Week 14

Multi Local

Rituals - where do you shop? Where does the food come from that you eat?

Relationships - facetime or physical who do you spend your time with in a week?

Restrictions - where are you able to live? What passport do you hold?

Analogy

Considered images and their analogy of culture and how to work effectively across cultures.

We saw all 4 pictures as a set and decided it depended on perspective.

• Big fish and little fish. Big fish appears big but if zoomed out it may not be big compared to a whale etc. Fish is not aware of the water as it knows nothing else.
• House in the distance behind the sea. The house looks like it is on the water but there may be land between.
• Camera lense. Can zoom in and out and focus on different things. Wide and close up lense views.
• Iceberg. Wide iceberg at the top to narrow above the water but what is under the water.

Relating back to our students… it is our perspective on the learners and that to be culturally aware
we need to be aware of what we can’t see. Not just understanding others but understanding ourselves and our perspectives.

Curriculum Principles

A report by the ERO looked at how well the eight principles of the New Zealand Curriculum
were represented in classrooms  The eight principles studied were:

• Coherence
• Community engagement
• Cultural diversity
• Future focus
• High expectations
• Inclusion
• Learning to learn
• Treaty of Waitangi

The report found that “Cultural diversity, future focus and Treaty of Waitangi were the least well represented principles in approximately a third of classrooms. These three principles were not evident at all in about a sixth of classrooms.”(Educational Review Office, 2012).

Education Review Office. (2012). The New Zealand Curriculum Principles: Foundations for Curriculum Decision-Making. Retrieved from http://www.ero.govt.nz/publications/the-new-zealan…

Digital

Engagement and agency

Working in Google docs and measuring the engagement in comparison to writing in their writing books, their cognitive engagement was greater as they had to focus on achieving their goals.  Their behavioral engagement and the emotional engagement improved through the collaboration with their peers as they developed relationships through communication and feedback.

Working with Seesaw has brought similar results with students asking to engage with the program and extend their cognitive, emotional and behavioral competencies.

Student Agency

Martin (2004, p. 135) characterises agency as "the capability of individual human beings to make choices and act on these choices in a way that makes a difference in their lives”. However, although we might believe that the most transformative learning comes from the learner’s own agency, Lindgren and McDaniel (2012, p.346) underline that “giving students the sense that they have control and the power to affect their own learning is one of the great challenges of contemporary education”.

Lindgren, R., & McDaniel, R. (2012). Transforming Online Learning through Narrative and Student Agency. Educational Technology & Society, 15(4), 344–355.

Martin, J. (2004). Self-Regulated Learning, Social Cognitive Theory, and Agency. Educational Psychologist, 39(2), 135-145.