Freemans Bay School
Engage Empower Enrich
Freemans Bay School is one of the
oldest schools in the New Zealand. Established in 1888, it is part of the Auckland City, Western Bays
network that is expected to have long term population growth.
This means that more new schools will
be developed in Auckland under the Ministry of Education Flexible Learning
Environments policy. (FLE).
Having been through a total new rebuild
at Freemans Bay School, I have been reflecting on where we could make systems
improvements on designing and transitioning into FLE environments.
Now that we are at the end of our
three year rebuild project, this post is around my thinking on:
What system changes need to be
explored at a national level and school level to support schools in a learner
led design process that will not only see the buildings completed but also support
collaborative ways of teaching and learning in the new spaces?
MOEs policy of FLEs requires a systems
thinking revision at national level.
In UK and Scandinavia the first
consultant that is appointed to any new education facility is the education
design consultant. This person is the lead consultant who supports schools
through the process of developing and supporting the school vision both at the
design stage and beyond.
We need to rethink our systems
nationally to ensure that school leaders and teachers are supported to work in
collaborative and flexible learning environments in a strategic way.
Having visited many new and refurbished FLE schools in
NZ and overseas, I am interested in how our MOE design policies and procedures
can be strengthened to ensure that the dots a joined between the school vision
for learning and the design, incorporating evidenced best practice to inform their decisions. This process needs to be
resourced at a national and school system level.
It is important for schools to
consider strategically how teachers, in their teams can transition into new
spaces - contextualising new ideas concerning curriculum, pedagogy and
co-teaching. If the teachers theories of practice are not aligned with
appropriate practice in FLE spaces they may not engage in the shifts of
practice required.
Meeting the increasing diversity of
students is recognised as being a too bigger ask for one teacher working in
isolation.
Hattie’s comprehensive study of
factors affecting schooling concluded that the most powerful strategy for
helping students to learn, was ensuring that teacher work in teams. (Hattie,
2009)
Asking teachers to make the shift to a
collaborative learning focused environment in teaching teams, on a daily basis,
adds a significant layer of complexity to teaching and ways of working.
When teachers have shared ownership of
groups of learners they need to be able to spend time together to plan,
research, implement and adapt their practice
In our NZ primary schools teachers
already have 30 hours class contact time with 1 hour a week mandated for
classroom release. Time is a significant barrier to the success of
collaborative learning focused relationships. This issue needs to be addressed
at a national and school level.
At
FBS we have recognised that staff need to be strategically supported through
the change process, to be prepared to collaborate to deliver a personalised
learning curriculum.
This support is provided through a mixture of vision led
workshops focused on collaboration, coaching and teacher led inquiry. We have
cut down the number of after staff workshops to ensure that teachers have time
to meet and to discuss their learners needs.
In 2010 Linda Darling-Hammond et al
researched how high performing countries organised successful professional
development for teachers. The findings were ‘extensive opportunities for
ongoing professional learning embedded in substantial planning and
collaboration time in school’.
Schools need to consider how they can
support the daily collaboration of the teaching teams and additional PLD
opportunities, based on best practice, that promote their school vision around
learning in their FLE environments.
What system changes to we need to have
at a national and school level to support teaching and learning in FLE
environments?
