Section 1.5 Professional Networking and Learning.
According to the Australian Institute for Teaching and School leadership (AITSL, 2012, standard 6.2); teachers have initiate collaborative relationships in order to effectively engage in professional learning. AITSL (2012, standard 7. 4) asks teachers to contribute to professional learning networks and communities, and build productive links with the wider community. In order to develop towards these standards, it imperative that developing teachers take steps towards learning about collaboration.
Initial attempts to collaborate often stop at the level of cooperation (Morrison, 2012), and this was true of my previous experiences in attempting to collaborate. Rather than just talking together about what work to do, and giving occasional feed-back, collaboration should include dialogue, sharing of knowledge and ideas, joint planning and decision making, clear structures of engagement and common goals (AITSL, n.d).
This time around, I came closer to achieving collaboration. The exchange between myself and a fellow student loosely resembled three stages of George Siemens (2005) four-stage continuum. It started out with simple communication, where we agreed to work together, communicated expectations and shared details. The exchange moved into cooperation where we both took the time to view each other’s work. I didn’t know how to use some of the functions of the site, and through question-and-answer type cooperation, was able to up-skill. We began to comment on each other’s sites, ask questions and share ideas on the comments. These ideas began to inform our practice, and it is at this point where I felt we had begun to touch upon something that slightly resembled collaboration. Unlike my previous attempts, where feedback was given after I completed a task, my most recent exchanges were carried out during the planning stages, which was useful for the generation of new ideas. Her insights contributed to changing the direction of my original plan, and gave me ideas such as the use of memes, and their attractiveness to young people. We had just started to touch on collaboration, however we didn’t continue to work together for long, nor did we refine our ideas together and reflect on finished outcomes together. As such, we didn’t get very far along the continuum. One thing that affected collaboration was, in my case, unfamiliarity with the tool that was being used which affected my reply time. Familiarity with collaboration tools, and timely exchanges would have brought me closer to effective collaboration.
Initial attempts to collaborate often stop at the level of cooperation (Morrison, 2012), and this was true of my previous experiences in attempting to collaborate. Rather than just talking together about what work to do, and giving occasional feed-back, collaboration should include dialogue, sharing of knowledge and ideas, joint planning and decision making, clear structures of engagement and common goals (AITSL, n.d).
This time around, I came closer to achieving collaboration. The exchange between myself and a fellow student loosely resembled three stages of George Siemens (2005) four-stage continuum. It started out with simple communication, where we agreed to work together, communicated expectations and shared details. The exchange moved into cooperation where we both took the time to view each other’s work. I didn’t know how to use some of the functions of the site, and through question-and-answer type cooperation, was able to up-skill. We began to comment on each other’s sites, ask questions and share ideas on the comments. These ideas began to inform our practice, and it is at this point where I felt we had begun to touch upon something that slightly resembled collaboration. Unlike my previous attempts, where feedback was given after I completed a task, my most recent exchanges were carried out during the planning stages, which was useful for the generation of new ideas. Her insights contributed to changing the direction of my original plan, and gave me ideas such as the use of memes, and their attractiveness to young people. We had just started to touch on collaboration, however we didn’t continue to work together for long, nor did we refine our ideas together and reflect on finished outcomes together. As such, we didn’t get very far along the continuum. One thing that affected collaboration was, in my case, unfamiliarity with the tool that was being used which affected my reply time. Familiarity with collaboration tools, and timely exchanges would have brought me closer to effective collaboration.