Janice's Reflective Practice Blog

To understand indigenous knowledge, people need to accumulate their own personal understanding of ‘culture’. Yes, it is the characteristics of a group of people, their music, dance, food and art. However, it is so much more. When applying the Mauri Model, I consider myself as sitting at the Mauri Ora level, the state of being actively engaged. My cultural framework is strong. I do not take on the perceptions of others, I have an open mind and develop my own understandings by being a listener and an observer. Gay (2010) defines culturally responsive pedagogy as teaching ‘to and through students’ personal and cultural strengths, their intellectual capabilities, and their prior accomplishments’ (p. 26). I believe this is the case, the bottom line. To be an effective cultural facilitator, you need to consider where you sit in relation to the Nine Cultural Intelligence Mega Skills, as identified by Bucher (2008). On reflection, I can check off numbers 1 to 8. A key contributin...

On reading Trends Shaping Education (2016), Family Matters was the trend that caught my attention and is most relevant to my practice. I could instantly see direct connections between the key topics discussed in this chapter and the positions of the families in our school community now and where that might lead to in the future. The fact that these trends are so closely interrelated, being a 'now' and a 'future 'issue was also an attracting feature. The most relevant issue that applies to our immediate school community and the wider community of Aotearoa, New Zealand within Family Matters, chapter (4) of Trends Shaping Education (2016), is that of Diverse Families. The institution of marriage is changing. Marriage rates are declining and same-sex marriages are now legal in almost half of the OECD countries. Our school community is following these trends with more children coming from a non-traditional family structure, when measured against many dynamics . Ou...

A ‘decile’ as defined by the Ministry of Education, school-decile-ratings (2017) “is a measure of the socio-economic position of a school’s student community relative to other schools throughout the country.” The decile rating attracts operational funding and resources. Deciles are calculated against the socio-economic indicators of income, occupation, household crowding, educational qualifications and  families receiving income support.                                                                                                                                Our school is decile 5. We have parents who are well educated, drive new cars and travel overseas r...

Finlay (2008) stated that to be a powerful tool to examine and transform practice, critical reflection needed to be refined and grown. After completing the reflective practice survey and considering the 5 levels of reflection as defined by Zeichner & Liston (1996), my current reflective practice is at the Rapid Reflection and Repair level. I need to shift to Research and Retheorizing and Reformulating to refine and grow my practice. Firstly, I selected a suitable model of reflection to augment the quality of my reflective practice. Finlay (2008) discusses a variety of reflective practice models; Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle (1988), The three-stage model of Boud, Keogh and Walker (1985) and John’s Model of Structured Reflection (2006). I have selected Jay and Johnson’s (2002) model as the three intertwined dimensions of; descriptive, comparative and critical reflection are more consistent with the Spiral Model of Inquiry where it cycles through: scanning – focussing – develo...

Reflective Practice Blog by Janice Potts is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .