

Community

The 5 COPs are active and involve regular meetings, conferences and online communications. The members are familiar and open about issues they face in their classes and we all benefit from discussions and feedback.

Practice

All of my COPs have spaces like web-sites to share resources, ideas and teaching approaches.

The NZ Languages Langsam in 2019 will be a great opportunity for me to share my inquiry learning with Languages teachers in the Wellington region.

I will keep a blog as it is especially useful for busy educators. Efimova & Fiedler (2003) state “a blog is like a small learning community.

I might not update a blog every week but I will comment through Twitter and post readings in Google+ to report my everyday findings.

Step 2

Team Solutions (2009) defines inquiry Learning as “A process where students co-construct their learning in an authentic context”. Authentic learning contexts are an important key for learning languages. Willis and Willis (2007) argue that “the most effective way to teach language is by engaging learners in real language use in the classroom.” Ellis (2003) emphasises “It is a well-established pedagogy that includes the following characteristics: major focus on authentic and real-world tasks”. It will be interesting to find how the inquiry learning process helps with learning languages, especially at the primary level where the learners have rudimentary target language knowledge.

Priebatsch (2010) lists 4 game mechanics;

• Appointment dynamic
• Influence and status dynamic
• Progression dynamic
• Communal discovery 

The“Influence and status” and “Progression” dynamics will encourage learners to improve their language skills. Pavy (2006) suggests that “teachers help boys to see the progress they have made” and “Competition was identified as a motivating factor in their language learning, whether as individuals competing against their own past performance, against each other, or against other groups in the class”.

McGonigal (2011) states “Gamification does not depend on the use of games, but rather these core mechanics”.

I am interested in understanding how to use core game mechanics to facilitate learning languages.

Step 3

I will engage with my COPs and ask for feedback.

Critical feedback from COPs will allow me to reflect upon higher levels in Zeichner and Liston’s Five Levels of Reflection (cited in Finlay, 2008, p.4) I will modify and improve my teaching practice.

References

Finlay, L. (2009). Reflecting on reflective practice. Practice-based Professional Learning Centre, Open University. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/sites/www.open.ac.uk.opencetl/files/files/ecms/web-content/Finlay-(2008)-Reflecting-on-reflective-practice-PBPL-paper-52.pdf

Jay, J.K. and Johnson, K.L. (2002) Capturing complexity: a typology of reflective practice for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 73-85.+

McGonigal, J. (2011). Reality is broken: Why games make us better and how they can change the world. New York: Penguin Press.

Priebatsch. S. (2010). Building the game layer on top of the world. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn9fTc_WMbo  

Pavy, S. (2006). Boys Learning Languages. The New Zealand Language Teacher. volume 32, November 2006 pages 16-22.

Wenger-Trayner, E., & Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015). Introduction to communities of practice: A brief overview of the concept and its uses. Retrieved from http://wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/

Team Solutions. (2009). Thinking about Inquiry. Retrieved from http://teamsolutions.wikispaces.com/Teaching+as+Inquiry