The concept of “communities of practice” is relatively new to me, but it makes me think of this new Formative Assessment initiative we have started at my school. In my school, our students are 75% free and reduced lunch, 75% minority and 65% special education. Because of this and of our current administrations lack of progress we have become a Title School this year. Now while it does give us more money for resources, it puts us under the watchful eye of the superintendants. The purpose is to use the money and resources in professional development in order to see major progress in our students’ Basic Skills Test scores. Our administrations solution was to make teachers focus more on formative assessments rather than summative assessments. A summative assessment is like an end of the year exam. It encompasses all of the material for the semester and then tests the student on that material. Formative assessment is assessment at the end of every day. Many teachers do it already by doing KWL charts, Ticket Out the Doors, or even just having a quick class discussion at the end of beginning of class the next day to check for comprehension. With our new Formative Assessment focus we have to turn in a Formative Assessment lesson plan for a lesson we will do the next week. Our principle then checks it and returns it to us so we can then do the results we gained.
Needless to say, we were very excited in the beginning. It actually worked and our excited allowed the students to be excited for the first couple of weeks. We sort of become a community of practice, but it certainly didn’t use the technological Web 2.0 tools I am learning about through FSO. In an article from Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge Online Journal, they outlined the positive aspects of communities of practice.
“Because communities of practice are voluntary, what makes them successful over time is their ability to generate enough excitement, relevance, and value to attract and engage members. Although many factors, such as management support or an urgent problem can inspire a community, nothing can substitute for this sense of aliveness.(McDermott, R. et al, 2002)"
At North, we definitely saw this aspect of “aliveness”. There were less behavioral problems and I could clearly see how the formative assessment practices were helping my own students and more importantly, how I teach. We were put into groups as teachers and told to meet once a week to talk about our progress. My group did so, but it was SO old fashioned. I could see us running out of steam as a school and this morning I received an email stating that we wouldn’t need to turn our forms in until October due to the fact that our principal just didn’t have time to check them. So how could a REAL community of practice concept help us get back on track? Before I give my suggestions, let me share with you a list of 7 Principles of Cultivating Communities of Practice from the Harvard Business School Journal.
1. 1. Design for evolution.
2. 2. Open a dialogue between inside and outside perspectives.
3. 3. Invite different levels of participation.
4. 4. Develop both public and private community spaces.
5. 5. Focus on value.
6. 6. Combine familiarity and excitement.
7. 7. Create a rhythm for the community (McDermott; et al, 2002).
As a school we need to design our practice for evolution by incorporating new technologies. We should be able to use Web 2.0 tools like Google Docs to keep a running log of our formative assessments. Then our administration and other teachers could comment on our forms and even get some ideas from them. We weren’t sharing any ideas or getting perspectives from other teachers, we were just meeting for meetings sake. We also need to allow some teachers to be more or less participatory depending on the week (and much of these problems could be helped by using Web 2.0 tools). Some weeks certain teachers have several meetings, several hall duties AND 180 students to teach. They shouldn’t be punished for not getting their stuff done for Formative Assessment as long as they make up for it by dialoguing with colleagues and getting help when they need it. We need to keep that excitement going with a Professional Development Website or Ning site that can invite teachers from other schools, Formative Assessment authors and professionals, and other teachers BEYOND just our community to help guide our learning. We need to make sure that we aren’t slacking off if it is a bad week, but looking ahead to see how we can do better. With Web 2.0 tools we would HAVE to use planning time to meet and we would need to waste paper to turn things in, we could actually work MORE efficiently and have a better outcome for our own teaching and our students. In this slide show from his blog, Education Innovation, Steve Dale takes the concept of Communities of Practice and really breaks it down for educational purposes! Check it out!
McDermott, R., Snyder, M. & Wenger, E. (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide To Managing Knowledge and Cultivating Communities Of Practice. Harvard Business School: Working Knowledge For Business Leaders. Retrieved September 15, 2009 from http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/2855.html
No comments:
Post a Comment