Elaborate in your own words how you would address those issues or trends in your context within your learning community or professional context.
There are many trends that keep popping up continuously in education these days and they are all shaping our education system in their own way. Here are 3 that I feel are really influencing my practice:
#1 - National Standards and Assessment
I am becoming increasingly frustrated with my teaching being judged by whether my children reach the target at the end of their Year 6 year. I guess this is quite a localised problem but I am really feeling it in South Auckland. My school - where some 5 year olds come in unable to hold a pencil and most are at a 3 year old level - I am expected to have them reading when they don't even have books at home! Am I testing for the best of my children, or am I testing because the government wants a number? I believe testing is not the way. I'm sure it has it's place but learners want to know how they are going. A test isn't going to tell them that. Feedback can happen at any stage in the learning process. What makes this sort of feedback particularly useful is when it is (a) timely, (b) objective and (c) relevant to the learner (Core-Education, n.d).
We need to be moving away from the traditional end of unit test. Sure that'll tell you what they have learnt but it doesn't give you the feedback that you could use at the time of your learning. We need to be moving towards a way of telling students what they need to work on and use at the time they are working on it and using it to get the best benefits.
#2 - 21st Century Skills / e-learning / Technology use
The New Zealand Information and Communications Technology Strategic Framework for Education states that all students should be able to access information and communications technology at school and have the opportunity to become confident and capable users (Dashper, 2014). The question is however - do they? The answer of course we know through our research and studies is that New Zealand is woefully behind the rest of the world in the implementation of technology into our classrooms. Our job as educators is to keep up with these trends and help our children keep up with what is going to be their future. Their futures are going to be so different to our pasts, and it would be wrong of us to keep teaching that way. The miniority of teachers are preparing the children - the rest are doing them a disservice. This is something I wish to change - even if it is one teacher at a time. I can start with my team and we can move on from there!
References:
Dashper, M. (2014). New Zealand Schools Embrace Technology for Teaching and Learning. Retrieved from http://www.techlearning.com/default.aspx?tabid=100&entryid=4722
http://www.core-ed.org/thought-leadership/ten-trends/ten-trends-2015/learner-agency
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