- continue building on the platform of High Behavioural Engagement across our school
- get High Cognitive Engagement in every class or learning space. See my previous post for the thinking behind this.
On Tuesday 10 February Dr Rebecca Jesson from the Woolf Fisher Research Centre of Auckland University presented their research findings to the combined staff of the 12 Manaiakalani schools. This presentation represented WFRC's early analysis of the same data set we used for our inquiry goals, but combined this with the data from the 11 other schools in the Manaiakalani Group.
The combined data set revealed great examples of Behavioural and Cognitive Engagement which we are able to analyse and use to identify desired practices we wish to see replicated in every class or learning space.
The data also revealed trends which matched our own analysis and surfaced or confirmed the need to inquire into:
- boys engagement in their learning.
- the slump in progress visible across our cluster in Y7/8 and the accentuated drop across the summer into Y9.
- the need to refocus on previously identified components of learning and teaching of Reading that were bringing consistent acceleration which during the last two years appears to have reduced.
My inquiry, therefore is to investigate how to bring about practice change that positively
affects outcomes in the 5 areas bullet pointed above.
My inquiry challenge is to:
- work with staff to clearly identify the desired practices which bring about the looked for change across the domains enumerated above
- work with the management team to identify, describe and implement strategies for getting these practices well understood by all staff
- developing strategy for getting these implemented in a timely fashion without staff overload.
The very real tension in this work is on the one hand going very slow to avoid overload, but not getting change embedded within an evaluation cycle and on the other hand trying to go too quick which will result in partial understanding and failed implementation.
