Activity 6

Activity 6:   New Zealand and International trends and issues in education

A current global trend is for poverty reduction and growth of the middle class.  

"Today there are 1 billion people in the "middle-classes", in 2030 there will be 3 billion. As families get wealthier, there is an increasing demand on goods and services and a larger proportion of this wealth will be spent on education."  Course reading - Global Trends 2030.

The impact that this predicted trend of growth in the middle class and their associated increasing spend on education seems immensely positive.  However, before we teachers begin to celebrate this rise of education spending, maybe we need to be mindful of what will not change.
This trend will not change the situation for those who remain not middle-class students and will therefore not be in the situation of having a greater amount of money spent on their education.   This issue is addressed, now and in the future, within my learning community by focusing on increasing family and student engagement with education and ignoring how little money whanau is spending.  Our families have always supported student's education in non-financial ways and I would work hard to increase this type of support through relationship building and mana. 

Relationships and engagement with school includes opportunities such as Breakfast Club, Sports events, Cultural events, parent/student goal setting interviews, one-to-one mentoring and social events.  Mana includes being part of this community and sharing in the successes of all students as well as individual success.  The celebration of our successes and therefore engagement is being addressed more and more utilising social media(hits on Facebook!) along with students being out and about in the community. With the transition to the new school being one of our goals this year, students are engaging far more with students from our contributing schools than ever before.  A lot of this is to do with planning for the new school - awesome!

A New Zealand Education trend is the rise and rise of technology (digital) access in schools.

The concern I have is about equitable access across all New Zealand students and whether students will also have increased access to supporting pedagogy.  In my own school the digital technology implementation has been hit and miss.  

The hits are the high speed internet, the three or four bookable class sets of Chromebooks along with half a dozen iPads and numerous desktops for all students.  Teacher implementation of the use of computers in classrooms has taken care of PD for the foreseeable future!  

The misses have been the struggles and conflict around the use of smartphones in classrooms (and the Health and Safety need for them following the 2011 earthquakes in Christchurch), the confusing website blocks instigated by the switch to N4L along with the increasing gap between teachers who are digital natives and the digital dinosaurs/immigrants.

These issues are addressed again (surprise, surprise!) by relationship building.  Senior Management meet weekly with our IT support team for attending to questions raised by teachers over the previous week.  This face to face meeting ensures that messages are not blurred and lines of communication with our technical support remain positive and open.  The N4L issue was solved within one day!

Educational use of smartphones in class must be implemented uniformly across the whole school with teachers and students mutually respecting the need for responsible use - a responsible use policy just for smartphones? 

The gap in digital use between natives and the dinosaurs is SLOWLY being addressed through hours of PD along with follow ups in department and face to face meetings. My observation here is that often both groups need each other for successful outcomes.  Teachers with experience and mastery of digital-free pedagogy have in their 'tool bags' the foundations needed to move into and upward with digital pedagogy.  Teaching literacy to non-engaged learners isn't something you want to throw an unsupported computer programme at, however there are many literacy based computer programmes supporting the work that experienced teachers do in the classroom e.g. Success-maker. 

This digital marriage won't happen overnight - but it will eventually happen.  

References:

National Intelligence Council. (December 2012.). Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds. Retrieved from www.dni.gov/nic/globaltrends