Plan and conduct a detailed inquiry

Plan and conduct a detailed inquiry into specific aspects of your current teaching that are relevant to the hypotheses you identified in the literature.  

Reality: The latest research is out. In math and reading, students are behind where they would be after a normal year, with the most vulnerable students showing the steepest drops, according to two new reports from the consulting firm McKinsey & Company and the NWEA, a nonprofit organization that provides academic assessments. The students did not just stall early on; the setbacks accumulated over time — and continued even after many students had returned to the classroom this year. Perhaps even more troubling, the students who were most affected by the crisis were already behind their peers before the pandemic, and the added losses have pushed them further back.

What can we do to bring back and retain more students at school and develop (or sometimes ignite) their love of learning? Teachers have to collaborate to address all these needs and use our strengths to engage our tamariki along with accelerating their learning. Covid affected everyone! That's why I believe that teacher collaboration is an extremely powerful approach that can be used to not just benefit our students but support teachers' well-being too.

For teacher collaboration to be effective, we (teachers) should want to participate rather than feel like we must. Like any other skill, collaboration can be improved upon with practice. This is my and, hopefully, my team's experience and reflection on the past two terms of our collaborative work. I look forward to continuing to improve our team's practice to maximise our tamariki successes in all areas of school life and support them to become life-long motivated learners. He waka eke noa!

The focus and plan of my inquiry into teacher and student collaboration to improve learning outcomes and well-being.

• Continue to  develop and refine our shared vision and goals, team culture
• Continue to refine and reflect on our collaborative planning and creation of shared resources
• Create a habit of frequent and consistent team data analysis (formative and summative) to reflect on best practices and plan the next steps.
• Continue to develop trust and positive professional relationships. Like any relationship, collaborative teams take time to build and have the potential to increase in strength and productivity over time. 
• Collaboratively advance our professional knowledge, skills, and beliefs about student learning. 
• Model positive collaborative behaviour to our learners.

Fluency Without Fear: Research Evidence on the Best Ways to Learn Math Facts By Jo Boaler

Fluency Without Fear: Research Evidence on the Best Ways to Learn Math Facts by Jo Boaler (2015)

Found a few years ago during my ALiM work, I keep referring back to this article and  https://www.youcubed.org/ website. This work is about developing number sense instead of memorization of facts, it unpacks the idea of learning math facts along with a deep understanding of numbers and the ways they relate to each other.

In a critical research project, researchers studied students as they solved number problems (Gray & Tall, 1994). The researchers concluded that low achievers are often low achievers not because they know less but because they don’t use numbers flexibly – they have been set on the wrong path, often from an early age, of trying to memorize methods instead of interacting with numbers flexibly (Boaler, 2009). 

Based on my experience, some teachers want their students to drill in basic facts and times tables as this is 'a good old school that worked well in the past'. Saying that we don't really have any research data to support this statement. I remember a lot of my classmates who hated maths because they didn't understand it or had to sit timed tests. I was one of them and I didn't enjoy that 'good old school' approach. 

I believe that the current decline in student achievement in maths is caused by a lack of maintenance or an unbalanced or inconsistent maths programme. 

• Do we all have a solid maths block every day four or five times a week? 
• Do our students practise and apply the knowledge and concepts taught in class or just do some busy work during their independent activities? 
• How can they develop fluency without mileage and purposefully created and provided opportunities? 

According to the NZC,  'number' should be the focus of 60–80 percent of mathematics teaching time during the first four years at school and 50-70 percent afterwards. 

Here comes a common misunderstanding or misconception. The curriculum requires a lot of time teaching 'number', but modern research talks about reasoning. The answer is simple. The 'old school' is about memorizing facts while the modern school is about developing fluency through making sense and connections, and talking about reasons for the use of different methods. Students need to learn to calculate through number sense, as well as spend time on problem-solving and reasoning. 

One of the great methods for teaching number sense and math facts at the same time is a teaching strategy called ‘number talks’ that many of us have been implementing already. Research tells us that the best mathematics classrooms are those in which students learn number facts and number sense through engaging activities that focus on mathematical understanding rather than rote memorization. (Jo Boaler)

At the end of her article, Jo compiled some great and engaging activities that can be used in any classroom to support your tamariki number sense development. 

Learning about Collaboration from Literature

My hypothesis is that a collaborative approach during group and independent learning activities might increase student engagement and develop a better understanding of topics or concepts and their practical application. 

Research shows that collaborative group work involves students working jointly on the same problem at all times. Within a collaborative group, decisions are shared and the negotiation of roles and relationships constantly evolves. Such a collaborative approach to learning is linked to Vygotskian ideas such as situated cognition, scaffolding, and the zone of proximal development  (Forman & Cazden, 1985).

Interestingly enough, I found proof of my own observations 'that part of the reason students give up on learning is because they find it difficult and think they are alone in their struggle. An important change takes place when students work together and discover that everybody finds some or all of the work difficult. This is a critical moment for students, and one that helps them know that for everyone learning is a process and that obstacles are common.' (LIMITLESS MIND by Jo Boaler)

Jo says that collaboration is vital for learning, brain development, and creating equitable outcomes. I agree with her; however, first of all, it is important to establish interpersonal connections. I noticed that some of my learners are happy working together and they achieve better results than a group that keeps arguing without listening to each other's ideas. Hence, teachers need to spend more time creating positive norms for collaborative groups.

Emily R. Lai (June 2011) in her Pearson Research report states that "Collaborative interactions are characterized by shared goals, symmetry of structure, and a high degree of negotiation, interactivity, and interdependence. Interactions producing elaborated explanations are particularly valuable for improving student learning. Nonresponsive feedback, on the other hand, can be detrimental to student learning in collaborative situations. Collaboration can have powerful effects on student learning, particularly for low-achieving students. However, a number of factors may moderate the impact of collaboration on student learning, including student characteristics, group composition, and task characteristics."

This resonates with me and my own experiences and shows that student collaboration requires a lot of teacher thinking and designing in creating tasks, forming groups and again, setting up class positive norms. Teachers need to carefully consider group composition in terms of gender and ability when using collaborative learning. Simple tasks with one correct solution that can easily be solved by a single, competent group member should not be used in collaborative settings. Even if not all young students will be able to collaborate effectively in their early school years, they will definitely start to develop such important habits required in older classes and in life in general. 

Another important idea I confirmed during my professional reading is that collaboration is not the only powerful approach to learning and/or working together. There are some times when individual and co-operative learning should take place to develop sound knowledge and skills to be able to work collaboratively and achieve better outcomes. 

For example, Nilofer Merchant in her article Eight Dangers of Collaboration (Dec 2011) reveals eight dangers of collaboration. She describes situations when people want to be individually recognised because they are great professionals or situations when collaboration slows down the process and creates conflicts instead of benefiting participants and organisations. Once again, in my opinion, we have to learn to choose the most suitable approach when it comes to a specific situation or task. This relates to students and even more to teachers. 

Create Staff Meeting - Silhouette Art workshop

Each term the Manaiakalani Kahui Ako hosts staff meetings as an opportunity for Manaiakalani teachers to connect with our COL Kaupapa and Pedagogy.

This time, my school hosted the Create Staff Meeting and I enjoyed the opportunity to share my practice with other wonderful and creative Manaiakalanai teachers. I was privileged to be supported by my team as this was the first workshop that we presented together. Well done Team Kea!

Team Collaboration to improve the efficiency and well-being of my team.

I believe that achieving effective collaboration with my colleagues improves the efficiency and well-being of my team. As I shared earlier in this blog, I see my team's collaboration not as a task to complete and then move on. Collaboration is an ongoing process that involves a lot of sharing, experimenting, designing, reflecting, etc.  I noticed that when we are team-planning and co-teaching, we develop and establish shared trust, values, goals and improve our team's systems.

TKI - Collaborative Teaching

Active collaboration is particularly important for creating a growth-based learning environment and for increasing student learning progress. Research shows that teachers who work together and learn from each other are more successful in improving student outcomes than those who work alone.

Through growth to achievement: Report of the review to achieve educational excellence in Australian schools , (March 2018)

Key benefits of teacher collaboration include:

• a sense of "all being in it together"
• having a critical friend to support you
• trying new things and getting feedback from students and colleagues on their impact
• being part of an ongoing process of reflection.
• a shift of thinking from “me” to “we” and from “my learners” to “our learners”.

We already see the shift in our thinking and approach to Team Kea's planning, teaching and learning.

For example, collaborative planning provides opportunities for us to improve our content knowledge of the NZC and receive/ give feedback on our next steps and professional achievements.

As we move towards moving to ILE, we will continue to develop our personal and team successful collaboration skills by actively participating in PLDs, reading professional literature, visiting different ILE schools and reflecting on our own practice and experiences.

Developing collaboration skills to improve learning experiences and achievements

Begin to collect evidence and data and come to the next session ready to share your preliminary findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge i.e. using your baseline student data and evidence.

The research shows that problem-solving, reasoning and proof, communication, connections, and representation–can be seen in action in a discourse-rich mathematics community as students interact, question one another and convey their understanding. 

After analysing my students' Term 1 data, I also had a few formative observations and conversations about their learning. The students enjoyed maths but didn't feel comfortable with 'harder' questions. I have a group of boys who are extremely competitive and want to win - no matter if it is a sports competition, a game or a maths question. I had to reestablish our maths class norms by talking about productive struggle, the purpose of solving problems, collaboration and team encouragement and support. He waka eke noa! We are all in this together!

I also believe that after two bumpy years, my students had no opportunities to develop their collaboration skills. You might wonder why is collaboration important in maths class? Because maths discourse is one of the powerful components of an effective maths programme. Along with the high leverage practices,  mathematical discourse improves students' critical, cognitive and metacognitive thinking, develops their key competencies, maths knowledge and skills, and contributes to their better achievements across the curriculum. My students needed to learn how to collaborate and engage in mathematical argumentation. I must admit that by this time, they started to collaborate together to learn and grow from each other. They also noticed that they have lots of fun working together.

Tools, measures & approaches to measure students progress

Describe the tools/measures/approaches you plan to use to get a more detailed and accurate profile of students’ learning in relation to that challenge. Justify why you chose these approaches and tools.

To measure my students' progress and knowledge, I plan to use both formative and summative assessments with a bigger emphasis on formative assessment strategies. I believe this will help improve teaching and learning simultaneously. 

Three types of standardized maths tests:

PAT, GLOSS/JAM and e-asttle

Surely, along with the standardized tests, I'll be using formative assessments (observations, student voice, conferencing, number talk and problem solving - tasks that require students to use skills or apply ideas, etc) to evaluate my students' progress.

The first set of Term 1 data showed that over half of my team's learners are working below or well-below expectations in Maths. Last year, my class' progress proved that my maths programme worked well for my students. This year, with the focus on team collaboration, I hope to extend my inquiry across my syndicate.