Mindlab Activity 4 Acting in my Professional Environment (Week 28)

Acting in My Professional Environment

As I implemented my Action Plan I came across an issue involving a few whānau members of my community. This tension impacted the professional environment of my tutor group. 

I analysed the issue and found that there was a clash between what our professional values and responsibilities are and what whānau want for their children or how they view their child's learning at Haeata. When my teaching team discussed the whānau responses (5 digital and 2 on paper) during an after school meeting, (about 2 weeks after the survey was shared) I personally struggled with how to respond to the criticism and negative language used by two of the whānau responses. Especially as one parent was very negative towards their own child.

I had been aware of the possibility of negative comments but because a lot of the students and their whānau were new to me I could not accurately predict the responses I received.  Ehrich, Kimber, Millwater, & Cranston (2011) state that "whatever decisions each of the key players makes, those decisions are likely to create repercussions for them personally, for their colleagues, for the students and parents, and for the school more broadly" (p. 182). As a team we discussed the responses but I personally was unsure of to how to respond. I knew that I needed to be careful with my response. When experiencing an ethical dilemma it was helpful to use a framework such as Figure 1, which shows a model of ethical decision making, (Ehrich et al, 2011, p. 178).

 I could have ignored the responses but instead I decided to share the results as a team and together we were able to share our opinions and learn from each other.  One of our school dispositions is being Collaborative and this relates to the Professional Standards under the heading of Professional Relationships, "Seek and respond to feedback from learners, colleagues and other education professionals, and engage in collaborative problem solving and learning focused collegial discussions" (Education Council, 2017, p. 18). The evidence I collect about my professional learning is based on these dispositions as well as the school essential agreements. The image below is an example of a heading from the site I use to track my own professional learning. 

Ehrich et al (2011) is also state that on-going professional learning is helpful for teachers to work through ethical issues and being in a collaborative team teaching environment is definitely an advantage for this.

I felt the best decision was to wait until the students had been involved in more learning activities or had the opportunity for more support.  One of the strategies discussed by Ehrich et al (2011) is to ask for another colleagues perspective. My teaching team has clarified our vision for our learning design and senior management has dictated the way we are going to share this with whānau. I have decided to send out the questionnaire again as a follow up. We need to contact whānau via phone over this next week and we are meeting them in person in week 8. So I will have an opportunity to ask the questions in these ways as well. My final decision for solving this was to wait and see if the interventions have made a difference extremely negative responses, and the neutral responses as well.

References:

Education Council (2017) Our Code, Our Standards. New Zealand: Wellington

Ehrich, L., Kimber, M., Millwater, J. & Cranston, N. 2011. Ethical dilemmas: a model to understand teacher practice. Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice. 17 (2), 173-185

practice, 17:2, 173-185