Mentoring – The next big development?

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Mentoring

Over the last two or three years I have noticed an increasing discussion in the early childhood education community regarding mentoring, and I believe this is a dialogue of growing importance.

Since the mid 1990s I have been interested in, influenced by, and an active participant in coming to grips with the characteristics of leadership in an early childhood arena. My experiences in professional learning and development and in teacher education have highlighted for me the significance of leadership and the ways in which the values, actions and behaviours of centre-based leaders influence and set the scene for the culture of an early childhood centre or organisation.

Over recent years, with the developments to expectations around appraisal, performance management, and the teacher registration process, the role of centre leaders has become more refined and clearly anticipates leaders taking an active role in mentoring their teaching teams and beginning teachers. I have, over the years, worked closely with many centre-based leaders (teachers, managers, and those in governance roles) and have regularly seen the complexity and isolation of the positions in which many of them work. I have been a long-time advocate of providing regular, formal supervision and/or mentoring for centre leaders, and formal mentorship is increasingly becoming part of teachers’ professional experience.

Those who work in early years education negotiate a physically, mentally, and often emotionally demanding context in their daily practice. Much of their professional learning takes place within the relationships they have with their teaching colleagues, professional leaders, families/whanau, and children. They are generally engaged in working in close collaboration with other teachers, and this can be complex and fraught with opportunities for miscommunication, differences in philosophy and pedagogy coupled with few opportunities to really discuss deeply what they are doing together.

The role of mentor provides a confidential and professional opportunity to discuss, reflect, and investigate the challenges of teaching and leadership within a community of practice. But I believe it is crucial to consider:

  • What is the purpose of a mentor?
  • What role does a mentor play?
  • What are the expectations and outcomes sought by working with a mentor?

My involvement, experience, and professional learning has led me to consider, refine, and develop an increasingly consolidated personal philosophy, or a set of views, which positions my approaches. Being clear about my own purpose, aspiration, and intention as a mentor allows me to align more clearly with the client/mentoree, and to develop a shared concept of the outcomes of the mentoring sessions together.
I believe a mentor’s aims are to:

  • prompt thinking rather than attempt to create a model of their own thinking
  • be a critical friend who encourages and respectfully questions or challenges the mentoree
  • help the mentee work their way through complexity.

Wherever the mentee is in their practice, career, or journey is perfect. There is no such thing as not ready, or too far down the track. Mentor meetings are a think tank of opportunities and possibilities, a safe haven to manage your own emotions and reactions, consider many paths and strategise to reach worthwhile outcomes.

Professional supervision and/or mentoring is a requirement within many early years comparable fields. Those working in the health sector, social services, and other family/whanau-focussed services are often required to ensure regular meetings with either peers or professional leaders to discuss and consult on their actions, practice, and performance. In my view this is a support mechanism that would be valuable and warranted for many in the early childhood education field.

In a modern learning context mentor relationships are becoming increasingly accessible, especially for those who, in the past, could have been viewed as isolated by distance (rural and semi-rural services). Advancing approaches in technology, enhanced broadband, and high speed internet becoming more reliably available, coupled with a simple ICT capability such as Skype means mentoring can be available directly, one-to-one, and in almost any context across Aotearoa.

CORE Education is constantly investigating and developing new ways to push the boundaries of education and connect more widely and in more accessible ways. CORE Early Years Team has two programmes currently available to support early years services to engage in professional learning, development, and mentoring. Check out the links below to learn more about our SELO 3 South Island online Leadership Programme, which includes one-to-one mentoring and/or the newly developed UChoose Programme aimed at supporting digital learning, leadership, and literacies, and much more, in contemporary education.

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Anatomy of an ARG

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Stephen at lighthouse

I haven't been to the lighthouse for years. There's no road to it; you have to walk. You drive the car to a spot the locals call Jack's Point. It's named after Bloody Jack, a hard man who, by his name, you might think was a fierce warlord. Turns out he got his nickname from his colourful language. His real name he gave to the headland half a mile to the south, Tuhawaiki Point. It's marked with a white octagonal light tower. On my right is a rolling paddock of wheat, on my left a sharp drop to the shingle beach fifty feet below. The dog is in a state of high excitement, new scents abound. I am having a ball, and I wouldn't be here if I wasn't playing Ingress.

So if your opinion is that computer games promote a disconnect from the planet, obesity, and a taste for violence, then you may have to rethink it; if only by acknowledging that there are games you can play on your feet, in the open air, in loosely knit teams of like-minded, peace-loving people your own age. These games go by many names: alternate reality game, augmented reality game, urban gaming, location-enabled game, pervasive game, street game, and probably more. I'll use just the one term in this article: alternate reality game (ARG). Imagine a world in which things are slightly different. Allow yourself to buy into that idea, and temporarily re-invent yourself. In your real life you'll be whoever you are, but in this other world you are effective, pro-active, insightful, and above all resilient. Put that other life on hold. See if this new effective self transforms your old self. Maybe even transcends your old self. That's why ARGs come under the broad mantle of reality hacks.

Typically these games are played on mobile devices, most likely your phone. They are "multi-player location-based games played out on city streets and built up urban environments" [Wikipedia], but I'd say that there is plenty of evidence and rationale for Ingress to push out into the wider landscape, and even to really remote locations. Ingress is a game from Niantic Labs, a startup within Google led by John Hanke, the man who, with others, invented Google Earth. You think it's a game, but it's not a game, the authors say. Every time you long tap an empty space on the Ingress map and choose New Portal, you are sending Google a little tiny piece of their stock in trade. That's not a bad thing, nor is it a conspiracy theory; it's just crowd-sourcing.

Exotic Matter (XM) is entering the world through portals. These portals are statues, monuments, porticos, churches, football stadiums, murals; any object of interest openly available to the public. The players are divided into factions: the Enlightened, and the Resistance. I chose to play on the side of the Resistance, because I don't want the world filled up with this Exotic Matter, whatever it is. I like the old world, the way it was before. You can defend a portal of your own, and you can attack a portal of the other faction and try to take it over. You must physically approach a portal to play it, you have to move in the real world to engage. The gameplay is deliciously complex, rich in rewards, inventory and powers. It's played out on Levels 1 to 8 and beyond. I heard of a Level 15 player the other day, a demi-god. There are frequent bulletins, videos posted on YouTube called the Ingress Report, and Ingress News. There are communities, both official and unofficial. There are around 7 million players worldwide.

So, why am I doing this? For the good of my health? At one level, yes. I need the exercise. But at another level, I am trying to understand the anatomy of an ARG. There's a whole new pedagogy here. It's constructionist, connectivist, and game-based. I have a strong feeling that students and their teachers should be doing this in some way. Designing, building and playing alternate reality games folded around curriculum. Just how I don't pretend to know yet. I'm looking for that now. That's why I'm at the lighthouse with my dog.

I’m keen to hear from any educator who is following a similar pathway, and may have experience of alternate reality or augmented reality games used in an educational context. I’d like to join any existing community, else I’ll start one and we can begin sharing!

***

Just as Niantic Labs is a start-up within Google, so is Stephen's project a start-up within CORE Education. Towards the end of last year CORE established their internal incubator. ARG-EF, The Alternate Reality Games in Education Framework, is one of the projects supported by the CORE Incubator, and is scheduled to deliver its first demonstration game in June of this year.

LINKS

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A glimpse of being young, gifted, and brown

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Manu teaching Pasifika students

I have had a particular interest in gifted education for some time now, but I think it stems from personal experience as well. I thought I would take an autoethnographic approach to today’s blog post and show some highlights about how I have been raised, and how growing up in Aotearoa has contributed to being young, gifted, and brown. This, then, is my story…

Life as a gifted and talented Pasifika child at primary school

I vividly remember being in primary school and going through the SRA reading system—the colour coded reading comprehension programme that was widely recognised in schools in the mid 1980s. In my final year of primary school in West Auckland, we moved back to Central Auckland, but before that time I had already completed the final colour grade of the system, the coveted “Gold” grade.

My teacher placed me and other students who also completed this grade in what he termed the “Language” group — students who had high literacy levels. We were responsible for producing the school’s newspaper (the Glendene Gazette, if I remember correctly). We all had assigned roles and wrote poetry, short stories, drew animated cartoons, gave advice, and produced quizzes for students to complete. I hadn’t realised until later, that we were the same students that had been selected a few years before to be senior reading buddies for junior students who had just started to learn how to read.

It was within this group that I also experienced a few field trips that included visits to MoTAT (Museum of Transport and Technology), Microworld (a science and technology inspired museum), and even watching a high school debate at Auckland Girls’ Grammar School (which would later be my high school of choice based on this trip alone). In-school activities included exploring our interests and passions such as performing arts, visual arts, sports, and science. At this age I was an athlete — competing in the school triathlon as a runner. Track events became my forte: being in the first round of selection for the 4 x 100 relay, winning the 100m final for my age group, and competing with other schools was a common experience for me.

At intermediate school

I skipped my second year of intermediate school. My eldest brother advocated for me in a meeting with my principal to push for this. My parents had no real understanding about what was happening. I remember my brother arguing with my principal that I didn’t need to be in Form 2 as I was in the top three of the class and wasn’t learning anything. This was a lesson about advocacy and standing up for yourself. They were important lessons that I would carry with me well into adulthood.

Learning in the home

While this learning was happening at school, it complemented the learning that was happening at home. My parents impressed upon us at a very young age that we were not permitted to speak English in the home — that was the purpose of school — to speak all of the English that we wanted to our heart’s content — outside the home.

I didn’t fully appreciate their hard-line approach until adulthood. Being bilingual has opened many doors to opportunities that I would not have had without knowing how to speak my own language. Samoan language was the first language of the home. We were disciplined if we did not speak our mother tongue, and we attended a church every Sunday that reinforced our heritage language as the language of worship to our God. I think, because the mode of communication at church was Samoan, it in a way helped to elevate the status of my mother tongue into the stratosphere of the heavens where I could feel closer to God, because we worshipped him through song and Scripture in Samoan.

The focus of learning at home was about cultural protocols: the Samoan manners of how to walk, how to talk, how to sit, how to stand, how to respect your elders, how to listen, how to watch and learn. My brothers and I were very quick to be able to walk in both worlds — our home world and our school world. We became quite adept at it. In time, we became interpreters for our parents for more complex social situations. Such situations required us to not only translate English into Samoan, but to also think critically about the best pathways forward, particularly in matters that affected our family. Some have the idea that Pasifika peoples are not taught how to think critically in home contexts because we are taught to obey instruction from cultural standpoints. However, we develop our thinking in conjunction with our learning at school to be able to think critically from a different standpoint. We think critically and question critically to gain understanding and clarity — rather than to challenge the status quo for the sake of it.

At high school and tertiary education

In my first year of high school, I learned how to play the piano. By year 12 I was teaching piano to other young girls at my church. I attained a Grade 8 Trumpet practical certificate through the Trinity College London, and went on to complete a Bachelor of Music degree. Most recently, I completed a Master’s in Professional Studies in Education in 2013 about connecting gifted Pasifika students with their musical talent. This dissertation has been synthesised into an article that will be published in the forthcoming first edition of SET this year.

I am currently embarking on a PhD in Education in the School of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Faculty of Education, at the University of Auckland. The research focus is on Pasifika students’ perceptions of factors that contribute to success in NCEA.

Drivers in education for Pasifika children

It is fair to say that growing up in my household was like growing up in a boarding school, because learning was interweaved with the demands of daily living, with the demands of high expectations, and being the best reflection of the family. In Pasifika families, it matters where you come from. If something happens — good or bad — the first question that is asked is, “Whose child is that?” You would either incur the wrath of your parents or their absolute pride, based on your actions and deeds. This is still one of the great incentives for success: that Pasifika children engage in with their parents — we do what we do to make our parents proud.

I developed cultural identifiers for giftedness by canvassing Pasifika parents at the school I was teaching in, to ensure that notions of giftedness from Pasifika perspectives would be included in the school’s gifted and talented programme. As a result, there were some Pasifika learners who were identified as having both domains — being identified as gifted through cognitive models and the cultural identifiers for giftedness (Faaea-Semeatu, 2011).

Further reading:

For further reading and information about cultural identifiers for Pasifika giftedness you can read the following article that inspired my Master’s research. Coincidentally, this article has been adapted by the Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) PLD provision within the Te Toi Tupu Consortium, and is currently being used to identify gifted Pasifika students in Aotearoa:

Faaea-Semeatu, T. (2011). Celebrating Gifted Indigenous!Roots: Gifted and Talented Pacific Island (Pasifika) Students. Papers from the 11th Asia Pacific Conference on Giftedness, Sydney, 29 July–1 August 2010. Australian Association for the Education of the Gifted and Talented/Australian Government, Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. Also available at AAEGT – Australian Association for the Education of the Gifted and Talented.

Podcasts about being young, gifted, and brown:

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5 top tips for a safer internet

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Safer Internet Day

CORE Education is delighted to be recognising international Safer Internet Day 2015 #SID2015, in support with NetSafe.

We present the following advice as starting points for early childhood, schools and kura who are planning ways to keep students safe online. Which of these is happening for your learners? Let us know on Twitter @coreeducation #SID2015.

Tip #1: Give respect, get respect

The Internet can be a powerful tool for connecting and working with others, both locally and globally.

  • Find ways to collaborate and learn to work positively with others online.
  • Teach our learners to manage their online reputations.
  • Design learning that creates safe, meaningful opportunities to grow ideas responsibly with others online.

Tip #2: Walk the talk

Safe and responsible use of the Internet is normalised through the way we all behave together.

  • Model critical thinking when using the Internet.
  • Find real-life, positive ways to model the use of the web as part of our own learning.
  • Guide others.

Tip #3: Open the door on dialogue

Rather than restricting access to the web or using fear-based messages, the best way to manage challenges online is to work them out together.

Effective prevention strategies emphasise approaches that actively involve discussing with students how they use digital technology, and more specifically, the challenges they experience online and how they keep safe. Teachers, students, peers, parents, family and whānau — we all have a role in this process. There are no quick fixes.

  • Talk to our learners, children and colleagues about online activity, cybersafety behaviours.
  • Lose the fear-based messages. Plan an approach that balances protective approaches, such as technical mediation of student online access, with strategies that promote safe, responsible and pro-social behaviours.
  • Provide support when they meet challenges.

Tip #4: Use the right tools

Use the tools that come with all devices and platforms to restrict or monitor our information and identity online as part of an overall strategy to manage safe use online.

  • Make sure we know how to manage our devices and the security systems that are in-built.
  • Set up secure passwords and consider using software to manage them.
  • Explore the use of Safe Search and student-friendly browsers.

Tip #5: Harness the power

Design experiences and learning opportunities that invite learners to pick up new skills safely and in meaningful contexts. Weave safety messages into the learning process. Make it part of learning plans before you set out with your students.

  • Look for meaningful opportunities to connect with other people across the world. Other young people, whānau and wider communities can all be guides.
  • Use social networks to foster conversations about issues that are relevant to students.
  • Weave web tools through local inquiry – take action in our community

Download a poster of these tips (PDF, 1.2MB). See a copy of the poster at the end of this post.

Other resources

If you liked this, you might also find these other cybersafety resources from CORE Education useful:

EdTalks on Cybersafety

EDtalk

  • Sticks and Stones: Fighting cyberbullying: The Sticks 'n Stones project aims to support students to be Positive Digital Citizens, to help those affected by Cyber Bullying and to encourage everyone not to be bystanders.
  • Te uru ipurangi:He kaupapa nui te uru ipurangi (digital citizenship) i roto i te ao hangarau e noho nei tātau. Ka kōreo mai a Wharehoka Wano mō te uru ipurangi i roto i te ao Māori nei. Hei tāna me whai wāhi ā tātou tikanga Māori i roto i ēnei mahi o te hangarau.
  • Ten Trends 2013: Digital citizenship: Dr John Fenaughty, University of Auckland, suggests a shift towards using inquiry based learning to promote critical thinking and then applying that to understanding what digital citizenship would look like for students.
  • Why research NZC students' online practices?: In this talk from ULearn11, Craig McDonald-Brown outlines why more New Zealand specific research is required into students' online practices.

McDonald Skype sessionImage source: #Skype screenshot mockup of 3way video call by Phil Wolff (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Cybersafety on the CORE Education blog:

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Keys to transformation

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Keys to transformation

The beginning of the school year provides us with plenty of opportunity to consider bringing new ideas and fresh ways of doing things into our schools and classroom programmes. Such thinking is a sign of a healthy system, with change coming as a result of the desire to continuously improve what we are doing, and to ensure we are providing the very best we can for our students.

The need to keep to core values

Any change we consider making should start with considering how such changes might align with our core beliefs, the fundamental ideas we have about what is important for our school and our learners. This is particularly the case where the change being considered is going to have significant impact on staff, students, and the community – e.g. rebuilding all or part of the school, changing the configuration of classes, or introducing new forms of assessment for instance.

As our school system seeks to adapt to the rapidly changing social, economic, and political pressures, the changes being considered can often conflict with the core beliefs, values, and principles we have established, resulting in tensions at all levels and a lack of any real vision for what we are doing or why we are doing it.

Transformation is the new buzzword

In New Zealand, as in many parts of the world, there are calls for a transformation in our school system. A simple search for “NZ Education” and “Transformation” on the Web will reveal just how pervasively this term is now being used across a range of policy and programmes. Yet, do we really understand what transformation means in practice, and is that practice built upon our own set of beliefs about transformation, or are we simply adopting the practices suggested by others?

The argument for and justification of a transformation of our education system is certainly gaining momentum, but a clear articulation of what this will look like is still to emerge, leaving many of the initiatives appearing to be nothing more than simply “different” to what they were.

What transformation really means

At the heart of this transformation is the shift from the school as the focus of education policy, to making the learner the focus of all educational decision-making, with a concerted effort to personalize the learning experience for each learner. Where previously many of our practices reflected an assumption that students start school as a ‘blank slate’ with an innate and fixed capacity to learn, a transformed system develops practices that build on prior learning and reflect a belief in the potential for all students to learn and achieve high standards, given high expectations, motivation and sufficient time and support. Placing the learner at the centre not only makes them the focus of attention in terms of policy and planning, but also involves them in the decisions made about these things. These thoughts are expanded on in CORE’s Ten Trends on Learner Orientation.

The three keys to unlocking transformation potential in our schools

Having established the fundamental premise of placing the learner at the centre of our thinking, there are three keys to unlocking the transformation potential in our schools. These three things define what is fundamentally different about teaching and learning in the 21st century, and help us understand the areas we need to focus on changing in our practice.

First, we must empower our learners by providing them with choices and the ability to act on those choices. This is the key of agency where learners have the ‘power to act’. Agency isn’t about abandoning our role as teachers and leaving everything to the learner, but recognises the learner as an empowered and active participant at all levels of the educational process. It requires us to re-think how we engage with learners and the role we take as teachers, and it requires an emphasis on a different set of competencies that will ensure our learners are able to make good and appropriate choices and act on them in their learning.

Second, we must acknowledge that learning is not confined to the four walls of a classroom, nor finishes at the school gate, but can and does occur anywhere, at any time and at any pace. This is the key of ubiquity, challenging us to find ways of embracing the wide range of contexts in which learning occurs, and to see our schools as ‘nodes’ on the network of learning provision. The increasing availability and use of digital technologies is enabling this to occur more easily, for example, learners are able to access what they are learning and doing at school from home or elsewhere, and they are able to access programmes of learning from other places, not depending purely on what is provided in their local school context.

Thirdly, we must embrace the idea that learning involves the process of knowledge building, and that this is no longer regarded as an individual endeavor, but occurs as individuals interact with each other, contributing, shaping and refining ideas so that the new knowledge is created ‘in the network’ of connections made. This is the key of connectedness, recognizing that ‘no learner is an island’, and that the connections between and among human beings is fundamental to learning in the 21st century. Again, the increased availability and use of digital technologies means that there is now no limit to how and where these connections are made. This is particularly significant in an increasingly globalised world.

Ready to make this the year of transformation?

Applied properly, these keys will require some fundamental shifts in our thinking as educators. They cannot be used in an ‘additive’ way, simply creating another layer to what we already do. Beginning by placing the learner at the centre of what we do, we have the opportunity to truly transform our education system, starting with what happens in our schools and classrooms. What better time to capture this sort of thinking and let it guide our actions than the beginning of a new school year? Let’s make 2015 the year of transformation!

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