Outcomes
The strategic plan that emerged from the process serves as a road map shared by all of the technology teachers at St Margaret's to take their students on their journey toward Technological literacy. The plan provides teachers with clear information about where the students have been and where they should be heading, and what they should gain along the way. For each year level of that student's development, the plan clearly outlines achievement targets. Targets include the achievement objectives outlined in the Technology Curriculum, assessment criteria (both for NCEA and IB) and a range of positive values and personal qualities.
At Year 7 students purchase a Technology Kit, which contains an A4 workbook. This is used by students to record all the technological practice undertaken
in the various modules of Technology throughout the student's Middle School
education (Years 7-10). This four-year record of a student's planning, development
and evaluation of their technological outcomes enables Technology teachers (the students and their parents) to clearly see an individual student's progression in technology. It also helps to establish appropriate pathways for future learning.
While the strategic plan is unambiguous, it is not tightly prescriptive – rather it leaves teachers with enough flexibility to make their part of the journey an interesting one. Its transparency enables teachers to ease progression through the levels through interaction. One of the Technology teachers in the Middle School, for example, is actively encouraging her peers in the Junior School to ease student progression into Middle School Technology by adopting similar, teaching approaches. For example, the use of scrapbooks is encouraged in the Junior School to record Technology work, with the idea that this will ease them into the concept of visual diaries. Claire would like to see this sort of interaction increase, not only within the department but also across other departments.
The plan also serves as an auditing tool that all teachers can use to evaluate their teaching units and identify gaps in their coverage of the curriculum. When Claire first used the strategic plan to examine one of her Year 10 teaching units, for example, she identified the need to improve her coverage of the Practising Technologist requirement.
Working to the plan has helped establish and maintain consistency of assessment across the whole department. In part, this consistency is a result of the process involved in establishing the plan. To participate in any meaningful sort of way, each teacher was required to gain a clear understanding of the curriculum, the achievement objectives and their Indicators of Progression. The cross moderation of student work done during the development of the plan helped to develop this understanding as well as assisted teachers to establish the assessment consistency required.
Assessment is embedded in the teaching and learning process. In the senior courses formative comments are recorded, following one-to-one conferencing, in a notebook. These comments are often referred to by the students, to check what was discussed and to plan the next steps required in their practice. This information is also used by the teacher to inform the writing of school reports and when speaking to parents and caregivers.
The reporting system allows access, by subsequent Technology teachers, to a student's module achievements and their formal school report. Reports are curently based on learning outcomes derived from the Components of Practice. In Years 7, 8, 9 and 10, reports are written at the conclusion of each Technology module. In the senior school, formal school reports are written twice a year with an Interim report summary after the first six weeks of the new school year.
Besides being a tool for providing unambiguous guidelines for planning and evaluating teaching units, aiding the consistency of teacher judgements on student achievement, the framework provides benchmark criteria against which the Year 9 entrants to the senior Technology course may be assessed. Each year, around 65 students enter the Year 9 programme at St Margaret's. Of these, about 50 have done Year 8 Technology at the school and are well versed in the process and the language of Technology. The remainder come from feeder schools in Christchurch and small area schools outside the city. The strategic plan enables teachers to assess where these students are at, and helps them adjust to the new pathway relatively quickly, says Claire.
The Beacon Practice project has resulted in a culture change in the department, Claire says. "The sharing and awareness of each other's practice achieved has been great. Now we know what's going on in the different areas at all the different levels, whereas before we were all just working in our separate Technology areas."
A teacher commented to Claire that the increased understanding brought about by the strategic plan enabled her to speak with confidence at a parent/teacher evening about what was going on in the different areas of the technology department. The teachers can now use examples from previous technology contexts when teaching in their own contexts. For example, a teacher may say to his or her class: "In Food technology you wrote specifications, how can you apply that knowledge to materials?"
Key factors for success
The success of the programme has come about through a combination of factors.
Beacon funding was 'absolutely critical' to the success, Claire says. The funding allowed teachers to meet regularly and focus exclusively on the development of the strategic plan/teaching framework, rather than becoming bogged down in the usual quotidian administrative details that derail many meetings.
"Although we were all getting on as a department, we weren't having as much professional conversation as we would've liked. We would meet regularly, but meetings would be more administrative than PD."
Strong leadership, both from outside the department and within it was important. Cliff credits much of the success of the programme to Claire's leadership as HOD.
"She had the willingness to take the extra step and the determination to force change along, but allied with this is a requirement for professional respect. Claire had earned that respect through the results she had been obtaining in NCEA and Scholarship.
"You may have the drive, the passion, the vision, but you also have to ensure that you have people alongside you. There's no point in just presenting information, or templates, or a programme to people. You have to take people with you. You don't so much lead from the front, as lead from alongside. It's as much about this as it is about providing a sense of direction."
Outside facilitation was also key. Cliff is clear about his role: "As a facilitator your job is to push people's boundaries and show them the next step. Not in a way that says: 'you have to do this' but more in the way of saying: 'Have you considered this?' The facilitation role as I see it involves confirmation as well as challenge. Not all challenges will be acceptable. Sometimes you put unrealistic challenges in front of people and you have to realise that. A good facilitator will challenge the group he or she is working with, be honest, and be encouraging."
The willingness of people to engage with proposed change was also critical Cliff believes. "People must see benefits in what they are being asked to do. Any changes must come from the people directly involved in the programme the key to facilitation is to get them to believe in what they are doing."
Part and parcel of cultivating this engagement is having everybody, jointly create a common vision statement up front, and then maintain that guiding vision throughout, he says. "It's so important to break down the vision statement into incremental achievable steps as early as possible, so that people don't just see it as a nice theory, or a piece of paper on the wall. They must be able to see the pathway required to turn the vision into reality."
Another factor in the success of the programme was the very strong support coming from the school's senior management and the obvious belief in what the Technology Department was attempting to do. Claire and Cliff agree this support was critical, and in particular single out the support offered by the principal of the school at the time-Claudia Wysocki.
Before she retired from the school in 2007, Claudia recorded an interview expressing her enthusiasm for Technology as a subject and the reasons behind her enthusiastic support for the Beacon Project in the Technology Department.
"I think they know that they are supported, that what they are doing excites me. And they know if they have ideas, they can come and talk about them, and if we can make them work we will make them work. And if we can't, we say: 'Well OK let's modify it and figure out how we can do it now," says Claudia.
"I haven't done it, they've done it. But they've done it with my support, because what they're talking about, I believe, is the education of the future, and that excites me.
"So I see the development of Technology, particularly through the Beacon project, as a valuable role model for other curricula areas. Particularly with Beacon, because the way that has developed with shared learning of staff, the way that they share their best practice and the way that they are open in discussion to talk about what has gone well for them and what hasn't gone well, the way they support one another, visit one another's classes, and really are developing the model of reflective practice, has had a huge impact on this school."
